| CYBERsitter Blocks Web Site Advertising |
| Metaphors and Media |
| Hear a Parasaurolophus |
| Israeli Archeology |
| NEAR Earth Flyby Generates Spectacular Photos |
| New Largest Known Prime Number, Find the Next for $1000 |
| Science Infotainment Done Right |
| Satellite Spotting |
| Covert Ops Goes Undercover |
| Comics, not Nazis |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
In the wake of the arrest of two men for having a trunkful of anthrax, we went off to see what we could find out about Bacillus anthracis. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have nice clinical definitions of the symptoms (lesions, respiratory illness, bellyache, sores in the mouth, fever). ABC News tells us why anthrax is not the greatest biological weapon, and includes info on vaccines and a deadly Russian outbreak linked to an explosion at a nearby military biolab. There's even a nice portrait of the bug.CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/other/case_def/anthrax.html
ABC: http://www.abcnews.com/sections/living/anthraxinfection/index.html
Internet Council of Registrars Burgled
On February 15, crooks stole a couple of expensive servers belonging to the Council of Registrars (CORE), a group formed to help introduce competition into the domain name administration system. The thieves took the $70k machines from a cage in the co-location facility operated by Best Internet Communications in San Francisco. Each server weighs about 200 pounds, there were no signs of forced entry, and none of the other cages with equally expensive equipment were broken into. The FBI and local cops are on the case. CNet's article has more details, and CORE may have a press release on their site by the time you read this.CORE: http://www.core.gtld-mou.org/
Best: http://www.best.com/
CNet: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,19220,00.html
NSI Releases New Domain Name Dispute Policy
Network Solutions (NSI), the domain registrar for .com, .net, .edu, and ..org domain names, has just announced a new policy it will use to resolve disputes over domain name ownership. Most of the changes from the old policy are fairly boring, but one attracts attention. Under that change, NSI reserves the right to suspend a domain with 30 days notice for any reason whatsoever. Previously, they would only do so if presented with valid trademarks in conflict with a given domain name. More competition anyone?http://www.rs.internic.net/domain-info/nic-rev03.html
Almost 30 Million Hosts on the Net
Network Wizards have released their latest bi-annual survey of the number of hosts on the Net. They estimate there are now 29,670,000 host computers out there talking to each other. This survey, using a new methodology, can't really be compared with previous surveys, but it seems that the number of machines hooked up to the Net is growing at about 50% per year. If you're interested in Net nuts and bolts, look at the explanation of the new methodology for detail on how to probe the network for connectivity information. The NGI site hosts further in-depth analysis of the Network Wizards data.Survey: http://www.nw.com/zone/WWW/report.html
NGI: http://www.ngi.org/trends.htm
There's still time to savor that king cake! There's also still time to visit some more Mardi Gras sites. MardiGrasNewOrleans trumpets its live coverage of the celebrations. In addition to providing more typical info, the site also serves as home to three krewes, including the celebrity-studded Krewe of Orpheus. The New Orleans from A to Z pages dish up an index of selected holiday and general Crescent City links.
