BREAKING SURF
| Blog Ethics |
| About BloggerCon |
| The Browser Wars Return |
| Meals on Wings |
| History of Big Spring/Webb AFB |
| European Air Show Photos |
| Ads for 118 |
| Album Cover Art Knockoffs |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| A Posthumous Interview with Philip K. Dick |
| Hebrew Picture Dictionary |
| Sky and Telescope's Customized Sky Charts |
| Mind over Matters of Disease |
| Sperm Wars |
| A Whale of a Photo |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
As we go to press most of the power has been restored to the 50+ million people who were affected by the great electricity blackout of 2003. At the moment nobody knows exactly how the problem developed, but there will certainly be a large and very public investigation. Scoring high on the amusing irony scale the Associated Press is running a story about Iraqis giving tips to Americans on dealing with the power blackout. Best tip: call in the Iraqis to get the power going again since they have so much experience in that area. Yahoo! has the full media coverage. Grant Barrett has a weblog entry from New York which is representative of personal experiences in that city during the blackout and which includes pictures.Iraqis: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030815/ap_on_re_mi_ea/blackout_iraq_1
Full Coverage: http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?in=US&cat=Northeast_Blackout
Grant Barrett: http://www.worldnewyork.net/comments.php?id=561_0_1_0_C
The W32/Blaster Worm: Fast and Virulent
The latest worm to spread and attack Windows systems has all the makings of a superworm. The infection is propagating with great speed and wide scope on the Internet, which is why we want to warn you about it. It's a critical vulnerability in Microsoft's Remote Procedure Call interface on Windows operating systems, and the company has had a fix available for a while. The worm is set to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Microsoft Windows Update server this Saturday. Needless to say, Microsoft is urging users to use Microsoft Windows Update to patch their systems as soon as possible. A graph at SANS that shows activity on TCP/IP port 135, a point of entry for the worm, reflects the infection's high virulence. CERT has an advisory with more information for sysadmins. In an ironic twist, Wired notes that Microsoft is having cultural problems, with users not trusting its own automated Windows patching process, thinking that the auto-install patches might be hacking attempts. Tech writer Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has a superb summary for the layman.Microsoft: http://microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-026.asp
SANS: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?date=2003-08-11
SANS graph: http://isc.sans.org/images/port135percent.png
CERT: http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-20.html
Wired: http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,59994,00.html
Vaughan-Nichols: http://www.practical-tech.com/network/n08142003.htm
Bush Administration Charged with Distorting Scientific Findings
A widely publicized report instigated by a Democratic congressman is accusing the Bush administration of "numerous instances where the administration has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings." The report was prepared by the minority staff (that would be the Democrats) of the House Committee on Government Reform. You always have to be careful when you venture into the grassy pastures of political warfare - you never know what you might step into. Regardless, upon examination, this report does appear to be a solidly researched and documented condemnation of the Bush administration's distortion for political purposes of a significant number of scientific issues. As always, no matter how kinky your politics, we don't ask you to take our word for it but encourage you to take a look, judge for yourself, and be an informed American voter.http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/
As the wavefront of blogs, wireless communication, and cheap enabling technology slams into the world of journalism and conventional media, three meaty pieces from Online Journalism Review observe what the length of this creative interface is stirring up. Paradigm shifts are always messy and turbulent and this one is no exception. Pay-per-story journals like the Korean phenomenon OhmyNews and the newbie RedPaper (see NSD 9.30) and independent reporters like Christopher Allbritton, whose reporting from Iraq was funded by readers, are indicative of the changes taking place. The eyewitness reports and individual expertise of participatory journalism supplement traditional news media and convert readers from audience to community, from customers to participants. That sounds grand, but it may also produce a tidal wave of drivel. Two other articles look at personal broadcasting (video blogging) and the decline in the prospects of professional photojournalists. Enthusiasts with time and relatively inexpensive technology can provide a sharp news focus beyond the reach of high volume broadcasting. Pro photojournalists are being swamped by hordes of amateurs armed with digital cameras and picture cell phones, and demand for their elite services is dropping. The articles provide sharp examples of people and organizations surfing along the inventive breaking edge of journalism.
