Remember I discovered the uncertainty around the authorship of 'The Old Astronomer'?

Well, the estimable and learned parrot_knight has sorted it out. The poem turns out to be considerably longer (but the title is shorter!) and it is of British provenance. Also, azdak was quite right to suggest amending 'smiles' to 'wiles'; that's the authorial reading.

Isn't LJ educational?

Oh dear. La Lista WIP ate a large chunk of my evening.

I've found a new way to waste time online, a Spanish site which lists people in terms of 'internet importance', i.e. how often they are mentioned. You can break it down by country, region, but also by things like 'writers' (further subdividable)

though it throws up some peculiar results. I'm surprised that Sean Connery is only the third most important Scot, behind Tony Blair (technically correct, but misleading) and Colin Mcrae. Stephen King is allegedly the most famous writer,followed by JK Rowling, Ken Follett, Dan Brown (God help us all; though I'm surprised KF comes out higher) and Terry Pratchett.