BREAKING SURF
| Vivisimo's Awesome Metasearch Beats Google |
| The Violated Mac |
| Life at the Bottom of the World |
| Around the Arctic in Seven Months |
| Historical British Panoramas |
| America on the Move |
| Abandoned Bicycles of New York City |
| Continuity Counts |
| International Photo Portraits |
| Aerial Art Photography |
| Mach's Matches |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Diary of a Car Salesman |
| The Proofreader's Hall of Shame |
| Classic Pop-Up Books |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Super Bowl Commercials, and the Breast
Erection drugs, horny chimps, and farting horses - such were the highlights of taste among this year's Super Bowl commercials. (Our favorite was Chevrolet's "Soap in Your Mouth" ad.) Naturally, all anybody wants to talk about is the quick halftime flash of a boob belonging to Janet Jackson. The chairman of the FCC wants an investigation and the media is going ape over the story (and incidentally, chimps are apes, not monkeys, as we never tire of pointing out to clueless large corporations). The Drudge Report has a lovely photo of the breast in question, and CNET reports that searches for it set records on all the search engines. TiVo users replayed the flash more than anything they ever have on their TV sets. As for the commercials, Ifilm has the videos in a variety of formats, while CBS has the ten best older commercials. Oh yes, somewhere in there was some sort of a sports event, but we couldn't be bothered to find any links to it.Drudge Report: http://www.drudgereport.com/mattjj.htm
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-5153330.html
Ifilm: http://www.ifilm.com/?sctn=collections&pg=superbowl2004
CBS: http://www.cbs.com/specials/2004_superbowl_commercials/
DDoS Hackers Threatened Super Bowl Gambling Sites
Super Bowl Sunday elicits some of the greatest gambling traffic of the year, and a lot of that is funneled online. Hackers see that, and hold that traffic hostage: "Wanna keep your site up? Pay me off, and I'll leave you alone." InfoWorld reports that stickup artists demand $10,000 to $40,000 to leave sites alone in an online form of the old protection racket, and some of those who haven't forked over the dough have suffered distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Such an attack, capable of taking down a server, is a big threat to these places, but what does it mean to you? Since DDoS attacks can't be reliably executed without many compromised systems, it means that there are many compromised systems out there, including possibly your own Windows machine. Whether or not you think gambling is a good idea is not the issue. The lesson here is to keep hardening systems against such penetration. Install antivirus and firewall software. Run Spybot Search & Destroy (SSD). Don't use Outlook. You can get the software for free, and you'll be doing yourself and everyone else a huge favor by doing so.InfoWorld: http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/29/HNsuperbowl_1.html
SSD: http://www.safer-networking.org/
A Guide to All the Presidential Candidates
If you listen to the media, you'd think that only about seven men are running for President of the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are actually about 140 candidates spread across the Republican (25 candidates) Democratic (45 candidates), and other political parties (American, Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Socialist Workers, Prohibition, and more). It's a mob of people you never hear about except on those "Gee, ain't it cute" TV segments in which they trot out some colorful crank who managed to cough up a registration fee. But not all of these people are cranks by any means, as shown by the extensive information on the Politics1 Web site. The site presents each of the 140 or so candidates with a short bio and links to their Web sites. So, who's going to be the first to create a demographic analysis of these people? (We're too lazy, but give us credit for the idea, OK?)http://www.politics1.com/p2004.htm
The body count of American troops in Iraq recently passed the 500 mark, and the number of wounded stands at almost 2,600. Not surprisingly, a number of sites are keeping track of the casualties, some providing detailed demographic information. Probably the most comprehensive listing outside of military sources can be found at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (ICCC). Its vast array of numerical data also includes coalition casualties, as its name indicates. Cryptome has a less comprehensive calendar-based display, with short summaries of incidents in which people died. Information on Iraqi civilian casualties is harder to come by, but the Iraq Body Count site is giving it a shot using a variety of media sources. We are not aware of any project which uses this data to automatically generate graphical representations of this carnage, but surely this kind of project is not far off in an election year.
