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Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. The city of Bath, in Somerset, was referred to as "The Bath" until the 19th Century.
More details

2. Bears don't like honey, and aren't even very keen on berries and nuts.

3. Scouts can deliver post.

4. Barbara Windsor was the second actress to play Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders.

5. Tattoos can be done with a person's ashes.

6. The average American spends $66.45 (£40) on Halloween.

7. When a shark pup is born its liver makes up 20% of its body mass

8. The world's oldest dog is 20.

9. The secret to a happy marriage for men is choosing a wife who is smarter and at least five years younger.

10. A man has been sent to jail for driving a motorised chair while drunk.

Seen 10 things? . Thanks to Kate Gandhi for this week's picture of 10 small windows.

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Now, is what I call work experience.
Ralph, Cumbria

I thought the quote of the day was spot on. Most people have no idea what keeps a plane in the air, so having them praying rather than screaming is a much better option. I have joked with several airlines that if 100 years ago I had suggested that we lock people up in metal cylinders with fireworks attached to them, fired them into the air and that they would pay for the privilege, they'd think I was mad.
John Airey, Peterborough, UK

Re : do cats break wind?
Maisy, Milton Keynes

Ah Halloween approaches again and I'm almost looking forward to it again. It's my one and only opportunity to ply all the neighbourhood's little darlings with the most E-number-laden sweets I can find, in the gleeful hope that they will be oh so hyper and badly-behaved by bedtime.
BWAAHHH HAAAAAA HAAAAAA!
Fi, Gloucestershire, UK

"But an industry spokesman said it was not gravely concerned about [to start selling coffins]..."
I think I died a little inside when I read that.
Caro, Lincolnshire

Winner of the Caption Competition! Yeah, baby - we are the champions!!
About the kudos. I know it's only a small amount but I would really appreciate it if you could let the Scouts handle it. I'd hate it to get spilt during a game of no-look basketball.
Decoyman, Wallingford, UK

Re : This could be construed as an all noun headline, although if it is, I'm not sure I want to think too much about what "Straw ends" are in that context.
Adam, London, UK

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Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed.

This week, the Grim Reaper rides in a motorised coffin in Salem, Massachusetts. Yes, Halloween is approaching. But what's being said?

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. daveworkman
Alongside the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, the Armageddon also brought with it the delights of Last of the Summer Wine series 5,365.

5. j-o-n-a-t-h-a-n
Nought to six feet under in 3 seconds.

4. eattherich
The Stones finally admit that it is one tour too many.

3. BeckySnow
"Fancy a re-match, Hammond?"

2. SeanieSmith
"Maybe I'm milking this man flu thing a bit too much."

1. Decoyman
KITT and The Hoff film the last episode of Knight Rider.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Are the Times leader writers hankering after more creative outlets for their arguments? Paper Monitor wonders because twice this week a leader column in the esteemed paper has been penned in the style of a celebrated author.

On Wednesday it was in recognition of the fact the veteran author has switched publishers after 38 years.

Today, the ghost of Richmal Crompton (creator of the Just William books) has taken hold of the column - a nod to the fact that apparently. (Once again, the Magazine doesn't like to blow its own trumpet, )

The ravages of time are there to see - William "has less hair to tousle". His gang, the Outlaws, are getting about by on Zimmer frames and Violet Elizabeth is in a wheelchair.

Nevertheless, they are off to the sweet shop to indulge in gobstoppers, sherbet lemons and the like - sidestepping the local supermarket and other totems of modern-day living.

Actually, given that William was 11 years old when he first saw print, in 1922, the old boy isn't doing too badly. Paper Monitor calculates he's hovering around the four-score years and 18 at the moment. Only two more years to go until his telegram from the Queen.

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Welcome to the Weekly Bonus Question.

Each week the news quiz will offer an answer. You are invited to suggest what the question might have been.

Suggestions should be sent using the COMMENTS BOX IN THIS ENTRY. And since nobody likes a smart alec, kudos will be deducted for predictability in your suggestions.

