BREAKING SURF
| Lose IE and Browse Happy |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Why You Need to Proof Photos Carefully |
| Earth at Night |
| Dubya and Condi Fight the Terrorists |
| Puzzles, Illusions, and Other Mind Teasers |
| Chase Ambulances from the Comfort of Your Desk |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
The Department of Defense's Abu Gharib Report
In the wake of the Abu Gharib prison scandals, the US Department of Defense established an independent panel to review what was going on there and to recommend how to fix it. The panel has produced its report. Keep in mind that this is a different document from an earlier internal report produced by the US Army. This panel found that no high-level policy called for the abuse of prisoners, but adds "the abuses were not just the failures of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline." As always, we urge you to read the actual source material, since a complex issue like this does not lend itself to sound bite analysis.http://www.dod.gov/news/Aug2004/d20040824finalreport.pdf
Thirty Years of Dungeons & Dragons
Paper, pencil, weird dice, and a 49-page rulebook (at first) hardly seem the ingredients for a game once so widely feared that parents didn't allow children to play it, schools banned it, and churches criticized it. This most popular of all role-playing games found its audience of mostly young people primarily in the '80s. For a while, a few folks demonized the game, and thought it responsible for failing grades and all manner of social ills. Remember that horrid Tom Hanks TV movie "Mazes and Monsters"? Call it D&D, AD&D, Neverwinter Nights, or D20, the game's allure is letting you pretend, among non-sniggering friends, to be a perfect hero or villain in a fantasy world. As the original players matured into movers and shakers, D&D gained a sheen of respectability - so much so that action star Vin Diesel readily admits his geeky addiction - and a whole new generation is discovering it. Many Web sites are celebrating D&D's 30th anniversary with stories and news about the interactive role playing game invented by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. Although the game's rules and settings have turned up in a slew of computer games - the multiplayer Neverwinter Nights has sold over 2 million copies - the pen-and-paper game remains the unmatched social experience. Something that lets your imagination free, as D&D does, has to be good thing.D&D: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/welcome
"Mazes and Monsters": http://www.spookylibrarians.com/mazes.html
NPR: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3858560
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3655627.stm
GameSpy: http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538848p1.html?fromint=1
Olympic Athletes Can't Post Stories Online
When you've paid big money for the right to record and broadcast Olympic coverage or for exorbitant room and board so that your journalists can attend the shindig, the last thing you want is competition from bloggers. We're not sure what else can explain the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) overzealous ban on reporting by participants and support staff, which includes prohibitions on blogging and posting pictures. The misguided policy is bound to succumb to blogging reality because blogs are out there, ubiquitous, and not going away any time soon. The policy is a shame as well as a sham, because personal reporting would enhance the immediacy and draw of the games, to everyone's advantage. We think the unreasonable rules make a mockery of the Olympic experience for athletes. Almost humorously, the IOC allows pre-existing bloggers to continue to post as normal. As an added joke, the Athens 2004 Organising Committee has been trying to control links to its content with an idiotic policy. No, we haven't told the committee we have a link here and we won't put "Athens" in all caps.CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/08/20/olympic.diaries.ap/index.html
Athens 2004: http://tinyurl.com/3refd
This year's Olympic Games have already featured the usual doping scandals and judging problems, but two pieces at Poynter Online give you a sense of how difficult it is to cover the games as a reporter, especially for a news outfit that does not hold broadcast rights. Americans, apparently, undergo a fair amount of culture shock; the Greeks have a different idea of what the press should do and how they should do it. The striking thing about these two pieces is that both reporters make it clear just how draining it is to watch the games and prepare stories. It makes you glad you are watching them on television - or, in some countries, online.
