BREAKING SURF
| Deconstructing the Semantic Web |
| The Media Carta Manifesto |
| HotelChatter |
| Ruins of the Third Reich |
| European Stadia |
| German Wildlife, on Cam |
| One Odd House in Baltimore |
| A Broad Look at Historical Panoramas |
| Art from the Heart of the Bottom |
| A Compendium of Quilts |
| FilmWise Quizzes and More |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| A Vice Called Vice |
| Urban Dictionary |
| Dr. Zebra's Guide to Medical Trivia |
| Lasers Reveal Carvings on Stonehenge |
| Endangered Farm Breeds |
| Google Deskbar |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Chess legend Gary Kasparov is once again taking on a computer, X3D Fritz, in the Man-Machine World Chess Championship. A series of four matches, already begun, is set to culminate Nov. 18. In a nod to the sponsor, X3D Technologies, the games are being played in virtual reality, a silly marketing gimmick. X3D's technology creates a virtual chessboard that floats in the air in front of Kasparov, who has to vocally announce his moves. Kasparov and audience members wear special glasses to produce the 3-D effect. Kasparov will receive $150,000 for the match, plus $25,000 if he draws or $50,000 if he wins. X3D Fritz will have to be satisfied with just the publicity and sales at about $100 a pop (regular Fritz costs less).http://x3dchess.com/index.html
Speaking of modernized medieval warfare, we were reading the Pakistan Christian Post when we found an open challenge to Osama Bin Laden from Chevalier James Reese, an American Knight Templar. The original Knights Templar, an order formed at the end of the First Crusade, disbanded (with help from the Pope) in 1314. The modern Knights Templar are an unrelated order of Christian Freemasons and one of their leaders, the aforementioned Reese, has challenged Bin Laden to single combat with sword or scimitar. Says Reese, "Here's the deal: if I win, Al Qaeda is disbanded - forever. If you win, then you can set the head of a Knight Templar on a pike outside your tent, and you can claim that you slew the chief of all Crusaders in the United States." Bin Laden, if he's alive, won't likely see this in the Pakistan Christian Post, which is published in that eminently non-Pakistani city of Philadelphia - the city of brotherly love, laughably enough.
Pakistan Christian Post: http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/newsdetails.php?newsid=398
The Knights Templar (original): http://www.templarhistory.com/
Knights Templar (modern): http://www.knightstemplar.org/
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a new 3-D survey of part of the universe, has announced it has the most compelling evidence yet that dark matter and dark energy rule the cosmos. The peculiar idea that the universe is largely invisible, made up of stuff that we can't observe directly but only sense through its gravitational influence, is old hat by now, but researchers toe the leading edge in looking for it. The SDSS is big-time, long-term science, involving over 200 scientists around the world. Two technical papers submitted to scholarly journals have the scoop, but you probably won't understand much of them unless you're in the profession yourself. The press release at the SDSS site is more accessible and has an awesome, colorful galaxy map. The new map shows over 200,000 galaxies in a slice of the cosmos 2 billion light years deep. From the clustering observed, the multidisciplinary team concluded that the universe consists of 5% atoms with most of the rest being mysterious dark matter (25%) and dark energy (70%). Scientists simply don't know why dark matter and energy exist or the physics that generates them. Until we learn, gaze in awe at the colorful galaxy map.
