| World's Highest Junkyard |
| Everybody Must Get Stones |
| The First Union Contracts: Written in Stone |
| QWERTY Cool |
| Babbling about Babbage |
| Van Leeuwenhoek |
| Blunt Trauma and Operative Care in Microgravity |
| Spectrum of the Milky Way |
| Space Mirrors |
| Eye in the Sky |
| Sojourner's Little Cousin |
| Netsurfer Book Recommendations |
| Descartes meditations |
| Are you game? |
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Opposable Thumb |
| Dig It |
| Design and Style, Ancient to Modern |
| The Mary Rose |
| Knotty Problems |
| History of Cesarean Section |
| Physician, Heal Thyself - and Everyone Else |
| Cats, Not Dogs |
| Virtual Drugs |
| Gila Monsters |
| The Compass |
| Sugar and Colonialism |
| Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me a Map |
| Buttered Cats |
| Out of Your Tree |
| A Polished Apple |
| Inquiring Minds Want to Know... |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
| Netsurfer Digest |
EARTH SYSTEMS
No matter where you go, there you are
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/rajs/text/pollution.html
Virtual rockhounds can have a field day (as it were) on the Web, either tracking down their favorite bits of Earth or settling in for some serious studies of gems and precious stones. Over at the Mineral Gallery, you can dig up any number of minerals (and without having to use one of those nasty rockhound picks), and get a full description of their chemistry and physical characteristics. Since this stone salon was established by Amethyst Galleries, an on-line rock shop, you can even purchase a specimen of your find. If you're in an academic mood, you might be interested in the online course in gems and precious stones developed by Jill Banfield, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The course covers topics central to gemology, mineralogy, and geology. There are loads of images and diagrams of precious and semi-precious stones, along with Quicktime visualizations of the crystalline structure of various stones. Visually the pages are a bit funky, but the content makes up for what they might lack in style.
Mineral gallery: http://mineral.galleries.com/default.htm
Online course: http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~jill/
COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING
Open the pod bay doors, Hal
The First Union Contracts: Written in Stone
In medieval Europe, churches were even more common than Starbucks are here today - one for every 200 people. To build them, more stone was quarried in just 300 years than at any time in ancient Egyptian civilization. The History of Stone Cutting site chisels in vivid relief the elaborate organization of medieval architect, mason, and labor guilds. Read about how the Freemasons got started and how they mastered the technology which has left monuments linking man to God for nearly a millennium.http://ripper.wildnet.co.uk/stonecut.html
Do you prefer the clickety-clack of a typewriter to your computer's interminable hum? Diehard Smith-Corona users who wait vainly for a typewriter Web browser to be developed will find at this site plenty of opportunity to get nostalgic about simpler times. Devoted to marvelous mechanical writing machines of the past, the site offers information about collecting typewriters, repairing and restoring them, and the history of their development. Site author Richard Polt shares his ruminations on the metaphysical significance of the typewriter and how it affects the process of writing. Heady stuff indeed. Clickity clickity clickity DING!
http://xavier.xu.edu:8000/~polt/typewriters.html
Are you a history buff interested in high technology? Then put down those dusty tomes, pick up your mouse, and pay a virtual visit to the Charles Babbage Institute of Computer History (CBI). This research center at the University of Minnesota focuses on studying and promoting the history of information processing. The CBI's Web site offers links to a variety of intriguing sites, such as the Cray Research Virtual Museum, posters of the History of Information Processing, and an amusing section called Hollywood and Computers. There's also a Photo Gallery for visual entertainment.
