Banksy

This is an intriguing thing. An anti-establishment, art 'terrorist', who actually needs the establishment ... otherwise what would he rebel against?

Banksy is a grafitti artist from Bristol, UK, who's work is popular, but not neccessarily populist - his choices of subject are too challenging for that: the Western world's reaction (or lack of) to AIDS in Africa, the 'security wall' between Israel and Palestine, inner-city deprevation in London.

The BBC have a brief article about him, but it was actually Alec Muffett who first brought Banksy to my attention some time ago (before the blog post linked above).

Of course, not everybody likes him. Paris Hilton and the Tate Museum of Modern Art (more comments on that subject another time!) have both 'suffered' from Banksy's not-so tender mercies.

Speculators and Prognosticators

There are two columns I love to read whenever they're updated ... one is the Mole. A supposed insider in the world of Formula 1 racing. 'He' (well, it might be a she, one does not know) likes to make the reader believe there's an office in the British government secret services concerned with the inner workings and machinations of the FIA, the racing teams and the associated manufacturers. The really good thing about them is that there's usually a nugget of information about the underlying implications of some of the shady dealing that goes on in the racing world that makes me say to myself, 'is that really what they're thinking at Renault?'

The other column I like is Robert X. Cringely's weekly articles on PBS. He does a similar job to the Mole, but in the world of computing and the Internet. His speculations about what Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sun, et. al. are planning to do next are always entertaining, and they invite the same 'hmmm, I wonder?' reaction from me as the Mole does.

I like that in a writer.