This week's answer is DOUGHNUT RALLY. But what's the question?

UPDATE 1717 GMT: The correct answer is, how to describe the circle of supporters who surround a MP obliged to make a public apology? ()

Of your woefully wrong suggested questions, we liked:

• BaldoBingham's Where would you find the health warning 'May contain nuts'?
• ARoseByAnyOther's What will lure IT to your desk?
• MuteJoe's What's faster than a cakewalk, a bun dance and a pastry wheel?
• rogueslr's Where can you always be assured of finding a policeman?
• BeckySnow's Where do cupcakes get a good kicking?
• And patbrennan's If Homer Simpson were to become a dictator, at what event would his supporters swear absolute loyalty to him?

Thanks to all who entered.

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"The plane is facing a technical problem and has to return. So please pray" - Reported words of Iranian airliner pilot to passengers.

The two words one doesn't want to hear over an aeroplane PA system are "please" and "pray". So the travellers on the Aseman Airlines flight were probably very grateful to get back to Tehran in one piece.

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A celebration of the riches of the web.

Today in Web Monitor: a diamond geezer, the Cult of the Somewhat Delayed and the linguist against languages.

• The recession is hitting everyone in different ways. Rapper :

"I buy diamonds on a very regular basis, but now I am selling my old stuff before I get something new. These are times when you learn about the value of money."

• the premium paid to get films and books as soon as they are released is unnecessary. He's suggesting the Cult of the Somewhat Delayed:

"It seems to me that the best way to instantly raise your standard of living is to live in the past. If you subsist entirely on two-year-old entertainment, and the corresponding two-year-old technology used to power it, you're cutting your fun budget in half, freeing up that money for more exciting expenditures like parking meters and postage... It is our fervent hope that all of you filthy unbelievers will respect our money-saving way of life, just as we respect your right to provide us with cheap entertainment. We just want to be left alone, and we hope you and the upcoming Clinton administration understand that."

• Why bother saving languages? Linguist John McWhorter was once assigned the task of teaching Native Americans their ancestral language. that the work that goes into learning a language is almost never worth the effort:

"Bookstore shelves groan under the weight of countless foreign-language self-teaching sets that are about as useful as the tonics and elixirs that passed as medicine a century ago and leave their students with anaemic vocabularies and paltry grammar that are of little use in real conversation.
Even with good instruction, it is fiendishly difficult to learn any new language well, at least after about the age of 15. Yet the going idea among linguists and anthropologists is that we must keep as many languages alive as possible, and that the death of each one is another step on a treadmill toward humankind's cultural oblivion. This accounted for the melancholy tone, for example, of the obituaries for the Eyak language of southern Alaska last year when its last speaker died.
... As we assess our linguistic future as a species, a basic question remains. Would it be inherently evil if there were not 6,000 spoken languages but one? We must consider the question in its pure, logical essence, apart from particular associations with English and its history. Notice, for example, how the discomfort with the prospect in itself eases when you imagine the world's language being, say, Eyak."

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If make for a happy marriage, then must surely be in for a fantastic time.
Adam, London, UK

Regarding Michael Caine's missing Google hits, are you sure you don't have Google safe search turned on? I would have sent a postcard, but apparently there's a strike on.
Cat, Leeds

Does anyone want to do my degree for me please? It's hard.
Aaron, Bath (formerly of Reading), UK

In : "The shape of the wood is also easy to explain" says Hilary, "It's the way the trees are grown that make it look heart-shaped". Brilliant, Holmes.

Ken, Chelmsford

Re , I've lived in France continuously since 1986, but am banned from giving blood here because of BSE. Up until about seven years ago, the French were happy to have me as a blood donor, but the BSE crisis in the UK made them think again, and some perception that I might have been a beef junkie (never!) has made them ban all Brits from giving blood.
Jacquie, France

Some from the department of the bleedin' obvious then!
James Dawkins, London

makes then.
Bob Draper, Bath, UK

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

It was only a matter of time.

