man, this is so cool. "A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. This ... followed an experiment to see if an automated design process ... could be used to breed an oscillator. .... When they looked more closely they found that, despite producing an oscillating signal, the circuit itself was not actually an oscillator. Instead, it was behaving more like a radio receiver, picking up a signal from a nearby computer and delivering it as an output." New Scientist, via BoingBoing.

excellent, Mozilla 1.1 supports site navigation via LINK tags; check the menu under View -> Show/Hide -> Site Navigation Bar. About time too! (he said ungratefully.) Now to figure out some time in the nearish future to fix this blog to use the goddamn things. (via Danny)

so, everyone knows that Nigerian Scam, "help us embezzle lots of developing-world money that got lost somehow during some coup", that kind of thing. Well, Theo Van Dinter forwards a new take on it:

I am an Uruk of Mordor, charged with the discovery of a number of valuable treasures within Moria. It has come to my notice that the mithril hoard previously owned by Ori of the land of Moria has been found by one of our cave-trolls. Under our laws, the hoard will be shared between our lord Sauron and the local Balrog, but so far neither knows the extent of the treasure.

Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 23:04:58 -0400
From: Theo Van Dinter (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Mordor Scam

I caught this on another mailing list and hadn't seen it here yet. Thought you folks would enjoy it. :)

Dear Sir,

I am an Uruk of Mordor, charged with the discovery of a number of valuable treasures within Moria. It has come to my notice that the mithril hoard previously owned by Ori of the land of Moria has been found by one of our cave-trolls. Under our laws, the hoard will be shared between our lord Sauron and the local Balrog, but so far neither knows the extent of the treasure.

Sir, I come to you as a respectful businessperson in order that we may derive some profit ourselves from this venture, I would wish that I could arrange for the transfer of half of the find to yourself, costing roughly 20,000 silver pennies. From this amount, I will then arrange for a further such that 25% remains your own, 5% goes for sundry costs (including hire of strong Rohan horses for use in transportation), 5% is given in bribe to the cave troll to ensure the quantity reported to our respective Lords is adjusted, 65% belongs to myself and my fellow Orcs.

In order that this be accomplished, I ask only that you provide details of:

Your willingness to participate in this venture,

Confirmation that you will not speak of this venture to anyone else, or wear any magic rings,

Your race and land of residence,

The location of your local Palantir or identity of your preferred message-carrying bird or beast,

Your given name, and any name you are known by in the Western lands,

The number of ponies you possess.

I look forward to your returning correspondence, which can be whispered to any passing magpie. I trust that you will ensure that no other dark feathered birds come to hear of this transaction.

latest bizarre Japanese sex fetish: "There weren't any particular standards regarding who was hired. I suppose the only requirement was an ability to stand erect after being kicked in the balls". (via forteana, of course) (Link)

Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 12:35:39 -0700
From: Brian Chapman (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected) (spam-protected)
Subject: The Japanese are a creative people

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/index.html

Tarzan Yagi, a former porno actor who turned to making adult movies when he went soft four years ago, has been one of the driving forces behind the production of ball kicking videos.

"You can't use professional actors, because you're making films about men being kicked in their most vital organ. If you did use them, they'd soon be put out of work. So we advertised in S&M magazines and over the Internet to find guys to appear in tamakeri videos. We had over 200 applicants. There weren't any particular standards regarding who was hired. I suppose the only requirement was an ability to stand erect after being kicked in the balls," Yagi tells Shukan Taishu, with a laugh.

etc.

I must get around to changing the text at the top of the front page; nowadays, half of this blog is stuff I want me to read -- a kind of public "must read when I get a chance" list.

Here's one for "must try when I get a chance": The hackerslab.org Free Hacking Zone. It's a simulated-hacking game, with increasing levels of difficulty, simulating a system you have to crack at each level. Sounds like fun...

(again -- well, not really) Looks like the South Pole will have fiber a hell of a lot sooner than I will.

IBEC's Telecommunications User Group has again criticised the current broadband situation in this country:

"IStream (Eircom's digital subscriber line service) does not provide an affordable broadband solution for business or households." ... "A basic monthly DSL price of EUR 30 to 40 is needed to stimulate adequate demand, while iStream costs the user a connection fee of EUR 199.65 and a monthly fee of EUR 107.69."

In terms of cost, (they) referred to a benchmarking study carried out by Forfas in March, which found that Ireland is ranked as the most expensive country in the (small to medium-size business) category.

It's good to see some backup for what is, broadly, IrelandOffline's positions, from other organisations. Let's hope these datapoints will eventually trickle into the consciousness of Irish small businesses and the media; it's truly shocking how little coverage this absurd state of affairs gets.

After 5 years of DSL trialling, cronyism, monopoly, and waffle from government, we're still almost exactly where we started. This I already knew. What I'd never noticed before is that nobody in this country seems to care, or is bothered to understand the issues. Even Australia would be giving front-page coverage to this crap, yet over here you're lucky to see any coverage at all in the news media.

It's very tempting just to leave Ireland -- again! -- and go somewhere where these things have been sorted out already, and stay there, at least until Ireland cops on. As you can probably guess, it's a pet peeve at the moment. ;)

Comics (or is it Games?): I can commiserate -- the Mutant Slug Genghis Khan boss is a bugger. Wigu, via Memepool.

The Scotsman, with some hilarious reports of squaddie culture shock:

"British marines returning from an operation deep in the Afghan mountains spoke last night of an alarming new threat - being propositioned by swarms of gay local farmers. ... "We were pretty shocked ... we discovered from the Afghan soldiers we had with us that a lot of men in this country have the same philosophy as ancient Greeks: 'a woman for babies, a man for pleasure'."

... the locals began pestering Afghan troops attached to the marines with ever more outrageous compensation demands - topping off at a demand from one village elder for $500 (£300) for damage to a tree by the downdraft from helicopters. ... "I managed to barter him down to two marine pens, a pencil and a rubber," Major Joyce said. "He went away quite happy .''

Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 18:09:07 -0600
From: Rob Solarion (spam-protected)
Subject: "Lookin' for love in all the wrong places ... "

Source: http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=V1752002&tid==1

Startled marines find Afghan men all made up to see them

Chris Stephen In Bagram

BRITISH marines returning from an operation deep in the Afghan mountains spoke last night of an alarming new threat - being propositioned by swarms of gay local farmers.

An Arbroath marine, James Fletcher, said: "They were more terrifying than the al-Qaeda. One bloke who had painted toenails was offering to paint ours. They go about hand in hand, mincing around the village."

While the marines failed to find any al-Qaeda during the seven-day Operation Condor, they were propositioned by dozens of men in villages the troops were ordered to search.

"We were pretty shocked," Marine Fletcher said. "We discovered from the Afghan soldiers we had with us that a lot of men in this country have the same philosophy as ancient Greeks: 'a woman for babies, a man for pleasure'."

Originally, the marines had sent patrols into several villages in the mountains near the town of Khost, hoping to catch up with al-Qaeda suspects who last week fought a four-hour gun battle with soldiers of the Australian SAS. The hardened troops, their faces covered in camouflage cream and weight down with weapons, radios and ammunition, were confronted with Afghans wanting to stroke their hair.

"It was hell," said Corporal Paul Richard, 20. "Every village we went into we got a group of men wearing make-up coming up, stroking our hair and cheeks and making kissing noises."

At one stage, troops were invited into a house and asked to dance. Citing the need to keep momentum in their search and destroy mission, the marines made their excuses and left. "They put some music on and ask us to dance. I told them where to go," said Cpl Richard. "Some of the guys turned tail and fled. It was hideous."

The Afghan hill tribes live in some of the most isolated communities in the country. "I think a lot of the problem is that they don't have the women around a lot," said another marine, Vaz Pickles. "We only saw about two women in the whole six days. It was all very disconcerting."

A second problem the British found came minutes after the first helicopter touched down at one of the hilltop firebases, when local farmers appeared demanding compensation for goats they claimed had been blown off the mountains by the rotor blades. "Every time we landed a Chinook near a village, we got some irate bloke running up to us saying his goat has just got blown off the mountain ridge by the helicopter - and then he demanded a hundred dollars compensation," said Major Phil Joyce, commander of Whisky Company, one of four companies deployed.

As patrols moved away from the landing zones, the locals began pestering Afghan troops attached to the marines with ever more outrageous compensation demands - topping off at a demand from one village elder for $500 (£300) for damage to a tree by the downdraft from helicopters.

But the marines were under orders to win the "hearts and minds" of local farmers in what is one of the few remaining Taleban bastions. "I managed to barter him down to two marine pens, a pencil and a rubber," Major Joyce said. "He went away quite happy ."

given that IBM was granted more software patents than any other U.S. company in 2001, this screenshot is quite appropriate, really. "e-business is the game, play to win", indeed...

a conservative MP in Oz is to spend a day as a "slave", working for the madam of Langtree's brothel in the mining town of Kalgoorlie. (via forteana)

Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 13:31:25 +0100
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: Brothel duty for Australian MP

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2218715.stm

Tuesday, 27 August, 2002, 11:00 GMT 12:00 UK Brothel duty for Australian MP

A conservative Member of Parliament in Australia is set to spend the day as a "slave" at one of Western Australia's most notorious brothels. Liberal Party member Barry Haase was "won" in a charity auction after the madam of Langtree's brothel in the mining town of Kalgoorlie made the highest offer for his services for a day.

Mary-Anne Kenworthy made a bid of A$1,000 ($540) in the local Rotary Club auction and said she intended "to have a lot of fun with him." Ms Kenworthy told the BBC's World Today programme that she had a packed timetable planned for Mr Haase to educate him in the ways of a brothel.

"I am going to put a frilly apron on him and start him cleaning at 10 in the morning to show him our brothel is spotlessly clean and not all brothels are dirty," Ms Kenworthy said.

"Secondly he is going on a tour at 12 o'clock - we do tours of our brothels

• and at two clock he is going to take the tour out wearing my tour hat,"

she added.

Long history

Ms Kenworthy said she would tell Mr Haase about the long history of Kalgoorlie's association with the oldest profession.

The gold-mining town has boasted the presence of an open brothel for 100 years, she said. But she stressed that there was a serious side to the day as she hoped to influence Mr Haase's opinion on brothels.

"I hope he will leave with an informed decision on what Australian brothels are all about and it will help him in his political career to make informed decisions that he might not have been able to make before," Ms Kenworthy said.

Mr Haase, a member of Prime Minister John Howard's party seemed relaxed about the prospect of working in a brothel. "You can't be half-hearted about fundraising for significant charities and I think I'm big enough to play the game," he said.

more than 70,000 Aussies declared themselves as Jedi Knights when asked to define their religion in last year's census, reports the Guardian (via forteana).

just got back from a brief weekend visit to LinuxBierWanderung in Doolin, Co. Clare. much chat and Guinness was enjoyed aplenty. Didn't get to meet a few of the people I hoped would be turning up, and didn't get to sample the official LBW brews (they hadn't arrived yet), but it was still good clean Linuxy fun -- and hopefully Liam will remember to bring me back some of the aforementioned LBWbooze ;).

Due to some Eircom crapness, the ISDN line for the LBW's internet link was non-functional (hence my lack of email, if you've been expecting one from me). But with the help of the IrishWAN boys, the LBW hall was linked to an ISDN connection 2 wireless hops, over a hill, and a mile or two, away -- with some cool side-effects. A very nice hack.

I'm dog tired at this stage though, after a 7-hour journey back to Dublin. must sleep soon.

In other news, SpamAssassin was on TechTV. twice. cool.

Ask's blog is an interesting read, must remember to bookmark it someday... ;)

Film: Cam points out that Apple are hosting the trailer for Godfrey Reggio's new chapter in the Koyaanisqatsi trilogy, Naqoyqatsi. I'm hurtin' to view this, but it looks like I'll have to wait; as usual for apple.com, it's Windows- and Mac-only Quicktime, and the only machine I have with decent bandwidth is a Linux-only work machine. The torture!

The Guardian: "Some Italians, it seems, are getting hot under the napkin about the standard of Italian food served in restaurants outside their country. Giovanni Alemanno, the agriculture minister, is chief among them. This week he announced a plan to introduce a policy of quality control on Italian food served abroad, lamenting the effect that the ubiquitous Italian restaurant is having on the reputation of his country's food. Hundreds of Italian restaurants are created around the world every day, he said, but in most cases the only thing Italian about them is the name or a tricolour flag on display outside. " (more...)

Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 14:20:16 +0100
From: "Martin Adamson" (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Nothing like mama used to make

Thursday August 22, 2002

The Guardian

Nothing like mama used to make

In Britain, we love Italian food - but is it the real thing? No, says the Italian government. Matthew Fort on whether our pasta is fit to be on the menu

Matthew Fort

Some Italians, it seems, are getting hot under the napkin about the standard of Italian food served in restaurants outside their country. Giovanni Alemanno, the agriculture minister, is chief among them. This week he announced a plan to introduce a policy of quality control on Italian food served abroad, lamenting the effect that the ubiquitous Italian restaurant is having on the reputation of his country's food. "Hundreds of Italian restaurants are created around the world every day," he said, "but in most cases the only thing Italian about them is the name or a tricolour flag on display outside."

The fact is that most of the Italian food served abroad has always been appalling. Think Spaghetti House, think Pizza Hut, think of thousands of Da Ginos, Da Marios, Amalfis, Bella Venezias, Borgo this and Trattoria that. You wonder why it's taken Italian politicians so long to wake up to the irreparable damage that these fifth columns of fifth-rate food have done to the reputation of one of the world's most exported cooking cultures.

Of course, the most willing conspirators in this traducing of Italy's great cooking traditions have been Italians themselves - the immigrants who sought to make a living out of restaurants in the countries where they settled, and quickly realised that they didn't have to try very hard to do so.

The real irony is that the qualities of Italian food and cooking have never been more highly appreciated abroad. We glug down oceans of olive oil at a cost per litre that no Italian would begin to consider paying. Balsamic vinegar that you would never find in Modena, its city of origin, sloshes through the professional and amateur kitchen here. Would-be Valentinas and Giorgios make pasta at home, for heaven's sake, something that few Italians can be bothered to do. Health-food shops and fashionable restaurants are saving such rarities as la cicerchia, a primitive pulse akin to a chickpea, when no one in Italy will give it table room. We worship pasta, mozzarella, focaccia and tiramisu. There are even some restaurants serving a passable approximation to authentic Italian food, albeit at a price.

