BREAKING SURF
| The Amateurization of Blogging |
| Dangers of Geek Monoculture |
| The Boneyard |
| Modern Ruins |
| Palin's Travels |
| "Good, Let's Begin (Bein, Let's Allez)" |
| Trailer Park Boys |
| Skyscraper Diagrams |
| A Gallery of Russian Art |
| Christian Music Parodies |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| A Brutally Honest Parent Blog |
| A Fun, Insightful Defective Yeti |
| Gossip in the Publishing Biz |
| The Tao Te Ching |
| Brain Probe Induces Out-of-Body Experiences |
| Making Math Fun |
| Building a Bra Ball to Fight Cancer |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
The Funniest Joke in the World
You've probably already heard the world's funniest joke by now, but don't give the LaughLab a miss because of that. There's so much here that it deserves a long visit. LaughLab waded through 40,000 jokes and almost 2 million votes to assemble the world's top rib ticklers by country (we liked the German and Canadian ones best, but that's just us), so there's a lot more to its humor arsenal than that single joke. And what has one country rolling helplessly in the aisles sometimes prompts just a snicker or two or just puzzlement elsewhere, which means there's bound to be something here you'll find amusing or puzzling. LaughLab even covers the serious side of humor - which can be amusing in its own way - with stuff about the importance of humor in communication and the relationship between joke complexity and mental ability. As well, LaughLab discovered there's a particular part of the brain that responds to humor, which may explain why some folks just don't seem to have a sense of it. What do you call a monkey in a minefield? For the answer, visit LaughLab.http://www.laughlab.co.uk/
Although they lack the Swedish royalty, the big bucks, and the prestige of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobels are funnier and perhaps more representative of real science than their flashier, more illustrious, official cousins. This year, the prizes - all handed out by genuine Nobel laureates - went for such work as the determination of total surface area in Indian elephants, studies of scrotal asymmetry, the effects of inappropriate highlighting on reading comprehension, a survey of belly button lint, and a wooden periodic table table with drawers for element samples. Two other particularly deserving awards went to CFOs and CEOs of a long list of companies headed by Enron, for adapting imaginary numbers for the business world, and to a researcher who reported on foam decay in beer and who suggested further tests by readers. Once you've finished appreciating this year's crop of achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced", dig into the previous winners. The ceremony itself, webcast and archived, seems like it would be great fun, and it is. We had a man there in 1998.
Winners: http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html
Webcast: http://www.improb.com/ig/2002/live-webcast-2.html
1998: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/misc/ignobel.html
All this week, the Nobel Prize committee has been announcing the winners of the most prestigious prize in science. As of press time, not all prizes had been awarded yet, but by the time you read this, all but the Nobel Peace Prize should be given out. So far, the medical prize went to research on genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death and the physics prize went to the designers of giant neutrino detectors and the creator of the X-ray telescope.
http://www.nobel.se/
Astronomers have discovered a huge object orbiting the sun in a path that's generally more distant than but slightly overlaps Pluto's. The object, dubbed Quaoar (pronounced kwa-whar) after a Native American god, is the largest chunk of rock to be discovered in the Solar System since the discovery of Pluto itself 72 years ago. Quaoar is 1,300 kilometers wide, more than half the size of Pluto itself, but not quite big enough to qualify as a planet. It orbits the sun every 288 years in a more or less circular orbit in the Kuiper Belt, where numerous cold chunks of rock and comets orbit on the very fringes of the Solar System. That it took this long to find something as big as Quaoar should give you an idea of how distant and dim that region is. Nevertheless, scientists think that even larger objects lurk out there in the trans-Plutonian wilderness. NASA has images, details, and more links.