From the moment Royal Mail announced it was going to be taking on 30,000 casual workers to relieve the effects of the strike, Paper Monitor was counting the days until the first undercover journalist surfaced with a tell-all account of life inside a sorting office.

So well done to the Guardian's . (On Saturday, the Daily Mail's Ryan Kisiel also .)

Morris managed to fool Royal Mail chiefs into giving him a job in one of its temporary sorting offices, as did Kisiel in Bristol.

In truth, there doesn't seem to have been much subterfuge involved on Morris' part. Had the post bosses simply Googled his name, their suspicions might have been roused by the second link.

Steven Morris | guardian.co.uk
Steven Morris is a reporter for the Guardian. ... 1-15 of 2355 for Steven Morris. Latest from global. Most viewed; Latest; Most commented. Last 24 hours ... [and so on]

Another click and they would have been treated to a picture of this aspiring postal sorter.

Ditto for Kisiel.

Morris delivers some juicy nuggets of behind-the-scenes shenanigans - DVD Frisbee, courtesy of all those online movie rental outfits (though Morris omits to mention whether any of the frisbee'd discs were from the Guardian's own online rental offshoot, Sofa Cinema) and something called "no look basketball". For those who have recently entrusted a parcel with Her Majesty's postal service... you're better off not knowing.

Paper Monitor can't help but wonder how many other hacks are, at this moment, desperately trying to disguise all signs of their Clerkenwell selves as they go through the motions of wanting to be a minimum wage temporary postal sorter.

It keenly awaits a slew of revelations in other papers.

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"As for Googling myself, I did that once but I gave up. There were seven and a half million sites" - Michael Caine on ego-surfing.

We've all been there. And for the record: Googling "Michael Caine" gets just under two million results. Without the quote marks it's 2.2 million. What happened to the other five-and-a-bit million? Answers on a postcard.

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A celebration of the riches of the web.

Today in Web Monitor: the difference between an actor and a star, an unexpected question from the war crimes tribunal and the politics of the metaverse.

• Michael Caine suggests age doesn't just affect the popularity of female actors in Hollywood. Caine said on Radio 4's Front Row he realised he was ageing the first time he was sent a script to play the father rather than the lover. He said the secret to ongoing success was in changing his job description:

"I became a movie actor. The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is that a movie star looks at a script and says how can I change this to suit me and a movie actor says how can I change me to suit this."

• Former Bosnian leader and accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic didn't turn up for the start of his trial on Monday in The Hague.
name of the Dutch seat of government raises one question - why do we call it The Hague, and not just Hague? In answering this question, he says that in medieval times, place names that were descriptions received the definite article. And in the case of The Hague, unlike other places, it has just stuck:

"We get the official name Den Haag from Des Graven Hage, which means 'the counts' hedge' and refers to the fact that Dutch noblemen once used the land for hunting. Many other place names started off as descriptions with definite articles. For example, the city of Bath, England, famous for its purportedly health-supporting natural spring, was referred to as 'The Bath' until the 19th century."

• Pixels and Policy - a blog that looks at how virtual worlds change our politics, policy and culture, brings up the curious case of racism in Second Life. In virtual reality you create what you look like - your avatar - so are given the opportunity to separate yourself from your age, race or gender. Despite this, found which suggests people are less likely to help someone if they have a black avatar:

"The issue of race can be so uncomfortable in the virtual world that black players will play as white avatars to avoid the awkward coldness experienced by the white player... The idea that a black woman would need to play as a member of another race merely to avoid the social awkwardness of being black in the metaverse is disturbing."

