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141. -new- Internet Director for Botany:  Gardening and Many Other Botanical Sites

You will find an extradordinary compendium of websites relating to gardening here.  And if you are a botanist you will find further links to all sorts of other related sites at the bottom of the page. (11-27-13)

140.  Where to Find Old Maps Online?

"The title of this website is most accurate: it is a collection of thousands of old maps. They are wonderful. The portal was created as part of collaboration between the Great Britain Historical GIS Project, based at the University of Portsmouth, and Klokan Technologies GmbH, based in Switzerland. First-time visitors will note the site draws on GPS technology and other place-based location services to pull up local maps of interest. For example, if one is in Los Angeles, dozens of maps of the nearby area will appear on the right-hand side of the interface screen. Visitors can click on each map as they see fit, or move to another part of the world for more maps. On the top of the interface, visitors will see a timeline that ranges from 1000 CE to the present day. They can use this timeline to look for historical maps from a set period of time. There's also a blog to consider here, and visitors can learn more about the contributing institutions via the Collections tab"—as cited by the Scout Project

(09/05/12)

139.  The Bacteria Museum

In this online archive, one not only learns how ubiquitous bacteria are, but that they are vital to our continued existence even if a goodly portion of them will lay us low. See http://bacteriamuseum.org/cms/ .  Very few of us know that the quality of certain of our foods is dependent on bacteria action.  That is, “Sour cream and Crème fraiche are both the products of cream after bacteria are allowed to grow in it. The difference in flavour, texture, and behavior (sour cream will curdle when heated, crème fraiche will not) all result from the differences in bacteria required to produce the two products. Buttermilk is low in fat and cheese comes in many variations. Yoghurt is probably one of the oldest forms of fermented milk.” (05-25-11)

138.  Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time

One could spend an evening or two or three looking through all these quotes at AMC’s One Liner Site.  The place is to look is under movie quotes by decade.  There you will find.  “We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed...But we're going back again in a couple of weeks.”---Animal Crackers. “Well, when I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better." ---I’m No Angel. “We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity.”----Notorious (5-11-11)

137. Scanning the News – Everywhere

An interesting way to view a distant newspaper front page.  Click on any “city” button and up pops the local paper front page! You can then open a link to the paper’s website to view more articles etc.   http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/ (04-15-09)

136.  Photos: Bring Life to Life

It’s pretty much forgotten now but it was photos—great photos—that put piss and vinegar into Henry Luce’s Time Life Empire. At its zenith Time Life was the epicenter of America, putting imagination on the front table of every American, and enjoying an importance not even matched by TV today.  We think we are visual today, and that the written word is in retreat.  Fact is, visuals were more important in the age of photo journalism, when pictures did not simply mirror life, but were bigger than life.  Google and Time Warner (now a media cripple) have cooperated to bring these photos back to Americans on the web. (02/18/09)

135. Beyond the Blue Shirts 
This website is truly global.  Laurie Carr, a web developer and obsessed New York Rangers fan (our kind of gal), tracks oversea hockey developments on Beyond the Blue Shirts, where she “translates daily hockey reports from the Russian press.  Specifically, she follows Russian, European, and North American Ranger prospects, as well as former and current players.”  See “From Russia,” New Yorker, December 8, 2008, in Talk of the Town, p.38.  (12/17/08)

134. Home of Useless Information
Useless Information comes to us from a science teacher in Chatham, on the outskirts of Albany.  Steve Silvermann clearly has a lot of time on his hands, because he has done a fabulous job of installing all sorts of useless stuff on his website.  Clearly he has cultivated a sense of irony that teachers need to fend off the slings and arrows of a truly insane educational system and to ward off the insults offered by a country racing ever faster towards blinding ignorance.  Learn about Japan’s Hiroo Onoda who kept fighting well after 1945, never having learned that his country had surrendered.  Learn about David Rice Atchison, the only man to have been President of the United States for only a day.  And look into contact lenses for chickens.  (3/28/07)

