| Exploring Online Erotica |
| What Is a Webmaster? |
| Flickering Stars |
| Monaghan Photographic Society |
| Tranquil Landscapes and the Click of the Shutter |
| Juicing that Writing Thing for All It's Worth |
| NYC Restaurant Reviews |
| An Aussie in Bud Selig's Court |
| Bibliophiles |
| The Workers Digest |
| The Oracle of the Nine |
| Biblical Mysteries |
| Git Yer Shovel - We're Agoin' Mammoth Huntin'! |
| Space 1988 |
| SETI Game |
| From the Earth to the Moon |
| Java, Complexity, and Artificial Life |
| Beri's Dinosaur World |
| Dinosaur Details |
| Science Daily |
| Tony Does NOT Want Your Unsolicited Comics |
| Scottish Radiance Moves |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
NASA, in an unexpected and unnecessary bow in the direction of the paranoidiots, has taken extremely delicate measures in re-examining in further detail the supposed face in the Cydonia region of Mars. Mars Global Surveyor is photographing the same area that Viking 1, the probe that discovered the "face" in the first place, did. NASA even released the raw images. You know, with ten times the resolution and a morning sun, it looks nothing like a face. We suppose there are those who say these images were doctored not to resemble a face, and them we ask why wasn't the original face doctored not to look like one too?http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mgs_cydonia.html
It took only four years for this radio-electronics school dropout to engineer the deaths of over 1.5 million people. He died April 15 in a mosquito infested hut, possibly from a heart attack, possibly helped on his way. CNN has a sparse biography, but Pol Pot's historical legacy is best contemplated at the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) site. This project has been put together "to attempt to improve the empirical underpinning of [the death toll] and establish more clearly the human cost of the Khmer Rouge revolution." The piles of data on this site mirror the piles of skulls on the killing fields, but with a coldness and precision which belies the messy business of suffering and death. Educate yourself.
CNN: http://cnn.com/resources/newsmakers/world/asia/pol.html
CGP: http://www.yale.edu/cgp/
http://www.pulitzer.org/
Crypto Design Gone Bad: Cellphone Encryption Cracked
Two UC-Berkeley researchers and a hacker organization have announced that they've figured out how to clone digital cell phones. The hackers obtained documentation about the supposedly secret crypto algorithm used to encode the identity of a phone on an internal chip. It then took the Berkeley researchers about a day to find a flaw and exploit it. "As shown so many times in the past, a design process conducted in secret and without public review will invariably lead to an insecure system," said Marc Briceno, director of said hacker organization. Furthermore, the hackers found evidence that the encryption algorithm was deliberately weakened by not using ten of the 64 encryption bits. The hackers say this implies that intelligence agencies forced upon the industry a weak standard which they've now shown to be exploitable by bad guys who want to steal your phone service. We wish the press release had had more technical details.http://www.scard.org/press/19980413-01/
Crypto Design Done Right: Flaw Found in Proposed Triple DES Standard
In an example of an open crypto design process, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has been working for years on a standard for secure encryption called Triple DES. Researchers had found flaws in several open proposals for the encryption algorithm but were ready to vote on a final standard last fall. Days before the vote, however, another flaw surfaced, and the algorithm is again on hold. This effective peer review process makes it less likely that the bad guys will find a hole in the eventual accepted standard to use to shuffle through your financial transactions. A research paper, "Cryptanalysis of the ANSI X9.52 CBCM Mode", tells the story, but is very technical and not for the math-phobic.http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~biham/publications.html
Entire Willie Nelson Album Contents Online
Country star Willie Nelson's new label, Lucky Records, is teaming up with Audionet, CDnow, and Yahoo! to make the entire contents of his latest album available online. This site has RealAudio and NetShow feeds of the entire CD. Click a button and if you have one of the two plug-ins, you can listen to the songs and decide if you want to buy. If you do, click another button and CDnow will take your order. Here's a concept that deserves to be seriously rewarded. If all labels did this, you'd never again have to buy the latest from your favorite rockers only to find out that drugs and speaker amps turned up to 11 have destroyed whatever's left of their bad music brain filters.http://www.audionet.com/willie/
Name Your Own Price for Airline Tickets
The auction is another capital capitalist method for connecting buyers and sellers. In this case, the commodity is airline tickets. You name your destination and the price, guarantee it with a credit card, and within 24 hours you find out if a major airline wants your business. There are some restrictions - no mileage bonuses earned, non-changeable/refundable tickets - so the service is probably best for flexible leisure travelers.http://www.priceline.com/
