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BREAKING SURF
The Hubble Maintenance Mission
Actually, it's more of an overhaul then simply maintenance. Shuttle Columbia is waiting on the pad at press time, but should be in orbit next week carrying out some major repairs and upgrades on the telescope. The mission will install an advanced camera, an experimental cooling system, and a new power control unit. This last one has a high pucker factor since all the power to the telescope will have to be turned off. Nobody is actually 100% sure that the instrument will power back up when the new power unit is reattached. Space.com has excellent coverage of the STS-109, while NASA has a pretty cool Flash site dedicated to the mission.Space.com: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts109_mission_stories.html
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts-109/flash/sts109.html
The prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) has maintained the Doomsday Clock since 1947. It is a symbol of international nuclear security, advancing on and retreating from midnight, depending on international relations and nuclear proliferation. The clock, established in 1947, was in many ways a reflection of the Cold War, and its movements during the past half-century mirror the tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. These days, although the Cold War has ended, the clock maintains relevance as Third World states actively seek and acquire nuclear weapons. The BAS cites many reasons for advancing the clock from 11:51 to 11:53, among them concerns about the security of nuclear weapons, US abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the crisis between India and Pakistan. A BAS press release has details.
Clock: http://www.bullatomsci.org/clock.html
BAS: http://www.thebulletin.org/media/022702pr.html
You live 89 years, and you're bound to do something somebody remembers. If you're talented or hard-working or lucky, you might do lots of things lots of people remember. For at least two generations, the animations that Chuck Jones crafted have entertained and educated adults and children. Bugs Bunny, the Grinch, and the bipolar Michigan J. Frog number among his many animated subjects. Mere words inadequately frame the magnitude of Jones's achievement in this distinctive American art form but we should remember that he wasn't simply an animator, he was a great, Oscar-winning director. Is it too much to hope that he was laid to rest in a casket from the Acme mail-order company? At Jones's site, a press release announces his passing.
Jones: http://www.chuckjones.com/
Press release: http://www.chuckjones.com/press_release/
Rolling Stone's 50 Favorite Album Covers
Rolling Stone doesn't provide thumbnails, alas, and you have to click through these album covers one at a time. We're not sure how the covers were chosen but it looks suspiciously as if the musical significance of the album contents is what counts, not the artistic merits of the cover. Many of the covers are pretty ordinary as visual art goes. At least Rolling Stone recognizes what an opinionated bunch we are and has allowed for differences of opinion - you can cast your vote for any of the 50 shown here or suggest another. The top three vote-getters are "Tales From Topographic Oceans" (Yes), "Dark Side of the Moon" (Pink Floyd), and, surprisingly, the one we voted for - for its art and the fact that it so succinctly expresses its era - "Rio" (Duran Duran). Hands up, those who waded through them all.http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=505
Feel Like Owning a Baseball Team?
The baseball-unaware may not know the shenanigans going on among baseball owners, but suffice it to say that they want to kill two teams, one of which is being run by proxy by Major League Baseball itself. The team, the Montreal Expos, has been run into the ground by past ownership and in all probability will either be euthanized or moved after the 2002 season, although some white knight may appear to save the diamond in distress. Do you hear hoofbeats? A gang of students at the University of Pennsylvania has initiated an effort to buy the team with donations. Presumably, the effort began as a joke but it has spiraled into the realm of remote possibility. So far, would-be owners have pledged $1.6 million, about 1% of the estimated total cost. Details remain sketchy, but at least one North American sports franchise, the NFL's Green Bay Packers, is already publicly owned. ESPN started the ball rolling.Buy the Expos: http://buytheexpos.poptopix.com/
ESPN: http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/schwarz_alan/1338567.html
Figurine Flim-Flam Figure Flees
Operating from his small store in Detroit, Stewart Richardson spent five years developing a thriving online business selling porcelain figurines on eBay. Thousands of satisfied customers bought collectible miniatures from him, and awarded him a high bidder satisfaction rating. On Jan. 17, after collecting payments from an unusually large and successful auction of what he claimed was an estate collection, he left for lunch. He hasn't been heard from since. He had previously emptied his bank accounts of over $200,000, so police are pretty sure he didn't just fall off a bridge. His business partner/wife feels betrayed and angry, his employees confused, his cheated customers furious. Why would a man suddenly step out of his life like that? No one spends five years setting up a scam, so it doesn't look as if he set out to steal. His soon-to-be-ex-wife says there's some evidence that Richardson may have been a compulsive online gambler who ended up with debts he couldn't satisfy any other way. It's an intriguing story - we all want to know how it ends. See MSNBC for more.http://www.msnbc.com/news/713634.asp
