Newsletter

28 November 2001

Hello again, and welcome to those who have just signed up. Here's what's been happening.

Arch-guardian of the nation's morals or meddlesome old ratbag? Either way, Mary Whitehouse died last week. One national newspaper (with no apparent conscious irony) ran a feature on "the rise and rise of designer sex shops" on the same day as it reported her death. Anita Roddick's daughter Sam is opening a new sex shop called "Coco de Mer", aimed primarily at women and designed to be sophisticated rather than smutty. All the same, I bet Ms Whitehouse will be spinning in her grave. If she's been buried by the time the shop opens.

Meanwhile in India a state government project to give Internet access to slum dwellers has found a novel way to curb abuse by teenagers. It seems the 30 information kiosks where the Internet terminals were set up was being overrun with youths surfing through to porn sites. So the partner NGO running the project set up the network so that anyone trying to misuse the terminals had their photograph flashed up on every terminal. Humiliating? Sure. But probably preferable to the solution which shopkeepers opposite one kiosk came up with. As one of them put it, they "caught one person who was misusing the facility and gave him a good thrashing." A bit extreme - especially as it's not that hard to arrive on a porn site by mistake. It's happened to a few people we know - to read about how the problem arises and a possible solution, follow the link below.
Too Much

Please visit the forum, join in the discussions or see if you can answer any of the queries. There's always plenty going on there. This week, for example, a BBC TV producer posted a message asking for old cine camera footage of the Queen for use in a programme to mark her Golden Jubilee. Why not come and have a look?

To keep an eye on what's new, please check the page below - we're constantly adding stuff: what's new

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Till next time...

Happy surfing!

Kay
Editor

Quote:

"To prove his love for her, he climbed the highest mountain, swam the deepest ocean, and crossed the widest desert. But she left him - he was never home."
(Anon., taken from Allan and Barbara Pease, "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps")

This week's exotic word: trousers. Not quite as exotic as all that, perhaps - it derives from the Gaelic (Irish and Scots) "triubhas", which has come down into modern "trews". But the original Gaelic word was singular. Maybe it ought to be "trewse" instead.

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