7 days SPOILER ALERT
No wonder you city folk lost this country - £6.00 for 5kg of chicken feed, get real! You get 5kg for £2.50 or 20kg for £6.00. So Boris could have got more than double the amount, well researched guys.
Rod Wallace, Lustleigh, Devon
Monitor note: Thanks Rod. Other brands of chicken feed are available.

As an employer I'm disgusted by the BBC's "Say goodbye to worktime boredom". Actively encouraging people to use Twitter/Facebook whilst they are being paid to do other things. This is just another example of Britain's attitude towards doing any actual work. Of course I doubt that you will read this as you are probably too busy twittering...
Lee, Preston

Web Monitor, as any Kenny Everett fan will tell you, Dr Gitfinger was a character in the Captain Kremmen radio series.
Jake, Newbury, Berkshire, UK

Nicolas (Thursday letters), "funky" is indeed a great addition. But where to put it?
Basil Long, Nottingham

Philip Hore (Thursday letters) asks if $23 quadrillion dollars could buy Europe. It almost certainly is enough to buy Europe, but how many times do you actually want to hear The Final Countdown?
Ben Moxon, Guildford, UK

Bieke Vanhooydonck (of the University of Antwerp). What a name! Sounds like a Douglas Adams invention. Fabulous.
Laura, Bicester

If "Dramatic Paws" doesn't win this week's caption competition, I'll eat my, um, lunch. Thank you. (And no, it isn't mine.)
Sue 'Rockahula' Lee, London
Monitor note: Hope your lunch tasted good, Sue.

Where is the page to enter the caption competition? I have been trying to enter for weeks now, and only ever get the "competition is now closed" page.
Helen, North Devon
Monitor note: Helen, you come looking just a little too late. Entries open at lunchtime on Thursdays, and close at 1230 BST Friday.

Sorry, James Ball (Thursday letters), "Penguin murders prompt sniper aid" is not an all-noun headline. "Prompt", although it can be a noun or indeed an adjective, is clearly used as a transitive verb here.
Hamish McGlobbie, Leeds

JoeA (Thursday letters), I received the joke e-mail comparing cars with computers on 25 February 1998. It was sent to me on 23 February 1998: e-mail wasn't quite as fast in those days. I don't know if that's the oldest recorded receipt of the e-mail, but as it happens, it is the oldest e-mail I still have.
Adam, London, UK

JoeA, 1997 is apparently the earliest recorded receipt of this e-mail.
Pascal, Grand Union Canal, Cowley, UK

I've never heard of Icehouse, and I've never received the e-mail imagining if a car was like a computer.
I - I don't really feel like part of the gang anymore.
*sniff*
Sue, London
Monitor note: Wait - Sue - come back! Cheese and pineapple stick?

I run an alternative hairdressing salon, and actually the mullet has been back for a while (Letters passum). It's now done with razor cutting and is more popular with young teen girls to get that "got out of bed" look. It's quite rocktastic as long as it's an excellent hairdresser doing it...
Zoey Ryland, Bristol

This week, a French Bulldog peeks out from the stage curtain at a dog fashion show in Taiwan. But what's being said?

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. Hilaryros
"In THESE shoes? I don't think so!"

5. Candace9839
Siegfried & Roy revamp Vegas show.

4. GreatUncleBulgariaJr
"So chuck, you chose contestant number three. He's small but with a true Latin American temprament and I know you'll have a lorra, lorra fun together."

3. RMutt-Urinal
Certain members of the audience were beginning to realise that they had been conned into buying tickets which promised "Doggie Fashion - Live on Stage".

2. tomhartland
"I won't get out of my basket for anything less than ten thous... ooo, is that a biscuit??"

1. gm_coates
Spike's Eric Morecambe impression was off to a good start.