The Most Rooted Towns in America
If you live in Greenville, Ala., you live in the most rooted and socially interactive hometown in the US, according the statistical analysis at the ePodunk Home Towns Index. Using 11 variables to measure the quality of social connections in every county in the US, the site's authors have established a ranking of the 100 best American hometowns. Mind you, given that social interaction is a key variable in the analysis, it's unlikely that anyone in Greenville is home surfing the Web to discover this statistical singularity.http://epodunk.com/top10/home_towns/index.html
Networking in the Marvel Universe
Captain America really does have the best connections. So say researchers at University of the Balearic Isles in Spain who are studying the Marvel comic universe to understand the differences between artificial and natural networks. The researchers have produced a statistical analysis of 6,486 characters in the 12,942-issue Marvel oeuvre. The analysis demonstrates that Stan Lee's universe shares only limited social characteristics with the real world - duh!. Believe it or not, Captain America is the Kevin Bacon of the Marvel universe. Read the Nature (Nature!) commentary for the skinny and a link to the paper proper.Marvel: http://www.marvel.com/
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nsu/020218/020218-17.html
ICANN President's Critique Ignites Controversy
M. Stuart Lynn, the president of domain-name governing body ICANN, has stirred up a hornets' nest of criticism with a long treatise on the current state of the organization. Lynn argues that the public, democratic processes that ICANN uses today do not work. He specifically cites the lack of money and ICANN's lack of control over the 240-plus national domain registration authorities. Lynn calls for abolishing ICANN governing board elections and for more governmental involvement and control. Lynn's opinions are inciting predictably vitriolic reaction from many groups that agree that ICANN is broken, but see a solution in a system more accessible to the individual. A Wired article has an executive summary of the issues and some reaction. Lynn's document, "The Case for Reform", is long and dense.Lynn: http://www.icann.org/general/lynn-reform-proposal-24feb02.htm
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50670,00.html
In this interview with CNET, John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet entrepreneur, and Grateful Dead lyricist - among other claims to fame - talks about the kinds of things you'd expect him to. He wants us all to care very deeply about threats to the freedom of the Internet - and there's no doubt we should, even though what to do isn't always very clear. Barlow fears that the development of interlocking systems of technology and law will suppress minority viewpoints and independent sources of information and expression. He worries that the Internet is being transformed into a blockbuster, best-seller, dumbed-down playground ruled by content owners who'll use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to bludgeon independent voices into silent impotence. Needless to say, Barlow's down on Microsoft and AOL, doesn't like .Net or Hailstorm, and thinks the DMCA is the biggest threat to freedom in a long time. There's nothing new or revelatory here, but it might distract you from your figurine losses.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-843349.html
Music and Video Files Can Contain Embedded Security Threats
Modern media players, like those from Real and Microsoft, support embedded URLs within the content they play. This can allow malicious scripts to be executed on the user's computer. A recent Bugtraq posting includes an example, and an account of at least one video that launches your browser and inundates your monitor with porn ads. It's worth noting that the problem lies not really with the media players, but with the browsers, which in the final analysis are the ones running the scripts. At the moment, the threat is primarily just risk of exposure to lots of annoying porn pop-ups - there's as yet no example of a malicious script delivered this way - but we fully expect that numerous porn sites, always on the cutting edge of annoying technology, will start using this trick any minute now. CNET has an informative, link-filled article on the issue.Bugtraq: http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/258122
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-846021.html
Leech computing has been defined as "a program running on a client computer without user knowledge that can process data and report back the results, but otherwise does not affect the usability of the client computer and makes no changes to the client". No doubt this is fairly neat technology, but you could get into some fine philosophical arguments about whether or not it constitutes theft of resources. A couple of postings at Hawk Software's Web site have resurrected the idea with suggestions that JavaScript and ActiveX could be used to implement workable versions. Incidentally, this is not a new concept; it became known at least once before, in 1997, under the equally cool name of "mipsucking".
