Worldwide plotting

President George W. Bush has a new policy: to start a Reign of Freedom around the world. So now we know: the invasion of Iraq wasn’t about getting their oil at all. He wanted to let freedom slither onto the gritty plains of Iraq and grow, menacingly and quietly, until it Ruled.

Hmmm. Something doesn’t fit there. Freedom does not, and cannot, rule — or reign, as he so grandiloquently put it. That’s by definition. What a twat. (He’s even going to send into combat loads of people who have woken up for years thinking they’re retired!)

All news seems to be old news these days, whether it’s a fight on Big Brother (our own Deputy Prime Minister punched a guy a few years ago) or a set of political memoirs (the inches pile up and still nobody’s any the wiser). But did you know that the first ever hand–printed tabloid newspapers were called broadsides? The link leads you to an online collection of them, and there are plenty of stories from the days when a murder story was to be salivated over and the type–gutters dripped with blood. And when wives were sold. I bet if you told one of those people, then, about today’s sites like EBay, they’d have clamoured for a ‘Wives’ section.

Of course, today’s public are more libertarian: wives don’t allow themselves to be sold. They give themselves away on websites all over the world. Heh.

Here’s a site with PDF copies of early printed books. (Including “A Booke of Secrets”. Endearingly silly – they bloody *published* them!) Also: Incoming Signals, a site so wonderfully peppered with typographical linky bullets, you’d think an ant with inky slippers had taken a walk. Stationery design – calm and beautiful and bulletless – at Passing Notes.

The ever–popular ‘bunnies’ series continues: Titanic in 30 seconds with bunnies. And Coudal continues too: with a great redesign and a retrospective of some of its frontpage graphics. Way to go, bro. z.