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Who is I was a regular donor in the UK, but I am not allowed to give blood in NZ because I lived in Britain for more than six months. Apparently I might be a mad cow.
Margaret, Christchurch, NZ

Here in Denmark, being British (or at least having lived in Britain during the mad cow disease era) is enough to have you barred from giving blood. Though no doubt, any Danes requiring blood while in the UK will be happy enough to accept. I was irrationally offended by their refusal to have mine the other week.
Ruth Helen, Copenhagen, Denmark

In the US, there are restrictions placed on donors:
Cannot donate if spent time that adds up to three months or more in the UK from 1980-1996 (England, N Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Falkland Islands)
Or if spent time that adds up to five years or more in European countries since 1980 (including time spent in the UK during 1980-1996).
My blood type is O- and I would love to be able to donate, but because I lived in London for 10 years between 1987 and 1997, cannot.
Jennifer Rowe, San Diego, US

- not any more, Madame, courtesy of la ´óÏó´«Ã½.
Mark, Reading, UK

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ now seems to be using the prefix "ex" (e.g. ex-president), where previously the word "former" would have been used. Has a new language policy been adopted? More importantly, can any Monitorites/fellow pedants clarify which is grammatically (or stylistically) correct?
Laura, Cardiff

Did the smugglers not note the not so subtle warning on the ship that their enterprise might not be such a good idea? ()
Simon, Colchester, UK

"It's me, bear, it's me" (Wednesday's Quote of the Day): Does he really know what he's doing, or is he just ursine about?
Rob Falconer, Llandough, Wales

OMG ! You're still the best though...
Karen, Cardiff
Monitor note: Paper Monitor passes on its thanks.

Yes Infense (Tuesday letters), if your employer has put up decorations they are permitting you to do nothing.
Laura, Ipswich

Infense, another group on the same floor as me at work have had a miniature Christmas tree up for at least the past 18 months. I can see it from my desk as I type. Given your theory of decorations = no work/holiday mode, it may explain why their outputs are always so low.
Katherine, Canberra, Australia

So, the old Routemaster unit of measurement is back on the Letters Page (Tanya K's Tuesday letter). Has anyone else noticed the new money metric out there - "you could save enough money to get 2 tickets to a European away game". When did this start happening? And why weren't we told?
Vicki, London

Sorry Sam (Tuesday letters), there was no 1LO. 2LO's predecessor was 2MT. The LO probably stood for London and MT for Marconi Telegraph. The 2 probably just indicated the frequency band used for broadcasting.
David , Newcastle, UK

I was in the meeting room at 15:00 BST yesterday, which is really inconvenient for me. Where the hell was everybody else?
Titus A Newt, Perth, Australia
Monitor note: Hate to break this to you, Titus...

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

We're used to things being so clever that they qualify as genius - Stephen Hawking, for instance, and those gun corkscrews that suck the thing out of the bottle in one motion.

But what about things that are so stupid they can be categorised as genius? Big Mouth Billy Bass and burglars who leave their wallet at the scene of the crime among them.

Well prepare for a towering example of the latter category on page 37 of today's Sun. It's a four paragraph story about a survey that suggests men with high testosterone levels don't like sharing.

Headline?

"Divide 'n bonk her"

Epic. Magnificent. Gloriously naff. This headline is everything tabloid newspapers aspire to.

Elsewhere, in the Daily Mirror, they're battling to make a coinage stick. Sometimes a bit of journalese takes root immediately and passes into the wider lexicon. WAGs being one example. Blair babes was another.

The Mirror is following the latter example with its pushing of "Cameron's cuties" in reference to the Conservative leader's battle to get more women MPs. The Daily Mail is also in on the act.

From a quick search of the LexisNexis newspaper database, it seems Matthew Norman coined the term in 2006 in the London Evening Standard to apply more generally to any photogenic candidate. Paper Monitor prediction: This won't stick.

Something has gone wrong over at the Daily Star. The famous Text Maniacs section usually provides a refreshing break from such concepts as "correct spelling", "coherent thought" and "the news".

But among all the X Factor rumination, bad jokes and requests for Abi Titmuss pictures, a rogue serious comment seems to have escaped the net.

"u rightly said prostate cancer kills 10,000 men a year, but u didn't mention that it gets little or no government funding - unlike breast cancer," texts James from Lancashire.

What's going on?

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"It's me, bear, it's me" - Black bear expert Lynn Rodgers on how he interacts with the animals.

Prof Rodgers has spent 43 years studying bears, but his approach differs from most scientists. He likes to get close to them. Very close.

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A celebration of the riches of the web.