Hawksoft: http://www.hawksoft.com/articles/leech/leech1.shtml
Mipsucking: http://hotwired.lycos.com/packet/packet/schrage/97/01/index1a.html
Mathematical Computing Breakthrough May Make RSA Vulnerable
The cryptography community has been buzzing with news of a theoretical breakthrough in factoring large numbers. The details are highly mathematical - read the paper if you're up to it - but the gist of it is that it may be possible to exploit parallel computing to factor integers significantly faster than is now possible. This is important for cryptography because one of the most popular public crypto systems in use today, based on the RSA algorithm, relies on the difficulty of factoring such numbers. If the computation can be sped up, potentially all current RSA-based crypto systems become much more vulnerable. Slashdot has discussion.Paper: http://cr.yp.to/papers.html#nfscircuit#nfscircuit
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/26/179206.shtml
The week of Feb. 18, a flood of messages from e-mail marketers hit AT&T's servers and overwhelmed the company's spam filters, delaying customer e-mail as much as a day. Brightmail, which provides the AT&T spam filters, claims such massive spam attacks are all too typical these days, and that spam now constitutes 20% of all online e-mail. There's an Asian connection to this problem, with large numbers of messages sent from or through Asian hubs - as we've mentioned ("Walling Off Asian Spam", NSD 8.07). Spammers are becoming more capable of outwitting filters, too. Some spamming programs, for example, can adapt e-mail addresses repeatedly until they work. The effort of ISPs to defend against spammers is naturally also on the rise, wasteful for companies who see it as a distraction from customer service. Whatever happened to just communicating with the kids? MSNBC has more.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/713079.asp
File-Sharing Hits the Boob Tube, Faces Lawsuits
Napster, and maybe online music, is old news. Television, an $80 billion industry, now faces the same sort of scenario that Napster presented to the music industry. Morpheus and Kazaa are among the new generation of file-sharing utilities that extend the concept to video. Napster's fatal flaw was its centralization; the file-sharing community has absorbed the lesson and the new generation has decentralized with the peer-to-peer paradigm. TV sharers capture the TV shows in electronic format and, worse yet, edit out the commercials! hey, it saves space on the hard drive. The Motion Picture Association of America has launched a first wave of lawsuits against ReplayTV, a digital VCR more or less, and against the creators of file-sharing apps, but this is going to be one long, drawn-out war. Look for better encryption to emerge from the studios, but to what end? Hackers will break anything they can come up with. TIME has the story, and an added bonus: a discussion with Movie88.com founder S.E. Tan.Story: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,203498,00.html
Tan: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,203476,00.html
Morpheus File-Sharing Software Breaks in Kazaa Upgrade
Morpheus, file-trading software, came into prominence as it filled the void left by the destruction of Napster and has become one of the most popular such programs. Morpheus uses protocols developed by a company called Kazaa. Kazaa recently implemented changes to its code, after which Morpheus could no longer function on Kazaa networks. The outage apparently caused a spike in the number of active Gnutella hosts as people decided to try out that open-source file-sharing alternative. Meanwhile, StreamCast, the company that created Morpheus, says it'll come up with a new "open protocol" version of Morpheus to address the problem. CNET and Wired have the story. Incidentally, check out the Gnutella Meter for a list of the top queries that are floating through the network.Morpheus: http://www.musiccity.com/
Gnutella: http://www.gnutellanews.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-845792.html
Wired: http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50725,00.html
Gnutella Meter: http://www.gnutellameter.com/
Companies Sift Dotcom Debris for Business Ideas
Remember Ricochet? It died in the dotcom implosion - or did it? The wireless network has been purchased and relaunched, with a more cautious approach to the market. Rather than growing as fast as possible, Aerie Networks, the new owner, has set up shop in the San Diego area and doesn't plan to expand coverage until it succeeds there. Other companies are sifting through the dotcom debris looking for recyclable ideas, but caution is the watchword and investors are taking that word seriously. Ensenda, for example, has adopted the Webvan model of same-day grocery delivery and tossed out the groceries. It offers same-day delivery services to retailers rather than selling goods itself, employing Webvan's basic concept but not its implementation. That might work. Fortune tells us that entrepeneurs who've learned something from the meltdown are much more attractive to the monied folks than those who are just dipping a toe into the waters with the next great idea.Aerie Networks: http://www.aerienetworks.com/
Ensenda: http://www.ensenda.com/
Fortune: http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=206499
PayPal Goes Public, Faces Uncertain Future
