Some links you might like

1. Setting up your own business can be stressful, but this chap created a "uterus" from a football bladder by
punching a couple of holes in it, and filling it with goat's blood, while his neighbours concluded he had a sexual disease and was possessed by evil spirits. He lost his wife and mother and even had to cook for himself. Still, it's a story with a happy ending, and not just for Mr Muruganantham.

2. Elephants have a "a complex language we will probably never decipher", according to Scientific American. I'd take that as a challenge if I were working in Silicon Valley. Also, does it say more about us or about elephants that their most recognisably intelligent activity is grieving for their dead?

3. Mark Steyn's having a bit of a bad time with the American legal system at the moment. Seeing as he's on the receiving end of a libel action, we don't necessarily have the comfort of saying that it wouldn't be like that in England. The legal systems of the US and England diverged a long time ago but, in some respects, not that far from each other. My diagnosis, as a non-US lawyer, is that Steyn's problem was using the f-word (fraud) against someone who's not afraid to sue. But on a completely different topic, here he is on the song 'Beautiful Dreamer'. It's an interesting story, whether you like the song or not. Did you know that the man who wrote it, Stephen Foster, also wrote "Oh! Susanna", "The Old Folks At Home (Swanee River)" and "Camptown Races"? And if you feel like buying a gift voucher or two from Steyn's store, I'm sure he'd be grateful too.

4. In unsurprising news, "there’s a whole cottage industry on the Web devoted to bitching and moaning about anachronisms in the vocabularies of television and movie depictions of the past. “Downton Abbey” is the mother lode, and it set off an anachronism gold rush." If you want an Anachronism Machine then this link will tell you about a man who has one. As with real gold rushes, you are probably better off selling the machines than looking for the gold yourself.