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The Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter #205 8/1/02 |
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Welcome to the 205th issue of the Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter offering weekly insights into new, cool, useful, fun, unusual and interesting sites on the Internet. In this issue: -
All Nature ~~~~~ Cool Tricks and Trinkets is made possible by~~~~~~ <Editor's Note> A1 Discount Hotels is our primary business and source of income. You can support Tricks and Trinkets, by checking us out the next time you're planning a trip. For personal travel needs, write me at info@a1-discount-hotels.com A1 Discount Hotels (an affiliate of Hotels.com) offers discount rooms in over 5000 hotels worldwide with choices from budget to 5 star hotels. Bookmark our site for you next trip. Visit us online or call our operators at 888-511-5743 http://www.a1-discount-hotels.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All Nature Backyard wanderers and global adventurers will find world-class nature content, from amphibians to wildflowers, at eNature.com, recently voted best education web site of 2002 at the Sixth Annual Webby Awards. At eNature, flora and fauna are up close and personal through local field guides, endangered species lists and an online backyard habitat planner that lets users organize and preserve their own observations in the neighborhood. For a global view, find more than 5,000 North American species with full-color photos and comprehensive descriptions of birds, mammals, butterflies, wildflowers, native plants, trees, even insects. A library of 500 bird calls lets you identify what you hear overhead, and a column of expert answers makes the tough calls. Urban Exploration The urban landscape makes for exotic meanderings as you explore a ship canal in Canada or a factory in France at Zone Tour, the Database of Urban Exploration. A sort of parallel universe for the life we live above ground, the site guides visitors through the underpinnings of civilization with audio and video clips of factories, quarries, abandoned buildings, attics and construction sites. Searchable by city or type of landscape, the site lets visitors push past the "No Entry" signs to wander under sidewalks or stroll rooftops and examine the function, urban archaeology and architecture that gives a new perspective on places foreign and familiar. Haunted Sanatorium In 1906, tuberculosis hit the US hard, with 3000 cases reported in Newark, New Jersey alone, giving birth to the Essex Mountain Sanatorium, a rambling state of the art facility atop a lonely mountain. The Essex Mountain Sanatorium web site explores the haunting presence that remained when the sanatorium was abruptly abandoned in 1977 leaving shadowy buildings and all their memories - and perhaps a ghost or two - sealed inside. The remaining "haunted place of death and suffering" is explored through photos snapped in the mysterious fog and debris of dim hallways, apparitions in windows, artifacts and frightful stories from people who visited on a dare and left fast, thoroughly freaked out. http://www.mountainsanatorium.net/ SHORT TAKES The Word Spy Invented, abused, exiled and ignored, it's not easy being a word. At Logophilia's Word Spy, new words and phrases like "thumbable" and "drunken trees" that have wandered into popular usage are welcomed and introduced around. <><><><> Drought Monitor It's been a long season without rain, and you can see how long and how severe the dry spell is anywhere in the US at Drought Monitor, where colors from pale yellow to deep red show dry conditions at a glance, with notes on how agriculture, water tables and fire are affected. http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/index.html <><><><> Challenge of the Superfriends Before "Friends," there was "Superfriends," a short-lived cartoon series of 16 episodes created in 1978 by Hanna-Barbera, featuring characters from DC Comics. At Challenge of the Superfriends, find episode lists, video and audio clips, bios of the heroes and villains, voice cast, music and other news of the series that has never been released on home video. http://members.aol.com/SprFriends/ Enjoy
the newsletter? Tell your friends to subscribe by sending an email to: All Too Flat The genesis of All Too Flat is a Monty Python joke about halibut, which pretty much sets the tone for this off-the-wall humor site for those whose sense of humor runs toward the quirky and the geeky. Two cheerful self-proclaimed nerds share their pranks, jokes and rants about the Bible, scientists and bananas via Funny Stuff, Serious Stuff and Geeky Stuff. ATF's collection includes an Ask the Fish column, scientist trading cards and hot videos of geeks gone wild at Mardi Gras. Fans who get hooked and want to share the fun can join chats, post messages, submit their own gags and shop The Store for the usual t-shirts and mugs carrying the very unusual ATF logo. Journal of Applied Treknology Trekkies are a serious bunch, and at The Journal of Applied Treknology they invite engineers and the lay public to peruse starship technology so innovative that designs of the 23rd century are considered historical nostalgia. Created by the Advanced Starship Design Bureau, the site is intent on developing consistent designs for space hardware that have been extrapolated from fragmentary specs given in Star Trek episodes or in official technical manuals. Visitors should catch up first in the archive showing designs from the past - that would be the 21st to the 23rd century - before viewing designs for starships, auxiliary spacecraft, propulsion, power generation, weapons, computers, communication, medical technology and ship systems in the 24th century. Famous Trials TV's Law and Order might have gotten you addicted to legal drama, but for the real story visit the University of Missouri Law School's Famous Trials, where genuine star litigators, evidence, testimony and drama from the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" trial to the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial are on display. Collected by a law school professor, the content includes original works, government records and other info that makes legal history live again. The 1969 Trial of the Chicago Seven, for example, offers chronology, YIPPIE posters, audio clips, trial transcripts and first person accounts. For those with a really harsh jones, see specialty sections on Searching for Law's Heroes, Searching for Evil, and Guilty or Not Guilty? http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
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Decameron Web Storytelling is more than boy meets girl, and few collections have had a more lasting impact on the discussion of Western values than the 100 stories of Boccaccio's Decameron, 10 days with 10 young people escaping the Plague in mid-14th century Florence. The Decameron Web from Brown University is a "hypermedia archive" of the seminal work. Search the English or Italian text of the work or explore the origins, causes and effects of the Plague that killed half the population of Italy and thousands more worldwide. Scholars and students can zero in on the arts, literature, history and social themes Decameron captured, with special sections of activities for students and teachers. http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/dweb.shtml World Facts Luxembourg is the richest country in the world and Finland is the cleanest - and has the most cellphones. Aneki.com is a one-stop site for fast answers to basic questions about any country in the world, with continental and world rankings in dozens of categories. Tons
of interesting facts are assembled here for use by trivia fans, research
paper writers, journalists or people who need to square a bet. We've got
the most billionaires, for example, but we're not even in the top 20 for
life expectancy. Search by categories like economic, social, technological
or environmental, or by continent. A nifty World Almanac lets you choose
a country and a fact, like population or climate, for an instant SUBSCRIBERS' SITES - Many of our subscribers have fascinating on-line projects. This weekly section will introduce you to some of these sites. Please let me know about your project so that I might mention it in this section. Write me at info@tricksandtrinkets.com ~World Wide Cuss Jar! - Profanity will cost you. ~Thomas Pitre Associates - Distance Learning and e-Communication. ~Wine Answers - You have questions, we have answers. ~The personal site of Angie Sims ~Greencycler's
Gizmo and WATER Pollution Center
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Zen Saying
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