SDSS: http://www.sdss.org/news/releases/20031028.powerspectrum.html
Paper 1: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0310725/
Paper 2: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0310723/
How Belkin Routers Spammed Users
VeriSign had this year's Esteemed Award for Technical Marketing Evilness (EATME)™ all locked up with its attempt to redirect DNS queries to its own search server, but all of a sudden we have a real contest on our hands. Belkin, a manufacturer of networking equipment, has leaped into the fray. Some genius at that company decided that every once in a while, Belkin routers should redirect a random Web request from your browser to Belkin's Web site for advertising purposes. To turn this feature off, users had to go to Belkin's Web site and ask the company to remotely switch off the behavior in the router, a process that does not work through a firewall. Can you say: 1) security hole; 2) broken automated Web requests; 3) spamming; 4) egregious waste of your time; 5) moral repugnance? Sure enough, consumers tore Belkin a new virtual orifice in scathing online feedback. The company has quickly backpedaled, and plans to release a firmware fix to disable this feature by Nov. 17. The Register has the story, while Slashdot has the outrage and notes about technical repercussions of this kind of thing.Belkin: http://www.belkin.com/
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33858.html
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/07/1740205.shtml
Bluejacking is using a cell phone to send an anonymous text message to someone nearby using Bluetooth wireless technology. It's invasive, rude, and burgeoning in popularity. Much of its appeal seems to be a voyeuristic thrill from observing the reaction of victims. In brief field surveys, the BBC found lots of mobile phones open to bluejacking, especially in crowded locations like airports and train stations. One keen bluejacker has a Web site to explain the phenomenon and, presumably, to encourage people to get into it. Her Web site, BluejackQ, explains what it is and how to do it, gives tips and tricks, and provides pointers on when to run for it if a victim turns nasty. It's probably only a matter of time before porn and spam applications surface.
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3237755.stm
BluejackQ: http://www.bluejackq.com/
Microsoft Offers Blog Tools and Social Networking with Wallop
Microsoft seems to think Wallop is a great name for its move into social networking software. Considering a Webster definition of "wallop" - to move with reckless or disorganized haste; advance in a headlong rush - we won't disagree. Wallop appears to combine Friendster's social-networking approach with simple blogging tools, moblogging, and RSS feeds, all wrapped up in a tidy package for the novice user and plastered with a Microsoft label. Wired has an article on this Microsoft effort, in which many of Wallop's competitors - read targets - display surprising bravado and nonchalance, false or otherwise.Wallop: http://mywallop.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,61095,00.html
What Web Servers Are the Presidential Candidates Running?
Linux Journal asks if there's any significance to which Web server/platform combinations 2004 Presidential candidates are using. Fortunately for Linux Journal, Netcraft lets anyone determine the operating system and Web server software of any Web site. Linux Journal lists the combination for each of 10 credible candidates. Most are running Apache; only three are running Microsoft IIS, and yes, as you probably guessed, President Bush is one of them. As far as parties go, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is running Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000 while the Democratic National Committee is running Apache on Linux. The RNC has an uptime of 4.26 days (maximum of 39.04). The DNC has an uptime of 445.02 days (also the maximum). You'll find amusing discussion in the comments section that follows the Linux Journal article.Linux Journal: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7239
Netcraft: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph
The Clark Community Network Enters the Democratic Race
The Presidential campaign of Wesley Clark has unveiled the Clark Community Network, an ambitious Web site of community comments in support of his run for the White House. Rival Democrat Howard Dean has clearly demonstrated the power of the Net to rally support and, more importantly, to raise large amounts of money. Dean's success has forced other candidates to focus serious attention on their own online image. Clark already had a Web site - including the mandatory weblog - but his newest Web presence is a full-blown community forum. The site runs on the same open-source software that powers well known community sites like Kuro5hin. The content is a mix of commentary and discussion from Clark supporters, ranging from organizational details to philosophical discussions about whether Clark's weblog is a liability to the campaign. Wired has a good backgrounder about the site.Clark Community Network: http://www.forclark.com/
Dean: http://www.deanforamerica.com/
Clark: http://blog.clark04.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61142,00.html
Let's wind up our mini-Presidential flurry with a Web site that presents the campaigns' financial data. The most intriguing bits at Fundrace 2004 are the Money Maps, which show geographically the source of funds for each candidate by county and amount of donation. You can easily see which sections of the country support which candidate and how strongly they do so. Another section ranks candidates by criteria such as average income of donors, Repeat Factor (average number of contributions per individual donor), GrassRoots Index (who gets small contributions from all over?), FatCats Index (who gets large contributions from the wealthiest Americans?), and so on.