There are limits. We probably can't tell the difference between pancetta and prosciutto, between sugo (tomato sauce) and ragu (meat sauce), between mozzarella di bufala (made with buffalo's milk) and mozzarella fior di latte (made with cow's milk).

The supermarkets, on which we depend for much of our supplies and information, still persist in making fresh penne, when it should only be dry; in using durum wheat for certain pastas when in many cases it is totally unsuitable; in adding cream to spaghetti carbonara, which has the same effect on pasta as making a pizza a deep-pie; and so on and so on. There is, after all, a difference between blind lust and true love.

Food, like language, is the repository of history. You can read the history of a region in Italy through its food, from the Moorish influences of the sorbetti and pastries such as canaroli in Calabria, to the use of paprika, cream and veal stews, relics of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the north.

The trouble is that our knowledge and experience of Italian food is strictly limited. Italy is a country with an unparalleled variety of dishes, ingredients, styles and techniques. Every region, every zone within a region, has its own very particular identity, based on produce and season, that goes unacknowledged on the predictable pizza/pasta menus of the British high street. The butchers in the market of Vibo Valentia make their zingirole, a kind of celestial brawn, only between October and April. Signora Cappello in Reggio di Calabria only stuffs cherry peppers with melanzane and pine kernels in July, when the peppers first come in. For reasons that remain obscure, the bridgehead between the British kitchen and la cucina Italiana has been the food of Tuscany, which is probably the most restricted and most boring in the country.

But then Italians are similarly restricted. They suffer, or benefit from, a condition known as campanilismo, a profound sense of locality, of being rooted in a specific place. Because food has such a central part in Italian culture - Italians talk about food as incessantly and naturally as we talk about the weather - it is rare to find an Italian of one region who has a kind word to say about the food of another. Such passion also helps to preserve local food culture.

That is why, on the whole, Italian cooking has changed far less in recent years than that of any other European country. Like Chinese cooks, Italian chefs are more intent on reproducing traditional dishes based on traditional ingredients than inventing new ones. Of course, it has developed over the centuries, absorbing new ingredients (there was a time when there were no tomatoes in Italy) and techniques, but it has resisted the wholesale globalisation and homogenisation of food cultures that has led to national food identities stamped beneath the mighty boot of global brands.

Even so, perhaps Signor Alemanno should be directing his concerns at his own country, because there are disturbing signs that even Italy is edging towards the kinds of changes in the structure of its agriculture and retailing that have been the death knell of national food culture in less resistant countries. Open market forces, EU regulation and social change are all playing their part in bringing Italian agriculture and retailing into line with those of its neighbours. Particular vegetables, pulses, fish, cheeses and breeds of pig, sheep and cattle are all under threat. The Italian-based international organisation Slow Food has recognised the dangers and has set up what it calls an ark to protect endangered species and delicacies. The neighbourhood grocers, butchers, bakers and alimentari who once supported local life in Rome and other cities are disappearing fast. Agricultural units are steadily getting bigger. Agricultural variety is disappearing in favour of monocultures.

It is one of the abiding ironies of Italy that the wonderful quality of the food, so sought after by buyers for the chrome-and-plate-glass food emporia in London, New York and Tokyo, is sustained by a resolutely peasant underclass. Much of the landscape, particularly in the south, guarantees to immure those who continue to live there in peasant poverty and perpetuate those values. The same profound rural conservatism is in part responsible for the fierce pride and astonishing high standard of local foods.

In decrying the globalisation and homogenisation of food cultures, we fail to recognise the true cost of traditional indigenous cultures to the people who have to maintain them. This way we celebrate labour and indignity that we would not tolerate in our own lives.

Whatever happens to Italian cooking outside the country is completely immaterial. We will do what we have always done - reinvent Italian food in our preferred image, just as we have with French, Chinese and Indian. The real future of Italian food lies not in the hands of such politicians as Signor Alemanno, but in those of Italian consumers, and, while there may be a bit of wavering in the ranks, on the whole they are standing remarkably firm.

A couple of years ago I witnessed a dispute between a husband and wife over the correct ingredients for the filling of a pastiera, a kind of super-tart made at Easter. The argument involved, among other things, the correct mixture of crystalised fruits, the origins of ricotta, the use of crema (custard) and the addition of orange water. It started off in fairly good-humoured banter, quickly brought out jeering dismissal of the other's point of view, heated up into an intense exchange of views and finally erupted into all-out barrages that came to a head when the wife proclaimed with magisterial dismissal: "Ma questo e un piatto romano!" ("But that is a Roman dish!")

I couldn't help thinking that it was all rather heartening. It was difficult to imagine such a passionate exchange in an English kitchen, or indeed an Englishman capable of holding his own on the matter of Victoria sponge.

British Telecom lose their "we invented hyperlinks, honest" case against Prodigy. Good to see some sanity in the courts.

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:36:29 +0100
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: BT loses hypertext claim

A bit of a long-runner this one -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26802.html

BT loses hypertext claim By Tim Richardson Posted: 23/08/2002 at 09:38 GMT

BT has lost its legal challenge to charge US ISPs a fee for using hyperlinks.

US judge Colleen McMahon ruled late yesterday that ISPs did not infringe a patent filed by BT more than 25 years ago.

The ruling was welcomed yesterday by those in the industry, although it was not unexpected.

In March Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the patent for the "hidden page" - filed in 1976 and granted in 1989 - might not actually cover what we know today as "hyperlinks".

Yesterday's decision confirms that initial ruling.

Two years ago BT discovered an old patent which it claimed proved it owned the patent to hyperlinks, the devices that help link the Web together.

Six months later the UK telco filed a lawsuit against Prodigy Communications Corp in New York State in a bid to exploit its patent and claim royalties.

The legal challenge asserted BT's patented claim to hypertext links or the "hidden page" as it was described in the original patent.

Had BT been successful it could have opened the doors to a massive claim from US ISPs for revenues.

According to reports Prodigy is delighted with the decision. It has maintained throughout that BT's challenge was "shameless" and "groundless".

BT has yet to make a formal response to the ruling. However, a spokesman for BT told The Register that they were "disappointed by the judgement".

"It's [the judgement] highly detailed. We will be considering our options," he said. ®

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something from the archives. Daev Walsh forwards an article from The Irish Digest about "Billy in the Bowl". This story is also immortalised in an old Dublin song, which in turn was mentioned in a Pogues track. Billy was a legless beggar in the alleys of Stoneybatter and Grangegorman (where I now live) during the 18th century, who discovered a new, but not entirely legal, way to make money.

From

daev (spam-protected)
Subject: The Case of the Stoneybatter Strangler

A story of my new neighbourhood...

The Irish Digest July 1964

The Case of the Stoneybatter Strangler

The handsome, deformed Billy in the Bowl evolved a plan to rob his donors. Then, one night, he made the biggest mistake of his life

DUBLIN in the eighteenth century was noted for two things - the architectural beauty of its public buildings and the large number of beggars who sought alms in its maze of streets and lanes. Many of these beggars relied on visitors and the gentry for their coin, but there was one who campaigned among the working class. This was "Billy In The Bowl"

The strange appellation was derived from the fact that Billy's sole means of transport was a large bowl-shaped car with wheels. Seated in this " bowl ", the beggar would propel himself along by pushing against the ground with wooden plugs, one in each hand.

Billy's unusual means of conveyance was vitally necessary, as he had been born without legs. Nature, however, had compensated for this by endowing him with powerful arms and shoulders and, what was most important, an unusually handsome face.

This was Billy's greatest asset in his daily routine of separating sympathetic passers-by from their small change.

The cunning young beggar would wait at a convenient spot on one of the many lonely roads or lanes which were a feature of eighteenth century Grangegorman and Stoneybatter, until a servant girl or an old lady would come along.

He would then put on is most attractive smile which, together with his black curly hair, never failed to halt the females. The fact that such a handsome young man was so terribly handicapped physically always evoked pity.

"Billy in the Bowl", however, wasn't satisfied with becoming the daily owner of a generous number of small coins; what his greed demanded were substantial sums of money. The more he managed to get the more he could indulge in his pet vices - gambling and drinking.

As a result the beggar evolved a plan to rob unsuspecting sympathisers. The first time lie put his plan into operation was on a cold March evening as dusk, was falling. The victim was a middle aged woman who was passing through Grangegorman Lane on her way to visit friends in Queen Street - on Dublin's North Quays.

When Billy heard the woman's footsteps, he hid behind some bushes in a ditch which skirted the lane. As his unsuspecting victim drew close, the beggar moaned and shouted, and cried out for help.

Trembling with excitement, the woman dashed to the spot where Billy lay concealed. She bent down to help the beggar out of the ditch, when two powerful arms closed around her throat and pulled her into the bushes.

In a few minutes it was all over. The woman lay in a dead faint, and Billy was travelling at a fast rate down the lane in his " bowl ", his victirn's purse snug in his coat pocket. An hour after the robbery the woman was found in a distracted condition, but failed to give a description of her assailant. And, as "Billy in the Bowl" had figured, nobody would suspect a deformed beggar.

Again and again the beggar carried out his robbery plan, always shifting the place of attack to a different part of Grangegorman or Stoneybatter.

On one occasion " Billy in "the Bowl " tried his tactics on a sturdy servant girl who put up such a vigorous resistance that he was forced to strangle her. The incident became known as the 11 Grangegorman Lane Murder and caused a great stir.

Hundred.s flocked to the scene of the crime and for a couple of months "Billy in the Bowl" was forced to desert his usual haunts. Around this period, Dublin's first-ever police force was been mobilised, and the first case they were confronted with was the Grangegorman lane murder.

Months passed and "Billy in the Bowl" reverted once again to his old pasttime. A number of young servant girls were lured into ditches and robbed, and the police were inundated with so many complaints that a nightly patrol was placed on the district. But the beggar still rolled along in his "bowl" pitied and unsuspected. Then came the night that finished Billy's career of crime.

Two stoudy built female cooks, trudging back to their places of employment after a night out in the city, were surprised and not a little shocked to hear shouts for help. Rushing over, they came upon a huddled figure in the ditch.

Billy, thinking there was only one woman, grabbed one of the cooks and tried to pull her into the ditch. She proved much too strong for him, however) and while resisting tore 'at his face with her sharp finger-nails.

Meanwhile, her companion acted with speed and daring. Pulling out her large hatpin she made .for the beggar, and plunged the pin into his right eye.

The screams and howls of the wounded beggar reverberated throughout the district and brought people dashing to the scene. Among them was a member of the nightly police patrol who promptly arrested the groaning Billy.

"Billy in the Bowl'' was tried and sentenced for robbery with violence, but they could never prove it was he who had strangled the servant girl. The Grangegorman-Stoneybatter district became once again a quiet, attractive Dublin suburb where old ladies strolled, and carefree servant girls laughed and giggled as they wended their way home at night.

daev

---

Rev. Dave 'daev' Walsh, (spam-protected) Home: http://www.fringeware.com/hell
Weekly Rant: http://www.nua.ie/blather 'Is it about a bicycle?'-Sgt.Pluck, 'The Third Policeman', by Flann O'Brien

---

Holistic Pet Detective, Owl Worrier, Snark Hunter

---

the Gamasutra post-mortem of The Italian Job (account required, sorry). "you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

notes from a suicide manual: the Japanese kamikaze pilot's manual, now published in English for the first time. Extracts at the Guardian, but here's some to go on with:

Taking off: Breathe deeply three times. Say in your mind: Yah (field), Kyu (ball), Joh (all right) as you breathe deeply. Proceed straight ahead on the airstrip. Otherwise you may damage the landing gears. ....

At the very moment of impact: do your best. Every deity and the spirits of your dead comrades are watching you intently. Just before the collision it is essential that you do not shut your eyes for a moment so as not to miss the target. Many have crashed into the targets with wide-open eyes. They will tell you what fun they had.

just spotted this on Karlin Lillington's weblog.

I sent (a mail) to whatever email contact was listed on the party website, noting in the subject heading that the message was an urgent press query. I asked them to give me a synopsis of their party stance on technology issues, which would be featured in a spread in the Irish Times, and gave them about 10 days to respond.

The Progressive Democrats, supposedly the pro-business party and the party from which the very publicly pro-technology-industry deputy prime minister (or Tanaiste) comes, never responded. At all. Neither did Sinn Fein, which had been making a minor campaign issue out of the state of Ireland's internet infrastructure. Of those who did reply, the major party in government, Fianna Fail, only just sneaked in under the deadline (because I suspect no one had read the email earlier). Labour got the award for responding first (the next day); with Fine Gael also on top of things, and the Greens a bit slower but in time for the deadline as well.

Somehow this does not surprise me at all; Irish politicians are all too willing to pay lip service to tech issues, but do absolutely nothing concrete, or useful, about them. The fact that true broadband for the home user has only been made available by one ISP, since about a year ago, and even then costs over 89 euros per month, bears this out only too graphically.

I've read this before, but it's worth pointing to: Jon Udell on SSL Proxying.

the browser's secure traffic flows to Proxomitron. It decrypts that
traffic, so you can see it in the log window, and then re-encrypts it to
the destination server. Coming back the other way, it decrypts the
server's responses, so you can see them in the log window, then
re-encrypts them to complete the secure loop back to the browser.  It's
really quite amazing, and amazingly useful. Automation tasks that used to
look like more trouble than they were worth -- for example, driving a
HotMail or E*Trade account from a script -- suddenly look easy.

Aaron sez:

It's 1:30AM. Hours ago, my server seemed to stop working. I could ping it, but I couldn't do anything else. We drove over to see what was up. ... I'll just say that everything broke. Repeatedly. ... I think I have a small idea what it's like to be Evan now. This is not what I want to be when I grow up.

Never mind that -- I think you now have an idea what it's like to be an on-call sysadmin ;)

I've been talking about these a lot on the SpamAssassin-talk list and other places, so forgive me for not blogging much about it.

• Paul Graham talks about his naive Bayesian spam filter. We already use a very basic form of this kind of matching in SpamAssassin, in the SPAM_PHRASES matches; but it's not proper Bayesian filtering. However, it looks like Matt is taking the bull by the horns and making it Work Right once 2.40 is released (any day now). (BTW it's worth noting that Bayesian filtering doesn't always seem to get the success rate that Paul talks about; we think this is down to what kind of mail you get.)

