AP
Professor Tim Darvill of the University of Bournemouth, right, and Professor Geoff Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries begin an excavation inside the stone circle of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, Monday March 31, 2008. Video from Day One

The Stonehenge dig: follow it live at the BBC, which, along with Smithsonian Networks -- offering their own set of videos -- is funding the gentle excavation.

Story: The Lourdes of ancient Britain? Dig aims to reveal Stonehenge's purpose "Faith in power of stones may be key to unlocking mystery of ancient site"

Maev Kennedy in today's Guardian:

The first excavation for more than a generation at Stonehenge began yesterday, looking for evidence that the most famous prehistoric monument in the world was the Lourdes of the bronze age, where the sick and troubled sought healing from the supernatural power of bluestones brought from west Wales.

Although the trench will be only 3.5 metres long and a metre deep, archaeologists expect to find the foundation holes of the very first stone circle, built more than 4,500 years ago and then altered over centuries. With luck they will find enough organic material, including pollen grains, snail shells and fragments of the antler tools of the builders, using techniques developed since the last excavations, to allow them to date the monument accurately.

Special permission had to be obtained from English Heritage, guardian of the stones, and the government for the first excavation since 1964. Druids were also invited to give their blessing to disrupting the long sleep of the stones.

More video by Yvette Staelens, a member of the University of Bournemouth excavation team offers a brief, breathless clip shot while she walks inside the stones, and promises "more anon."

Partridges are next: The British House of Lords is leaping into blogging. At Lords of the Blog All none pilot bloggers are actual Lords and Baronesses.

Lords of the Blog is an experimental project to encourage direct dialogue between web users across the world and Members of the House of Lords. Commissioned by the House of Lords, the pilot project is conducted by the Hansard Society who are working directly with Members of the Lords to bring their blogs to the wider online audience.

Background on the project from Ross Ferguson, a blogger (Basic Craft) who helped raise money for it.while working as Director of eDemocracy for Hansard.

Leading now: Subsidiarity by Lord Tyler of Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, whose official title is Lord Tyler of Linkinhorne but whose real name is Paul.

Access wants to be freer, faster: Broadband Cowboy "As Beltway bureaucrats keep America in the wireless Dark Ages, a spectrum revolt is brewing in the heart of Indian country."

By Brent Hurtig in Wired :

Dewayne Hendricks will go awfully far out of his way to prove a point. He has mounted transceivers on rooftops in Mongolia and traveled to the South Seas to build a broadband network for the island nation of Tonga. His quest: to demonstrate the power of wireless technology - and the way the US government stunts its potential.

Hendricks isn't a government official, a telco CEO, or an engineer. Rather, he's a professional gadfly, who runs the Dandin Group, a consulting firm. With few qualifications beyond vision, chutzpah, and a hands-on mastery of wireless technology, he sits on the FCC's Technological Advisory Council, alongside a who's who of tech executives from AT&T, Cisco, WorldCom, and Lucent. He prefers to operate beyond the reach of US authorities, but his goal is nothing less than a fundamental reengineering of the national wireless infrastructure.

There's no sensible reason why Americans shouldn't have inexpensive, ubiquitous, high-performance broadband access, Hendricks says. Using technologies that are already available or in fast-track development, everyone could enjoy reliable, fully symmetrical wireless at T1 speed or better. No more digital divide. No more last-mile problem. No more compromises. The only things standing in the way are the FCC, Congress, and "other people who just don't get it."

Sitting in his cluttered home office in the Fremont hills above the San Francisco Bay, Hendricks exudes the runaway ebullience of a true believer. "People yearn for the way they communicate on Star Trek," the youthful 52-year-old says. He leans toward a coffee table neatly laid out with Trekker props and grabs one. "I need a communications paradigm shift," he exclaims, waving a toy Communicator, "so that anywhere I go, any time, I can move bits around."

via Doc Searls, who adds,

DeWayne is leaving the country. Going offshore. Because he’s giving up on geeks here in the U.S. We’re not fighting for the Net, he says. And we need to.

The Net is infrastructure, like highways and water. It shouldn't be rationed and sold at high prices.

If noble ideals don't appeal, try this: Everybody should get to shop online. Businesses try so hard to get you in the door of their brick and mortar stores -- why bar the door to their Web stores?