http://www.fundrace.org/
Prediction Futures Meet Technology
Markets are impressive predictors because of their ability to pool diverse information possessed by different individuals. Remember the US government's terrorism futures market, which erupted into the public consciousness several months ago and was quickly snuffed (see NSD 9.29)? MIT's Technology Review magazine has set up a market called Innovation Futures, where you can buy and sell contracts related to technological and organizational innovation. Players get $10,000 in artificial money to invest. For example, you can buy futures on whether or not Google will go public in April 2004. You pay $13 for the contract; if the event takes place in April, you receive $100, for a profit of $87. (The most a contract can be worth is $100.) Whoever has the highest net worth on Jan. 31, 2004 wins a prize, as do several others. The Real Power of Artificial Markets site explores the analysis of markets. If you want to build your own predictive market, check out the Prediction Trader V4 software.NSD 9.29: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.29.html#BS1
Innovation Futures: http://trif.technologyreview.com/bk/guide.html
Real Power of Artificial Markets: http://www.artificialmarkets.com/
Prediction Trader V4: http://us.newsfutures.com/home/trader.html
Stuart Kauffman Thinks Big about Life
Stuart Kauffman is a deep thinker. Based at the Sante Fe Institute, Kauffman has produced several compelling, challenging science books, including "At Home in the Universe". In that work, he describes how order arises from chaos and famously points out that life has explored only a small corner of the huge range of protein space, leaving lots of room for human explorers. In a short transcript and a ten-minute video on the Edge Web site, he muses about autonomous agents, the definition of life, and the coming marriage between biology and nanotechnology. He envisages a future in which life is pretty much an industrial process, opening up the rest of that vast protein space to human ingenuity, with all the advantages and the moral and societal conundrums that will create. The interview provides a good sense of the man and his ideas and provides a teasing glimpse of how man might explore the biology that evolution has ignored.Edge: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman03/kauffman_index.html
"At Home in the Universe": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195111303/netsurferdigest
Are Iraqis Writing Iraqi Blogs?
Blogs from Iraq got off to a great start with the anonymous posts of Salam Pax. Pax acquired, and deserved, a great following, and prompted debate over whether or not he was who and where he claimed. In his footsteps, other Iraqi bloggers are springing up, but the same questions are raised: what and who are you really reading? Is this really the word of Iraqis? Although framed within the context of Iraq, the question applies to all anonymous bloggers. Online Journalism review devotes half a column to the issue, but the only answer to the question it arrives at boils down to "because they say so". The second half of the column looks at the perils of private publishing in Iraq.http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1068169487.php
Salon wonders whether coincidence or cause and effect is responsible for a recent jump in CD sales. Although the number of peer-to-peer network users continues to grow, CD sales increased by 16% over 2002 levels after the Recording Industry Association of America began subpoenaing file-sharers. The legal action certainly got big play in the media, and the music industry believes this first sales uptick since 2000 shows people can be frightened away from sharing and into buying instead. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, thinks the sales growth is mere coincidence and that many other factors, including lower prices, a slew of hot releases, and resurgent consumer spending, explain the recent spike upwards. There's no hard evidence to explain either the long sales slide or the recent increase, so you can pretty much make of the figures what you want. Some advocates of file-sharing claim the practice actually stimulates music sales. One thing seems certain, though: this battle isn't over yet by a long shot.