Participatory journalism: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060218311.php
Personal broadcasting: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060223904.php
Photjournalism: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1060300231.php
NSD 9.30: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.30.html#BS10
In NSD 9.05's "Testing Six Degrees of Separation", we introduced you to the Smallworld team of sociologists at Columbia University who wanted to test the quantity of relationship linkages between individuals. Does the cliche six degrees of separation hold up? The answer appears to be yes, sort of. To send a message to a complete stranger in a distant location through friends in many cases requires only four relays to reach the targeted individual. The vast majority of such chains, however, broke down: of over 24,000 message chains initiated, only 384 reached their targets. The failed chains died, in general, due to lack of interest. The researchers estimate that had everybody cooperated, messages could reliably reach their targets within five to seven relays. The story has garnered considerable media attention, but doesn't it sorta seem like the scientists picked the number six out of the air?
Smallworld: http://smallworld.columbia.edu/
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=3240077
NSD 9.05: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.05.html#SCI1
If you have kids, or are one, you know of Steve Burns, although you probably only know him by his first name. Burns hosted the first 100 episodes of "Blue's Clues" before leaving and shaving his head. While Burns's work was exemplary onscreen, there was a certain dissonance offscreen - Steve showed up to his "Blue's Clues" audition in earrings and an army jacket, and he once said that as a kid he would've hated the character he portrayed. Nevertheless, at his own Web site, he has nothing bad to say about the show he chose to leave, other than that he felt he had to either leave or stay with it a very long time. Burns, who has always had musical aspirations, has just released an album, Songs for Dustmites. You can listen to the whole album at Burns's Web site, and we recommend you do. It's darned good - alternative for sure, with overtones of goth but ethereal. A fan site has an archived New York Times feature on Burns, and PhreshWater has an article with a musical perspective. You can buy the album below, or catch Burns on tour through the western US.
Burns: http://www.steveswebpage.com/
Songs for Dustmites: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000AINL3/netsurferdigest
Times: http://www.steve-burns.com/articles_nytimes.html
PhreshWater: http://www.phreshwater.com/feat01.aspx
SIPphones: Buy the Cheap Net Phone Set, Call for Free
Michael Robertson, the man who brought you MP3.com and Lindows, is at it again. His new venture, SIPphone, sells plug-and-play phones that work over broadband connections. The site sells session initiation protocol (SIP) phones in pairs for $130 - you're supposed to give the other phone to whomever you call the most. Plug yours into your network Ethernet port, and you can immediately talk for free to any other SIP user around the world. There are some limitations, unsurprisingly. A SIP phone won't work with modems, you can't dial 911, and you can't talk to land lines or cell phones, with the exception of 800 numbers. You can, however, use pre-paid 800-number calling cards to call long distance. You can talk to users of any SIP network beyond SIPphone. Your SIPphone number is embedded in your phone hardware; no matter where you take your phone, your number is constant. The price is low, the set-up is easy, and there are no extra charges. Sounds great, but will it work as a long-term business? The phone companies can't be pleased....http://www.sipphone.com/
There are 3,000 luxury cars - BMWs, Volvos, and Saabs - sitting on the bottom of the English Channel. The Tricolor, a car-transport vessel, went down last December in one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. All 24 members of the crew were rescued, and a succession of ships that collided with the wreck led authorities to fast-track its removal, a process in progress now. This MetaFilter page has excellent links to photographs of the complicated salvage effort. The auto manufacturers want every piece of every car recovered; they fear that someone might try to install parts from one of the salvaged cars and that their companies will be liable for any resulting damages. The official Tricolor Salvage site is also fun.
