Found on the interweb: Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

This is nice.

Duelling restaurant reviews - and an anniversary

Check it out at Deborama's Kitchen.

Tales from the trail

Reuters on the web has a really good blog tracking the US elections - Tales from the Trail. Check it out.

Ain't Nobody Who Can Sing Like Me - a great podcast

I have only listened to three or four podcasts in my life so far. If I had more time I would listen to a lot more. This one was excellent. And by the way, the CD is great too.

Deborama's WWW Number 29 - Last.fm

I am still very new at this, but I got turned on to this site by the same guy (from the BBC) who forced me to join Facebook. (OK, to be fair, Facebook forced me to join Facebook, he just gave me a link on it.) This week's Wednesday Website of the Week is for music lovers. It's called last.fm and it is yet another possibility for the future of music distribution, consumption and production. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Deborama's WWW Number 9 - Answerbag.com

Answerbag is a wiki or wiki-like site that often comes up if you do a lot of quirky searches (as I do.) It's free to sign up, and members can post a question on literally any topic in the world, not matter how serious or how frivolous. Other members then scan the questions and, if they know the answer, they answer it. I found Answerbag twice. The first time, I was frustrated by the total lack of leaf wipes in all the shops (having been supplanted by Christmas tat) and was looking for a home-made leaf-wipe formula. The second time I was looking for natural remedies to correct a home hair-colouring experiment gone slightly awry. (I can see you thinking Deborama is really too old for such silliness, and you would be right.) Like most participatory web experiences, Answerbag is growing luxuriously and sprouting widgets, gadgets and special interest groups.

Quotes from tribe.net

This may replace my blogging about subject lines of spam e-mails. I have been collecting quotes from conversation threads in the various tribe message boards that I follow. Here are two particularly lustrous gems:

• Yes you could, we need someone to wear out the cat so that she sleeps through the weekend.


• I can weld, but I can't teleport.

Don't you just love Spam?

No, not the strange pink meat-like substance. those anonymous, plaintive, almost poetically subject-lined missives that appear in your inbox, first in twos and threes, then in dozens, scores, maybe even hundreds. Today I got a particularly charming collection of subject-lines:
1Million People Anxiously Sending you $40 Each!
Permit bank rival for your credit
Save much on latest soft names
A Thinking of You Card for you (from Plumping G. Gustav)

Remember 10 September 2001

Eric Lee of LabourStart has an article titled 'End of the Internet dream?' which references a massive study of abuses of online freedom of expression by nearly every country in the world. This was conducted and published by a group called Reporters Without Borders.

UK Google News

Tonight's headlines on UK Google News have not one US story amongst them. You may not think that's remarkable, but it's the first time I've seen that in about two years of reading it. You usually find one or two sneaking in with the World or Entertainment or at least Sci/Tech.

Aljazeerah.info

Aljazeerah is finally available online. I have been trying to access it for weeks and it was always broken. Maybe I was just unlucky? Anyway ...

Guardian Updates Story But Leaves the Same Link - Terrorism Futures are off the drawing board.

The story below was updated at 5:30 pm BST. This link and the one below now go to the same story: Pentagon to scrap plans for futures market in terror. But earlier when I first blogged it, it was a different story, only mentioning the two Senators opposition to it (from yesterday, presumably.) Too bad, I was gearing up for a righteous fight. (For one thing, President Pious-face - how un-Christian!)

Third party movement in the US

Hi, folks. No posts yesterday as I spent most of the day in Chester on a business trip. No, actually I spent most of the day on various trains and a couple of hours in Chester, but you don't want to hear my problems.

Alas, A Blog has posted a copy of an e-mail letter making the rounds amongst Green activists in the US, which is very worth reading. Again, this sounds like the same old discussion that led to the formation of the New Party, of which you do not really hear anymore. Back in the early 1990s, the Greens were all highly suspicious of the "fusion idea" but now they are obviously trying to figure out how to make it work. Good luck to you!

Blogkeeping

As you can see, my links are now restored, and added to. One new link is the link to the small but perfectly formed weblog of Steven Brust, formerly of Minneapolis (like me) and a writer of science fiction and occasional song lyrics (not like me, although I have written one song.) I first became aware of Steven Brust because one of his books was called "Brokedown Palace" and I read it obsessively trying to find if there was any clue as to whether he was or was not a Grateful Dead fan. Finally, I had to give up guessing and go to a panel discussion that he was on, and just ask him. He seemed surprised that I couldn't tell. I believe there was at that time a very small collective of midwestern sf writers that include Steve and also a couple (at the time) Emma Bull and Will Shetterly (who were also on the panel). Some years later, I read and enjoyed books by both of them as well. Then I was briefly associated with Will in a political context when he ran for governor of Minnesota on the Grassroots Party ticket and I was on a committee with the Progressive Minnesota Party. And then not much later than that, my two kids, who were teenagers at the time, introduced me to the Sandman comics and we went to a Neil Gaiman reading (in aid of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund?) and there was music performed there by the Flash Girls, one of whom looked vaguely familiar and turned out to be Emma Bull. (There's a link for Neil Gaiman's weblog and the Flash Girls home page down the side there.) That's what I love about the Twin Cities - it is such a social nexus, all these busy, buzzy, hard-working talented people. You get involved in one or two things, and pretty soon you know everybody.

"Googlewashing" is a new word with a very frightening history. This article in the Register describes how a bland, cleverly apolitical website thrown up by a blogger with super-connections in the tiny subculture of technical blogging effectively neutered a powerful new term : " second superpower", thus instantly (well, in a matter of weeks) depriving the anti-globalism and anti-war organising forces of a concept that had the power to transform thought. Subtle, but creepy.

An alternative news site

According to some sources, the best place to get less-biased news coverage on the war is from Russian spies. There is a website that relays an English translation of news sourced from Russian intelligence with a one-day delay. The site is run by Venik's Aviation. You can even get it straight from the source and (sort of) translated into English. In fact, despite the patchy translation, this site is far more entertaining than the very dry, purely text Venik's site. Best of all are the instant feedback from users all over the world. A lot more content-rich than the average hour of "Faux News".

Yet another linklist and a quote

And now for something completely different. I promised religion and sex. I have a headache just now so here's a little religion. But don't worry, it's not the ugly, bossy, dogmatic kind.

My favourite quote about religion (from memory so sorry if not totally accurate.) Henry David Thoreau was lying in his bed and dying. As parsons were wont to do, especially in those times, especially in religion-drenched early 19th century New England, a parson came to him and asked him if he had made his peace with God. "I wasn't aware that we had quarreled," replied Thoreau.

In that spirit, some of my best links for the spirit:

Ship of Fools
Belief Net (For searchers.)
Swami Beyondananda
My church - Walker United Methodist in Minneapolis

Miscellaneous things of a spiritual nature:
A Homily on the Descent of the Holy Sophia
Ahimsa
Aish Ha Torah - Explore Judaism
Gnostic Society Library
Life of John Wesley
The Julian Meetings

Another linklist

Another good way to get news : News aggregation on the web. Here are three that I use:
Google News (UK edition)
News Is Free
Yahoo News (UK edition)

A linklist

Here are some wildly variant news sources, so you can try to get some balance

The World
Al Bawaba, the Middle East gateway, English version
The Age (Australia)
BBC aka the Beeb aka Auntie
The New York Times on the web (You have to register but it's free, you don't have to sign in, and they pretty much leave you alone, so unless you're really paranoid, go for it.)
USA Today

Some (mostly American) left-of-centre sources:
Mother Jones
The Nation
AlterNet
Sojourners