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2003/11/06/cd_sales/index_np.html
The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines
This list of design violations comes from Jakob Nielsen, the well known Web-design and user-interface guru. Nielsen's list and its rankings are based on numerous homepage reviews his consulting company has performed. Surprisingly, the biggest problem has nothing to do with HTML or visual design or structure, at all. According to Nielsen the most violated homepage design guideline is a failure to emphasize what your site offers that's of value to users and how your services differ from those of key competitors. Nielsen's full list can be found in his popular Alertbox column. Incidentally, if you want Nielsen to take a look at your own home page and suggest how it can be improved, it will cost you a cool $10,000 in consulting fees.http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031110.html
Ten Rules about Charging for Content
While some hold that information wants to be free, people want to get paid. Read this account of how the Albuquerque Journal went from a free to a paid Web site. Far from losing readers, the paper's circulation actually grew. The article has ten points to make about why you might want to charge for newspaper content, all of them more or less convincing. Ironically, you can read about it at a free site, Online Journalism Review.http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1068080483.php
Characteristics of Napster and Gnutella Hosts
Very little of the academic attention paid to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has looked at the characteristics of the hosts who choose to participate in them. To help fill that gap, researchers have surveyed the aggregate characteristics of Napster and Gnutella hosts, looking at things like bandwidth, IP latencies, connect/disconnect frequencies, number of files shared, and the level of cooperation between the hosts. Their key conclusion is "significant heterogeneity and lack of cooperation across peers participating in these systems." Naturally, the findings have implications for the evolving design architecture of P2P networks. The full PDF paper has the numerical details and many illustrative graphs. It was published in the journal Multimedia Systems.http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/msj.pdf
The Matrix movie trilogy has ended, and we're probably all the better for that. While the first movie received pretty good reviews, the last couple haven't lived up to expectations. By one estimate, some 400 billion hours of online time have been devoted to the Matrix movies. We at NSD estimate that movie-goers, after watching the latest episode, probably spent about 400 billion hours huddled around a toilet. Has a movie series ever gone from promising philosophical premise to crap action movie so quickly? Some Slashdotters even compared "The Matrix: Revolutions" to that horror of sequel horrors, "Highlander II: The Quickening" - shudder. Some of the better of those 400 billion hours of online time were spent on The Matrix: Resolutions, which looks back at fan speculation on what the third installment would resolve. If nothing else, take a look at some of the cool snapshots at the official Matrix site.
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/05/1613227
The Matrix Resolutions: http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/resolutions.html
Matrix: http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/
"Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka"
The BBC has started webcasting the first of six episodes of a new animated Doctor Who adventure. "Scream of the Shalka" features Richard E. Grant and was written by Paul Cornell. The webcast is a Flash animation. In addition to the new Doctor Who adventure, the Web site has interviews with the cast, images suitable for desktop wallpaper, and a contest in which you can win a life-sized display figure of the ninth Doctor Who. New episodes will come out every Thursday through mid-December.http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/shalka/index.shtml
When CBS decided not to screen the "The Reagans" miniseries, did it cravenly cave in to political correctness, or was it a justifiable business decision that the show simply wasn't up to snuff? Those who thought it was an unbalanced portrayal of Nancy and Ronald Reagan unquestionably put pressure on CBS, and the network had already agreed to cut one scene in which the President shows indifference to AIDS sufferers. But just how bad or good was the show? Judge for yourself the merits and bias of the program as you read Salon's online script of the show. The 213-page, 8-MB PDF file is supposedly an authentic shooting script, although Salon cautions that it's undated and may not be the version actually used. We can't help wondering what the big deal is. Movies and TV have never been known for historical accuracy or objectivity so surely nobody takes these things all that seriously, do they?