133. Flight Stats
Flightstats may depress you—or help you.  It will tell you just how often the flight you have chosen is late getting to its destination, and how far it typically runs behind.  We, however, have found it useful.  It has guided us away from some real losers and put us on board at a time of day when we have a chance of getting to the church on time.  (12/20/06)

132. Finding Waldo
When we are looking up semi-celebrities, we find that www.zoominfo.com turns up references to people we want to run down, with a fair amount of ease.  Often it seems to find citations that search engines don’t turn up.  (9/27/06)

131. Eco-Tourism
North Carolina has pieced together quite a program on farm tourism.  Other states are trying to get in the act as well, hoping to put a nickel in poor family pockets, this and specialty crops and animals being the two best hopes for family agriculture.  Massachusetts also has put together a map to picture farms.  Those wanting to take a sabbatical in the green world should see Opportunities on Organic Farms, but this group requires that you join it before accessing its directory.  (8/2/06)

130. Getting Ready for the Video Store
There are a 1,000 movies we all want to watch, but when we get to the video store, we cannot remember one of them.  And it’s an impossible hunt to find anything worth while when you get there.  Peter Kindlmann has given us a literate way of improving our aim.  Light up a cigar and pull up Senses of Cinema.  At leisure, read about one of these directors, say Altman, and take careful notes with your fountain pen.  Now you are ready to tool off to the video store in your 1988 Volvo and get a film that will give you smiles on a summer night.  (5/31/06)

129. Business Blogs
Even America’s biggest companies are trying not to be left behind by the Internet.  So many have gone beyond websites (where they hardly ever excel) to blogs.  Here’s a Wiki List, though we have not discovered whether any of these blogs will really brighten your life.  But they’re a safe substitute for Lunesta and all the other sleep drugs that have crept into the market.  The history of this site about business blogs (an effort by Chris Anderson of Wired and Ross Mayfield of SocialText ) can be found at The Long Tail, a blog that’s worth a look in any event.  Of course, the best corporate blogs are not managed by companies, but are the products of renegade employees who have simply decided to get a blog going. 

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, explains what it is all about on his site which we quote below.  If he’s right, the New Economy is all about niches and niche products, which means America can get deeply into value added niches—and survive amid global competition.  Such an economy will be very dependent on the Internet and our particular passion—relentless collaboration.  Anderson says:

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.  As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. 

One example of this is the theory’s prediction that demand for products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are.  But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio.  In other words, the potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don’t individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross that economic bar. 

The term refers specifically to the yellow part of the sales chart at upper left, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods.  The vertical axis is sales; the horizontal is products.  The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century.  The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future. 

Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude.  Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits. 

When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed.  And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).  Our research project has attempted to quantify the Long Tail in three ways, comparing data from online and offline retailers in music, movies, and books.  (3/22/06)

128. Hyper Design
Graphic design has fallen into disrepair.  Generally the worst is not as bad as it was 30 years ago. But the highs are few and far between: we have come to be dominated by the boringly average.  And, perhaps because of digital media, most design has become too busy and over-wrought, chaos to the eyes, anxiety provoking for the soul.  Design budgets have fallen, with companies plowing too many of their dollars into web activities where the graphics make it hard for readers to clunk around slow-moving sites.  With the computer, every man and woman has become a self-taught design expert with little to show for it.

The busy-ness of design reflects our age.  Everybody is doing too much unreflectively too many hours a day.  Our artifacts are mirroring are hyper lives—confused, teeming with options, overcome  with particulars that obscure any view of the general.  Computers and cellphones have too many functions and options that bear no connection to the very few things most users actually want.  Design now may not be pretty, but it reflects all too well the current state of our culture.

The marvel of the design community, however, is that many of the old hands still love what they are doing as much as ever, and chat with each other about design and designers with the same passion evinced by wine and single malt aficionados. One example of the frenzied communications around the design beehive we sometimes enjoy is Design Observer.  It’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff here, so don’t try.  Simply read the one-liners, and you will occasionally pick up an idea about some subject you will want to pursue further.  In other words, it’s a hit and miss affair, but just occasionally you will find a zinger.