Poynter 1: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=70139
Poynter 2: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=69851
The US Pandemic Influenza Response and Preparedness Plan
A pandemic is a global epidemic of some illness, and the illness most on the mind of the medical community these days is influenza. Three great influenza pandemics ravaged the planet during the 20th century, the most severe of which in 1918 killed over 500,000 Americans and more than 20 million worldwide. Until the recent SARS epidemic, the world's health organizations were woefully unprepared to deal with anything approaching this scale and severity. SARS in many ways was a watershed in thinking about such pandemics. International cooperation contained SARS despite its virulence and deadliness, and the experience prodded governments around the world into thinking seriously about coping with killer pandemics. This plan is the US's first major attempt at a plan for influenza pandemics. Such planning must remain unsatisfactorily vague because there is simply no way to accurately predict specific factors such as the availability of vaccines and social responses to epidemics. Nevertheless, the plan remains an important effort, one that will inevitably undergo criticism and debate.http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/pandemicplan/
Robbers Eye "The Scream", Take It
Edvard Munch's "The Scream" is gone, again. Thieves stole the painting at gunpoint from the Munch Museum in Oslo, the second time in a decade that a version of the painting (Munch painted four) has been stolen right off the wall. Also missing is Munch's "Madonna". You'd think museums might have learned something about security after the first theft, but no - the Munch Museum just hung the art on the wall, without alarms or any protection more secure than pieces of wire. The gunmen displayed a knowledge of the craft of art thievery, CNN notes. They might hold it for ransom, or perhaps they acted on a purchase order. Police arrived quickly, to no avail. "The Scream" is gone; all that's left is a wail - oh, and the Edvard Munch Hub, with links to Munch info and art.Munch Museum: http://www.munch.museum.no/
CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/24/norway.scream/index.html
Edvard Munch Hub: http://www.knowdeep.org/munch/
Not everybody walked away from the dotcom bubble implosion with empty pockets. Take, for example, Jared Polis (ne Schutz). He sold his ISP company in 1998 for some $22 million. In 1999, he sold Blue Mountain, his online greeting-card company, for another $150 million. So, what does a 29-year-old dotcom millionaire do these days? In Polis's case, he not only keeps his hand in the usual numerous business interests of a very rich man, but he also dabbles in state politics in Colorado. Denver's weekly, Westword, has an article that focuses mostly on Polis's political aspirations, and is rather long on the ins and outs of Colorado's Democratic Party. Nevertheless, it is a pretty good portrait of a guy who made it big during the dotcom boom and held on to most of his money. That in itself is pretty rare.
http://www.westword.com/issues/2004-08-19/feature.html
Elisabeth Kubler Ross 1926-2004
Elisabeth Kubler Ross was known far and wide as the woman who brought death out of the shadows. After receiving a medical degree in her native Switzerland, Kubler Ross moved to the US and while working at major hospitals was appalled at the treatment of terminally ill patients. Her work with dying patients led to her first book, the hugely influential "On Death and Dying". It was this book which first introduced the concept of stages of death, the blueprint of the emotions people feel when confronting death. Her book and subsequent work on behalf of the dying were instrumental in bringing the issue of hospice care into the medical mainstream. In her later years, Kubler Ross established a "healing center" on a 300-acre Virginia farm, where she was one of the first physicians to treat babies born with AIDS at a time when AIDS patients were still very much stigmatized. After a life that garnered many honors and admiration, Kubler Ross retired in the mid 1990s. By all accounts, she continued to enjoy life as much as possible until her death from natural causes this past week. You can read a detailed biography on her Web site.Elisabeth Kubler Ross: http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/
"On Death and Dying": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684839385/netsurferdigest
John Kerry is probably tired of the Web. It has certainly allowed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to get its word out (see Disinfopedia, however) and you have to wonder what else it has in store. How about an old girlfriend, Lee Whitnum, who decided to publish her memories at her Hedge Fund Mistress site, after her upcoming book of the same title. Whitnum dated Kerry in the 1990s and she remembers him fondly. Overwhelmed by hate mail and publicity, she has removed the page with the Kerry material, but you can still pre-order her book, which contains a character modeled on Kerry. The Register did a little directory digging and put in its article a link to Whitnum's directory of Kerry images. Take a look before Whitnum figures out they're still online.
Disinfopedia: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth
Hedge Fund Mistress: http://www.hedgefundmistress.com/
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/20/kerry_gf_webshame/
Lynndie England's arguably most famous pose is with an Iraqi prisoner on a leash. Second famous would be the thumb-up gesture she gives to indicate that a naked prisoner's crotch meets with her approval. That latter pose, accented with cigarette and gun-like pointing, now has a name, the "Lynndie", and it is has become a spreading online meme. England currently faces a general court martial as a result of her role in the mistreatment of prisoners in the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but that doesn't stop the horde of imitators. A site called Bad Gas tells us it's best to catch your Lynndie victim unaware, and has further instructions, along with pictures of submitted Lynndies. Wikipedia has more info on England, with photos and links.