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/07/reagans_script/index.html
Breaking News on Herring's Breaking Wind
Scientists have discovered that herring emit high-pitched farts, and have even produced a .wav file so that you can hear them. After testing, the researchers determined that the fish farted not out of dietray consequences or from fear. The working hypothesis at present seems to be that herring fart a lot at night in order to locate one another when they can't rely on sight. For schooling fish, such as herring, the concept sort of makes sense, at least for the males.http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994343
ONLINE CULTURE
Deconstructing the Semantic Web
What is the Semantic Web good for? Better yet, what is the Semantic Web? At its simplest, the Semantic Web is a vision of a unified, formal framework for describing data on the Web. The definition leads to a host of assertions why the Semantic Web is desirable and what it can be used for. In a recent essay, Clay Shirky deconstructs the idea and concludes that the Semantic Web is essentially useless. He argues that the Semantic Web is nothing more than a mechanism for creating useless links in logic (syllogisms). It's not strictly accurate to say that Shirky thinks the Semantic Web is useless; rather he thinks the project as it stands, a top-down attempt to define data formalisms for the Web, is not worthwhile. Shirky perceives that a more bottom-up approach for data modeling the Web is evolving organically, and will result in a more useful foundation for enabling machines and humans to, in some sense, share an understanding of meaning on the Web. That's a rather broad paraphrase of a long and well argued piece, so you should probably read it yourself to get all the nuances.http://www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_syllogism.html
"We, the undersigned, are troubled by the way information flows and the way meaning is produced in our society." So begins an impassioned but not very historic manifesto produced by the always entertaining culture rebels at Adbusters. The signees have lost faith in the institutions of mass media and the regulatory bodies that oversee them. Accordingly, they seek to launch a new movement of media democracy and a new human right, the right to communicate. It's a noble sentiment perhaps undermined by the immediately proceeding demand for "the right to buy radio and television airtime under the same rules and conditions as advertising agencies". In addition to the Media Carta Manifesto, there is also a plan of action to "break the corporate advertising monopoly", "take back the public airways", and "break up the media conglomerates". All this evokes a fond nostalgia for the glorious successes of Communism, as does the rather neat samizdat design of the Web site.
http://www.mediacarta.org/
ONLINE TRAVEL
HotelChatter is a new collaborative weblog for travelers who research and purchase hotel reservations online. The site aims to cover everything related to hotels and lodging around the world. It offers not only entries from users who review hotels - where to stay, what to stay away from - but also things like which celebrities are staying where, hotel industry news, tips for booking online, and more. The Web site is off to a good start, with numerous people already writing up their hotel experiences, and a sprinkling of link-packed entries with an assortment of hotel-related links. Notably, the search feature allows you to look for stories tagged with city, state, and country. Worth checking out and worth contributing to.http://www.hotelchatter.com/
Though justly reviled, the Nazi regime put together some bold architecture in its time, and this site presents examples of the original work and, in many cases, examples of how that work appears today. This isn't about politics, it's about edifice, and some of it is fascinating. The descriptive text and attributions are excellent, as well, and it is clear that much time and effort has been dedicated to presenting this material clearly and concisely. As the Allies proceeded to bomb the schnitzel out of Nazi Germany, the Germans moved production facilities underground, and there's some great documentation of that migration to be found here. While many are familiar with the Buchenwald death camp, we'd bet you didn't know that its commandant built a zoo there. Adding insult to injury, the animals received far better treatment than the prisoners. See for yourself.
http://www.thirdreichruins.com/
This site is the labor of love of some European footie/soccer-nut. It features pictures, histories, and stats of sports stadia in Europe. For those who know little of European sport in general and soccer in particular, it will be interesting, informative, and well worth a visit. For European soccer fans, it's practically porn. The sight of the Nou Camp stadium bulging with 109,000 people will quicken the pulse of the FC Barcelona fan, and the spectacular San Siro will delight Milanese of AC or Inter persuasion. Even to non-partisans, these two stadia are pretty special, and they are just two of the 707 European sports stadia you can see on this site. The photographs are great and really do give a sense of the atmosphere of some of the grounds - there are some fantastic ones of the Ali Sami Yen stadium, home of the Galatasary club of Turkey, and one of Europe's most intimidating cauldrons for visiting teams, despite its paltry capacity of 32,000 . English fans may be interested in revisiting Bayern Munich's Olympiastadion for happy memories of the 5-1 mullering of Germany in 2001.
http://www.eurostadiums.com/
At Wildtiere-live, you can follow a herd of, we think, red deer in a nature park in Germany. The main feature is a live Windows Media Player video feed, though do make sure that you watch this during the hours of daylight in Germany. If it's dark there, you can look at some old footage, but we had great fun watching the live feed of the massive antlered stags, the females, and the young grazing in a forest clearing, and hearing their bellows and grunts. Under the feed there is a button marked Schnappschuss, which Babel Fish told us means "snapshot", that allows you to save a snapshot of the feed as a picture, and even e-mail it. You can read about members of the herd in the link marked Die Hauptdarsteller; here we learnt, again courtesy of Babel Fish, that the stag, Paul, the former boss of the herd, "was dethroned in the middle last year in the Brunft by Heinz. A disgrace, which he did not bear yet.... Paul is inclined therefore to inconsiderate, aggressive high-speed shots." We plan on tuning in to more of the live feed in the hope of catching Paul in action.