As entertaining perhaps is DesignBoom, where we would particularly recommend the interview section.  This is more about products, but products with a fair amount of eye appeal.  It ranges about the world, and certainly branches out into the graphic design world.

Take a look at Rolf Beuker and his design management weblog to get a feel for what’s going on in Mount-Everest-level design education in both Europe and America.  At all the sites, including Beuker’s, you can find an avalanche of design commentary and design publication links that makes you wonder how designers ever get any work done.

128. Elements and Other Science Sites
We find that you have to peek around the web to find sites that give you a good feel for what’s emerging in science, and none is comprehensive.  A good place to start is Element List, which claims to provide the best science links on the web.  Well, some of them.  Element List was founded in October 2004 by Dr. Jacqueline Floyd, research scientist in geophysics at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York.  It’s more or less organized like a blog, which means it is quite disorganized.  And it gets argumentative both about politics and science, instead of just sticking to its mission of providing good links.  That said, we find occasional items that don’t pop up elsewhere.

We have reviewed Science Daily.  The Hogans make an effort to be comprehensive and don’t get bogged down in didactic or preachy commentary.  This is the right place to start your search on a new development. 

By and large The New York Times has the best weekly science section of all the major papers we have surveyed, and this has probably long been the best section in the whole newspaper.  In some senses, it’s an oddity, since the wisdom of this science talent does not spill over into the coverage of the high-tech industry, etc.  In other words, there is very little trickle down from the science talent pool.  But for bits and pieces of science news, we would tackle the BBC, which manages to put together quite an online news service, given the fact that it is a broadcast service. Likewise, its health section is worth the read. 

While we do not recommend The Wall Street Journal for science in general, although it takes in major amounts of revenue from high technology advertisers, Sharon Begley’s column is first rate and takes you through an offbeat look at some serious science questions usually not tackled elsewhere.  She goes where her nose leads her. 

127. Tracking Natural Disasters
You have to poke around a bit at the National Weather Service and FEMA to find out which states have been most punished by natural disasters.  We had heard, for instance, that Rhode Island, even though it is located on the Coast, had been less blighted by hurricanes, tornadoes, and everything else than other states, but were hard pressed to find some data to back up the hearsay.  Well, here are some places where you can find out who has taken a beating: 

www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml
www.nws.noaa.gov/om/severe_weather/state04.pdf
www.fema.gov/library/diz72-98.shtm
www.fema.gov/library/dizandemer.shtm#dizinfo
www.fema.gov/library/dizandemer.shtm  (1/25/06)

126. Paris Review
You cannot be interested in 20th century American and European literature if you don’t visit The Paris Review.  There are interviews archived here with everybody—Algren, Capote, Robert Penn Warren, Forster, Mauriac, even Dorothy Parker.  Why you could deal with your insomnia just by visiting here!  As a dividend, you will find a link to the complete archives of the New York Review of Books.  It’s hard to realize that George Plimpton, founder and forever editor, bon vivant and sportsman, has bitten the dust, but it’s a pleasure to see this—the best memorial to him.  (1/25/06)

125. Paris: Bourgeoisie Century
“Paris: Capital of the 19th Century” is a marvelous work in progress at Brown University.  In general it includes, thus far, a bibliography and a smattering of useful essays.  It is a lovely introduction to France when it was still on top that provides, we think, useful clues as to why it has fallen into mild irrelevance.  Irrelevant, unless you are a cook, an arena where it still is a world power.  (1/18/06)

124. Beating Phone Systems, Computers
By now you have learned to hate corporations that make you duel with their automated phone systems when you are seeking customer service.  Sometimes there is a way around it.  Blogger Paul English has posted The IVR Cheat Sheet, which lists codes that make take you out of the system and put you in touch with real humanoids (i.e., human beings that work for big corporations).  But English helps you with other unfriendly systems as well.  He’s a computer programmer who says that he is embarrassed about how ridiculously complex the software/computer world is.  So he shows you how to do your blogging via email.  And he gives his best hints on handling everything from Alzheimer’s to spam.  English is cofounder and tech head for Kayak.com, a travel website about which we know nothing.  (1/11/06)

