BREAKING SURF
| Esther Dyson Starts Blogging |
| William Gibson Stops Blogging |
| Computing with Disabilities |
| The Wild Parrots of San Francisco |
| How to Live in America |
| The Howards and Their Castle |
| Portable Flight Path Maps |
| Cheap Gas |
| Unicorn Tapestries |
| Architecture and the Built Environment |
| Eccentric English Art |
| What a Long Strange Trip |
| Susan Kare, Icon Designer |
| Talk Radio Depot |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Other People's Stories |
| Everything "Alice in Wonderland" |
| Talking Points Blog |
| A Journal of Spirits - the Potable Kind |
| The E-Zine Machine |
| What's the Big Idea? |
| Paleontological Research Institution |
| Rosalind Franklin |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
|
|
|
BREAKING SURF
Apple has unveiled a new music sale and download service along with a number of enhancements to its iTunes music software and iPod portable player. The iTunes Music Store lets users download songs in AAC format for 99 cents a pop and, to start, boasts a selection of 200,000 songs from five major labels. Links to the store are built into Apple's newly upgraded iTunes 4 software, which allows unlimited CD burning of the tunes for personal use. You can also share your playlist with others, albeit with some restrictions. The iPod has been upgraded in look and functionality, most notably by including a USB 2.0 interface for faster file transfer between the Mac and the gadget. So far all this is only available for the Macintosh, though Apple plans to offer Windows software with these features by the end of the year. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has a review of the service, and Slashdot has further discussion of AAC and other audio formats. Check out the ad with Nic at the Apple site. Ellen Feiss has some competition....Apple: http://www.apple.com/music/
WSJ: http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20030430.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/29/1154204
Entertainment Biz Loses One...
We have good news and bad news - although which is which depends on your perspective. In a welcome breath of legal sanity, a US judge has absolved defendants Streamcast Networks (which owns Morpheus) and Grokster of much of a lawsuit brought against them by the music and movie industries. The judge noted critical technological differences between these file-sharing apps and Napster, which lost a similar suit, and the relevance of a US Supreme Court's Betamax decision, in which the concept of substantial non-infringing use played a critical role in freeing the technology from legal prohibition. The recent ruling doesn't suddenly make it legal to provide unlicensed access to copyrighted material, and applies only to current versions of the two apps. CNET has the story; the text of the decision contains some fine details about legal precedents. MP3Newswire.net has a relevant interview with the president of Grokster, Wayne Rosso.CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1027-998363.html
Decision: http://eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/030425_order_on_motions.pdf
MP3Newswire.net: http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/grokster.html
In other news, another federal judge has brushed aside Verizon's claim that revealing the identity of one particular active file-sharer to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) would violate the customer's constitutional right to anonymous expression. This is the second setback to Verizon in its efforts to thwart the RIAA. Verizon has 14 days to comply with the request to out the customer. CNET and Wired have the details.
CNET (Verizon): http://news.com.com/2100-1027-998268.html
Wired: http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58620,00.html
In hypocrisy of the Nth magnitude, the RIAA has shown that software such as Grokster does have legitimate uses. While RIAA lawyers argue in court that such file-sharing apps need to be shut down, the RIAA is using the chat functions of Grokster and Kazaa to send a message to millions of users, thus demonstrating that these apps can be used without breaking copyright and that they are legitimate. The thrust of the sent message, aimed at file-sharers, is that sharing copyrighted music is illegal. CNET has the straight news, and Slashdot has some tittering.
