26/2/01 - The mystery of fugu's poison. (via Grauniad weblog)

And the molecule itself, tetrodotoxin.

26/2/01 - Chomskybot!

26/2/01 - The secrets of fashion rhyming slang:

""I WAS so Tom Ford by the whole thing but I'm just so Christian at the moment that I couldn't do anything else - so I thought I'd just Helmut and see how it went," said my friend Sasha, a fashionista of eye-watering trendiness. "Then I met an old boyfriend and we got rather Gucci, so I stayed for a while.""

"G: Buenas tardes. Me puede decir si hay trabajo para españoles?

British Council: (Takes a deep breath, then in a sarcastic and moody voice) INGLAIS. (Pause.) I only speak ENGLISH..."

26/2/01 - See how Schroedinger's Cat is getting on.

26/2/01 - Kiddie cocaine vs liquid cocaine.

26/2/01 - Take a virtual tour of a room at Glen Eyre.

21/2/01 - Sacrilegious art, The Last Pancake Breakfast:

21/2/01 - An interview with Berkeley Breathed (of Bloom County fame), part one and part two. (via Baylink)

20/2/01 - Nice animated .gif of the Tacoma Narrows bridge:

20/2/01 - A piece on problems naming British warships: (via Lake Effect)

"Yet when the Ministry of Defense last year announced orders for two more major fleet units, a pair of 16,000-ton assault ships, it said they would be called Lyme Bay and Largs Bay, after places in England and Scotland. ?Lyme Bay and Largs Bay might be lovely spots for a picnic, but they are hardly the sort of thing to inspire terror in the heart of an enemy,? said another officer..."

20/2/01 - Long article on John Cage's 4'33": (via Jejune)

"4'33", pronounced "four minutes, thirty-three seconds", (Cage himself referred to it as "four, thirty-three") is often mistakenly referred to as Cage's "silent piece". He made it clear that he believed there is no such thing as silence, defined as a total absence of sound. In 1951, he visited an anechoic chamber at Harvard University in order to hear silence. "I literally expected to hear nothing," he said. Instead, he heard two sounds, one high and one low. He was told that the first was his nervous system and the other his blood circulating."

20/2/01 - Jejune discovers people are stupid:

"Some new guy came late into my Physics class today. After 1.5 hours, he went up to the Professor and confirmed what he'd just realized - that he was in the wrong classroom, at the wrong time, in the wrong building, with a professor that he didn't know and a class full of people that he'd never seen before; and he'd just taken an exam clearly labeled "PHYS 100" filled with questions about force and accelleration, instead of Friday's exam for Physics 221 about special relativity, E&M radiation, and Schrodinger."

18/2/01 - Excellent piece by Calebos on being 'encouraged' to upgrade your browser:

"I've been mulling over the most recent ALA issue on the Browser Upgrade Campaign. I understand that the effort is targeted at educating developers, and that not every site is expected to make this leap. However, I still think that any developer who blindly follows this advice will find herself quickly out of a job...

Unless the browser profile of your target audience matches the browsers you've chosen as your target platforms, the results of this approach could potentially be disastrous. You will essentially be adding a major barrier between your audience and your site's contents. The only way the audience will make the effort to move past this barrier is if the content is extremely compelling...

If you look at the reasons given to users by the WaSP for upgrading their browsers, I don't think you could say that they make as compelling a case. Improving my Web experience? Making is easier on developers? None of this resonates with me a user. There are plenty of sites out there that do not make me jump through hoops to access their content. Why should I bother?..."

18/2/01 - An interview with Ralph Nader: [warning: NYT registration]

"Q. You won less than 4 percent of the national vote, yet your votes were enough to put George W. Bush in the White House. What do you say to the people who say that you were nothing but a Gore spoiler all along?

A. I say there must be 20 spoilers: the state of Tennessee, the state of Arkansas, the Democratically controlled counties of Palm Beach that didn't recount in time for the Supreme Court deadline, George Bush taking 10 times the number of Democratic votes in Florida that I did. Ten times! There were too many spoilers to single out one for his alleged defeat."

18/2/01 - Spoof 'Goofus and Gallant' cartoons.

18/2/01 - Tips for handling vinyl records.

18/2/01 - Another reason to like the Mountain Goats:

"What's your favorite record/CD store in the US?

John Darnielle: I'd step on too many friends' toes if I singled one out. These are my favorites, in no order at all: Vinyl Fever in Tallahassee, Aquarius in San Francisco, Rhino Records in Claremont, Gate City Noise in Greensboro, Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis..."

18/2/01 - Sites taken from f.uk fashion: 70's fashions from Rusty Zipper, including fantastic iron-on patches, or modern stuff from Deepfrieddoobrey.

17/2/01 - A Yank at Oxford: (via Blue Ruin)

"Our UK cousins are tragically poor at expressing emotions. Yet bolstered by a few rounds of lager, they can't get enough. Hugging, kissing, stroking, they become, well, somewhat indiscriminate about whom they cuddle. Time and time again, I have ducked the beer-goggled advances of colleagues, who know damn well that I am happily married. The wedding ring isn't a protective charm here. After all, they think, what's a snog among mates?"

"I must confess that I do not myself observe the distinction between "that" and "which." Furthermore, there is little evidence that this distinction is or has ever been regularly made in past centuries by careful writers of English."

17/2/01 - I'd noticed this too:

"When did they pass the constitutional amendment requiring every president and would-be president to end every speech with the words, "God bless you, and God bless America"?"

17/2/01- An excellent 45 minute Mountain Goats show recorded by WFMU New York. [warning: Real Audio]

It features a performance of Alpha Omega with the correct pronunciation of Cairo, Georgia.  It starts at after two hours.

16/2/01 - I added the website Foot of God to my bookmarks on the 13th.  They didn't last long: (originally via Splinters)

"In response to legal action taken by representatives of FIFA and other copyright owners, Foot of God is temporarily unavailable."

I also generated my own Love Heart:

16/2/01 - An interview with Cat Power. (via frownland)

16/2/01 - Photographs from the last tram week in Sheffield, 1960.

Of course we now have a new tram system - Supertram(p).

16/2/01 - Another Mountain Goats interview.  The second photograph is bizarre.