123. Social Psychology Database
Professor Scout Plous of Weslyan maintains the most comprehensive database on social psychology one can find on the internet called the Social Psychology Network.  It’s backed by the NSF.  It’s a smart way of finding out what’s going on in doctoral programs around the country.  (12/14/05)

122. Memories of India and Ceylon
We got started on Harappa.com when we were looking into aspects of Ceylon.  But it is a historical trove of images about ancient India, Pakistan, the Indus Valley, and Sri Lanka.  It is produced in San Francisco.  For some reason, San Francisco is rich in people who do fascinating cultural and historical compendiums, such as Robert Mix whom we talked about in “Being There.”  (12/7/05)

121. Birding at Cornell
The eBird website was developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the
National Audubon Society.  Visitors can make their own bird observations, or access the entire historical database to find out what other users of the eBird site have to say about their own bird watching forays.  The site as well has a good glossary.  But one should go further and root around all the sites available from the Cornell Lab.  For instance, see the homepage of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Or take a look at the Macaulay Library.  The tribe at Cornell was intimately involved in the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker and brings a passion to birding that does not seem to be rivaled anywhere in the country.  For a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at the ivory-bill story, visit the Audubon Society website and read “The Best Kept Secret” by Rachel Dickinson, journalist and husband of Cornell Laboratory’s Tim Gallagher, who was himself intimately involved with the pursuit of the long lost woodpecker.  (11/23/05)

120. American Conifer Society
We are immensely impressed with the website of the American Conifer Society.  There’s a wealth of information here about particular conifers, about events in the evergreen world, books to read, pruning, and links to nurseries and gardens.  (11/2/05)

119. Tour de Force
In times past young people would take a continental tour to complete their education.  Now Jonas Carlson has saved them the trip by providing 360 degree panoramic images of several delightful spots across the globe—on his Virtual Sweden site (www.virtualsweden.se).  Strangely enough, after peeking around at all his scenes, we find he has an affinity for churches and is able to evoke their spiritual quality.  The rest of his pictures seem competent but perhaps a bit lifeless.  (10/5/05)

118. Cookin’ With Gas
This online collection from the Michigan State University Libraries and the Michigan State University Museum presents important cookbooks from the late 18th to the early 20th century.  Of course, Fannie Farmer is here, but there are also chestnuts like Artemis Ward, a White House cookbook, etc.  See http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/index.html.  (9/28/05)

117. Where Pilots Hang Out
Obviously, Mike the Webmaster for this site is a longtime pilot who has had to sit around in a lot of places.  In fact, we notice that our own pilots on a recent trip hung around all the standard places in town, uncovering nothing new on their trip.  Mike, as you will find, uncovers a bit of everything, some good, some bad.  But at least he gets off the beaten path.  See www.pilotwait.com.  (9/7/05)

116. Churchill Speaks
Here you can hear Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946, when he foreshadowed our struggle with Stalin and saluted the opportunity presented by the United Nations.  It’s worth listening just to hear his golden strains.  “Westminster,” he says, that’s a name with which he has some familiarity.  Much more clearly than FDR or Truman, he saw the dangers posed by the “Iron Curtain” and perhaps envisioned the long Cold War ahead.  See www.churchillspeeches.com.  Given Great Britain’s relative decline in power and his own political vulnerability, Churchill played his hand very well, wooing and warning the us colonials about the ways of the world.  Wouldst we could hear his wisdom today, when we are frittering away our power.  (6/29/05)

115. Photography of the Southwest
We keep lighting on photographers around the world who don’t quite make their living from their images but are very serious, indeed.  Often their work has a freshness lacking amongst the chaps who are shooting commercially fulltime. Lately we have come across Wright World (www.wrightworld.com/links/links.html), which is full of links to the photographic scene in the Southwest and elsewhere.  (5/2505)

114. Cancer Resources
We always worry about a website where we cannot easily find out who put it together and for what reason.  That said, if you are just starting to learn about one variety, The Cancer Directory (www.cancerdir.com) will provide a number of links that may lead you somewhere.  Also take a look at National Cancer Institute on Stitch in Time for reliable interpretative information.  (3/16/05)