Wildtiere-live: http://www.wildtiere-live.de/
Babel Fish: http://world.altavista.com/
Those of us who experience a harsh winter climate know what the February blues can do to one's state of mind. In the case of this eccentric artist, a long winter resulted in a peculiar passion. Timmerman Daugherty, formerly a lawyer, has made the transition to artist by creating a frozen-in-time garden made entirely from junk. Daugherty's desire for a year-round garden was so intense, she began creating trees from green bottles and other assorted oddities. Soon this love for recycling discarded items left the garden and entered the house. From porch to patio, living room to kitchen, this house is adorned with glass, old jewelry, knick-knacks, and other unusual items rescued from the back alley and thrift shops. Although the artist's choice of interior and exterior design is not for everyone, the commitment to her craft is extraordinary.
http://www.weirdgardens.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
A Broad Look at Historical Panoramas
Panoramic photography records scenes too large for conventional cameras, with landscapes and group portraits leading the way. Taking the Long View is an archive with about 4,000 images maintained by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Subjects range from civil engineering to military activities to sports. There are so many visual treasures here it's hard to know where to start. From the subject index, you can jump into a geographic area or into alphabetized categories. It's amazing to view, say, a group portrait of the 1909 St. Louis Cardinals then jump through a link to a photo of attendees at a 1918 conference on worldwide prohibition, thence to a portrait that commemorates the visit of General John Pershing to General Ulysses Grant's cabin on the Ohio State Fair Grounds in 1935. We're not sure why you'd want to do that, but it's neat that you can, and that you can download TIFF versions of many of the JPEGs in this huge archive.http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/pnhtml/pnhome.html
Art from the Heart of the Bottom
When we say that someone has an amazing butt, we generally talk form rather than function With respect to artist Stan Murmer, we're referring to both. He stumbled upon a novel way of making an impression on the art world a few years ago when, for an art class assignment, he was told to use an organic object as a stamp. Murmer realized that he had been sitting on a perfectly usable organic stamp for all of his life. Thus butt-print art was born, and Murmer has never looked back (apart from when he is rollering acrylic paint onto his buttocks, of course.) Initially known at art school as "the freak who turned his ass in as a project", he now sells his pictures for hundreds of dollars, occasionally. At Murmer's Web site, he presents a gallery of his work, together with a brief history of the artistic movement, and a journal of current assignments. Just as Van Gogh was renowned for his sunflowers, so Murmer will be remembered for his tulips; the shape of that flower lends itself perfectly to the artistic tools he has at his disposal.http://slingshot.to/buttart/
Quilting is both a true art and a means of creating practical and necessary items. The Quilt Index site is historical, rather than instructional as many quilting sites are. Nothing is sold here. What quilters will find are many wonderful quilts, both old and new. Most of the data comes from several state projects created to document this art, but you'll also find academic essays that are useful in putting the many techniques into a practical perspective. Most of the quilts on display are stunning and all the thumbnails can be expanded to a size large enough to easily see the fine details.
http://www.quiltindex.org/
Know movies, do you? We challenge you to take visual quizzes at FilmWise, where removing actors' heads is a fine art. In one recent quiz, you were asked to identify 16 actors whose childhood heads had been superimposed on their adult bodies in movie scenes. The best guessers won DVDs. Invisibles are a series of contests in which actors' bodies are missing - you see their clothes in a scene and have to guess the movie. If you find the visual quizzes humbling, try the text quizzes, such as In Closing (from Oct. 30), which asks you to identify movies on the basis of their last words. For instance: "Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you. Gort berenga." Fortunately, the answers are a click away, so you won't have to lose sleep over them. Should you exhaust the quizzes, FilmWise has forums to browse and links to visit so that you, too, can flaunt your head and utter the occasional "Gort berenga" with authority and conviction.
