Googling

Wonderful piece in The Independent's Science and Technology pages on Wednesday. It's had a good week, the Indie, what with Bono's work on Tuesday to promote Red.

This piece listed which countries recorded the most searches for particular items as noted by Google Trends. For instance:

Jesus - Peru
The da Vinci Code - the Philippines
Metatarsal - despite Rooney's injury, India is the origin of most searches for this

Some results are predictable:

Pasta - Italy
Chicken tikka masala - UK
Cheeseburger - USA

But why Argentinians are all searching for chop suey, the Irish for colonic irrigation (oh and facial hair) and the Aussies for haemorroids is beyond me. Perhaps the latter is the cause of their depression, a word for which they also search regularly.

Put the lists together under individual countries and the results are fascinating:

South Africa wins for - bestiality, Princess Diana, Aids, second coming and malaria
Singapore - slimming, Sony, vegetarian, sushi and body odour
New Zealand - climate change, toilet, Paris Hilton, sausages and underpants

Can anyone write me a sentence containing all those NZ words? Too easy.

So a quiz question. Where in Europe would you find the most hits for:

Grand Prix, Adolf Hitler, Steven Spielberg, Johnny Depp and James Bond? It's one country. It isn't us, nor is it Germany.

Whilst the Algerians click furiously on sardines and the Finns on Benny Hill (really), please ponder.