{"id":2270,"date":"2011-12-25T07:45:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-25T07:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=2270"},"modified":"2011-12-25T07:19:24","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T07:19:24","slug":"25-december-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2011\/12\/25\/25-december-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"25 December 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning to you all and our very best wishes for a splendidly splendid Christmas. I\u2019m sure Santa will have visited you all as you\u2019re bound to have been very nice and only occasionally naughty during 2011 (apart from brother Steph, obviously). We\u2019re off to Nick and Lucy\u2019s later to share the festivities and we\u2019ll take Pen\u2019s folks along for the ride. I\u2019m looking forward to a staggeringly splendid feast and am sure I won\u2019t be disappointed.<\/p>\n

For those of you who may not have received our Christmas greetings (either because the post is delayed over the Christmas rush or because we’ve struck you off the list this year), you can find a virtual copy here<\/a>. In addition to the usual nonsense, the virtual addition has a number of additional photos as well as a link to a video\/slideshow of our holiday in Tuscany this past summer. Enjoy it if you dare.<\/p>\n

The other \u201cbig\u201d event this week was, of course, a birthday last Thursday which was most enjoyable. Thanks to all of you who sent cards or posted Facebook greetings as well as to those who phoned. We Skyped with Adam in China and were delightfully surprised to find Ben online at the same time \u2013 what else does one do when one can\u2019t sleep at 3.30 in the morning but get up and get online. So, we were able to have a group birthday Skype which was very nice.<\/p>\n

I did receive more cards than one can shake a stick at but I have to confess my favourite came from Sandy and Pam:<\/p>\n

\"Happy<\/a><\/p>\n

And the greeting on the inside of the card reads, \u201cHope your birthday doesn\u2019t stink.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I can assure you that it didn\u2019t and, as a birthday treat, my sweetheart took me to dinner at the Inn at Farnborough<\/a> which was exceedingly pleasant. We had been aware of the Inn and its excellent reputation but had never been before – it was a delight. A wonderful, straight-forward ambiance, absolutely delicious food, very good value and excellent service. I think it will become our favourite place to go for those “special” occasions.<\/p>\n

I also had the most marvellous present from my granddaughter:<\/p>\n

\"Grandpa<\/a><\/p>\n

Thursday was also the day of the El Gordo lottery<\/a> in Spain which distributed something in the region of $3.29 billion in prize money. I was aware that El Gordo is the largest lottery in the world but I wasn\u2019t aware that the drawing takes place on my birthday every year. I also wasn\u2019t aware that it (allegedly) started in 1812 (can that really be right?). The BBC web site has a short video clip which you can see here<\/a>. Bizarrely, pupils from the San Ildefonso School in Madrid \u201csing\u201d the results.<\/p>\n

And thank you very much but I don\u2019t need anyone to make the obvious connection between me on my birthday and the phrase \u201cEl Gordo\u201d, especially after a fine meal (including dessert)!<\/p>\n

Another amusing little article which caught my eye this week on the Guardian web site<\/a>. Apparently, an automated profanity checker went into overdrive last weekend which resulted in the electronic programme guide for Virgin Media (a cable television service provider in the UK) censoring the names and titles of a variety of programmes. The 1959 version of The 39 Steps, was described in the on-screen programme guide as being a Hitchc***k remake starring Kenneth More and there was also a reference to Charles D***ens\u2019 Christmas Carol.<\/p>\n

This reminded me of what has generically become known as The Scunthorpe Problem which I remember from the early days of the internet and e-mail. According to that reliable source of all information, Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.<\/p>\n

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL’s dirty-word filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL, because the town’s name contains the substring cunt<\/em>. Years later, Google’s filters apparently made the same mistake, preventing residents from searching for local businesses that included Scunthorpe in their names.<\/p>\n