Apparently London Underground is going to start perfuming Tube stations. The idea originated in France, where the Metro has been “perfuming platforms for three years with Madeleine, a scent named after one of its smelliest stations.” Starting Monday, Euston, St James’s Park and Piccadilly Circus will hopefully smell of a “fresh watery floral bouquet of rose and jasmine combined with citrus top notes, giving way to strong woody accents and a hint of sweetness in the base” as opposed to the “earthy concoction of sweat, fast food and mouse droppings that is the real l’air du Tube.” I’ll give you a review as soon as I can.

Two positive foot-and-mouth related items today: the government’s chief scientific adviser said that the disease is now under control, and Calista Flockhart’s London stage debut has been postponed indefinitely, partly due to FMD’s effect on tourism. Hooray!

Roger Ebert says the new Crocodile Dundee movie isn’t great, but you could do worse. I also appreciated Ebert’s deft use of Australian expressions. (“Good on ya, mate!”) As a side note, why the heck is Ebert’s site so slow these days? Take my advice – if you actually get the main page to load, open all links in a new window. Otherwise you’ll never get back to the main page again.

Since I seem to get a lot of search requests for it, here’s my official Bejeweled Strategy Guide:

1. Always play on Level 2. It’s impossible to get a decent score on Level 1, and Level 3 is just too darn fast.
2. Getting a high score is less about making single matches and more about making combination moves. Always go for the combo-setup as opposed to the easy score.
3. Make vertical matches whenever possible. This allows for more pieces to fall and gives more opportunities for combo-scores. Matching a horizontal row means that the three rows fall together, and your chances of making another match are smaller.
4. Try working in only one area of the screen at a time, as opposed to jumping all over the place. I find I do better when I concentrate on a smaller area and get every possible match before moving on.
5. The time of day that you play can have a huge impact. If I play in the morning or after lunch when I’m “fresh”, my scores are much higher than when I play at the end of the day (with my brain fried from ten hours of work). Find the time that’s best for you.

I have to warn you though, my personal strategy seems to have a built-in score cap. While I have occasionally broken 10,000 points, 9 times out of 10 my score will hover in the 7000-9000 range. If that’s an improvement for you, go for it.

Just looking through the referrer logs, and I found the coolest thing ever. If you do a Google search on “Ninja swords” for pages within the UK, I’m the sixth result! Sweet.

One of the SMC chicks who participated in the illegal reading of “The Vagina Monologues” wrote a letter to Salon.com defending the play to Camille Paglia. Very cool.

How incredibly weird. A reporter for the New York Observer managed to infiltrate the secret initiation rite of the “Skull and Bones” society at Yale University. This is the same society that both President Bush and his father belonged to, as well as “founders of Time Inc. and the C.I.A.” and “several Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors.” Slate calls the exposé a “great day in the annals of American journalism“. Wasn’t it also a movie starring Pacey?

Let’s see, on Monday Metafilter wondered if George Bush’s new strategy is to “court the Catholics.” I’d say the signs are good… On Wednesday Notre Dame announced that Bush is going to be this year’s commencement speaker. Ugh.

Steve points to an interesting page full of the real facts about the famous McDonald’s spilled coffee case. I always thought it was a frivolous lawsuit, but hearing that a 79-year-old woman had to have skin grafts on 6% of her body changes things a bit.

Oh good Lord. As an experiment, two journalists from the Guardian walked around London asking American tourists about foot-and-mouth disease. Unfortunately we Yanks pretty much lived up to all the stereotypes. These people were idiots (“Is that the one where you have to burn your shoes?”), with the notable exception of one 13-year-old kid.