April Fool's Day Research Articles

The Critical Reception of Mark Twain's Introduction to English as She is Taught

The Critical Reception of Mark Twain's Introduction to <i>English as She is Taught</i>

Tropical Cyclone Harold meets the Novel Coronavirus

Abstract: COVID-19 began to manifest in the Pacific Islands by early March 2020, starting in the US and French territories, spreading slowly to the independent countries of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. All of the independent Pacific countries responded with aggressive measures, closing borders and establishing curfews. Against this background, Tropical Cyclone Harold, formed on April Fool's Day, began its devastating path through four Pacific countries: Solomon Islands with 27 dead in a ferry accident; Vanuatu whose northern islands, including Santo and Malekula were devastated by the cyclone with wind speeds greater than 200 km/h. The devastation continued in Fiji, with two tornadoes and devastation particularly in Kadavu and the southern Lau group. Tropical Cyclone Harold struck Tonga at the height of the king tide. COVID-19 continues to complicate relief efforts, particularly in Vanuatu. As of May 3, 2020, sixteen Pacific countries and territories had yet to report their first confirmed case of COVID-19: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Pitcairn, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Wallis and Futuna. The Pacific continues to lead by example motivated by collective stewardship with actions and policies based on science. Pacific leaders continue to work with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to implement COVID-19 management recommendations.

'And breathe…'? The sociology of health and illness in COVID-19 time.

'And breathe…'? The sociology of health and illness in COVID-19 time.

Josephine Butler, Women's Rights, and Low Church Anglicanism

Josephine Butler, Women's Rights, and Low Church Anglicanism Timothy Larsen (bio) It was an article in the Edinburgh Review (October 1853) on "Church Parties" that crystalized the assumption that members of the Church of England could be sorted into three basic ways of being Anglican. The author, W.J. Conybeare—opting for spatial reasoning—called them High, Low, and Broad (Burns). By "Broad," he meant an openness to liberal theology and a desire for inclusiveness rather than the dogmatic policing of boundaries. Many, both at the time and to this day, have considered F.D. Maurice to be the most important theological voice for the Broad Church in the second half of the nineteenth century. By "High," Conybeare meant an emphasis on the Catholic nature of the Church. In the Victorian age, this tradition was transformed and dominated by the Tractarian, or Oxford Movement. One of its leaders, E.B. Pusey, was so important that many referred to these Anglicans as "Puseyites." "Low Church" meant an emphasis on the Church of England's Protestant identity. Therefore, strictly speaking, Victorian Broad Church Anglicans were also Low Church. Conybeare, however, was clear that he was using the term to refer only to those who also were marked by the evangelical movement. Low Church Anglicans who were neither Broad Church nor evangelical tended to think of themselves as just garden-variety or generic Anglicans and therefore did not found journals or societies or otherwise make themselves visible through organizing as a distinct group. It is Conybeare's evangelical, Low Church Anglicans that are our focus. In the Church of England Calendar today, leaders of all three traditions are celebrated. Pusey is commemorated on 16 September. One wonders, however, if a bit of party mischief was behind F.D. Maurice being commemorated on April Fool's Day (maybe the day of his birth would have been a better choice than that of his death). More important than either of these, however—not a mere "commemoration" but a "lesser festival"—is the observance on 30 May for the evangelical, Low Church Anglican Josephine Butler (1828–1906). Butler is famous for her deep commitment to the rights of women. Although the term was not in general use at the time, scholars often identity some Victorians as "feminists," with Butler being a prime example (Caine). Indeed, in 1866, Butler was a prominent supporter of the first attempt in Britain to legislate for women's suffrage (Jordan). Her first publication was in support of the opening up of higher education to women: The Education and Employment of Women (1868). She is best known, however, for defending women who were sex workers—or who were suspected of being so. The Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s empowered authorities in areas with concentrations of military personnel to inspect women thought to be [End Page 146] prostitutes for venereal diseases. Butler was outraged. Why were the men not inspected? (She even used the phrase "double standard.") Why were women not presumed innocent, as men were? And many more such arguments. She fought the good fight until, in 1883, Parliament finally gave in. In his landmark study, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, D.W. Bebbington formulated what has become the standard definition of evangelicalism. The Bebbington Quadrilateral identifies four distinguishing marks of evangelicals: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism (Bebbington 2–17). Butler exemplified all these traits. Her entire career was a manifestation of evangelical activism. It was in conscious succession to an eminent evangelical Anglican from earlier in the century, William Wilberforce, and his campaign to end the slave trade. Butler was clear that sex trafficking was a form of slavery and that therefore she too was an abolitionist. As to crucicentrism (a focus on Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross), Butler could even end a pamphlet written to rally women's rights activists with this conclusion: "We are learning now more deeply than ever the power of Christ's Crucifixion and Death" (Truth Before Everything 23). By the late nineteenth century, even many self-described evangelicals had become squeamish in regards to the old articulation of the Atonement and had turned...

