Every week, we say we?re not going to write about religion. Every week, we do. This week we heard about a surprise bestseller from Bookpages (www.bookpages.co. uk) the week before Christmas ? the Bible. According to the company, it suddenly rocketed into second place in the bestsellers list, beaten only by that spiritual guide to living ? Bridget Jones? Diary. Unfortunately, Bill Gates? The Road Ahead didn?t even make it into the top 10.

It all adds up

After we mocked systems developer MicroStaff for implying that computers were around in 1898, eagle-eyed reader Chris Northedge sent us an entry from the 1837 edition of Maunder?s Treasury of Knowledge. The book defines a computer as ?a Computist, a calculator? ? in other words, some poor sod doing manual calculations all day. Brunel had 21 computers on his staff in the 1840s, Chris helpfully informs us.

Warm brown stuff

Just when we thought that the beer-and-nappies myth had been nailed, Tesco has jumped in to take it around the block one more time, based on analysis of its clubcard database.

Apparently, men shopping in Tesco are buying beer and nappies together, we hear. Men ?fear people will think them hen-pecked husbands ordered by their wives to buy the nappies,? Clubcard manager Nick Green said last week. ?Proudly placing a six-pack alongside the nappies sends out the message that a man is really a he-man.?

Tesco, your prize of tripe is in the post.

Junk male

This week?s nomination for the Bad Advertising Awards goes to Oracle, which sent one of our readers 12 invitations to a roadshow.

Sadly, the reader lived in an area where the event had already been (and gone). In revenge, he mailed the cards back anyway, requesting tickets for the event that he had now missed. The next week, the useless tickets arrived.

Whose moo?

Matthew Ellison of Independent Insurance has drawn our attention to the Gateway 2000 blurb in its advertising, claiming the copyright on the black and white cow pattern on its boxes.

If there are any black and white cows who would like to challenge this, give us a bell (geddit?) and we promise favourable coverage.

Out of the blue

Public awareness of the millennium bug has now reached the point where the Birmingham Post can run an article on the crisis, which has been forwarded to us by a confused Mike Orriel. ?The skills required are the earlier computer languages,? it says, ?such as Cobalt?.

So, if you?re an out-of-work programmer in this mysterious language, contact the Birmingham Post. It knows where you can get a job.

Poetry please!

And finally, Windows error message Haikus. We?ve had at least 300 of them, so far (or at least 300 things that look a bit like Haiku). We know we said we wouldn?t be too strict on the syllable count (it?s five, seven, five if you recall), but try to get the right number of lines in the thing, at least.

Nevertheless, we have many excellent entries that will take us weeks to wade through, and here are a few that made us chuckle:

You are a pervert!
No pornography today.
Signed: the Webmaster
(David Harper)

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that
(Lots of you)

Your system which soared
So freely on gliding wings
Now hangs, frozen and blue
(Alan Tuplin)

Lots more next week.