113. Airline Meals
Don’t get over-excited about this site (www.airlinemeals.net/indexMotwArchive.
html), but it’s worth a read.   It has almost 11,000 images of meals from nearly 500 airlines taken by various contributors who add a comment about the food.  This won’t help you find the exceptional meal, but at least it will help you learn about the disasters in advance so that you can fly with your own hamper put together by a charcuterie in the city from which you depart.  We surveyed, for instance, Dragonair, since we had our first, really first-class meal in years aboard one of its flights from Hong Kong to Bejing.  And dexterous service to go with it.  Yet this airline does not show up on the chart of those lines winning awards from the website.  On the contrary, several trunk carriers with dismal food in all classes do get one or more awards in the meal of the week archive.  A 30-plus graphic designer from Rotterdam is the eminence grise of this site, and we suspect, yes, he knows more about the look of food than the taste of it.  Nonetheless, he does recognize that the Asian airlines generally do a better job on food than the rest.  To get a perceptive readout about the first class food of airlines flying Asian routes, go to “The Ups and Downs of  First Class,” on our Best of Class.  (3/9/05)

112. American Garden Museum
This intriguing website, www.americangardenmuseum.com, does not provide much in the way of background, workings, editors, or ownership.  We believe it’s located in Florida.  But please understand that it is only a web creation without bricks and mortar.  The following site description was abstracted from the Scout Report:  

For those who ask others the eternal question, “How does your garden grow?”, the American Garden Museum website may be a nice way to find out how different American gardens have evolved through history.  As a statement on the site proclaims, “The Museum highlights gardens big and small, urban and rural, gentle and outrageous, wildly expensive and affordable.” Visitors may want to delve into the site by looking through the “Showcase” area.  In this part of the site, a different garden or landscaped environment is profiled every couple of months, including such interesting sites as Opus 40, which is located in Saugerties, New York.  The “Gardens” area features an interactive clickable map of the United States, where visitors may learn about prominent gardens in each state, such as the Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, New York.  Finally, those who already have a green thumb may submit their own gardening stories or experiences, which may then be shared with the online gardening community via this particular website. [KMG]  (2/23/05)

111. Garlic Breath & the Stinking Rose
This rather fun website gets into the growing and lore of garlic, plus a little health, plus some recipes that you should not feel obliged to try.  We’re amused but don’t include it in our spice section, simply because it is not a foodlover’s paradise.  We are pleased to learn that Ulysses owes his escape from Circe to “yellow garlic,” which makes us wonder, however, if he would have been a more interesting fellow, had he gotten entrapped along the way.  See Garlic Central at www.garlic-central.com.  Learn here that stinkin’ breath  apparently works well against insects and vampires as well in case you are overcome by either of those critters.   (2/23/05)

110. Ancient Observatories: Chaco Canyon
Yet another wonderful extraterrestrial happening in New Mexico.  The abstract below comes from the Scout Report: 

The Chaco Canyon installment in the Ancient Observatories series is designed to help teachers introduce students to the field of archeoastronomy, the study of astronomy of ancient cultures. Available in both Flash/broadband and an html version for slower connections, the site includes a wealth of documentation of astronomical observations conducted from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, from petroglyphs to NASA photographs.  For example, see a 1997 photograph showing a supernova in a distant galaxy compared with a petroglyph created in AD 1054, thought to be a representation of a supernova in our own galaxy.  There are also maps, animations showing seasonal alignments of the sun, and a time-lapse Quicktime movie showing how sunlight changes throughout the day at Chaco. Links are provided to NASA’s Sun-Earth Day main site, featuring other ancient observatories, such as Stonehenge, and Sun Watchers Through Time.  www.exploratorium.edu/chaco.  (2/23/05)

109. Zen Gardens
Tiny Bowdoin College in Maine may not immediately make one think of zen gardens, but it has certainly done a fine job offering web users valuable online tours and insights into these peaceful and lovely places.  Specifically, the site is dedicated to the gardens of Japan and—to be geographically more precise—to the historic gardens of Kyoto and its environs.  Through the various pages dedicated to over twenty separate gardens, visitors may take virtual tours of each one and read extended histories on each locale.  First-time visitors will want to read the overview essay, which discusses the importance of early Japanese gardens, and then continue on to the section which discusses the various elements of these gardens, such as bridges, sand, stones, and water.  The site is rounded out by a bibliography for further exploration and a glossary of key terms.  (This comment was drawn from the Scout newsletter which, now and again, cites exceptional websites.  See http://academic.bowdoin.edu/zen/index.shtml?overview.)

