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BREAKING SURF
US Supreme Court Lets Congress Extend Copyrights
The US Supreme Court, in a closely watched copyright case, has affirmed the right of Congress to extend copyright terms. The Eldred v. Ashcroft case challenged Congress's right to enact the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended copyright protection in time. Critics fear the law will restrict the availability of material in the public domain, material which has many legitimate users and uses. The law was the result of intense lobbying by major corporate interests, notably Disney, which worried about the impending expiration of their copyright on Mickey Mouse. Without the law, Mickey's image would have entered the public domain in 2003. The Eldred case challenged Congressional authority to make such long copyright extensions (95 years for corporations, life plus 70 years for individual authors) and the Supreme Court effectively ruled that Congress does have the authority to do so - regardless of whether the law is good or not.Eldred v. Ashcroft: http://eldred.cc/
Judgement: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/01-618o.pdf
My Name's Kevin, and I'm Free, Nearly
Famous/infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick is in the news lately, for several reasons. He won in court the right to renew his ham radio license. The probation that prevents him from using a computer expires in a few days. He has a book out, "The Art of Deception", which teaches how to minimize the risk of social engineering hacks. The Register reports that Mitnick wanted to include a little autobiographical explanation in "The Art of Deception", but the publisher refused to include it. The Register eagerly jumped at the chance to put the little essay online, and here it is. We're sure there is a crescendo of Mitnick news on the horizon, but here's a little amuse-bouche to get you started.http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28835.html
Lessig Bets Job on Spam Curb Proposal
Larry Lessig - rights activist, Stanford law professor, and a lawyer who fought for Eldred v. Ashcroft (q.v.) - has proposed a novel approach to curb spammers. He says all spam must be labeled as such, and anyone who finds spammers violating the law should earn bounty pay for turning them in. He figures that if such an anti-spam law were enacted, it would work where filters and other measures don't, and he's so convinced he's willing to put his job on the line over it. His blog has the dare and a link to an article that outlines his bounty system proposal. Lessig will decide if any law passed fits the bill, and Declan McCullagh of CNET will judge if sending vigilantes after the Web polluters has worked. Declan says he's agreed to act as judge but doesn't think such legislation will be passed any time soon. Great idea - pity it's not likely to be put to the test.Lessig: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_01.shtml#000787
McCullagh: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04286.html
The Damaging Effects of the DMCA
There's a lot of wisdom, good sense, and intelligence out there in cyberspace, much of it available for free. So why, oh, why do politicians, legislators, and even judges stumble around like idiots and pass and uphold stupid laws with dangerous and harmful consequences? The trigger for this perennial bit of rhetorical raving is the Electronic Freedom Foundation's report, "Unintended Consequences: Four Years Under the DMCA", which details the ruinous effects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Everywhere, the act is being used as a bludgeon to stifle competition, dampen innovation, hamper research, and curb consumer fair-use rights. The details of this must-read document are depressing and devastating. Only the brave and the foolhardy can contend with this legal bludgeon, which will surely rank as one of the most damaging legislative endeavors in US history. The disconnect between the mounting free intelligence of the Internet and the increasingly expensive stupidity of the non-Net world has never been more glaring, but as we noted last week, consumers are lucky that juries seem determined to push this law into irrelevance.http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030102_dmca_unintended_consequences.html
Hack of Microsoft Reader Available, for Now