• While we're doing that, we'll have to make sure we don't hit this MS patent. grr.

• Habeas Sender-Warranted E-mail has launched. It's a very nice solution, allowing non-spam senders of all kinds to "sign" their mails with a "mark" indicating that it's non-spam -- and filters, like SpamAssassin, can then use that mark as a good compensation signal (SpamAssassin now has the HABEAS_SWE test in CVS).

  The mark in question is a copyright- and trademark-protected haiku. Virtually every internet-connected country in the world honours copyrighted poetry with a high degree of legal protection, so unauthorised reproduction will be a big no-no, and result in a heavy battering in the courts.

  As a result, they're going to have to have some serious lawyers on their side. But it looks like they do. And to really press the advantage, they've teamed up with Dun and Bradstreet -- who can seriously impact a scumbag's ability to do business in the western world, never mind just Florida, if it comes to that.

  However, there's still money to worry about (as usual). It does cost a hell of a lot to pursue as many legal cases as they may have to. Let's hope they can pull it off. Good luck folks!

• Finally, cool -- I've made Aaron's see-also bar!

A US ISP, Information Wave Technologies, has banned the RIAA from accessing its network due to their announced plans to crack internet-connected computers to "protect their assets" -- ie. stop file-swapping. Go IWT! (via BB)

Leonard has released a nifty upgrade to Newsbruiser, his weblog software. It now has the feature that means a weblog stops being an overgrown .plan file, and becomes a proper Web Log -- a calendar. Now I'm jealous.

Phew! the Budejovicky Budvar brewery has "escaped significant damage" and it's delicious Budvar beer is back online.

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 15:39:55 +0100
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: Budvar saved

Famous Czech Brewery Working Again

Thursday August 15, 2002 3:00 PM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - Famed Czech brewery Budejovicky Budvar resumed production of the original Budweiser beer Thursday, two days after unprecedented flooding shut down operations, officials said.

Spokeswoman Denisa Mylbachrova said the brewery was forced to halt production Tuesday when large parts of the town of Ceske Budejovice, 90 miles south of Prague, were flooded.

``The brewery was without steam and electricity," Mylbachrova said, adding that the brewery had never before had experienced such troubles.

Although part of the brewery was flooded, it escaped significant damage, she said.

``Damages caused by the flood are minimal," the brewery's director-general, Jiri Bocek, said in a statement. ``The quality of the beer will not be affected.''

Budejovicky Budvar was founded in 1895 in Ceske Budejovice - called Budweis by the German-speaking people that populated the area at the time. Beer has been brewed there since 1265.

The founders of American brewer Anheuser-Busch used the name Budweiser for their product because it was well-known in their German homeland. They founded their brewery in 1876.

Disputes over the trademark date back to 1906, when the Czech brewery began exporting its product to the United States. The two competitors are embroiled in about 60 lawsuits across Europe.

Another one bites the dust. Looks like the "live monkey brains for dinner" story is a big fib.

Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 21:29:28 +0100
From: Rachel Carthy (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Yet another legend bites the dust

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20020808zg.htm

Thursday, August 8, 2002

Debunking strange Asian myths: Part II

Do Chinese really pig out on live monkey brains? The writer couldn't find one who has

By MARK SCHREIBER

This story began over a beer in a Kabukicho restaurant, when an adventuresome Canadian lassie named Christine, who had requested a tour of Shinjuku's sleazier hangouts, leaned suggestively across the table and asked me in a husky voice if I had ever eaten monkey brains.

I hadn't. And for that matter, I certainly wouldn't. Medical textbooks say eating simian gray matter can give you kuru, a disorder similar to mad cow disease.

For those unfamiliar with this famous tale -- featured in the documentary films "Mondo Cane" and "Faces of Death" -- consumption of monkey brains calls for a live monkey (species not specified) to be immobilized by a collar in the center of a table designed specially for such a purpose. A tool of some sort is used to whack open his skull, upon which the live, bloody gray matter is apportioned to eagerly awaiting diners.

Christine's question was my cue to embellish on this story, so that I might take perverse pleasure in watching her squirm with disgust.

But I thought for a moment and realized that, after three and a half decades of wandering around Asia -- and eating things that might indeed invoke repugnance on the part of squeamish Westerners -- I had yet to partake in this delicacy. I have met exactly two individuals who "claim" to have done so, both Americans and otherwise upstanding citizens, who seemed a bit irritated by my skepticism.

"It's an urban legend," I told her. "Nobody really eats monkey brains."

Her countenance reflected an expression of rapt disappointment.

Well, I thought, perhaps this is as good an opportunity as any to lay this story to rest. So I began sending out e-mails to an assortment of old Asia hands -- ex-military men, businessmen, government employees, missionaries, guide book editors. I also fired off queries to about a dozen Chinese chefs. Everybody knew the story. Nobody had ever actually partaken of such a meal, or witnessed a monkey meet its maker in such a cruel manner.

A few got a good chuckle out of letting their imaginations run wild.

"Most Chinese places do a lousy job on monkey brains," one Washington D.C. acquaintance replied, tongue in cheek. "I have a friend who is a high ranking patron of the Friends of the National Zoo and he gets me anything I need. It's not too difficult to prepare at home -- the most difficult part is holding the little bastards still without getting bitten."

I also succeeded in getting columnist Cecil Adams to post my query on The Straight Dope web site, and drew quite a few responses. One message, from Gopinath Nagaraj, was of particular interest, and I include it here in its entirety.

"The story of the monkey being shackled under a table only to have its skull removed and its brain scooped out while it is still alive originates apparently in a newspaper report to that effect sometime in 1948, when a columnist (I've forgotten his name) wrote a tongue-in-cheek column on the feeding habits of ethnic Chinese. He was also apparently responsible for the saying that the Chinese eat everything in the water except submarines, everything in the air except airplanes and everything with legs except furniture.

"He confessed in a revelation some time back (shortly before his death) that he had no idea that the monkey brain story would take on the dimension of an urban legend, but there you are. I am inclined to believe him because in my numerous travels, I have visited many Chinese restaurants, and, while all have heard the story, none have witnessed the event."

Oh yes; in my exhaustive search I did find a restaurant in Beijing with "monkey's brain" on the menu. But get this: it's a vegetarian establishment. The "brain" is likely to be tofu, which in Chinese is colorfully described as nao (brains) in certain types of cuisine. And when I asked a Chinese chef in my neighborhood what he knew about monkey brains, he brandished a transparent bag of brown, fuzzy mushrooms labeled hou-tou (monkey's head), imported from China.

And that's as close as I succeeded in getting to the bottom, or rather the "top'' of this famous story.

Eddie Mair's diary at the Guardian. Eddie Mair is the producer of the BBC Today radio programme.

A case in point (and I'm not making this up): 10 days ago, when another Israeli bus was blown up on a Sunday morning causing several deaths, we carried a report on Broadcasting House from our correpondent at the scene. The next day we got a very serious complaint insisting we had, on air, called the victims "bastards". We scoured the tape of the show for the offending word. It wasn't there. It turned out what the listener had heard was the reporter saying "...the victims' bus had started..."

Aaron notes:

Tokelau, a small island in the Pacific is inhabited by less than 1500 people. They've always divided their share of fish among the people equally and so now that they've got their own top-level domain (.tk) they're giving those away for free too.

Some quick grepping of /usr/share/dict/words reveals that the following are still available:

transatlan.tk (transatlantic), antibiot.tk (antibiotic), determinis.tk (ah, you get the idea...), climac.tk, empha.tk, orgias.tk, parasi.tk, pedan.tk, pragma.tk, psychosoma.tk, sclero.tk, seman.tk, skep.tk, unrealis.tk, vladivos.tk, woods.tk, slaps.tk, acroba.tk, athle.tk, aristocra.tk, apathe.tk, apocalyp.tk, antisemi.tk, axioma.tk, atavis.tk, atheis.tk, asympto.tk, behavioris.tk, Dadais.tk.

They're purely URL forwarding, of course, but good fun... I've just taken antarc.tk ;)

a great interview with Bruce Schneier (via /.):

If the rise of the Internet has shown anything, it is that huge numbers of middle-class, middle-management types like to look at dirty pictures on computer screens. A good way to steal ... secrets ... would be to set up a pornographic Web site. The Web site would be free, but visitors would have to register to download the naughty bits. ...

Many of his corporate porn surfers, Schneier predicted, would use for the dirty Web site the same password they used at work. Not only that, many users would surf to the porn site on the fast Internet connection at the office. ...

"In six months you'd be able to break into Fortune 500 companies and government agencies all over the world," Schneier said, chewing his nondescript meal. "It would work! It would work -- that's the awful thing."

some very nerdy Lovecraft-meets-miffy humour: Tales of the Plush Cthulhu. "How odd it looks!" said Miss Kitty Fluffington. "Very non-Euclidian." "Yes," said Brown Snuggly Bear, "but thank goodness it isn't squamous." "Or gibbous," said Mister Bright Eyes. "It seems to be covering something," said Miss Kitty Fluffington. "Let's see!"

anti-spam laws are not necessarily the answer: A Seattle man who has been actively pursuing spammers in King County District Court has been hit with a nearly $7,000 judgment to cover a spammer's attorney fees:

According to Newman, who prepared the order, the chief basis of Kato's decision was "personal jurisdiction." In other words, the judge agreed with Newman's position that his clients could not reasonably expect to be hauled into court in Washington state for "sending something blindly over the Internet," Newman said.

The British Museum in London is to display the contents of the Secretum:

Some items even have names, such as St Cosmo's "big toe", which dates from 18th-century southern Italy, where it was said to be a popular sex toy. Unmarried maidens prayed on St Cosmo's day: "Blessed St Cosmo, let it be like this." (Link)

Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 10:41:04 +0100
From: "Martin Adamson" (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Sex secrets of the British Museum

The Sunday Times

August 11, 2002

Sex secrets of the British Museum

Jonathan Leake and Jane Mulkerrins

THE British Museum is to shed the last of its inhibitions. A secret collection of sex toys, chastity belts and antique erotica that has been locked away since Victorian times could finally be opened to the public. The collection contains more than 400 provocative items described by the museum's Victorian curators as "abominable monuments to human licentiousness".

They banned anyone except those of "mature years and sound morals" from seeing them -- and may even have added to the collection by snapping off the "corrupting" parts of classical nude statues on display in the museum.

After more than a century of pressure from art historians it emerged this weekend that the museum is considering reversing the policy. It has already thought of turning the collection into a money-spinner by mounting a special exhibition.

Dr David Gainster, a senior curator who is writing a book on the collection, has sent a proposal to the management recommending that it should be exhibited. "Its importance is at last being realised. It is of great value both for the individual artefacts and as a time capsule of Victorian interest in sexual material," he said.

The collection contains erotica from the Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Indian empires as well as from renaissance and medieval times. Artefacts range from a statue of Pan intimately involved with a she-goat to a medieval-style iron chastity belt and images from one of the first sex education books, printed in the 16th century.

Some items even have names, such as St Cosmo's "big toe", which dates from 18th-century southern Italy, where it was said to be a popular sex toy. Unmarried maidens prayed on St Cosmo's day: "Blessed St Cosmo, let it be like this."

The museum has made tentative plans to display about 400 of the items in an exhibition provisionally entitled Sex and Sensibility. It means the ancient erotica would take pride of place next to the Elgin marbles.

Such an exhibition could be just the money-spinner the museum needs after being forced to cut staff, close galleries and reduce its research and restoration work. The government is preparing to give it up to £15m to help bail it out.

The exhibits, locked in a cupboard in the Secretum (secret museum), have been open to those who submit a personal application. They are largely the collection of George Witt, a Victorian doctor-turned-banker and one-time mayor of Bedford.

Dr Witt, who donated his unusual collection, perhaps wisely just after the passing of the first Obscene Publications Act, is thought to have been at the centre of an international circle of wealthy gentlemen who collected erotica.

"In Victorian times, when to have had representations such as these was very much frowned upon, he probably collected them to show to his male friends after dinner parties," said Judy Rodoe, another curator.

One item that would doubtless have amused his guests is a gentleman's tobacco box, decorated on the outside with pleasant country scenes. Under the lid, however, is a graphic portrayal of a couple in flagrante delicto, leaning against a startled-looking horse.

Other items reveal much about ancestral beliefs in health, illness and fertility, and include phallic symbols that in the 17th century were used to lobby the gods to bring relief to a suffering believer. One such curio is an alabaster phallus on animal legs, engraved with birds and animals.

The Secretum also contains the only pornography to survive from the renaissance period. The 16th-century I modi set of engravings shows more than a dozen different sexual positions and was used as the benchmark for pornography for the next two centuries. "It forms the basis for a lot of erotic art from that time onwards -- it really is the first good sex guide," said Gainster.

More recent items include 18th-century condoms made from animal intestines knotted at one end with a silk ribbon.

The British Museum already displays several erotic items. A silver Roman cup featuring a homoerotic scene was controversially bought last year for £1.8m using £300,000 of lottery money.

"This collection tells us so much about the Victorian attitude to sex," said Gainster. "It is a historical artefact in its own right, and it also serves as a warning to future historians against imposing their own prejudices on past cultures."

Additional reporting: Roger Dobson

Monsanto up to some serious dirty tricks than normal: now they're posing as third parties to silence critics through character assassination. (article by George Monbiot in The Guardian -- forwarded to forteana by Rachel Carthy.)

Le "maxi-vague" de la Côte d'Azur - a mini-tidal wave, every day at 4pm. Sounds like great fun!

Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 23:25:38 +0100
From: Roy Stilling (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: It's 4pm on the Côte d'Azur. Must be time for the daily tidal wave

The Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=323316

It's 4pm on the Côte d'Azur. Must be time for the daily tidal wave By John Lichfield in Paris 11 August 2002

All the elements are present for a French version of Jaws.

In the opening scene, swimmers, sunbathers and fishermen are relaxing on the crowded beaches of the Côte d'Azur (almost the only part of France to escape the rain this summer).

Abruptly, it strikes. A giant wave ("maxi-vague"), 4ft high and 15ft long, surges from nowhere and generates panic among the holiday-makers. Toddlers are almost swept away. Mobile phones, expensive sun-creams and towels stolen from hotels are engulfed by the Mediterranean, never to be seen again.

So far no one has been seriously hurt, although a number of small children have been sucked under and badly scared. The giant wave which strikes the coast near Nice each day at almost exactly 4pm is causing consternation, amusement and scientific bafflement. The local newspaper, Nice-Matin, describes it as "the event of the year".

