Monday Links from an Enfield DFS sofa (ssh!) Vol. LXXXIV

[vetran]

Toynbee - so the mail tried to FIND OUT some dirt. I suppose its a refreshing change for Polly she just rewrites the labour party manifesto every week.
I imagine phoning her neighbours is a bit too much like real journalism for her. Obviously if they did break in that's totally unacceptable.

[vetran]

Tube map

if it were clear how far apart the stations were it would help you decide to walk.

I approve it does make slightly more sense geographically.

[NickFitz]

"Lunch is for links" - Gordon Netto.

• Revealing the roots of a riot - Whenever a riot occurs, the pundits of the media have their explanations of why it happened: uncannily, these explanations always precisely confirm the pundit's own opinions and prejudices, even though it's quite obvious that all the pundits can't be right. Forty-four years ago, after six days of rioting in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press tried a different approach - a properly conducted, randomised survey of the residents of the stricken neighbourhoods. The findings are probably still more relevant to the past weekend's events in London than any amount of "insight" pieces, whether in the Mail or the Grauniad.
  
  
• Why I’m weird about privacy - "Like everyone, I want to express myself, and I want to control information that describes me. That traditionally involves people, but now organizations have data about me too. Controlling that isn’t easy, but I’m stubborn, so I try anyway." Google employee Ryan Barrett (if that's really who he is) explains why and how he tries to control the data that's collected about him.
  
  
• Dr Elizabeth Thompson of Bristol Homeopathic Hospital finds that pills that contain nothing have no effect (not even placebo effect) - "In March 2006 the University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust announced a trial that was being run by Dr Elizabeth Thompson at the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital... But no results appeared." Homeopathy: medicine for people who don't want to get better.
  
  
• The London Tube Map, Redesigned For A Multiscreen World - "Mark Noad updated Harry Beck's legendary design to be more geographically accurate and easier to read on mobile devices." Interesting work, though I fail to see what geographical accuracy has to do with the Tube.
  
  
• 3,000 Brick Castle Made Entirely From Human Hair! - Lori Zimmer is justifiably excited about artist Agustina Woodgate's latest exhibition: "Made of tightly bound hair bricks, the piece looks like clay at first glance, with varying shades of brown and grays stacked perfectly together. Blonde hair donors provided the bricking for the windows, and the senior set contributed a band of white hair for the tower’s top."
  
  
• All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten - "All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school" - words of wisdom from Robert Fulghum.
  
  
• An everyday story of how the 'Daily Mail' digs its dirt - and how to throw it back - Interesting Polly Toynbee piece from 1996: "It started some weeks ago when I met the Mail's new associate editor, Veronica Wadley... She said, laughing, that they were out to get me. I laughed too - imagining some reasoned confrontation argued out in print. How naive."
  
  
• The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth - "The untold story of the Microsoft antitrust case and what it means for the future of Bill Gates and his company." John Heilemann's November 2000 Wired article includes many insights into the way Microsoft made itself so unpopular in the 1990s: "They basically said, OK, we have this nice tulip sandwich for you," Mike Homer told me later. "You can put a little mustard on it if you want. You can put a little ketchup on it. But you're going to eat the ******* thing or we're going to put you out of business."
  
  
• Terry Gilliam's Do It Yourself Animation Show - The Monty Python animator in a 1970s show with Bob Godfrey explaining how to do cut-out animations, from finding images to making hippopotami bounce up and down:
  
  
  
  
  
• Scaffoldage - "Skeletal archiporn." It is a fact universally acknowledged that no matter how recondite an interest, somebody will eventually create a website devoted to it. In this case, somebody is Shaun Usher and the interest is photographs of scaffolding - but such excellent photographs of scaffolding:
  
  
  
  (Photo by flickr user The Commons)
  

Happy invoicing!