Here's a trivia question. From which 1979 British movie does the following quote come:
Son: "Do I have a big nose, mum?"
Mum: "Oh stop thinking about sex!"
Son: "I wasn't - "
Mum: "You're always on about it. Is it too big? Is it too small? Will the girls like this? Will the girls like that?"
Well, far more important questions than all of the above (including our modest trivia attempt there) were on our readers' minds this week.
For you guys, it was all 'should Australia legalise gay marriage?' and 'should Australia export uranium to India?' and so forth.
But those message boards actually took second and third spots on our list of most-clicked-on pages this week.
Perhaps in the hope of escaping a planet populated by so many people with so little time for each other like the tram lady, your next choice was NASA's report that it had found a planet in the 'Goldilocks' zone - not too hot, not too cold ... and pretty much like Earth.
It's a loooong way off - as is the technology to ship people there, so it was back to serious issues facing our own ball of clay - like Europe's financial abyss. Turns out the story in fifth spot was a bit of rare good news - a leading Italian economist told SBS he thinks his country will make it out of the woods, and he even outlined some concrete steps it can take to find its way.
Still on money and stuff in sixth spot, a Chinese bank's move to Australia shook the local market, but what's a bit of financial competition between friends?
Seventh place went to our interview with Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson as his crew prepared for a trip to Antarctica. If you hadn't heard, they're the activists who brave high seas and hostile boats to try and stop Japan from killing whales for research, or school lunches or whatever.
Next in line was the disturbing news that an Aussie from Victoria had been detained while on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and sentenced to 500 lashes for blasphemy.
Blasphemy's not the kind of thing one really expects a person who has paid a lot of money to fly to the Gulf to engage in, his son said, as well as outlining his dad's terrible health conditions and the unlikelihood he would survive the punishment. Stay classy, Saudi Arabia.
And speaking of classy, a mega-advanced US drone that appeared to have been secretively circling about high above Iran found itself on the ground, in Iranian hands. The US said it must have crashed due to a malfunction, but Iranian officials said they'd hacked into its system and landed it safely. They even showed a video of it, but the States said it might be a fake they bought on eBay.
Oh all right, they didn't say the bit about eBay.
So those were the top ten, but we actually receive a weekly report that shows our whole top 42 (whoever generates them is clearly a Douglas Adams fan).
Anyway, it's worth mentioning the yarn that took out 11th spot, titled 'This article has expired.'
That means our team put an article up whose headline was appealing enough for you to click on quite a lot, only to be disappointed by a blank page and those resounding four words.
Obviously, our software (and its operators) are badly in need of this not-necessarily-Christmas break - and we wish you a pleasant one too.
And if you're feeling down because you're not taking holidays like the masses at this time of year, we offer you the advice of another figure in the movie quoted above to the not-necessarily-Jesus-like central character:
Share