You may remember last year's skirmish in the e-book wars, when Adobe first pushed then dropped DMCA charges against Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, who discussed ways to bypass the proprietary locks on Adobe's eBook format. Sklyarov's company, ElcomSoft, was recently acquitted of producing the hacking software. In the wake of ElcomSoft's acquittal in the US, British programmer Dan Jackson has posted code that does much the same thing - only this time, it's geared toward Microsoft's Reader product. Jackson claims that he simply wants to read purchased e-books on his older hardware. Microsoft, of course, is examining its options, including legal ones. Microsoft's "embrace and extend" philosophy apparently doesn't embrace enough, nor extend far enough. CNet has a story.Jackson: http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979778.html
A Trove of Confidential Data Sits on Used Hard Drives
The fact that recycled computer hard drives can be a treasure trove of confidential data is not news. What makes this San Francisco Chronicle article interesting are the statistics that can be gleaned from the experience of two MIT graduate students. Over two years, Simson Garfinkel (yes, he really is a grad student) and Abhi Shelat bought 158 used hard drives at computer stores and on eBay. Of those, 129 (81%) were functional; 69 (53%) of the working drives had recoverable files and a whopping 49 (37%) had "significant personal information" - medical correspondence, love letters, pornography, and 5,000 credit card numbers. The two students have published the results of their study in IEEE Security & Privacy, but Garfinkel also offers a PDF copy at his Web site. Chronicle:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/01/15/national1617EST0765.DTL
Garfinkel: http://www.simson.net/
Deadline to Name the Mars Rovers Approaches
NASA has selected the Planetary Society and Lego to run a contest for students in US schools to select names for the twin Mars Exploration Rovers. The rovers are scheduled to be launched separately next summer and will arrive on Mars in January 2004. They will carry out research aimed primarily at determining the role of water in Martian geology. The contest to name the rovers is open to any K-12 students in US schools who choose to write an essay about why their choice is the best. Deadline for entry is Jan. 31, 2003.Mars Rover Mission: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/
Planetary Society: http://planetary.org/rrgtm/contests.html
Contest: http://www.lego.com/rovers/contest.asp
Vatican Nixes Online Confessions
The Times reports that the Vatican, which has a popular Web site run by nuns - geek nuns, presumably - has recently warned Catholics about some of the online world's undesirable uses. For example, it urges bishops and priests to avoid hearing confessions online. No doubt, online confessions are a little more convenient for sinners eager for absolution than is lining up at the confessionals, but the Holy See isn't keen on the possibility of hackers using intercepted sinners' tales for blackmail. As well, the Pontiff now discourages group confessions, saying they should be reserved for rare situations. Some dioceses just seem to get a little carried away there and need the steady hand of Rome to keep the high-tech giddy streak under control. The Vatican has also been pointing its well exercised, morally reproving finger at what it calls "flirting" in Internet chat rooms, calling it tantamount to adultery. We say lighten up, guys and gals.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-538079,00.html
There.com is bound to be the butt of many bad jokes, but its developers may be the ones who laugh, all the way to the bank. So they hope. There.com is the latest entry in the world of virtual worlds that try to attract real people as inhabitants. It's easier to visit the site than to write about it, but the goal is to create an online space in which people will interact through online avatars in a non-competitive situation. As one early beta tester explained, it is more like Club Med than the Sims. Whether it will catch on with the public remains to be seen, but the organizers claim that they need only 150,000 "citizens" to break even. Wired and the New York Times have more.
There: http://www.there.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57130,00.html
Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/business/13NECO.html
A brief report says that China cut access to Blog*spot, a sub-division of Blogger that allows people to host their own weblogs. Greg Walton first noticed the block and speculated that China cut access to the entire domain primarily to prevent people from accessing DynaWeb, a Blog*spot site that regularly publishes lists of proxy servers which allow Chinese netsurfers to circumvent the Chinese government's Internet censorship. At press time, China had narrowed its focus, allowing access to Blog*spot but maintaining a filter on DynaWeb. Walton's blog has links to several media stories about the issue and DynaWeb has some info as well.
