Dowbrigade

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden’s Lund University, one of the oldest seats
of learning in Scandinavia, will take a leap into the unknown by appointing
northern Europe’s first professor of parapsychology, hypnology and
clairvoyance.

Almost 30 candidates, including a self-professed Indian
medium and an American named Heaven Lord, applied for the post, financed
by a
donation, whose holder the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has joked will
be a "Ghost Professor."

The first professor, to be appointed by Lund University Dean Goran
Bexell, is expected to start work in 2004, faculty secretary Kerstin
Johansson
told Reuters.

from Reuters

If I had known about this site I might have quit smoking reefer years
earlier. Japanese artist A.Kitaoka will leave you crosseyed and reaching
for the Pepto Bismal.  Hmmm, I guess that’s less than a ringing endorsement. But
check it out.

Kitaoka
collection via BoingBoing

These guys are probably goosestepping all
the way to the bank, judging by the press they are getting. Alert reader
Dennis Moser, following up on a challenge in my
previous post on the topic, has uncoverred the on-line ordering information for this delectable
vintage. 

He reports that once he had the name of the vinyard (Alessandro
Lunardelli) the rest was easy. Watch your mailbox closely, Dennis, your
authentic Nazi hand grenade trophy (hopefully disarmed) should be arriving
any day.

So for all of you closet Nazis, SS wannabes and just plain
neo-fascist wine aficionados who can’t wait to get your hands on a bottle
of this stuff, here are the crucial links:

Alessandro Lunardelli
Vinyard

Actual
Ordering Page (Italian)

Available in Red only.  Personally, I’ll stick to
my Boone’s Farm.

No, not really. But I wish MY neighborhood
firemen wore flashy tin-foil uniforms like these.Actually, it is probably
a high-tech flame resistent, heat deflective self-cleaning micro-fiber
making
them look like basting turkeys.

What they are actually doing is battling to put out the
fire at a Bridgestone Corp tire plant at the Bridgestone Tochigi factory
in
Kuroiso,
north
of Tokyo, September 8, 2003.

from REUTERS/Toshiyuki
Aizawa

width=”329″ height=”500″>

The wife of Lord Lucan has dismissed a
claim in a new book her husband fled to India in 1974 and lived out the
rest of his life posing as a
hippy known as "Jungly Barry"

In the book, Dead Lucky, former senior Scotland Yard detective Duncan
MacLaughlin said he had unearthed evidence solving where the aristocrat
went after his family’s nanny Sandra Rivett was found battered to death
at his London home in 1974.

The Earl’s car was found abandoned in the East Sussex port
town of Newhaven giving rise to the belief, shared by his wife Lady Veronica
Lucan, he drowned himself in the Channel.

But MacLaughlin says in the book, extracts of which have appeared in
the Sunday Telegraph, that Lord Lucan fled to Goa in India, where he
lived a hippy lifestyle as Barry Halpin until his death in 1996.

from
Annanova

Librarians are on front lines against easier government
access to records

BOULDER, Colo. — Librarians are not keeping quiet about the USA Patriot
Act.

The antiterrorism legislation, passed a month after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, allows federal agents to obtain from public libraries the records
of books and other materials circulated to individual patrons if a special
federal court in Washington grants permission as part of a terrorism
or foreign spying investigation.

"Librarians can’t be quiet about this because it’s so fundamental
to what we do," said Carla Hayden, president of the American Library
Association. "As
librarians we are in a position of trust. People know they can come to
us and ask for information, and we won’t judge them."

from
the Boston Globe

Hiwatha Bray in the Boston Globe