the tremendously witty and erudite alan coren (punch editor, original news quiz panelist) passed away last week: there is a news quiz tribute hosted by sandi toksvig, andy hamilton and jeremy hardy on radio 4, and an archived episode featuring him with linda smith and tony hawks on bbc7. be sure to listen to them.

it occurs that if i keep watcing qi i'm going to grow up with a lot of strange maxims for living. it's a bit like the time miss c.y. wong assigned jurassic park for sec 1 history when we were doing the archaeology module, and the one thing i got out of that was that you should keep absolutely still in the presence of a tyrannosaur because it has amphibian vision and will not see you if you didn't move. nowadays i keep saying to myself: remember not to eat nothing but rabbits. eat something with it, but don't eat only rabbits. (Qi 5.3) true, the occasions on which that maxim could be applied are few, but such occasions should be more likely to arise, compared, for instance, to my meeting a tyrannosaur, and i've held on to that bit of life-saving information for 14 years.