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1025-998825.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/30/0220212
WHO on SARS: Charts, Maps and Context Issues
With fear and loathing racing well ahead of infection, and its controversial travel advisory for Toronto, now lifted, the World Health Organization (WHO) has taken the SARS outbreak firmly in hand. Although China is the epicenter of the disease, Canada and the US host the largest concentration of cases outside Asia. The questionable call on Toronto aside, there's a lot at the WHO's SARS site about this new and still mysterious disease, which fortunately is not as lethal as was first feared. For example, the WHO tells you how to handle SARS specimens and previews the international conference on SARS to be held in June. The site offers maps showing where the disease is cropping up, and some fairly reassuring epidemiological curves that unfortunately lack interpretive commentary. What the site doesn't have, and badly needs given the mostly irrational public reaction and the junk-science approach of many politicians and media, is context and credible assessments of risk. Alas, the WHO is probably too politically driven to be the best source for that. Other diseases kill far more people every year without the kind of hysteria that is accompanying this one. Overall, though, this is a useful resource for all things SARS related, which is why we're covering it again.http://www.who.int/csr/sars/en/
The Alpha 3.8 Global Traceroute Web-Crawling Art Project
You've always bought into the line that the Internet is built to route around damage, right? That may have been true a few years ago, but Net traffic has been increasingly routed into a more economical and more fragile framework. The traceroute data generated by Alpha 3.8, the latest Tsunamii.net project, is expected to demonstrate this in both graphic and textual data output. You're probably familiar with the concept of infobots, commonly called "spiders", which crawl the Web site by site as they index content, often for search engine databases. Alpha 3.8 uses somewhat similar technology to crawl the Web and camp out on servers here and there for an average of a week and a half at a time. Visitors are asked to perform and submit Web-assisted traceroutes to help Alpha 3.8 accumulate data. As we write this, the site was in Malaysia. A good explanation of what's happening and why is presented on Fragnetics, and of course we have to link to the project.Alpha 3.8: http://www.tsunamii.net/
Fragnetics: http://www.fragnetics.com/articles/alpha38/
Unemployment Survey Seeks to Mine Predictive Data
How many more months can you expect to remain unemployed if you've already been unemployed for X number of months, given your field of endeavor, location, and previous salary? That's the question this survey is trying to answer. It's not scientific, since the sample - people who are online and managed to stumble on the survey - is hardly random, but there is some valid data to be mined here. At press time, almost 1,500 responses had been tabulated, and the number of responses from California and Texas approach statistical significance for those states. Answer at the Survey page; read results at the Main Reporting Page.Survey: http://dev2.hypnotic.net/oddtodd/
Main Reporting Page: http://dev2.hypnotic.net/oddtodd/report.cfm
The arms race between spammers and spam fighters continues to produce new and more complex technologies. The Register notes a new, repugnant, and criminal spammer strategy: spam zombies. Spammers disseminate virus and/or Trojan horse programs that infect your computer and use it in stealth mode to send out spam without your knowledge. One example is a program called Proxy-Guzu, which after infection sends an e-mail with the IP address and port number of the infected comupter to a spammer's Hotmail account. With that incoming info, a spammer can connect directly to the infected system and use it as a proxy to send off, say, penis enlargement e-mail. The hapless victims may not even know that their machines are sending out spam, and the spammer has effectively camouflaged the origin of his e-mail.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30414.html
Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Spam
Brad Templeton, one of the pioneers of Internet business (remember ClariNet, possibly the very first pure dotcom?), notes that 25 years ago, May 3, 1978, the first ever piece of junk e-mail was sent out onto the Arpanet. The message, which touted the release of the DEC-20 computer, was sent to a mailing list culled from a directory of everybody connected to the Arpanet at the time. Just over 10 years ago, Mar. 31, 1993, a Usenet post was first christened as spam. Templeton jumps off these events into an essay looking at the history, present, and future of spam. Much of this will be familiar territory to veterans of the spam wars, but it's still worth reading for its sense of history and Templeton's uniquely experienced perspective on the problem.http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/spam25.html
O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference
The O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference wrapped up this week in Silicon Valley after having produced plenty of provocative thought about up-and-coming technologies. The conference Web page has many links to press coverage in both mainstream and tech media. At the site, you can also read O'Reilly-produced articles about some key elements of the conference: Howard Rheingold's presentation on smart mobs; an interview with Alan Kay, the father of the modern graphic user interface; Eric Bonabeau's take on swarm intelligence; and several pieces about the exciting things going on with wireless networks. Much of the best current innovation is taking place in technologies covered here, so it's worthwhile spending a little time here catching up with the future.http://www.oreillynet.com/et2003/
May must be Hitler month. CBS will air a movie about Adolf Hitler's youth and the Atlantic has a fascinating article on Hitler's library, or the portion of it preserved at the US Library of Congress. Apparently, in addition to being a wonderful dancer, Hitler was also a bibliophile with a vast library. This article recounts the origins of the collection as well as its fate - it has been largely ignored by historians and biographers. However, the analysis of the library's contents throws light on its former owner, especially with respect to his interest in spirituality and warfare. One striking thing is that so many of the books appear unread and unopened, though perhaps not too surprising given that a huge number of people gave him books as gifts.
Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/05/ryback.htm
Wonderful Dancer: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JK45/netsurferdigest
New Yorkers Aren't All That Friendly (Yawn)
If you need help, don't go to New York City. The Big Apple rates near the bottom of cities where people are willing to help a stranger - whether the task is to help a blind person cross the road or to inform strangers that they have dropped something. That's the conclusion of a fascinating social-psychology experiment recounted in this article from American Scientist. In the US, friendliness drops with increasing city size, and appears most prevalent in the southeast and least on both coasts. Brazil, it turns out, is a great place to be a stranger, and not just for the thongs.http://www.americanscientist.org/articles/03articles/Levine.html
The Emergence of Genetics in Art
Watson and Crick didn't exactly discover the dual helical structure of DNA on their own, 50 years ago. They had a bit of help from one Rosalind Franklin, who shot the first-ever X-ray pics of the building-blocks of life. Some circles call for the Watson-Crick model to be renamed the Watson-Crick-Franklin model, but not this Economist article, which just about ignores her. The piece focuses on the emergence in artwork of a prominent theme: molecular biology. While Dali may have been the first to incorporate DNA's double helix in art, the theme is currently being fleshed out, so to speak. Sculpture, canvas, and other media are increasingly exploring the images and genetic code as artistic platforms. The art doesn't all speak favorably of biotech, but there you find the natural collision of arts and sciences. For more on Franklin, see the article in Surfing Science.http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1730781
Madonnna has learned the hard way that if you go looking for trouble on the Internet, you'd better be prepared for counterattacks. She seeded file-sharing networks such as Kazaa with bogus song files that contained a loop of her asking "What the fuck do you think you are doing?" In return, a hacker penetrated the Madonna Web site and replaced the normal front page with a list of songs from her latest album, American Life, and the statement "This is what the fuck I think I'm doing...". Question asked, question answered! Madonna's people took down the site for 15 hours. The Smoking Gun has a screen grab showing what it looked like before repairs. The so-called cuckoo's-egg approach, meaning to flood file-sharing networks with worthless digital fakes, isn't new but Madonna's approach was unusually provocative, so the unwanted attention from the hacker fraternity should come as no surprise. CNET also has the tale.
Madonna: http://www.madonna.com/madonna/
Smoking Gun: http://thesmokinggun.com/archive/madonnasplash1.html
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1025-997856.html
The June 5 Webby Awards ceremony has been cancelled because people either couldn't or wouldn't get to San Francisco to participate. Blame the economy and the ever-popular fears about traveling. The present crop of Webby winners will be named in a quiet little online ceremony instead. Just two years ago, the ceremony attracted over 3,000 movers, shakers, and groupies. This year, they couldn't get even 300 folks to agree to attend. Some feel that the glamour factor should be a thing of the past; others believe that as the Webby Awards are all about Internet content, it is best done as an online affair. Still, if you don't go to the affair, you miss some serious networking opportunities. The fact that people are opting to stay away in droves, rather than capitalizing upon such an opportunity for schmoozing, doesn't seem to bode well for the event. The San Francisco Chronicle has more, and NSD 9.15 had a blurb on the nominees.
Chronicle: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/26/MN229365.DTL
NSD 9.15: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.15.html#BS8
Proposed New Hampshire Law Enlightened about Wireless Security
It's nice to be able to report on a relatively enlightened piece of computer security legislation for a change. A proposed bill in New Hampshire (motto: "Live Free or Die") states that "the owner of a wireless computer network shall be responsible for securing such computer network" and that anybody who connects to such a network believing it to be open will not risk prosecution under more draconian computer intrusion laws. This law would in effect encourage wireless network operators to secure their networks lest they lose the ability to prosecute hackers. At the same time, it would give a defense to people who connect to such networks in the belief that the networks are open on purpose. This is not an academic distinction, as there is at least one case of a person being prosecuted - but not convicted - for connecting to an unsecured municipal owned network in Texas. Wired has the details on the proposed law and its positive impact on wireless networking.http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,58651,00.html
When we wrote about blogchalking in NSD 8.27, we told you about a consistent set of descriptive metadata which you can add to your blog. The concept has evolved since then, and the latest format lets you relay more detail about your blog and yourself. Beyond your location (place names rather then the ultra-precise GeoURL information), you can blogchalk info like your age, demeanor, and even eye color. As the blogchalking phenomenon has flourished, it has naturally led to the Blogchalk Search Engine, a specialized search engine that indexes the blogchalk information. It lets you find other weblogs which have a blogchalk location attribute of "Houston", or for that matter an eye color attribute of "blue".
