Earwigs: Less Worrying Than You Thought, But Not Much

Elegantly drawing together a couple of recent blog themes, my colleague D. instant-messaged me today to say he had opened a new carton of apple juice and found a live earwig inside the lid.

'Was it male or female?', was my immediate - and possibly not entirely relevant - response.

D. didn't know, as it was 'only small', so we looked it up in Wikipedia, where we discovered the following rigorous scientific data:

The name earwig comes from Old English eare "ear" and wicga "insect". It is fancifully related to the notion that earwigs burrow into the brains of humans through the ear and therein lay their eggs. This belief, however, is false. Nevertheless, being exploratory and omnivorous, earwigs probably do crawl into the human ear; even if they are only looking for a humid crevice in which to hide, such behavior provides a memorable basis for the name.

So there you have it: earwigs 'probably' do get in your ear, but not to lay eggs or anything.

That's all right then.

NEXT WEEK: Cottage pie 'probably made of cottages'.

Why I Love Wikipedia

Having had an instant-message discussion with the lovely Mr BC earlier about Falmouth in the Elizabethan era, I was moved to look the place up in that founte of all truthfull knowledge, Ye Wikepaedia.

Joyless people are always going on about how 'the' Wikipedia is scandalously unacademic and untrustworthy and all that, but the sooner you accept that some of it may not be strictly and accurately true, the sooner you can get down to the real business of appreciating its gloriously flawed nature.

Who wants stuffy academia, for example, when you can have lovely bits of user-generated bathos like this:

The name Falmouth comes from the river Fal, which is a Norse/Danish Viking name, strongly suggesting that the Danes used the deep water habour [sic] as a landing/resting place. During the Viking Age, the Danes did ally with the Britons of Cornwall, and the Vikings helped their Cornish allies by making pillaging raids on the South coast of Devon and Dorset, which was then controlled by the Saxons of Wessex, who were historically the enemies of both the Danes and the Britons.

Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which passes in succession close to the neighbouring town of Penryn.

Which prompts the question: had the Vikings *known* about the A39, would they still have gone round the boaty way?

I'm Clearly Researching The World's Greatest Novel

Things I've apparently looked up on Wikipedia recently:

Albigensian Crusade
Arsène Wenger
Clay Shirky
Collioure
Cryptozoology
ECHELON
Fauvism
Flintlock
Monitor Lizards
Morwenstow
Occitania
Panty Line
Periwig
Philippe le Bel
Pierre Bourdieu
Quatermass
Raoul 'Tin Tin' Dufy*

I *am* Neal Stephenson and I claim my £5! And now (well, shortly) I'm off here, with this one, to turn it all into a pale imitation of this. Hurrah!


* Which made me laugh a lot, but not as much as Wyndham's job interview.