Star Wars webs lack force

www.favorites.com/bailey/index.html

It's obvious when it's pointed out to you, but have you ever noticed how many of the lines from the Star Wars films can be improved merely by substituting one of the words with "pants"? "I feel a powerful stirring in the pants", or, "These aren't the pants you're looking for". And so on. It's a parlour game which has developed enough of a cult following to get its very own Star Wars Pants page. And, if you've got the right kind of sense of humour, you might find it funny for, oh, a good two or three minutes.

Star Wars fan pages have been on the Web for pretty much as long as the Internet itself has been around. The imminent arrival of the three Star Wars prequels hasn't done any harm.

The obsession about the trilogy borders on the alarming. One American, Robert Brown, has amassed an enormous, sprawling website packed with detailed analyses about the film and its various elements. His musings on the Millennium Falcon (www.synicon.com.au/ sw/mf/falcon.htm) alone amount to several thousand words. "I have," he confesses rashly, "been intrigued by the Millennium Falcon, particularly the seemingly insoluble riddle of its interior layout since 1977. Now, at last, I can present the results of my exhaustive analysis, armed with nearly 70 digitised widescreen movie shots."

John Glenn

shuttle.nasa.gov/sts-95/crew/glenn.html

Four times during the week that John Glenn was making his historic second trip into orbit, I received emails from different people suggesting that everybody in the world should dress up in ape suits and we should bury the Statue of Liberty up to its neck in sand. It was a good gag and, scarily, if my experience was anything to go by, just about everybody in the world with an email address was in on it. However, Nasa has been milking Glenn's trip for all its PR value. There is a page devoted to him on Nasa's official site, as well as a host of other links to information about the original Sixties space flights. One of the best links is to the Time magazine archives, which contain a host of the publication's articles about the space race, including original interviews.

Glenn also discusses the mission on his home page (www.senate.gov/glenn/main.html), where he promotes himself as a model for older people: "If my flight inspires other older Americans to strive to set and achieve high goals for themselves, then I think it is a good thing."

Wembley

shakti.trincoll.edu/msharnof/Wembley.html

Wembley Stadium doesn't have an official site, which is an odd situation; given the controversy over the proposed demolition of the twin towers, the owners need all the PR they can get. For the moment, fans have to settle for this self-styled unofficial Wembley page, which has a series of artists' impressions of the new stadium and a brief history of the venue.