Since the Mediterranean is a tideless and often placid sea, the waves breaking on the beaches in the Baie des Anges around Nice usually plop ashore within a few inches of one another. The phenomenon of the maxi-vague – a single, giant, rogue wave, which breaks much further up the beach – began a few years ago but has taken on a puzzling regularity and ferocity this year.

Olivier, 34, a beach fishermen at Cros-de-Cagnes, west of Nice, said: "When the sea is very calm, you see first a few ripples, just like a trembling in the water. Then, the big wave comes. The first time, it catches you. After that, you're on your guard." Swimmers have been tossed against rocks. Parents have reported having to drag terrified children from the sea with lungs full of water.

The finger of blame was pointed at first at the high-speed ferries that have cut the journey time from Nice to Corsica to three hours in the past six years. The ships have been ordered to travel more slowly near the coast. The no-speeding zone may now be enlarged experimentally to see if the big wave disappears.

However, the authorities and maritime scientists are not convinced that the fast ferries are the only, or even the principal, cause of the maxi-vague. The regularity of the phenomenon this summer has everyone baffled. The 4pm arrival time bears no obvious relation to the ferry timetable.

Marine scientists are convinced that the wave is not purely a natural event. They believe that it may be generated by a combination of wind, coastal geography and the passage of large, fast boats other than ferries.

Gabriel Nakhleh, an official in the French government's maritime office in Nice, said: "It is a complex phenomenon. It seems to be something to do with the weather but there could be other, so far undiscovered, causes ... We are not treating this lightly."

In the meantime, the authorities would like you to know that it is perfectly safe to go back into the water. Except at around 4pm.

Tax havens and offshore islands are not quite as "free" -- at least in terms of personal liberties -- as people might think. R.

1. Hettinga tells some stories about "Triumph, the Fabulous

Crotch-Sniffing Caymanian Customs Wonder Dog, ... and (the Cayman-born expat's kid) who was literally exiled from the island when the island constabulary discovered a marijuana seed or three in his summer-break rental car a few years back."

I guess it's back to the oil rigs then ;)

Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 12:31:56 -0400
From: "R. A. Hettinga" (spam-protected)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

At 3:36 PM +1000 8/11/02, David Hillary wrote:
> I think that tax havens such as the Cayman Islands should be ranked
> among the freest in the world. No taxes on business or individuals
> for a start. Great environment for banking and commerce. Good
> protection of property rights. Small non-interventionist
> government.

Clearly you've never met "Triumph", the Fabulous Crotch-Sniffing Caymanian Customs Wonder Dog at extreme close range, or heard the story about the expat's college age kid, actually born on Cayman, who was literally exiled from the island when the island constabulary "discovered" a marijuana seed or three in his summer-break rental car a few years back.

I mean, his old man was some senior cheese at Global Crossing at the time, but this was back when they could do no wrong. If that's what they did to *his* kid, imagine what some poor former junk-bond-hustler might have to deal with someday for, say, the odd unauthorized Cuban nightlife excursion. A discretely folded twenty keeps the stamp off your passport on the ground in Havana, and a bottle of Maker's Mark goes a long way towards some interesting nocturnal diversion when you get there and all, but still, you can't help thinking that Uncle's going to come a-knockin', and that Cayman van's going to stop rockin' some day, and when it does, it ain't gonna be pretty.

Closer to home, conceptually at least, a couple of cryptogeeken were hustled off and strip-searched, on the spot, when they landed on Grand Cayman for the Financial Cryptography conference there a couple of years ago. Like lots of cypherpunks, these guys were active shooters in the Bay Area, and they had stopped in Jamaica, Mon, for a few days on the way to Grand Cayman. Because they, and their stuff, reeked on both counts, they were given complementary colorectal examinations and an entertaining game of 20 questions, or two, courtesy of the Caymanian Federales, after the obligatory fun and games with a then-snarling Crotch-Sniffing Caymanian Wonder Dog. Heck, I had to completely unpack *all* my stuff for a nice, well-fed Caymanian customs lady just to get *out* of the country when I left.

Besides, tax havens are being increasingly constrained as to their activities these days, because they cost the larger nation-states too much in the way of "escaped" "revenue", or at least the perception of same in the local "free" press. Obviously, if your money "there" isn't exchangeable into your money "here", it kind of defeats the purpose of keeping your money "there" in the first place, giving folks like FinCEN lots of leverage when financial treaties come up for renegotiation due to changes in technology, like on-line credit-card and securities clearing, or the odd governmental or quango re-org, like they are wont to do increasingly in the EU, and the US.

As a result, the veil of secrecy went in Switzerland quite a while ago. The recent holocaust deposit thing was just the bride and groom on that particular wedding-cake, and, as goes Switzerland, so goes Luxembourg, and of course Lichtenstein, which itself is usually accessible only through Switzerland. Finally, of course, the Caymans themselves will cough up depositor lists whenever Uncle comes calling about one thing or another on an increasingly longer list of fishing pretexts.

At this point, the "legal", state-backed pecuniary privacy pickings are kind of thin on the ground. I mean, I'm not sure I'd like to keep my money in, say, Vanuatu. Would you? Remember, this is a place where a bandana hanging on a string across an otherwise public road will close it down until the local erst-cannibal hunter-gatherer turned statutorily-permanent landowner figures out just what his new or imagined property rights are this afternoon.

The point is, any cypherpunk worth his salt will tell you that only solution to financial or any other, privacy, is to make private transactions on the net, cheaper, and more secure, than "transparent" transactions currently are in meatspace. Then things get *real* interesting, and financial privacy -- and considerably more personal freedom -- will just be the icing on the wedding cake. Bride and groom action figures sold separately, of course.

Cheers, RAH (Who went to FC2K at the Grand Cayman Marriott in February that year. Nice place, I liked Anguilla better though, at least at the time, and I haven't been back to either since. The beaches are certainly better in Anguilla, and the "private" banking system there is probably just as porous as Cayman's is, by this point. If I were to pick up and move Somewhere Free outside Your Friendly Neighborhood Unipolar Superpower, New Zealand is somewhere near the top of my list, and Chile would be next, though things change quickly out there in ballistic-missile flyover country. In that vein, who knows, maybe we're in for some kind of latter-day Peloponnesian irony, and *Russia* will end up the freest place on earth someday. Stranger things have happened in the last couple of decades, yes?)

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--

1. A. Hettinga

The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

tool-using crows. Brainy crow upsets pecking order: "Betty the New Caledonian crow made a tool from a piece of garden wire and used it to hook a tasty morsel of meat out of a tube too deep for her beak." ... "The question is: what kind of physics is it they understand? If you see a problem, pick up a straight wire and without instruction bend it into the right shape, and then extract the food, that means the animal is behaving as if it understands the required physical properties of an instrument".

the Win32 messaging API, the foundation of Windows, is inherently insecure:

• textboxes can be instructed to remove attributes, such as length limits for incoming data (EM_SETLIMITTEXT)

• a paste action can triggered (WM_PASTE)

• an application can be instructed to jump to a given location in memory (WM_TIMER) - and the best thing is, the application can do nothing about it

Once again, it's clear the Windows dev team chose totally a unnecessary degree of flexibility, over security. Great paper. (via /.)

Breastfeeding? avoid JFK Airport: "A Long Island mother is fuming that JFK Airport security guards forced her to drink her own breast milk in front of other passengers before boarding a flight". (via BoingBoing)

I've just discovered Joystick 101, a great talking-about-games site. Highlights include Follow the Bouncing Breasts:

Just think -- it was someone's job to perfect the panty peek in Soul Caliber, or the (breast) jiggle motion in Ready 2 Rumble. It seems like a lot of effort for something so unrelated to gameplay. Particularly when the gameplay left so much to be desired. ... We joked that these designers were reminiscent of Gary and Wyatt in Weird Science, wearing the bras on their heads and working hard on perfecting the breast size of their fantasy women. Is this analogy far from the mark?

(ha, that headline should generate some interesting referrals from Google ;)

"Despite the seemingly ubiquitous admonition to "drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day", rigorous proof for this counsel appears to be lacking. This review sought to find the origin of this advice (called "8 x 8" for short) and to examine the scientific evidence, if any, that might support it.

No scientific studies were found in support of 8 x 8. Rather, surveys of food and fluid intake on thousands of adults of both genders - analyses of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals - strongly suggest that such large amounts are not needed". (/.)

Forty years ago, two psychiatrists administered history's largest dose of LSD. Johan Jensen reports on the epoch-defining experiment. (from The Guardian)

Two weeks ago, an Indonesian woman attended the funeral of her husband and son, passengers on a plane that crashed deep in the jungle. But even as she wept, her son - barefoot and bleeding - was fighting his way back to civilisation. Bangau Samuel tells John Aglionby how he made it home. (from the Guardian)

A great article on Kevin Warwick from Danny O'Brien via the BBC.

Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2002 12:16:09 +0100
From: "Martin Adamson" (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Why I'm not impressed with Professor Cyborg

From the BBC website - www.bbc.co.uk

Thursday, 1 August, 2002, 15:21 GMT 16:21 UK

Why I'm not impressed with Professor Cyborg

By Dave Green Co-editor, NTK.net

Kevin Warwick is the professor who puts microchips in his arm and sees a great future for cyborgs. He's good at getting in the news, but not everyone is impressed.

You've got to hand it to Professor Kevin Warwick.

Whether he's proclaiming himself "the world's first cyborg", or touting his university department of photogenic robot animals, he shows an almost intuitive grasp of an even less well-understood discipline: what makes a good headline.

But, as well as provoking the envy of other academics, Warwick's media profile has a more serious downside.

Because stories in newspapers aren't usually structured like proper scientific write-ups - with a hypothesis, apparatus, method, results and conclusion - they make it difficult to objectively assess his work.

Most of the time, the interested reader or viewer is left wondering: What the hell is he doing?

Perhaps to address this shortfall, Kevin has written up his latest electronic-implant experiment in the book I, Cyborg, complete with a terrifying cover-picture of him looking like The Terminator.

He'll be back

Once again, it does not entirely follow the traditional format ("Apparatus: Surreptitiously obtained neural electrodes intended for use with cats. A local hospital. Some Lego. The credulous world media. My wife.")

But, to his credit, he does make a brave attempt to address much of the criticism he's received. And then spoils it all at the end by ranting about the imminent enslavery of humanity again.

First up, the popular allegation that he hasn't published many scientific papers. The book documents his academic output and lecture tours in almost excruciating detail - along with some more unusual sources of acclaim, including Gillian Anderson (who plays Agent Scully in The X-Files), and noted peer-review journals The Guinness Book Of Records and The Mail On Sunday.

Second, this whole business about being the "world's first cyborg". I've wondered about this for a while: "cyborg", short for "cybernetic organism", is generally used to mean a human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices. Which presumably includes artificial limbs, pacemakers, or those cochlear implants which actually stimulate the auditory nerves of the hearing impaired.

But Kevin says they're not real cyborgs, because they're all trying to fix a defect - whereas he is upgrading the human body with new abilities.

Pioneer

Specifically, the new abilities he's hoping for include: ultrasonic extra-sensory input (so that, bat-like, he can tell how far away things are with his eyes shut), controlling a robot from his nervous system, sending impulses from his nerves to those of his wife (and vice versa) - and, pioneeringly, the power to influence "interactive jewellery".

And finally, there are some promising indications that, before attempting to wire his nervous system up to his wife's, he did read up on the field to see if anyone had done anything similar - but it turned out to be full of well-meaning researchers sticking electrodes into monkeys.

To be fair, the build-up to the actual implanting makes for interesting reading, in a do-we-know-what-we're-doing? and will-we-run-out-of-money? kind of way.

But once the nerve-monitoring electrodes are safely embedded in his arm, Warwick's instinct for public relations - inevitably - kicks in.

He isn't content to demonstrate his neural impulses travelling across the internet to control a robot arm on the other side of the office. No, he has to fly to New York - a more impressive photo opportunity.

And, yes, he does manage a form of primitive Morse-code-style nervous-system-to-nervous-system communication with his wife - but it's a far cry from the transmission of emotions, mental states and sexual arousal which he previously prophesied.

Melodrama

In the classic Conclusion section cop-out sentence, Kevin notes that "Further studies would be necessary" to investigate this area. I suggest he starts with further studies into why he believes that moods are mediated by your arms' motor neurons in the first place.

Responding to criticisms that he uses "highly emotive language", Warwick portrays himself as a populist, a communicator, who cares so passionately about science that he has to let the public know about his work by any means he can.

Unfortunately, this is somewhat undermined by the book's melodramatic warnings that this very experiment could leave him dead, "a mental vegetable", or with a mild pain in his arm.

Ultimately, it's up to history to judge whether his experiments are a worthwhile investigation of neural control systems or a succession of neat publicity stunts.

But I can't imagine that his increasingly baroque justifications - his predicted future where non-cyborg-enhanced humans become second-class citizens

• are genuinely helping his cause.

If his work is as good as he says it is, he really needs to start letting it speak for itself. And for someone who's constantly critical of the "enormous errors" in contemporary human communication, maybe Kevin should, every now and again, consider keeping his mouth shut.

A great quote from a CBS article on spammers.

Bernard Balan, 51, who operates a bulk mail site ... says he's gone through "unbelievable hardships" to keep the spam flowing. ... "My operating costs have gone up 1,000 percent this year, just so I can figure out how to get around all these filters".

Best news I've read all day ;) Full story at CBS.

The SliMP3. I've been trying to figure out how to get my MP3s playing downstairs, without a noisy PC with fan to do it. This looks like a good way to do it; stream them from your PC upstairs!

• Supports all MP3 bit rates and VBR, plus MPEG2
• Communicates using IP over Ethernet, open streaming/control protocol
• Infrared remote control
• Small enough that you can put it anywhere - on a shelf, bedside table, etc.
• Open-source server, written in Perl (GPL)
• Optional HTTP interface - control the player and manage your playlists from a web browser!

Only $249. (Shipping may be a different matter, though...)

Fantastic article on file-swapping, from the artist's perspective by Janis Ian.

Jon Ronson at the Guardian investigates making a "dirty bomb". It turns out to be not quite as easy as all that:

I log on to Ask Jeeves and type, 'Where can I buy some uranium?' Jeeves responds, 'You can find anything at eBay. eBay has everything you're looking for. Find it all at eBay.'