http://www.filmwise.com/main/index.shtml
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
The Complete Far Side
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Wireless Hacks
Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Serieshttp://www.viceland.com/
Strictly speaking, this wonderful, fully interactive slang dictionary does not just cover urban slang. There are terms from many non-urban (urban in the sense this site uses it, black) lifestyles here. For example, "suck it up" is a term made common in and by the military. Civilians use it freely today. The emphasis is certainly on urban slang, though. The dictionary is as comprehensive as any slang dictionary can be. Visitors can add their own definitions, rate those they check, and read or hear pronunciations of the terms, which often don't seem to have much relation to the actual spelling. One warning: there's a lot of raw language here. If you're easily offended, stay away.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Dr. Zebra's Guide to Medical Trivia
We aren't sure why John Sotos, MD, calls himself Dr. Zebra, but we certainly like his hobby site, which is more down-to-earth than many sites that cover medical topics. Our reviewer's favorite section by far is the main attraction, Medical History of American Presidents. Every President is covered, and there are plenty of surprises. We learned, for example, that George Washington battled his way through smallpox, tuberculosis, dysentery, pneumonia, five bouts of malaria, and other afflictions. What a fighter! Andrew Jackson "would fight at the drop of a hat" whenever someone joked about his slobbering, a habit he couldn't control until maturity. Jackson was six feet tall but never heavier than 145 pounds. During the American Revolution, "he experienced hardship, pain, disease, multiple wounds of the head and fingers, and grief arising from the annihilation of his immediate family." For most of us, unfortunately, it's easier to relate to details like these than it is to dry recitation of accomplishments as a statesman. Teachers, take note. Another neat feature is Astronauts & Cosmonauts, which includes Astronaut Selection Hints, advice for would-be astronauts ("NASA loves to hear that you're not interested in being an astronaut."), and Dumb Flight Surgeon Tricks, a delight for anyone who has ever doubted the judgment of their doctor.http://www.doctorzebra.com/
Lasers Reveal Carvings on Stonehenge
Nobody really knows why Stonehenge was set up in the first place, although theories abound, so who cares? Well, while you were napping, the place just got a lot more interesting. It's not just a bunch of big rocks; archaeologists have attacked the monument with lasers and have found art on the 'Henge. It appears as though folks in the Bronze Age, some 4,000 years ago, carved representations of metal axes (and at least one dagger) on some of the stones. You can't see them now, but lasers can. As metal was cutting-edge technology at the time, some believe that the carvings imply thanks to the gods. Do we know why Stonehenge was built? Nope. Do we know what the carvings of axe-heads and dagger signify? Nope. But the 3-D laser scanning is far from complete. As axe and dagger were common instruments of death in that time, however, certain possibilities regarding the purpose of the monument do leap to mind.http://www.stonehengelaserscan.org/
To sheep farmers, sheep are not just sheep. Each of many varieties has its pros and cons. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is an organization that works to try to preserve the nearly 100 breeds of cattle, goats, horses, asses, sheep, swine, and poultry that are currently facing extinction. The site has information and photos of all varieties of the animals just listed - all breeds, not just those in danger. This organization is one of the good guys is the environmentalist world. Its goals are widely supported in the agricultural community and its site is visually excellent as well as informative.
http://www.albc-usa.org/
SOFTWARE
Google Deskbar is a lot like the Google Toolbar, except you don't have to have a browser open in order to access it. Type Ctrl+Alt+G in any Windows application and you can search Google right there and then. The results show up in a small inset window that closes automatically. Other keyboard shortcuts let you immediately search Google News, Google Images, and Froogle, use the Google Calculator, and so on. Windows only.http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html