NASA: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/07oct_newworld.htm
Wow. Just a few years ago, the spouse of one of our Netsurfers was deployed in support of the STS-80 shuttle mission. Now, we're up to STS-112. The latest mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis included a camera mounted on the external fuel tank. This produced some neat videos of the shuttle's launch, which can be found on the mission video page. The Web page contains several other videos and will be updated with new ones as the mission progresses. Atlantis is visiting the International Space Station to deliver and install a complex structural component - it's just like the game Civilization! This will be the first time that such a camera has been used. Hit the SpaceRef.com link for the technical stuff, and you'll see this isn't just a typical joyride. Safety analysis reporting, placement, and much more had to be covered to get this puppy to yap. You can follow the progress of the mission on the action-packed NASA Human SpaceFlight Web page.
SpaceRef.com: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=6516
Mission Video: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle/sts-112/html/fd1.html
Human SpaceFlight: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/
It was a classic rude awakening, with a sensational propaganda impact, when radios all around the globe began to play the staticky beep, beep, beep of the USSR's Sputnik 1, Earth's first artificial satellite. The US eventually turned the October 1957 launch of the 184-pound satellite into a resounding wake-up call that would have dramatic results - including the Internet - but initial American responses faltered. In December, an American rocket carrying a satellite exploded on its launch pad, after lifting a mere 17 feet. In early 1958, the US finally put its own satellite (Explorer I) into orbit, but by then Russia had put a dog into space. Space.com looks back at this stunning start to the space age. NASA offers a .wav file of Sputnik's telemetric beeps. Michael Wright has some good stuff at his Sputnik fan site, although it hasn't been updated in a while and some links may not work. Our reviewer still remembers listening to Sputnik and the awesome impact those beeps had. We also remember watching blurry black-and-white TV images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon - a mere 12 years later.
Space.com: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sputnik_45th_anniversary_021004.html
NASA: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/
Wright: http://www.batnet.com/mfwright/sputnik.html
Chess: Kramnik (Man) vs. Deep Fritz (Machine)
This chess event is billed as the "Brains in Bahrain": human chess champion Vladimir Kramnik takes on computer Deep Fritz. The King of Bahrain has put up $1 million in prize money for the match, which at press time is being decisively won by the human. Kramnik is a former protege of Garry Kasparov, widely acknowledged as the best chess player ever - a title Kramnik is trying to claim after his win over Kasparov a couple of years ago. Kasparov's loss to the Deep Blue program in 1997 was a milestone in the history of chess and computing, the first time a machine beat a world-champ grandmaster. Kramnik is up against a machine that, frankly, is not as powerful as Deep Blue. Deep Blue could evaluate 200 million moves per second whereas Deep Fritz can only handle up to 4 million. Kasparov will play a machine comparable to Kramnik's current opponent in December, one called Deep Junior. This soap opera just cries out to be the plot of a best-seller, don't you think? Time has more.Brains in Bahrain: http://www.brainsinbahrain.com/
Time: http://www.time.com/time/sampler/article/0,8599,356410,00.html
Web-Savvy US Army Adds Afghanistan Blog to Online Pitch
The US Army may just be the most sophisticated online recruiter. Since June, its America's Army game has been downloaded nearly 800,000 times. As Wired makes clear, the US Army spared no expense in researching and developing the game. All it lacks, to some players, is enough gore. The latest entry in the US Army's online recruiting strategy is the Afghanistan blog, supposedly written by one of the game's developers on tour in Afghanistan. The blog is syrupy and lacking in detail, but demonstrates that the Army is serious about recruiting a generation raised on the PC and the Web. You probably don't know whether to fear the future or feel secure that the Army is so in sync with American youth. Salon takes a closer look at the game's popularity.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,55568,00.html
Blog: http://www.americasarmy.com/archives/afghanistan_weblog/bomb.php
Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/10/04/why_we_fight/index.html
The values of the 1979 revolution in Iran - a fundamentalist brand of state Islam and rejection of western culture and values - appear to be fading as that country's discontented youth explore the alternatives of Western music and the Internet. The Guardian's investigative journalism exposes a vibrant underground where girl bloggers discuss sex, music, politics, and their frustrating lives, and where just about any movie can be had under the counter. The core of the new revolution is teeming Tehran, with its bountiful, barely hidden, illegal satellite dishes and rising computer usage. Islamic schools continue to provide military training and to instill hatred of the US, but many young people chafe under the state's still-heavy hand of restriction and repression. They want reform and modernization while conservative clerics struggle to hold back the tide of change. Today in Iran, more women than men attend university, yet dancing is forbidden. This is a fascinating glimpse into an uneasy struggle to reform a nation, the outcome of which is far from certain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,803614,00.html