Man ends up with barnacle stuck to his penis. Forwarded from forteana.

Hey, Graham Barr is wearing my shirt!!

The "bloke dies on Stag Night and nobody notices" urban legend comes true:

An inquest has heard how a man in a pub died while friends partied around him and played practical jokes on him. (Link)

Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 11:37:38 +0100
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Re: Stag night UL

A similar but true tale from a former regular of mine -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/286249.stm

Thursday, February 25, 1999 Published at 19:08 GMT

Drinkers shaved dead man's head

An inquest has heard how a man in a pub died while friends partied around him and played practical jokes on him.

They shaved one side of Ian Clifton's head and took photographs of him with an inflatable doll.

Mr Clifton, 35, had been dead for up to an hour at the Jervis Lumb pub close to his home in Norfolk Park, Sheffield.

Last October he called at the pub and joined a birthday party for a member of the pub's fishing team.

By 10pm, Mr Clifton had become unconscious after drinking about 11 pints of lager and a quantity of home-made punch through the course of the day, the inquest heard.

Duty of care

As he lay out cold in the pub, his friends shaved one side of his head and placed an inflatable doll on him which they photographed. This was described as common practice at the pub.

Some time later an ambulance was called, and paramedics found Mr Clifton was dead.

A forensic pathologist told the inquest that he had died of acute alcoholic poisoning.

Returning a verdict of accidental death contributed to by neglect, Coroner Chris Dorries expressed concern that such an incident could occur in a busy public house.

He plans to write to Sheffield's licensing magistrates, so that they can remind other publicans of their duty of care to customers.

Some nerd humour courtesy of Verity Stob at DDJ. This will be familiar to anyone who's used Windows, I should think.

Cruft Force 2. Comfortable. Description: User has now got around to resetting Explorer so that "web content in folders" is suppressed. Something has made a C:\TEMP directory in the proper place unasked, for which mercy the user guiltily feels grateful.

A strange entry is found in the System event log: MRxSmb: The redirector was unable to initialise security context or query context attributes. Assiduous googling of the key phrases, up web site and down newsgroup, establishes that, although many have wondered, nobody knows what this means. (jm: ...time passes...)

Cruft Force 5. Worn out. Description: Some time after bootup, always get a dialog "A service has failed to start - BLT300." What is BLT300? Nobody knows. Although one can manually remove/disable this service, it always reappears two or three reboots later.

If one double-clicks a document icon, Word takes 4 minutes 30 seconds to start up. But it still works fine if started as a program. Somebody opines that this is due to misconfigured DDE. Or the Mars-Jupiter cusp.''

P.J. O'Rourke on corporate corruption:

However, if corporate corruption does exist, it has benefits as well as liabilities. Auditing scandals will no doubt improve the sex lives of accountants. Bean counters were previously thought to be drab and unattractive creatures. Now accountants are considered cute--by their fellow prison inmates.

Sunday Times: Tourists to invade Kabul on 'axis of evil' holidays:

"Seven weeks after the Royal Marines pulled out, the tourists are going in. Despite Foreign Office warnings and the threat of kidnap, landmines and US airstrikes, two British tour companies are offering holidays to Afghanistan. ... The trips are the ultimate in a new trend dubbed hardship holidays. Booming numbers of western travellers are searching ever harder to find authentic off the beaten track experiences, and enterprising tour operators are answering the demand with trips to the slums of Rio, sweatshops in El Salvador and South African townships. "

I doubt it's the same. I'd love to visit Afghanistan, although I'm happy to wait a few years until everything's settled down a little. Also, from the sounds of it, most of the visitors want to go for the same reasons, or because they visited in the 70s -- like these folks did.

The Sunday Times

July 28, 2002

Tourists to invade Kabul on 'axis of evil' holidays

Tom Robbins

SEVEN weeks after the Royal Marines pulled out, the tourists are going in. Despite Foreign Office warnings and the threat of kidnap, landmines and US airstrikes, two British tour companies are offering holidays to Afghanistan. The first tourists leave Britain for the war-ravaged country on August 23. They will stay for a 10-day tour, taking in the sights of Kabul, Herat, Bamian and Mazar-i-Sharif. A second company is taking bookings for a bus tour in the spring.

Both companies are also planning tours to Iraq for September and October, in spite of concerns over possible American bombing raids. For those who still find their wanderlust unsated, the brochures offer Iran and North Korea, allowing adventurous travellers to complete their tour of the "axis of evil".

The trips are the ultimate in a new trend dubbed "hardship holidays". Booming numbers of western travellers are searching ever harder to find authentic "off the beaten track" experiences, and enterprising tour operators are answering the demand with trips to the slums of Rio, sweatshops in El Salvador and South African townships.

A Russian company is running what it calls "extreme tourism" trips to see the sarcophagus at Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster; while an American firm is offering "reality tours" to Palestine and Belfast.

The Afghan government is keen to encourage tourism and in January the aviation and tourism minister, Dr Abdul Rahman, gave a television interview inviting "tourists of the world" to visit. The following month he was stabbed to death at Kabul airport.

Organisers of the Afghan trips insist they are not running "Tora Bora tours" for thrill-seeking young men who want to visit a war zone. Instead, many of those who have booked are enthusiasts of architecture and archeology and are in their sixties.

The first tour of Afghanistan is being organised by LIVE Travel, a Twickenham-based company. The seven people on the trip range from 33 to 65 and include a barrister, a retired banker, a former policewoman and a postman.

They will fly to Tehran, then take a connecting flight to Kabul. From there they will travel to Bamiyan, site of the giant stone buddhas destroyed by the Taliban.

Despite losing six of its eight planes to shelling, Ariana Afghan Airlines is now operating again, and the group will use internal flights to visit Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, site of the bloodbath in which hundreds of Taliban prisoners of war were killed after an uprising.

"It's not about the ego trip of being the first on the scene; it's about seizing the opportunity while you can because the situation may well get worse," said Gary Day, 42, a freight administrator at Heathrow who will be on the trip. "To experience things that are different, that's the start and finish for me."

Hinterland Travel, of Godstone in Surrey, is promising greater creature comforts by taking its own bus to the country and travelling overland through Herat, Kandahar and Kabul. The trip for up to 20 people starts on April 17 and costs £1,680, but places are filling up fast. Both companies say their detailed local knowledge minimises any risks.

Some who have signed up visited the country in the 1970s and are keen to return. Others want to visit after seeing the stunning scenery in the background of televised war reports.

"Obviously we are going against Foreign Office advice but we do brief our clients very thoroughly and it's up to them if they travel," said Geoff Hann, the company's founder, who will go to Afghanistan next month to plan the trip in more detail. "Getting travel insurance can be a bit of problem, though."

The Foreign Office strongly advises against travel to Afghanistan, saying: "The threat to foreigners (including British nationals) from terrorist/criminal violence remains high. Activity by armed groups continues in many areas."

For Iraq, the official advice is a single stark statement: "British nationals should not attempt to visit Iraq."

The city of Rome has admitted defeat in a long battle with a disabled man who is believed to make £100,000 a year collecting coins from the Trevi fountain.

Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 23:00:00 -0500
From: bruce lanier wright (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=A3100?= ,000 a year from the Trevi fountain

http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/07/29/wcoin29.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/07/29/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=237291

Invalid wins over free coins in fountain By Bruce Johnston in Rome (Filed: 29/07/2002)

The city of Rome has admitted defeat in a long battle with a disabled man who is believed to make £100,000 a year collecting coins from the Trevi fountain.

Although Roberto Cercelletta is fined 516 euros (£325) every day for wading into the 270-year-old fountain at dawn, he never pays the fines.

A police spokesman said: "Officially, he is unemployed. His case has been assigned to a social worker and he has a disability certificate. He is untouchable."

The nature of Cercelletta's disability is not clear but invalido certificates are sometimes awarded on flimsy grounds.

Cercelletta has been collecting the coins for 20 years. The Supreme Court has ruled that money thrown into fountains is no one's property and so is anyone's to take.

Described as a huge man with a bellowing voice, Cercelletta works with two assistants and always carries a knife. Whenever his lucrative trade is threatened, he cuts himself with it, creating an embarrassing scene. The ploy always works.

The only good news for Caritas, the charity which is supposed to receive the Trevi money, is that on Sundays Cercelletta takes the day off, allowing it to collect the coins one day in seven.

Legend has it that if a visitor to Rome throws a coin into the Trevi fountain over his shoulder, his return will be guaranteed.

The monument's fame was cemented by the film Three Coins in the Fountain, and Cercelletta has now become a legend in his own right, often posing for photographs in front of the fountain.

Police say the only way to stop him would be to catch him damaging the fountain, something he never does.

" Kangaroo scrotum pouches are unusual sentimental little gifts that last and remembered for a long time because of its uniqueness." Well, I can't argue with that... (fwd: Bob Rickard's forteana post)

Irishman could face 10 years in jail for helping asylum-seekers to escape from Australian camp:

His solicitor told the court that he was pleading guilty to the offence. However she asked the court not to jail her client, who has no previous convictions, and who is due to leave Australia when his visa runs out in a few months time.

However the crown prosecutor said that the offence was such that it required a stiff penalty, both to punish the offender and as a deterrent to other would-be criminals considering similar action.

...

Insp Des Bray confirmed that Mr O'Shea had been arrested and charged at a campsite in Port Augusta on July 2nd. In a court appearance on July 3rd, Mr O'Shea was refused bail, and has been in jail since.

"Criminals"? In my opinion, Jonathan O'Shea's a hero. Personally, I don't miss the anti-refugee feeling in Australia.

A classic byline:

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (July 24, 2002 9:37 p.m. EDT) - Losing your job, quitting school, going broke and moving back home with your mother after living abroad for years would be tough on anyone.

It's even tougher when you're a former military dictator who once had the power to execute opponents at will.

Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 15:54:43 +0100
From: "Martin Adamson" (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Onetime dictator now broke, living with mom

http://www.nandotimes.com/world/story/477222p-3812684c.html

World: Onetime dictator now broke, living with mom

Copyright © 2002 AP Online

By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (July 24, 2002 9:37 p.m. EDT) - Losing your job, quitting school, going broke and moving back home with your mother after living abroad for years would be tough on anyone.

It's even tougher when you're a former military dictator who once had the power to execute opponents at will.

Valentine Strasser became the world's youngest head of state when he seized power in 1992 at the age of 25. But the limelight didn't last - four years later, he was ousted in another coup.

"I'm basically living off my mother now. She's been very supportive," the 35-year-old said at a neighborhood bar on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital.

"It's been tough. I'm unemployed, but I'm coping."

It was well before noon and the former president was doing what he often does on weekdays: Joking around with friends, playing checkers and sipping diligently on a plastic cup of palm wine - a cheap and highly potent alcoholic brew.

In contrast to the days when he commanded an army and courted the favor of foreign presidents, Strasser today seems to have reverted simply to being just another neighborhood kid.

Gone are the crisp military fatigues, new suits and wraparound sunglasses. In their place: A baseball hat worn backward, a Bob Marley T-shirt, dark green shorts and a pair of 'Air' Nike sneakers.

Asked how he spends his time now that he doesn't have to rule the nation, Strasser took a drag of his cigarette and thought for a moment.

"I've been drinking palm wine," he said. "You shouldn't say that. But this is a democracy now. So go ahead."

Things were very different a decade ago when Strasser, then a captain known for winning disco contests, headed up a group of twentysomething officers demanding unpaid salaries.

The protests snowballed into a popular coup that ousted dictator Maj. Gen. Joseph Momoh in April 1992.

Strasser was hailed as a savior by many. Even today, Freetown residents say he changed things for the better, drastically cutting inflation, cleaning up the capital and putting the long defunct national TV station back on air.

He and his junta - known as "the boys" because most were only in their 20s - scored points by waging war, if unsuccessfully, on the nation's hated rebels.

But Strasser was no angel. The young ruler was widely criticized when his government executed two dozen alleged coup plotters without trial on a Freetown beach.

Strasser promised to hand over power in democratic elections in 1996. But he was beaten to the punch by his No. 2 man, Brig. Julius Maada Bio, who overthrew him in a bloodless coup in January that year.

Strasser was forced into exile and soon ended up in Britain, where the United Nations arranged a special scholarship for him to study law at Warwick University in Coventry.

University spokesman Peter Dunn said the former dictator spent 18 months at the school before dropping out, saying in a letter that he'd run out of money.

Media reports at the time said Strasser slipped away to London and changed his name to Reginald to avoid the press and potential enemies. In 2000, his student visa expired and he was deported.

Soon after, he made his way back to Sierra Leone, which is only now emerging peacefully from a decade of civil war in which rebels abducted children into their ranks and killed, raped and maimed tens of thousands of civilians.

Unlike many of the world's former heads of state, however, Strasser was not treated to a generous government stipend or given a plush mansion or bodyguards.

A house he built for himself on the edge of town was burned down by aggrieved soldiers in 1999, so he moved into his mother's two-story house across the street.

The government says Strasser is not entitled to benefits because he took power by force. Strasser concedes the point but says he should be treated better.

Last year, the government called on citizens not to throw stones at the former head of state, who without a car, was wandering around Freetown on foot.

But Strasser is still immensely popular among some, and may be able to capitalize on it. In five years, he'll be eligible to run for president - something he says he's considering.

Charismatic, muscle-bound and six-foot-two, he's the dominant figure at the bar he often frequents, which stands tenuously together with bamboo poles and plastic sheeting somehow obtained from the U.N. World Food Program.

Whatever the future holds, Strasser will always have his high-profile past to relish.

"Oh it was good. I was the youngest ... head of state in the whole wide world," he said with a guffaw, looking around the bar for support.

Then he leaned forward with a wide smile and slapped a high-five on the hand of someone sitting across from him.

"An obsessive anti-abortionist who murdered a security guard has quoted Bible passages to a Supreme Court judge to try to prove he is not psychotic." Fwded from forteana...

Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 07:15:31 +1000
From: Peter Darben (spam-protected)
To: "Forteana List": ;
Subject: Chock full of sig potential

my favourites are the first and second-last paragraphs

----- (from The Herald Sun (Melbourne) 26.7.02)

Abortion clinic killer: I'm not psychotic By WAYNE HOWELL, Supreme Court reporter July 26, 2002

AN obsessive anti_abortionist who murdered a security guard has quoted Bible passages to a Supreme Court judge to try to prove he is not psychotic.

