Collect Dog Poo and Win The Lottery

Dog Poo Lottery!
Clearing your dog poo from the street in Taiwan’s capital Taipei could be a life-changing experience. In a bid to clear up the streets from dog poo, the city offered a very rare lottery for dog owners. For each bag of dog poo that is turned in to the officers, a person was given a special lottery ticket for the chance to win a gold ingot worth £1,500. Officials say about 4,000 people came in with various bags of poo during the exercise.

At the end, it was a middle-aged woman who walked away with the top prize. Originally the contest was supposed to end last October but because of its success, the officials decided to extend it.

So what is the measure of success that officials are talking about?

Since the lottery was announced, the dog poos on the streets of Taiwan’s capital Taipei has more than halved over the period. During the draw last, several other winners were announced but one woman walked away with the ultimate prize. The city admitted that they don’t have the resources to keep exchanging dog poos for gold. So how to they hope to keep the streets clean? They say they hope the people have developed the habit of clearing up their dog poos!

So I wonder if CaRT will be offering dog walkers a prize for clearing up behind them on the towpath - or will boaters and other towpath users be the unlucky losers again.

A bit of a sad tail of a dog.

The world's oldest dog has died at 26 years and eight months. Pusuke, a fluffy tan Shiba mix, died on Monday after suddenly falling ill and refusing to eat, owner Yumiko Shinohara said at her home in Sakura, a city outside Tokyo, Japan."I would just like to thank him for staying alive so long." Pusuke's lifespan would have been the equivalent of about 125 years for a human.

Our old cat was 29 last September and he is still going strong, apart from taking tablets for an over active thyroid. He has his own harem - with a couple of sprightly girls aged 8 and 10 who seem to think he is Mr Wonderful. But then he is a lot like me!

Did you remember to enter?
Competitors from around the world will flock to China for the 20th annual World Memory Championships, taking place in Guangzhou. Held over a three-day period in December, the competition will challenge contestants’ ability and stamina with 10 different rounds. Entrants will be challenged to memorise images, numbers, dates, names and packs of cards as they battle for the honour of triumphing in this prestigious event.

I don't know about you but I have enough problems remembering my debit card number. But if you are up for a challenge. The UK's intelligence agency has set up a code-breaking challenge in a bid to attract new talent. GCHQ has launched a new website with a visual code and invited anyone to have a go at cracking the code. The competition closes on 12 December.

Can you crack the code?

Forth bridge completed!

The painting of the Forth Bridge, a job that is famously never finished has finally been completed. Now the search is on for new metaphor for a never ending task! Network Rail said that its 10-year, £130m programme of refurbishment had ended and that the crossing would not need another full paint job for at least 20 years.The project, involved encasing the bridge in up to 4,000 tonnes of scaffolding and painting more than 230,000 square meters of steel. A triple layer of new glass flake epoxy paint was applied to the bridge, similar to that used by the offshore oil industry, to create a virtually impenetrable layer.

Now I ask myself if this new kind of triple layer of new glass flake epoxy heavy duty paint will be available at a reasonable price for use in boat blacking?

The projects completion sparked  calls to find a new metaphor which adequately described a seemingly never ending process. Twitter users suggested “upgrading the M1 near Luton” would be a suitable replacement or “shaving a wookiee” - a famously furry character in the Star Wars trilogy.

Later....