NSD 8.27: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.27.html#OC1
Blogchalking: http://www.blogchalking.com/chalk.htm
Blogchalk Search Engine: http://bstpierre.org/bc/
BlogMatcher finds blogs that appear to be similar to a blog you supply it with. The comparison engine works on the principle that two blogs that link to the same sites share some sort of topical commonality. You put in the URL of the reference blog you want to match, and BlogMatcher does the rest. It applies a scoring formula to the links that blogs have in common - links shared among many blogs have a lower score than more uncommon links. The results are a list of blogs that, in most cases, appear to discuss similar topics to the reference blog. This is not unlike the page rank algorithm used by Google, but probably simpler, and limited to the 12,706 or so blogs in the database at press time.
http://blog.iloha.net/lab/
Ask Jeeves, the search engine with a butler, is back, and it appears that Jeeves has used his time off to really prowl the Net, trying to make search results relevant to the user. For example, if you now type "apple" you are asked whether you are interested in the fruit or the firm so that you may narrow your results. A Wired article has some other interesting anecdotes on the search engine business as Google's competitors try to carve out niches for themselves. You can read about the new features at Ask Jeeves through a link on its home page.
Ask Jeeves: http://ask.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58530,00.html
Inevitably, after the wild success of the most-wanted-Iraqi playing cards, somebody came up with a set of Bush Regime cards. These are only available online so far, but who knows by the time you read this. The deck includes not only members of the Bush and Republican leadership but many conservative media figures and a few of the various big money conservative donors and foundation leaders. It comes from a highly partisan site, as you might have guessed.
http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2003_04_20_uggabugga_archive.html#93223761
ONLINE CULTURE
Esther Dyson is well known in technology circles mostly for being well known in technology circles. Her Release 4.0 newsletter is widely read in the tech and venture capital industry and she's done a great deal of work in bringing Internet technology to Eastern Europe. The digital celebrity has finally started a blog, though she is careful to point out that "a lot of what I do is stuff I simply can't write about: internal meetings with portfolio companies, corporate regime change, private briefings and such. This blog will be an experiment covering the things I *can* talk about." Ooooo!http://release4.blogspot.com/
Best selling SF author and cyberpunk celebrity William Gibson says that he'll stop blogging at the end of his current book promotion tour. He's quoted in a Wired interview that blogging provided him "the largest amount of personal feedback I've had from readers over time," but that he's worried about the process stifling his creativity as he seeks to work on his next novel. Gibson's blog was quite popular among his many fans, and he has not ruled out starting it up again after he's finished his next book, whatever it may be.
Gibson: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp
Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58607,00.html
AbilityHub outlines alternative methods of computer access for those with disabilities. It's run by Dan Gilman, himself paralyzed from a spinal cord injury in 1972. From eye-gaze keyboard alternatives to speech-recognition software, the alternatives are outlined on the site and links are provided to the vendors of the products. There's even a foot-controlled mouse, which, as our reviewer recalls from his tech-support days 10 years ago, was what many people originally thought the mouse was for when they unpacked their computers.