Walton: http://go.openflows.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/11/0359210
Blogger.com: http://www.blogger.com/
DynaWeb: http://dweb.blogspot.com/
US Spams Potential Iraqi Dissidents
CNN has tattled on the US, spilling the beans about how the military and various US government agencies have been sending thousands of e-mail messages to prominent Iraqis, urging them to dissent or defect in the face of a looming war with the US. This surreptitious official US spam campaign is part of a broader psychological warfare initiative aimed at convincing prominent Iraqis that resistance is futile. Unfortunately for any vacillating Iraqis, Saddam Hussein has much nastier ways of enforcing compliance than a flood of e-mail. While this tactic seems to display a dismaying ignorance about the risks faced by people living under despots, when viewed as part of an overall campaign of psychological warfare, it makes sense.http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/11/sproject.irq.email/index.html
Switzerland Sails Ahead in the Louis Vuitton Cup
When maritime nations come to mind, Switzerland doesn't usually rank up there in the top 150. But right now in Louis Vuitton Cup finals, the Swiss boat Alinghi, backed by pharmaceutical billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli, is putting on a masterful display of sailing skill against the US's Oracle BMW (yep, Larry Ellison himself is on board). The best of nine Louis Vuitton Cup showdown determines which team gets to challenge the defending America's champion, New Zealand. At press time, Alinghi was up 3-1. Alinghi has already beaten Oracle BMW 4-0 in a semifinal match-up, and how Oracle BMW survived to race again in finals is complicated but explained at the official America's Cup Web site. The site also provides race updates, short news items, historical information, sailing schedules and technical discussion about the boat. The actual America's Cup contest begins Feb. 15. Stay tuned.http://www.americascup.yahoo.com/
Silver Remedies: Not Only Useless, but Harmful
When you eat silver, your skin may turn gray, black or blue. The metal was once widely used for its antibiotic properties, but it wasn't particularly effective. Now, as some penicillin-resistant strains of bacteria crop up, silver solutions are making a comeback as alternative medicines - especially on the Net. Today, they claim to cure cancer and a wide range of other ills. There's no evidence that they do. The only evidence of their effects is that they make you turn color - argyria, it's called. If bluish-gray works for you and your wardrobe and you want to avoid the long lines at the tanning booths or paint counters, give it a try. Wired has a story.http://wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,57119,00.html
Portal Sues Google over Rank Adjustment
Do search engines have too much power? That's the issue underlying a lawsuit involving Google, the Internet's top search engine. Yale Law School's LawMeme and CNET both offer details of the suit, but the basic issue is this: is Google allowed to compensate for sites and organizations that deliberately boost the number of links to their sites to inflate their rating on the Google engine? Google's basic premise is that the quality of a site is directly related to the number of links to that site. The SearchKing portal is a conglomeration of sites that interlink, in a sense artificially boosting their rank within Google. Google admits it dials down the ranking of SearchKing sites in response, but claims it has done no wrong. The case raises fascinating issues about the role of search engines in Internet ecology and politics. Are the courts the appropriate place to resolve this?LawMeme: http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=807
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980215.html
SearchKing: http://www.searchking.com/
The Photobloggies Now Accepting Nominations
You have until Jan. 26 to nominate your favorite photo blog for the Photobloggies. You can nominate a site in categories such as Photoblog of the Year, Best Non-Digital Photoblog, Best Pet Photoblog, Best Photo Essay on a Blog, Best Photo Meme, and more. Prizes range from highs - a subscription to Aperture magazine, photo books - to lows - a red rubber devil duck, batteries. You can submit nominations or sign up as a judge on the Photobloggies Web site. The Photobloggies were inspired by the Weblog Awards, a.k.a. the Bloggies, and were created by Rannie "Photojunkie" Turingan, whose weblog provides some fine photo-oriented netsurfing in its own right.Photobloggies: http://www.photojunkie.org/photobloggies/
Bloggies: http://www.fairvue.com/?feature=awards2003
Photojunkie: http://www.photojunkie.org/
Red rubber devil duck: http://www.poolandspa.com/catalog/product001036000006.cfm
Turing Tournament Worth Big Bucks
A little knowledge about game theory and some clever programming can gain you a cool $10,000. The Turing Tournament tries "to find...the best computer programs to mimic human behavior, and...the best computer programs to detect the difference between machine and human behavior." The contest would be really exciting if, as proposed by Alan Turing himself, an interrogator could ask questions of the programs to figure out whether or not they're human - a classic Turing test. However, this contest is a bit more esoteric. You can create either a software emulator to generate a data file corresponding to a series of outcomes from a theoretical game between two people or you can write a detector program to try to figure out if such a file is generated by human game play or by software. The authors of the winning emulator and detector will each win $10,000. Deadline for entry is May 31, 2003.Turing Tournament: http://turing.ssel.caltech.edu/
Turing Test: http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html
Top Vulnerabilities in Creating Web Applications
