Wow, the Aislers Set have their own weblog.

25/3/01 - A vi tutorial.

25/3/01 - A short history of industrial action during the Second World War.  My father was one of the Huddersfield apprentices:

"In March 1944 [the apprentices] gave notice of strike action unless their demands for nationalisation of the mines and for exemption from 'the pit compulsion plot' were met. When no reply came, they were itching for a fight. 'Bevin won't climb down, so we'll pull him down,' was the battle cry of one of them. So at the end of March 26,000 apprentices, on the Tyne and then in Glasgow, Huddersfield and Teesside, came out in direct conflict with the government, against the Bevin Ballot Scheme and in support of the call for nationalisation of the mines.

The apprentices' strike only lasted two weeks and--while no Tyneside apprentice was directed to the pits--it did not achieve its immediate demands. Nonetheless, it was the culmination of a process of rank and file recovery which saw workers advance from the defence of pay and conditions to unofficial, illegal action which directly challenged the political authority of the government.

It was little wonder then--after such a wave of working class revolt--that the 1945 Labour government embarked on the most systematic reform programme in British history in an effort to stem that tide of anger mixed with high expectations."

See the truth about Bill Clinton. Oh and George Bush.

The article writer has his own website.

25/3/01 - Poets travel on trains in Sicily to introduce people to poetry:

"The children... find the poets, young and old, different from expectations.  "I though they were all like hermits," said one youngster, "but these ones are really sociable"."

25/3/01 - Get rid of those troublesome corpses fast: [warning: Flash intro, skip] (via Reutellog)

"After killing my cheating husband and his new lover in a murderous frenzy, I called the 1-866-BODYBAG line.  The CADAVER INCORPORATED clean up crew arrived and were finished 20 minutes later.  They completely covered up all evidence of the bloodbath.  Thank you CADAVER INC!!!!!"

"1.Die Substantivierung von Verben ist nicht gut. Sie ist ein Zeichen von Jargonisierung und führt zu schlechtem Schreiben.
2.Getrennte Relativpronomen sind etwas, wo man seine Sätze mit durcheinanderbringen darf.
3.Aussergewöhnlich ausufernde Alliterationen sind abscheulich..."

24/3/01 - Handy perl script to strip ads from webpages.  This one does Salon.

24/3/01 - The term 'blogger' appears as part of World Wide Words:

"A blogger is a person who keeps a Web log, or blog for short. The idea started sometime in 1998, but really caught on in 2000, to the extent that there are now thousands of bloggers and blogs about. At the beginning, the concept was that a person kept a diary of their explorations of the World Wide Web, making it public for others to inspect and follow up. But as blogging has expanded, that simple idea has been so much modified that it is now difficult to get two bloggers to agree on what the term means."

24/3/01 - A version of Venus and Cupid, 'Venere e Amore' by Michele di Ridolfo di Ghirlandaio, has been restored, removing the 19th century application of what look like some old curtains: [warning: Italian]

24/3/01 - Another piece for the 'what have they done to our food' file:

"...since 1940, there [have] been some stunning declines [in trace elements] in all fruit and vegetables: calcium is down 46%; sodium down 49%; copper down 75%. More specifically, carrots have lost 75% of their magnesium; broccoli has lost 75% of its calcium; and sodium has disappeared entirely from runner beans."

The article mentions that Johnny Cash has covered 'I See A Darkness', Napster comes up trumps filtering or not.

Last five things from Napster (apart from Johnny):

Tom Jones & The Pretenders - Lust for Life
Aretha Franklin - Precious Lord (Take My Hand) & You've Got A Friend
Fela Kuti - Upsidedown
Dave van Ronk - Clouds (From Both Sides Now)
The Commodores - Sail On

"Offered here for your enjoyment are four short organic chemistry plays that illustrate reaction mechanisms."

"...but be warned! I had to discontinue the plays because a student complained to the Dean that the plays were sexually offensive, even though: (1) the students were repeatedly reminded that atoms and molecules don't have gender and (2) students never touched each other and (3) these plays aren't nearly as raunchy as Shakespeare!"