http://www.abilityhub.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
The Wild Parrots of San Francisco
For those of us dwelling within the chaos of urban life, seeking out tiny pockets of nature in the confines of the city is the closest we regularly get to wildlife. Some of us have never even bothered to take a closer look at the creatures that cohabitate and adapt to man's urban sprawl. All of us could take a lesson from Mark Bittner. Thirteen years ago, Bittner discovered a unique presence in the heart of San Francisco: wild parrots. After several visits, Bittner gained the trust of these tropical creatures and was soon hand-feeding them. Bittner was able to get up close to these remarkable birds. The jury is still out on how the parrots came to call Telegraph Hill home, although rumors fly that these are birds that escaped from a ship or that the flock are birds set free by or escaped from pet owners. Whatever the story, this flock is flourishing, as observed by Bittner for more than a decade. While this site provides a detailed look at Bittner and his relationship with the birds, you'll be privy to more of the story when his book and a film hit the market at the end of this year.http://pelicanmedia.org/wildparrots.html
It's sobering to think how many people emigrate to the US despite the obstacles they face, visa or no visa. Once in the US, they have to find work, a place to live, and a doctor. They must learn to handle road traffic, emergencies, and financial planning. Even a lot of longtime Americans don't do all that. VidaAmericana.com is designed to help current and future immigrants handle all these and more potentially daunting tasks. Remember the scene in "Star Trek IV" where Kirk asks Spock "What does 'exact change' mean?" Much of the knowledge we take for granted - tipping, how to buy food and clothing, how to address an envelope - can bewilder the unprepared. This site gives much practical advice and provides many relevant links to governmental sites such as the US Customs Service and metropolitan transit authorities. While certainly valuable, the site has an implicit catch-22: much of the information can help people with limited experience, but they need Internet access and probably do not have it. Too bad there's no way to download it all to a handheld.
http://www.vidaamericana.com/english/index.html
If you ever watched the 1980s costume drama "Brideshead Revisited", you've already virtually visited Castle Howard; if not, you have a treat ahead of you. Built in 1699 by the famous architect Sir John Vanbrugh, Castle Howard is still a private home of the Howard family but it is also a large working estate which houses paintings by Canaletto, Holbein, Gainsborough, and Reynolds, William Morris tapestries, recently restored gardens, a boating lake, spectacular concerts, and holiday accommodations. Castle Howard is a stately home with plenty for any visitor to enjoy, particularly those with green fingers, as the grounds also offer garden tours, an organic farm, and a large tree nursery. If you are ever near York, England, drop in. After surviving three centuries and a massive fire in 1940, Castle Howard is starting to look indestructible.
http://www.castlehoward.co.uk/
Have you ever craned your neck when your pilot came over the PA system to announce the presence of something spectacular on the ground that apparently only he can see? Or better yet, while the left side of the plane can clearly see the Grand Canyon, the right side of the plane gets nothing but a whole lot of rural Arizona? Spin Maps was created to help airline passengers distinguish that patchwork quilt of land from 33,000 feet. It's a clever idea, and one that should entertain folks of all ages. They don't happen to sell maps of any route our reviewer flies, but she's hoping they'll expand.
http://www.spinmaps.com/
The GasBuddy Organization provides real-time tracking of local gasoline prices for the US and Canada. Each local site provides a listing of the lowest and highest prices per gallon or litre, submitted entirely by visitors to the site. Anyone can submit a price; entries are automatically removed after 96 hours. You can sort the prices by general area or brand. For instance, if you want to use your SpeedPass, you can search for only Exxon, Mobil, and Esso stations. Additionally, you can use the Price Chart links to graph the cost of gasoline in any three tracked cities over the past two years.
http://www.gasbuddy.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The mythical unicorn is a creature that most children learn to admire in fairytales. More recently, one was enshrined in J. K. Rowling's books. If you've never seen one yourself, you could check out the exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art or its accompanying Web site. The tale of the unicorn is retold there in text, video, and illustration as a story of courtly love and with a Christian interpretation, but the explanations of the details of the seven displayed tapestries are even more telling. The more important gentlemen have silk scarves holding their hats in place, bright clothes imply the brutality of their pursuit of the innocent beast, rabbits in the foreground refer to fertility, and the carnations by the unicorn's hoof symbolized love. Every inch of the woven artwork is rich in allegory.http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Unicorn/unicorn_splash.htm
Architecture and the Built Environment
Esto Photographics proves you don't need a lot of elaborate Flash or guesswork navigation to have an impressive gallery on the Web. Its elegant Images of Architecture and the Built Environment are a pleasure to browse. You don't have to be an art critic or museum-goer to enjoy the striking composition and revealing angles of the low-res color and black-and-white photographs that showcase the technical and creative professional talent it serves. ("Esto connects architects, designers, photographers and publications.") You'd find more stock photos at huge sites such as Getty Images and Comstock, but less can be more. Most Esto categories have three photos each, so you can whip through a lot of architecture in short order to get a quick sense of scope and quality. The residential category is especially fine. You can also view individual portfolios of Esto photographers. These guys are good - so good that if you want to hire one of them for your own project, you'll likely have to pay big bucks. Ah, well!http://www.esto.com/home.htm
Biggles is a freelance artist/designer and a self-confessed English eccentric. The latter certainly comes out in this online collection of the bizarre objects he has made in the course of his unorthodox career. Wit and whimsy seem the keynotes to his design - the objects generally have no discernable purpose other than to delight and intrigue. There's a nose-operated peepshow that resembles a Victorian What-the-Butler-Saw machine; the user looks through two peepholes at a rather tame picture of a nude, and then blusher pads pop out to rouge the face of the unsuspecting voyeur. This is one of the more "useful" objects in a collection that includes a twin-handled garden fork, an ivy bicycle, and a kissing machine. English eccentrics plainly do serve a purpose though - to give us delightful little sites like this.