RIAA Trying to Use DMCA to Secure Verizon ISP User Info
Are you a big user of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software? Even if not, you should pay attention to this legal dispute between the RIAA and Verizon. The RIAA want Verizon's ISP division to identify a Verizon customer who is using Kazaa to share over 600 songs. The RIAA is trying to use the DMCA to force Verizon to turn over the name without a lawsuit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed an amicus brief arguing that a lawsuit would better protect user privacy. Obviously, the RIAA wants to go the faster and cheaper DMCA route. It's another example of the DMCA's many unexpected legal consequences and another reason why the legislation has to be revisited by Congress as well as the courts.CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-960838.html
EFF: http://www.eff.org/Cases/RIAA_v_Verizon/20020830_eff_amicus.html
SANS/FBI Top 20 Internet Security Vulnerabilities
What's surprising about this recently updated list of Net security vulnerabilities is that it points the finger at just about every software package that's essential to running the Net. Such well known packages as the Apache and Microsoft IIS webservers, Secure Shell (SSH), FTP, Microsoft SQL Server, Sendmail, and Internet Explorer rank among the top security risks. The key to understanding why is knowing that, in many cases, the underlying problem is actually the millions of users who fail to upgrade to the latest/greatest versions of packages, which incorporate security fixes. As a result, a huge pool of older software with known security problems sits online, ripe for exploitation. That's just one lesson from the vulnerability list, which derives from a rough consensus among the world's top security experts. Sysadmins and even security-conscious DSL users will want to check it out.http://www.sans.org/top20/
Two Case Studies of Open Source: Apache and Mozilla
A team of researchers has examined the two most famous open-source software projects in order to quantify them and compare them to commercial projects. The researchers examined numerous metrics of the Apache and Mozilla efforts based on historical data such as source revision, bug reports, and project-team size. They tested several hypotheses about the open-source process based on those metrics. For example, they looked at assumptions about the productivity of the core programming team, lower defect density in open-source software, and rapid response to customer problems in open-source projects. the researchers reached many conclusions we simply don't have room for here. This information-dense paper is of interest to anybody who does programming for fun or profit.http://www.research.avayalabs.com/techreport/ALR-2002-003-paper.pdf
eBay Completes Purchase of PayPal
eBay has completed its purchase of PayPal. PayPal's online payment service will continue to operate under its own brand and its earnings will be broken out separately on eBay balance sheets. When the share swap was announced, the deal was valued at about $1.5 billion on paper, but eBay shares have dropped in value since. The short blurb from CNET notes that PayPal has some 20 million users and will contribute more than $60 million in annual revenue to eBay. As is usual with deals this size, there are still shareholder lawsuits flying about.eBay: http://www.ebay.com/
PayPal: http://www.paypal.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1017-960658.html
ONLINE CULTURE
The Amateurization of Blogging
Clay Shirky points to blogging and asks the pertinent question, "How can we make money doing this?" Well, he answers himself with an emphatic "most of us can't." Shirky's piece, from his Networks, Economics, and Culture (NEC) mailing list, proposes that weblogs are a radical break from previous publishing traditions. He writes, "They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity." He argues that the publishing methods made possible by the Net undermine the costs and barriers to entry of traditional methods such as print publishing. All this inevitably leads to a glut of amateur content which will keep professionals away from a medium in which they can't make money - and that's not necessarily a bad thing.Shirky: http://www.shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
NEC: http://ernie.webservepro.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/nec
According to Tom Steinberg's editorial in the Register, a typical geek will "resent attempts to record his emails, hate attempts to stop him swapping MP3s, and despise Microsoft's attempts to do anything at all. He's going to kick up a fuss if his ISP blocks any ports, and is likely to advocate software written under Open Source licences." Steinberg's point is that the geek belief system that so pervades Net culture has become thoroughly predictable, narrow, and sometimes in thrall to contradictory philosophical traditions. He argues that such monoculture is dangerous because it will make fighting for geek intellectual sacred cows more difficult. His is an abstract philosophical point, but one worth thinking about if you're a self-identified geek. Tom Steinberg is the founder of VoxPolitics blog, UK-centric but of interest if these kinds of issues resonate with you.
