10 things we didn't know this time last week

10 THINGS

10 Shoes - by Phil Coomes

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It's easy to lose track of the news. So at the end of the week, it's good to keep an eye on some of those things which shouldn't go unnoticed.

If you spot something you think should be included next week, send it to us using the form at the bottom of the page.

 

1. Immigration officers decide which people should or shouldn't be let into the country based on their shoes, according to author Tony Saint. "If you see someone from a Third World flight, they may look the part of the international businessman," he told us. "They may have the suit, may have the suitcase, the tie. But just have a look at the shoes and they will be the give-away as to whether they are genuine or not." Note to self: avoid hassle and travel classy.

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2. Shoes as a symbol of class is nothing new - indeed it's one of those traditional indicators of where someone comes in the class pecking order. Leather soles giving a satisfying click when heels are tapped together can take you a long way. Even Tony Blair has experience of shoes being a symbol of influence - when a new boy at Fettes College, he was "fag" to a prefect called Michael Gascoigne, who told Blair's biographer John Rentoul: "Blair would clean my shoes, Blanco my army belt and polish the brass on it. If I couldn't see my face in it, he would have it thrown back at him."

3. Fancy a quiet drink tonight? Where better to go than a charming little Scottish pub. OK, it's a bit remote, being on a small island south of the Mull of Kintyre, and there is only one couple - Dick and Meg Gannon - living on the island. But as Mr Gannon is the landlord of the Byron Darnton pub, you can be assured of not being disturbed. (Except when 11 Royal Navy sailors get stranded on rocks and have to spend the night in the pub).

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Einstein, photographed in 1955 (after having revised the unified field theory)

4. 1953 was a remarkable year, being the starting point for so many of today's fixtures. Among them were the creation of stilettos, McDonalds, the B-52 bomber, Mr Tony Blair, colour TVs, and not forgetting Einstein's revised unified field theory. But among the list are the nation's lollipop ladies, who started their sterling work after the creation of the School Crossing Patrol Service.

5. Hillary Clinton told us this week that the only member of the family who wanted to know Bill after his disgrace, the only one who could put the former president's weaknesses to one side and still show affection, was Buddy. Sadly for Mr Clinton, Buddy was killed by a car outside their New York home last January. But happily he seems to be getting on well with his new dog, Seamus, Buddy's nephew. The owner of a nearby wine shop told the New York Times this week that he sees the former president quite a bit. "He walks through downtown with his dog, stops in at Starbucks for coffee," he said. But asked if he ever saw Hillary walking with Bill, he quickly added: "Never. Oh no, I have never seen them together."

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6. Many Christians who were attracted to the undertones of messiah-hood in the original Matrix film have been disappointed by the sequel. Not because it doesn't dazzle, but because perhaps the religious themes have become too obvious. Michael Elliot, of the Florida-based Christiancritic.com website, says: "From the Christian perspective, I think the filmmakers missed the mark. The Christian analogies don't hold up anymore. It's a hodgepodge of spirituality. I'm not angry about it. I'm not offended by it. I think people will be disappointed. It's filled with an aura of self-importance that it doesn't deserve."

7. Worried about the environment? Worried about pesticides used on crops? A new robot which crawls among the crops and uses facial recognition techniques to identify weeds could be the answer, the New Scientist reports. Danish scientists say the device could put spots of weed killer directly on the unwanted plant - and eventually pluck the offending item out of the ground.

8. Is anyone from the CIA reading this? Probably not, according to a study of how much the US intelligence agency uses computers. Agents are so paranoid about the potential for security breaches that they try to avoid all risk at all, the report found. The result is that it is technologically five years behind other countries' intelligence services, that its agents think of technology as a "bogeyman", and that many of them "seem unaware of data that is available on the internet and from other non-CIA sources". They don't know what they've been missing.

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9. For instance, they may never know that women wearing trousers is the source of the world's troubles. That's at least the verdict from King Mswati of Swaziland. This week he said: "The Bible says curse be unto a woman who wears pants, and those who wear their husband's clothes. That is why the world is in such a state today." Human rights, he added, are an "abomination before God".

Swaziland country profile

10. Also 50 this year is the much celebrated City Lights bookshop in San Francisco, a little piece of America which seems to be untouched by the trends of the modern world. Started as the US's first paperbacks-only bookshop, its associations with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and others are much treasured. Adair Lara wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle this week that inside "it looks like a used bookstore from 1953, with the same torn checkerboard linoleum, shelves of books by troublemakers, and chairs with readers cobwebbed to them. At the checkout, where Pottery Barn might have Summer Jazz, there is a CD for sale: Noam Chomsky's Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind."

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