ICCC: http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx
Cryptome: http://cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw.htm
Iraq Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount_date_down.htm
Cory Doctorow's New Novel Free Online
Cory Doctorow's first novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom", was released for free on the Web and simultaneously sold for cash in book stores as a publishing experiment. Apparently, the experiment was a success, because Doctorow has just published his second novel, "Eastern Standard Tribe", in the same manner. Doctorow invites his readers to "rip, mix and burn! - and that's what I'm hoping you will do with this." Sure enough, one of his fans has created a Web site where you can remix Doctorow's books with "Alice in Wonderland" for some neat results. Doctorow has links to that and other innovations at his book's Web site. Trevor Smith's Java speedreader is kinda cool. Meanwhile, Doctorow and publisher Tor Books will be keenly eyeing the financial results of this second book; Doctorow has a couple more books on the way. His Web site has much more information on his book, his publishing experiment, and fan reaction.Doctorow: http://www.craphound.com/est/
"Eastern Standard Tribe": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765307596/netsurferdigest
The exodus of manufacturing jobs to China and of software and service jobs to India is in the news these days. Wired looks at the move to outsource programming work to India with sympathy and some useful insights. The three pieces that make up the feature provide stories both bitter and hopeful, and cast an informative light on globalization's latest phenomenon. With highly educated, English-speaking population and low labor costs, India has become an essential consideration with respect to outsourcing for almost all businesses. To dismiss India is to risk becoming uncompetitive. Regardless, the new face of the global village darkens the doors of many software engineers in the US. Terminated workers see little prospect of finding a job at home and those still with jobs cling grimly, scared of the future. Indian managers, scurrying to meet a burgeoning demand for their increasingly high-quality services, find US complaints frustrating and two-faced. Dynamic capitalism has been good for the US, they point out, and now it's being good to others as well. Meanwhile, trade-protectionist groups clamor to have outsourcing outlawed while others call for better measures to cushion the shock of rapid change. This isn't the first time that technological and socio-economic forces have shaken up the free market and it won't be the last. Like it or not, jobs and work don't belong to anyone or anywhere in particular, and protectionism is a blind alley. That doesn't make it easier for anyone on the cusp of change.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india.html
Dumbest Moments in Business of 2003
Business 2.0's annual take on the past year's dumbest business moments has arrived and it's a motley collection. The grand prize co-winners for 2003 are a pair of Dicks. One of them, Dick Grazzo, former head of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), won for taking home ludicrous amounts of cash. We'd consider Grazzo a greedy player, but not dumb - our vote would have gone to the board of the NYSE on this one. A clear loser among the 100 other listees is the Dairy Queen franchise in Richmond, Va. - down $700,000 after employee Ayman Hasaballa yanked down the sweater of a female customer, bit her breast, and exclaimed, "I am like Dracula." Apparently, it wasn't the first time he'd attacked a woman in the restaurant. You might think the news couldn't go much further downhill, but you'd be wrong. It can, and it does. No matter how low the bar is set, somebody will limbo under it.http://www.business2.com/b2/web/dumbest/1
The US Department of Homeland Security has unveiled a new Web site and alert system to provide public information about computer security and to provide advice to the general public about protecting their computers from hacking. The United States-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) site provides another channel for the security alerts that actually come from the well known Carnegie Mellon CERT Coordination Center (CERT-CC). The US-CERT site also lets you sign up for related mailing lists and provides forms for reporting hacking incidents and security vulnerabilities. None of this is new for security professionals, and much of the information is a bit too technical for the average user. Still, it never hurts to have another venue for the distribution of this kind of important security information.
