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Week 80

05.19.03

Okay, now that's pretty funny. Techno steampunk humor. "Steamtechno" would likely be the more proper usage.

http://www.museumoftechno.org/index.html

Especially this part. Har har har.

http://www.museumoftechno.org/collections/
franklin/extract_01.html

 

05.20.03

Dave Nalle can font like nobody's business. Actually that is Dave's business.

http://www.fontcraft.com/scriptorium/index.html

 

05.21.03

What happens to dead strands of the Web? Well, they get turned into seafloor observatories.

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/
wo_hecht051603.asp

 

05.22.03

The soul of Labour still beats strongly in Britain, where even the "adult trades and services industry" wants to organize and assure fair play for all concerned.

http://www.oatsuk.com

Here is their big British sex-trade show, in kinky Manchester. Kids, you don't want to look at this site. Not because it's so "adult," but because every single sexual impulse that burns in the human bosom has been marketized, steam-cleaned and put on a catwalk, complete with pricetag.

http://www.erotica-uk.com/Site/

"This way for the fetish teddy bears, ladies and gentlemen; erotic horoscopes here in booth 23A...." Man, what kind of society can do this to itself? The air of latex-covered antisepsis here is really amazing.

 

05.23.03

Okay, I was innocently enjoying that ELF-Aquitaine scandal, but then "Dede the Sardine" boggled my mind.

http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/
dcn-read.pl?citID=60085

http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/
launder/regions/2002/0201elf.htm

"On Monday, Andre Guelfi, a sprightly 84-year-old also known as Dede la Sardine... took the stand. He never finished school, but built a property empire in Paris, pioneered a technique of freezing sardines - hence his nickname - and now lives in Malta, a very rich man."

Okay, fine, so this old Sardine guy froze fish and sold real estate, and...wait a second, he's also a Corsican race-car driver who is married to Pompidou's niece

http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/drv-gueand.html

"In 1992, he was the conduit for L30 million of commissions to German businessmen and lobbyists.... He paid the novelist Francoise Sagan L1 million...."

Okay, hold it right there. Francoise Sagan?! You can't give Francoise Sagan a million pounds! The woman is a bohemian novelist! She's supposed to be hanging out all smoldery-eyed and jaded in some Left Bank cafe with Juliette Greco!

http://www.journalism.cf.ac.uk/2001/Student/
sjoslt/sagan.htm

Francoise Sagan is not supposed to be a player in big-oil shenanigans. She is supposed to be uttering plangent aphorisms, like:

"A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you."
Francoise Sagan

Or:

"Art must take reality by surprise."
Francoise Sagan

Or:

"It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the 'fronts' people assume before one another's eyes, and the 'front' a writer puts on the face of reality."

Huh.... Maybe Francoise Sagan did quietly pocket a zillion bucks to help fleece an oil company.

 

 


Bruce Sterling writes books like Darwin watched animals. Find out more about him, and read tattered electronic copies of Cheap Truth, at the Bruce Sterling Online Index. He lives with his wife Nancy and their two daughters in Austin, Texas.

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