Edgar Allan Poe's Baltimore

Edgar Allan Poe's Baltimore

News

FigureStudy objective: The use of chicken soup in the symptomatic treatment of infectious disease is a well-known home remedy for the relief of symptoms and well-being advocated by mothers all over the world. We could find no published clinical trials, however, involving the use of chicken soup in the ED. Our goal was to see if the addition of chicken soup with standard treatment would improve patient's disposition and treatment outcome. Methods: This non-controlled, non-blinded, non-randomized prospective study in a single center offered patients who presented to our ED with any complaints vaguely relating to an infectious disease treatment with chicken soup as part of their standard treatment. They were given a visual seven-point scale to report whether they were feeling better at disposition. Statistical analysis subsequently determined outcome improvement and patient satisfaction scores. Results: Originally 1,989 patients were to be enrolled, but significant improvement in outcome was noted on early review of cases. The study was ended, and the use of chicken soup was added to standardized treatment protocols. Conclusion: Mom was right. Chicken soup does improve all areas of measurement including patient improvement, satisfaction, and outcomes scores. Decrease in Time to Defibrillation with the Use of a Remote Device BY DR. HOWARD, DR. FINE, & DR. HOWARD Introduction: Time to defibrillation/cardioversion (shock) in ventricular dysthymias has been shown in multiple studies to be the rate determinate step in outcomes for cardiac arrest victims. Decrease in time to shock has been shown by other studies to improve outcome in cardiac arrest victims. Our study was proposed to see if we could decrease this time interval by using a remote-controlled handheld device to initiate shock by the code leader.FigureConclusion: Our study showed a decrease in time-to-shock by the use of a remote-controlled handheld device to initiate electrical shock in cardiac arrest patients in ventricular dysrhythmias, Times were not statistically significant because several outlier times messed up the results. These prolonged times to shock were looked at individually, and it appeared that the inability to find the remote contributed to the most significant time delays for those outliers. Future research should focus on how to make this process more efficient. We suggest incorporating the shock button into an app on cellular phones.FigureUsing the Long Outward Exhalation (LOX) Maneuver for Conversion of SVT in the Emergency Department BY D. ELI, MD, K. OSHER, DO, & B. AGEL, MD We report a case of SVT that was successfully converted using a previously unreported technique for the cessation of SVT. An 18-year-old man presented to the ED with a fast heart rate. He denied any chest pain, lightheadedness, or shortness of breath. He also denied previous history of fast or irregular heart rate, family history, or recent ingestions of alcohol, sympathetic drugs, or tobacco. The patient was alert, in no distress, and had a heart rate of 180 bpm and stable vital signs. His ECG showed a narrow complex regular tachycardia with a rate of 180. He was placed in a monitored room, a plain untoasted bagel was placed over his flips, and it was explained to him to use a long outward exhalation (LOX) for 15 seconds. This maneuver was tried twice without any success. After further discussion, we decided to place a piece of lox (salt-cured salmon) over the hole of the bagel. The patient was again instructed to take a long outward exhalation after placing the bagel and lox over his mouth. Conversion was almost immediate. Repeat ECG showed normal sinus rhythm with no changes. He was discharged home to follow-up with primary care in two to three days. We hypothesized that exhaling through a plain bagel did not generate enough resistance to simulate a Valsalva maneuver, once but the lox applied to the outside of the bagel acted as a flutter valve, generating a 40 mm Hg pressure and 15 s strain, which has been shown to be needed for conversion. Further studies are needed to determine whether the LOX maneuver needs to be modified (i.e., toasting, cream cheese). Better late than never, we always say. These April Fool's Day gems were brought to you byStuart Etengoff, DO, an emergency physician at Genesys Regional Medical Center in Grand Blanc, MI. In case you were wondering about the authors on these case reports, the first one was Dr. Oy Vey for the exclamation used by Jewish mothers everywhere when serving chicken soup to sick family members. C(hicken) N(oodle) Campbell stood for the soup. The authors of the second item were the last names often used by the Three Stooges when they played doctors on their show. The third case report used the words deli, kosher, and bagel as stand-ins for the doctors' names.

