Say hello to the new Politics and World Affairs icon. It's a detail from one of the photos in the story about high frolics at Holyrood during the swearing in of members. Also in that story, a shot of Rosie Kane, who I confidently predict is going to be the Scottish Socialists' poster girl very soon. An appearance on HIGNFY by the end of next year, methinks.

Our friends at The Register take a look at National Rail's new timetable site. And wish they hadn't. What do they say:
"Useful URLs should never be allowed to die."
"An interface that forces people to lift their hands from the keyboard, roll back a cuff, and press the 'date' button on their watch simply isn't a good interface."
"After typing the date pressing the Enter key achieves precisely nothing."
"If a site can't be used with Lynx it will be hard for an aural browser to cope with it, so the new train times website could be [..] something which may count as discrimination."
"If you happen to have cookies turned off then you just get presented with the form you started with, but with all of your data conveniently removed. That's it."
"It's almost as though somebody wants you not to know when the trains are supposed to be running."

They love it.

We tried a deceptively tricky journey, from Longbridge to Bristol, first Monday in June, returning the next Thursday. The journey requires me to go into New Street, then double back through Cheltenham to arrive in Bristol. Perfectly legal, there's an easement allowing that reversal right through the Cross City South, but it does need that specific rule to be implemented. "We cannot find any trains" reported the website. Added bonus points for accurately reflecting the way Vermin Trains go AWOL at a moment's notice, but minus several million for pretending to know when Vermin Trains will actually go AWOL. So, not only is the design crap, but the results are garbage.

For the definitive results, we looked at the Deutsche Bahn site. That is canonical, and any deviation from reality is the fault of reality (or Network Rail.) Typed in the data, pressed return, confirmed which Bristol station we mean (Temple Meads, natch) and got the data. 1003 from Longy, 1042 out of Neustrasse, into BTM at 1208. Similarly easy to get back.

Speaking of places where trains do run on time, Modern Pentathlon visited Berlin recently, and the Eurosport film set the scene by showing people walking about the Brandenburg Gate. This is the *real* Brandenburg Gate, in Potsdam, not that construction site in Berlin. Muahahahahaha.

The NHL final four is set. In the East, it's 2001 champs New Jersey against the perpetually promising Ottawa. Should be a cracker, and this wasn't a long shot for a conference final at any point in the season.

Over in the West, it's the Anaheim Mighty Ducks against the Minnesota Wild. Hey, stop laughing at the back. No, really, those are the two best teams in the west. Yes, it's an exact re-run of last year's American League baseball final, but this is a genuine matchup. In ice hockey. Between a team that takes its name from a Disney cartoon character and a team that wasn't in existence five years ago. No one seems to have predicted this, least of all Anaheim's owner The Disney Craporation. ESPN's coverage has centred on the usual suspects: Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, Toronto, Vancouver. None of them made the final four. None of them.

The group starts working this week with the Vancouver hip-hop act Swollen Members; next week it begins work with Mr. Bowie. It is scheduled to record with the British girl group Sugababes; it has recently written and produced six songs in Miami with Mr. Martin and has completed one of several songs that it is working on with Ms. Spears. A single it recorded with the folk-pop singer Jason Mraz is climbing the charts.

Ah, the NYT Style Sheet meets the frenetic world of popular music. One of them comes a cropper, and I'm really not sure which.

Why is Alles Wird Gut not representing Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest. Any song that has me singing along half way through the first listen is a surefire winner. Perhaps even against the Uckfield lesbians.

Friday: the US State department says that terrorism is at its lowest level in 33 years, and the actual risk it poses is statistically negligible. Monday: the US leads the G8 claim that terrorism remains a "pervasive and global threat."

Worst. Buffy. Ever.

For the first time in a career that has spanned more than 20 years, Weird Al will not be doing a music video for the lead track. Eminem gave his blessings for the parody of "Lose Yourself," but he felt uncomfortable with Al making a video for "Couch Potato". Eminem sees "Lose Yourself" as an important hip hop song with a strong legacy and is afraid that a Weird Al video might detract from that.

Poodle Hat, Mr Yankovic's first new album in four long years, will be in US record stores May 20. The track listing includes remakes of "Hot in Herre", "Complicated", "Piano Man", "I Want It That Way", and the "Angry White Boy Polka".

