Who's in charge of the Internet?
Interesting essay on the control and management (or lack of) of the internet.

Very funny "alternative" London Tube Map tubemap.jpg. I love the stream of conciousness naming of the stations as you follow a tube line along.

Two nice MS Word parodies...
BBspot - Word 2004 to Pioneer AutoUnsummarize Feature

"Microsoft announced a revolutionary new feature will appear in Word 2004 called AutoUnsummarize. The technology works by taking short, concise sections of text and expanding them to any specified length."

Northern Word

"All the usual Word menu option are there, but in a language your Northern England employees can understand"

Thunderbirds are Go!
I loved thunderbirds as a wee lad, and I suppose I still do !
I noticed this Thunderbirds trailer is go! at BoingBoing (a blog worth regular visits). The trailer is pretty big, but the thunderbird craft (the stars of the show) look pretty authentic.
It prompted me to check here: comingsoon.net which has some stills and blurb, and then here: IMDb Forum: Thunderbirds which contains some worrying stories about a butchered screenplay... :-( lets just hopw they're wrong.

St Trevor of Brooking tells it like it really ought to be !
Trevor's opinion piece in the Guardian Our good health is refrershingly spot on.

"The relationship between sport and alcohol does not have to be a disaster for the nation's wellbeing"

The World's best looking bands
Another to add to the "Worster Album Covers Ever" collections.
[see See earlier item]

David Byrne turns PowerPoint into art.
Wired News: Turning Heads With PowerPoint

Mr. Picassohead Great Fun - have a go !

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.

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]

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...

Whistle blows at West Ham

"Plc under fire from disillusioned shareholders with a blueprint to protect the club from poachers"

This looks like a genuinely serious attempt wrestle control of West Ham from the current board. Interesting to see "fans" actually tackling the board via corporate means...
More coverage over at KUMB

Modeling the Internet.

"This project was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe".

This fantastic image (quite large) looks rather like a map of a galaxy to me...

thepictureofeverything.com Freaky !

Slashdot on Ways to Beat the Telecommuting Blues
Some interesting commentary on the pros and cons of telecommuting. I have worked from home for the last year or so, in my current job, and before that various other roles at Oracle enabled me to work from home.

The Guardian - Why I love Balamory
Funny piece on Balamory, the greatest kids show on TV !
I actually love this show... it shares many of the best characteristics from the seminal 60's trilogy (holy trinity ?) of Camberwick Green/Trumpton/Chigley, with characters identified by their own individual songs and occupations.
Charlie loves balamory (or "More More" as he calls it) too, which is good, as I sometimes let him watch it with me.