Bad Gas: http://badgas.co.uk/lynndie/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynndie_England
Outsource Your Own Job to India
We can't find any confirmation of this, but the idea is too good to just drop. In July, the Times of India had an article that quoted an unidentified programmer's Slashdot post: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing." We did some cursory searching on Slashdot but could not find the source of the quote. Frankly, it sounds like a joke. The Times of India talks about this as a minimalist instance of a "micro multinational". Is there anything to this story? That's irrelevant. It's out there now, so you can be sure somebody will give it a try.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/769493.cms
Dodgeball.com Helps You Bounce off Friends
Dodgeball.com's motto is "Hook up with friends. Discover what's around you." If you think this is another social networking service - well, you'd be mostly right. But Dodgeball.com is a little more than that. The basic idea is simple. Tell Dodgeball.com where you are and it will broadcast your location to all your friends and friends of friends within about a ten-block radius. The service is designed for use with cell phones and uses text messages to do all the coordinating. The service is free, other than your phone charges, and is currently available in 15 major US metropolises. Dodgeball.com is a cool resource for those of us who don't sit in front of a computer all day. NPR had a reporter try out the service - the audio file of his report is online.Dodgeball: http://www.dodgeball.com/
NPR: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3866348
Hewlett-Packard (HP) has begun taking online orders for its licensed version of Apple's iPod. If you were hoping for lower prices than Apple's, you'll be disappointed. HP's online store prices iPods at $299 and $399 for the 20-GB and 40-GB versions respectively, exactly what Apple charges. There are some rumors that the HP iPods will have some hardware features that Apples iPods do not, but nothing in any of the HP announcements confirms that. The confirmed extras that HP provides are Tattoos, which are basically stickers you can customize, print, and wrap around your iPod to give it a specific skin - there are samples on the HP Digital Music site. The HP press release has details about the iPod and many other HP announcements, including new large-screen plasma TVs, a digital-media control center, and various photography offerings.
HP Digital Music: http://h10049.www1.hp.com/music/us/en/index_flash.jsp
Press release: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2004/040827a.html
You have to be impressed by a project which involves hacking hardware, software, and fashion all in one go - we sure are. So, what is it? The item in question is a belt buckle made out of a Pocket PC PDA which scrolls a listing of popular search-engine results. The picture at Engadget makes it clear. The level of ingenuity displayed in creating this gizmo pegs right up there at 11, and if you want to try it yourself, you'll be glad to learn that making one is not that hard. You'll need to ruin a PDA, of course, but everything else involves maybe an hour or two of actual work. Engadget explains what's involved, complete with screen captures. Incidentally, the gizmo obtains its list of search-engine queries from the meta-search engine Dogpile, whose Flash - and flash - Search Spy is worth a look.
Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/entry/6833839062762584/
Search Spy: http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/results.htm
Windows XP Secure for Only 20 Minutes
A fresh, new Windows XP machine connected to the Internet lasts unblemished an average of only 20 minutes before a Net-borne attack compromises it. The numbers the SANS computer-security outfit relays are amazing and disturbing. It takes longer than 20 minutes to download all the critical updates a new Windows XP installation or machine needs. SANS also offers a thoughtful PDF (Can there be such a thing? Thoughtful content providers don't use PDFs) on how to install XP safely and securely. An article at SecurityFocus has some blunt discussion of the mess most computers have to deal with on a daily basis, plus some choice remarks on alternatives to Microsoft. Given that SP2, Microsoft's latest greatest service pack, also has security flaws, these are both articles of immediate value.SANS: http://isc.sans.org/survivalhistory.php
SecurityFocus: http://securityfocus.com/columnists/262
Technorati Blog Index Gets Major Funding