The Party suspends George Galloway. The controversial MP for Glasgow Kelvin has not been denied The Party whip because of the smear campaign in the Daily Torygraph, involving ludicrous claims of finding unburned papers in bomb sites. Instead, Mr Galloway has parted company because he called for British combatants to decide for themselves whether Mr Blair's campaign in Iraq was lawful.

In his response, Mr Galloway said that he would represent the new Glasgow Central seat. This seat is also targetted by the thuggish former Party Chairman, "Dr" John Reid (he's not a real John.) Mr Galloway becomes the fifth (count 'em!) Labour MP to be suspended or thrown out of the party since the 1997 election. The list does not include Mr Mandleson, Mr Vaz, Mr Robinson, or Mr Sarwar, all of whom faced actual or potential criminal charges, unlike Mr Galloway. The Party also sends in the hounds of the Commons Standards Committee, a group that appears to have no bearing on the case; and the Charity Commission, investigating one of Mr Galloway's organisations from before it became a charity, and has no bearing on anything.

The UK anti-terrorism laws make it unlawful to plot the overthrow of a foreign government. We have the peg on which to hang Mr Blair.

A large store in the US has suspended sales of three "men's magazines." The publications, based on traditional British fare dating back to 1992, feature scantily-clad ministarlets, bawdy humour, and a few unthreatening page numbers.

POP IDLE US 2 winner Vanessa Olivarez was amongst about 30 animal rights activists demonstrating outside the North American Fur and Fashion Exhibition in Montréal yesterday. "I just don't see why anybody would want to kill 50,000 bunnies just to put them on their back," said Olivarez, an Atlanta hair salon worker who recently posed nude for an anti-fur campaign. Yes, the pink haired cutie posed starkers. The fan club is gnashing their teeth already.

Went out yesterday morning, and took some pictures of Spring. Thumbnails are to the right, click for full image.

Building in the second picture is the Longbridge car plant, seen from the North side. That part of the plant is probably going to be demolished over the next year or two, as it's surplus to requirements.

Building in the bottom picture is the old Longbridge train station, from when it was slap bang on the Bristol Road. The station moved about 400 yards east after the war, but the building was still used for goods traffic until the 1980s. No one has (yet) gotten round to demolishing it.

Everything else is trees and plants within a half mile of home.

The site statistics for April emerge. For various reasons, it's the first time I've compiled them since December, and a few things have changed in the time.

Exclusivity is a double-edged sword; it both identifies people as members of a group, and marks them out as different from the mainstream. Exclusivity builds walls between people, between the few who have and the many who have not; in turn, exclusivity breeds jealousy from the have nots, and can lead to an increasingly isolationist position from those who have.

Neither of those emotions are good for me right now. I don't need to surround myself with people who want what they cannot have. Nor do I need to surround myself with people who wish to hoard what gifts they have. My understanding is that people's talents need to be shared and used for everyone's benefit, not hidden away under a bushel, nor suppressed by those fearful of others showing them up.

For my money, that's what any seperatist grouping does. Divide the world into those who have some arbitrary criterion and those who do not, and split based on that arbitrary criterion. It could be something as trivial as hair colour, it could be something as intrinsic as gender or skin colour. Where IQ tests fall along that spectrum is a matter for debate. All I know is that I don't want to be a part of any group that openly discriminates on that or any other ground.

Mr George Bush recoils after hitting his head, Thursday, May 1, 2003, as he boarded a helicopter at the Occupied White House. Bush was headed for California, which he missed, landing instead aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as it steams toward San Diego. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

In the US, a ruling that fund raisers who knowingly deceive the people they call, pretending that more money will go to charity than is really the case, are committing a crime. Well, duh. More tellingly, the fact that a fund raiser keeps a high percentage of donations - in the case on trial, 85 cents in every euro - is not in itself fraud.

We have a music review: Evolve, the latest by Ani DiFranco.

Who needs the publicity more? Diana Krall, Elvis Costello set to wed.

Bryan Adams shot at in London. Leather jacket sustains minor damage. This is revenge for That Bloody Song.

Chuck Windsor reckons that nanotechnology could reduce the planet to porridge by manipulating matter at an atomic level. The first experiments appear to have been carried out already, on the organ inside Mr Chuck's cranial cavity. As anyone who passed KYTV Physics will know, this is complete and utter scientific illiteracy.