"A handful of envelopes; selection for entry to a £50,000 prize draw, and a call for charity from Christian Aid, pen included. Easy. A pre-printed envelope which looks like it might be from my bank. I open it. It isn't. A card-shaped envelope addressed in what appears to be my mother's handwriting, but looking closer it's just a printed approximation of her style (they've extrapolated the '4' rather badly), and besides, she's dead."

The Campaign for Real Advertising starts here, at Upsideclone.

There must be hundreds of tiny things from Interconnected that have made my brain the thing it is today, and many hazy half-interests crystallised by Matt's sudden and infectious enthusiasm for bits of the world (the person/blog boundary blurs a bit, but I'm pretty sure Upsideclone wouldn't have existed without the cast-net of Matt's weblog). Interconnected. Daily, required reading. Long may it remain connected.

The whole thing seems absurdly adjacent to a World's Greatest X mug being presented by a panel of strangers - such a thing would be far more meaningful and interesting if an individual whose opinion I cared for was doing the presenting, and explaining their reasoning. So (at Tom's encouragement, after this came up in email) I'm hereby forging meme #1 of the Subjective Best British Weblog competition, encouraging people to nominate their current favourite and tell the world why. No prizes or vote-tallying, just a meaningful signpost to somewhere worth going. (And this isn't a curmudgeons-only thing; it'd be good to see everyone's favourites.)

"Adopting the Brace Position during airplane emergencies does not improve your chances of surviving an impact. What it does do is preserve the location of your teeth in proximity to your mortal remains in order to aid forensic odontologists in corpse identification."

But wait! h2g2 says that airline authories have recently changed the crash position to something else, because head-between-knees was breaking people's jawbones and making dental identification even more difficult. And other sites say that it's actually for simple passenger safety after all, that people have survived crashes using it.

Given the choice between killing passengers (and knowing which ones) and merely injuring them, it does seem a bit absurd that any airline would prefer a reputation for the former. But I suppose a nasty plane crash is always a nasty plane crash, in the public memory, however many survivors crawl out.

[Update: The Register technically demolishes the tracking-chip idea.]

"Ananda, should any sentient beings in any of the kingdoms of existence, copy down this Dharani on birch-bark or palm-leaves or paper made of papyrus or of white felt, and keep it safely in some scented wrapping, this man no matter how faint-hearted or unable to remember the words for reciting it, but who copies it in his room and keeps it by him, this man in all his life will remain unharmed by any poison of the Maras."

Also interesting that for all its ease and range of distribution, the Internet actually helps kill these things off by denying them any real room for mutation. (Although there was the iWon thing.)

But it's going to be Bush, if anyone, isn't it? Oh dear.