It seems that a database of some 3,650,556 indexed weblogs is worth about $6.5 million in venture funding. We'll save you the calculation - that's about $1.78 per blog, never mind per word. Technorati rates among the biggest and fastest growing blog-indexing services on the Web, a ranking reflected in the past by its often overwhelmed servers. This round of funding apparently comes from two large venture-capital outfits, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital. It's not clear how the investors plan to make money from this investment. Technorati itself does not carry any advertising (yet), nor is it clear whether it sells any back-end data to other companies. The investors may be gambling that they will eventually sell the company to a larger player like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo. Wired has the story and appropriate links.Technorati: http://www.technorati.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64716,00.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Browse Happy begins with the contention that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is inherently unsafe, and that using it can compromise your Windows system's integrity. The site's a product of the Web Standards Project, which tilts at the windmill of standards non-compliance. Truth be told, it wins its share of battles. Browse Happy does its best to steer you toward other browsers, and employs testimonials from half a dozen veteran netsurfers to get you there. Here at NSD, we use IE, Opera, Firefox, Safari, and several other browsers on multiple platforms and at both broadband and dial-up speeds. There'd be no point in our being here if we couldn't tell you what to expect at the sites we point you to, would there? If you want to play with different browsers, Browse Happy at the very least provides an easily accessed list of the best of the alternatives.http://browsehappy.com/
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Just a Geek
U-Boat War Patrol: The Hidden Photographic Diary of U-564
This Is Burning Man: The Raise of a New American Underground
Olympic's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of the Olympics' Gold Medal Gaffes, Improbable Triumphs, and Other OdditiesSURFING SITES
When Tamara Hoerig assumes the missionary position, she's fully clothed, sitting next to a non-believer, and discussing God and faith. She goes by just Tamara on her Web site, Date to Save - but more about that soon. Tamara thinks she and other hot women of the Lord should use their "beautiful bodies to glorify His name." She goes on: "If you're really good at dating, or just really good looking, then you should use that to bring souls to God." Check out the Message Board, where the real content is. The nature of the site and the frequent links to merchandise (you can buy a Jesus Classic Thong) triggered our hoax-dar. A little WHOIS check revealed Tamara's last name - which translates to something like "in service" in English - and that she uses a postal box for an address and submitted no phone number. The domain's administrative contact, Tony Deweese, does work for Web and video-game companies. We conclude this is a spoof, but funny one nonetheless.http://datetosave.com/index.shtml
Speaking of Dating and No Sex...
Meet Mike, a self-professed "complete and utter pathetic loser". Like other virtual beggars before him, Mike wants money from the sympathetic and sometimes naive Internet audience. Why does he need the cash? To impress a local Los Angelena enough that she lets him into her pants. Mike pledges that he would only use donations to let him get a date with a woman whom he wouldn't have to pay for. He'd use the money for a fancy date with all the fixins, such as flowers and candy. So far, Mike's Internet panhandling has brought in only a paltry $266.12, although that total doesn't take into account the many non-monetary donations sent his way (see the progress log for more details). The paltry income hasn't even paid Mike's Web site bills. Mike had been keeping a journal, but it now ends Dec. 23, 2003 - it had gone on further at one time.http://www.zerosexlife.com/
Once upon a time in America, most boys were named Tom or John, while girls were most often Mary or Alice. The pool of possible names was limited. There were traditional names and there were traditional names, and most babies got one of the top ten most popular. Names did come into fancy and fall out of favor, but they all came from a small, basic pool. That was then; this is now. Parents now feel few constraints when naming their offspring, both in choice of name and spelling. Now, chosen names are often both significant and lovely. Some parents, however, unfortunately have gone right off the deep end. Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing, a site that's honestly subtitled "A Primer on Parent Cruelty", celebrates the most unfortunate of actual children's names. When you're not laughing, you'll shudder and feel for these poor victimized kids. The site author's comments are priceless.
http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/index.html
What constitutes art? Apparently, it can be as simply brilliant as cooking up Sunday dinner for a stranger. The Dinner Project is a one-year expedition of culinary and conversational delights that intertwines the artist/cook and dinner guests into a tapestry of living artwork. The creative mastermind behind this ambitious project is Iwona. Each week, she finds an unsuspecting participant willing to host a small dinner party, which Iwona will cater. At the end of the year, Iwona plans to host a large dinner party for all the participants. At the Dinner Project site, you can read Iwona's journal, view the menu and highlights for each Sunday dinner, and check out photos of Iwona and her dinner guests. The project has just barely gotten off the table, so there's still little in the way of content. As each dinner ends, we're sure this site will pack on a few more pounds.
http://thedinnerproject.com/
Whatever Happened to Futuristic Transportation?