Peter James Knight, who killed Steven Rogers at a family planning clinic on July 16 last year, said he objected to taking oaths on religious grounds.

In April, a jury found Knight guilty of the killing. Knight was armed with a Winchester rifle and 14 rounds of ammunition.

For months after his arrest, Knight was known as Mr X because he refused to talk to police or reveal his name.

At a brief pre-sentence hearing yesterday, Knight agreed to the publicising of two psychiatrists' opinions and of a letter he wrote to Justice Bernard Teague.

In his letter, Knight rejected psychiatrist Dr Ron Senadipathy's opinion that he was psychotic. He said his opposition to taking oaths was not delusional but was based on biblical scripture.

"Firstly, James, chapter 5 verse 12 says: 'My friends, above all else, don't take an oath. You must not swear by heaven or earth or by anything else. Yes or no is all you need to say. If you ... anything more you will

be condemned," he told the judge in his letter.

Dr Senadipathy told the court Knight's delusion about taking oaths had led to his living in a humpy in a forest so he did not have to take oaths or sign declarations by earning income or claiming social security.

The psychiatrist said Knight was a highly dangerous man who suffered chronic paranoid schizophrenia. "He committed the crime driven by his delusional interpretation of the Bible and moral values he developed accordingly," Dr Senadipathy said in his report.

But another psychiatrist, Dr Justin Barry Walsh, said Knight was not mentally ill, just "odd".

Knight believed taking oaths was childish nonsense and violated the Bible's teachings.

Knight also said he had designed a perpetual motion machine and a better mousetrap, but was reluctant to give any detail for fear of being thought a nutcase.

The case was adjourned.

Herald Sun

EBay comes in handy as a "source of evidentiary ephemera for asbestos litigators":

After a heated bidding war on EBay, Mark Lanier recently paid $2,125 to win a 1941 naval machinery manual. It sounds like a peculiar collecting hobby, but to Lanier it was serious business. The Houston lawyer, who sues companies on behalf of asbestos exposure victims, was bidding against a defense lawyer to get his hands on an evidentiary trophy filled with details on where and how asbestos was used aboard ships.

LA Times, via Gary Stock on the Irregulars list...

Here we go again -- the Dead Russian Composer Personality Test. My result:

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Igor Stravinsky. Known as a true son of the new 20th Century, my music started out melodic and folky but slowly got more dissonant and bizzare as I aged. I am a traveler and a neat freak, and very much hated those rotten eggs thrown at me after the premiere of The Rite of Spring.

HiWAAY's spam-filtering statistics, online.

Har har... a tale of two emails. Take one April 3 2000 post to ILUG:

The concept of revocable email addresses has been around for ages - once you're set up to do subaddressing (such as user+foo@bar.com), it's dead easy to do all by yourself, with the added bonus that you're not dependant on some third party service provider.

Yep, sure I do it myself using virtusertable: jm-latestdodgydotcomstock@jmason.org gets deleted once it gets spammed.

Forget all about it for 2 years...

... and eventually follow up with a 20 July 2002 spam to me:

Long Beach Film Festival - Now Accepting Films & Screenplays

The Long Beach Film Festival is now accepting screenplays and films (short, documentary & feature) in all formats. The winners' work will be reviewed by a committee of established production companies. This is a great way to get exposure and even discovered in Hollywood.

What address was it sent to? Yes, that's right -- jm-latestdodgydotcomstock at jmason.org. Oh the irony.

Good article explaining why the 'distributing objects by class' model doesn't work - found at Morbus Iff's blog.

Collatoral Spammage 2002, a "How much spam do you get?" survey, results here. (found via aaronsw's blog).

Currently there's a neat curve around 21-50 per week, and then a big jump at the 201-400 range, where I find myself (spamtraps not included -- they get more like 30k spams a week ;)

I reckon this jump in the graph is a result of the poll URL being passed around people who are interested in the subject -- who, if my experience is anything to go by, generally find themselves interested because they're snowed under by the stuff.

Anyway, some further reading brings me to two TidBITS articles on the subject: Content
Filtering Exposed and Email Filtering: Killing the Killer App.

For what it's worth, I agree to an extent with Adam and Geoff on the subject: the mail delivery infrastructure should not be clogged up with content filtering, with two caveats. (read on for more)

... Some further reading brings me to two TidBITS articles on the subject: Content Filtering Exposed and Email Filtering: Killing the Killer App.

For what it's worth, I agree to an extent with Adam and Geoff on the subject: the mail delivery infrastructure should not be clogged up with
content filtering -- but with two caveats.

• Unless the user wants filtering to take place: content filtering should be left to the user's discretion. It makes me uncomfortable when I receive mails from some guy I've never corresponded with, asking "who the hell is SpamAssassin and what has he done to my mail?". It's clear in every case that what's happened is that an ISP has installed SpamAssassin with the default configuration, which is oriented towards an end-user on a UNIX desktop, not some poor bought-a-windows-box-a-month-ago newbie.

  There's a bucketload of documentation telling ISPs how to install for their situation, but clearly someone's not reading it, and SpamAssassin gets a bad reputation as a result.

• Unless the filters do something other than bounce or bit-bucket: False positives will always happen, so there has to be some way for the mail to be received correctly if it's an FP. In SpamAssassin, we simply tag the mail, so the user can filter to a separate mailbox and scan those for FPs occasionally, and we document that FP's do happen, and happen regularly.

  Bit-bucketing or bouncing the mail will either (a) mildly irritate some senders ("what do you mean my mail is porn?"), (b) greatly inconvenience other senders (the large-scale TidBITS case), or (c) result in an important mail going AWOL (the worst-case scenario). Not recommended.

With both (not either ;) of those caveats noted, it's a vastly improved situation.

It's worth noting as well that SpamAssassin also takes a "straw that broke the camel's back" approach to avoid the "if mail contains 'Viagra', then bounce it" stupidity. Unless multiple problems are found in the message, it's not filtered. That, along with the automatic whitelist, makes a big difference.

The Spam Has Got To Go -- (link via HtP) --

"I used to think that spam was akin to junk mail that we all get in our physical mailboxes. I once even argued that I got more junk postal mail than junk email. Those days are long gone. It has now become a daily deluge. It is analogous to people driving by your house and stuffing your mailbox with trash and pornographic materials and other insults to your intelligence and your morals. People are advised to get a new email address to avoid the problem. That is analogous to having to pick up your furniture and family and move to a new house. And then within days if not hours, be found and have your mailbox stuffed once again."

The author gets it right, until they hit the paragraph at the end stating (along with Jon Udell) that digital IDs and signed emails are the solution. That's the problem -- one can't wander around telling all your correspondents to rebuild their email systems, and use new methods simply to talk to one. And even then, a whole new -- and scary -- layer of infrastructure needs to be built to issue, guarantee, and revoke the IDs, and let's hope to ghod it's not Verisign ;) It's just not viable.

Damn, the Simputer development effort is running into money problems.

THE SIMPUTER -- whose name is an acronym for Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual Computer -- was launched in April 2001. ... Running on AAA batteries, they included a built-in speaker, microphone, telephone jack and modem as well as USB and smart card connectors. Internet browsers and e-mail applications would be standard. Among software that has been developed for the Simputer are applications covering electronic governance, literacy initiatives and dissemination of health information.

'Nobody has built a computer for the rural and poor people. Also, there is no license for the hardware or software. That is probably the reason for their hesitation.'

Sweetcode.org: haven't looked at it in 6 months, but it's got great stuff, like:

• CRM-114 "is a system to examine incoming e-mail, system log streams, data files or other data streams, and to sort, filter, or alter the incoming files or data streams according to whatever the user desires. Criteria for categorization of data can be by satisfaction of regexes, by sparse spectra, or by other means. Accuracy of the sparse spectra function has been seen in excess of 99 per cent, for 10+ megabytes of learning text".

• Panorama Tools : "Software to View, Create, Edit and Remap Panoramic Images". If I can ever afford to get all my photos printed, I'll need this.

According to BrightMail, spam volume to their traps has quintupled in the last year; from 879,253 messages per month to 4,825,144. Insane. PDF graph here.

Bake, Don't Fry: Aaron Swartz has written a good article about static page generation vs. database-backed websites, with a hefty plug for WebMake.

But he seems to miss the fact that WebMake does all the dep-tracking tricks described in Building Baked Sites -- modulo the odd bug in the dep-tracking code. ;).

"(On July 4) Israeli officials reported that a missile may have exploded a few miles from an EL-AL plane flying over the Ukraine. Over the weekend, however, both the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and Ukraine's National Space Agency indicated that a meteor rather than a terrorist attack may have been the cause of the atmospheric fireball explosion."

Random musing: I saw a memorable meteor strike while I was visiting Fraser Island in Australia -- while walking along in bright sunshine, without a cloud in the sky, a burning fireball streaked across the sky from west to east. It burnt up before it hit the sea, however. Wish I'd got a picture.

Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 09:35:37 +0100
From: Rachel Carthy (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Meteors target Israelis

http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc070802.html

CCNet 79/2002 - 8 July 2002

Only two days before a Space Roundtable at the United States Senate will address "The Asteroid Threat", an atmospheric impact on July 4 (Independence Day) has set off a timely reminder that the impact hazard is not limited to large objects. Last Thursday, Israeli officials reported that a missile may have exploded a few miles from an EL-AL plane flying over the Ukraine. Over the weekend, however, both the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and Ukraine's National Space Agency indicated that a meteor rather than a terrorist attack may have been the cause of the atmospheric fireball explosion.... The latest incident should serve as a catalyst to begin addressing the political, economic and security risks due to smaller NEOs, a perpetual threat that has been neglected for far too long.

--Benny Peiser, 8 July 2002

Hooray! Dug my headphones out from the box where they've been stowed for the last 6 months, found my mp3 backups, and I can finally listen to music again! Current top picks (in a retro style):

• Tribe of Issachar - original dubplate

• Barrington Levy - Under Mi Sensi

• Congo Natty - Champion DJ

• Hyper-On Experience - Lords of the Null Lines

• Sizzla - Praise Ye Jah

Man, I missed good reggae on my holidays -- there's only so much Bob Marley you can take ;)

Biological Warfare and the "Buffy Paradigm".

Any structured intellectual approach to describing this situation (biological warfare) -- and planning for it -- is so uncertain that a valid structure can only be developed as an exercise in complexity or chaos theory. I, however, would like you to think about the biological threat in more mundane terms. I am going to suggest that you think about biological warfare in terms of a TV show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that you think about the world of biological weapons in terms of the Buffy Paradigm, and that you think about many of the problems in the proposed solutions as part of the Buffy Syndrome.

My ghod. It's not quite as bad as Jerry Pournelle and SDI in the 80's, but it's getting there...

"Archaeologists can now say with confidence what life was like for the Roman legionaries stationed at the end of empire: in Carlisle, almost 2,000 years ago - it rained all the time and it stank of fermented fish."

Synchronicity! The fermented fish paste cropped up at the weekend, too. Described in the article as "a luxurious import from Spain and undoubtedly one of the most prized possessions of a wealthy Roman officer" and (in Latin on the amphora) "Tunny fish relish from Tangiers, old", this was made near my parents' house in Torrox in Andalucia, Spain -- or at least, if it was common across Spain, the Torrox version was much prized by the Romans.

Sadly, it's no longer made. But I'm a bit of a fish paste fan -- you can't make decent Thai or Laotian food without nam pla, and for a taste sensation on toast, Patum Peperium ("The Gentleman's Relish") is unbeatable in a steampunk-breakfast kind of way. In fact, the Roman paste sounds very similar. (Link)

Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 09:12:12 +0100
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: Roman sauce

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,751857,00.html

Legionaries' lament of mushy fish

Dig reveals Roman Carlisle

Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent

Tuesday July 9, 2002

The Guardian

Archaeologists can now say with confidence what life was like for the Roman legionaries stationed at the end of empire: in Carlisle, almost 2,000 years ago - it rained all the time and it stank of fermented fish.

The historians assured the mayor of Carlisle that their latest piece of research tasted much better than it looked, which still left considerable room for argument.

The fish sauce, recreated from an authentic Roman recipe, and served up at Carlisle Castle last night, looked appalling.

"It looked frankly like something Baldrick would have served Blackadder. Actually it looked just like mud - lumpy mud," one sceptical diner said. Martin Allfrey, English Heritage head of collections, said firmly: "It did look slightly off putting, but pesto, which everyone likes now, isn't exactly a picture of loveliness either. It tasted - well, perfectly all right. Quite interesting, really."

The broken container of fish sauce, which was a luxurious import from Spain and undoubtedly one of the most prized possessions of a wealthy Roman officer, was one of hundreds of thousands of objects found in a large dig at Carlisle Castle, which turned into one of the richest Roman excavations in Britain.

The condition of many of the finds, perfectly preserved in the sodden soil, was startling. There were almost 10,000 pieces of leather and timber - including dozens of pieces of complex wooden drainage pipes, suggesting that coping with the rain was a signifcant headache for the Romans.

Among thousands of pieces of broken pottery there was a nondescript chunk of the neck of a common amphora, which still had an attached label. In Latin it promised that its contents were "Tunny fish relish from Tangiers, old", "for the larder", "excellent" and "top quality".

Tangiers is believed to have described the style of the sauce, rather than the origin, which was probably Cadiz. The sauce was made of tuna fish chopped into chunks, salted, and then fermented in its own juice packed into a clay amphora - the one at Carlisle would have held at least a gallon of sauce.

For last night's guests this unlovely greeny brown sludge was then diluted with garlic, thyme, cumin, lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil and wine.

Phew! That took a while, and it was only the watch-camera pics. The 1000 "proper" photos may take a while longer to get up. But without further ado, here's some shots from my travels:

• Travelling in Australia (January and February)




• New Zealand (March)




• Thailand and Laos (April)




• Nepal (May)




• India (June)

BTW regarding the Nepal image above: we must have just missed these guys, but their MS-sponsored patches (surely "service packs"? snicker) were much in evidence along the trail.

The evolved keyboard.

Danny O'Brien:

Mac Websites have this quality of I've been exploring and stumbled upon this cool (yet mysterious) trick! How endlessly curious is my strange friend!. Linux sites have much less of this idea of PC as mysterious black box. Tips tend to come with long explanations attached as to why they work, and why all other ways of doing it are Considered Dangerous.