1. A new element cannot be named after a living person.
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2. Plants that smell of almonds or marzipan are more likely to be poisonous.
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3. The UK's median gross annual salary is £20,801.
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4. The best Italian saffron is made from crocus flowers picked at dawn.
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5. The world's longest bench is 613 metres.
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6. Testicular cancer only accounts for 1-2% of male cancers.
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7. Brahms liked his audience to clap in between movements.
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8. Zoos in China use female dogs as surrogate mothers for baby tigers, lions and bear cubs.
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9. Some lizards are so light they fall to the ground like a feather.
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10. Buzz Aldrin received Holy Communion on the moon.
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Seen 10 things? Send us a picture to use next week. Thanks to Heidi Adnum for this week's picture of 10 ducks in Hyde Park, London.

It is, perhaps, a question as old as time, dating back to, oh, at least the pre-social networking era. Who, if you could invite just about anyone, would be your ideal dinner party guests?

For Gordon Brown, who as Prime Minister has, at the very least, the opportunity to turn that fantasy into reality, the answer is revealed in today's Guardian:
Motty
Brucie
Jimmy (Carr)
Fred the Shred
Ed (Miliband)
Paper Monitor does not know the seating plan.

The paper is also to be congratulated on its colour co-ordination today, tricking out both its front page and G2 cover in an eye-catching combo of tomato red, basil green and white. But there the similarities end. "FREE Italian phrasebook" is on the front, "AMIS ON IRAN" on G2.

Meanwhile, the tabloids report on the unedifying tale of Ingrid Tarrant's parking ticket. When caught parking in a bus stop, she "roared away in her silver Saab", says the Daily Express, only to end up "wrestling on the ground" with a police officer. She says she was "petrified". He says she was "abrupt and rude". Either way, there is not much dignity left intact.

And finally, Metro persists in its efforts to label the Blue Mountains as the Outback. Which indicates that its subs don't hang on Paper Monitor's every post. Today's headline is "Backpacker's Outback ordeal 'was not a hoax'".

That's not the Outback. This is the Outback.

Each week the news quiz 7 days 7 questions will offer an answer. You are invited to suggest what the question might have been.

Suggestions should be sent using the COMMENTS BOX IN THIS ENTRY. And since nobody likes a smart alec, kudos will be deducted for predictability in your suggestions.

This week's answer is A FOX OR A DOG. But what's the question?

For those led here by Friday's mini-question, here are the somewhat worrying pictures of not one but three surrogate dogs nursing abandoned baby animals in China.

Left is the dog with the lion cubs - who frankly looks a little worried - middle is the dog with red pandas, and right is another dog with tiger cubs. Using female dogs as surrogate mothers for baby tigers and lions, bear cubs and other newborn animals is a common practice in Chinese zoos.

Brave is the actor that suggests that their every word is not a slice of brilliant pithy insight, so hats off to the star of Speed and Miss Congeniality.
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It's ironic of the BBC to publish The unsung hero of the Apollo mission (as if there was only one). There were thousands of engineers involved with the design and the operation of the dozen or so Apollo missions, not to mention the astronauts that flew Apollo 8, 9 and 10, and James Webb, the Nasa boss who held it all together. They are all largely unsung.
Rob, Derby, UK

Did John Airey (Wednesday letters) try the Latin quiz and, if so, how did he do? "Stat" may or may not be an Americanism, but it is certainly a Latin one. Stat. (statim), as any prescriber or pharmacist knows, means "immediately" and a "stat" dose of a drug (or even a cup of tea) is a one-off dose given immediately, usually prior to a procedure.
Aqua Suliser, Aqua Sulis

Well, the Met Office were right for once (Is there any truth in St Swithin's lore?). They forecast a "barbeque summer" and that's exactly what we've got. It's poured and poured - just like every time I have a barbeque.
Peter, Cropthorne, Worcs

This headline would have been so much better had it included the word "Funky".
Nicolas, London
Monitor note: One concurs.

