I try to avoid politics here, but I read an interesting statistic over at The Independent today:
“In the most recent polls, the number of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 plot, which stood at 80 per cent in 2002, and 64 per cent early in 2005, has now slipped to the high twenties – roughly the same numbers, give or take a percentage point, as those of the conspiracy theorists who believe that the Bush administration planned the atrocities, or at least allowed them to happen, in order to further its imperial ambitions in the Middle East.”

It’s always a delight when fun stuff arrives in the mail, and yesterdays delivery was an unexpected treat! I’d pre-ordered a copy of Animation Blast #9 a month ago and had, for the most part, forgotten I’d done so. When I opened the package I was surprised at the size of it! 108 pages of good quality printed stock, chock full of fantastic articles and artwork.

A complete run-down on the book’s content can be found here on the website, but it includes gems such as an article on Disney’s “Tenth” Old Man, John Sibley, on Disney in the 50s, bawdy wartime cartoons, The Three Cabelleros, Korty Films and writer John Dunn.

If you’re in any way interested in cartoons or animation — or even art — history, do yourself a favour and buy a copy!

The top quality of this book, and the tantalising sneak peek over at The Blackwing Diaries, has really made me wish that I’d pre-ordered a copy of Amid’s other new book, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation, as well. It’s out of stock everywhere!

Update: Jenny has just brought to my attention Amid’s posting on the Cartoon Modern blog (I have too many blogs to read and missed this one today!). Amazon should have stock in within the next day or two and will them ship out then. So go buy that too!

There’s a lovely article over at Design Observer today about Halfway, Oregon. A town bought in the 1999 dot-com boom days by Half.com.

Millions of books, planetariums and children’s mobiles across the world today become obsolete as Pluto is demoted to ‘big floaty rock thing’ along with Ceres and UB313.

What would Gustav Holst say? Will there now be two versions of his orchestral suite?*

* It turns out that he wouldn’t have said anything as he died before Pluto was discovered. Even the Pluto part of the suite is actually just the end bit of Neptune.

Update: Kottke’s doing a cool contest to find the best (new 8 planet or old-skool 9 planet) mnemonic, e.g. Man, very erroneous! Moronic jerks shouldn’t uninclude neat Pluto.

I stopped messing with this blog a year ago this month because the thing became corrupt and I couldn’t be bothered to mess about with it to get it working again. Today I thought I’d have a go at fixing it. Turns out that it was bloody easy (uninstall WordPress, reinstall WordPress using the same database), so here it is again. Expect more updates as I fee like it!

Antikewl Daily coming back shortly. Just transferring from Moveable Type over to WordPress.