MetaFilter: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/27546
Tricolor Salvage: http://www.tricolorsalvage.com/pages/home.asp
Bartle on Voice Communication in Games
Gamegirladvance has a feature by Richard Bartle on real-time voice communication among video game players. Bartle, a co-creator of the first MUD, is about as authoritative as anyone gets when it comes to multiplayer games. He's not opposed to voice communication - in fact, he sees a bright future for it - but he argues that voice comms technology has not matured enough to be used in games. Bartle figures that, sadly, there's an almost irresistible marketing requirement to add it, even though he thinks it actually lowers the quality of the game experience and ultimately turns off players. The technology just isn't good enough yet and breaks the spell of immersion, the suspension of disbelief. Players enter virtual game worlds to escape the real one, but current voice technology impinges upon the make-believe experience, an unwelcome intrusion of reality. Designers who know their stuff understand this, but Bartle worries that their bosses don't.http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html
Sex.com Suit Settled, but Kremen Still Troubled
You'd think the legitimate owner of the sex.com domain would own a money-making machine. That's what Gary Kremen, said legitimate owner, believed as well. But alas... The domain was hijacked by a forger and Kremen undertook a major lawsuit to get the domain back. The suit stopped short of the US Supreme Court with Kremen holding a paper saying he was entitled to $65 million in damages, but the hijacker skipped the country. Kremen managed to snag two houses, one of which looks great on the outside but is unfinished and largely unfurnished inside. Kremen hasn't had much success with Sex.com or his other domains, either. He founded Match.com and wound up with only $50,000 in an $8 million sell-off. His time with Sex.com has led to some serious self-destructive behavior, including a major addiction to speed. Even now, Kremen is still having problems developing his supposedly bullet-proof domain. Read this Wired article to see what happens when you think you hit the jackpot.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/sex_com.html
Do Penis Enlargement Pills Work?
On seeing that question, our immediate instinct is to react with "No way, it's just a stupid spammer thing." We, however, are a sophisticated civilization and as such see the scientific method as a path to ultimate truth. Clearly, an experiment is in order. An anonymous author, who describes himself as "just a regular guy living in New York City who wants a larger penis", has graciously offered himself as the experimental subject for this important study. He is maintaining a weblog at which he is tracking his experience with some pills and providing relevant measurements to an accuracy of 1 millimeter. Some of the commenters at the blog site have questioned whether the unnamed scientist is really a spammer, but the anonymous researcher pledges to post only the truth. He also discloses that "I will tell you upfront that the links to (the pills) do contain my affiliate ID so that if you do buy based on my writings here, I'll get some compensation for it." Not that much different from a lot of pharmaceutical research these days, is it?http://thepill.blogs.com/
The Bush administration has pledged to more than double the amount of timber cut in public forests west of the Cascades in order to meet the goals of the Clinton administration's 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (see the Oregonian). That's good, because with, at last count, 247 total individuals filing for candidacy in the upcoming California special election to recall Governor Gray Davis, the demand for paper, soapboxes, and placard posts on the West Coast has to be huge. California's political carnival just keeps rolling on. Now would be an excellent time for Davis to get into the clothing retail business: You Want My Seat? Buy My Pants! The California Secretary of State office provides details.
Oregonian: http://tinyurl.com/k2k0
California: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/recall_cand.htm
Is Google trying to shift from search engine to application? First, you could use it as a dictionary, and now you can use it as a calculator, too. Simply enter the expression you'd like evaluated in the search box and hit one of the search buttons to get an answer. The formats are familiar to anybody who's used command-line calculators: basic arithmetic ("5+2*2" or "2^20"), more complicated math ("sine 30 degrees" or "e^(i*pi)+1"), units of measure and conversions ("100 miles in kilometers", or "160 pounds * 4000 feet in Calories"), and physical constants ("1 a.u./c" or "G*mass of earth/radius of earth^2"). Google says that you can also experiment with other numbering systems, including hexadecimal and binary, but does not give examples. However, Jason Kottke, Andrew Baio and friends explore the limits of the service with some surprisingly entertaining and enlightening results.
