Nothing Is New Under The Sun

Smiley faces, the original emoji's if you will, are now all pervasive ....

The 1963 Smiley That Launched A Few Billion More ....

The classic form was designed by Harvey Ball in 1963, who was employed by State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts and asked to create a 'happy face' to use in the office, to raise staff morale.

Urban Myths Strike Again

There are urban legends that take generations to develop, and then there are flash myths .... our new digital lifestyles mean that word of mouth is faster than ever and this is what struck the car salesman of Afghanistan (talking of tuff jobs) ...... an urban legend has sprung up that caused the local car buyers to develop a curious aversion for registration plates containing the number 39.

For some unexplained reason the number 39 is suddenly held as a mark of great shame by Afghan's, but no one knows why anymore, or what the cause of this dislike is. One explanation given is that the taboo started because a pimp had '39' on his number plate, but in which case what about the other numbers on the pimp plate? Another explanation is that it stems from an old way of calculating numbers from letters and numbers into letters called "Abjad" ... but why 39 would be an issue isn't covered by that explanation either.