Swedish photographer Chris Maluszynski was surprised by the garishness of the carpets in the casinos of Las Vegas. Until, that is, he realised that they had a purpose – to stop the punters feeling sleepy because sleepy tourists don’t spend money. If your eyes stray to the floor and see one of these monstrosities, you [...]
With money tight, we’re all looking to save money. But those who buy cheap perfume or after-shave at markets, online or when abroad, believing they’re conserving cash, may not realise they are actually putting some deeply unpleasant substances on their skin.
Harper’s Bazaar in the United States investigated a range of counterfeit perfumes and found ingredients [...]
YOUR TRAIN IS OFFICIALLY “ON TIME”, EVEN WHEN IT IS LATE
Waiting in the cold for a train that seems to take forever, do you ever look at those “Aren’t We Punctual And Wonderful?” posters from train companies and marvel at their claims of 90%-plus punctuality or whatever. Do you ever feel it doesn’t chime with [...]
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CCTV CAMERAS IN RUSSIA’S CAPITAL FED FAKE FOOTAGE TO THE POLICE
After an investigation lasting several months, Moscow police have uncovered a massive security fraud. The company StroyMontageServices was paid to instal CCTV cameras throughout the city and then feed live images from them to the Police.
What was actually appearing on police [...]
FORECASTERS AIM FOR CONSISTENCY. BUT THE MET OFFICE’S CONSISTENCY IS IN GETTING ITS PREDICTIONS WRONG
Forecasting is an inexact science, no matter what the field. It’s said, for instance, that economists have successfully predicted 14 of the last five recessions. Yet Britain’s Met Office has achieved an extraordinary consistency in its long-range forecasts – by getting [...]
Zebu Organization of the YearWhat else could it be but the House of Commons, the high reputation of which has been brought low by the Expenses’ Scandal? It’s as if our 646 MPs lined up their feet and took aim at them with shotguns. What is most disgraceful is not the claims that have been [...]
A ROUND-UP OF THE MOST GLARING, RIDICULOUS AND EGREGIOUS LIES, DECEPTION AND BULLSHIT OF 2009
Zebu OrganisationsRoyal Mail clearly deserve to be singled out for their “Sorry You Were Out” cards, pushed through letterboxes, whether people are out or not. Initially, facing an imminent strike, Royal Mail’s less-than-stellar management maintained that this hardly ever happened and [...]
A ROUND-UP OF THE MOST GLARING, RIDICULOUS AND EGREGIOUS LIES, DECEPTION AND BULLSHIT OF 2009
Zebu OrganisationsBritish Telecom make the list, primarily for telling the villagers of Hambledon in Oxfordshire that it was impossible to provide them with broadband. That might not have been so difficult to live with, had they not then discovered that BT [...]
As well as the emergency services, the RSPCA also get their fair share of mind-boggling calls from the public.
The RPSCA have issued their list of the most ridiculous calls they received from the animal-loving British public in 2009.
A member of the public rang to report a slow moving tortoise on the hard shoulder of a [...]
“Is that the police? Help! I’m trapped in my duvet”Two days ago Greater Manchester Police revealed that one of the many 999 calls they’d had which weren’t real emergencies came from a woman, possibly drunk, who called because her cat was playing with a ball of string and it was “doing her head in”.
Now Devon [...]
With train fares due to rise yet again, it is no surprise if commuters find rail travel expensive. What’s more surprising is that Network Rail clearly thinks so too.
200 Network Rail staff had to travel to Coventry from Reading for a conference, a distance of 90 miles. As a senior executive noted in a memo: [...]
We’ve remarked before how councils justify their phalanxes of cctv cameras by claiming they are for crime-busting while, in reality, they are mainly used for extorting money from hapless motorists.In their desperation to squeeze cash from us, councils become ever more wily. But we were still puzzled to see this speed camera in the borough [...]
After we wrote about the inaccuracy of facial recognition systems, we received such a detailed comment on it from David Moss that we asked if we could make it a blog entry. David, a former IT consultant, writes widely on the subject, most recently for The Guardian.
Biometrics based on face recognition do not work. All [...]
We all hate spam, except presumably the loathsome bottom-feeders who flood our in-boxes with the bloody stuff. However, we noticed a while back that while the products they tout may be pretty well identical, month on month, year on year, there’s often an element of inspiration when it comes to inventing the names of the [...]
We were furious when we wrote about a CCTV camera that was pointing into somebody’s home. It seemed an appalling invasion of privacy but, while we felt sympathy for whoever lived behind the net curtains, at least we had no idea who lived there or what the CCTV operator actually saw.
And then somebody sent us [...]
We wrote the other day about how the oft-quoted figure of 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain is utter Zebu and explained the less than scientific way the number arose. We’re glad to say that somebody is trying to find out how many cameras there spying on us.
Big Brother Watch put in Freedom of Information requests [...]
Not all instances of deception in modern society make us despair of our fellow man. Sometimes pulling a fast one can be positively applauded, which is why, in Complete and Utter Zebu, we devoted a section to the naming of racehorses. For it is a long-established tradition among owners to try to come up with [...]
Theme: Guangzhou
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