Calculator: http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator
Kottke: http://www.kottke.org/03/08/030814fun_with_the.html
Baio: http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/08/14/fun_with.shtml
eBay Wants to Control Ads with "eBay" on Google
eBay's latest move puts it in some fairly muddled waters. The company has asked Google to refuse to sell ad placements that include its trademarked name. Among other things, it has asked for refusal of ads containing text such as "eBay management software". This CNET article quotes a seller of eBay management software who notes that eBay's wish seems hypocritical, as its own auction site hosts ads sporting trademarked names such as "Barbie". The software seller has already filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice on this matter, and we expect that others will follow (ahem) suit. This has potential for serious ugliness. eBay seems to believe that it's simply protecting its trademark. Google wouldn't comment. CNET has a brief - for now - story.http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5061888.html
Spam Benefits Major Companies as Well as Spammers
Who profits from spam? Given that it's difficult to figure out where spam actually comes from, MSNBC decided to set up a mailbox and respond to a single spam message about mortgage refinancing. The array of organizations that responded was breathtaking, including Quicken Loans, Loanweb, and Ameriquest. Quicken Loans alleged that it was responding to a request made at its Web site, but there was no such visit. Instead, MSNBC discovered a vast and largely hidden network of players who make pennies on a lead offered to mortgage brokers. Each node in this network links to someone further down the food chain; ultimately, you get to the entity that actually sent the spam. MSNBC's best find was Erp, a man who claimed he never sent spam but decided he didn't want anyone to know his name. Without a name there is no one to pin responsibility on, and that is just one fundamental problem with spam. This MSNBC article is the latest episode of its major investigative effort into spam. As we said last issue, all the sections are worth reading.http://www.msnbc.com/news/940490.asp
Paul Graham, best known for his popularization of Bayesian spam filtering, has written a piece that suggests yet another aggressive spam fighting approach. Graham's article tells how spammers are altering their messages to beat statistical content filters, then notes that the one thing spammers can't really change in their message is the URLs of the Web sites they promote. This allows software to recognize the URL in an e-mail and classify it as spam - and then, perhaps, to access those URLs a very large number of times. Widespread use of such a process would cause spammers pain in the form of the cost of bandwidth, and maybe make the business uneconomical. The more spam a spammer sends, the more automated, costly Web traffic they would see. Graham mentions experimental software that is already set up to do this. The obvious problem with this method is that it can be easily turned into a distributed denial of service attack on unsuspecting Web sites, a facet not addressed in Graham's otherwise thoughtful piece.
http://www.paulgraham.com/ffb.html
Free Software Foundation FTP Site Cracked, Recovered
The FTP site of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) hosts many free software packages widely used in the major Unix distributions. The FSF recently discovered that its FTP server had been hacked, and many folks worried that some of those packages may have been compromised with Trojan-horse code. Fortunately, this does not seem to be the case. The crack apparently happened in March, shortly after an exploit was found in an obscure bit of the operating-system kernel, but before a fix was installed on the machine. The machine was compromised by a user who had shell access, a now-discontinued privilege given to package maintainers. The hacker apparently used the FTP machine to collect passwords and as a launching point to attack other machines. The FSF has mounted a substantial effort to verify MD5 checksums of all the software it was hosting and has not found any tampering. The FTP site has a succinct explanation of the situation.http://ftp.gnu.org/MISSING-FILES.README
New Top-Level Domain .Pro Costs a Pretty Penny
