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Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation — Any statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.

Hlade's Law — If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person; they will find an easier way to do it.

Stigler's Law — No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer, named by statistician Stephen Stigler who attributes it to sociologist Robert Merton.

I am a snob

At least, according to a survey reported (indirectly) here, that has unearthed an amusing collection of stats about Mac-users vs. PEE CEE users.

Scarily, I have to admit to having perfectionist tendencies, owning a notebook (laptop), driving a station wagon (Puegeot 406), paying for downloaded music (use iTunes), and caring about "green" products and the environment.

And whilst I have gone to Starbucks, and used teeth-whitening toothpaste in my lifetime, I can honestly say I don't own a hybrid car, or buy five pairs of sneakers in a year (although Mrs Hope would be happy to give that last one a go).

I'm not only amazed that someone came up with these questions to ask computer users (do you use teeth-whitening products/drive a station wagon/buy five or more pairs of sneakers per year?) but also to then deduce that there are 'cause-effect' links with the computer they use...

Getting along well

Just updated my Flickr site with a few new photos of Reuben. Here's one for free.

With my day off on Fridays I've been able to take up the responsibility of Friday dinners. Found a new pasta recipe in Jamie's Italian book last week (I would sound slightly contrite for mentioning Jamie, except it's utterly delicious and now my second favourite pasta recipe) and did a pretty decent toad-in-the-hole this week. Then, whilst ad-libbing on Saturday, found that creme-fraiche on hot pasta has almost the same 'sour milk' aroma as Reuben's nappies after a No. 2. Sorry. But we still ate it.