20/6/01 - A paean to Ferris Bueller. (via web-goddess)

16/6/01 - Weblogged pretty much all over but still a must-read:

"After almost two months at the negotiating table, the workers who play characters such as Mickey Mouse and Cinderella at Walt Disney World have won an important concession: clean undergarments."

16/6/01 - Your complete guide to Mac Aquariums.

16/6/01 - The title says it all, Is It Veggie?

16/6/01 - The top ten searches of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"1. sex
2. marriage
3. baptism
4. sin
5. abortion
6. hell
7. eucharist
8. purgatory
9. death penalty
10. confirmation"

16/6/01 - How does your website look to the deuteranopes? (via memepool)

(That's red-green colour blind to you and me.)

16/6/01 - A gratuitous pig link, Pigs On Parade.

16/6/01 - A website for John Darnielle's 'zine, Last Plane To Jakarta. [warning: Flash]

16/6/01 - A ridiculous time between posts.  Must.  Pull.  Finger.  Out.

5/6/01 - How the politics in our election are viewed from the US: (via Sore Eyes)

"It's a policy portfolio that would put Hague on the far left fringe of American politics. Here in Britain, though, Hague is the leader of the Conservative Party -- and he's been criticized for taking his party too far to the right as he campaigns for the national election on June 7."

3/6/01 - Have you committed a crime?  Then use this very thorough resource to choose your defence.

I like automatism, especially as the onus is not on you to prove it:

"If, because of [the concussion] [the anaesthesia] the defendant's state of mind was such that, at the time of the [act in question], his ability to exercise voluntary control was totally destroyed, he is not guilty of the offence. The defence has raised this issue for you to consider, but it is not for the defendant to prove that that was his condition; it is for the prosecution to make you sure that it was not."

3/6/01 - Handy internet radio locator.

3/6/01 - Back in the day, Janet Reno is praised for her attitude to deadbeat dads with this dance classic:

"[Intro: Anquette, backed up by "Dragnet" theme]
In our town we have a State Attorney by the name of Janet Reno 
She locks brothers up for not paying their child support
In your town you may have someone just like her 

[the beat kicks in]

You think you're so slick, that you won't have to pay 
You slay, get a baby, then run away 
Oh, but I got a trick for your monkey ass 
The boys that don't pay get cased up fast 
You ?answer to? Janet Reno and she lays the law..."

"A WOMAN was so terrified of going to prison she pretended she had died so magistrates would halt the case against her... First she wrote saying she could not attend court because her father had died. The case was adjourned but then she wrote again claiming she had been involved in a serious road accident and was in hospital. When her case was due to be heard again she wrote a third letter claiming she had died as a result of the accident..."

"Recently I've heard many moans about the low percentage of women in Parliament. As a women, I've been particularly unimpressed by the women already in Parliament, particularly the 'Blair Babes' inflicted upon us at the last election. They along with the pressure 'groupies' and 'lovies' insist on telling me what I should think, accept, respect, even say and I'm getting a little irritated with it and them."

2/6/01 - From the New Yorker archives, what passes for a small computer in 1960:

"Up to now, all-purpose computers have required a great amount of space to sit down in and couldn't be readily moved from place to place. Mark XI weighs only three hundred and seventy-five pounds and is therefore completely portable."

"President George Bush's advisers have warned him that he should build a high-security laboratory to protect the planet from extraterrestrial life-forms for the day when a spaceship comes back with rock samples from Mars."

"Trevor Geach from St Austell said: “I thought the wife had fallen in the bath - it was a hell of a racket!”"

"The word bee, as used in spelling bee, is a language puzzle that has never been satisfactorily accounted for. A fairly old and widely-used word, it refers to a community social gathering at which friends and neighbors join together in a single activity (sewing, quilting, barn raising, etc.), usually to help one person or family. The earliest known example in print is a spinning bee, in 1769. Other early occurrences are husking bee (1816), apple bee (1827), and logging bee (1836). Spelling bee is apparently an American term. It first appeared in print in 1875, but it seems certain that the word was used orally for several years before that."

"There are the obvious phrases like "Kill the President" which caused two schoolboys from the UK to be quizzed by special branch, "anarchy", "echelon" :-), "nuclear", "assassinate". Then there are ones that are dodgy (cause they fit in with X-file type paranoia) like "Roswell", "Waco", "World Trade Center", "Soros" - after George Soros, "Whitewater"."