Driven by sheer "vainglorious hubris", the Guardian took pity on the Tories and convened a brainstorming session to come up with a way to relaunch the party. Naturally, they chose to let their readers in on the panel's deliberations and conclusions.

Look, logo, name

Karmarama's new look for the party was red. The message behind this was, they explained, "Why blue? Why not red?" In other words, we are not hung up on colours and old allegiances, and neither need you be. Surprisingly, we all thought that this was brilliant, suggesting a party that was open to change.

Then we changed the party logo, the current one being described by Rachel as "a nasty whooshing thing, like something by a regional train operator". We forbore to remind her just who had brought in regional train operators, and studied instead Karmarama's idea of a fist with the thumb up. Dave explained that this Conservative hand could then be used in a variety of situations, wittily expressing Victory, Sod Off, Cooperation etc. We bought it.

But what about the name? Tim argued that Conservative was a deeply unpleasant word. Ed retorted that Labour wasn't nice either if you had spent 24 hours in it giving birth. Tim suggested the Freedom Party but the rest of us said that we weren't born yesterday.

"Do you have to have a name?" Karmarama asked. "Can't you just call it Tulip or something?" Now, this isn't so far-fetched. The Italian left forms the Olive Tree Alliance, so perhaps the Tories could become the Oak Tree, a symbol of sturdiness, longevity and annual renewal? But this is Britain, land of satire. Imagine what a well-placed dog would do next to an oak.

So we settled for "the conservatives", no off-putting "party" and all in friendly lower case. Oh, and an objection to be lodged very time the word "Tory" is used by the BBC or ITN.

I have to say that my first reaction to this piece was to loathe the emissaries from Karmarama, the advertising agency which volunteered to help out. My second reaction was to laugh out loud at the last stage of the process:

Finally, a leader

The group agreed that there should be one. In which case, said Karmarama, it ought to be someone like Gary Lineker. We demurred, following a desultory discussion taking in Richard Branson and Anita Roddick. Then Gordon told us that the polling evidence showed that the man that women would be most likely to vote for was… Bill Clinton. "It's all about women," he added, "they make or break leaders."

Bill Clinton? With Alan Clark dead, we could only think of one sexy, bad man. John Major. We passed.

[Via Amygdala]

Wired News discovers that the various file trading networks aren't half as reliant on swapping music as they were. Unsurprisingly, porn has (ahem) outstripped music as the hottest commodity to trade.

(What would be truly newsworthy would be a communications medium where porn didn't end up being big business.)

The Periodic Table of Dessert by Andrew Plotkin.

The subtitle – A Scientific and Rigorous approach to patisserie — in Full Color – is about right. Not only does the chart cover all the delights you'd expect in a serious look at desserts (Chocolate, Ginger, Coffee, Banana, Grand Marnier), but Plotkin even finds room for such essential, yet oft-overlooked, elements as Little Silver Balls and Poppy Seed. And finds them just the right place in the sequence.

This topic clearly merits further detailed study, including lots of … ah … fieldwork. I can feel my arteries hardening already…

Lois M Bujold is interviewed by Mike Houlahan, a New Zealand-based journalist, and in the process compels me to add The Curse of Chalion to my wish list.

MH> In The Curse Of Chalion religion is a principal theme. What drew you to create your own pantheon and theology? Particularly, the choice of the theme of sainthood interested me — your definition seems to be deliberately at odds with a 21st century Western view.

LMB> Although Chalion has some roots in 15th century Spanish history, I wanted the book to be set in its own world. I wanted Chalion's Temple to carry out many of the vital social functions performed by real religions in our history, but I also wanted to come up with a theology that was non-dualistic, as I think dualism is a mistake. Although we can imagine good and evil as pure extracts as a thought experiment, they are never actually found that way in reality. So the five gods of Chalion were selected as a number that could not be divided evenly, because the moment you give human beings more than one of anything, they immediately try to set things in some hierarchy of value and position themselves on the "best" side, whether that actually makes any sense or not. Best for what? Of course, this immediately suggested a Chalionese heresy, where people re-invent dualism by selecting the most ambiguous of the gods to be the "evil" one, and they're off and running again. I play quite a bit in the novel with human nature versus reality, best two falls out of three. Also, in Chalion, I reverse the standard dualism of matter and spirit; their theologians are very clear that matter comes first and spirit grows from it.

As if I didn't have enough to read!

[Via Anita's LOL]

From The Guardian's Diary column, quoted in full because it's just priceless:

A setback for the BNP's local election campaign in Medway, where one of its four candidates has been forced to withdraw. One Anthony James Holroyd, candidate for the Peninsula ward, has pulled out, reports the Anti Nazi League website, after his mother Stella discovered his plan, frogmarched him down to the civic centre and made him remove his name from the ballot paper just before the deadline for withdrawal. He's not an embryonic fascist leader, to adapt a line for Stella from The Life of Brian, he's a very naughty boy.

