06 March, 2008

The Pubic Domain

The apology of the day comes from the Island:

Our main headline yesterday should have read ‘Robbers of public money will end up in hell—Chief Justice’. Due to an inadvertent error the word ‘pubic’ had crept in instead of ‘public’. We tender an unqualified apology to Chief Justice Sarath N Silva.

This reminds me of an incident from my callow youth that happened around 12 or 13 years ago. I worked in Channel [V] then, and despite being a scriptwriter for them, did not have a computer to myself at work. Their public relations department had a computer that was mostly free, but the two ladies who worked there would act immensely pricey about letting me use what I considered an office resource. The screensaver on their computer read “We Are Proud Of Being Channel [V]’s Public Relations”, and in a fit of youthful pique, I removed the ‘l’ from ‘public.’

Exactly 41 days later—I counted—they noticed and changed it back. I could have changed it again, of course, but I didn’t, so that I would have the pleasure of watching them wait in front of their machine every morning till the screensaver came on just to see if it had been changed. Cheap thrills.

Update: Via Groundviews, here’s a screenshot of the headline as it appeared:

(Groundviews link via email from Deane.)