Experts, especially British experts, both agree and disagree on the question: What is the proper way to make a cup of tea? Investigator Gary Dryfoos reminds us that there are audiovisual materials documenting some of those views. Here are a few of those materials. One might keep in mind that there is an official British […]
What’s in a surname, if one wants to see portents about the medical fates of persons who have those surnames? This study aims to answer that question, focusing on British surnames: “British Surname Origins, Population Structure and Health Outcomes—An Observational Study of Hospital Admissions,” Jakob Petersen, Jens Kandt, and Paul A. Longley, Scientific Reports, vol. […]
The 1999 Ig Nobel Literature Prize was awarded to The British Standards Institution, for its six-page specification (BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea. BS-6008 is now, in the year 2020, available for sale at a price of £110.00 per copy from the British Standards Institution, which now calls itself BSI. […]
Andreas Kluth, the Berlin bureau chief of the British magazine The Economist, wrote an essay called “Being German is No Laughing Matter“. Here is the beginning of that essay: Shortly after moving back to Germany in 2012 after decades of absence, mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries, I took my kids to the Berlin zoo. The children […]
The British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA) exists, it says, “to protect and promote British weights and measures, and to oppose compulsory use of the metric system”. Their catchy slogan: “campaigning for inch-pound industries and consumer interests”. They maintain a list of “Corporate Culprits” — people and groups of whom they say: Just who are the […]
Historians, most of them, agonize over how much to trust the work of earlier historians. The Got Medieval blog writes of one terrible bout of agonizing: … Indeed, a reputation as a bungler who doesn’t know his patronyms (son of the horrible one/Uther) from his epithets (horrible son) is about the best that Geoffrey could […]
Wall was a master an analyzing British bird droppings, as is evident in this study: “Coots and other birds eating goose- and gull-droppings,” T. Wall, British Birds. Vol. 76, no. 9, 1983, pp. 410-411.
“Every living creature is said to have its use, its beneficial part to play in the economy of nature.” So says page 117 of the book British stalk-eyed crustacea and spiders: with an account of their structure, classification and habitats,written by F.A.A. Skuse, and published in 1887.
Scholarly fans of British hitmen have managed to rank the members of that profession. Hitmen in Britain, according to this study, essentially come in four varieties: Novice, Dilettente, Journeyman, and Master. Details are published in: “The British Hitman: 1974–2013,” Donal MacIntyre, David Wilson, Elizabeth Yardley [pictured here], Liam Brolan, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, […]
Osbaldiston was a master at analyzing British bird droppings, as is evident in this study: “Water and electrolyte balance studies of birds showing ‘wet droppings’“, G.W. Osbaldiston, British Veterinary Journal, vol. 125, no. 12, December 1969, pp. 653-63.