WHAT has happened to Britain鈥檚 special relationship with the US? When a colleague tried to email a friend in Texas, his message was blocked and he got this back from the server: 鈥淩eceived: 557 Your IP address is from a blacklisted country. Disconnecting.鈥�
LAST week we reported how scammers have started posing as relatives of former Iraqi officials such as Tariq Aziz, who have supposedly left behind huge sums of money that need laundering. Now a colleague tells of receiving an email saying that someone with the same last name as his had died with all his family in a traffic accident and left $25 million in a bank account. The cash was still unclaimed, apparently, because no relatives were known.
Why was our colleague instantly suspicious? It wasn鈥檛 just that he had never heard of the unfortunate victim. The accident and the bank account just happened to be in Nigeria, and the rest of the email had all the trappings of a familiar scam originating in that country. Targets of the Nigerian scam are offered big rewards for laundering the ill-gotten gains of corrupt officials. This one was obviously just another variation devised to lure in new suckers.
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The emails virtually always purport to come from some notoriously corrupt country, which got us wondering where the next round will come from. American companies have had more than their share of corruption problems lately, with large sums going missing from corporate ledgers. Will the next round of Nigerian scam letters start with messages like 鈥淚 am Kenneth L., former CEO of the E. Corporation, now resident in the Cayman Islands. I am seeking your help in retrieving the sum of $XYZ million of former corporate funds now in a numbered Swiss bank account鈥︹��
FOR bookish readers, the Library Hotel is a novel place to stay in mid-town New York (). The hotel not only offers bibliophiles the usual plush bathrobes, bottled spring water, hairdryer and complimentary bath products, but guests can also book their room using to the 10 major categories of the Dewey decimal classification system of cataloguing library books.
It gives room service a whole new meaning. The rooms on each of the ten floors contain a collection of art and books relevant to a topic within the category of the floor it is on. So if you鈥檙e on the Literature floor you can choose to specialise in, for example, poetry or the classics, while the Math and Science floor offers bedtime reading in astronomy, botany or any other science you fancy. There is even an Erotic Literature room and a Love room, though they don鈥檛 say which floors these are on.
Could The Library Hotel be the only hotel in the world that is always fully booked? (Sorry.)
AROUND the tennis courts at Priory Park tennis club in Kew, west of London, there is a bird whose song stands out from the others because it is indistinguishable from the ringing tone of a cellphone.
鈥淧robably a starling,鈥� suggested users of an online forum about what kind of bird this might be. Added one: 鈥淭here鈥檚 one round Putney that does the default Ericsson ring.鈥�
WHAT on earth were they thinking of? Reader Martin Liddament wanted to ensure that his computer was clean of sexual innuendo or pornographic material, so he did a search of his computer files using the term 鈥渟ex鈥�.
He was startled to find that the Alpha Five database package he had installed from a CD that came free with PC Advisor magazine had made use of this word as a file extension. As a result, the template directory of this program included filenames such as: 鈥淕ift entry.sex, Invited guests.sex, Party budget.sex, Classes to instructors.sex, Classes to students.sex, Recipes.sex, People 鈥� Activities.sex, Employees.sex鈥� and much more.
A bad joke, or an amazing gaffe? Who can tell?
THE ABBREVIATIONS of Sky Digital鈥檚 on-screen listings for British television can be rather misleading. One evening, reader Ian Docherty read 鈥淏ig Broth鈥� and wondered if it was a cookery program. No, it was Big Brother. Then there was 鈥淔amily Fort鈥�. Was this a history of royal homes? No, it was Family Fortunes. And could 鈥淗ome Imp鈥� be a sitcom about fairies? No, it was Home Improvements. And it doesn鈥檛 stop there. Docherty says there were others too numerous to mention.
BROWSING through the interesting equipment in The Hire Directory 2002, produced by the HSS Hire Service Group, readers Ann and Jon Ardron were intrigued to come across a device called a 鈥淗azardous Area Generator鈥�. This was available for hire at a mere 拢195 a week for those who need to generate a dangerous space.
FINALLY, Doncaster College in South Yorkshire is advertising online at for part-time tutors who can teach 鈥渂asic key skillls鈥�. As reader Susan Hitchings points out, their need seems great.
Reader James Setman reports that according to the label, the Altoids tangerine and citrus sours on sale in Richmond, Virginia, are made with 鈥渘atural flavor with other natural flavor鈥