Glad to see another all-noun headline today - Penguin murders prompt sniper aid - and even more cheered to see it doubles as a headline that virtually forces you to read on. Good stuff.
James Ball, London, UK

I think Paper Monitor has dated itself. Can't be that many people under the age of 40 who remember obscure Icehouse lyrics from the early 1980s.
GW, also 40-plus, London, UK

I'm now going to have to spend the rest of the afternoon looking for pop lyrics in previous blogs. Incidentally, I saw Icehouse support David Bowie on his Serious Moonlight tour.
*Sigh* just realised that was 26 years ago.
Andrea, Cheltenham, UK

Ahhh thanks, Paper Monitor - I've now got a medley of Icehouse songs going round my head.
Sarah, London, UK
Monitor note: All together now... "Great Southern Land, in the sleeping sun/you walk alone with the ghost of time..."

I recently received one of those "hilarious" forwarded joke e-mails from a colleague. It was the one imagining if a car was like a computer in 10 different ways. I'm sure I remember first receiving this years ago. What is the oldest recorded receipt of this e-mail that anyone knows about? Maybe Web Monitor could find a website that monitors the history of forwarded e-mails.
JoeA, London

Web Monitor forgoes the screen breaks to find the most interesting bits of the Internet. Make sure you share your best links by sending them via the comment box.

• We've already been informed by a work experience boy at Morgan Stanley, Matthew Robson, that Twitter isn't for teenagers, as posted on Web Monitor previously and reported in the Financial Times. However, it turns out forcing politicians to answer in 140 characters works out quite well. The Independent interviewed Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg using questions from Twitter with the help of regular political tweeters Indy Politics and Tweetminster.
He managed to answer curiously named gitfinger's question - What path should the UK take with its defensive capability? With this:

"Key thing is to be ready to fight stateless conflicts, no longer the old state vs state cold war conflicts."

• The leader of the Conservatives, David Cameron, spoke in the Independent about what he learnt from bringing up a disabled child. Ivan, who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died in February:

"The day you find out your child has a disability you're not just deeply shocked, worried and upset - you're also incredibly confused.
It feels like you're on the beginning of a journey you never planned to take, without a map or a clue which direction to go in."

"As man's cranium grew, his digestive tract shrank. This forced him to obtain more energy-dense foods than his fellow-primates were subsisting on, which put a premium on adding further brain power. The result of this self-reinforcing process was a strong taste for foods that are high in calories and easy to digest."

• Going to the opposite end of the scale was Richard P Feynman from the California Institute of Technology who died in 1988. Preoccupations, one of Web Monitor's network of friends on Delicious linked to Feynman's lectures on YouTube and his view on how to downscale. Feynman highlighted a big challenge in physics - going small. He looked at solving the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale - after all the principle of making small stuff may seem quite simple but you need tiny fingers and how can you oil your machinery?:

"They tell me about electric motors that are the size of the nail on your small finger. And there is a device on the market, they tell me, by which you can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin... Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [er, shouldn't that be 32 volumes?] on the head of a pin?"

• The director of the Institute of the Future Marina Gorbis comments in Boing Boing on how personal transformation has changed since the beginning of the internet age. Psychiatrist George Vaillant's longitudinal studies of 268 Harvard men, written about in Atlantic and posted on Web Monitor, showed that re-inventing yourself is just a normal part of life. Gorbis reflects that this reinvention is now documented on Facebook, Twitter and the rest:

"What is interesting about the technology environment we live in is that for the first time in our human history we are able to create persistent and mirror-like references points of our lives that keep former identities in constant view. Videos and photographs taken from birth, snippets of life documented on Facebook, streams of thoughts on Twitter, inner wonderings revealed in blogs -- these are all new reference points for creating and shaping our identities, our senses of self. And unlike previous reminders, often tucked away in shoe boxes, desk drawers, and attics, these are much more sensory-rich, pervasive, and easily accessible, to us and others."

It's an easy mistake to make for those who have never been to the Great Southern Land.

"Rescued after 12 days lost in the Outback" - Metro

Only it's not the Outback.

Londoner Jamie Neale, 19, survived for almost a fortnight after setting out for an ill-fated day trek in the Blue Mountains (pictured top right).

This is a national park west of Sydney. Australians call this "the bush". Which is different, very different, from the Outback (pictured lower right).