Remember those new top-level domains that ICANN approved, .info and .pro among them? RegistryPro is trying to make the .pro domain names a revenue source by charging registered professionals $300 US for a single domain. RegistryPro will provide users with a digital signature and domain only after the professional standing of the domain has been checked. Given that one can get a domain name for much less, it doesn't seem like professionals are going to opt for .pro over .com in overwhelming numbers any time soon. CNET has more.RegistryPro: http://www.registrypro.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5061326.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Ever since Web sites first lit up the Internet, archiving and managing posted information have been a challenge. Compared with published literature, fixed and easily referenced, online communication is dangerously volatile. Sites disappear or lie abandoned and content changes on a whim. The rise of blogs adds urgency to the debate about the rules for the new forms of publishing. Rebecca Blood considers blogs maverick journalism and proposes a six-rule set of blogger ethics. Perhaps the most contentious of these is the fourth, which suggests that items should be added to if necessary but never rewritten. As she sees it, blogging may immeasurably enrich the information environment but without rules and ethics it could decay into a kind of grey literature of questionable provenance, usefulness, and legitimacy. Jonathon Delacour is equally serious but disagrees that bloggers are journalists and is adamant that revising is fine. He admits the line between fact and fiction is often blurry, but he trusts readers to distinguish between them with intelligence. He proposes revisions to most of Rebecca's rules and reasons persuasively and clearly. Both writers make good points and the debate is worth reading, thinking about, and perhaps contributing to. For background, see NSD 9.28.Blood: http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html
Delacour: http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2003/08/weblog_ethics.php
NSD 9.28: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.28.html#OC1
BloggerCon seemed like a great idea. Hold a conference under the auspices of the Harvard Law School with a motto of "Celebrating the art and science of weblogs". Invite well known weblogging pundits like Glenn Reynolds, Doc Searls, and Elizabeth Spiers. Have it all hosted by Harvard blog fellowshipper Dave Winer. Sounds great, right? Well, when the blogger community found out they were invited to spend $500 each to attend the weblog love fest, it ripped the idea to shreds, It didn't help that the introduced members of the panel are not universally loved in the blogosphere by any means. The whole thing is acidly deconstructed by the Register's Andrew Orlowski, who provides numerous links to the relevant criticism. We particularly like the quote by August Pollak: "90% of the audience at this thing who will likely be reporters for magazines and Web sites, their fees paid by their respective editors to Find Out What The Kids Are Up To These Days...."
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32315.html
BloggerCon: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggerCon/
Just when you thought the Microsoft/Netscape/other browser wars were over, they're back - or will be soon, thinks developer Peter-Paul Koch. His "Browser Wars II: The Saga Continues" is meant to help developers prepare clients and the public for battles to come. He notes that Microsoft plans to tie Internet Explorer (IE) 7 to its new operating system - to upgrade from Explorer 6, it seems, you will have to get the new OS. "To us," Koch writes, "the story of the Tied Browser shows that Microsoft is Evil. That's our real story." You've heard that before, but consider this educated source. Koch predicts that IE 6, once an "Evil Usurper," will soon fall behind in compliance with new standards and "mutate into a Senile Evil Dinosaur Usurper." As Koch sees it, IE 6 and its incomplete CSS support can't support today's technology because of inherent limits. He thinks it will assume the position Netscape Navigator now holds during the two to three years it will take for IE 7 to appear. Mac users will be interested in Koch's opinion of Safari, which "shows every promise of becoming a far better browser than Explorer 6." In the long run, our reviewer would bet anyway on the Redmond Raiders.