http://www.mardigrasneworleans.com/
http://www.neworleansatoz.com/
State Department Country Report on Human Rights
Every January, the US State Department must, by law, report to Congress on the status of human rights in each of the countries of the world. This year, the full report can be read online and it makes for surprisingly interesting reading given that it comes from a government bureaucracy. As you'd expect, you'll find both hope and tragedy, as some countries claw their way up from barbarism while others sink deeper. You may want to read just the introduction for a general overview rather than the whole massive report. We recommend you check out any country in your travel plans. mlhttp://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/
1997_hrp_report/97hrp_report_toc.html
In days of old, letters were not uncommonly lost on the way to their intended recipients. Correspondents kept letterbooks, with copies of their letters, in case they had to entrust another copy to the whims of Mother Nature and hostile bandits. George Washington, a man of his time in 18th century America, kept such letterbooks. In honor of Presidents' Day in the US, the Library of Congress has released scanned images of 41 of Washington's letterbooks, spanning 43 years of his life. The site, composed as it is from images of handwritten notebooks, could benefit from a text transcription of the contents. It's a fine resource for scholars, but the general Web public would probably be more interested in the contents than in the pure images. Visitors can also peruse scholarly essays and notes on the digitizing project.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html
Letters Make the World Go Around
Among the usual formatting praise and braise, this issue's Letters cover spam and censorship; spam and translators; spam and AT&T; spam, spam, spam, and spam; spam and spam on toast....http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/letters/letter.04.06.html
ONLINE CULTURE
CYBERsitter Blocks Web Site Advertising
CYBERsitter, one of the more popular filter programs designed to keep "harmful matter" from the curious eyes of delicate kids, has produced a new twist in the blocking and filtering debate. The latest release can be configured to block advertising banners in addition to the usual assortment of sites featuring various officially designated unmentionables. If nothing else, this is surely a clever marketing move for the company. Dan Tobias' site takes an amusing, opposing view of CYBERsitter.CYBERsitter: http://www.solidoak.com/cysitter.htm
Dan: http://www.softdisk.com/comp/dan/cybersitter/
Do we actually surf the Net? Is the Net really a highway? Metaphor plays a bigger role than you'd think, and Mick Cunningham explores the phenomenon as it relates to electronic communication. Like old explorers relied on maps, the shapers of the digital revolution rely on metaphors, collective perceptions that truly bear on how we think about it, how we act within it, and what we do about it. Cunningham fears that if we choose incorrect metaphors we may founder like the Spanish explorers who died in the desert after crossing the "Isle" of California's Sierra Nevada in hopes of finding the island's east coast. The simple design helps make this an easy read, so don't let the big words scare you off.
http://members.tripod.com/~mick_cunningham/meta1.htm
ART ONLINE
Art Crimes: Canvasses with Rivets
Cities paint sentimental scenes denoting civic pride on the sides of buildings. Advertising puts cultural icons on brick facades in Brobdingnagian scale. Yet the real masters of art on grand mortared and riveted media - graffiti artists with more urgent messages - still risk arrest and defacement of their works. Art Crimes preserves their works and honors the masters in urban centers around the world. The site includes a glossary, bios, serious analyses, and even employment opportunities. Writers, as the best are called, take pride in individuality, masked in large part by the dramatic loss of scale in the translation to the online medium. Art rivalling the scale of Guernica can't really get the viewing it deserves on canvasses as small as most monitor screens. Selected detail photos would be an appropriate enhancement, and certainly help to preserve work that is always at risk of eradication. Still, these are serious artists, with much more to say than many artists who have the good commercial sense to vandalize only canvas.http://www.graffiti.org/index.html
University of California Museum of Photography
The University of California Museum of Photography offers its visitors access to fascinating and diverse collections. There's the expected look at classic cameras, but the notes seem aimed at photographers who come from the InstaMatic school as well as devotees of Arbus. The exhibitions and collections will catch your eye, no matter what your taste. Choose from a contemplation of high European tradition in modern culture, the absurdities of transplanting one regional (American midwest) architectural style to another area (California), or the ragged energy and aerotechnics of the skate culture. The short, thoughtful essays that accompany each exhibit generally avoid the self-conscious doublespeak of art criticism.http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/default.html
Memory and Sense of Place: Worcester, Massachusetts
Gliding through this site is sort of like watching slides of Spalding Gray's summer vacation, considering the number of non sequiturs. The site grows out of an 8-mm film which Mitchel Ahern produced in 1981. Pull technology mandates your experience as you visit Worcester as it was 20 years ago. Once you've entered the story, you quickly find yourself caught up in the series of black-and-white photographs and their captions. The journey takes 30 minutes. The author claims he's moved out of the Worcester in his mind, but he's just given it a new home on the Web, where it has becomes the Worcester of us all.http://web0.tiac.net/users/mitchela/
We've certainly seen our share of the Web's popular sites as well as its dusty nooks, but we're still amazed at the diversity we find. Diversity certainly describes Hunter O'Reilly - oil painter, genetics researcher, stuffed animal collector, hat aficionado, PhD candidate in cancer research. Meet the female version of McGyver, who talks about herself in third person. Clearly, she's not entirely sure who she is, either. However, her page introduces the visitor to each Hunter avatar separately, and its crisp layout whisks you to all the personalities in a quick click-through. You also meet her teddy bear and - ahem - e-mail him.