US-CERT: http://us-cert.gov/
CERT-CC: http://www.cert.org/
Tracking the MyDoom Worm, and Some Sage Advice to SCO
If you're curious how the MyDoom worm has affected the Net, read the F-Secure blog. The worm is recognized as the most widespread in Net history. Because MyDoom was designed to launch a distributed attack the SCO Group's Web site, the company took its SCO.com domain offline and replaced it temporarily with TheSCOGroup.com. Meanwhile, a second variant of the worm is spreading, MyDoom.B, which targets Microsoft. Fortunately, the impact on Microsoft appears to be negligible thanks to the company's massive and well distributed Net presence, hosted by Net-cache company Akamai. The F-Secure weblog offers links to graphs that depict the spread of the worm. Don't miss Netcraft's hilarious if slightly geeky suggestions for how SCO should have dealt with the worm.F-Secure: http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/
Netcraft: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/30/wwwscocom_is_a_weapon_of_mass_destruction.html
With the MyDoom worm wreaking havoc all over the Net this week, we looked around and found a couple of recent technical studies that investigate how such worms propagate. In one study, at SecurityFocus, Tom Vogt simulates the propagation of worms and comes to the pessimistic conclusion that only a few minor changes in worm design can, and will, lead to the birth of the theoretical flash worm. A flash worm can infect virtually all vulnerable hosts on the Net (numbering in the tens of thousands) within minutes, far faster than countermeasures can be deployed. A second study by Daniel Hanson et al, also at SecurityFocus, looks at how worms propagate on local networks that are firewalled from the Net. It finds that worms can scan for the IP addresses of vulnerable hosts a number of ways in order to optimize their spread either on local networks or over the Net in general. The scary bottom line is that worm design can be significantly improved and it is only a matter of time before we see a true flash worm.
Vogt: http://securityfocus.com/guest/24046
Hanson: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1752
Here's a new low in sleazy spyware software. A program called SpyBan, which claims to help you identify and remove spyware from your computer, actually contains spyware of its own. The program includes a component called Look2Me, which tracks the Web sites you visit and reports them to a central server. SpyBan is basically a Trojan that slips spyware into your computer. According to Download.com, some 44,000 people have downloaded SpyBan over the last four months. Download.com removed the program from its servers when it learned of the deception. CNET has the story.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5153485.html
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has published this exhaustive guide on how to care for your CDs and DVDs. This kind of information is of great interest to archivists and librarians who must care for modern data-storage media for many years to come. It all comes down to common sense: don't touch the data side of CDs; watch out for scratches; keep an eye on temperature and humidity; and so on. The document includes a great deal of technical information about how CDs and DVDs are put together. It also acknowledges that there's a paucity of data about the actual life expectancy of these media, with estimates ranging from 25 to 100 years. All in all, very useful guide to preserving a digital legacy.
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf
Islam asks its adherents to undertake the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in their lives. Chances are that you will never be one of those pilgrims, called hajji, but Channel 4 offers an excellent and visually stunning recreation of the experience as well as a great deal of information on Islamic religious practices. In the west, the Hajj often only makes the news when pilgrims die in stampedes, but this site allows you to appreciate the true meaning of the practice. Don't miss the Slideshow on the Resources page.
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/H/hajj/index.html
Going to IKEA to look for Fartyg lights can seem like entering the Labyrinth to look for the Minotaur - and can fill you with the same sense of dread. But a visit to an IKEA showroom will never be the same after you read this funny piece that looks at it as though it were a computer game. The Ikea Walkthrough is a perfect antidote to the grim reality of birch veneer, clear lacquer, and bold colors. First, you have to hunt for weapons, of course. The universal Allen wrench is easy to find and will do in a pinch but requires 16 blows to kill anyone. To survive deep into the game, you really need something more powerful. Best is the 2004 IKEA spring catalogue, a 17-pound monster that is essential for the final boss-fight. The walkthrough leads you successfully through the five worlds of IKEA: parking lot, showroom, marketplace, self-serve warehouse (featuring a labyrinth!), and checkout, finally. Be sure to visit the IKEA cafe and buy a latte power-up along the way (the meatballs aren't bad, either). Liberally stuffed with vital tips and game-winning strategies, the walkthrough is a scream that gets progressively funnier, with a finale of stomachache-inducing, roll-in-the-aisles quality.
