World Toilet Day

Today, on November 19, is World Toilet Day, declared by the World Toilet Organization – who would have thought something like that exists?

But there’s a meaning to it, befauce over 2.6 billion people don’t have toilets at all – and for many more, the situation isn’t much better. Which isn’t all too good for people’s health, much too often there’s bad hygiene, and the excrements are discharged directly into the environment.

Wikipedia:

The United Nations claim that more than 5 million children die every year from sanitation related diseases such as diarrhoea. More than a billion people without sanitary facilities relieve themselves on streets and in rivers, heavily polluting the water. The most important source of water contamination in developing countries is due to the lack of adequate sanitation facilities. Although public toilets are available in most countries, most of them are poorly maintained.

The WTO envisages clean, safe, affordable, ecologically sound and sustainable sanitation. It aims to advocate sustainable toilet systems through capacity building and public education, and by implementing real time projects.

(via kultpavillon via BloggerAmt)

Music Quiz 2

Update: I hope that the low number of participants in this music quiz so far was only caused by it being buried under an above-average amount of other posts – which is why I’m fetching it to the top again… :)

The next edition of my little music quiz series – without further ado:

Why did Queen (or their record company) have to buy 65 bicycle seats in the year 1978?

This question was also given two years ago at Genial daneben, a TV show where comedians try to answer funny/strange/curious questions – and in that sense, I’m asking those of you who already know the answer (*) to wait a little and let the others post their (hopefully numerous and funny) guesses. :)

Let the quiz begin – without search engines and encyclopedias, they don’t have them at Genial daneben either…


The answer: Congratulations to JuliaL49 (cf. comments)! :clap:

The “Bicycle Race” video (from the “Jazz” album) featured 65 naked women riding around a race track on bikes hired from British cycle shop chain Halfords. When returned, Queen was ordered to pay for all the seats as Halfords wouldn’t accept them knowing what they had been used for. The album also included a poster of these women.

See also the Wikipedia article, including a small scan of the poster.


(*) You can send the correct answer to me by mail if you want, so that it’s clear who knew it first – if that’s important to you.

Schnaps at the Office

This is about a German blog directory; “Amt” = office, agency, “Schnapszahl” = multi-digit number with all numbers equal.

Das neue Blog-Verzeichnis BloggerAmt hat derzeit 444 Blogs eingetragen:

BloggerAmt 444

Na denn Prost bei dieser Schnapszahl!

Die Top100-Liste dort basiert übrigens auf der Bewertung durch andere, der Anzahl der Favorisierungen (ja, das gibt’s auch) und der durchschnittlichen Beiträge pro Tag – mal was anderes. :) Das “schwarze Brett” und die wechselnde Stichprobe finde ich auch gut gelöst – auf jeden Fall übersichtlicher als bei Bloggerei.de.

Und eine witzig-nutzlos(?)-nette “BlogMatrix” gibt’s jetzt auch. :mrgreen:

The Seven-Anghela Itch

– Part of a series

(Again, I’ll try to make this the mockery of a scam in bad German have some sense to you English readers…)

“Excuse for that I something days not wrote.” Sure, no problem, I don’t write about you here in my blog every day, either. “From away, I want that you know that I to you very much want to meet.” You’re talking to everyone like that, huh? Well, I guess I’ll be away soon. :)

“You have told to Me that you want that our meeting has, too, happened.” I haven’t. We already know your translation program is poor, but that it invents stuff like that?

“I will be requiring me the two-sided map.” A folded map like those from Falk? Good luck trying putting that back together, you’re gonna need your recreation: “because at me Now has the holiday, that I take would was, itself begun with you to relax and to meet.”

Anghela

Good idea that you will “start to search arbitrary possibilities now just straight,” since your twisted wangling is no good idea. Also tell that your friends who are “interested that the noblesse like ours The relations will develop.”

But be careful that your “master”, whom I had suspected before, or whoever is ordering you to do all that, gets to know about it. Or why do you have to do so much? “Tell me, about as you think Our meeting, I must know your opinion.” “I ought to say that it very From Away.” “I ought to tell you that I me such trip, since it very not make possible can From Away.”

Sou you want to know a few things now:

“Your full name;???”
“Your full address;???”
— My address is as full as my name.

“The title of the airport should I fly close;???”
— The title should be at least “Prof. Dr. Dr.”, but better don’t do that flying thing, there’s enough air traffic already.

“The quantity of the mobile telephone”
— One.

“Worry, my precious thing, I send the kisses for you!” – Aaargh! Yes, I’m worried!

:loll:

(PS: If you, dear reader, happen to own the rights of these pictures the spammers used, just send me a little note and I’ll remove them.)

Show entire spam text (German) ▼

See also this German antispam forum here and especially there

And again the explicit note that this can only be frauds that want to grift pretended travel costs and/or do money-laundering.

Continued: No d8 with Anghela

Variable loyalty points

The German food discounter Rewe is currently running “the sharpest loyalty point campaign” with the knife manufacturer Zwilling – for each 5€ you pay at Rewe, you get one discount ticket, and once you got 30, you get a discount on certain Zwilling products. So a rather simple discount ticket system (limited to one manufacturer), but the variability of the tickets’ values seems strange to me:

Product Price with discount Regular price Value of one ticket
knife-block 9,99 € 49,50 € 131,7 ct
meat knife 14,99 € 32,50 € 58,37 ct
lard knife 9,99 € 19,50 € 31,7 ct
bread knife 17,99 € 39,50 € 71,7 ct
cooking knife 21,99 € 48,50 € 88,37 ct
universal knife 11,99 € 24,50 € 41,7 ct
peeling & vegetable knife 9,99 € 29,50 € 65,03 ct
santoku knife 19,99 € 45,50 € 85,03 ct
steak knife set 29,99 € 74,50 € 148,37 ct
knife scharpener 9,99 € 15,95 € 19,87 ct
multipurpose scissors 9,99 € 19,95 € 33,2 ct
scissors set 13,99 € 30,50 € 55,03 ct

That’s an average of 69,17 cents per discount point – but with a range of 19,87 to 148,37 cents!

I don’t want to be so vicious and call the recommended prices without discount phantasy values, there must be some sensible basis to them – but the discounts do seem pretty arbitrary…