Category: Funny

This is not the Best Newspaper Correction Ever

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Correction, New York Times, 30 December 2011

Yes, it’s an amusing correction, but it’s not the best ever.

The reigning champion, this year, as it has been for nearly 100 years, the Grauniad’s* Corrections and amplifications column.

The material there is extensive and voluminous, but I believe that the best correction of all time comes from their effort on 2 February 2009:

The absence of corrections yesterday was due to a technical hitch rather than any sudden onset of accuracy.

Seriously, corrections simply do not get any better than that.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

It’s On (Sort of)

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Stephen Colbert has passed the Colbert super PAC to Jon Stewart, (the special effects involved could be best described as “low budget”) and established an “exploratory committee” to “explore” run for the Republican nomination in his native South Carolina.

Cool.

He could probably beat John Huntsman.

The video will be up on Comedy Central tomorrow some time.

Best Siri Prank of Last Year

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Someone programmed a display model Apple iPhone to cuss out anyone who attempted to talk to it“

A LAD of 12 who tried out the new iPhone 4S in Tesco was stunned when it told him: “Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***.”

The phone’s Siri system, which answers spoken questions, came back with the foul-mouthed insult when Charlie Le Quesne asked: “How many people are there in the world?”

Charlie’s horrified mum Kim said: “The phone was a demo version and was low enough on the shelf for Charlie to have a go with it. He asked it a simple question and we couldn’t believe the filth it came out with.

“I thought I must be hearing things. So we asked again and the same four-letter stuff blared out.

“I asked for the manager and after staff heard it they agreed to unplug it.”

Apologetic staff at Tesco in Coventry told Kim pranksters had tampered with the phone’s set-up instructions.

The Siri system refers to the phone’s user by name — using information stored in its contacts system. The jokers had entered the rude seven-word phrase as the user’s name — so the phone blurted it out when it answered a question

Heh.