Beer tokens

In the UK it is traditional when drinking in a pub with a group of friends to buy a round. For those who do not know what a round is, it is when one member of the group buys drinks for everyone else. It is only polite that each member of the group should buy a round each. In recent years there has been a fear that such a culture can lead to excessive drinking in order to get your money's worth. Interestingly I discovered today that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century pubs issued tokens so that you could get your drink another time.



Provided, that is, that in your drunken state you don't lose the token.

Swoosh

An internationally recognised logo is that of the sportswear company Nike. It's distinctive swoosh was dreamt up by a graphic design student called Carolyn Davidson. She charged $35 for coming up with the logo. She was later re numerated more extensively due to the success of the logo and the company.



Incidentally Nike is the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in Oregon, USA.

John Millar

Every so often I browse the various faculty pages on my university's website to see the names given to certain professorships. One such professorship is the John Millar Chair of Public Law. Who I hear you cry is John Millar? Well John Millar was the fourth person to hold the chair of civil law at the University of Glasgow. He was appointed in 1761 at the age of 26 and stayed until his death in 1801. He was the first holder of the chair to have studied entirely in Scotland and he had been taught by no less a man than Adam Smith. Under his tenure the University of Glasgow's Law School gained a nationwide experience and saw the number of students rise even though the central courts were all in Edinburgh.



Alas upon his death the reputation of the law school went into decline. I am assured it has since recovered.

A Surprising Find

While volunteering at Oxfam I was rooting through a box of children's books when I came across a book by Sylvia Plath. I had no idea that she had written children's books, somehow she just didn't seem the type. The book in question was "The It-Doesn't-Matter-Suit". However she wrote another three children's books, "The Bed Book", "Collected Children's Stories" and "Mrs Cherry's Kitchen". All of these children's books were published posthumously.

So that's where he's running off to

All last semester when one of my classes would over-run one of my fellow students would leave as though he had somewhere else to be. I often wondered where this was. I now know this reason. Once said class finished I decided to be very studious and head to the study area for my course and do some more work. Once I get there I discover that said student is manning the enquiries desk. This would explain his need to get away on time.



Doesn't explain though why the class keeps over-running, maybe if the professors showed up on time...

Weird and Wonderful Words

I don't play much Scrabble, I don't have the time and I lack a Scrabble board with which to play Scrabble. I find it interesting though because in order to win players have to recall English words which they would otherwise have no use for. I like to imagine there is a department in the Oxford English Dictionary that sit around playing Scrabble and inventing words so that they can use the awkward jumble of letters that they have acquired. Take for example "oogonia", this is the plural of oogonium which is an immature ovum. Or "carboyed" which is an adjective the carboy being a vessel for fermenting wine, mead or beer. Or "ala" which refers to a wing or wing-like structure.



So rare are these words that blogger's spellchecker does not recognise them suggesting begonia, carbide and Aila respectively (it also suggested organism for oogonium which I thought would be a case of not yet).

Norovirus

Recently there has been a wee bit in the news about the winter vomiting bug, norovirus. Apparently hundred of thousands, if not millions of Britons have succumbed to this virus in the past few weeks. Norovirus is the most common cause of gastroenteritis in the UK. The real number affected may be much higher as not everyone reports it. I seem to have come down with a virus similar to Norovirus (but according to the medical oracle that is my father I would be a lot sicker if I did have Norovirus) which is better than being infected with actual Norovirus but still unpleasant.

I would still like to know who infected me, and I apologise to anyone I have inadvertently infected.