http://tinyurl.com/govf
ONLINE TRAVEL
In October 2001, Dutch Web/graphic designer Marco Hart took a picture of his Turkish Airlines in-flight meal so he could show his parents what he'd eaten. Later, he searched the Web and found that a few other people had posted pictures of airline food online, and he thought it might be fun to gather these pictures in one site. Things really took off; currently there are over 3,500 pictures of airline meals from 268 different airlines, and last month his AirlineMeals.net welcomed its one-millionth visitor. It's not hard to see why the site is so popular: it's fun, it's informative, and it encourages participation from its users, who can send in their own pictures and comments on mile-high food or discuss it in the lively forums. A tip for you: if you find yourself on a domestic Aeroflot red-eye flight, go for the fish rather than the meat if you're traveling business class, and bring your own food if you're flying economy.http://www.airlinemeals.net/
History of Big Spring/Webb AFB
Big Spring Army Air Field in Texas was created in 1942 to train bombardiers on the then super-secret state-of-the-art Norden bombsight. The bombsights were kept in a vault between flights and the bombing range was bigger than several of the smaller states of the Union. After the war, Big Spring was taken over by the US Air Force, which named it Big Spring Air Force Base (AFB), and later renamed it Webb AFB. The field continued as a training base as well as hosting a group of fighters tasked with protecting the border in case the Mexican or Costa Rican air forces attacked. The base was shut down in 1977 but the base's Hangar 25 still exists and a group of dedicated volunteers have created a museum there. This site shows many of the museum's photos and tells the entire Webb story. The site has quite a few broken links, but there's enough here to lend the feel of what was once one of the US's major air training bases.http://www.hangar25.org/
The Pegase site is a searchable database of many hundred spectacular plane photos. The planes range in era from pre-World War I to the most modern. Browse or search by plane type or particular air show. Photos can be viewed at 800 by 600 pixels or larger via simple clicks. The photo quality is professional. One not to miss is the Bleriot XI^2, an early World War I plane. Take a look at it, then complain about your worst flying experience.
Pegase: http://www.pegase-airshow.com/search.php
Bleriot: http://www.pegase-airshow.com/picture.php?Aircraft=109&id=579&size=l
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The British have for many years been dialing 192 for directory inquiry services, but this is all set to change later this month when British Telecom (BT) introduces a new range of services under a different number, 118. Shifting something that is so firmly imprinted on the public consciousness takes some effort, and BT has taken an innovative approach. Perhaps realizing that in the past, public service announcements have generally not ranged much further in style than from the po-faced to the lame, with the occasional "Reefer Madness"-type campaigns achieving success for all the wrong reasons, BT has gone for a quirky, humorous approach. The stars of their TV ad campaign are two gangly athletes with '70s pornstar mustaches, and the ads are genuinely funny. This site has collected some of the ads for you to view in Flash, and they are well worth a look, especially the hilarious pastiche of the Honda Accord ad.http://www.the118118experience.com/
The Knockoff Project features album cover design spoofs, tributes, and coincidences. Revisit the vinyl era through this unique look at art inspired by music - or, at times, completely unrelated to music. Browse through hundreds of thumbnail images of classic album covers from such artists as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Madonna - and many more obscure artists. Despite the lack of order in the layout of this site's content, it manages to keep its visitors' attention through simple navigation and quickly loaded pages. The only two named categories are Beatles and "Sexy!". The site's a great idea and fine as it is, but it would improve immensely with just a bit of explanation.
http://www.knockoffproject.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages
The Chicago Manual of Style: Fifteenth Edition
Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering
A Posthumous Interview with Philip K. Dick
The dead speak up, but often we listen only when they have something new to say. Philip K. Dick died in 1982, after writing science fiction that gave birth to "Blade Runner", "Minority Report", the upcoming "PayCheck", and other movies. With the help of writer Erik Davis, a serious fan of clever interpolation, Dick gives a posthumous interview with eerie relevance to ongoing developments in computer science, robotics, and mass media. The interview is based on fiction, letters, and essays by Dick, who "responds" to questions from Davis in a way that illustrates both Dick's foresight and the persistence of his deep concerns over the manipulation of perception. For example, Davis asks what is wrong with use of virtual technology to spread a message. Dick "replies": "The bombardment of pseudorealities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly. Fake realities will create fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland." If the futurist in you is confused by the confluence of reality and artifice, Dick may have something to say to you. He envisions a world where humans and machines "meet each other halfway." Davis attempts skillfully to bring Dick back to life to help us deal with what might seem a posthuman era.http://frontwheeldrive.com/philip_k_dick.html
Visit this site for a fun and easy way to learn basic words translated from English to Hebrew. Created by Jacob Richman, a computer consultant, My Hebrew Picture Dictionary is a welcome addition to the many language resources available on the Internet. Visitors are provided with translations of common words used in everyday language. Each word is accompanied by a photograph (also taken by Richman) and the transliteration of that word. This site won't help you get that Hebrew-as-a-second-language diploma, but it can introduce you or help you brush up on the ancient tongue.
