14/7/01 - Tallahassee's greatest surf band, Stingray International, is no more.

14/7/01 - An interview with Peter Billingsley, star of A Christmas Story.  I wonder if they ever show this movie on British TV.  Hell, if they show Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World they should make room for A Christmas Story.

Creepy.  There's a whole website dedicated to Historical Boys' Clothing.  Here's the Digby... page.

"Billy White clearly attend an English preparatory school, an elementary level private school. He wears the traditional school uniform, complete with peaked cap, blazer, stripped school tie, short trousers, and kneesocks. The boy's peaked cap had an usually large peak."

"DEMOLITION of Sheffield's 1970s town hall extension is due to start in the autumn. Councillors have sealed the fate of the Egg Box which will make way for offices, a top-class hotel and the Winter Gardens."

14/7/01 - A different version of the Stars and Stripes aimed at protesting corporate takeover:

Of course if it's anti-consumer it must be Adbusters.  The opening page features a larger version of the flag.

14/7/01 - Something wrong here, Britain standing up to the US?! [warning: NYT registration]

"Britain gingerly took issue with the United States on Thursday, warning that a U.N. conference to curb small arms should not be ``blown off course'' by gun lobbying groups."

"According to controversial adult comic Viz, cannabalism, a serial flasher and the prospect of ending up in hospital after a quick dip off in the sea are some of the weird and wonderful attractions in store for those who dare to enter Norfolk.

Now, accusations about being a backward race of carrot crunchers who all own tractors are a bit of harmless fun – but quite where rumours of cannibalism and flashers have come from is a mystery."

14/7/01 - After many happy years the Electronic Telegraph has succumbed to a nasty redesign.  Poor layout, javascript pop-ups, new windows, blehh.  And for some unknown reason they've relaunched as a portal!  Didn't that die a death in 1998?

The editor makes his defence here.

14/7/01 - Wow, a tornado off Felixstowe:

13/7/01 - In reference to buying orange Penguin paperbacks; a complete list by number and author.

13/7/01 - A handy list of party games to aid that regression to childhood.

13/7/01 - From the email update for the Showroom cinema:

"OPENING FRIDAY 13 JULY:

BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY
Obscure British indie release featuring cast of unknowns in a dark, brutal exploration of urban angst in the cyber-future.  Bridget – a tomb-raiding archaeologist - battles through exotic jungles and cocktail parties hunting down the hated Illuminati, an evil cult of semi-robotic publishing executives attempting to take over the world with their genetically modified Chardonnay.  A Bridget too far."

13/7/01 - At last, Cleopatra 2525, next Friday on Channel 5. (via NTK)

13/7/01 - I spent a nice hour in some of local charity shops.  A few pounds gets me black patent Kickers (given to Brooke), two highball glasses (18p!), a dish drainer (how boringly practical), three orange Penguin paperbacks, Limbo '90 by Bernard Wolfe, The Philanderer by Stanley Kauffmann, and The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia, and also an old cookery book.

13/7/01 - A page of cartoons by the political and social satirist Herluf Bidstrup.

13/7/01 - How a Zamboni works.

13/7/01 - Design your own Kickers!

13/7/01 - DiskothiQ has a whole album dedicated to (American) football teams.  How many times do you get songs dedicated to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?

13/7/01 - I'm altering my little sidebar now that they're performing the last rites on Napster.  Music downloads courtesy of Audiogalaxy, FilePile, Brilliantine and Radio Plus.

11/7/01 - An excellent article on Florida governor Jeb Bush:

"...Jeb has had to endure jibes on America’s popular late-night television shows. David Letterman did one of his famous “Top Ten Little-Known Facts” lists: number 9 was “Jeb Bush’s turn-ons: long walks, romantic dinners and rigging elections for his brother”. Another talk-show host, Jay Leno, mused: “Wasn’t it ironic that during the Clinton Administration the President had been unfaithful and his brother had been an idiot, and now it was the brother who was unfaithful and the President . . .”"

11/7/01 - Free mp3s from Belle and Sebastian's Peel session. (via Radio Plus)

10/7/01 - Yeah, that's how the Egyptians built the pyramids.  With kites. (via Reutellog)

10/7/01 - Join the High Altitude Thinkers at Infomesa this August: (via dangerousmeta)

"Complex data evolves into Knowledge. Knowledge evolves into Productivity. Productivity evolves into Profits and Industry Leadership. Innovation is advanced by continual Reinvention. Reinvention evolves from Big Thinking.

We invite you to participate in reinvention and discovery. "

Just to pick out the eyewitness testimony :

"Consider first the critical question of whether witnesses identified him him as the killer. The answer is simple: they did not. No one saw him commit the crime. No one even identified him as being in the vicinity of Jill Dando's house in the vital half hour before she was killed. The only two witnesses who thought they saw the gunman hurrying away failed to identify the man they saw as George. Only one witness - out of a dozen - actually picked him out at an identity parade. That witness did so insisting she had only seen him in Gowan Road, the road where Jill Dando had her house, at seven o'clock in the morning, more than three hours before the murder took place. Of the remaining 11 witnesses called by the Crown, 10 could not positively identify George with the man they remembered seeing. Oliver Pownall, the prosecuting barrister, insisted that "it is the Crown's case that it is inconceivable that there were two men in Gowan Road that morning, both of the same age, height and general appearance". But of course, that is eminently conceivable - indeed, it could be said to be precisely what the failure of the witnesses to unanimously or clearly identify George shows."

"The use of forensic DNA tests in the 1990s using trial evidence from persons convicted by juries in the 1970s and 1980s has resulted in the definitive exoneration of several dozen of these people. This has resulted in a new line of evidence that eyewitness evidence is fallible because, in the vast majority of these cases, false eyewitness identification was the primary evidence leading to their wrongful conviction."

"Genetically modified (GM) canola is appearing in farmers' fields where it wasn't planted, and because the plant has been engineered to resist conventional herbicides, it's tough to kill...

Monsanto, which created on of the GM canola strains, says that if farmers' call the company, they'll send out a team to manually pull up the weeds."

Here's an example:

Ah, they don't make 'em like Porkys anymore.

9/7/01 - I've seen plenty of webpages that require me to be running Internet Explorer, or more modern versions of Netscape, but this is the first site I've seen that requires you to be running Microsoft Windows!

There's a competition to win a washing machine; that's probably not Linux compatible either.