Basil's off-colour squawks
A swearing parrot bought by a British couple has embarrassed its new owners by constantly insisting: "I'm in the valleys". Basil the African Grey delivered his first verbal volley within hours of being given a new home. He announced himself with a polite "hello" but when new owner Sarah Fisk replied, he promptly told her to "**** off " with an accent straight from his previous home in Wales. The bird then started squawking "I'm in the valleys" followed by a tirade of expletives. Said Mrs Fisk: "His previous owners had said he had sworn in the past, but I thought that a change of scenery would leave that behind - not a chance." (Source: Telegraph.co.uk)
Commenters' hate speech skews views
Every site has, to some degree, a problem with commenters spamming the page with hate speech - usually a moderator has to read all the comments and reject the offensive ones. This week Popular Science announced it was shutting down comments for good on all future web articles, saying they "can be bad for science". In a recent study, University of Wisconsin researchers had people read a phoney blog post describing the pros and cons of a new piece of technology. Participants then read either combative comments (Sample: You're stupid if you think this is a good product) or civil ones. They found that the uncivil comments "not only polarised readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself". The Onion satire site doesn't allow comments but readers can still engage with the content through social media. Some sites like sports site ESPN require commenters to log in through their Facebook profiles, the theory being that stirrers are less inclined to troll if no longer anonymous. (Via The Week magazine)
Paying the water bill on a high