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27442.html
VoxPolitics: http://www.voxpolitics.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Sleeping Giants is a presentation that resembles a short PBS film, without the constant interruptions imploring you to call in and donate. Put together by Kodak, it's a compelling look at a little-known US Air Force project, known officially as the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC) and unofficially as the Boneyard. It's a huge desert parking lot where the US Air Force mothballs hundreds of warplanes and choppers. But this isn't a bunch of planes piled all together like cars in a junkyard; these are maintained and then sealed in a cocoon that keeps the electronics from baking in the sun. Many of them fly again, either as remote-controlled target drones, or as movie stars in films like "Top Gun". Sleeping Giants is fascinating in itself, but the site also offers photo tips, natch, and the credits section features a link to the AMARC site itself. Of course, we can do that, too.Sleeping Giants: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/sleepingGiants/index.shtml
AMARC: http://www.dm.af.mil/AMARC/
AMARC, mentioned above, is coincidentally among the features at Modern Ruins, along with a dead aluminum factory and many other cool locations. Site owner Phillip Buehler seeks out modern ruins and photographs them to record their vaguely disturbing nature; they illustrate the lack of permanence in the world. Most of the material is presented as 360-degree QuickTime panoramas that let you pan left and right, or zoom in for a better look. The photos seem a little dark on the screen, but that doesn't detract from their value - and, in fact, might add to it - or educational value. Buehler sometimes includes stories from people who frequented the now abandoned locales he records. Among his offerings are Ellis Island, the SS United States, Coney Island, and Cape Canaveral. It's fascinating.
http://modern-ruins.com/index.html
Michael Palin travels the world so you don't have to! This site is fun, easy to use, and demonstrates that with a little thought a Web site can make a television show last forever. To date, four of Palin's adventures are online and his latest, "Sahara", will be updated at the site on a regular basis. If you liked the shows and the offbeat style of this former Monty Python player you will have to bookmark this clever site.