Here's how to tell the difference. Anything called "the bush" has lots of bushes, and trees as well. Whereas the Outback has just the one bush in all its thousands of miles of parched red sand. Or thereabouts.

Nor is Metro the only paper to make this mistake.

"'My boy's been found!' Hugs and a kick up the backside for son feared dead in Outback" - Guardian
"Lost Brit safe after 12 days in Oz outback" - Daily Star
"Who says that pommies can't survive in the outback?" - The Scotsman
"Dad bushwhacks backpack son who survived 12 days lost in unforgiving Outback" - Irish Independent

And on Tuesday the London Evening Standard reported on how two British families had also become lost in the Outback, complete with a photo of the actual Outback.

Only they, too, had been in the Blue Mountains. Walking alone like a primitive man (see their hungry eyes, it's a hungry home...)

Divorced father of-two Paslow admitted seven counts of benefit fraud and was sentenced to 200 hours community service after using £3,552 to fund fangs, a forked tongue and horns.
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Just wanted to point out that a much more accurate translation of the cogito (cogito ergo sum) is "I am thinking", not "I think" - it refers to the on-going act, not the capacity in general. Ergo pedanto.
Martha Hampson, London

I have to share this with the world - 7/7 in the Latin quiz, thanks to some guesswork, general knowledge and a film company's motto. I was not allowed to sit my Latin O-level because I only got 1% in the mock - who's laughing now?
Nicole, Londinium

I think, if I were lost in the wilderness and hungry enough to begin eating plants, I would not be wandering about thinking, "Hmmm. This one smells a bit like marzipan. Next!"
Helen, London, Ontario, Canada

Sorry Ann (Tuesday letters), but I think Sarah Brown was quite right to refuse the veal. It goes against her ethics. You wouldn't criticize someone for refusing the same if they were vegetarian, would you?
Robyn, Cheshire

Ann, it is basic manners for the host to first determine their guests' dietary requirements, be they medical, religious or moral.
Eddyozman, currently NY, NY

Re Kathryn's letter (Tuesday). Yes! Er, No... Maybe.
David Richerby, Leeds, UK

Is there a way of typing the action of clapping without it looking ironic? Well done Paper Monitor clap, clap, clap!
Edd, Cardiff

Isn't "stat!" an American expression (re Paper Monitor's tea demands)? The last time I used it in the workplace I had to explain what I meant, which rather defeated the object of using it in the first place.
John Airey, Peterborough, UK

Web Monitor clicks through the internet to find the most interesting bits. Make sure you share your best links by sending them via the comment box.

• One of ex-US President Jimmy Carter's old speech writers, Gordon Stewart, has given an insight into what it takes to say the right thing in a crisis situation. During the 1979 energy crisis, even a young Bill Clinton, then a governor, was shuttled into Camp David to offer advice to Carter on what to say to the nation. Stewart's "malaise speech" was the result:

"There was never any way the Jimmy Carter we all know would avoid saying: 'There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.' Where the speeches of Reagan and Barack Obama evoke the beauty of dreams, President Carter insisted on the realities of responsibility and the need for radical change. Mr Carter's sense of our own accountability, his warnings about the debilitating effects of self-centered divisiveness were the speech's true heresies. They are also the very elements that keep it relevant today."

• The figure 750 million lifetime album sales has been popping up in Michael Jackson obituaries and retrospectives without anyone really questioning the figure. Now, Carl Bialik, the numbers guy at Wall Street Journal is giving the numbers a proper look. Bialik found in his blog that the figure for lifetime record sales curiously leaped from 200 million to 600 million at the end of 2006, when Jackson was trying to make a comeback. Record sales figures are sketchy - international data differs from country to country and in the US sales weren't even recorded in any detail until 1991. In the end, Bialik turned to bloggers for help. The Fan of Music blog puts the figure at 205.5 million whereas Hitsville blog reckons 131.5 million albums were sold world-wide, along with 65.6 million singles.