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/index.html
Antony van Leeuwenhoek liked to watch. It seems the 17th-century Dutchman would grab anything he could lay his hands on and shove it under a homemade microscope. After scraping plaque off his teeth ("as thick as if 'twere batter"), Leeuwenhoek discovered - no, not the importance of brushing twice daily - bacteria. With his acute eyesight and skill at grinding magnifying lenses, he went on to open up an entire world of microscopic life to science. He made the first observations of sperm cells, blood cells and various forms of algae. This site provides many of his eloquent descriptions that make protists sound like synchronized swimmers - only more interesting.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html
ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
Blunt Trauma and Operative Care in Microgravity
It's simply a matter of time before some television network produces a show that weds two of the most popular genres: science fiction and medical drama. Low Earth Orbit Emergency Room (LEOER)! Action, suspense, human emotion, life-and-death decisions, and floating nurses! Yet, critical television viewers will, as always, monitor the accuracy of medical procedures performed on camera. It pays, therefore, to research factors that make the care of trauma in space significantly different from that performed on earth. Physiological changes caused by microgravity can greatly affect the patient even before injury, complicating treatment beyond what one might expect for the simple loss of gravity. Current research, though limited, is continuing, with the aim of providing the care necessary to save lives in remote environments with limited resources. Learn the facts now, and some day soon you may be shouting at your TV, "NO, NO, NO! You can't administer gas anesthetic in space! And who in her right mind would attempt a standard thoracotomy?!"http://www.facs.org/about_college/acsdept/jacs/articles/597d.html
Those fortunate enough to spend much time away from city lights on clear moonless nights know the awesome beauty of the Milky Way. How much more fortunate would they be if their sight wasn't limited to the range of the visible spectrum, but also could include perception of the infrared, radio frequency, x-ray or even gamma ray wavelengths? Perhaps they would care to see how molecular or atomic hydrogen is distributed through the galaxy from the perspective of Earth. Such experiences are possible, and neither special glasses nor astral projection is required; the Astrophysics Data Facility at NASA has published such views on the Web, and has also made available 35mm slides and posters for sale. The views cover 360 x 20 degrees, detailed in more than 14 orders of magnitude, allowing mere mortals and other nonphysicists to experience the full grandeur of the Milky Way. Some day you'll be able to tell your grandchildren, "I remember when the sky was so clear, you could see beyond the unltraviolet".
http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/mw/milkyway.html
And you thought billboards were bad! Wait `til you see the night illuminated with a Pepsi (or some other) logo from 250 miles out in space. The Russian Energia corporation has recently launched the privately-funded "Space Regatta Consortium" project, which will place a 75' mirror in space this November. Selected cities of northern Canada and Europe will be bathed in three mile-wide swaths of light ten times brighter than the moon for a few minutes each. Ostensibly designed to counteract the condition known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which afflicts many who work and live near the Arctic circle in winter, planned satellites will brighten the days of residents and, it's hoped, lead to lower rates of depression, alcoholism, and suicide. "Don't jump, Sven! Look - it's the Energizer bunny!" 9
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/98/06/14/stinwenws01029.html?239501
High altitude voyeurs can stay current at the Operational Significant Event Imagery home page. Maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the page features daily image updates from NOAA's fleet of weather satellites. Fires, floods, storms, and more are tracked daily and the latest images offered up. Think of it as a gallery of the planet's train wrecks.
http://www.osei.noaa.gov/
The folks who brought you that cute, bread-box-sized Sojourner rover on Mars are at it again. This time it's an even tinier rover - a nanorover - destined for the asteroid Nereus sometime in 2002. The nanorover measures just 20 centimeters on a side, which, according to the DG unit converter (NSS 1.10), is less than 8". It's a curious creature headed for an even curiouser destination.
http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/nrover/nrt_main.html
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Netsurfer Book Recommendations Books our staff likes and you might too. Click on the cover or title to order the books at a hefty discount from Amazon.com and send a few pennies our way as well.
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Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant TeacherMATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY
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Meditations: http://philos.wright.edu/DesCartes/Meditations.html
Biography: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Descartes.html
Dualism: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Descartes.html#Descartes
Metamath Solitaire is a Java applet designed to help you build so-called simple (according to the author) proofs in logic and set theory. Well, maybe it's simple for some folks. Anyway, there're lots of opportunity to test your brain power and mathematical intuition with this puppy.
