Nearly everything is quite interesting.

Har plockat upp Bill Brysons A Short History of Nearly Everything igen, samtidigt som jag (*) fastnat för Stephen Frys QI -

"the quiz that asks the question: if ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"

Och då visar det sig att man kan inte läsa A Short History... utan att höra Stephen Frys röst läsa texten.

Titta till exempel på ett avsnitt från säsong ett eller julavsnittet med David Tennant och läs sedan det här stycket:

Halley was an exceptional figure. In the course of a long and productive career, he was a sea captain, a cartographer, a professor of geometry at the University of Oxford, deputy controller of the Royal Mint, astronomer royal, and inventor of the deep-sea diving bell. He wrote authoritatively on magnetism, tides, and the motions of the planets, and fondly on the effects of opium. He invented the weather map and actuarial table, proposed methods for working out the age of the Earth and its distance from the Sun, even devised a practical method for keeping fish fresh out of season. The one thing he didn't do, interestingly enough, was discover the comet that bears his name. He merely recognized that the comet he saw in 1682 was the same one that had been seen by others in 1456, 1531, and 1607. It didn't become Halley's comet until 1758, some sixteen years after his death.

Quite interesting, eller hur? Erkänn att ni hörde Stephen Fry läsa ovanstående för er?

(*) Jag fastnade för QI under min korta septembersemester i London, som jag också borde blogga om. Proms in the Park, Doctor Faustus på The Globe, Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, science fiction-utställning på British Library, bokhandelsbesök ... Borde bloggas, eller hur.