http://members.spree.com/hunter/
Sex, Death, Morality - in Other Words, Art
Some artists and critics would argue that true art shocks. Shocking (yes, that's this site's name) provides "a short history and gallery" that peeks at the scandalous works of artists better known for their mainstream masterpieces. Keywords on the main menu hint at the subject matter: meat; urinal; rape; porn; etc. The artists represented here - one to a page, in a graphic format so unobjectionable as to be cryptic and unrevealing - include Rembrandt, Goya, Magritte, Duchamp, and Andy Warhol. The only graphic that might trigger parental anxiety shows a naked couple copulating in soft focus. The creator of the site hopes that "this is a contribution to more tolerance and an open-minded encounter with contemporary art...." The premise holds appeal. If Shocking were a little more shocking, it might do more than raise intriguing questions.http://kultur-online.com/shocking/
Featuring watercolors of architectural decorations such as columns, arches and carvings as his exclusive subject matter, artist Salvatore Ventura displays over 60 works. While we found his technically skilled use of the medium interesting, the choice of subject matter may be an acquired taste. You'll also find an exhaustive essay on the artist's work by William Zimmer, contributing critic of the New York Times.
http://www.salventura.com/
Although the dark background colors make these pages difficult to navigate and read, artist Minako Yamano's unique art makes the journey worthwhile. Her offerings include "circuit board images blown up on Japanese folding screens" and "advertising images composed in the manner of ancient paintings".
http://users.tuna.net/dz/mina/art/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
Miscellaneous London Political Commentary
Most political comment in England falls at extreme ends of a spectrum. Left-wing tabloids hurl abuse at Tories and right-wing columnists write pompous, incomprehensible diatribes in the heavy newspapers. London Miscellany is a different sort of newspaper, elegant, erudite, and politically deadly. It targets no single party or ideal but some of the opinions will startle you. The editorial on the true attitude of the European Union to the UK contains facts and ideas not normally accessible in other media. This online Hyde Park supplies a valuable service to British politics and free speech.http://wkweb5.cableinet.co.uk/0000/London.Miscellany/
Let's start with a quote from the site itself: "PoP shack retains the right to make all stories so esoteric that only they 'get' them, so unintelligible and thoughtless that it can cause temporary lulls in productive thought." We buy it. PoP Shack is something like a cross between a Commonplace Book and editorial columns by a group of what appear to be male high school graduates, but it's worth your while to see the design and to read what's going on in the heads of the soon-to-be 20-somethings - if you can wade through the atrocious spelling of some of the overly excited writers. Whichever one spelled "semantic" correctly in one shot needs to edit this zine. Guys, "discuss" means to talk about something; "discus" is an Olympic event.
http://www.ultranet.com/~shack/
Buddhism, the Web, and the Environment
"On" comes in black and white for the most part, with articles and cultural commentary going in three diverse directions at once: Buddhism, the Web, and the environment. Features from published writers rotate daily to monthly and, like the rest of the site, they brim with provocative thought. Site visitors should plan to spend some time poking into the nooks and crannies.http://www.onweb.org/
Talking Turkey and Other Good Stuff
Whether you're in the restaurant business or you just love to eat out, Restaurant Report On-line is up your alley. This sampling of trade journals has plenty of the nitty-gritty: feature articles such as "Independent Restaurant Survival in a Mega-Chain World" may help your restaurant stay competitive - and may make you more appreciative the next time you dine at your favorite local crabhouse or ribshack. Interviews with wine experts may provide some good conversational tidbits. The Best of the Best and James Beard Dateline pages offer reviews and comments by industry insiders in a few major cities. The Departments page has articles for folks with special interests in coffee, cuisine, or wine, as well as reports for bean counters and managers. The decor here is plain, but the menu is likely to have something that appeals to you.http://www.restaurantreport.com/
When you sign up for Breakfast Serials, you receive a piece of a story each morning in your mailbox. If you come in on the 19th day of a 20-part story, use the supplied URL to get to the the bits you've missed. Each issue is just long enough to read over a cup of coffee for a breather before you start your day.