http://www.biggles.uk.com/welcome.html
In the FAQ that follows Danny Gomez's extraordinary "Flashback" Flash animation, the first question is unsurprisingly "What drugs do u use?" A fair question, given that the cartoon features Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD, whose face morphs into a demonic mask as he bangs his shaman's drum, and a psyco (sic) whose repressed memories are drawn out with disturbing yet beautiful kaleidoscopic artwork set to the backdrop of trippy, trancey music. File under "weird" folks - you're in for a strange trip. And just what drugs does the creator use? "Too much coffee man," according to the FAQ. Yeah right. Whatever, dude.
http://w1.736.telia.com/%7Eu73602493/flashback.html
As the Little Engine That Could often said, "I think icon, I think icon!" OK, maybe not, but Susan Kare does. She's an interface graphic designer in San Franciso, and if you've ever laid eyes on a Mac or used a painting program, you've seen her work. Played Solitaire on Windows? She designed the cards. Her client list is a veritable who's who of the major tech industry players: Apple, Microsoft, Palm, Netscape, Shockwave, and many more. Sometimes referred to as "the matriarch of all things pixel", Kare offers some of her work for sale at her site. Icon and pixel fonts are her specialty. Want to replace that boring hourglass with a rhino? You can pick up around 40 bio-icons for less than $30.
http://www.kare.com/index.html
Although among the most comprehensive sources of talk radio available on the Net, Stafanki doesn't lack shortcomings. Notably, you don't know what format a stream is until you try it. That aside, there is a great deal of content here - and we're not talking right-wing/left-wing rants. You get material here that you might not easily find elsewhere, for example, the CBC series on the privatization of water. What? Privatization of water supplies? What's next - privatization of air? The CBC reports that during the past decade, three large corporations have gained control of the water supplies for over 300 million people on every continent. Your local TV talking heads are too busy hamming it up and trying to appear folksy to bother with news like this. Bypass them. Find out what's really happening here.
