If it’s news to me, it must be news to you!
Basket case: Pork pies, camcorders and leg waxing have been replaced by chilled mashed potato, raspberries and exercise leggings in the basket of goods used to calculate the UK’s inflation rate.
Remains: Scientists believe that bones found on a remote Pacific island are the remains of Amelia Earhart who disappeared in 1937.
No brainer: The start-up company Nectome offers to preserve your brain for as long as it takes to develop the technology to upload your consciousness to the cloud. The downside is they have to euthanise you to do it.
Typical: When Trump and Kim Jong-un finally meet perhaps they should choose the Gyeonggi English Village as the venue. Just a few miles from the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, the village boasts a typical English pub serving warm beer, has bright red postboxes and a replica Stonehenge in the car park.
Back to the future: The BBC has taken a look at the history of the future of work and the wildly optimistic predictions of how technology would change our lives and our unfounded fears. Such as Socrates who thought that writing would ruin our memories.
OTT: Travel Oregon describes its new promotional video as ‘only slightly exaggerated‘ even though it includes a giant rabbit and a frog reading a newspaper.
Platypodes: Scientists believe that the ‘Shirley Temple’ protein found in platypus milk could be a new weapon in the war against antibiotic-resistant superbugs. (Platypodes would be the correct technical plural of the platypus, not platypi, although platypuses is acceptable.)
Back in time: A row between Kosovo and Serbia has meant that digital clocks in twenty-five European countries are running six minutes slow.
Brief lives: The astronaut who pioneered the jetpack Bruce McCandless; motorcycle manufacturer Ivano Beggio; Real Thing singer Eddy Amoo; early tv chef Zena Skinner; fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy; comedian and Bullseye host Jim Bowen; the comedy legend Ken Dodd.
And, of course, the visionary physicist Stephen Hawking who also had a wonderful sense of humour. As he said: ‘Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny‘. Listen to him below playing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy MkII in the Hexagonal Phase broadcast on Radio 4 on 8th March.