• Richard Corlis in Corlis is arguing that Bruno could be the first one-day-wonder film after the figures for the first weekend dropped off after Friday. Time put it down to bad twitter reviews. Seth Jacobson in First Post points out that Borat took more in its second week than its first, saying:

"But then Borat was released in 2006 BT (Before Twitter). And maybe the word of mouth has it right - that Borat was a better film. "

• Always on the lookout for original viewpoints Web Monitor has been on the search for an intelligent feminist blog for some time and yet to come across one. So WM was hopeful when Jezebel flagged up the teenage feminist blog the F-Bomb. It seems the teenage feminist is very concerned about celebrities - from Lily Allen's feminist lyrics to Tori Amos on sexual politics. When talking about the Pixar film UP! F-Bomb founder Julie Zeilinger said:

"UP is the best movie ever. I'm hypercritical of everything and I couldn't find anything wrong with it."

• One set of musings on sexual politics the F-Bomb unearthed was Tori Amos in the Guardian, talking about powerful men:

"A powerful man is a man that knows who he is and doesn't need to manipulate people to get what he wants... I've worked with many powerful men in the music industry. The big power brokers in the industry are still men for the most part. And not just them: it's the people behind them, the business affairs, the structures, the boards - it's all men. And there are the good guys and the not- so-good guys. There are the controlling men and there are those that want the exchange."

• Yesterday's Web Monitor touched on why flash mobs make a grown man cry and asked if it's still the case on the occasions that they are organised to advertise something. Said grown man Euan Semple replied in his blog:

"I guess marketers and advertisers have become adept at playing on human emotion in all sorts of ways over the years and getting me to associate - however unconsciously or unwillingly - the emotional impact of a flash mob with a particular brand is just more of the same. Hopefully the balance of trust is shifting and we are much less likely to accept being manipulated if that manipulation feels too overt or too direct - much as witty and entertaining TV ads feel more acceptable than out and out sales pitches. It's a fine line though!"

"It's not just flash mobs. It's parades, marching bands (adult or children), displays, amateur performances of singing and dancing."

Another day, another notable work experience in the papers.

On Tuesday it was the turn of 15-year-old Matthew Robson, who in a two-week placement at Morgan Stanley wrote an unscientific report on how teenagers consume the media (read his note in full in the Guardian).

While he didn't actually use the word "lame" to describe Twitter - or whatever the yoof jargon of the day is - that's the between-the-lines subtext of his assessment that the micro-blogging site is "aimed at adults". Despite being the author of assorted tweets on behalf of the Magazine collective, Paper Monitor couldn't help but titter.

Today it is Daniela Oliveros-Elvidge, on work experience at Downing St after buttonholing Gordon Brown at a Prince's Trust event. The Times offers the new girl some tips, such as never calling Lord Mandelson by his first name. "He has very many other possible titles to choose from and all of them are grander than Peter."

Well, it is the season for it. Paper Monitor is currently lording it over a cluster of mini-Magazinites (is that the correct term? - ed), demanding dry triple-shot lattes and dispensing lemon cake to those who deliver clean copy.

And the Daily Mail reports on the rise of Twinterns - work experience students put in charge of a company's official Twitter feed. Which can go rather wrong, as Habitat found out to its cost when its twittering intern got a little too enthusiastic about driving traffic to his tweets.

And finally, not only is it work experience season (TEA! STAT! Yes, you. What do you mean, where's the tea bar?) it is Proms season.

The Daily Telegraph picks up on the open letter from Time Out's classical music editor addressed to Loud Clapping Man Who Sits Behind Me At Concerts.

For Proms audiences are nothing if not enthusiastic. While Proms director Roger Wright tells the Telegraph that he understands this man's pain, he points out that "Mozart rather enjoyed audiences clapping and Brahms was rather disappointed when they didn't clap between movements."

Paper Monitor concurs, and hopes its readers will mark the conclusion of this blog post with a round of applause.

Thank you. Thank you. You're too, too kind.

Signs will be erected at Culloden asking visitors to respect the site as a war grave following a complaint about picnickers.
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