Shouldn't we feel cheated? Weren't we promised flying cars or, at least, rocket backpacks for the 21st century? World Fair dioramas and the covers of Popular Science have held out the promise of easy and effortless transport in the years to come; somehow, it's always just beyond our reach. Transportation Futuristics, courtesy of the Davis Transportation Library at the University of California, Berkeley, "examines some of the efforts to address transportation needs in ways that didn't quite get off the ground literally or figuratively." It does so by way of a collection of galleries of original advertisements and other graphics that expressed the visions of new and better planes, trains, automobiles, etc. We especially liked the transcontinental subway with gimbaled compartments. While some of the technologies have panned out, like the maglev train, we're still waiting for a car with attachable wings and propeller. The site has a very 1950s feel to it; it's as much a look back at a more technologically optimistic era as a study of how we strive towards a better future.http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/news_events/exhibits/futuristics/index.html
How Polaroid Became a Household Name
It wasn't by accident. Back in 1957, Polaroid had something of an identity crisis. Everyone knew Kodak's yellow film boxes, but few knew anything about the relatively new Polaroid instant film and cameras. Paul Giambarba led a team that changed all that. His book-like blog describes how he and his co-workers established the Polaroid brand image and how they created the many details that helped to push the brand. The story is instructive on many levels. It's strongest as a tale of marketing psychology, showing the power and the nitty gritty of branding. Almost equally strong are its sections relating to graphic and industrial design. Much of what the Polaroid team did had significant influence on American product design in the middle and end of the 20th century.http://giam.typepad.com/the_branding_of_polaroid_/
We're all in favor of the use of diagrams and charts as learning aids. Threetwoone.org features a series of original historical and geographical diagrams of, for instance, the War of the Roses or how various countries are physically connected. The most thorough and informative diagrams here are the Biblical charts; these could really come in handy if you teach Bible study. The diagram of the western hemisphere will help you learn, for instance, that Brazil borders every South American country except for Chile and Ecuador. The Wall Street Scandal chart looks like a football play gone south. Some of these diagrams are more interesting than useful, but that's not a criticism. The site plans to post more charts. Keep an eye open for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes and Schindler's List charts.
http://www.threetwoone.org/diagrams/index.htm
Puzzle Pirates More Addictive than Grog
Any game that Steve Jackson says leaves him "unspeakably impressed" is worth a try. Yohoho Puzzle Pirates (more commonly referred to as simply Puzzle Pirates) is an online multiplayer game that, combined with Tetris-esque puzzles, challenges you to advance your character through the ranks of scurvydom. Puzzle Pirates was in alpha testing for almost a year and in beta for another half after that, and the game's excellent level of usability definitely shows that. Let us warn you that the game's addictive and subscription-based - and the first few hits are free. Don't tell the cops we turned you on to the stuff.http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
If you're a regular at neighborhood teddy bear picnics, you'd be well advised to bypass this Web site. The sadistically wild antics of the Ready Teddy Death crew are outlined at this online home of teddy-bear massacres. The butchery and carnage will horrify you; fluff and synthetic stuffing float relatively well in air and add a surreal Peckinpah-esque atmosphere to the destruction. A handful of videos give visitors an inside glimpse into the world of teddy annihilation. The short clips depict various macabre methods and instruments of teddy-bear extermination. If the videos fail to quench your thirst for teddy-bear stuffing, try stopping by the game sections for a more participatory approach to relieving your pent up teddy-bear issues.
http://www.readyteddydeath.com/
Jay Maynard, the "Tron" guy, is back for a second helping of Internet fame, this time as a reporter. "Jimmy Kimmel Live" assigned Maynard and his costume to interview folks emerging from a screening of "Farenheit 9/11". The scene is hysterical - the opinionated Maynard doesn't much like Michael Moore, and he makes that very clear. He also makes clear that he thinks "Tron" is a better, more meaningful movie. In another brief sequence, an attractive young woman notes to Maynard, "You're looking down here, but my eyes are up here," eliciting quick apologies. In case we failed to bring it to you in the past, although we know we planned to, we're including a link to the page where Maynard describes the creation of his costume. Who could possibly fail to love a guy who looks seven months pregnant, dressed in a painted unitard with a Frisbee on his back? That he also interviews movie patrons of generally opposite opinion makes the interview video that much more alluring. This latest act is definitely worth the time it takes to download.