http://www.palinstravels.co.uk/
"Good, Let's Begin (Bein, Let's Allez)"
To some, Franglais is a hideous corruption of a rich, profound and sacred sonority by the profane, barbaric yawp of an excuse for animated social intercourse known to polite society as Anglais. It's spoken, of necessity, in Quebec, New Brunswick, and other regions where compromise is not necessarily a dirty word. A wonderful online introduction to this cultural and linguistic blending is La Petite Lesson En Francais. It's impudent. It's hilarious. Proust might puke; Joyce would rejoice. Au revoir, links to translators and dictionaries! Bonjour, funky FAQs! Before you jump into educational goodies such as "Hockey but of course!", "Are You Interviewing for a Job in Montreal?", and "Shopping with Your Girlfriend", we recommend you start with the "Qu'est-ce que the hell?" page for background. Piece of cake, n'est-ce pas? The more familiar you are with French and English the more you'll enjoy the Franglais humor, which often is broad and sometimes cleverly subtle. Puns are everywhere, as is verbal slapstick.http://www.geocities.com/lapetitelesson/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Those residing south of the border may not have seen "Trailer Park Boys", a Canadian comedy series about the lives of Ricky and Julian, two best friends who grew up and still live in a trailer park. The show follows the misadventures of the two, along with a bizarre supporting cast of trailer park denizens, including the googly-eyed Bubbles, who has a fondness for shopping carts, kitties, and a bubble machine. Julian tries to turn his life around following his latest stint in prison, ne'er-do-well Ricky seeks to grow the best pot in the park, and both consume massive amounts of chicken fingers. Fans will want to check out the show's official site, which has older, navigable HTML pages as well as the fun but confusing Flash affair. There's also the Showcase channel site. It's hard to describe the show, but if you can imagine the "South Park" boys grown up, more profane, and live-action, you can start to get the picture. This is definitely the funniest thing ever to come out of Nova Scotia.Official: http://www.trailerparkboys.com/
Showcase: http://www.showcase.ca/trailerparkboys/
This online database presents more than 5,000 illustrations of skyscrapers from around the world. The search function allows you to sort results by country, number of floors, architect, and more. Results are displayed in a graphical format that depicts the height of the buildings with color images for visual effect. Illustrated by skyscraper-hobbyists from around the world, the drawings give visitors a glance at the architecture of the buildings' facades. You can view extant structures, ones destroyed, or even buildings in the process of construction. A virtual tour of offices, bank towers, malls, and embassies, this site provides a quick look at some of the world's most prestigious and noted structures. From the Empire State Building to the Shanghai World Financial Center, this site features the tallest buildings erected by modern man.
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/index.php
Vernissages for contemporary artists can be a nightmare. Often the gallery turns out to be a cupboard, in which case there will be over 200 people there, or else a chilly 20,000-square-foot converted warehouse, with just you, a couple of artists, and a half-dozen of their friends rattling around in there. Still, the wine's generally free, so you can guzzle that interesting Chechnyan Sauvignon as you browse the exhibits. Who knows, after a bottle of the stuff, your significant other might just talk you into buying that $15,000 bold canvas of freeze-dried blood and elephant dung. This is why e-commerce is such a blessing to would be art collectors. At Gallery-a, a Russian site, all you need is a computer, a Net connection, and, of course, some money to buy any of the works by 23 St. Petersburg artists. Sit back, hold your chin, strike a thoughtful critical pose, and browse over 350 original oil paintings, water colors, sculptures, and even copies of masterpieces. Nothing in elephant dung, though.
http://www.gallery-a.ru/
ApologetiX, a parody-playing rock band that proudly calls itself "The Christian Weird Al Yankovic" (their site even features a glowing blurb from Yankovic's drummer) isn't just concerned with delivering mild amusement to the masses with their goofy send ups of today's pop songs. No sir, they're out to win over heathen hearts and minds by rewriting those songs as Christian anthems, with such classics as "The Real Sin Savior" (a spoof of Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady") - a song that promotes the teaching of creationism in the classroom and ridicules evolution with the cutting refrain "My mama is a fish." Now that your appetite has been sufficiently whetted, you'll want to visit the band's official site, where you can preview tracks, buy swag, and check out tour info. Depending on your belief system, this is all either highly entertaining or very scary.