For a few moments, it looked like someone had re-inflated the Internet bubble. When PayPal's stock jumped nearly 55% in the first few hours of its existence, the gold rush had returned, sort of. The shares have come back down to Earth, losing nearly a third of their highest value, but it was heavenly, albeit for a few moments. PayPal is a Web-based payment system that lets online buyers and sellers use their credit card and bank accounts as online cash. Like other firms, it is attempting to become the glue that binds buyers and sellers together as it shaves off a slight profit for itself. Unfortunately for PayPal, eBay recently purchased a percentage of a rival service. An article in the Economist paints a somewhat too rosy picture of the future; a Wired article gives you some of the dirt on the latest bronze rather than golden IPO.Economist: http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=999374
Wired: http://wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,50612,FF.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Documenting the End of the Free Internet
You may have noticed a trend away from free Web content to fee-based content. The reason for this is pretty straightforward; content providers have to eat. The ad-based paradigm has failed miserably for most during the dotcom implosion, answering some of the questions about the system that had been raised even when the bloom was on the rose. Now that the aphids have sucked the rose dry, an increasing number of content providers have begun charging or begging for a small premium in exchange for access to the full range of material they offer online. The trend, viewed by some as the beginning of the end of the free Internet - rather a stretch, really - is roughly documented in this ongoing blog, aptly named The End of the Free.http://theendoffree.com/
On idle Friday nights, the mind turns to the self. One such recent evening, we began to wonder what, if anything, the online world had to say about us going to paid subscriptions. It turned out to be more than we'd thought. That, in fact, was how we found The End of the Free (q.v.) and contributor Olivier Travers's own positive comments on our free-to-fee explanation. Our passage to pay "brought a tear" to the eye of librarian Steven Cohen until he discovered that libraries can subscribe for free. Marketing analyst Lee Traupel wrote a piece on us that darn near made us blush (for the record, our editor uses a metal folding chair). Much to our surprise, even CNET and Slashdot noticed. CNET put up a little article, although with inaccuracies (we're still waiting for our initial public offering). One Slashdot poster mentioned us in a discussion of The End of the Free. By the way, on some of these pages, you have to do a search or "find" for "Netsurfer" to find us among the dross.
The End of the Free: http://www.theendoffree.com/2002_02_01_arch.html
Travers: http://webvoice.blogspot.com/?/2002_02_01_webvoice_archive.html
Traupel: http://www.promotionbase.com/article/680
Cohen: http://www.librarystuff.net/
CNET: http://investor.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-8770405-0.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/22/0123225.shtml
Another page we found has little to do with our pay scheme and more to do with our influence. In January 2001, Jon Udell ran a little Perl script to look at tech magazine Web sites as listed on Yahoo and compare the links therein. By counting the links, Udell could measure the referential reputation of a given site, called "mindshare", and rank the sites accordingly. Of the 472 sites listed in Yahoo, NSD ranked a respectable 63rd, sandwiched between First Monday and OS/2 E-Zine. CMP and CNET took the top two slots. Although the data are old, Udell provides the script he used, so that anybody could run it anew. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
http://udell.roninhouse.com/mindshare-report.html
Laid-off Dotcom Slacker Busted by Online Diary
The moral of this story is that if you cheat on welfare, don't go advertising it all over the Net. Todd Rosenberg got laid off from his dotcom job in New York last June. He got bored and created a Web site that chronicles his slacker lifestyle, which consists mostly of camping out on the couch and sucking on the glass teat. His Web site (covered in NSD 8.05) was modestly popular, and people started donating a dollar here and a dollar there to a total of about $9,000. Unfortunately, Todd's now in trouble with the New York Department of Labor, which may not be too worried about the cash - you can collect government cash and accept donations - but which has this pesky rule that says unemployment recipients need to be actively looking for work. Read all about it in the International Herald Tribune.IHT: http://www.iht.com/articles/49371.html
Rosenberg: http://www.oddtodd.com/
Glass Teat: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0441289886/netsurferdigest
When Google added archives of Usenet posts dated as far back as 1981, millions of users found themselves in a virtual TARDIS. Early users of Usenet were flooded with memories when they came across their long-lost messages. But Usenet was just one forum for text-based group e-communications back before the WWW exploded - many people dialed up to a favorite electronic bulletin board system (BBS) at the break-neck speed of 1200 baud. Sites like Textfiles and the Etext Archives are doing for BBS posts what Google is doing for Usenet. These and similar projects need support; the online world of the last 20 years could prove to exist only in the happy memories of those who participated. A fantastic article in Salon looks at the efforts of these digital preservationists, who are working to reinforce the online foundation for historians to come.