The Open Web Application Security Project has released a list of what it considers the top ten vulnerabilities in web applications. Web developers should use this list as a basis for reviewing their work for secure programming practices. Hiring managers may want to use the list to weed out Web developers who are unaware of secure Web programming practices. The group readily admits the difficulty of choosing a top ten, particularly in light of the lack of statistics on which vulnerabilities are most often exploited by crackers. However, the list, the result of a broad consensus among developers, is certainly helpful for anyone who wants to ensure a secure Web site. Read the PDF report on the site for full details.http://www.owasp.org/
Keynote Systems has released the results of a study on the reliability of Short Message Service (SMS) wireless text services. The two-week SMS study showed that 7.5% of all SMS messages were lost in transit across all phone networks. Businesses which rely on SMS for automated alerts will be interested in the statistical breakdown by phone network available in the press release. Keynote Systems is well known in the online industry for providing statistics about the speed and access performance of Web sites around the globe.
http://www.keynote.com/news_events/releases_2003/15jan07-wirelessindex.html
Demise of the Voter News Service
The November 2000 Presidential election will be remembered for many things, but for major media outlets one particularly painful memory will be the erroneous early prediction of the winner. The Voter News Service (VNS), a joint venture of top US TV networks, was supposed to deliver exit-polling data that would enable the media to predict and analyze voter behavior. Problems with VNS were partly responsible for the 2000 debacle but after an ambitious attempt at upgrading the service, it again melted down under the weight of untested and malfunctioning technology during the 2002 elections. An article at Baseline tells what went wrong, a cautionary tale for any large IT project with too many chefs.http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,3959,826676,00.asp
"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" is a SF novel by Cory Doctorow, who with his publisher has taken the unusual step of making the text available online - free of charge, free of restriction. Publishing is a dollar-and-cents business, yet Doctorow doesn't believe that he's giving up any royalties in the process of the experiment. Others in the business seem to corroborate the idea that distributing fiction online ultimately drives sales of bound versions. Wired has a brief article.
http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57152,00.html
eBay Proves a Treasure Trove of Legal Evidence
Evidence turns up in the most unlikely places. Law.com profiles Houston lawyer Mark Lanier, who has found that eBay is a great repository for materials related to asbestos. He constantly bids on documents and products dating from the period before asbestos became a public enemy. Lanier uses the goods he buys as evidence in court and he even lends them to other lawyers suing the former asbestos manufacturers. Who'd have thought that eBay would become a site fit for "Law and Order"?http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1039054549074
W3C Releases Scripting Standard, Advises Against Its Use
Never let it be said that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) cannot speak out of both sides of its mouth. In the recently released Document Object Model Level 2 HTML module, the W3C laid out how scripting languages such as Javascript should interact with HTML and XML code. In addition, the W3C encouraged developers to use scripting languages as little as possible, arguing that scripts increased the opacity of Web pages and hindered the ability to "repurpose" content. Yes, its technical, but it is also political. According to the W3C, scripting is somehow undemocratic and another example of how even the most seemingly technical standards embody a host of competing interests. CNET has analysis.W3C: http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20030109/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979976.html
Netsurfer Books: Our Holiday Bestsellers
You can take a look at the books Netsurfer readers loved this past holiday. Netsurfer Library has the list of our top 10 best-selling books from last quarter, reflecting the kind of oddball mix of interests we've come to expect from our readers. Meanwhile, a new issue of Netsurfer Books is also available. Take a look and pass the word.Netsurfer Top 10 Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/best1m.htm
NSB 05.01: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/sub/v05/nsb.05.01.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Last July, SecurityFocus columnist Tim Mullen made a controversial proposal. He suggested that "you should have the right to neutralize a worm process running on someone else's infected system, if it's relentlessly attacking your network." In other words, you should be able to hack the offending machine to shut off the attack. Six months on, Mullen reviews his idea. He says that he's surprised most security experts came out against it, and that quite a few people are enthusiastic proponents. Posters at the bottom of Mullen's column and on Slashdot cover both sides of the issue with ethical, legal, and practical arguments. This is an important discussion about community-wide security policy, which may actually influence the law. Worth keeping an eye on.Mullen: http://online.securityfocus.com/columnists/134
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/01/15/132203.shtml
The recent release of the XHTML 2.0 proposed standard by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has unleashed a bit of a backlash among hardcore Web designers. The issues are nicely summarized in Jeffrey Zeldman's blog. It seems that XHTML 2.0 is a complete break with earlier standards like XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.x, something many Web designers do not appreciate. Zeldman puts it in perspective, noting that it's not worth getting your panties in a knot over this issue. He argues that browsers will not support this standard for years and that it really should be given another name since it solves different problems than do the current page design standards. Arcane Web design arguments? Perhaps, but this kind of storm is what leads to Net consensus about what should and should not be a standard. Worth a read if you're in the Web design biz.
