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Today on Barbelith: “Pearl Harbor’s Fatal Flaw” – A look at the presentation of the human cause in the war movie, following the release of Pearl Harbor. By Tom Armitage.

So the first e-mail was of course tremendously exciting and yet absurdly ill-timed. My renewal notice for barbelith.com arrived this morning, making it nearly two years since I coughed up $70 in a bedsit in Hampstead. Of course that also means that I have thirty days to find $70. Speaking of the barbelith.com, my first excess bandwidth e-mail came through today – which I believe is only going to charge me $4 for May. But I would place money on that number rising over the coming months. And the alternative? Upgrade to high volume or quick serve accounts at a price of up to $250 a month.

I bought 24 Years of Hunger in 1991 because it was in Q magazine’s top 50 albums of the year. I loved it at the time, and unlike a lot of the music that I listened to when I was nineteen, I still listen to it today. In fact I put it on this evening and suddenly remembered how much I liked it. The reviews at Amazon are kind of sweet as well: “Poor Eg, poor Alice – they created a total masterpiece and nobody’s ever heard of either them or it. Wonderful for driving in the dead of night.” Does anyone else own it?

People who diet are profoundly stupid, says BBC. Ok, that’s unfair. What the BBC actually says is that Thinking ‘drains the brain’ – essentially of glucose, and extraordinarily quickly. Traditionally, it has been thought that as long as you have food in your system then the energy supplies to your brain will remain essentially consistent. But this article suggests that when under particular mental stress, individuals can literally use up all the glucose incredibly quickly.

This may explain geek fetish foods high in caffeine and sugar. I know that I can go on mad obsessive intellectual kicks when interested and doped up on regular doses of Coca-Cola – although it hasn’t done my teeth much good. And of course the corrollary of all this (and it is specifically stated) is that: “thinking became slower when blood sugar levels were down” – meaning people on diets are just not the sharpest tools in the box.

Today has so far been foul. I don’t know what the hell I ate but it certainly hasn’t agreed with me. I feel continually betrayed by my biology – it’s like a web-server that hasn’t been keeping up with its security patches. Something always seems to go wrong with it. Maybe it’s more like a PC. I mean, it always gets the job done, and it’s always something small, but it’s always bloody happening. And as usual I just work through it.

Today on Barbelith: “Harry Potter and Capitalism” – being a series of novels in which Harry and Hogwarts are deeply implicated in a capitalist organization of the world.

Happy Birthday to PGP: “Phil Zimmermann became the world’s first cyberspace hero 10 years ago this week. In a public move, which transformed the way Internet users viewed privacy and made him the target of a federal criminal probe, Zimmermann released Pretty Good Privacy on June 5, 1991.”

News of the day: Metafilter hacked – and this put up in its place. Courtesy of Matt.

Headsplurge: Good morning and thank you to Nick Jordan for the new REM album. It’s one of those albums that I’ve wanted since before it came out, but have felt somewhat conflicted about because – you know – it’s REM. But I suppose alternative auguries included the coming-out of Big Gay Stipey. Well, whatever, I’ve got a lot to do today and it’s really going to help me concentrate. Thanks again. More news: Yesterday, all day, I spent two pounds. TWO. That’s impressive that is. Addenda: Paul from Oh Sky Lab is actually called “Paul Love”. What’s that about? Postscript: One review to write, one letter to draft and a thousand e-mails to send.

Another response to Ralph’s anti-GAP piece on Barbelith: “Rebel Without A Sweater”. This particularly piece is extremely long and involved – and written intelligently (albeit with vitriol). And I quote: “The author of this recent cookie-cutter rant against corporate homogenization would be expecting too much from a population that does not owe his opinions such respect – least of all his opinions on what, exactly, makes one diverse.” It’s such an empassioned response, in fact, that I’ve decided to ask the person concerned whether they’d like to rewrite their comments and have them put onto Barbelith.

The site also has a very interesting reciprocal link facility that I think might actually catch on quite well across the net. Keep your eyes peeled – this could be the next BlogVoices.