(both via BoingBoing.) BTW I've removed swhack -- which seems to have 404'ed -- and replaced it with Oblomovka and Aaron's blog.

One for Ireland Offline -- the Pew Research Center's report The Broadband Difference: How online Americans' behavior changes with high-speed Internet connections at home.

For broadband users, the always-on, high-speed connection expands the scope of their online activities and the frequency with which they do them. It transforms their online experience. This has led to steady growth in broadband adoption among Net users. Since the Pew Internet Project first inquired about the nature of users home connection in June 2000, the number of high-speed home users has quadrupled from 6 million to 24 million Americans. This places home broadband adoption rates on par with the adoption of other popular technologies, such as the personal computer and the compact disc player, and faster than color TV and the VCR.

The Open Web Application Security Project's Guide to Building Secure Web Applications:

The Guide covers various web application security topics from architecture to preventing attack specifics like cross site scripting, cookie poisoning and SQL injection.

Hotmail users face summer of random email deletion: "Microsoft Hotmail users have been warned that their emails could be randomly deleted this summer, unless they pay UKP 19.99 for extra storage space."

Good NYT article on spam. Worth blogging, despite it's age, for this stat:

A (Federal Trade Commission) survey showed that 63 percent of "remove me" options (on spam mail) either did not work or resulted in even more e-mail.

I've tested this, too, but it's nice to have such an authoritative source to quote.

However, they missed SpamAssassin -- totally off their radar, it seems. I wonder why?

Interesting notes on level design in 3D games. FPS means first-person shooter, TPS third-person shooter. Both refer to the position of the "camera" while you're playing.

In an FPS, realistic room sizes would be pretty much what they are in real life, in a TPS they're closer to double that of real life. If your average bedroom is 4x5 meters and 2.5 meters high, in a TPS the size would be 8x10 meters and the height 4 meters; the great thing about larger sizes is that the characters are easier to control and the spaces don't even feel too big!

But what about furniture? If the room is 150-200 percent of realistic size, surely the pieces of furniture need to be large as well? Not exactly. The best approach really is to make the furniture close to real life scale as the characters in the game are as well of real size -- making the furniture larger would result in the characters looking like children and that's definitely something you should avoid. Please note I'm not saying you shouldn't scale the furniture, but rather than the effect should be kept to a bare minimum; making the pieces 10-20 percent larger than what's realistic still results in close enough real size tables, chairs, couches etc., but it also ensures the rooms don't look overly large. Its also important to remember the spacing between the pieces -- even if they are about real life size, the space between doesn't need to be, go with whatever still looks good and makes the movement of the characters easier.

A good rule of thumb for all this is to make things the player gets near closer to the their real life size. Objects further away can be too large, as it often makes the space look of more realistically sized. Another pointer to keep in mind is a thing they teach people studying architecture: one centimeter on the floor is ten on the wall is a meter in the ceiling - as your gaze is usually downward, you tend notice small things on the ground more easily than larger ones in the ceiling.

Yeesh! taint.org is rapidly turning into BlogAssassin, it looks like. Here's a good SpamAssassin story from Declan McCullagh: Deconstructing Richard Gephardt's releases, by SpamAssassin. 3 WHOLE LINES OF YELLING DETECTED!

Whoops -- another SpamAssassin plug, this time from Peter G. Neumann, moderator of the RISKS Forum. Looks like I'm collecting the entire Internet Secret Cabal at this rate!

I'm back! And I wrote a long, well-thought-out update, and poxy, broken SuSE 8.0 ate it, without even leaving a dead.letter turd. Bastard.

But in the meantime, I must note that it's mind-bogglingly cool to have people like Salon, Bruce Sterling, Simson Garfinkel and Cory at BoingBoing plugging SpamAssassin, and to come back to Ireland to find that dogma, our humble server, got slashdotted as a result!

In passing -- it looks like Danny O'Brien now has a blog called Oblomovka. Worth taking a look at. I'm still struggling through several thousand mails, so for now even adding it to my bookmarks is on the to-do list.

OK, we're back in Pokhara, after a 10-day trek up to the Annapurna Base Camp. Much fun, and much dhal bhat, was had by both of us, despite some initial scariness...

Basically, myself, Catherine and Bhadra our guide, spent a very pleasant first night in Dhampus, the first stop on the 10-day trek. Much rakshi (local millet booze, tastes like watered-down lukewarm vodka) was imbibed, resulting in some seriously ludicrous attempts at Nepali dancing! Thankfully there's no photos.

Next day, we hiked up to the next town, Pothana, over some very leechy trails (top leech tip: cover your boots in salt, they can't stand it). All well and good, until halfway through the town a Dutch guy ran out of a teahouse and stopped us, telling us that an English couple had been attacked in the forest just outside the town -- of course, we immediately went to meet them. The guy had a bloodsoaked bandage tied around his head, and told us how himself and his girlfriend had been walking through the forest towards the next town, Landruk, when a Nepali guy approached. The English guy said namaste (hello), and was rewarded with a wallop over the head with a 6-foot stick! They then stole his girlfriend's rucksack and attempted to take his, but (somehow) he managed to fight them off with half of the stick, then escaped.

With some help (and interpreting) from Bhadra, we found out from the locals that there was a gang of robbers operating in this forest, and a week previous to this, 2 Swedish girls had to be airlifted out because they were too badly beaten to walk! Serious problem -- and one nobody had bothered to inform any of us tourists about!

After this, the 8 tourists, and their respective guides and porters, all trooped out of the village -- Bhadra knew a quick route back to the road over a ridge, which saved us a half-day's walk back via Dhampus. Along the way, the English couple were stopped by what seemed to be the entire village, who were having a very heated conversation. The upshot was that they wanted the English couple to wait around for a half day until some of the men returned from the forest, hopefully with captive robbers in tow, and then the whole lot would get the bus back to Pokhara (the nearest city) and give out stink to ACAP, the Annapurna Conservation Area Project, who run the area. The English couple agreed, and we went on.

Eventually, we sidetracked around to another way up the trek. Myself and Catherine were the only 2 tourists to head up -- everyone else decided to head back to Pokhara, but we were happy enough with Bhadra's assurances that this route was very well-travelled, with no forests and no known robberies (by day at least).

It turned out for the best in the end -- we had an amazing trek, got loads of pictures, saw the entire Annapurna range from the Annapurna Sanctuary, no clouds, and no further robberies. And lots of rakshi!

In the end, we heard through the grapevine that the robbers had been attacked by the local Maoists (the police don't patrol the mountains any more). One 17-year old robber was shot, and 2 more had their arms and legs broken. Rough justice in the traditional paramilitary law enforcement style, I guess. (By the way, the Maoists enjoy about 80% support in the mountains, from what we've heard).

The remaining robbers hightailed it to Pokhara as well (they were not locals), and were eventually arrested. Hopefully the Nepalese law enforcement system can sort it out - corruption is apparently rife, but around here they take these kind of tourist-targeting attacks very seriously -- for many people, it's their livelihood, and it's already suffered a lot this year due to the political situation.

So, a happy ending for us, and a warning for anyone else out there thinking of doing the Annapurna Sanctuary trek -- stick to the known-safe trails, and bring a Nepali guide/porter for extra safety.

Photos will be forthcoming once we get back to Ireland, earn some money, get them developed and scan them in. This could take several months though... ;)

Latest update: (This one's a bit lazy. I'm just editing Catherine's mail to travelogue, adding a few bits.)

We flew from New Zealand to Bangkok on the 18th of April. From Bangkok we headed for Laos via Nong Khai in North-eastern Thailand, on a comfy first-class train carriage again (spoiling ourselves!).

We then made for the Northern Thai border, passing through Vientiane, Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang.

Vang Vieng is a tiny little town which has evolved into a tourist chill-out zone for falang (foreign) and south-east Asian tourists alike -- we spent a nice afternoon with a group of holidaying Thai Buddhist monks, jumping into a deep river pool on a rope swing! (Camera was out of film for that one, sorry folks). Great fun spot though.

Having said that, Luang Prabang was definitely the highlight, I would highly recommend anybody to go there. The city is crammed with Buddhist temples from the 14th to the 21st century counterbalanced with crumbling old french colonial architecture. All of this is set by the Mekong river, filled with river traffic of all descriptions from water buffalo to large chinese sampans.

After this we headed for Thailand, up the Mekong river, on a speedboat. These are a reasonably insane way to travel, hitting speeds of 80km/h, and shooting the occasional rapids! We'd heard it was possible to have to wait a day or two before getting on a boat, so we paid extra to pre-book, just to make sure it was OK.

Things started badly, with an hour and a half delay as our pre-booked tickets didn't really seem to make a difference; eventually we persuaded our boat to get underway, with 7 passengers instead of the promised max 6.

Then we hit Pakbeng, the halfway point, had a spot of lunch, and waited another bonus 1/2 hour, before our driver informed us that we'd be changing boats after the 2 Lao passengers left, leaving 4 falang in the boat. (The passenger details may seem meaningless, but I think he'd never have embarked on the next bit if a local was around to give him a bollocking).

It turned out our new driver had a nice sideline in trading pla beuk (giant Mekong catfish) and live monitor lizards up and down the river! After about 6 stops for chats, buying and selling, our group of 4 was joined by his 2 mates, 2 sacks of live lizards, 2 2-meter-long live pla beuk and another large, live mystery fish, all thrashing about occasionally. I'd wanted to see a pla beuk, but not this much!

Eventually we lost the rag a bit, and I think this got us to Huay Xai before the border post shut for the day. Not a good experience. For reference, our tickets were booked through a ticket agent 2 doors up from the LPB Lao Aviation office (one of our co-passengers booked through the Lao Aviation office itself), and our agent had assured us that these things -- or the ones we could foresee at least! -- were not going to happen. Suggestion: don't bother pre-booking, or if you do, make sure you get these assurances in writing!

Anyway, after that we made it into Thailand, pretty sure we were going to be stuck in Chiang Khong (we'd missed the last bus to Chiang Rai or Chiang Mai, our intended destination). But the good news was that an agent of Namkhong Travel was touting on the far side of the Thai border post, and got 3 of us onto a very comfortable, very reasonably-priced private air-con minibus bound for Chiang Mai -- so see, touts are good! Namkhong Travel certainly get my thumbs-up anyway.

So we are currently in Chang Mai which we missed on our last visit, and ahead of schedule no less. We are not sure exactly what to do next, we have a few days to mess about with, as we are leaving SE Asia on the 11th of May to fly to Nepal.

Writing from an internet cafe in Luang Prabang, Laos. It's sweltering, of course, so we've spent a day hiding in the shadows of wats (temples) and drinking pineapple and lemon shakes.

Despite warnings of bbq'ed rat and grilled frogs, we've found the food to be excellent -- laap and sticky rice being the top favourite at the moment. Back to Thailand in a few days for more top tucker!

Well, we're back in Auckland after zooming around the South Island. Got to meet up with June and Vin in Christchurch for a tasty meal and much yakking about NZ; take a look at that site for pictures and imagine me and Kate instead of June and Vin, and you'll have a good idea of what we've been up to... I haven't even developed the photos we've taken yet!

We did meet up with a mate from Dublin -- Yvonne; we didn't even know she was over here, but there you go. Basically, we wandered into a Dept of Conservation (they manage the National Parks) office in Queenstown, intending to get some ideas of good walks to do, and who was working behind the counter but the girl herself. Small world! So we all did a 20km hike. WTF is New Zealand doing to us?!

Anyway, next update will probably be from Thailand -- we still haven't firmed up an itinerary yet. Let's hope the political situation in Nepal settles down before we get there...

We're currently zooming through New Zealand in the cheapest way possible,

while still managing to see some stuff - very hectic and lots of early 

mornings. Managed to see lotsa dolphins close-up and do a 15km trek to see a crater lake on Mt Ruapehu ("see" in quotes because it was pissing rain and so foggy we could barely see 100m anyway).

Good laugh being had anyway, although there's a danger we'll catch scurvy from all the cheap noodles and packet pasta we're eating...

Help! We're staying in a tent in a malarial swamp for 56 bucks a night! Can you spell rip-off?

But I think that's Byron Bay for you. We'll probably stay here tonight for the night that's in it -- there's lots of bars here (happy Paddy's Day), then rock up to Lennox Head, which sounds like a thoroughly nicer (and cheaper) beach chill-out kind of place. With any luck Lennox Head has less fairy-tat-selling hippie shops, flaming jugglers, etc. as well.

Fraser Island was cool, dingoes spotted, still no snakes or sharks though! BTW I'm not impressed by the "that'll kill ya, mate" stories -- IMO, picnics in th' oul' sod are more beset by stinging insects, plants, and rampaging animals than this place is (Queensland stingers and crocs excepted). Sure, there are dangerous animals out there, but they're extremely rare, whereas the minor irritations of aggressive wasps and nettles are far too common at home. Plus the weather's nicer here ;)

In other news I've just plumped for a copy of Lord of the Rings, so my reading will be sorted for the next few months I think!

La Feile Padraig shona diobh, will update again soonish...

Touching land once again! Much swaying is taking place as the sea legs wear off.

The Whitsundays are lovely -- a great archipelago of 74 islands off the Queensland coast, with beautiful blue seas and white coral and sand beaches. Good fish-watching too: pairs of cuttlefish, some large coral and potato cod, and -- best of all -- a huge (1.5m) Maori wrasse called "Elvis". Catherine got some diving in, but I was surface-bound by a nasty cold so had to stick with snorkeling. Still, I think I saw more fish, ha.

Now off to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island (via the night bus. argh). Another update at that point!

Well, just back from diving on the Great Barrier Reef; lots of good fish, and no attacks from groupers called "Grumpy", thankfully.

Disappointingly, there were no sharks either. But I spotted lots of other good wildlife; a good few green turtles munching coral, lionfish, and some pretty large coral cod.

Great diving! Hopefully the pictures will come out OK once they're developed -- if so, I'll scan 'em. First though, there's sailing in the Whitsundays...

Hi travelogue readers! Quick links for photos (probably will be very infrequently updated...)

• Watchcam photos

• older Thailand travelogue

Just back from tree-hugging around Victoria's national parks; now in Sydney, bodysurfing! Great Barrier Reef next.

(Before I sign off, I have to note NTK calling me an "official NTK hero". How nice is that? Cheers Danny 'n' Dave...)