Zeldman: http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0103b.shtml#skyfall
XHTML 2.0 Draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xhtml2-20020805/
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The Tenacity of the Cockroach: Conversations with Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders
Cathedrals of the Flesh
The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics
The Non-Designer's Design BookSURFING SITES
Edward Felton Believes You Have Freedom to Tinker
Some of us are old enough to remember that as a nation, the US used to lord it all over the Japanese. The riffage went that even though the Japanese were running away with the auto industry, the electronics industry, and buying up American golf courses, their social system only produced corporate zombies, devoid of creativity or imagination. Then, the US got spooked by Japan, Inc. and proceeded to rework its own business and educational systems to produce just those same imagined sterile corporate drones. Now, US school systems all revolve around high-stakes, standardized tests and the culture of innovation which has characterized the American economy for hundreds of years is being choked with patents, lawsuits, and the cowardly DMCA. The Freedom to Tinker site is a blog run by Edward Felton, computer science professor at Princeton and technology talking head. Says he: "The focus is on issues related to legal regulation of technology, and especially on legal attempts to restrict the right of technologists and citizens to tinker with technological devices." Let's hope the pendulum starts swinging the other way. Check it out, contribute, and let's all push.http://www.freedomtotinker.com/
The RIAA says that all the piracy on the Net is killing the music industry. But, as the old saying goes, the Devil's in the details. Providing some of those details, one George Ziemann (possibly called "Satan" by those in the RIAA) manages to level the field a bit. In his dissection and commentary of statements issued by the recording industry, Zieman solidly refutes the RIAA's position. If you're like most of us, you don't download MP3 stuff all that often, so the whole RIAA thing is no big deal. Right? Wrong. The RIAA's efforts to justify weird copy-protection schemes hit home when you pay good money for a CD, only to find that you can play it in your home player but not in your car. As for mixing your best-loved tracks onto a tape or CD - forget that also. Ziemann's lucid explanation of some spreadsheet numbers makes a lot of sense and starts to tear down the wall of FUD thrown up by the RIAA every chance it gets.
