I've been saving up loads of links for you, but to be honest I've just been too stressed about all the house business to write properly (I must have the wrong brain chemistry), and now most of them have become yesterday's news. I was momentarily disconcerted, I will admit, but then it occurred to me that this obsolescence was in itself a theme. Here, then, are some stories whose time has come and gone.
Did you know the French played pool and dominos? At the same time? The Americans on the other hand mainly stick to their own sports, but they do at least play them well.
Jimmy Wales says students should be allowed to use Wikipedia. Apparently it's much more accurate since they brought in their new peer review system. I say, if you're going to use it, edit it. Not just the facts. Every time you find a spelling mistake, or (more commonly) punctuation errors or inelegant sentence construction, fix it. It's your encyclopaedia too, you know.
Not that you'll have much luck if you live in the countryside. Apparently there's a town country broadband divide, with peasants still having to check the market price of cornseed by an ancient system of relay hollering, while the rest of us get sports updates through transmitters embedded in our lattés. Good. Teach them to drive down our roads in their SUVs, sneering at the litter. Haven't they got any starlings to kill?
Here, Ben Goldacre is telling us how to fool fingerprint scanners. He points out that the fingerprints you leave can be reproduced, so if they're used as a password, you're effectively leaving a copy of your PIN number every time you touch anything. And that's if the Government hasn't distributed them on free CDs for everyone.
Does all this depress you? Well, at least you aren't any more likely to get cancer.
Soon, a look ahead to Euro 2008.
10/12/07 @ 00:25