Today in Web Monitor: politeness prevails in the faith debate, how fame corrupts and the tweeting dame. Share your favourite bits of the web by sending your links via the letter box to the right of this page.

• Christopher Hitchens has just finished a film standing up for his atheist beliefs. He's been debating in the UK, Canada and the US and what he's been surprised by is the politeness of those on the opposing side of the debate:

"I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a 'script' that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe."

• that fame corrupts men more than women. She says it would be rare for an older woman to leave her family for a teenage lover and she has a theory why:

"It's about a fear of dying for men: they want to stay immortal. But you know what, honey? We're all dying every day - it's just that women are more deeply rooted in reality."

• Web Monitor gets the impression Elizabeth Taylor may like the new Michael Jackson film This Is It. , ending with:

"I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable."

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I think that the original is a superior image because she is obviously drunk - she's passed out. The new is merely an exhibitionist. She could even be posing. Or perhaps her knicker elastic has broken.
Jo Edkins, Cambridge,UK

Was it just me that thought that in the she was skateboarding?
Alan, Edinburgh

I am, like most people living in urban areas, out at work in the daytime. It makes no difference , as long as it's before I get home.
Lee, Birmingham

For those of you still mourning the loss of the Routemaster as a unit of measurement, this morning's Metro uses an intriguing new London unit that is sure to catch on. Apparently, a new report about the tube says that "the number of passengers commuting in conditions equivalent to four or more people in a phone box will double to half a million by 2026 without continued modernisation". But the real question - are they talking about red phone boxes or the new type? We should be told.
Tanya K, Reading

I think it's pretty well-known that 2LO was the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s original radio call sign, and aparrently it wasn't the first, which leads me to conclude that 1LO also existed. If so, what was 1LO used for and by whom?
Sam Chapman, Reading

Advice needed. My employer has put up Christmas decorations. Does this mean I can slide into festive/no work mode? Or should I wait until 1 December?
Infense, Adelaide, Australia

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

As you read this, Paper Monitor has just finished digesting page three of the Sun through the fingers of hands that were hurriedly put over eyes in horror. It's not a good way to start the day, but it's Gordon Ramsay's description of how he sometimes starts his day that is the problem.

Talking about his "year from hell", he mentions his wife and how they have coped after he was accused of having an affair behind her back - something he denies. It starts off sweetly enough.

"She's brilliant. That hurricane made us incredibly closer."

But quickly enters the "too-much-information" stage.

"Her buttocks are so firm it's like clinging to a six-pack. She has the bum of an 18-year-old. I woke up the other day and she was doing buttock-clenching exercises."

Note to Gordon, please don't follow the route of telling us about how great your sex life is at every opportunity to try and convince us you are happy together. We're not interested, even if the Sun thinks we are.

Another thing we're not going to dwell too long on is Amy Winehouse's new boobs, but they are in most papers today - making the front page of the Daily Mail. It says she turned up late for the Q Awards in London, slurred her words and was rude.

Sounds as if she could have made it into the Sun's "Binge Britain" series. Day Two and the focus is still firmly on young women. The newest member of the "drunk girl" club is a young student in Sheffield, pictured being arrested for stealing a policeman's hat.

But just as Paper Monitor predicted, Drunker Girl is now the official face of female debauchery in the UK. After her debut in the papers last week, she returns today. Get used to those , they're here to stay.

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"I would tell them to go to hell... go home [o]r wet your pants" - Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, on parents who fear the book is too scary for children

With a film of the classic 1963 book due out later this year, Mr Sendak has little truck with the cotton wool style of parenting that is popular with many mothers and fathers today.

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A celebration of the riches of the web.

Today in Web Monitor: the skills of the messy, the perplexed gameshow host and the inspiration for American Psycho. Share your favourite bits of the web by sending a link via the letters box to the right of this page.