23/3/01 - Charlotte Raven (the columnist who inspired the 1981 vs 2000 comparison below) throws down the gauntlet:

"I've sometimes wondered what I'd do if, God forbid, I was ever the subject of Private Eye's parody diary. How could you carry on doing whatever you did when Craig Brown has revealed you as a shallow, self-adoring sham? My respect for the acuity of these pieces and my certainty that, if it were me, I would stop what I was doing RIGHT AWAY..."

23/3/01 - A lovely trip down memory lane with the Top 40 from 1981.

The good:

"1 "Tainted Love" - Soft Cell: 1981 off to a cracking start with this fetish-soul classic. A drum machine on the point of collapse and Almond giving it his all."

"9 "Birdie Song" - Tweets: I'll tell you what, though, house music has really improved novelty records."

"31 "More Than In Love" - Kate Robbins & Beyond: Yeah, similarly. This is actually more likely to be good than the ELO song."

23/3/01 - Now my mum is online I should get one more reader.  She will want links like this, a review of British MPs' websites:

"In 1997, I surveyed MPs' Web sites as part of a research project for the Open University. I found that an estimated 7 percent of MPs had their own site. Most of those were pretty amateur. Broken links, pointless animated graphics, pictures overlapping with text, and a lack of email addresses were just some of the Web sins frequently committed by these sorry sites. Fast forward to 2001, and the situation is a little -- but not much -- better. David Walker, a journalist at the Guardian and author, recently calculated that the number of Westminster MPs with their own Web site to be 16 percent, but he admits that it's probably an underestimate."

"Serving the Amish and others without electricity with products for simple self-sufficient living since 1955"

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

23/3/01 - Interesting article on the Apples in Stereo 'selling out'. [warning: NYT registration]

23/3/01 - Hello Kitty is packing heat.

23/3/01 - Yawn, another 'banned' advert.

23/3/01 - Overclockers risking life and limb.  But the results are impressive:

"In early January 2001 leading manufacturer of sub zero CPU cooling technologies asetek Inc. passed the milestone of 2GHz CPU speed. Officially the CPU clock frequency on the VapoChill system registered as 2,004.5 MHz."

"One further note on Horseman's Haven: If you are into blisteringly hot stuff, you can ask for a bowl of  "level two." I don't remember seeing it on the menu, and gather that it's sort of an insider thing. (I heard about it from a waiter at Geronimo, an excellent high-end restaurant on Canyon Road.) Level two is your basic bowl of green chile, but with the heat turned up to a stratospheric level."

23/3/01 - The murder in Attleborough (which I mentioned six months ago) was resolved.  Just your typically depressing small town mindlessness:

"Despite not having had any previous contact with the 28-year-old victim, he punched him to the ground and kicked him in the head as he lay unconscious in the street."

23/3/01 - Weblogs Europe over enjoy Low: methylsalicylate sees them in London, henso in Prague and pjoe in Amsterdam (with a picture).

23/3/01 - Sheffield tries again to deal with its prostitutes; previous efforts have not been successful:

"...when the Liberal Democrats gained control of the city council in 1999, they wanted to introduce registration of the city's saunas and brothels. That idea was dropped after the Sunday Sport newspaper ran a story urging readers: "Come to Sheffield.""

Another head, ripped from The Sun. 'Should Mel B Get the Axe?':

21/3/01 - William Safire's rules for writers:

"Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice should never be used.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects..."

"The votes are in and Al Roker has been elected Bonkey of the Week, with over 60% of the votes. Early exit polls put Steve Erkel ahead by approximately 15%, but Roker flexed his Bonkey-muscles and won the vote in a late landslide victory. Roker commanded the election with almost 90% of the consitituency when the polls closed Sunday night.

Al Roker is pure, unmitigated Bonkey. The picture pretty much says it all."

21/3/01 - A site collecting liner notes:

"If comic books are the bastard children of Literature, then Liner Notes are the progeny Literature was too drunk to remember. It's our belief that liner notes may well be the last untrawled backwater of writing."

"People laugh when I list Adam Ant as one of my favorite artists. But that's only because they're idiots."