ONLINE CULTURE
To enter the Billy Wildhack site, you have to click on an "I'm an adult" link in a wry imitation of the I-know-what-I'm-getting-into-and-I'm-of-age portal to many porn sites (or so we hear). Billy's is not truly a porn site, but a weekly gossip column with news and attitude about sex and erotica on the Net. Our skeptical but dutiful reviewer found an item about an ad banner Microsoft seemingly placed on an exhibitionist's site, and fuss about Web cams and phony JenniCam sites. The text resembles a column in Playboy, and that's a good thing, but there are bits like this: "...you'll want to meet Lynn, a fantasy catfighter who tells us she has 'very very strong legs for powerful painful scissor holds.' For a price, she'll come to your house and show you what she means."http://billywildhack.com/
Corporate webmasters show off with snazzy bells and whistles but when annual reviews roll around, they often feel invisible to the folks in HR who can't decide where to categorize the new media specialist - "Well, you're sort of an editor, and you're sort of a sysadmin...." Selena Sol tries to define the role of the webmaster on her Web page. She breaks the responsibilities into six categories: content creation, architectural design, implementation, visual design, and management. Next time HR asks you for a job description, print this out and hand it to them. More interesting than they sound, these pages also point to useful Web design resources.
http://stars.com/Internet/Web/Jobs/webmaster.html
ART ONLINE
Chaplin, Keaton (Buster, not Michael) and Lloyd (Harold, not Christopher) headline this delightful silent film site. The second tier stars include Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. We found the biographies too skimpy; Fatty Arbuckle's confirms the existence of the scandal that effectively ended his career - and that's all. Mabel Normand's mentions neither the scandal that marked her life nor her early death (she died at 37 of tuberculosis). The site chooses instead to focus on the work of these early stars, offering a few dozen QuickTime shorts from some of the most famous of all silent films. Even the longer ones are all too fleeting, but there's enough selection to keep you in the theatre for longer than you realize.http://www.uno.edu/~drcom/Slapstick/
The Monaghan Photographic Society uses its Web site to tell members and potential visitors about upcoming events, classes, and exhibitions. Fortunately, they've also mounted some of their prize-winning and breathtakingly beautiful photographs in an online gallery. Find your favorite - maybe the delightful "Pink Grass and Umbrella" or the moody "Fence" - for there's photography here for every taste.
http://www.archeire.com/mps/
Tranquil Landscapes and the Click of the Shutter
The whole experience of visiting Jimmy Mac Donald's photography site is, indeed, serene. His photographs are all black and white and he sets off the type by making the headings a minty green color the shade of thick Coke bottles. Although you find out a bit about Jimmy's life and philosophy from the page, the crux of each page is his stunning photography, which has won awards all over North America. He describes some of the steps he takes in developing and printing his art on different pages; amateur photographers may find this site an invaluable resource.http://nunavut.nu/jimmy/jimmy.html
BOOKS & E-ZINES
Juicing that Writing Thing for All It's Worth
Ian MacKenzie writes that Guardianpub Online evolved from the Gaijin Guardian, which he used to keep in touch with his friends around the world while he lived in Japan. The descendant Guardianpub leaves aside Ian's personal accomplishments to wage war on the inanities of everyday life. Ian arranges his humor columns by category, and topics range from taking a Japanese woman to her first pro hockey game to the media circus around Princess Diana's death. Note that there's some adult language and meaninglessly racy pics hidden on the site. Oh, and Ian, we're sure you know this, but that other bagpipe song? It's Scotland the Brave.http://www.geocities.com/soho/lofts/3148
Steven Shaw created his articulate, personal New York Restaurant Reviews because the urban lawyer spends "an alarmingly high percentage of his disposable income on dining out" and because his opinions often stray from those of professional food critics, whose objectivity he questions in light of special treatment lavished by restaurateurs hungry for praise. Steven looks for good service, consistency, courtesy toward newcomers, and ability to handle special requests. Shaw dines at his own expense and accepts no ads on his Web site. He writes for the little guy, but how often can little guys in the Big Apple afford $100 for lunch like he can? Reading these reviews is sometomes like reading about that tropical vacation you've always meant to take. Even so, we wish we had him as a guide whenever we eat out. Don't miss his "Tips for dining out in New York".