[Via Found]

Fly Guy is a whimsical yet insanely cool Flash animation. A delightful way to wind down after a long, hard day at work. See if you can find your way to the tropical beach and hula dancer.

(Hint – try going up. Then keep going up. But don't be in too much of a hurry. Make sure you take a few detours. You wouldn't want to miss the chance to rock out along the way.)

[Via jann herlihy dot com]

This will probably be utterly dull for anyone who isn't fascinated by American domestic politics, but I can't resist applauding a delightful evisceration of Newt Gingrich by Charles Pierce.

Pace, E.J. Dionne and Jonathan Alter, but there isn't a public figure alive more worthy of undistilled invective than Newt Gingrich, recently resurrected intellectual satrap of the unpleasant, the uninformed, and (very likely) the unshod. I know all of us good liberals are supposed to be battling this out in our shiny armor on the higher plain of our ideals but, sakes alive, how can we do this when somebody rolls back the stone and out staggers, blinking at the daylight, the greasy adulterous king of the Undead, come now to play the role of advisor to Emperor C-Plus Augustus and the rest of the lads and lassies?

Remember the heady days of '94, before Bill Clinton outmaneuvered Newtie until he left Congress wearing a barrel? Newtie – who has yet to learn that a string of adjectives is not an argument – was a towering intellectual figure on the landscape. [...]

There's more – much more – in that vein later in the posting: it's well worth reading to the bitter end.

[Via Avedon's other weblog - scroll down to the entry for Sunday 27 April 2003]

Never mind an iPod, I want a Kalashnikov with a built-in MP3 player.

[Via Charlie's Diary]

Sorry for the relative lack of posting over the last couple of days. I've been very lazy, catching up on some DVD viewing and even buying yet more books for my To Read pile.

First of all, I watched John Carpenter's wonderfully silly Big Trouble In Little China. It's been ages since I've seen it from start to finish, and it was every bit as much fun as I remembered. Kurt Russell's swaggering yet dim hero was good value, and Carpenter deftly handled the mix of humour and drama and funky martial arts action. Plus, the young Kim Cattrall was very hot…

I followed that by finishing off my long-postponed viewing of season 1 of Spaced. I didn't take to the show during its first season on Channel 4, so after being bowled over by the second season I made sure to pick up a two-seasons-for-the-price-of-one DVD set. I'm pretty sure I missed half the pop culture references, but even so it was a remarkably clever – not to mention, very funny – show. I'm looking forward to watching season 2 next time I have a DVD-viewing session.

As far as reading goes, I'd stalled on the book I was reading (Alex Gilliland's A Revolution From Rosinante) and was looking for something new to get my teeth into. Intending to pick up just one book, I ended up with quite a pile: M John Harrison's Light, Elizabeth Moon's Speed of Dark, Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt and Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon. I've started with Robinson's odd little alternate history, depicting a world where the Black Death was a lot more virulent, wiping European civilisation from the face of the world and leaving it to the East to have an industrial revolution and colonise the New World. I'm not usually a fan of alternate history, but Robinson's take on the genre is sufficiently odd to intrigue me and draw me in. It's looking very promising so far.

During a discussion on rec.arts.sf.written of the Hugo nominations, Sean O'Hara presents an explanation for the dreadful ending Steven Spielberg inflicted on viewers of Minority Report. I don't buy it myself, but I can't come up with a better way to rescue the film.

Talking of the Hugo nominations, it turns out that Ted Chiang has declined the nomination for Best Novelette for Liking What You See: A Documentary. With any luck this'll clear the way for Charlie Stross to pick up the trophy for Halo.

How often do you see Ewan MacGregor and Jean-Claude Van Damme mentioned as being up for the same role?

Admittedly it's just the "impresario" who is behind the project thinking aloud about his ideal cast, but it's still a pretty bizarre idea that there's a part out there which could be played by either actor. Not quite as bizarre as the notion that the role of Axel Foley, as played for laughs by Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, was originally intended for Sylvester Stallone, but it's close.

Really Bad Country Song Titles.

• I Changed Her Oil, She Changed My Life
• She Offered Her Honor, He Honored Her Offer, and All Through the Night It Was Honor and Offer
• I Went Back to My Fourth Wife for the Third Time and Gave Her a Second Chance to Make a First Class Fool Out of Me

[Via scrubbles.net - permalinks aren't working, so scroll down to the entry for 16 April.]