http://www1.shore.net/~ndm/java/mm.html
ARCHEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
What is past is prologue
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Opposable Thumb
Thumbs up to a site for teachers offering creative classroom exercises to give students a grasp of the opposing digit in primate evolution. Imagine what it must have been like for pre-thumb hominoids - using scissors, blowdrying their hair, and zip-locking storage bags must have been a real drag. This Woodrow Wilson Biology Institute page links to information about the institute's programs in pre-college teacher education.http://www.gene.com/ae/AE/AEPC/WWC/1991/opposable.html
Like the electronic brethren of many print magazines, Archaeology allows you a taste of its richness, but holds out for a subscription to the print version if you want all the magazine has to offer. And it has a lot to offer. Published by the Archeological Institute of America, the oldest and largest archaeological organization in North America, Archeology presents well written, richly illustrated articles that, while of academic quality, are easy and intriguing to read. A prime example is the looting of Kabul's national museum (approximately 70 percent of its collections have disappeared) and the appearance of artifacts from Afghanistan's rich history on the shadowy and shady international antiquities market. The electronic version of Archaeology allows you a look at each issue's contents, plus a glance at the full text of news briefs and one feature story. That's about it. The Website itself offers up a bit more - a number of features, news briefs, a visit to the Institute's "bookstore," and favorite archaeological links. Any armchair or VDT archaeologist will appreciate the time spent here, but will probably end up with a hankering for the real deal.
http://www.archaeology.org/
Design and Style, Ancient to Modern
Once you get a look at Queen Minos's 1500 BCE private apartment - with the dolphin frieze surrounded by delicate rosettes - you might never play with your Lady Di commemorative doll again. This is royal style. Tulane University Professor Hugh Lester has collected notes on and photos of hundreds of palaces, tombs, monuments, pieces of jewelry, furniture, and other decorative arts spanning the ancient world to contemporary times: Romanesque, High Gothic Style, English Renaissance, American Victorian, you name it. It's a great reference for advanced undergrad and first-year MFA design students - or for anyone with a passion for beautiful things.http://www.tulane.edu/lester/text/lester.html
It would be a noble end for a mighty sailing vessel to be destroyed in a blazing naval engagement or to succumb to storm, at last, lashed by wind and waves. Other ships of lore were destroyed by treachery or giant sea monsters. Alas, the Mary Rose, an English warship launched around 1511, has a somewhat different history. Apparently, during a battle with French warships, the Mary Rose executed a sharp turn with her gun ports open; water poured in and quickly took the ship down, along with her crew of between 500 and 700 men. The ship lay encased in clay until it was rediscovered in 1968; it was raised in 1982, and now resides in a climate-controlled museum in Portsmouth, England. The pictures available at this virtual museum show the ship to be in a state somewhat less than seaworthy. The full history of the ship is available here, along with a visual narrative of its demise, chronicle of its recovery, and mail-order gift shop, where you can buy a replica of a thimble recovered from the sea floor, among other items.
http://www.maryrose.org/index.html
SCIENCE AND ART
Puttin' on the Ritz
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/ma/CPM/welcome.htm
MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY
It's alive! It's alive!
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/cesarean/cesarean_1.html
Physician, Heal Thyself - and Everyone Else
Put the Mayo Clinic Health Oasis at the top of your health and fitness Web site collection. This unbelievably thorough site has everything from the latest health-related news to ratings for your fast food selections (oh, how I wish I hadn't eaten that Big Mac last night...). You can search for details on your prescription, learn how to prevent cancer, make sure your kidlets have had the right vaccines, and more. It's like - dare we say - a doctor who makes house calls.http://www.mayohealth.org/index.htm
For those of us not in the know - most likely the doggish among us - a recitation of cat breeds might go something like this: Brown cats with stripes, and gray cats, and white cats, and a few white cats with stripes, and some yellowish-brown cats, and so on, and so on, and so on. A visit to the Cat Fanciers' Association (the world's largest registry of pedigreed cats) will disabuse anyone of the notion that cats are just cats. The Association keeps a list of recognized breeds on its Web site, and presents pictures of award-winning members of each breed. There's also a write up of the breed's physical and behavioral characteristics, and a chance to garner more information from breed-loving clubs. In perusing the descriptions, you'll come across tidbits such as this about the Bombay breed: Bombays are for people who have always wanted a panther, a dog, or a monkey. We'll take two!
http://www.cfainc.org/breeds.html
The College of Pharmacy at the University of Arizona contains a History of Pharmacy Museum. While the virtual tour of this museum doesn't include every item in the real deal, it's well worth the price of admission ($0.00). Mortar and pestle fans will be envious of the range of ancient pharmaceutical paraphenalia, and there's beaucoup history info on the site as well.