http://www.shaw-review.com/
An Aussie in Bud Selig's Court
Shayne Bennett is a baseball player from Australia whom the Montreal Expos currently employ as a relief pitcher. What's it like? Read about it yourself. Shayne posts weekly updates on life in the Show, living in strange places, and the pressures of life as a non-superstar in a forgotten corner of the baseball planet. The Roo Report, as it's called, comes with an archive of past columns, a few video samples, and the occasioanl live chat. Shayne's down-home, brutally honest manner keeps us reading.http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com/special/shayne.sml
We won't even bother telling you what we found in the archives. The current issue is evidence enough of how BIBLIOnline perceives the world. Imagine a semi-scholarly publication in which the two main articles feature Umberto Eco and Jackie Gleason. Eco is a well known bibliophile; Gleason's tastes were narrower, perhaps, and less lofty, but he is still well regarded for the respect he showed his comparatively modest collection. It wasn't too modest a collection, though, or Gleason would never have made Biblio's pages. This e-zine celebrates books - and pretty much anything else ever turned out by a printing press or the hand of the copyist. Aware of popular culture, the articles still speak comfortably about incunabula, rubricated texts, things cabalistic, and Eco's references to semiotics. BIBLIOnline challenges and rewards and - in its own very smart way - lets you in on the out-and-out joy it takes in its subjects.
http://www.bibliomag.com/
Did you know that in 1973 average American workers earned $445 a week, while now they pocket $373? This newsletter explores some of the horrors of work that you don't have time to acknowledge because you're usually so busy... working. The similarities between work and prison, and the isolation of those who manage to stuff it up for the rest of the population (thus making it almost impossible to work out the essential problems inherent in scoial differences) are just some of the issues covered in this left-leaning, slightly anarchist publication.
http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~pac/
As initial trepidation at the notion of accepting advice from non-professionals gave way, we realized we take our friend's advice as gospel, so why not this group of nine? We pressed on, and discovered Dr. Germaine Ord's advice that we should never have started faking orgasms and that we shouldn't have sex with a tampon in. Masi Bantmaari advises against sleepwalking through life. This motley sample of tips will let you know what to expect from the Nine, who appear to be having a grand old time mucking about.
http://www.ebookcentral.com/files/ninemain.mhtml
Bible Mysteries straddles the academic and the flaky. A recent examination of whether Saddam Hussein tries to model himself on Nebuchadrezzar II reinforces that diagnosis - is this scholarly or just plain wacko? The site looked closely at the alleged Bible codes that had their 15 minutes of fame last year, and favored the existence of the codes. With the release of new studies and evidence that the discoverers of the alleged code weren't exactly playing kosher, the site takes a few steps back, then forward, then back again (see the Stop Press link). Biblical archeology and its detailed chronological minutiae - for all that's worth - permeates the site. Check it out. You might like it, or you might not.
http://www.photoad.com/BibleMysteries/
SURFING SCIENCE
Git Yer Shovel - We're Agoin' Mammoth Huntin'!
