OutSider Weblog

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

Still in the New Statesman, Nick Cohen slams the whole PFI/PPP thing and points out that The Taxpayer Always Foots the Bill.

Again from the New Statesman, a leader on When Bloodlust Takes Over looks at the pressures on the Police to arrest, and a jury to convict, the first likely suspect to come along during a high-profile murder investigation. Once you had to be Irish and associable with a handy label of the form $TOWN $NUMBER, but now any lone nutter seems to be fair game, provided the victim was photogenic enough.



This week's New Statesman cover story continues what's turning into a fully-fledged, if a little one-sided, debate on the whole drugs thing. Basically the writer is saying that when his age-group get into power no-one anywhere is going to believe they kept their noses clean...

Monday, July 09, 2001

Yay! I got an entry into ickle. It's for the miniscule of sound...

Following on from the Simputer story, CNN has a piece on how Playstations could narrow the digital divide. It's nice to know they're not just toys...

The Guardian discovers the Simputer -- a linux-based handheld computer that looks set to bring the internet to the masses (if you'll excuse the expression): Handheld PC bridges digital divide (Simputer's own site).

Sunday, July 08, 2001

Near future science fiction funded by the US Air Force? Alternate Futures for 2025: Security Planning to Avoid Surprise. Makes a nice match for The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015 from RAND (also historically connected to the USAAF).

I was expecting something like this during the current government, but nothing like this quickly: Police end cannabis seizures [Observer].

Friday, July 06, 2001

And following naturally on from Stonehenge, the Summer Festival Map. Not, as I'd thought when I clicked on the link from brainsluice, a map of which festivals are on where, but a guide to something that's almost, but not quite, totally unlike Glastonbury.

Speaking of which, there's also Meg Pickard's DIY Glastonbury.

Here, finally, is one of the pictures from the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge.

Just after sunrise, tinted and tweaked

Okay, I admit it, I recoloured the picture and edited out most of the people. The full size version is currently my screen backdrop.

Is this blatant, or what: How Not to Steal a Site Design? [From Evolt]

I should have put in a link to the Temple ov thee Lemur ages ago...

How many of us truly, madly, deeply lust after...good conversation? The Comedic Intellectual Front do.

The times, indeed, are changing. Today's piece on why cannabis should be legalised is by Peter Lilley (yes, the Tory one) writing in the Daily Telegraph.

I'm really beginning to think that the axis of political debate in this country is moving from left/right (where there's frankly sod all difference between the major parties any more) towards the authoritarian/libertarian one.

Thursday, July 05, 2001

The old conspiracy theory that suggests Neil Armstrong never landed on the Moon turns up again in today's Guardian. Happily, Matthew Genge carries on to debunk the idea quite thoroughly on purely geological grounds.

However, if all you read is the first half of the article, it looks as if he's on the other side altogether...


Tuesday, July 03, 2001

The US and Japanese governments have demanded that Sony abandon its plan to outsource PlayStation 2 production to Taiwan. The reason? The console could be used for military purposes [via The Register].


To the strains of the "Mission Impossible" theme, 100 Greenpeace peace protesters invaded Menwith Hill...

"Got a light, officer?" said the Guardian's Merope Mills, as she attempted to get arrested in Brixton. Shades of skinning up on a police car bonnet in Amsterdam (no, not me, the excellent Joe Pauker, author of the "Get Lost" guide).

Sunday, July 01, 2001

The Little World of Giovanni Guareschi, being a site dedicated to the author of the "Don Camillo" stories, and where English translations of almost all of them are online (with, of course, the permission of the copyright holders).