http://www.pharmacy.arizona.edu/museum/index.html
Most pets aren't too much trouble if they escape confinement. Hamsters, gerbils, mice, and even snakes can usually be recaptured before they cause too much damage. Fish usually don't go very far. Most lizards move pretty fast, but they won't wreck your house, and aren't dangerous. But imagine Aunt Tilly's surprise when she reaches for her purse and discovers that a brightly-colored lizard has latched onto her arm. You spend the next 15 minutes trying to get the creature to relax its jaws, as you explain that most gila monster bites aren't fatal. You can tell her how you learned about these fascinating creatures from Dr. Seward's Web page, how they live in the wild, how to keep and breed them in your home, and how to tell the sexes apart. You could even show her how this particular gila is of the reticulated variety, as opposed to the banded. Chances are, by the time she leaves hospital, she'll be asking you where she can get her own pet gila monster.
Dr. Seward's Page: http://www.drseward.com/index.html
Desert USA Site: http://www.desertusa.com/sep97/du_gilamonster.html
University of Nevada: http://hrcweb.lv-hrc.nevada.edu/mbm/reptiles/oldfiles/gilatext.htm
Article from Reptile and Amphibian Magazine: http://www.frii.com/~dspiess/gila.htm
Hiking and treatment tips: http://www.thehikingsite.com/trailtips_creatures.htm
ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY
All that we see or seem
http://www.gisnet.com/gis/notebook/comprose.html#32points
Europe's 15th-century crowns staked big bullion on finding an ocean passage to Asian silks and spices. When all their explorers could come up with was The New World, rulers adapted to recoup their investment. Read how the plantation model started in the sugar cane industry - how Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French colonists developed profitable ways to cultivate a delightful new taste treat on the backs of millions of African slaves. This Sugar and Colonialism page is one of many about the history of trade sponsored by The University of Minnesota's John Ford Bell Library.
http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/sugar.html
Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me a Map
Mapping Early Modern Worlds presents a history of maps and map making from the time of Ptolemy (who had that business about the Earth being round) to Shakespearean times. In addition to the science of map making - which apparently was not much of a science for some centuries after Ptolemy - the exhibit draws out the social aspects of map making, especially its role in presenting the world outside, beyond one's home boundaries. The illustrations for the exhibit come from the collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, the institution responsible for mounting the exhibit. While the illustrations are glorious, they're offered "as is", i.e. with no option to view a larger image. You'll need to squint a bit. However, in a potentially fatal bit of ill-advised Web weaving, the exhibit is presented along with five other Folger exhibits. Ergo, actually loading all of the illustrations for the mapping exhibit can be a tortuous process, because the files are reasonably large, and, given all six exhibits are heavily illustrated, there's a heck of a lot of stuff coming down the pipe. Without a great deal of patience or a T1 line, this could turn out to be a long wait in line for a virtual exhibit.http://www.folger.edu/public/exhibit/PAST.htm
SCIENCE LITE
Where are you, Mulder?
http://www.netzone.com/~gather/Funnies/CatVsButter.html
RESIDUE
We can't be sure what else is out there
http://treeclimbing.com/
Newton's Apple is a highly regarded public television show dishing up science lessons with style, wit, and substance. The show's creators have established a polished Web site that delivers teachers' guides and other resources developed over the show's 15-year history. Visitors can browse science subjects through an alphabetical index, or you can browse by season for the show's 9th through 15th seasons. The guides for each show vary a bit from season to season, but generally you can expect an overview of the subject at hand, some bits to get class started, classroom activities, and a listing of additional resources. Also on hand are morsels dubbed Science Try Its and Street Smarts, which, in the first instance, offer simple brain puzzlers students can try at home, and in the second, slightly goofy questions that leave you a bit more knowledgeable once you have the answer. Definitely an apple every science teacher deserves.
http://ericir.syr.edu/Projects/Newton/
Inquiring Minds Want to Know...
and the Almanack wants to tell them the answers. The "inQuiry Almanack" is a fascinating journal that is both well-written and educational. Teachers will especially appreciate the collaborative online project ideas, ideas for classroom activities, and related resources. It's a wired world, and the Almanack helps make learning about those wires and their wonders a delight.http://www.fi.edu/qanda/qanda.html