>From April 13 to May 15, paleontologists from the Center for Indigenous Research in El Paso, Tex., will dig up a mammoth in New Mexico. Best of all, a multimedia crew will be posting the whole operation online. So far, they've gotten a hole in the ground and an official NMB (New Mexican buttload) of snow and rain. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is paleontology in action! Use the delay to read the Dry Gulch site background info and past daily reports.http://www.virtualelpaso.com/archaeology/mammoth/cir_mammoth_intro.htm
Remember netsurfing in 1988? Unless you had clearance, the only way to get online information about the US space program was by dialup to Spacelink, NASA's first public online information service. Today, a communications revolution and four site redesigns later, Spacelink celebrates its tenth anniversary of public access. NASA calls this Web site "an aeronautics and space resource for educators." Even if you aren't a teacher or student, Spacelink is a user-friendly guide with a search engine you can use to get around NASA's many Web sites. "Cool Picks" has some neat links, including "Warp Drive When?", "Send Your Name to Mars!", and "Space Cadet Academy for Kids". Hot Topics rockets you to an amazing variety of news and background. The heart of Spacelink, the Library, houses the electronic publications of NASA's Education Division and a schedule for the agency's educational TV programs. More of us adults would likely have gone into space studies had we had riches such as these in our teen years.
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/
"Who's Out There" puts you at the helm of a space discovery mission, a SETI mission to be precise. The project is intended for advanced fifth graders and above, but would probably interest older inquisitive minds too. The creators give their visitors different options, explaining which options are most feasible and why, and making the visitor do simple math problems in the process. It's sort of like a choose your own adventure game for space. SETI has successfully scaled some big concepts down for little people.
http://www.seti.org/game/
HBO's miniseries "From The Earth to The Moon" comes with a multimedia extravaganza of a publicity site. Over a year in the making, the companion Web site is part history and part entertainment, with a flight simulator, essays, reports from the TV production team, bulletin boards, and "moon movies". The Web site wants to recreate for younger surfers the excitement that surrounded the moon missions followed by their earthbound parents long ago. The exploits of brave heroes on unearthly quests can keep you glued to the tube - and to the monitor, so long as site traffic doesn't slow HBO's server's response to a crawl.
http://www.hbo.com/apollo/
Java, Complexity, and Artificial Life
Computer programmer, outdoorsman, and self-proclaimed "rampant capitalist" Scott Robert Ladd has devoted much of his Web site to the development and meaning of artificial life. Ignore the trite e-mail animations here and you'll find a multifaceted look at complexity science. Ladd gives a philosophical and mathematical slant to natural selection in overviews and essays, book reviews, and interactive Java applets that will perplex, amuse, or enlighten you even if you aren't into theory. Tell your math-whiz friends about these deceptively simple gamelike applets. Maybe they'll explain the logic behind them. We can't. Since this is a personal site, expect the incongruous here and there, such as an occasional construction sign and a section about coyotes. Ladd is, in his own words, "seeking creative solutions to intractable problems."http://www.frontier.net/~srladd/
Berislav Krzic combines his artistic talents and his passion for dinosaurs, and we all reap the rewards. Using pencil, acrylics, and gouache, he recreates in intimate detail vanished worlds of ages past. This unusual online encyclopaedia combines artistic skill with deep scientific knowledge. Each illustrated creature comes to life with details of diet, habitat, and behavior. Packed with painstaking attention to authentic detail, this is a wonderful site for anyone with an interest in things scaly and extinct.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1638/index.html
Dinosauria Online offers both reasonably technical articles and simple information about paleontology, especially dinosaurs. Collected by a serious dinosaur enthusiast who's certainly free with his biases, it is a large collection of pictures, definitions, articles, and discussions about the fine details of what is known about the ancestors of everything living today.
http://www.dinosauria.com/
Science Daily makes a good resource for teachers and others. You can look through daily briefs or full articles, scan a week's worth of headlines, post to over 200 relevant newsgroups, search for science books, and even sign up for a weekly e-mail update of breaking news. Nicely laid out, fast and sensible.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
CORRECTIONS
Tony Does NOT Want Your Unsolicited Comics
Tony Isabella thanked us for reviewing his site in "The Comic Book Biz" (NSD 4.08), but he also said we erred. He doesn't review unpublished and unsolicited work. We may have been confused by a contest he was running. Or we were just confused.http://www.wfcomics.com/tony/
We covered Scottish Radiance magazine and its passionate love of Scotland in NSD 4.01. The new URL is:
http://www.scottishradiance.com/