Quite an Original Failure:

ABSTRACT: This article explores how Herman Melville uses the elegant structure of the April Fool's Day prank to anticipate not only the critical and commercial failure of his final novel in 1857, but also the proclivities of the twentieth-century literary scholar. The Confidence-Man simultaneously invites and defies the many attempts to read it as allegory and, through a series of increasingly antagonistic metafictional interludes, Melville's narrator berates his imagined reader and, vicariously, all his readers for their delusional expectations, hypocritical standards, and otherwise irrational reading habits.

Count your Easter goodies

It is time to celebrate the arrival of spring and use its many associations to encourage children to identify big and small things, and place them in meaningful contexts. And don't forget to observe the fun on April Fool's Day!

Schweißtreibender Aprilscherz

Schweißtreibender Aprilscherz

Book Review: Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World, by Kembrew McLeod

Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World. Kembrew McLeod. New York: New York University Press, 2014. 364 pp. $29.95 hbk.On April 1, 2013, two disc jockeys at Florida radio station Gator Country 101.9 told listeners the local water supply was tainted with dihydrogen monoxide. Authorities in Lee County soon received concerned calls and had to issue statement advising residents there weren't any problems and that they believed it was an April Fool's Day Indeed, dihydrogen monoxide synonym for water, and it common hoax (Penn & Teller once got dozens of concert goers to sign petition for banning dihydrogen monoxide). The two Florida DJs were briefly suspended.In Kembrew McLeod's engaging, humorous, and thoroughly researched new book, Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World, we learn many things, including the fact that hoaxes and pranks, just like parody and satire, are not exactly the same thing. McLeod, professor in communication studies at the University of Iowa who writes and produces documentaries on topics ranging from popular music to copyright law, calls pranks playful critiques performed within the public sphere and amplified by that serve as a form of edutainment-an instructive amusement that can make perpetrators, victims, and witnesses wiser. Pranks, thus, constitute an oddball pedagogy, with successful ones using big reveal in which their purpose made publicly clear.While pranksters use trickery to spark discussion, challenge belief-system assumptions, and change the world, hoaxers have no such pretensions. For them, the goal to make others look foolish or to seek fame. The hoax, as McLeod writes, thus is kissing cousin of prank. The dihydrogen monoxide stunt described above better fits the definition of hoax than prank.McLeod himself quite the prankster, having once successfully trademarked the term freedom of expression. You can find the official certificate online at http:// www.freedomofexpression.us/trademark.html. He describes in chapter 10 his own initiation into pranksterhood while an undergraduate at James Madison University, where he learned firsthand how easy it to manipulate the media.Years later, in 2008 at Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Iowa City, McLeod donned metallic robot costume and heckled the featured speaker, former President Bill Clinton. McLeod gave grief to the forty-second president about remark Clinton made sixteen years earlier attacking (and taking out of context) comments by Sister Souljah. This RoboProfessor prank instructive on how easily the news media are manipulated by pranks, as it garnered coverage on CNN and MSNBC. McLeod followed up as slightly different RoboProfessor in 2012 when he heckled the homophobic viewpoints of Republican presidential aspirant Michele Bachmann. This time, the costume-clad McLeod claimed to be gay robot, telling attendees at Bachmann bus-stop rally, I cannot help myself. …

April Fools!

