Friday, December 05, 2003

Mr. Picassohead Great Fun - have a go !

Thursday, December 04, 2003

elgooG Funtastic mirroring technology... take a look - and try a search (watch out you hit the right button).
The CIA Assassination of John Lennon
Just because you're paranoid... single page comic strip on the death of Lennon.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

George Monbiot on the oil crisis.
This article Bottom of the barrel addresses the most critical issue facing our "civilisation". I have been (semi) following this for a couple of years, since seeing a BBC Monry Program TV show, and then hearing a Radio 4 science show, which in both cases even the most rose-tinted optimistic predictions of oil reserves vs peak usage had seriously scary implications.
Read this article, and see if you can answer the question:
"The world is running out of oil - so why do politicians refuse to talk about it?"
Politicians: Professional Communicators who can't communicate...?
I expect everyone heard about the award to Donald Rumsfeld
United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has won Plain English Campaign's annual 'Foot in Mouth' award for the most baffling statement by a public figure.
His winning entry:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns"

However, as Simon Hoggart reports this week, we can be justly proud of our very own Mr John Prescott, who apparently said:
"I don't know, in conversations with the Tory administration may have meant no, if you look on the record they have no money to put into the housing, but I'm afraid that the kind of reforms, we brought, in fact if you look at resources I have been looking on the record of the spokesman for opposition, who in fact, the secretary of state, there are six secretaries of state so I can't keep up with them, anyway, the one who's the leader of the group of secretaries of state at the moment, and he has had I think in his case the housing investment over the five or six years halved during that period has doubled over the same period of my administration!"
JP Brown's Serious LEGO - CubeSolver
"This robot solves the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube®.
I started to think about this problem in about August of 2000. In Jan 2001 fellow Mindstorms forums user 'agiecco' announced his intention to work on a robotic solution and, simultaneously, I saw that Rubik's Cubes were on sale at www.target.com. So I bought a couple of cubes and started getting down to business..."
Delayed GNER Wi-Fi train trial steams out
UK train company GNER yesterday began a free, 19-day Wi-Fi trial on board rail services out of London's Kings Cross to Scotland and the North of England."
[See earlier item]

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Umberto Eco on The future of books
"Vegetal and mineral memory: The future of books
The city of Alexandria played host on 1 November to the renowned Italian novelist and scholar Umberto Eco, who gave a lecture in English, on varieties of literary and geographic memory, at the newly opened Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Al-Ahram Weekly publishes the complete text of the lecture"
OK, confession, I skimmed this as it's pretty long... however he makes some interesting points on the relationship between techonologies and "books", and where he see's things going...