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15/11/00 - A review of The Englishman's Handbook or How To Deal With Foreigners.

15/11/00 - The Life and Art of Ed Wood Jr.

15/11/00 - The story behind the disputed election of 1876.

The winner was Rutherford B. Hayes:

"In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the most controversial presidential election in U.S. history, defeating Democrat Samuel Tilden by one electoral vote. Questionable dealings between Hayes and key state delegations had helped secure his victory. Opponents tagged Hayes "His Fraudulency.""

15/11/00 - Pig noises.

15/11/00 - An interview with Sister Wendy:

"Sister Wendy rates Cezanne as the greatest painter of all time. Her favourite work of art, however, is Velazquez's Las Meninas, which hangs in the Prado in Madrid. "It is a miracle, a work that completely exemplifies painting and art," she sighs."

Not everyone likes her though:

"IT MAY seem difficult to hate the world's most famous and beloved Carmelite nun, Sister Wendy Beckett, but I  believe I have succeeded."

15/11/00 - The annotated Dan Rather.

15/11/00 - What can you say?

"In a strange twist, under New Mexico law, a tie there could force Bush and Gore to draw straws or play a hand of poker to settle the race. State law requires that in a dead-even race, “the determination as to which of the candidates shall be declared to have been nominated or elected shall be decided by lot.” In practice, the usual method for this rare event has been to play one hand of five-card poker..."

14/11/00 - Java sucks.

14/11/00 - The British press insists on calling Tallahassee 'sleepy'.

They'll definitely see the other side of the city at the weekend - it's the highly anticipated FSU-UF match up, and the media will have to give up their comfortable hotel rooms:

"Some may wind up in the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house on College Avenue at $150 a night. Ryan Owaski and several fraternity brothers manned the banner in the Capitol courtyard Monday. Owaski said the fraternity has made 10 of its 24 rooms available, by having residents share rooms, to beef up fraternity coffers."

It provides this article on the water situation:

"Smith said the city is going after car washes because some people perceive them as large users of water. But, Smith said, Santa Fe's commercial car-wash industry uses about 7 million gallons of water a year - about one-tenth of 1 percent of the city's annual water consumption... By comparison, the city of Santa Fe this summer diverted an average of 1 million gallons of water a day to Las Campanas, a luxury development northwest of town. Las Campanas used most of that water on its two private golf courses."

13/11/00 - The World's Most Dangerous Bands.

13/11/00 - Gratuitous pig reference!

"In an e-mail from my friend Linda: "Sorry to hear you are wet. Everyone here is walking around with socks on because of wet trotter covers ..." Trotter covers? That's a new one ... love it!"

"This website is a community of hundreds of individual websites, well 200 plus at the moment anyway. About a hundred [Aston] Villa sites, mainly based around football, but not always."

"If a customer came within 10ft they should smile sweetly and offer to help. (The 10 foot rule.) If a shopper made a complaint or request, it should be dealt with "by sundown". (The sundown rule.) And customers' bags had to be packed at the checkout - a service painfully absent in leading German supermarkets.

The result was a culture clash of huge proportions. Rather than charm the Germans, the Wal-Mart tactics infuriated shoppers and aroused their suspicions. Barbara Schnappauf, a researcher at GFK, Germany's biggest research institute, in Nuremberg, said: "German customers cannot handle this kind of service. If someone tries to put things in a bag for them they say to themselves, 'Hey, I just paid for that. That's mine'. If someone takes hold of their possessions at the checkout they think they are trying to steal them.""

13/11/00 - Rebutting 13 myths concerning the U.S. presidential elections.

13/11/00 - How to spot a New Zealander.  Ask them to say 'fish and chips'.

13/11/00 - US survival tips for Aussies.  Another culture that demands butter on sandwiches:

"Butter is a dirty word in the US. Along with margarine it is currently considered unhealthy. The standard spread for sandwiches is mayonnaise ( I once ordered a sandwich with butter and after explaining it a few more times and dealing with the stares associated with "where'd you park the spaceship?" the shop-assistant nipped out to the backroom and returned with a blob of oil that passed as butter). As a consequence there is not a great range of butter or margarines. What butter exists tastes totally different to the Australian brands."

13/11/00 - An excellent (old) article on visualization of molecular surfaces.

Roger Sayle's personal reminiscences on RasMol.

13/11/00 - The sky is falling:

"A GROUP of scientists are trying to persuade Nasa to abandon plans to bring back a soil sample from Mars because they fear an extra-terrestrial plague could be unleashed on Earth."

13/11/00 -  Retail Anthropology - or how those dastardly shop owners make us buy things we don't want. (via Grauniad weblog)

13/11/00 -  Anthropologists as spies.

13/11/00 -  I'm sure you could think of candidates for post-natal abortion.

13/11/00 -  A profile of the next U.S. President - Strom Thurmond.

13/11/00 - Rowing with cold hands?  You need poagies.

13/11/00 - Extracts from a George Bush news conference.  In which parallel universe were there two votes:

"Q. Governor, generally, though, do you think it's time for Al Gore to give up?

You know, Frank, I think each candidate and each team is going to have to do what they think is best, in the best interests of the country. And I think in the best interests of the country, it's in our country's best interests that we plan in a responsible way a possible administration. And there have been two votes and we're pleased with the results of the two vote"

"As the "Creating Digital Dividends" conference drew to a close in Seattle recently, the final speaker arrived and started asking skeptical questions. The premise was that "market drivers" could be used "to bring the benefits of connectivity and participation in the e-economy to all of the world's six billion people," according to conference materials, but the speaker would have little of it.

"I mean, do people have a clear view of what it means to live on $1 a day?" the speaker, William H. Gates, asked. "There's no electricity in that house. None.""

11/11/00 - Another reason not to eat at McDonalds:

"HAMBURGERS are unChristian, the Roman Catholic Church declared yesterday. A newspaper controlled by the Italian bishops and reflecting the views of the Vatican emphasised the point by proclaiming: "The hamburger? It's atheist."... Blame for the burger was even heaped on Martin Luther, the rebel 16th-century religious reformer..."

11/11/00 - How others see us:

"One young Argentine told a survey by the British Council: "I [would] rather live in a more chaotic place, some place more emotional, more like Belgium.""

9/11/00 - Do the Dan Rather simile quiz. (via Metafilter)

9/11/00 - That dodgy Florida ballot paper. (via Haddock)