108. The World of Dahl
Several generations of dreamers have  read Roald Dahl’s books about James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda.  They are charming and engaging, but harbor a little bit of terror just below the surface.  We remember well, for instance, a Dahl story (“Royal Jelly”) where a baby was brought back to health through a diet of bee jelly, and only later did they notice a furry coat developing on its belly.  This engaging website (www.roalddahl.com) has all sorts of wonderful things to explore, but be warned that it is over-designed and tedious to navigate.  If you read Dahl’s autobiographical sketches, you will wonder how such a serious person could summon up such enchantment.  Perhaps his works are an escape from life as he knew it, which, now and again, had some dreadful patches.  This site is much too complex, much too hard to navigate, and takes too much patience to peruse.  This hyperdesign, incidentally, is a problem in toydom, in modern design, and, most of all, in today’s computerdom.  Those who write about the future of computing sum it up in one word, “Simplicity.”  There will be a drive to make software, websites, software, and computers much simpler to operate, putting a very simple face (the techies can’t even make this word simple: they call it interface) on toys, websites, computers, systems, and gadgets of all types.  Even some of the seminal thinkers about information processing at MIT complain about the inoperability of today’s software.

107. Walking  out New Mexico
As we suggested in our letter of 17 September 2003, New Mexico is about the outdoors, the supernatural, the escape from all urban vestiges.  Now, a few centuries after the Jesuits made their way here, the problem is to find notes from wayfarers that will lead you  through its open spaces.  We have discovered a couple of academics who have tried to see the state in the right way.  Back in 1994, Philip Greenspun, a professor around MIT, who has done heaps about the Internet and is willing to talk about everything else besides, took a trip around the state.  You will find his photo record, observations, and even a proposed itinerary for future travelers at   www.photo.net/us/sw/new-mexico.  In addition, a graduate student who spent a patch of time at Los Alamos by the name of Dallas Masters put something together for all his colleagues back in 1996 and happily it has not been wiped away.  We find particularly helpful his ranking of hot springs, and he nicely tells you how to move beyond all the obvious tourist places.  Los Alamos, needless to say, is a strange town that you need to get away from.  See http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~dallas/sers/index.html and then open the section “Life in Los Alamos.”

106. Flight Tracker
Your son is coming in today on Air Lateness, and you want to know if he is on time and how far his flight has really progressed.  And you do not want to be put on hold by the airline whose clerks often provide ambiguous or wrong information anyway.  Go to Flight Tracker (www.flightview.com/TravelTools), plug in the flight number, and see just where things stand.

105. The Beer Advocate
The brothers Todd and Jason Alstrom have built their site into the home for beer lovers since 1996, with more than 18,000 members from 120 countries, and about 1.5 million users per month.  See The Boston Globe, April 21, 2004, p. E3.  In addition to their site www.beeradvocate.com, they have also gotten into the beer festival business, their next Art of Beer Fest to feature 35 breweries and nine guest speakers.  The brothers still have a little work to do.  We could not, for instance, find our current favorite from Danang, 33 Beer, which we typically have with our pho, Vietnam’s delicious soup.

104. Inspiration for the Long-Distance Runner
To keep up on real runners, look at www.coolrunning.com in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.  But for even more fun, look at Kevin Tiller’s home page, incorporated in the Australian site, where he tells you all about himself, including his running times, and his assorted other interests.  We are very partial to his list of inspirational quotes at http://www.coolrunning.com.au/kevintiller/inspire.shtml which provides you with a stream of aphorisms that will help you roll rocks uphill, give an extra lunge when you are rowing the last sixteenth mile, or win the contract when you are outgunned by McBooz, Goldfinger Bank, or one of the other gigantic professional service firms that offer generic advice for too much money.  You can find here Neil Young’s “It’s better to burn out than fade away” or Courtenay’s “Small can beat big, but you have to have a plan.” Anonymous is often the best quipmeister, saying, for instance, that “If you’re not living live on the edge, then you’re taking up too much space.”  He links to a Ghandi website which reminds us that “we must be the change we wish to see.”

