Olympic makeover

After the flame is extinguished, the flags lowered and the last medals awarded the Olympic roadshow will move on from London to focus on Rio de Janeiro. But the organisers of London 2012 are hoping that the games will leave more than memories - the legacy of the spectacle has been at the heart of the project since the bid's inception.

From 2013 the Olympic Park will be renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The whole site covers 513 acres, making it a little larger than the Regent's Park (410 acres) and slightly smaller than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (whose combined area is 625 acres). The area of new open space in the Olympic Park will be 250 acres, which is 37 acres more than its close neighbour to the west, Victoria Park.  

Between the Olympic Park and Stratford lies the vast hulk of Westfield Stratford City. Although the development features housing, offices and leisure, the main feature is some 1,900,000 sq ft (177,000 m2) of new retail space. It will be the UK's largest shopping centre - beating its sister centre in Shepherd's Bush (1,614,600 sq ft), close rivals Bluewater (1,675,955 sq ft), Lakeside (1,434,000 sq ft) and even the UK's previous current title holder the Metro Centre (1,818,000 sq ft).

It is, however, a tiddler compared to the world's biggest mall. The South China Mall in Dongguan, China is a whopping 6.4m sq ft but has become a symbol for excess - it stands largely empty, with only 1% of space let.

Red alert

This week the Japanese nuclear authorities announced that the partial meltdowns at four of Fukushima I's reactors would be raised to a 'category 5' incident. I had never come across this scale before and, whilst it clearly relates to the seriousness of the incident, I didn't know what it was out of, or what the criteria were. 

The scale is the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). It was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and is designed to enable clear communication on nuclear incidents. The scale has eight levels from level 0 to level 7. There has only been one level 7 incident (Chernobyl) and one level 6 incident (Kyshtym) (both in the former Soviet Union). 

Fukushima joins Three Mile Island (USA), Windscale (UK) and Chalk River (Canada) on the list of level 5 incidents at nuclear power plants.

Japan in 'battle against time' says IAEA 

Say that again?

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. 

It derives its name from Sylvia Wright's mishearing of the last stanza to the ballad "The Bonney Earl O'Moray:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". 

The birth of Nazi architecture

Please visit the new website at www.vaguelyinteresting.co.uk

The Haus der Kunst (literally House of Art) is an art museum in Munich, Germany. It was the first piece of public architecture built under the Nazi regime.

The Art of Germany, BBC 4

Sound and fury



Hendiadys (pronounced /hɛnˈdaɪ.ədɨs/, a Latinized form of the Greek phrase ἓν διὰ δυοῖν, hèn dià duoîn, "one through two") is a figure of speech used for emphasis, and is defined as the substitution of a conjunction for a subordination. The basic idea is to use two words linked by a conjunction (e.g. and) to express a single, complex idea.

Examples - sound and fury (from Macbeth) versus the furious sound. The Kingdom, the power and the glory (from the Lord's Prayer) instead of a glorious, powerful kingdom

This is to be distinguished from a tautology, which is an unnecessary or unessential (and sometimes unintentional) repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing.

Examples - free gift, a short summary or a new innovation.

Belgium vs USSR

Belgium provided greater economic benefit to the Germans in World War II than the entire occupied territory in the Soviet Union

The red poppy is the ubiquitous symbol of remembrance throughout the UK and much of the Commonwealth.Its counterpart in France is another wild flower that was found in Flanders Fields - the blue cornflower or the Bleuet de France. 

Since 1933 there has also been a White Poppy sold by the Peace Pledge Union, which is seen as an alternative by anti-war activists.

BBC Radio 4, Poppies Are Red, Cornflowers Are Blue