One last blog. This has to be noted as a worthy aim. Ben writes:

I think it would be mildly amusing if a lot of people were to visit this page and enter star ratings and customer reviews that do a little bit to repay Mr. Myers in kind for what he has so unstintingly given to so, so many people over the years.

Read on for more...

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 12:38:31 -0800
From: ben walsh (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Kevin Myers

It is an indication of the hidebound and inflexible organisation of "The Irish Times" that they continue to give space -- almost daily! --to Myers to vent his bilious spleen. What is particularly upsetting is that the column is in some ways an inheritor of Myles na gCopaleen's brilliantly witty "Cruskeen Lawn" column. The humour is gone -- Myers' concept of this artform is to invent silly names for organizations which advance opinions he holds in contempt, especially those concerning women. Myers' deep-seated loathing for women and schoolboy paranoia about lesbians and female orgasms is always close to the surface, so he sneers about the "Afro-Lesbian Collective of Limbless Veterans of the Falklands War" when he wants a "politically correct" straw man he can savage. Where Myles was inclusive in his satire; mocking "bores" that we could all recognize aspects of in ourselves and our friends, satirizing real people and events in a humourous and effective way, Myers is all vitriol; removed from any semblance of real life and especially the company of women, he inveighs against imaginery opponents wildly, inaccurately and without the benefit of the scholarship he fondly imagines himself to possess.

What Myers is in favour of is hard to say. His slavish admiration of anything English and upper class is evident in his hatred for the "lower orders", as evidenced by this recent screed in which he fawns over the accomplished Fiennes family by asking why there is no "Sharon Fiennes, aged 23, the mother of seven children, in some tower block in London? She too, no doubt, belongs to the nowharmean linguistic subgroup. Her delightful offspring are of various racial origins, with an uncertain number of fathers (owing to drink having been taken on most of the nights in question, nowharmean; maybe even the odd threesome or two, eeer, wotchadoin, o-aw-righthen, nowharmean). Possible fathers might exceed the dozen, though no one really knows, least of all Sharon, and of course none of these fine lads is paying a single penny in maintenance, no-wharmean."

Ignorant misogyny, racism and snobbishness wrapped up into one piece of vicious, hateful bile: that is the writing of Kevin Myers.

Similarly, a recent clerical controversy inspires in Myers a sudden passion for Christian orthodoxy which we never knew he possessed. Comments by a church Dean questioning the ressurection were deemed so off-the-wall by Father Kevin that he depicted a world turned upside-down as a consequence of the Dean's thinking. And, this being Kevin Myers, the female orgasm had to make an appearance as he talked of a nude Mother Superior herding a group of nuns to: "The Anne Summers sex shop, of course ... Batteries or mains, girls?"

It is sad beyond measure that "The Irish Times" publishes this hateful prattle so often and under the "Irishman's Diary" byline, when an occasional guest opinion piece is all the insight into this sick worldview is more than is called for. Sadder still that a publishing house chose to compile and sell a collection of this output. Beyond comprehension that anyone would buy it.

End Of Bloggage, for now -- updates will be infrequent for the next few months. I'm off! travelling back to Ireland via

• Oz
• NZ
• Bangkok, then overland to Laos and Vietnam (hopefully)
• Nepal, then overland to India
• and finally back to Ireland via Frankfurt

there will be intermittent bloggage 'til then. See y'all soon...

Aaagh! I'm going to be diving in the Great Barrier Reef pretty soon. Gotta avoid this bugger -- having my head chewed by a giant 100-kilo grouper called "Grumpy" is not my idea of fun, let alone when it's 20 metres down.

(The diver said:) It came from underneath me. I never saw it coming. Then it was just 'bang' and I was inside the fish's mouth. It ripped off my regulator but my mask was still on and then, just as suddenly, it let me go. ...

(The dive instructor said:) Giant grouper have very powerful jaws. Grumpy could have crushed Andre's head like a soft peach and snapped his neck like a twig. That's why I think Grumpy was only being playful.

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 10:01:07 -0000
From: Mark Pilkington (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: "Grumpy was only being playful"

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,3660475%255E2765,00.html

How I survived being gulped by a giant fish

DOWN IN THE MOUTH: Swedish tourist Andre Ronnlund is lucky to be alive after being swallowed by a giant grouper

FRANK THORNE

27jan02

A MAN who was swallowed by a fish while diving on the Great Barrier Reef has told of how he was "stalked" by the creature which tried to make a meal of him.

Swedish backpacker Andre Ronnlund, 24, thought he was going to die with his head in the mouth of a giant grouper while diving at Yongala, off Townsville, last month.

"In the beginning, it was fun," he said, speaking for the first time of his bizarre ordeal. "Me and my diving buddy had never seen such big fish.

"But then it came right up to within inches of our faces and followed us everywhere we went. I felt it was a little bit threatening and I didn't like it."

Running short of air, Mr Ronnlund decided to signal his diving buddy that he was going to surface.

That's when the 100kg grouper - a local legend called Grumpy estimated to be 80 years old - made his move.

"I was hit from underneath and everything suddenly went black. My breathing gear was shredded. I was inside the mouth of this big fish and I blacked out," he said.

"At first I thought it was a shark. I didn't see it coming. I didn't know what hit me.

"I was as helpless as a prawn on the proverbial barbie and I thought, 'This is it', and I would end my days as fish food.

"I was stuck in its mouth and it was squeezing pretty hard. I felt the blood running down my neck and I couldn't move. I was in great pain, just waiting to die."

Mr Ronnlund was about 20m down when he was attacked.

"It came from underneath me. I never saw it coming. Then it was just 'bang' and I was inside the fish's mouth. It ripped off my regulator but my mask was still on and then, just as suddenly, it let me go."

As he reached for his emergency air supply, Mr Ronnlund had to put the boot in as Grumpy came back for another bite.

"I gave him a kick between his eyes and he swam back towards the bottom."

Mr Ronnlund, who had been blase about stories of the dangers of Australian wildlife, is believed to be the only person to report a grouper attack.

Dive instructor Merv Ruggeri, of Adrenalin Dive company, said Mr Ronnlund was lucky to be alive.

"Giant grouper have very powerful jaws. Grumpy could have crushed Andre's head like a soft peach and snapped his neck like a twig. That's why I think Grumpy was only being playful."

--

Mark Pilkington (spam-protected)

---

"The blood is the life, but electricity is the life of the blood.'' Dr Carter Moffat, 1892

---

--- http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk :Strange Attractor http://www.forteantimes.com :Fortean Times online http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk :Magonia online http://www.kosmische.org :Kosmische Club

The Turkish Star Wars. I reckon this has got to be seen.

What can anyone say? "The Turkish Star Wars" makes film criticism moot. From the early days of the flickering shadow scenes in the Lumiere Brothers's shorts through today's digital cinema, there has never been a film quite like this. Help us, Obi Wan Kenobi...help us!

Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 11:13:05 +0100
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: The Turkish Star Wars

http://www.filmthreat.com/Reviews.asp?File=ReviewsOne.inc&Id=2341

THE TURKISH STAR WARS

by Phil Hall

1982, Un-rated, 85min, Shocking Videos (spam-protected) (10/26/2001)

The Turkish film industry has a curious tradition of appropriating Hollywood classics and remaking them on a budget roughly equivalent to the price of lunch at a neighborhood kebab shop. Devoted readers of Film Threat will recall "The Turkish Wizard of Oz," which tossed the MGM classic over an Istanbul rainbow and into a realm of utter surrealism, and there are also Turkish-based versions of "Star Trek," "Tarzan," "Superman" and even "E.T." lurking about.

However, none of this knowledge could possibly prepare you for the jaw-dropping insanity of "The Turkish Star Wars." This film is not actually a scene-for-scene remake of the George Lucas landmark, although it shamelessly pirated the special effects footage from the 1977 original and tacked it into a feverish nightmare of celluloid dementia which needs to be seen if only to prove how far the minds of lunatic filmmakers can run. Prepare yourself, because the only way to appreciate "The Turkish Star Wars" is to follow the storyline through its labyrinthine lunacy.

Long ago in a Turkish-speaking galaxy far, far away, the universe is being imperiled by a quartet of evildoers: two bush-haired men wearing Mardi Gras costumes, a slutty babe dressed as Cleopatra, and a blue robot with an ambulance light on his head. (I am not making this up...I could not possibly make this up!) Their fleet of spaceships go to war against the flying saucers of a heroic group of rebels, and for several minutes the screen is filled with F/X footage from a battered print of "Star Wars."

... and so forth to the horrid climax: ...

Now it's time for a showdown between our golden gloved good guy and the entire cast of miscreants. A huge rumble takes place in an open field, with the villains getting their heads decapitated left and right. While this is going on , footage from the outer space battles in "Star Wars" is repeated, along with scenes from a film about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. After much derring-do and chopping, the bad guys are vanquished and everyone lives happily ever after. The man with the golden gloves goes back into outer space, leaving his chemically-enhanced blonde lady friend behind to clean up all of the severed heads.

What can anyone say? "The Turkish Star Wars" makes film criticism moot. From the early days of the flickering shadow scenes in the Lumiere Brothers's shorts through today's digital cinema, there has never been a film quite like this. Help us, Obi Wan Kenobi...help us!

Gary Stock @ http://www.unblinking.com/ seems to be running Googlewhacking, originally heard of via a post on 0xdeadbeef:

I've gotten addicted to looking for combinations of common words which have the lowest incidence of appearance on web pages, as indexed by google. So far, I have yet to find a set of two common english words which do not appear together on any web pages...

Gary has taken this, and run (far and wide) with it. So here's my attempt: bearnaise destructor: that scores 10600 x 242000 = 2,565,200,000 points.

BTW, I meant to reply to the 0xdeadbeef posting when it came through. This is really a resurfacing of Net Bullseye, created back in 1998 by Harold Chaput:

You and your friends gather around a web browser and go to AltaVista. Now do a search on two words or phrases. .... The first person who enters a search request that comes back with only one found document is the winner.

It's a lot easier than Googlewhacking, since there was less web out there, back then ;) and the phrase addition makes it easy-peasy. Some of our hits:

• +spindoctor +fertilizer (the hit was some kind of Northern Ireland "Peace Book", appropriately enough)

• +freebase +"pogo stick"

• +sasquatch +"vacuum cleaner hose"

• +inflated +"distributed objects everywhere"

• +"ben walsh" +bum

• +"embarrassing anal leakage" +walsh

• +dinner +"baby's kidneys"

Note the predominance of attempts to slag each other off. I'm particularly proud of my "embarrassing anal leakage" (so to speak), aimed right at Ben Walsh. Bullseye!

Chris Blizzard has a blog. Cool.

Even better, it looks like sub-pixel font rendering will be supported in official Moz builds soon-ish, thanks to some blizzard and keithp hackage.

This is good -- it was seriously looking like it was going to be a 'download third-party RPMs' deal for quite a while, based on the Bugzilla correspondence.

Guardian review of a new book about 18th century scottish sex clubs, via forteana:

The Beggar's Benison, the club to which Stevenson devotes his attention, was dedicated to "the convivial celebration of male sexuality".

Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 16:44:19 -0000
From: "Tim Chapman" (spam-protected)
To: forteana (spam-protected)
Subject: Great Scottish wankers of history

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,635688,00.html

The Beggar's Benison: Sex Clubs of Enlightenment Scotland and Their Rituals

David Stevenson

265pp, Tuckwell Press, £18.99

Clubs were one of the 18th century's great inventions. "Clubbable", a word invented by Dr Johnson, was a coinage for the age. For men, the club promised a new form of sociability. Nowadays we associate clubs with reactionary habits, yet once they were self-consciously modern, allowing enlightened gentlemen to socialise outside the narrow confines of family or profession. In a club, men were to express their common rationality and learn social sophistication. And lowland Scotland, whose capital, Edinburgh, was a hub of Enlightenment culture, was the home to many such associations of like-minded citizens.

David Stevenson's mischievous aim is to show that the 18th-century club was not necessarily the polite and proper organisation celebrated in official propaganda. Some clubs were merely "raucous" - the average meeting more stag night than philosophical discussion group - while others were fervently "libertine". The Beggar's Benison, the club to which Stevenson devotes his attention, was dedicated to "the convivial celebration of male sexuality". It was founded in the town of Anstruther in Fife, though it came to have branches in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Its earliest members were customs officers, merchants and affluent craftsmen - leading members of the community. By the end of the century it included churchmen and aristocrats. All were, in their own eyes, modern "defiers of convention", liberated hedonists.

They dined and drank together, delighting in obscene songs and toasts. They had some earnest interest in matters of sex, and texts survive of "lectures" on what we would call sex education. They used the club's stock of pornography and were occasionally entertained by naked "posture girls". And it seems that they indulged in rituals of collective masturbation, participation in this apparently being an initiation procedure.

Masturbation was a preoccupation for the club, and Stevenson remarks that this may speak of the lack of available entertainment in 18th-century Fife. He also makes historical sense of it by describing "the great masturbation panic" that began in the early decades of the 18th century, with physicians in particular warning that onanism was "a major health and social problem". The club's rituals, he thinks, were a reaction against the backwardness of quacks and moralists. Shameless "frigging" was an expression of intellectual freedom.

The evidence of the club's activities includes many odd relics. Among the impedimenta of would-be libertinism are medals depicting naked human figures, plates and bowls with startling genital decorations and seals depicting the club symbol, a phallus with a small bag suspended from it. This made graphic the club's benison: "May prick nor purse ne'er fail you". Forward-looking proponents of commerce, members seem to have been enthusiasts for both free trade and free love. A prize possession was a snuffbox donated by honorary member George IV containing pubic hair from one of his mistresses.

As Stevenson concedes, his theme is not entirely new; associations of Georgian rakes have been described by historians before. Many will know of Sir Francis Dashwood's Medmenham Monks, the so-called "Hell-Fire Club", whose members blasphemously substituted Venus for Christ in parodies of religious worship and cavorted with loose women in the caves of Dashwood's estate.

What Stevenson manages to show is that such associations were, however oddly, some part of Enlightenment culture. Sometimes his enthusiasm to see his libidinous Scottish gentlemen in their proper historical context leads him to pile anecdote and digression promiscuously together. He cannot omit any good story about sex-obsessed Scotsmen, from the obscene versifying of Alexander Robertson in the 1690s to the sexological therapies for which James Graham was imprisoned in the 1780s. But he certainly shows that his 18th-century countrymen were not quite as restrained or "polite" as is usually supposed.