If you're going to ring up your insurance company and lie to them about some jewellery having been stolen, it's a good idea to make sure you didn't hit accidentally hit the redial button on your mobile phone before you turn to your colleague and brag about your cleverness. Especially when the insurance company records all calls for 'training purposes.'

[Via Techdirt]

I haven't been able to post much this evening because I've spent much of it fighting with my old PC trying to persuade it to install the drivers required to allow me to network it to my iMac so I can transfer all my personal data files to my new toy. After much juggling of Windows installation CDs and several false starts I finally got TCP/IP over Ethernet working on my old PC, so as I type this I'm FTPing a couple of gigabytes of files across in the background.

I do, however, still have time to point out an image I saw earlier today. Back in March I posted a picture of sunset as seen from space which looked – and turned out to be – too good to be true. Just to redress the balance, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a genuine image of twilight as seen from the International Space Station. Not as sharp and clear, but still mightily impressive. That's one hell of a view they've got up there.

Normal posting should resume tomorrow.

The latest trailer for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is an improvement on the earlier teasers, but still not very encouraging. It may have Arnie in his signature role, and no doubt the SFX will be up to scratch, but look at the downside: no James Cameron or Linda Hamilton, for starters. Then there's the question of whether making Arnie's adversary a female will actually impress anyone: in the wake of Buffy, Dark Angel, Alias, Xena and the like, the sight of a woman wiping the floor with a man in single combat has mostly lost a lot of the shock value it once had.

I'd like to be proved wrong, simply because the first two Terminator films – and especially the first – were memorable examples of high-octane action SF and it would be fun to see the writers pull it off one more time. Instead, it looks like a desperate attempt by Arnie to wring one more payday out of his most lucrative franchise.

In a year without X-Men 2 and two Matrix sequels, T3 might grab my attention, but as it stands I'll be waiting to hear some positive reviews before I venture into the cinema.

[Via Slashdot]

Do you remember Lotus Improv? Dan Hon pointed out a fascinating story about the early development work on Improv and the intervention of Steve Jobs, which ensured that Improv became the one piece of application software which made mere PC users wish they had a NeXT.

If you have no idea what Improv was, this article explains a little of the program's history, but this review does a better of explaining why Improv was a cut above a mere spreadsheet.

[Via ext|circ]

The Onion: New Fox Reality Show To Determine Ruler Of Iraq.

Class.

As the last ever season finale approaches, Joyce Millman poses the question How do you say goodbye to 'Buffy'?

Vampires, hellgods, snake demons – I've watched Buffy battle them all. But they weren't as scary as the knowledge that, very soon, I will no longer have an excuse to put life on hold every Tuesday night. Over the last six years, I've devoted an almost embarrassing amount of time, energy and thought, both personal and professional, to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Now, with only a few weeks left until the May 20 series finale, I'm facing my "Buffy"-less future by burrowing into seasons past, trying to imagine a fitting end to the coolest television coming-of-age horror-fantasy-love story ever told.

There are spoilers for BBC viewers – and possibly for Sky viewers too – I'm not sure how far they are into season 7 – and a certain amount of speculation about how Millman thinks the show ought to end, but if you already have some idea of how season 6 ends and how season 7 goes the article is well worth a look. Not because it springs any major surprises, but because it serves as a reminder of just how good we've had it these last half dozen years, of how clever and witty and exciting and touching and affecting a show Joss Whedon & Co have delivered week after week.

We BBC viewers have quite a wait until we see the 22nd episode of season 7, but it'll still feel as if the TV world's a little less exciting after 20th May.

[NB/- the IHT site uses some very clever HTML which makes it a joy to use if you have a browser that's up to the task, but not so great otherwise. Safari users will find that the page is a bit of a mess, but fortunately I read earlier this evening that Safari's developer has cracked the problem of displaying the IHT site properly. Here's hoping that it won't be long until Safari users can read the IHT comfortably. In the meantime, it's worth firing up Camino or IE to read this article.]

Talking of stunning photographs, this image of a lunar transit by the International Space Station is impressive in a different way.

Not as spectacular as pictures of the Northern Lights, perhaps, but I can't help but look at the ISS in that photo and dream of the day when there'll be a lot more of us up there, hopefully on a permanent basis.

[Via Anita's LOL]

LeRoy Zimmerman has taken some truly spectacular panoramic photographs of Alaskan landscapes. Really impressive work, even in miniature as presented in his online portfolio. The images of the Northern Lights are especially appealing, but he's no slouch at presenting the Alaskan landscape in daylight either.

I just wish I could afford one of his prints. Sky Fire or On a Clear Day would look very good indeed on the wall just behind my iMac.

(One day I'm going to have to venture far enough north to see the Northern Lights for myself. One day…)