Websites

fantasy world order

fantasy world order

Liberator, protector, protestor, regulator or sceptic? Visitors are invited to select their stance on globalisation issues at this site (above) launched to coincide with the recent IMF/World Bank summit in Prague. An online questionnaire then explores their detailed opinions - so far, more people have protest tendencies than they initially admit. Participants may go on to create the profile of an ideal world leader. The site, backed by the New Statesman, Oxfam and others, follows the pattern of a similar "game" dealing with the London mayoral elections.

Amorios

Se habla espanol? If so, and are conducting an adulterous affair in Argentina, this site may be for you. It offers an online alibi service, arranging elaborate smokescreens designed to allay spousal suspicion of those "playing away". Options include bogus invitations to business conferences, fake attendance certificates and phone numbers with reassuringly conferential sound effects going on in the background. Or as Babelfish (www.babelfish.com) translates: "When it needs an excuse for his escapes, Amorios is its safer solution. Now it is possible to have with other people informal relations with the highest sobriety as far as the security of the encounter to prevent the possibility of being discovered."

Sonny Barger - An American Legend

As yet one can't actually join the Hells Angels online, but one can order Sonny's range of barbecue sauces and salsas while catching up on press reactions to his ongoing book tour. Other Angels sites, such as Big Red Machine (www.bigredmachine.com) flesh out the mythology for fantasists on Honda 70s worldwide, as well as giving details of meetings and rallies for the initiated. Links to other regional chapters include a page for "West England", where buying a calendar will help one member fight a manslaughter rap. But always remember, "HELLS ANGELS and the DEATHHEAD LOGO® are trademarks owned by Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation".

The Bomb Shelters of Plymouth

The Web has a special fascination with the subterranean - old underground stations, catacombs, silos - and this personal site with an educational bent explores the network of air raid shelters constructed in Plymouth at the start of the Second World War. A damply evocative tour of dark corridors, hidden doors, sandbags and graffiti, with a chance for the imagination to run riot: there's even a a "ghost shot" showing a medieval friar lurking in a corner. Elsewhere, a look at the role of US soldiers in the area and tips on "bark rubbing" techniques to record old messages carved into trees by lovelorn servicemen.

Cybercinema

"Cybercinema" refers not to those online mini-movies but the history of artificial intelligence on the big screen. Though in need of an update, a fascinating survey, from early obscurities like Dr Smith's Automaton (1910) through the usual suspects ( Westworld, 2001, Demon Seed) to the 1990s. Classic cybermen turn out to have long lives - the loveable Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet (1956) turned up again not only in TV's Lost in Space but decades later as a bit player in the 1988 non-great Cherry 2000, about an android wife who "short-circuits during a steamy love-making session". Ambitious thematic classifications - Intelligence, Fear, God, Love, Self - and a sound archive with dialogue from John Carpenter's Cartesian bomb in Dark Star as well as the complete sayings of HAL 9000.

websites@dircon.co.uk