http://www.stafanki.com/
|
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: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist
The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals As Solar Observatories
The Best American Travel Writing 2002
All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's NapsterBOOKS & E-ZINES
Remember that story your cousin's best friend's sister told you? Here you'll find tales told by someone else and retold by someone new. You'll discover an intoxicating mix of anecdotes that have the all the ingredients of urban legends and spell-binding rumors. Every Tuesday features new stories recounted for eager visitors. You'll experience accounts from strangers, friends, family and people the story reteller never even met. The rumor mill has more grist with this creative online twist on gossip and hearsay. Why not contribute your own - or, in the tradition of this site, someone else's - story today? How about the wild weekend escapades of the coworker in the cubicle next to yours?http://www.otherpeoplesstories.com/
Everything "Alice in Wonderland"
Take a step through this virtual looking glass and explore everything "Alice in Wonderland". You'll discover a world befitting a queen and her royal deck of cards, from the widely accepted Disney animated film to the macabre video game by American McGee. Navigate your way through several pages of Wonderland goodies and further exploration yields details about the man who created the whimsical adventures of Alice and the many creatures of Wonderland. Charles Dodgson wrote the tales under the pen name of Lewis Carroll. After telling the story of "Alice's Adventures Underground" to a colleague's eldest daughter, named Alice, the young girl begged him to write it down. So was born the story of a curious little girl who follows a white rabbit down a hole.http://www.alice-in-wonderland.fsnet.co.uk/
Everyone's a journalist now that we have blogs. We didn't say "good journalist", mind you, and you may well be deafened by the level of noise out there. But Josh Marshall writes for a variety of paying publications in addition to his blog, Talking Points Memo (TPM). TPM illustrates how an entertaining, informative, and well written blog can complement the more conventional arms of the Fourth Estate. The mainstream media came close to overlooking the Trent Lott affair back when, but Marshall was one of the few who picked it up and was on it like a pitbull that wouldn't let go. The rest you know. It's right to say that he comes at things from the left, but when a writer tells you, with reference to Rick Santorum's recent comments on homosexuality, that "there's a fine line between Christian conservative and porn-king", you just have to read on, whatever your political stripe.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
A Journal of Spirits - the Potable Kind
F. Paul Pacult has the two most vital ingredients of a successful commentator on wines, beers and spirits. First, he knows his stuff. He knows that fruit brandies and eau-de-vies are best served at cellar temperature, and that the master Scotch blender's greatest attributes are his nose, his experience, and his passion. Second, Pacult has this self-same passion, be it for hoppy, malty Pilsener lagers or for fat, big-hearted Napa Valley Syrahs. Perhaps this combination of the authority that comes from deep knowledge and an evident love for his subject matter means that he, unlike some, does not come across as a snob or a bore. Quite the reverse: this site is full of authoritative, lively reviews and articles and handy practical tips for enhancing your imbibing pleasure. One such tip is to avoid American light beers altogether. As we said, he knows his stuff.http://www.spiritjournal.com/
Looking for interesting e-zines? Why? You have us, after all! Nevertheless, we'll happily point you toward a site that makes e-zines its passion. Search for any topic you can think of, or just browse through the listings, conveniently grouped into categories. The E-Zine Machine offers descriptions of the e-zines, publication frequency, format, approximate circulation, and more. They report; you decide. Oh wait, that line's taken. Well, you get the idea.
http://www.theezinemachine.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Pity Albert Einstein, born too early, perhaps. Were he alive today, the celebrated theorist might well be having the time of his life developing his grand unified theory at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. This spring, a four-part miniseries on public TV, "Big Ideas", will explore some of the massive efforts underway at that haven for great thinkers in order to understand the universe on an Einsteinian scale. The miniseries is based on four grand themes: "Exploring the Cosmos", "Einstein's Dream", "A New History of the World", and "Thinking Big". The companion Web site, Big Ideas Online, seems an excellent preview. It has three main sections: Big Thinkers (biographies), Big Ideas (background), and Great Failures, a two-page essay that puts the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Titanic in perspective. If you've ever been intrigued by multidisciplinary concepts such as interstellar travel, game theory, or the origins of terrorism, stop by this site on your way to enlightenment. The broadcast schedule is in About the Series.http://www.thirteen.org/bigideas/
Paleontological Research Institution
Paleontology may sound dull, especially if ancient specimens in glass cabinets don't turn you on. Anyone who enjoyed "Jurassic Park" has something in common, though, with the folks at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) in Ithaca, N.Y., where various scientific projects bring the past to light. PRI's Web site is designed for students and teachers as well as the general public. There's a nice balance of text and photographs, and the site highlights three mastodon excavations in New York. Mastodons aren't dinosaurs, of course, but kids who wonder what bone diggers do in the field and in the lab will learn a lot here. Virtual field trips cover other earth sciences. One section is devoted to right whales, another to oil, and another to Finger Lakes geology. There's also a preview of PRI's Museum of the Earth, scheduled to open this summer.http://www.priweb.org/index.html
Everyone knows James Watson and Francis Crick, but have you heard of Rosalind Franklin? Chances are you've seen her opus, the first clear image of DNA, now dubbed Photo 51. It's that X-ray diffraction photo from which Watson and Crick deduced the double-helix structure of DNA. Nova has created an episode entitled "Secret of Photo 51", which delves into the topic, and the companion Web site is high-quality reading for high-school students and curious adults.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/