It is April Fool's day, although in education these April Fools jokes seem to have been going on for the whole month…

Sharing and Inspiring

When you work in education, August is the start of a new year. It is a time not only to reflect on past accomplishments and failures but also to set goals. It is a little bit of a challenge for me to be writing this in mid-April, because I'm not quite in that mindset yet. Even so, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my involvement over the past few years with Professional School Counseling, and I want to take this opportunity to share with you my goals for the journal. I must start by saying that I am excited to be coming on board as the Professional School Counseling editor. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but laugh when, on April Fool's Day, the previous editor, Rick Auger, Ph.D., sent me an e-mail in which he reminded me that was my first official day on the job. It took me a minute to remember he wasn't joking. I have spent the past couple of years as associate editor, working closely with Rick, and I want to express how much I value having worked with him. The collaborative manner in which he approached his role as editor has allowed me to slowly transition into that role. I also want to welcome Chris Sink, Ph.D., Seattle Pacific University, on board as the new associate editor. If you're not aware, Chris is a former editor of Professional School Counseling, and he brings a wealth of other editorial experience with him. Kathleen Rakestraw continues to serve as the person who manages everything and keeps us moving; we would be lost without her. As I was reviewing back issues of Professional School Counseling, I realized that my goals are not really that different from those of recent editors. In December 2006, Rick wrote that he wanted to make the journal relevant to practicing school counselors, include voices from people outside of school counseling, present empirical data, and publish high-quality articles. I must say that I still agree with all of those things. In particular, any of you who have submitted manuscripts over the past few years probably know that Rick and I have tried to encourage authors to collect data to support their ideas. Accountability and evidence-based practice are two important concepts for school counselors, and I believe that our professional journal should help school counselors understand how to demonstrate their effectiveness and also provide them with evidence-based interventions they can implement in their schools. To be more specific, I would like to see Professional School Counseling (a) be informative to practitioners, counselor educators, and graduate students; (b) address topics that are timely; and (c) focus on evidence-based and/or theory-based ideas and interventions. We rely on the editorial board to help ensure these goals are met. An efficient review process, managed by Kathleen, ensures that we are able to publish articles before the information becomes dated. The editorial board also provides feedback regarding the perceived relevance of the manuscripts for the journal. …

A Campus with Sense of Humor [Et Cetera

On April Fool's Day (April 1, 2009), the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine cartoonist, Tayfun Akgul, had the opening of his “outdoor” cartoon exhibit on the campus of Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Turkey. This exhibit was not an ordinary show: Large-scale cartoons (10 cartoons, totaling 500 square meters) were hung from the buildings (see Figures 1–4). All cartoons were originally published in Tayfun's cartoon book, Bilimum (in Turkish, by the Cartoonists' Association of Turkey, 2004.) The exhibit was to remain open until June 2009.

Implausible diseases and public health

The BMJ published in 2006 a paper introducing a new pathology: the motivational deficiency disorder.1 This time, it was an April fool's day joke, so humanity escaped a new condition (perhaps a pandemic …). However, there are many papers, not published on 1 April, which present other novel diseases, from irritable bowel syndrome to social phobia, male baldness, restless legs and all the like.2 No doubts that discovering new diseases or new syndromes is an important task of medical research. No doubt either that a shaken up demography and a changing environment are both creative of new … Correspondence: Fred Paccaud, Institute of Social and Preventive medicine, Bugnon 17, 1005 Lausanne, Switzerland. email: fred.paccaud{at}chuv.ch