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/the_nonexpert_ikea.php
How much is your privacy worth? HP Labs researchers decided to find out what personal info individuals don't want other people to know. They have concluded that the further from average a person's given personal trait is, the more money that person will demand to reveal it. The example used in the paper is body weight. The more overweight people perceived themselves to be, the more money they wanted before revealing their weight to others. In other words, if you think you are fat, you don't want others to know, even if they can see you. Several people would not reveal their weight for anything less than an infinite amount of money. While the abstract is fine, the paper contains enough jargon to make reading it entirely unpleasant. We hope that the same procedure can be applied to other traits, like sexuality, for a more comprehensive analysis. Although people may think their weight is a secret, it's not exactly hidden from others.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/deviance/index.html
The US Congress, Press Passes, and Online Journalism
In the US, the House and Senate have longstanding rules regarding who gets press passes and who doesn't. In general, print and traditional broadcast representatives get them and other folks don't. Online journalists feel they're getting the short end of the stick, here, and maybe they are. At the same time, technological advances such as phonecams tend to blur lines that were previously rather clearly drawn. Online Journalism Review looks at whether or not "principal income...obtained from news correspondence intended for publication in newspapers entitled to second-class mailing privileges" is still, in the Internet Age, valid as the only qualification for a press pass.http://ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1075604186.php
ONLINE CULTURE
Vivisimo's Awesome Metasearch Beats Google
Vivisimo is a demonstration of powerful searching technologies called clustering and auto-categorization. The sample shown here easily beat Google on speed for difficult but not very complex searches. Google and other engines can reach more data and use far more involved query syntax, but Vivisimo wins on speed and practicality. For the majority of searches, this is more than enough superior technology. If it doesn't do the job, the others can back it up. In addition to running a public site, Vivisimo technology is selling its technology to users who need powerful and fast online search capability. It will likely start showing up in many sites soon. And it should.http://vivisimo.com/
As the story went, Andy's parents bought him a Power Mac G5 for Christmas. Not being a Mac fan, Andy decided to rip out the Apple guts and replace them with an Intel-compatible motherboard. He posted his story to the Overclockers Web site, and the meme took off from there. Next thing you know, the poor guy is getting death threats in his e-mail from fanatical Mac users who just could not handle the heinous violation of their beloved fetish. After receiving 1,300 e-mail messages of invective and creepy threats, Andy has revealed that it was all a modest practical joke he played on one of his Mac loving friends. No actual Macs were harmed in the playing of this joke, he says, he used a spare G5 case. Not everyone is buying his second story. Overclockers has the original post complete with photos, and the retraction. Wired has a follow-up.