http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html
Financial Comparison Guide to Charities
If you have enough money or material goods, one of the kinder things to do with the excess is to support those less fortunate. Organized charities are excellent recipients of your largesse, as they can distribute resources effectively and actually increase the value of the donations. That's the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, many charities, both registered and unregistered, squander way too much of their income on infrastructure and administration. While the best charities will have single digit percentages of income paying for expenses, many popular charities have expenses that exceed 50%! The Charity Navigator site provides data on and sorts over 1,700 charities. The site is superbly constructed and extraordinarily useful for regular givers. Our reviewer uses it frequently.http://www.charitynavigator.org/
American Physician and Hospital Ratings
Checking the quality of doctors, hospitals, and other medical services before they're needed is a wise idea. High quality isn't a given, even at nationally known hospitals, and quality varies from procedure to procedure and doctor to doctor. The Health Grades Web site, in association with J.D. Powers, provides reports on all medical areas to both consumers and professionals. The first two consumer reports are free; a modest fee is required for additional reports. The site has only adequate navigation. Some reports are hard to create, while others provide far more data than their limited search parameters would seem to warrant. That's good for consumers, though.http://www.healthgrades.com/
There have been several attempts to set up online stolen property registries, with varying degrees of success. This site has the advantage of being an open system, very simple to use, and best of all - free. Nearly every other stolen property recovery site on the Net has some mandatory payment structure, whereas the International Stolen and Lost Property Database uses ads and voluntary donations to cover costs. Of course, if such a site isn't used, it isn't valuable, no matter how inexpensive. Assuming the blurbs at the site are to be believed, it's working quite well. Posting and checking for stolen property is easy, with a minimum number of click-through screens. The property database is updated regularly, so deadwood is cleaned out. All in all, it's a good place to go if varmints have stolen your stuff.
http://www.itsbeenstolen.com/
British Pathe Newsreel Archive Online and Free
British Pathe has put over 3,500 hours of its newsreels online. Footage dates from 1896 to 1970. The earliest clips involve such events as Gladstone's funeral and Queen Victoria's visits to other countries. You have to fill in your personal particulars just to download free clips, and, unfortunately, the free preview versions of the files have "BRITISH PATHE PREVIEW ONLY" written rather annoyingly in bright yellow text across the front, as if it weren't enough that the resolution is so poor. Then again, doesn't the cliche say beggars can't be choosers? So far that hasn't held true for the Internet, but maybe it's beginning to. Regardless, this is an astoundingly useful resource for amateur and professional historians.http://www.britishpathe.com/
Because Non-Traitors Have Nothing to Hide
How to rid the US of terrorists? Easy. All US patriots must register. Everyone who does not register is perforce a terrorist. That's the straight-faced premise that powers the United States of America Patriot Registration, a fine political farce with all the solemn trimmings of believability. This farce from the master satirists at Whitehouse.org is an ostensible appeal from US Attorney General John Ashcroft. The registration form is a riot. For example, you have three choices for country of origin: "United States of America", "Other (Militant Muslin Theocracy)", and "Other (Non-Militant Muslim Theocracy)". Should you submit the form, you will receive a "True Patriot Identification Number" and a warning that you'll need that number "for your inevitable participation in Operation Mandatory Patriotic Tattoo" - which has its own page, by the way. One omission is unpatriotically glaring: Where's the free database where you can look up names of those who have yet to register?http://www.whitehouse.org/initiatives/patriot/index.asp
Paired Cosmetic Accessories for the Neutered Pet
Neuticles, synthetic testicular implants for pets, are the brain-children of inventor and dog-lover Gregg Miller. Inspiration came to Miller as he contemplated the neutering of his 200-lb bloodhound, Buck. There is a picture of Buck on the site and we wonder whether his owner ever considered going the extra yard with Botox and gastroplasty for the obese hound, but that's beside the point - an idea was born. Now 100,000 dogs, cats, horses, and bulls worldwide have had Miller's testicular implants inserted into their scrota. You can buy a pair of petite (for the smaller dog or cat) NeuticlesORIGINAL in polyprophylene here for $40, or for $129 you can kit out your dog in a hefty pair of NeuticlesULTRA in solid silicon. There are no brass neuticles, but there is some nifty merchandise on sale here - why not get a Ballcap (one size fits all - $19) emblazoned with the Neuticles logo, or for just $44 you can wear a pair of synthetic testicles on an elegant necklace. Neuticles are safe, practical, inexpensive, and complication-free; short of getting his nuts back, what more could your neutered pet ask for?http://www.neuticles.com/
Zoos: A Historical Perspective
This Smithsonian site features a collection of pamphlets and guides published by zoos from 40 countries over the past century and looks at the evolution of zoological gardens over time, from entertainment venues to scientific research and propagation facilities. Additional resources are provided, including Croke's book, "The Modern Ark", which features one of our NSD staffers discussing elephant handling. Much of the material presented comes from early in the century, when animals and zoos were entertainment venues. Thus, we see orangs dining at table, cramped cages, chimps trained to emulate people, and the like. Most of the material presented dates from between 1880 and 1950, and therefore does not reflect with any accuracy what zoos are presently doing. It is an interesting look back, however, in that it shows where we have come from, and perhaps gives clues as to where we should go next.http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/zoos/index.htm
Have you ever tried to make a recipe from a book or magazine and then realized that you're missing one or more vital ingredients? If so, the Cook's Thesaurus is what you needed. All ingredients you can think of, and then a few more, are listed, along with what you can substitute without altering the flavor of the dish too radically. The olive section would please any Mediterranean connoisseur. Each detailed ingredient listing tells what the item is typically used for, how to cook it, and even common nicknames, and all are accompanied by clear photographs. It is just a pity that the Cook's Thesaurus does not provide explanations of cryptic cookery terms like parfait, confit, or roux. Perhaps a French dictionary is best for those.