The Persistence of Donaldson's Memory

Retrospective issues of professional journals typically include both personal remembrance of the subject scholar and an evaluation of the ongoing relevance or influence of his work. have a personal memory of Donaldson, which include here briefly both for its inherent interest and because, in the nature of things, it is unlikely to be known at all widely.1 1974 brought to Ann Arbor perhaps the fifth or sixth incarna tion of the Hash an annual April Fool's Day gathering on the Diag, the main quadrangle of the University of Michigan, initially conceived as a massive act of civil disobedience and designed to promote the decrimi nalization of marijuana use. By 1974, however, a victim of its own success, the protest had largely degenerated into a party for truant high schoolers. Undergraduates like me typically caught only a whiff of the Bash's milling crowd as they continued on their way to class. My Chaucer's Canterbury Tales class met in a room facing the Diag that semester, and Professor Donaldson had the unusual habit of coming to class several minutes early. So we were not surprised to see him standing watch at the window that day?he often did so?but it was a bit startling when he pumped his left fist and shouted Hurrah! out the window a couple of times. Noticing the shock on our faces, he asked those of us in the first row what was going on out there. Hash Bash, we replied. what? he asked. We explained. Oh, he mused, I thought it was a rally to impeach Nixon. The memory of that story generates a personal, persistent smile. But Donaldson's scholarship, like that of other academics, also persists insti tutionally in a variety of ways. First there are the important formulations about problems in our field. Some formulations persist even distinct from the names of the scholars who originally articulated them, as was evident in the sessions of the 2006 International Congress of the New Chaucer Society and the discussions they engendered. heard a paper offering an unattributed reminder that the C-Text of Piers Plowman disambiguated that poem and made it more obviously orthodox; a colleague's frustrated response to a paper that she felt was reviving the

Popular Sweetner Sucralose as a Migraine Trigger

Sucralose (trichlorogalactosucrose, or better known as Splenda) is an artificial sweetener from native sucrose that was approved by the FDA on April 1, 1998 (April Fool's Day). This observation of a potential causal relationship between sucralose and migraines may be important for physicians to remember this can be a possible trigger during dietary history taking. Identifying further triggers for migraine headaches, in this case sucralose, may help alleviate some of the cost burden (through expensive medical therapy or missed work opportunity) as well as provide relief to migraineurs.

Seven reasons to shave your head and three reasons not to

Many of these monthly missives have addressed the different ways ACM is working to change the image of computing professionals. This month, in the spirit of April Fool's Day, we root out the ACM President's effort to change that image one person at a time---starting at the top.

Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity, and: The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox, and: Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (review)

Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity. By David Chapin. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. Pp. vii, 257. Cloth, $80.00; paper, $24.95.)The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox. By Nancy Rubin Stuart. (New York: Harcourt Books, 2005. Pp. xiii, 393. Cloth $25.00; paper, $14.00.)Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism. By Barbara Weisberg. (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. Pp. viii, 324. Cloth $14.95; paper $24.95.)On April Fool's Day 1848, fourteen-year-old Maggie and eleven-yearold Kate Fox were surprised to find that the strange rapping noises that had so vexed their parents over the past weeks were causing a huge stir in their small farming community. As interest in the rappings spread, Maggie and Kate joined their sister Leah (twenty years their senior) in nearby Rochester and the spirit raps that followed soon attracted the allegiance of the city's reformers and radicals. With Leah as their guide, over the next five years the Fox sisters became famous. They hobnobbed with many of the nation's most prestigious citizens as their seances sparked both controversy and a new religious movement, Spiritualism, all within the context of a nation bursting with issues of industrialization, immigration, urbanization, scientific discovery, and religious fervor. In the mid-185Os, Maggie abandoned Spiritualism and became secretly engaged to the politically and socially powerful Arctic explorer Elisha Kane, only to wind up abandoned after his untimely death. By the 186Os both she and Kate struggled with personal problems and growing feelings of resentment toward Leah, who had married a wealthy man and achieved a secure social status that eluded them. By 1888, after Leah published a self-aggrandizing account of their history and Kate was stripped of her funds after being widowed, the two younger Fox sisters, alcoholic and largely destitute, lashed out at Spiritualism by publicly revealing that the spirit raps were nothing but the sound of their toe joints popping. But less than a year later, with little explanation, they reasserted their devotion to Spiritualism and retracted their earlier confession. Both died a few years later, essentially forgotten.The story of the Fox sisters has it all: ghost story, romance, mystery, and tragedy. It is thus not surprising that they have been the subjects of multiple biographies, all of which rely almost entirely on the sisters' own contradictory histories.1 Mariam Pond (wife of a grand-nephew of the sisters) wrote a sympathetic, first-hand history based on her in-laws' recollections of nearly century-old events, backing them with little evidence and no concrete sources. Earl Wesley Fornell attempted a more academic biography, but outside of a bit of historical contextualization (much of it erroneous), added little to the story. Herbert G.Jackson did a better job, tapping the vast contemporary newspaper sources that chronicled the sisters' public lives, but with little new analysis. One other biography, George Corner's Doctor Kane of the Arctic Seas (1972) further outlined Maggie's relationship to Elisha Kane and his family, but none of these books penetrated much deeper than the confusing and contradictory story that the sisters put before the public in their own books. None even dug deep enough to solidify birth dates.Cultural and social historians have also been tantalized by the Fox sisters because the spiritualist movement they helped launch is wonderful fodder for explaining many antebellum trends. R. Laurence Moore's demonstration of the interplay between nineteenth-century religious and scientific rhetoric (In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture [1977]) and Ann Braude's linking of Spiritualism and the early women's movement (Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth Century America [1989]) have both heavily impacted thinking about the era. …