Overclockers: http://www.overclockers.com/tips1133/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,62157,00.html
ONLINE TRAVEL
Life at the Bottom of the World
Ah, Antarctica! The last frontier on our planet. Home to penguins, clean air, and ozone holes. Idyllic, eh? Well, no. It's really just a big dead place, as you'll find out when you drop by Big Dead Place for a visit. This online guidebook is a unique combination of cold, hard fact and dry humor. You gotta love a guide that employs subheadings such as "If You Almost Die or Something", with instructions on dealing with it. Taxation? Got ya covered - "The ordinary meaning of 'foreign country' includes Antarctica, even though it has no recognized government." says the US Supreme Court. Really, when you think about Antarctica, you never consider most of this stuff, do you? Even things like publishing a newsletter can take a hosing and be left outside to chill. It's amazing that the sense of humor of anyone posted to Antarctica survives in a place like this.http://www.bigdeadplace.com/
Around the Arctic in Seven Months
Arctic Transect 2004 is a five-week-old journey headed across the Canadian Arctic. It's also an online learning experience that reaches out to K-12 students and their teachers. With the help of the University of Minnesota, this site promises to chronicle the entire 3,000 miles the team will cross in the seven months it plans to spend out there. Each day, the team checks back in with audio files, videos, and photos of their experiences. From biographies of the dogs on the mush teams to questions that focus on environmental changes in the Arctic region, the site is for curious learners of all ages.http://www.polarhusky.com/portal.html
Collect Britain is a virtual museum of much of Britain's past. There are online collections, virtual themed tours, and much more. Much of the current work revolves around the many old maps of England that still exist. In this context, a panorama is not the wide-screen image of today's English usage, but a wide pictorial map. There are wonderful maps of all parts of Britain dating back over 800 years. The famous Ordnance Surveys are well represented in the collections, and will be both familiar and intriguingly different from today's. No matter how large your monitor, or how large its resolution, this site is going to make you want a larger monitor and a higher resolution. The level of detail is amazing. You just need to have the modern technology to see these old masterpieces.
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/
Many things shape the US. In millions of ways, the key is transportation. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History documents this superbly with America on the Move, a multimedia journey across time and continent. Start your exploration with any of three supersections: Exhibition, Collection, or Themes. Exhibition follows a timeline from roughly 1800 to 2000 with articles such as "A Streetcar City" and "Roadside Communities". Along the way, you'll find background on a huge variety of topics such as commerce, immigration, and food. Collection is a database of artifacts - everything, it seems, from a Chevrolet radiator emblem to a railroad conductor's watch. The initial Browse Collection search interface (categorical, chronological, and geographic) is exemplary in its intuitive ease of use. So are the keyword and advanced searches. Themes delves into broad categories such as art, leisure, and technology. Great stuff!
http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/
Abandoned Bicycles of New York City
After spending more than a year walking past these lonely contraptions on the harsh streets of New York City, amateur photographer Joe Schumacher decided to bring the plight of the Big Apple's abandoned bicycles to the Internet. Through his lens, visitors will experience the haunting images of bicycles that once shone brightly and now are riddled with rust. A year into this project, Schumacher has captured more than 40 images of these underappreciated transportation devices. Each image is accompanied by a caption that explains where the photograph was taken and the inspiration behind choosing the subject matter. Visitors will discover scavenged, broken, and otherwise forgotten bicycles that are destined to spend their final days decaying on the streets.http://jschumacher.typepad.com/photos/abandoned_bikes/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Moviemakers make mistakes. We don't mean poor choices in casting or projects. We're talking boners, goofs, oversights. Movie Mistakes indexes 32,182 mistakes in 3,292 films. Wow! Thanks to many keen eyes and ears and memories like steel traps, this quasi-community site serves as a shame-on-you to Hollywood. Alas, you can only view clips of the offenders if you become a member ($10 a year) but you can take advantage of a free trial membership. Even if you don't join, you'll find plenty of evidence to convince you that someone is asleep on every set or in every editing suite of every major production company. According to Movie Mistakes, the most mistake-filled flick is "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" with 256 errors. If box-office success correlates with factual errors, continuity bloopers, and blunders with props and costumes, expect to see many, many more in your lifetime. You'll probably miss a lot of them.http://www.moviemistakes.com/
The local community photographer is now an anachronism in many parts of the world. First, cheap cameras and now digital imagery have replaced the skilled technicians of the corner studio. While there are now many more images to look at, the average quality has dropped dramatically. That's clear when you traverse the Colors 58 Web site. The site offers excellent advice (with charming line artwork) on how to build a pinhole camera, set up a studio of your own, and take good portraits. The meat of the site consists of 9 sample sets of portraits from portrait photographers all over the world. These are not slick photos, but all, without exception, are wonderful evocations of real people. The 78-year photographer from Tel Aviv says all he wanted to do was take pictures of good-looking women. He really means "good-looking women in uniform, with guns - or in one case, a large tank with a big gun." For all that, he takes great photos.