http://www.breakfastserials.com/
MediaTech Books: Media, Computing, and Communication
This combination bookstore/book review site focuses on a mix of modern media and digital economy works. Books for sale/reviewed here include "1998 Writer's Market", "The New Global Economy in the Information Age", "The Rise of the Network Society", "Java 1.1", and a variety of like titles. A short paragraph describing each book accompanies links to longer reviews. The strength of this clean site lies in the choice of books, but even if modern media and wired economy don't interest you, stop by to check out the cool Java scrolling quote applet at the bottom of their home page.http://www.g-factory.com/mediatechbooks/index.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Despite being relegated to roles as extras in the Jurassic Park movies, hadrosaurs are truly some of the most fascinating dinosaurs to have roamed the Cretaceous. Many genera, including Parasaurolophus, identied themselves with cranial crests housing twisting nasal passages. Most paleontologists believe hadrosaurs trumpeted to each other with these airways. Now, two scientists have used a CT scan and computers to analyze the Parasaurolophus airway and produce a digital version of what they think Parasaurolophus sounded like. While you wait for the download, ponder how long ago this sound was last heard live.http://www.nmmnh-abq.mus.nm.us/nmmnh/parasound.html
In Israel, the earth is so salted with history that archeological sites can result from new development or an unusual drop in the water level. Three hundred major pieces, unearthed at several sites only in the past seven years, make up a major new exhibit at the Israel Museum. The artifacts span time beginning with 20,000 years BCE and ending with the Islamic period of 1000 CE. This online exhibit is small, but the selection of items is varied and the short annotations are packed with historical perspective and context. This exhibit is part of the museum's larger site, so you may want to take a more ambitious tour when you've finished enjoying this one.
http://www.imj.org.il/newant/
NEAR Earth Flyby Generates Spectacular Photos
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft flew by our little planet on its way to a December rendezvous with the asteroid Eros. The probe took some spectacular pictures of the Earth and Moon to calibrate its instruments. The shots show a rarely seen perspective - the south polar regions of both bodies. The Earth photos feature spectacular views of Antarctica girdled by beautiful polar weather patterns. A movie of the encounter will be posted shortly.http://sd-www.jhuapl.edu/NEAR/
New Largest Known Prime Number, Find the Next for $1000
The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search has turned up the 37th known Mersenne prime: 2^3021377-1, a number 909,526 digits long. The prime was found by 19-year-old student Roland Clarkson with a program written by George Woltman and networking software written by Scott Kurowski. We'll use this excuse to remind you about the GIMPS project, in which thousands of Net computers just like yours together work on bits of the prime number search problem. In case you're wondering, primes have important applications in cryptography and number theory. The GIMPS project is one of the most advanced distributed computing projects. If you join, you'll win at least $1000 if your machine finds the 38th largest prime.http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Science Infotainment Done Right
A Science Odyssey is the engrossing, interactive Web companion to a 10-hour TV series broadcast by PBS in January. We were drawn at once into Matters of Life and Death, a review of the past 100 years of medicine and public health with a great Shockwave feature, "You Try It: Doctor Over Time", which gives you medical perspectives on the same ailments from 1900, 1950, and 1998. The other major sections behind the Then+Now menu are Mysteries of the Universe (physics and astronomy), In Search of Ourselves (human behavior), Bigger, Better, Faster (technology), and Origins (earth and life sciences). The sweep, humor, and games that populate this site make it a wonderfully compelling educational destination for kids and grownups. A Science Odyssey may well change your feelings about the word infotainment.http://www.pbs.org/aso/
The German Space Operations Centre offers a set of dynamic Web pages with satellite visibility predictions. Visitors either type in their coordinates and time zone manually, or select a location from a large database of cities. If they then bookmark the following page, the coordinate information is saved in the URL. You can get visibility predictions for Mir for the next 10 days or daily predictions of all visible satellites.
http://www.gsoc.dlr.de/satvis/
CORRECTIONS
The night before we sent out NSD 4.05, the Covert Ops URL worked. Then it didn't. This happens once in a while - a site will disappear just after we go to press. In this case, the directory is still there, so it might again pop up.http://www.covertops.com/
Bebe Williams wrote to clarify that his site ("Klaus Barbie Doll Raises Mattel's Hackles", NSD 4.03) is not devoted to the infamous Nazi deeds of Klaus Barbie. It's rather a comics syndicate with a variety of subjects and humor. Comics, Nazis - after Hogan's Heroes, can you blame us for getting them mixed up?
http://www.tcj.com/online/bullpen/raging12_07.html