Textfiles: http://textfiles.com/
Etext Archives: http://www.etext.org/
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/22/bbs_archives/index.html
The powers that be in Tampa, Fla. wanted to put Voyeur Dorm out of business. Voyeur Dorm is a fully webcammed house inhabited by attractive college girls. The girls like to dress down. This apparently was a threat to the moral fiber of the community, so the city sued and argued that Voyeur Dorm violated city zoning laws by operating an adult business in a residential community. After a series of court cases, this week the US Supreme Court declined to hear the city's final appeal. Voyeur Dorm can stay and Tampans (have a better idea?) must continue to tremble in fear of accidentally turning on their computers, paying $39.95, and seeing some boobies. The Naples Daily News has the news. Turn off JavaScript when you visit Voyeur Dorm; it has annoying pop-ups on exit.
Voyeur Dorm: http://www.voyeurdorm.com/
Naples Daily News: http://www.naplesnews.com/02/02/florida/d751810a.htm
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
You know how two people can take a picture of the same thing at the same time and one looks like a vacation photo and the other looks like a work of art? The magic that some of us can't capture is all in the composition, and Herman Krieger has plenty of it. Some of his photo essays are online, along with excerpts from others. Although Krieger uses multiple styles of information architecture to display his wares, you basically just click on the photos you want to see in more detail in all of them. In particular, the Churches ad Hoc gallery is interesting. Our reviewer's favorite was a photo entitled "The Pope's Answer to Luther".http://www.efn.org/~hkrieger/
Truly good art is not found only in galleries that ask for admission fees or donations. Indeed, what qualifies as truly good art - a subjective issue, to be sure - is judged using the same criteria as wine, books, or music. Try a wide variety and your tastes will become clear. Amateur art can be intriguing irrespective of the reported level of experience of the artist. At the Museum of Fred, examples of exactly this kind of art, all purchased from thrift shops, are kept for all to enjoy. A variety of styles are tossed together, ranging from landscapes to portraits, wild animals to the wild west, to form a truly eclectic mix. A mouse click on a painting will bring up a larger copy so you can see the work in greater detail.
http://www.museumoffred.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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The Mouse Driver Chronicles
Running Weblogs With Slash
The Oligarchs: Wealth & Power in the New RussiaThe Fruit of Bitter Lemons: Israelis and Palestinians
Most Web sites devoted to the current state of affairs between Israelis and Palestinians can best be called hyperbolic. There's no shortage of red-hot rants. Bitterlemons.org, however, sticks out for its attempt to present reasoned and reasonable discourse from both sides. The site is the combined effort of a Palestinian and an Israeli. Both are intellectuals and both have solid, practical backgrounds to temper their thoughts. They, along with guest authors, contribute to most weekly editions. Each edition covers a current event or issue, and consists of four roughly 750-word (typical op-ed length) pieces. Two are pro-Israeli, two are pro-Palestinian. Relevant news and documents are quick links away. Most of the views here are those of moderates, and it's frightening to see how far apart the two sides are today.http://bitterlemons.org/
The Open Source Intel Collective is the place to turn to when you stop believing what the news media and the pros say is happening in the world. User contributions make up the bulk of the content here and they range in quality from pretty good to really spectacular. There's virtually none of the childishness and silliness that often passes for commentary on the Net. The major area covered on this Canada-based site is Europe (including Russia), but the whole world receives attention. While articles and comments are the main feature, you can also visit user forums and other useful pages. There are links to the major online news wires and other resources, such as MSNBC's interactive maps.
