Ebola in Nigeria

Spotted on twitter – the Nigerian Police Force sharing this leaflet in Pidgin telling people what to look out for and what to do in cases of Ebola:

ebpid

This is a great example of the importance of pitching information at the right level and in the right language or dialect if you are going to get your message successfully across. This leaflet has also been made available in Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
Too many otherwise brilliantly thought-out campaigns have failed because these basic rules were forgotten during implementation.

As for Pidgin language – I’m blown away every time I see or hear it.

Coffee Trend Observations

This observation was made by one of our number yesterday evening as some in our party ordered cappuccinos after dessert:

Cappuccinos are so yesterday, guys!

I was unaware of this fact (I don’t drink cappuccinos anyway).
Perhaps cappuccinos are out of date because they’re named after the 16th Century Ordo Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum.

The individual in question then ordered a latte, which is of course named after the Intergalactic Scientific Company’s Prototype Latte Hyperspace Warp Drive.

That should be in vogue for the next few hundred years then.

Lumineers, described

This is a great cartoon from Wrong Hands, the Indie example being my favourite in that it basically sums up the Lumineers and Mumford & Sons, in one handy timeline.

anatomy-of-songs

I don’t listen to Country, Blues, Pop or Classic Rock enough to comment on those particular examples, but given the unerring accuracy of the Indie one, I can only assume that they are absolutely spot on.

I await the Tall Accountant’s comment on the bottom one with eager anticipation.

Of Penguins and Landmines

This comes from the QI website, so I’m fairly convinced of its veracity.

There are thousands of landmines in the Falkland Islands, laid in the 1980s by the Argentinians, which have been a boon to the Islands’ penguin populations, who are too light to set them off (sadly, more modern landmines can be set off by the change in temperature caused by a shadow falling on them, so any penguins in Afghanistan wouldn’t get away with it). The consequent lack of humans in the Falklands means that their populations have rebounded after the decline caused by whaling ventures.

When they did stay on the Falklands, whalers needed fire to turn the whales’ blubber into whale oil. As there aren’t many trees there, whalers would simply burn the penguins, which have highly flammable fat beneath their skin.

Now we know. And now we’re off to Boulders Beach to see if you can actually use a penguin as a firelighter.

Penguin facts, eh? You can never have too many of them.

I was watching an old episode of QI last night and it struck me that I should probably watch a whole lot more episodes of it. While the comedy doesn’t always work, the facts are… well… Quite Interesting.

Richard Dawkins tweets on thinking logically

It’s a fairly simple concept, but it’s something a lot of people just don’t seem to understand.
Dawkins sums it up nicely here:

Yes. All of the above.