A Curly Top, a Royal Engagement and a Local Bylaw: Cinema Exhibition and Innovation in Utrecht in 1936

O n April Fool's Day, 1936 more than 300 persons, almost exclusively mothers with their young daughters, crowded the Gebouw voor Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Building for Arts and Sciences) in the centre of Utrecht. They had responded to a newspaper advertisement placed by the local Flora Cinema which had called for Shirley Temple look-alikes to present themselves for a contest. The winner would be awarded a Shirley Temple doll, while her mother would receive the sum of 25 Guilders (a substantial amount of money at that time) in a savings account. Everyone was relieved that they were not being fooled when Is. Cohen Barnstijn,1 the owner of the Flora Cinema, turned up with four gentlemen: the jury consisting of the director of the Gerzon fashion store which was sponsoring the contest, a photographer and two journalists. The local newspaper Utrechts Nieuwsblad could not help but comment that 'the majority of the contestants looked as much like Shirley as a flea resembles an elephant, although it needs to be said that there were some girls who really had something in common with the little American film star'.2 The newspaper considered the 'special costumes' that some mothers had made for their offspring an 'eyesore', nor was it particularly impressed with the 'curly top wigs' that some of the girls were wearing. At the end of a long afternoon, three girls received a Shirley Temple doll from the jury, while the mother of Anneke Mietendorff, the ultimate winner, was presented with the coveted savings account cheque. The contest was part of a publicity campaign for the new Shirley Temple film Curly Top that opened two days later at the Flora Cinema. Ironically, the three girls were not allowed to see that particular film nor any other Shirley Temple film for that matter as a local bylaw (Lichtbeeldenverordening) banned those under the age of fourteen from attending any film show within the municipality of Utrecht. Exception was made for 'films concerning the subject of science, industry, agriculture and trade', i.e. the kind of films that exhibitors were loath to screen (except on a Sunday morning for the members of an institute for adult education) knowing that they would make a loss. The fact that young people were not allowed to see the films of Shirley Temple, the very symbol of innocence, offered local cinema exhibitors an ideal excuse to reopen their campaign to have the regulation repealed. They had fought this measure ever since it had come into force in 1915. So it would be easy to see the 1936 campaign as just another moment in the decades-long exhibitors' struggle to do away with the obstacles (entertainment tax was

James Devaney and the Brisbane Resistance to Modernism

This grainy old photograph from The Courier-Mail of 2 April 1971, under the headline ‘The Three Ancients’, shows three grey-haired men — James Devaney (identified as being 80 years old), Frank Francis (75), and Robert S. Byrnes (71) — standing around a middle-aged woman who sits at a Victorian-style desk in front of a photograph of the Queen. The caption explains this puzzling image. As an April Fool's Day gesture, the self-styled ‘three ancients’, all former presidents of the Queensland Branch of the Federation of Australian Writers (FAW(Q)), are singing a song called ‘Three Ex-P's’ (to the tune of ‘Three Blind Mice’) to the current president, Maureen Freer. The three men, we are assured, ‘have made a large contribution to the cultural activities of Queensland’.