The Null Device
2000/8/23
Edward Craven Walker recently passed away. He is best known for inventing the lava lamp, but was also an enthusiastic adherent of the nudist lifestyle, and once caused considerable controversy by campaigning to ban overweight nudists.
Curiosity killed the cat: doing a Google search on "OXO OVO" reveals various guestbook quotes (1, 2), and an "Oxo Ovo Supermarket" involved in the making of a video tape titled Melbourne Videowerk Mix. From this one could conclude that they're some sort of vaguely Situationist subversive-art outfit.
In the US, where productivity is everything, there is less and less slack. Real wages have been declining (for people other than CEOs, that is) for some years, and many workers need to work more than one full-time job to make ends meet; workers typically get only one week of leave a year (as opposed to the four in Australia), and now, the lunch break is on its way out, replaced with hastily eaten lunches at one's desk. Given that Australia is a few years behind the US, and there is immense pressure from multinational corporations to globalise working conditions and override those quaint, archaic, inefficient cultural differences, how long until Australians are as overworked and underpaid as Americans? (link via rebeccablood.net)
Some troublemaker has put up an online copy of (parts of) local prankster classic How To Make Trouble And Influence People, full of accounts of subversive pranks. Enjoy.
The War on Pleasure: In Texas, the sale of sex toys is a criminal offense, and possession of more than six counts as intent to sell. Not surprisingly, the heinous fiends who use the devices proscribed are overwhelmingly female. (via Leviathan)
Re: the OXO OVO mystery. Still no explanation (there may not be one, for all we know), though there's a page of photographs of these cryptic inscriptions. (Thanks, Cat.)
Five letters by Lewis Carroll have been found in a castle in northeast England. No word on whether the letters shed any light on whether or not Carroll was Jack the Ripper.