http://www.foodsubs.com/
If you think that history is all about the dates of battles and coronations, you need to subscribe to this daily historical event calendar. It stretches back to 1525, and the topics covered are eclectic to say the least. For example, June 1990 saw Florida outlaw the wearing of thong bathing suits. On May 27, 1981, Lenny Randle was refused permission by the umpire to blow a slow rolling baseball across the foul line. On Jan.11, 1908, a prominent young lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi was jailed for the first time, for refusing to register as an Asian in South Africa. The detailed content is well presented with relevant sketches, vintage photographs, and related links. There's a slight bias towards news of strikes, labor issues, and anarchic politics but it is well worth a visit to find out what happened on your birthday.
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/calmast.htm
Now, there's a combination, eh? A lot of influential folks seem to believe that the terrorist organization was behind the mail-in anthrax attack in the US that followed the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Ross Getman is one and he makes a decent case for it. Decent is, however, not airtight, and that is presumably why the case hasn't been publicized recently. Whoever used the anthrax, they found it a pretty useless agent. More people are killed in car accidents every day than the entire anthrax scare ever claimed.
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze443zw/
Lego and Star Trek go together like slide rulers and pocket protectors. Kevin Miller undertook a project to build the USS Enterprise entirely out of Lego and he's put his venture online (another fad that goes well with Lego and Star Trek) so you can peruse his undertaking. It's quite an impressive feat, which features, as he mentions, "accidental saucer separation" capability. In the process, Miller mentions his relief when he found BrickLink, where you can buy every Lego brick you've ever dreamed of and some you haven't.
Miller: http://homepage.mac.com/happywaffle/enterprise.html
BrickLink: http://www.bricklink.com/
Explosive Demolition Industry Fun
Recreational implosion followers and explosive demolition professionals are the target audience of Implosionworld.com. Those two categories include virtually the whole population. There's lots of news and lots of Real Player videos of explosive demolitions. Spectacular doesn't even begin to describe many of them. Implosionworld.com is an outgrowth of earlier work by a firm called Protec in documenting building and structural explosive demolitions in a manner that was useful to the engineers. The entertainment value is simply a bonus. A wide variety of demolition techniques are illustrated; few are true implosions. The Myth of "Implosion" page (first click the Did You Know? link) will set everyone straight.http://www.implosionworld.com/
The Web is home to some strange and unusual online collections, and the assortment of items on this site is no exception. Welcome to the Condiment Packet Museum, which displays hundreds of tiny sachets with cachet. You'll see a variety of packets from big fast food chains as well as an assortment of products from little known specialty restaurants. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this site, besides its mere existence, is the evolving face of the packaging and the changing mix of condiment ingredients. The changes are evidence that marketing gurus study the consumer impact on a company's bottom line even from these tiny containers. Apparently even the smallest aspect of the food service industry has a place in the social fabric of our lives.