http://www.apologetix.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out the Netsurfer Library at http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
Brotherhood of the Wolfhttp://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html
A Fun, Insightful Defective Yeti
Why read yet another blog by yet another Seattle-area computer programmer? Well, because it's funny, that's why. Matthew Baldwin adds his entries roughly in a clump every few days and to say that his topics range widely would understate the case. Our favorite was the tragic tale of a UPS parcel gone walkabout, but a close second is the observation of the effect a lovely young woman had on hardened commuters on his local bus. Baldwin's detailed observations of the everyday world are given a little top-spin of lunacy to result in stories which you should only read when the boss is out of earshot. You can search his archives by categories such as movies, overheard, news, and photo captions. Or you could pop into the favorite posts section and agree to the End-Users License Agreement which includes agreeing to give him a backrub and remembering his wife's birthday.http://www.defectiveyeti.com/
The publishing industry thrives on gossip. There are magazines and many books devoted entirely to gossip, and they sell quite well. MobyLives is a weekly column on the publishing industry that appears in papers around the US and online, first thing every Monday. The column is good, but the news log is even better. Updated daily, the news log covers writers, publishers, books, literary celebrities, oddball news, and just plain publishing industry dirt. The letters section is also worth reading to gauge the mood of the industry. There is also substantial archive of old columns, news, and letters. Whether you're a publisher, writer or just a reader, this site is entertaining reading all by itself. If you need more in this vein, check out "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People".
MobyLives: http://www.mobylives.com/
How to...: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/030681188X/netsurferdigest
The ancient philosophy known as the Tao is explored and explained in this online resource that also includes information on Feng Shui and Zen. Based on the writings of Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching provides insight into the deeper meaning of life. Translated directly as road, path, way, or doctrine, "Tao" is recognized as the "unseen, underlying law of the universe from which all other principles and phenomena proceed." Enlighten your heart and mind as you read from the teaching of the Tao. Visitors can purchase the Tao at this Web site, or subscribe to a newsletter featuring Taoist quotes, members-only downloads, and site updates. For a quick glance at the Taoist teachings, visit the random quote generator and read quotes such as, "Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know." It's supposed to give you a new angle on the meaning of life and serve as an invaluable resource for those seeking higher enlightenment.
http://www.thetao.info/
SURFING SCIENCE
Brain Probe Induces Out-of-Body Experiences
We've all seen a scene in a movie or TV show when someone leaves their body and looks down on other characters unaware of their hovering. Can you really have such an out-of-body experience? A fluky bit of scientific evidence indicates that you can, in a sense. A recent article in Nature describes remarkable clinical findings in a 43-year-old patient in Geneva who had suffered from epileptic seizures for 11 years. Neurologists used electrodes to stimulate the angular gyrus of her right cortex, an area of the brain that integrates visual cues and spatial feedback from the body. Awake during the treatment, she told the researchers she thought she was floating above her body and watching herself. As the article in Nature reports, "At other times during the same session... the patient screamed, because she 'saw' her legs shortening, and 'saw' her knees about to hit her face." This all came as a surprise to her physicians, who did not expect a paranormal response. The context of these findings is available in a more detailed article at CNN. This patient's case will likely prompt more research into related occurrences such as the phantom limb phenomenon in patients who report sensation in an arm or leg they've lost.Nature: http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-8.html
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/19/coolsc.outofbody/index.html
You hated math when you were a kid. You know it; we know it. Now that we've found some common ground, you might check out this place - particularly if you're a boomer with kids. The site makes math easy. It even tries to make it fun. Yeah, like when was the last time you had fun with geometry? Skip the humor, but the magic section is entertaining (how did they do that?). This is one of those places where you find a little to like, and a little to dislike. Mathematically, it should come out even - or maybe a bit on the plus side of the equation.
http://www.themathlab.com/welcome.htm
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Building a Bra Ball to Fight Cancer
There are two good reasons to support the BraBall. One is that it should raise awareness of breast cancer and raise money for the cause. The other is that a giant rubber-band ball composed of bras hooked end to end is an amazing thing. The ball has a core capsule containing personal and factual items about breast cancer. Surrounding the capsule are more than 10,000 bras donated since January 2001. It is over four feet high, and weighs about half a ton. The final goal is a ball five feet and four inches tall (the height of the average American woman) to be housed in a women's museum. It needs about 9,000 more bras to reach the size goal; you can mail yours to the artist in California. Fifty percent of all BraBall postcard and T-shirt sales are donated to non-profit breast cancer advocacy organizationshttp://www.braball.com/