Maynard: http://www.ibiblio.org/jmaynard/TRONcostume/
Video: http://www.newsfly.org/news/f911_tron_guy.htm
If you've had your fill of Olympic coverage, check out this video montage of the 2003 Japan National Yo-Yo Contest. While you will probably never see yo-yo competition as an Olympic event, you will be completely awestruck with the manual dexterity of these guys - and, yeah, they're all guys. No doubt, those of us who spent weeks of youth mastering the intricacies of tricks such as Walk the Dog and Around the World will watch slack-jawed as these masters of the yo-yo combine the humble spinner with stringcraft. The link below leads directly to a 13-MB WMV video file, which runs just over seven minutes.
http://media.hugi.is/hahradi/fyndnar/Japan_National_Yo-Yo_Contest_2003.wmv
Humor sometimes collides with reality. In fact, it's the collision that often makes it funny. That's the case with Dan Smith's view of Apple's product cycle. The real Apple behaves much like the Apple Smith describes, and the Mac faithful are everything the author says and then some. The descriptions and reactions are accurate, even if the intent of the author is to amuse. For most people, the text will seem over the top. Apple junkies will recognize Smith's understatements. The best part of the piece is that it is not product specific. What is described is deeply ingrained into Apple culture and virtually all products have a life cycle as described.
http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
It may sound like something out of SF, but the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal does exist. Based in Amherst, N.Y., the committee has a site called the Skeptiseum, an online museum devoted to rational analysis of phenomena beloved of tabloids and movie producers. Ghosts, miracles, aliens - you name it, and chances are it fits in one of the museum's nine categories of exhibit. In his feature exhibit, Web curator Joe Nickell highlights Miraculous Self-Portraits of Jesus, including the debunked but ever-mysterious Shroud of Turin, which was the subject of a recent PBS show. Nickell blasts that show, "Secrets of the Dead", in which "viewers were subjected to the astonishingly absurd notion... that the image was 'the world's first photograph.'" Other objects of scrutiny include the Loch Ness monster, UFOs, and shrunken heads. Unfortunately, the museum only skims over these and most other subjects of longtime pop speculation, so you may discover nothing new. For reasons we can't yet put our finger on, we are absolutely and positively certain of the veracity of the error message generated on a recent visit when we clicked on the Site Index navigation link: "Not Found". Cue the Theremin.
http://www.skeptiseum.org/
Jewish Women in the North American Tradition
Judaism traditionally relegates women to subordinate roles in religious life. While that's slowly changing in the US and Canada, the tradition still holds sway over many North American Jews. North American Jewish women have broken the constraints the religion can impose. The Jewish Women's Archive site celebrates the achievements of North American Jewish women. The site offers current news and articles, a teachable curriculum, and an archive for researchers.http://www.jwa.org/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Why You Need to Proof Photos Carefully
The iHomefinder site lets real-estate agents and buyers search for properties. We found a lovely four-bedroom home in Danville, Calif. going for a shade over $1 million, but we worry about the neighborhood. Hit the More Photos link and find the view inside the house that also reveals just what goes on outside.http://tinyurl.com/5a9q6
This spectacular mosaic was compiled from images taken by the US Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP). It's a cloud-free nighttime view of the Earth that reveals the whole of our electric civilization. Very cool.
Earth at Night: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040822.html
DMSP: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/missions/dmsp.html
Dubya and Condi Fight the Terrorists
And now for a game as timely as it is silly. Can Dubya and his faithful sidekick Condi stop terrorists from taking over the White House? Only you can help them! Bring it on.http://www.miniclip.com/bushshootout.htm
Puzzles, Illusions, and Other Mind Teasers
Mind Bluff is a collection of optical illusions, brain teasers, and other mental tricks. There's something for everyone who likes mind exercise here. There are also too many ads, some of which struck us as phishing expeditions. One of the best games is avoiding the ads and enjoying the rest of the site.http://www.mindbluff.com/
Chase Ambulances from the Comfort of Your Desk
Pondering purchasing a scanner? Ponder no more. The Public Safety Broadcasts on the Internet site lets you tune into other people's misfortunes with the click of a mouse. The page links to broadcast streams from a variety of services. There's less organization to the site and geographical variety than we'd like.http://www.policescan.us/