Old blogs, new tricks
“Is 92-year-old Donald Crowdis the world’s oldest blogger?” boingboing.net asked. “Even if he isn’t, his blog is terrific.”
Recent matters granted the benefit of Mr Crowdis’s extensive life experience include cannibalism. “The best food, or at least the best protein, is that which is most like our own,” he says.
“Of course, eating others of our kind gives rise to social problems, and is rare as a result, but it happens.”
Advertisement
downtoearth.blogspot.com
boingboing.net
Nice idea
A new website is aiming to foster more “niceness” between Londoners by issuing tokens to people who are witnessed being generous, polite or courteous.
“Recipients are directed to our website, www.niceties-tokens.com, where they are invited to record their part in the token’s journey in our logbook,” the scheme’s founders explain.
“Hopefully, on each step of their journey they will demonstrate and promote the central message of the campaign: nice perpetuates nice.”
An honourable enterprise, but not everyone bought into the idea. “I give it a week or two before someone registers nastytokens.com,” one hardened Londoner wrote on metafilter.com.
niceties-token.com/
metafilter.com
Advertisement
Web loot
The Metropolitan Police cautioned that fake Middle Eastern archaeological artefacts were being sold on eBay to fund international terrorism. Forged “historical relics”, purported to be genuine artefacts, are playing an important part in a racket worth an estimated £200 million a year in Britain, the force’s specialist arts and antiques unit said.
Genuine items looted from Iraq are also being offered for sale.
met.police.uk/artandantiques
Advertisement
icom.museum/iraq.html
unesco.org
Virtual reality
Second Life, a hugely popular virtual world that has 1.5 million residents, was hit by a rogue program that allows users to make exact replicas of objects inside the game.
“As you can imagine, this copying ability is reeking havoc with the in-world economy,” digitalcrusader.ca wrote.
Advertisement
“Many Second Lifers actually make a ‘real world’ living from it.”
Strange addiction
Do you play banjo when you are alone? Have you played banjo first thing in the morning? Do you tell yourself you can stop playing any time you want to?
“If you answered yes or no to one or more of these questions, you should join us at B.A.,” the Banjo Players Anonymous site implores.
“You must imagine yourself NOT playing a banjo. You must imagine yourself not being the target of such cruel jokes as: A gorilla and a banjo player are walking across a bridge, what makes them different? The gorilla may be on his way to a gig.”
Porn myth
Online pornography may not be as prevalent as widely supposed.
A study conducted for the US Department of Justice, by Philip Stark, a Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, indicated that only 1 per cent of the sites indexed by Google and Microsoft are “sexually explicit”.
Iraq review
As violence in Iraq reached a new peak, the most cited story on the web was a Washington Post article, revealing a secret Pentagon review on America’s options.
“The group conducting the review is likely to recommend a combination of a small, short-term increase in US troops and a long-term commitment to stepped-up training and advising of Iraqi forces,” it said.
Money games
A global shortage of the PlayStation 3, yet to be released in Britain, led to prices soaring on the web. One British trader sold one second-hand console for £1,220 — a 400-plus per cent mark-up on the retail price. “A gamer with a little bit of money is a dangerous individual,” Mousetrap, the Times Online technology blog, said.
timesonline.co.uk