The History of the Universe.....

in 60 Seconds or Less??? That's the title of a video produced by the US National Science Foundation, from an original conception of the Annals of Improbable Research. It's comprehensive, hilarious, and thought provoking.

The video is here. Be warned, it doesn't work in Opera (you have to use IE, I fear) and you need RealPlayer.

The Annals of Improbable Research website has a bit of history on the History. All you need for this is a browser!

Today's funny travel joke

I subscribe to the "Travel Insider", a very incisive report on various aspects of travel throughout the world. It's written by David Rowell, and the URL for this week's issue is here, although I get mine delivered via email.

At the end of this week's newsletter, he said:

"Finally this week, did you hear about the passenger who had three bags to check for his flight to Los Angeles. He asked the gate agent 'Could you please send the first bag to Las Vegas, the second bag to London, and the third bag to Hong Kong?'

"The gate agent said that would not be possible. The passenger replied

"'I don't see why not. That's what you did with my bags when I flew to LAX last week.'"

Sadly, David's newsletter (well worth a subscription for anyone who has ever flown or who ever plans to fly someplace) usually has bad news about travel and the industry in general. But it's news that's important to know. His homepage is here.

Music from the Hearts of Space

I am a devotee of this program, and have been listening to it, on and off, almost since its inception. First it was in New York City, a hiatus in Chicago, then back to listening again in San Francisco, then a hiatus until they placed their program archive on the Web a few years ago. I subscribed to unlimited access, and have been able to hear the programs over the 'net since then. Getting broadband has made it even better.

So imagine my surprise last weekend when their website changed formats and, all of a sudden, I couldn't get access (which I had paid for). I emailed their helpdesk, and got a reply back on the weekend itself (commendable). The old service was hidden under the new interface, but, surprise surprise, it doesn't support Opera. When queried, their support person said: "Thanks, Chris. We do intend to keep the current service active for the foreseeable future, and will most likely integrate the RealAudio streams into the new service. We cannot guarantee support for Opera, however, as it is losing the browser wars. Safari yes, We intend to support Firefox, and of course IE."

I suppose this means that no matter which browser one picks, losing "the browser wars" means that websites will stop supporting it. I am getting a bit miffed with Opera, mainly because it's not very resilient when it comes to detecting site encoding. If the site isn't specific on how it's encoded, Opera doesn't do a good job of discovering what it's encoded in and showing it to the punters as well as it can.

So my options are:

• Go back to IE. I want to resist this; if I have to, I'll save it for Hearts of Space and other inflexible providers.


• Try Firefox. I was not cheered when I read this week that it has more open security problems than IE does.


• Stop listening to HOS. I don't want to do this.

What a pain this all is! While I don't particularly like RealPlayer, I've come to an accomodation with it such that it doesn't intrude on my "computer experience" and only docilely appears when I want it to, and is free.

I suppose I could get a MacMini...but HWMBO isn't keen until I get a new job.