"AND NOW, A COMPARISON... 

I. Aesthetic appeal of bear 
John West: Incredibly realistic-looking bear from Jim Henson's Creature Shop 
Toyota: Incredibly realistic-looking bears from US National Park Service 
Smirnoff: Incredibly realistic-looking bear from the old Grizzly Adams show 
Wendy's: Incredibly fake-looking bear from local costume shop"

"But in spite of the passion evinced by the hacker priesthood, and in spite of its corporate and internet-server success, Linux is never going to be a mass-market consumer operating system like Windows or Mac OS. Torvalds's first internet posting said that Linux was going to be "a program for hackers by a hacker", and this remains true. If you are excited by the idea of typing obscure commands into a black window to dick around with your computer's guts, you'll love it. But if you just want to use your computer for word-processing, web-surfing, or whatever, you'd better avoid it like the plague."

27/1/01 - Just had to pull this completely from le bleu blog: 

""Italian court allows bottom patting." 

Hey...that's fine with me. As long as "ball whopping" is also allowed."

There are a couple of short summaries here and here but this is the most interesting.  A complete contemporary account with emphasis on the 'Shocking Deaths, Perilous Escapes, and Gallant rescues...'.  The pub where I saw the sign is mentioned: 

"Across the road, the premises of Mr. Woodcock, maltster, were flooded and injured. Next door is the Shakespeare Inn, in which the cellars were filled with water, and the lower rooms were covered with mud. The Flood swept large trees and stones across the Wadsley and Langsett turnpike road, and piled them up in front of the national school and by the side of the police station."

"A number of Bodies are at the undermentioned places awaiting identification and removal, viz: 
THE SHEFFIELD UNION HOUSE, KELHAM STREET 
THE SPORTSMAN'S INN, OWLERTON 
MR. ARMITAGE'S BEERHOUSE, OWLERTON 
THE SHAKESPEARE INN, HILLSBRO' 
THE QUEEN'S HOTEL, LANGSET ROAD 
DO ROSE INN, near BOTTOM BARRACKS GATE 
DO NEW BARRACK TAVERN, BOTTOM ROAD 
DO BARRACK HOSPITAL 
DO OLD FLOUR MILL 
DO NEW VICTORIA HOTEL 
DO YEW TREE INN, MALIN BRIDGE"

27/1/01 - Matt Groening's How to be a Feisty Rock Critic. (via New York London Paris Munich) 

27/1/01 - You go cow! 

25/1/01 - You'd think the last thing a morgue would worry about in a power cut is this: 

"Losing power in a morgue is never a good thing, and coroner's investigator Michael Yost wondered why PG&E would cut them off. "If there was a blackout and if there was an accident of some kind, the coroner needs to go out, come back and do an autopsy. It's not a life- threatening situation, but still an important job," he said."

What I really want is a picture of the Saturnalia picture disk.  Anyone? 

25/1/01 - Thank goodness they still have freedom in Russia. 

25/1/01 - Reviews of 'Entertaining Mr. Sloane'. 

The Times: 

"But [Alison] Steadman is, as Orton wanted, gloriously blatant. Within minutes of Sloane?s entry, this rouged, beehived personage is feeling him up while announcing that she?s ?in the rude? beneath her flowery frock, and before long she?s smothering him in blubbery flesh and arch, coy, lower-middle-class platitudes. It?s as if Mrs Tiggywinkle were reinventing herself as Mae West - and, in its dim, sentimental way, hilarious proof that, yes, Entertaining Mr Sloane is well worth reviving again."

"Young audiences who come fresh and unknowing to Orton and Entertaining Mr Sloane will not, in today's climate of violence and collapsing moral standards, be shocked by the depravity that they witness. But I fancy they will still be surprised and delighted by Orton's stylish expose of the English struggling in the toils of unsuitable sexual desire."

"In the end, I find something slightly chilling about Orton's own amorality. But there is no denying his power as a comic stylist or the play's ability, even after all these years, to leave one pleasurably shocked."

"The first two times I saw Entertaining Mr Sloane, I could not for the life of me see why it was supposed to be important and funny. Then I saw it a third time, and what I had previously found inane and nasty was revealed as hilarious and brilliant. Sadly, to judge by the unresponsiveness of its first-night audience, Terry Johnson's version will add recruits to the puzzled party."

"One leaves the theatre with the depressing feeling that Orton, one of the brightest young things of his generation, has now become a bit of a bore."

25/1/01 - The Nike story is online. (via As Above) 

23/1/01 - For my records, my MEP is Linda McAvan. 

23/1/01 - An interesting article on fox hunting in the US. (via Grauniad weblog) 

There's even a drag hunt group near Gainesville. 

23/1/01 - Linus Torvalds is Reader's Digest European of the Year. 

23/1/01 - It may not be true but it is funny: (via 0xdeadbeef) [Doh! Not Yet Online] 

"Nike has offered personalized running shoes whereby a customer can have his/her own messsage put on the shoe -- someone decided to test this new customer service as can be seen in the following messages. The personalized message requested was "SWEATSHOP"."

"In an apparently overzealous attempt to prevent spam, Microsoft's Hotmail has been discarding e-mail sent to and from sites hosted by controversial Internet service providers--even if the sites themselves are not controversial."

23/1/01 - An article on the new production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane. 

From another article: 

"This powerful play exploded on the West End stage at a time when the Lord Chamberlain was still wielding a blue pencil against anything that might upset the morals of his sensitive flock. My first West End appearance, in There's a Girl in My Soup (1966), had come under attack. As I staggered on stage with an appalling hangover, I had to say, "my eyes feel like two piss-holes in the snow." This was changed, at the Chamberlain's insistence, to "rissoles". So it's hard to imagine how, two years earlier, Mr Sloane, the most shocking play of its day, ever made it to the West End."

"Departing President Clinton, as a final gift to the nation, created the position of a counterintelligence czar. Besides coordinating the efforts of countless agencies to defend national secrets, the czar has the added task of protecting critical secrets for American corporations. The Wall Street Journal  reported intelligence officials were hopeful they could find someone "having the stature to engage chief executives." But when corporations are keeping secrets from the public, should the government be acting as an accomplice? Well, yes. Why? As the Journal explained, in words WTO protestors should learn by heart, "With the rise in globalization and industrial espionage, government officials now say national security and economic security are indistinguishable." To update the words of Revolutionary War hero Nathan Allen, "I?m sorry I have but one life to give for my country? and for Mobil Oil and Boeing and Time Warner and?"  (WSJ 1/11/01)"

This is a better picture but has that funny border effect.