http://www.fabrica.it/colors58/
Cameron Davidson is more artist than technician. He is obviously a photographer of great skill, but his technical achievements pale beside his art. He takes many of his photos from planes or other flying devices - don't miss the parasail photo in his portfolio. Aerial photography has always offered a perspective that we humans normally don't get. Davidson merges the best of the aerial point of view with a true traditional artist's eye for the composition. His site is his portfolio and the works shown are for license or sale. The prices indicate he has a fair view of its value. Davidson's art is very high quality.
http://www.camerondavidson.com/
You never know where people are going to find art. For David Mach, it was in a criticism of one of his earlier works that he found his new inspiration - matches. No, he's not a pyromaniac, although he does have what seems to be an almost preternatural affinity for his materials. It's not so much the fire that he's interested in as the object that produces it. He creates intricate sculptures of African masks and wild animals out of match heads. You'll have to see it to understand fully. No smoking, please.
http://www.davidmach.com/sculpture/sculmatchframes.htm
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.
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I Can't Believe I'm Buying This Book: A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating
Jacques Futrelle's "The Thinking Machine"
Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters from the End of the Affair
40 Watts from Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radiohttp://edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/article.html
The Proofreader's Hall of Shame
We spend a lot of time in front of word-filled screens and leafing through printed pieces of dead trees. That's probably why a place like the Proofreader's Hall of Shame holds special appeal for us. Stupid typos and grammatical or syntax errors mean that somebody isn't doing a particularly good job of minding the shop. This Web site is ruthless in its tracking, but it comes up with some great stuff, mostly in the News & Magazines section: "military couples rush to exchange vowels" - which looks to us as though the headline writer had seen a few "Wheel of Fortune" episodes too many. There's also the humorous "Pacers don't relish boy-boy image", which brings up all kinds of questions. A college education doesn't always help: check out Kappa Sigma's "Batchelor Auction" in the Advertisements archive.http://www.zone38.net/phs/archives/index.php
As attitudes about how children learn began to change in the 18th century, pop-up books began to find their way into upper-class society. The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books offers a look at some of the beautifully illustrated pop-up books in its collection in Toronto. Using Flash, the Web designers have simulated the pop-up and slide action of each book featured. Your eyes will be treated to a kaleidoscope of classic illustrations and color. The design elements used in creating these interactive books was sophisticated for the era, and as such achieved tremendous popularity. In addition to viewing short Flash movies, you can also read about the collection.
http://indexes.tpl.toronto.on.ca/vexhibit/magicbook/home.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Human fascination with dinosaurs seems endless. Discovery Channel has launched a fine site, Dinosaur Planet, devoted to appreciation of these much-studied predecessors. It's the companion site for the TV series of the same name. Jump into the Flash-based Interactive Dinosaur Viewer and you'll find unique interactive features. The size-comparison chart is not interactive, but after "Jurassic Park" and its sequels, it seems essential for educational perspective. We especially like the 360-degree views and the Motion screens, which feature 3-D models of the dinos at speed. Check out the Video Gallery, too. Its superb animations give you TV show clips and increase your appreciation of broadband. We got a charge out of the "Velociraptor at Work" and "Alpha's Egg" clips in particular. Little kids will love clicking around this site. Bigger kids may even read some of the text that accompanies the graphics and videos. Did you know dinosaur bones have gone to space? The Cretaceous Quiz is another feature here that might help parents capture and hold the interest of their offspring.http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/dinosaurplanet/dinosaurplanet.html
Watching and Attracting Birds in Your Yard