http://www.clearfour.com/condiment/
Some people will collect anything, but the appeal of collecting, rather than drinking the contents of, beer cans is hard to understand. This enthusiast Web site, with an unusual menu system of can-shaped buttons, seeks to explain the appeal. The canning of beer started shortly after Prohibition ended in 1933 and now there are collections of items as various as beer trays, Canadian cone-top cans, and Tennett's lager Scottish scenes. Rare cans, such as flat top cans from small breweries which require a can opener, can fetch up to $1,000 in a sale. The history of the beer-canning process around the world is discussed, as is the thorny issue of how to convince your loved-one to let you fill a room with thousands of beer cans (start small, move onto shelves, and finally take over the basement). One question remains unanswered: is there still beer in those cans?
http://www.beercans.org/
Card Tricks and Other Sleight of Hand
Ever want to impress your friends over lunch or prove to your boss you have too much free time? Card Trick Central is the place for you. Tricks are divided up by difficulty as well as type. For instance, there's a category called Mental Tricks, which seems to imply that most magic is, well, brain-optional. Probably the most useful and often-overlooked part of generic magic trick skills is sleight of hand, but Card Trick Central provides an excellent Sleight Index, which explains how to do such basics as palm or force a card.http://web.superb.net/cardtric/index.htm
If you're buying a car this year and you'd like to avoid becoming one of the many who die in motor vehicle accidents, you need to check out Crashtest.com. It provides an easily read, color-coded grid of crash test results from international government and insurance industry groups. It covers vehicles from A-Z - well, to Volvo at least. There are plenty of explanatory articles available here, too, but the main focus is the five possible performance ratings in 13 different categories, including a scary one called death-rate. Most nationalities of cars are included although Michael Schumacher would be surprised to find that Ferrari is omitted. Some of the results are shocking as they demonstrate that safety issues are still largely controlled by cost and those trendy SUVs do not score much better than stunt-cars.
http://www.crashtest.com/default.htm
With new generations of mobile phones appearing every other month or so, there are a lot of orphan, perfectly capable mobile phones sitting unused in drawers and boxes - over 100 million of them, the Cell for Cash folks estimate. Throwing them away isn't a great idea as many contain small amounts of toxins that could leach out in landfills. Cell for Cash will buy many of the phones of the last few years for prices ranging from a couple of dollars to $60 or so. The site isn't clear as to what happens to the phones, but they will be recycled either in whole or as materials and parts. This is at least as good an idea as donating the phones to charity, where they're generally of dubious value and utility.
http://www.cellforcash.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Mickey and Goofy on Eldred v. Ashcroft
There's plenty of commentary on the latest Supreme Court decision, but this one may well be the most artistic.http://www.waxy.org/random/images/weblog/eldred.jpg
"Lord of the Rings", as Written by...
Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Mickey Spillane, H.P. Lovecraft, Dr. Seuss, Ayn Rand. You get the idea. Many readers contribute to this rather amusing thread on the Straight Dope forum. Some of the entries are frighteningly lifelike.http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=138905
Hacking a Smart Foosball Table
How do you make foosball better? You make it smarter. The secret isn't in enlightening the little men but in enlightening the ball return so that it'll keep score. Couple that with a bit of hardware and software, and it can display the score on a screen for all to marvel at. Not bad for a school project.http://stage.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~dc788/fall2002/physcomp/foosball/
The folks at Nabisco have put together a Flash game to promote their products through the use of some rather unlikely minigolf scenarios, which is saying something in a world where tilting at windmills is considered perfectly normal.
http://www.nabiscoworld.com/games/nw_shock_nwmm.htm
This is everything a flash animated game should be: a mindless waste of time with a high punch-the-air who-da-man factor. You'll love it. Basically, you just lob shit at a fan. Honestly. That's it. It's great.
http://www.freeloader.com/games/hitthefan.htm
For folks who like Scrabble but dislike having other people around to play, there's a new Flash game called Word Stalk. The more (and more complex) words you make, the higher Jack climbs.
http://popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=wordstalk