http://osic.theofficersclub.com/
Don't go here for flashy, trashy, multimedia extravaganzas. NetWits is low-bandwidth, high-quality reading material. Yep, we speak true: reading, the arcane art of looking at the same letters in differing combinations over and over. Rumor has it that they're actually starting to teach this in California again, after a ten-year hiatus. You can enjoy the content here even over a slow dial-up modem. If you're into speed-reading, try NetWits with a broadband connection. There are a number of excellent writers hiding out here, and they all have sites of their own.
http://www.thenetwits.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
I Toast, Therefore I Am. And I Can Forecast the Weather!
What are the necessities every morning? Wake up. Get a shower. Get dressed. Make some coffee. Make some toast. Check the weather. What if you could accomplish those last two tasks simultaneously? No, we're not suggesting you kidnap Al Roker and force him into a life of bready servitude. There's a toaster that can forecast the weather, and as your butter melts into the little crevices of clouds or sun, you'll know whether or not you'll need the umbrella. Whether or not you'll need headache medicine before your first morning meeting is out is another story.http://dancing-man.com/robin/toasty/
http://www.sadgeezer.com/RedDwarf/toaster.htm
The Journal of Chemical Education has a series of QuickTime movies which were intended as companions to the "Chemistry Comes Alive!" series of CD-ROMs. However, the movies stand well on their own, with a knowledgeable narrator walking the observer through most experiments. Time lapse is employed to demonstrate the full effects in some of the longer experiments, while slow motion is also used to show details of some of the more sudden reactions. The demonstrations are especially beneficial when the conditions would be difficult to duplicate in a classroom environment. In addition, this is a particularly useful resource for home-schooled children, as eyewash would be inelegant hanging from the chandelier in the dining room and sodium reactions might scare the cat.
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/jcesoft/cca/CCA0/SAMPMOVS.HTM
Let the ChemTeam (Re)Introduce You to High School Chemistry
The ChemTeam, "a tutorial for high school chemistry", is the kind of site many adults could have used in their own inglorious struggle with classic science. It's deeper than the home page might make it seem. Jump right into multipage sections on Stoichiometry, Colligative Properties (remember those?), and other potential academic pitfalls. A photo gallery gives face to famous names in the field. College-bound students may benefit from site creator John Park's study guide to advanced placement tests (he has posted local and national Chemistry Olympiad tests given between 1985 and 1999), if not from his large collection of classic papers from dating from 50 BCE to 1949. If your child fails his or her next chemistry quiz in spite of the ChemTeam, browse the humor section, where we found something apt on the Life's Rules page: "Rule 1. Life is not fair; get used to it." Often, it seems, chemistry and philosophy - or attitude - go hand in hand.http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/ChemTeamIndex.html
The peer groups interested in the periodic table of the elements are limited neither to teens nor to adult scientists. An eight-year-old can be as fascinated as a 50-year-old by the vast array of pieces to the chemical puzzle. The Royal Society of Chemistry has put together a visual periodic table titled "109". Made to explore and reflect upon the diversity of elements that make up all matter, the visual table can show you how these elements affect our lives in largely unseen and often unexpected ways. If at all possible, look at the Flash version of the table - for each element, it uses beautiful icons that you see en route to the amazing descriptions of what you selected.
http://www.chemsoc.org/viselements/
Taking the Fear out of Cancer (.com)
Cancer patients have much to fear: pain; incapacity; and burden imposed on family and others, to name a few. Taking the Fear out of Cancer seeks to reduce fear "by providing awareness through education and information, by inspiring with hope and motivation, and by giving support to all people dealing with cancer...." This is a personal, though anonymous, site without bells or whistles. Practical advice includes a top-ten list of things to do at diagnosis. There are nutrition tips and suggestions, a list of symptoms and diagnostic exams for specific types of cancer, gateways to cancer organizations and other resources ("Information Center" and "Making Connections"), and a bulletin board. In the modest e-commerce section, you can buy message T-shirts such as "Love Me, Love My Oncologist" and coffee mugs. Some might prefer the modest size and scope of this site to health megasites.http://www.takingthefearoutofcancer.com/