This place is for the birds. Take a look at the FeederCam. Notice how the suet is held almost upside down? That's how you keep grunge birds like starlings from taking the place over (they can't hang at odd angles). Although the Project FeederWatch site is designed to suck you into a bird-counting mission, you can still pick up great tips for improving your personal backyard birding experience. In particular, you'll want to look carefully at the images - these unintentionally provide great insight. As well, check out the About Birds & Bird Feeding page for informative links. This is a great resource for folks who want to attract birds into their backyards. Already got birds, but the darn cats and squirrels are a problem? No problem. Find advice on dealing with that right here, too.http://birds.cornell.edu/pfw/
Radiation Gizmos and Protection of Yore
Next time you worry about overexposure to X-rays at a clinic, remember that you're safer now than, say, your mother would have been decades ago. For proof, visit the Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Collection, a federal museum under the auspice of Oak Ridge Associated Universities in Tennessee. The museum's Web site has some scary stuff. We shiver at the sight of the uterine radium applicator and the shielded forceps on the Brachytherapy page. The Radiology section is its own chamber of clinical horrors. Imagine yourself, a radiologist, standing with your head inside the Patterson hand-held fluoroscope (standard equipment in the US in the 1920s) and getting bombarded by the same radiation as your patient. Fun! Who knows? If you live long enough, you might start to recognize medical or industrial memorabilia that have yet to be archived here.http://www.orau.org/ptp/museumdirectory.htm
Podiatry and the History of Footwear
Cameron Kippen, of the Department of Podiatry at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, is a man who knows his footwear. We'll focus on just two of his Web essays on the cultural significance of the shoe (or boot or clog or slipper) in mankind's history. The first is an account of the dancing shoe from the ancient world to the '70s, and a second focuses on fashion footwear - Rock Shoes - worn by youths from 1956-1990, from blue suede shoes to designer sportswear. At first blush, a potted history of shoes may not seem the liveliest of reads, but these essays are really quite fascinating - the second especially, demonstrating how lifestyle choices and musical allegiances drove and dictated fashion. Any readers who once wore winklepickers may, however, be surprised to learn that they were wearing representations of the phallus. If you're coming into the show scene cold, Kippen provides a glossary of terms so you can tell your Assyrian boots from your embates.Kippen: http://podiatry.curtin.edu.au/staff/kippen/
Dancing Shoes: http://podiatry.curtin.edu.au/dance.html
Rock Shoes: http://podiatry.curtin.edu.au/cool.html
The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy (a mouthful to make every bureaucrat happy) is not on the Bush administration's favorite sites list. This rather pedantic site is devoted to exposing the current and often unnecessary extremes the US government applies to scientific exploration. The arguments are clear and so is the point of view. A simple visit by Matt Drudge or Rush Limbaugh would easily raise their blood pressure a few points. Ordinary readers can have the same reaction for different reason. Can the government's actions be for real? The evidence presented is persuasive. Without sites like this one, science will just become a tool of politicians.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
The Micropolitan Museum of Microscopic Art Forms
The Micropolitan Museum is open for viewing of its freshwater and marine collections. Admission is free with your Net access. After poking about in the galleries, you may want to purchase a microscope so you can peruse the life-forms in a drop of your drinking water. You can buy a 'scope here - no worries. In addition to providing really cool images, the Micropolitan provides coherent text. That's a rare combination, and it makes for a great virtual tour.http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/micropolitan/index.html
Bruce Sterling's Environmental Kick
Viridian is a pet project of noted SF author Bruce Sterling. The basic concept appears to revolve around bein' green. You can learn all kinds of eco-stuff here. Aside from articles about Viridian, the focus of the site is Viridian Notes. These are relevant - barely, sometimes - articles on environmental issues. The latest, the 399th, relates a recent article in the Register that starts with a cyclone-whipped island and segues into a discussion of national top-level domains. Articles in Viridian Notes are annotated, and they are preceded by a jumble of related links. Among the other stuff here is information that you can learn how to build houses out of straw. We'd have sworn that some pig did just that, with disastrous results, but hey - he was a pig, after all.http://www.viridiandesign.org/