Lynne Murphy writes a great blog, which this book is at least partly based on, about the differences between American and British English. Or should that be that this book is based on?

Books like this really make you question everything you write.

Some of the material I was already familiar with, having read it elsewhere, possibly even on her blog, but there were plenty of new facts to keep me entertained. Sometimes it’s difficult to remember where a word of phrase came from. Did I always say that or did I learn it more recently? How do you pronounce words? When it came up in conversation a few months ago, I genuinely couldn’t remember whether I normally said “skedule” and “shedule.” I kept second-guessing myself!

• Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity draws marchers from across America – Good to see that there is some sense in American politics!
• Some physics to live by… – “Whether we like it or not, human life is subject to the universal laws of physics.”

• Aerial views of New York – Neat pictures of Manhattan (and bits of New Jersey).
• Wallace and Gromit to appear on Christmas stamps – For once: Christmas stamps that I approve of.
• My First Week with the iPhone – I always assumed that a touch device like the iPhone would be pretty much useless for blind users. It’s good to be wrong.

• Apple Answers the FCC’s Questions – A few interesting tidbits, including the fact that two reviewers look at every update, but I’d say that there was little of real substance here.
• The brutal truth about America’s healthcare – “But the truth is that the rich, and the insurance firms, just don’t realise what we are going through, or simply don’t care. Look around this room and tell me that America’s healthcare don’t need fixing.” Still finding the whole debate quite bizarre.

As is necessary when you travel to the US, I hired a car. It’s always tricky to hire a small car in America — only in the US could an SUV fit in a “small car” parking space — but I dismissed all their attempts to get me to upgrade. Maybe it was some form of revenge, but I ended up with a Chrysler P.T. Cruiser. Not terribly small. But actually terrible.

I enjoyed writing my CRAP Alert post yesterday. Very cathartic. But there are some serious points in it and while I might be overstating the case when I spell them out here, I think it’s worth doing just to be clear.

The truth is I genuinely do support the right of people to publish this kind of information. I am against pretty much all forms of censorship and am very much in favour of giving people good information so that they can make an informed decision themselves.

Ever since I found it a few years ago I have been very impressed with the CAP Alert website. The “American Culture Ministry” owns it and their plan is to review films for objectionable content. In this context, “objectionable” means anything that does not fit in with their fairly strict interpretation of the Bible. They claim that their reviews are objective¹ as they use the WISDOM scale². I absolutely support the rights of groups such as this to take all the fun out of entertainment.

It’s bizarre. Virtually every American I’ve met has disliked Dubya, yet over the whole country, despite a number of obvious set-backs, his popularity has rarely been in question. Why such a contradiction? How did it get like that and how soon will the US be returning to normal?

The company where I (currently) work is always trying to get people to transfer over to the New York office. There are a number of personal reasons why I didn’t want to do that, however the main reason was always that it — basically — just didn’t appeal. It really didn’t seem to be very much different from London, where I currently live, but, well, more. So when I visited New York in April I was not expecting to like it very much.

What does a two year old mince pie and an ewok have in common? The answer, it turns out, is “wedding cake.”

Huh?

Let me explain.

Wedding cakes have a bit of a history for us. Americans tend not to be very keen on the traditional British fruit cake, which was a bit of a problem since I got married to a Californian in New York! Even the hotel concierge could only track down a fruit flan which is not what I’d call traditional. In the end we had to make do with less conventional but still delicious “normal” deserts.