http://www.milon.co.il/
SURFING SCIENCE
Sky and Telescope's Customized Sky Charts
Sky and Telescope offers an online sky chart that simulates a naked-eye view of the sky - from any point on Earth, at any time of the day or night, and between the years 1600 and 2400. If you're a star-gazing enthusiast, you'll find this sky simulator a useful tool for planning your next stellar expedition. Included with this sky chart is an option to print your own map of the stars for further reference while out in the field. This interactive sky chart is just one of the many tools available at this online portal of the cosmos. Check out some other great reference materials here such as, Observing Highlights, the Almanac, and the Image Gallery.http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/skychart/
With its emphasis on proof, modern science has generally been skeptical of a strong relationship between emotion and disease. The National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division held an interdisciplinary exhibition in 1996-97 to help elucidate the extent to which feelings affect the body. Its Web site, Emotions and Disease, documents the exhibition in academic fashion. An historical overview touches on views of ancient physicians Hippocrates and Galen and those of later practitioners. In the 19th century, microscopic anatomy "fragmented the notion of organismic unity implicit in classical and early modern medical theory." By the mid 19th century, though, neuroses had become a major area of clinical study. Hysteria was hot. Sigmund Freud dropped hypnosis in favor of psychoanalysis, with the revolutionary approach of listening to, rather than looking at, his patients. Thanks to shell-shock, psychosomatic medicine grew quickly after World War II. The American self-help tradition (awash with quackery), the placebo effect (founded on "hope, imagination, and expectation"), and stress and deprivation have all come under scrutiny in the continuing effort to identify an interrelationship. The final section, Frontiers of the Mind, deals with "the explosive development of neuroscience, a field which has quickly become one of the most respected, exciting and actively pursued in medicine." The conclusion seems to be that some long-held popular beliefs may prove to have a basis in fact after all. Well, well!
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/emotions/emotionshome.html
Extreme sports are yesterday's news, computer games are passe, and reality TV has always sucked, so what's going to be the Next Big Thing? In a word - exo-biotics. At the vanguard of this phenomenon is Sperm-Wars: The Game. It's simplicity itself: competitors provide "samples" which are then colorized, placed in the gaming arena (competition slides, race tubes, death-wrestle pits, etc.) and then viewed under a microscope to see which sperm performs best in a series of contests of endurance, speed, strength, and maze-solving ability. Game creator Mike Roof clearly sees the massive potential of the game and has mapped out a painstakingly thorough marketing plan for the sport, which involves merchandizing, sponsorship, gambling, and even competitions where Joe Public can compete against celebrities of sport, entertainment, and politics. The way Roof sees it, the pre-discharge market has been pretty well covered by pornography. He's looking to exploit the post-discharge market and hype it for all it's worth.
http://www.sperm-wars.com/
The old saw says that good luck is really only when preparedness meets opportunity. Regardless, there's no doubt that some scientists and photographers happen into better results than others. Occasionally, luck, science, and photography coalesce and magic happens. Big magic. Big, stinky magic. Magic so big and stinky that you have to evacuate the bow of the ship caught within it. It's funny that we should use the word "evacuate", actually, because that's exactly what the minke whale in this photo did just before the shutter snapped..That superb science outlet, News.com.au, published photo along with the report.
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6947020%5E13762,00.html