My five minutes of BBC fame (or maybe not)

Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to BBC Radio Guernsey while I was finishing up at the office. Their evening show features Duncan Warren, broadcasting on several BBC local radio stations in the UK Southwest. At one point, Duncan started talking with one of his callers about the Stella Awards, named for the woman who sued McDonald's after spilling their coffee on herself and getting burned. These awards are allegedly given to outrageous lawsuits that actually collect damages. He specifically mentioned one that involved someone setting the cruise control on their new RV and leaving the driver's seat. Supposedly, this person sued the RV manufacturer arguing that the manual didn't warn that they couldn't leave the wheel when the cruise control was engaged.

Now this caught my attention, because the RV cruise control story is a notorious and venerable urban legend. So I went to Snopes.com and did a quick search. Sure enough, the cruise control lawsuit is in there as a confirmed myth. I also noted that the entire existence of the Stella Awards is also apparently a myth.

So, I sent Duncan an e-mail to that effect, pointing to the Snopes website. I got a reply from his producer, indicating that he wanted to talk to me on the air today. So we arranged for them to call me at 8:30pm England time, and I spent about five minutes on the air with him, discussing the nature of the urban legend and the Snopes website. I did manage to mention BookCrossing in passing, but wasn't able to steer the conversation in that direction.

Unfortunately, while skyring was all set to try and record my interview for posterity, it seems that BBC Radio Guernsey wasn't streaming Duncan's show today, but was instead streaming their AM feed with local programming, and he missed my five minutes of air time. Oh well. JKT has been hinting that she'd like to talk to me on the air at some point, so maybe next time will work out.

Oh...I almost forgot to say "Happy New Year!"

What? You look puzzled. Didn't you know that it's the Iranian New Year? Well, now you do.

One of the things I like about my job is the incredible diversity of the employees here. A few months back, a co-worker from Ethiopia took a bunch of us out to an Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate the retirement of my old boss. Today, it was Iran's turn. I have a number of co-workers who were born in Iran, and every year they invite a bunch of us to join them for lunch at an Iranian restaurant to celebrate the Iranian New Year. Today, a group of about two dozen people from our work unit piled into a bunch of cars and went out to celebrate. We had a variety of Iranian dishes to sample, and I believe we all left the restaurant wishing we were headed home for a nap instead of back to the office to work. The food was fabulous, and the conversation included discussions of Iranian New Year's traditions. All-in-all, quite a fun lunch.