• There is no shame in having a messy house, - quite the reverse. His self-confessed messiness has helped him cultivate some uncelebrated skills of agility:

"I'm bad at repairing stuff or organising repairs, but I'm actually rather good at coping with things that are broken: the main light in my bedroom hasn't worked for years but, panther-like, I can negotiate furniture and piles of clothes in inky blackness to find the bedside lamp. The door handle comes off if you try to use it, but I've developed a burglar's knack of getting in by inserting my fingers between the frame and the door - I can do it in my sleep... Among the vices, why has domestic vanity so completely outstripped laziness?"

• Vernon Kay wonders who is actually surveyed on All Star Family Fortunes, his own gameshow. For the uninitiated, Kay puts questions to teams of families and they give what they think would be the answer 100 people surveyed for the show would answer. "I sometimes wonder who the 100 people surveyed are" to which he responded "me too."

• The director of American Psycho that Christian Bale based his portrayal of the lead character on Tom Cruise:

"We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he [Christian Bale] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy."

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Can anyone tell me why the NHS feels the need to advertise? Surely if you're ill you have no choice but to use them? Our local hospital just spent yet another £4,000 on advertising in our local paper - WHY??
Lesley McLaren, Chester, England

Regarding I can go one better... two million and one from his dad.
Martin Comer, London UK

Unless her knees are turned back-to-front, "Drunk Girl" isn't prostrate (Paper Monitor, Monday): she is supine.
The Pedant , London

Re: 10 things number 10... are we talking five past three? Ten past?
Basil Long, Nottingham

Dan from Derby (Friday's letters): You fool! That's just what they want you to think! Don't you realise that the entire modus operandi of HMRC is to overcharge by just a few pounds here and there so that people will think that it's not worth the trouble of claiming it back?
Adam, London, UK

Another day, . Careful, Aunty Beeb, people might start making comparisons with the Daily Express and Princess Diana...
Darren, London

Re: . Bring back the Kunzle cake (please!!) - one happy childhood memory that I'd love to be able to revisit.
John E, Southampton, U.K.

Wouldn't that be... Texmex food?
Sarah, London

The Beautiful People website (Monday's Quote) is a terrific idea. I'll post a picture of a handsome hunk with flowing coiffeured locks and a rippling muscled torso, only to find that the 'partner of my dreams' has been similarly duplicitous and her picture of a radiant, toned and lively Ms Perfect was sent in by a seventy year old overweight asthmatic granny with a triple, hairy, chin and dentures. What fun! What an essential service!
Mark, Reading

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Monsieur Mohan, you are spoiling us with your drunk girls.

Last week, Paper Monitor noted how the icon de jour of licentiousness, - for the uninitiated, a picture of a woman lying prostrate on a city-centre bench with a couple of empty alcopop bottles at her feet - had potentially been usurped by a new rival to the throne... let's call her Drunker Girl.

The in a short skirt staggering through a city centre, her underwear down at her ankles.

Now, the Sun, under the stewardship of relatively new editor Dominic Mohan, has literally and figuratively gone to town(s) with the idea.

is the headline, set against pictures of inebriated young women in town centres from Plymouth to Newcastle.

The main picture could almost be a study of 21st Century binge culture. A woman in Cardiff is pictured leaning forward as she steadies herself with one hand, and clutches her handbag with the other. She is, in the vernacular of her age group, parking a pavement pizza.

There's another picture of her slumped next to a wall, talking into her mobile phone as police officers tend to her.

But the good people of Cheltenham might feel a little aggrieved at their town being featured in this gallery of shame.

While Drunk Girl Newcastle is snapped being led away by police and Drunk Girl Windsor is pictured being wrestled to the ground by officers of the law, in Cheltenham the women pictured are doing nothing more than, er, wearing short skirts.

That's a pretty minor infringement of sartorial norms compared with the woman from Daventry, pictured four pages earlier, who is named as Kelly, is aged 19 and is, of course, the main draw on page 3.

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"People are fed up wasting time and money meeting unattractive people on the net" - Greg Hodge, who runs a dating website that excludes ugly people

Applicants to join the website Beautiful People, which this week goes global, are rated by other users according to their attractiveness. Only one in five people, including for the sake of research, is admitted.

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