103. Gyre
Gyre.org is simply a great way to catch up on breaking technological developments both in military applications and on other scientific fronts.  So you will find lots about space, biological warfare, and the like.  But you will also find all sorts of things in nano- and neuro-technology, fields that the scientifically aware have to track these days. 

102. America's Most Literate Cities
We would not take this paper too seriously, but it’s sort of fun to look at, and we were tempted to put it under Global Wit and Wisdom.  It’s by an educational bureaucrat who has put in too much time in places like Florida and Wisconsin, places more blessed in their wilds than in their cities.  The survey using the author’s criteria, shows that literacy resides in smaller, second cities with populations around the half million mark. You can find it at www.uww.edu/cities.  On reflection, you will probably find that knowledge, such as it is, is more evenly distributed in these burgs.  But, we suspect, the highs are much higher, and the lows much lower, in much larger cities.  

That aside, what is interesting about the study is that Minneapolis, Minnesota comes out on top.  Minneapolis has some clear strengths on which the nation has not focused.  There are great amounts of midlevel education available:  It does not produce greatness, but the education does seep through to a goodly part of the citizenry.  Some of the best thinking in the public health field comes out of its public health professionals, and we hear that it gets a better return than most on both its educational and health dollars.  We wonder if either its political traditions or Scandanavian feedstock have produced a sturdier middle class here than other sections of the country.  Minnesota does deserve much more study by all our social scientists.

101. Lightning Does Strike Twice
It happened to us twice in 2002, the two jolts within 25 feet of one another, all during the month of July.  That kindled an interest in lightning, which has not led to anything practical but we hope it does.  We would like to better learn how to protect limb and property.   We asked the chap whose company did the repairs on our maimed buildings what you do to avert such problems.   All we learned from our chat is that he suffered as devastating a strike not longer after our little incident.  Perhaps we should all drink white lightning to forget that we ever had to deal with the real thing.  Nonetheless, there are a clutch of websites and other sources that give us a little insight into lightning. 

PJK writes from New Haven that the text to pay attention to is R. H. Golde’s Lightning Protection, which unfortunately is out of print and sells for a king’s ransom.  It came into the world in 1975 (1973 according to other sources) from the Chemical Publishing Company in New York City.  It sets forth in some detail everything you never wanted to know about lightning rods and the several things you should know about deadhead wires to establish a proper ground.  Everybody says this is the classic book in the trade, but we really wonder how many have read it.   

Some minor thoughts for you, if your buildings take a hit.  Plan on it knocking out most of your minor appliances including your phones, a TV or two, etc.  Surge arresters will help computers, TVs, answering machines, and the like, if you have not been lucky enough to unplug things in advance.  It’s good to do so, incidentally, when you go away on summer vacations.  Make sure you not only run your current but your phone lines for these gadgets through the arresters:  Quite often you will lose your computer because of the modem hook-up, and not because of the electric line.  Major electrical motors can go out even a year after you are struck, so make sure you have some recourse with your insurance company in case things breakdown much later.  Buried cables and other lines belonging to the power company can deteriorate over a two month period after the strike, so have them checked if you experience an outage after you think all is cured. 

We have not checked to find out whether lightning is on the increase, but anecdotally we hear of more problems nationwide over the last 2 years.  The University of Florida maintains a Lightning Research Laboratory www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/ which indicates the high degree of interest the utility industry has in the whys and wherefores of lightning. Other centers of research can be found at http://ae.atmos.uah.edu/.   New Mexico, incidentally, has the highest rate of lightning fatalities in the nation.  Florida, Arkansas, and Wyoming are the other states where you may easily get hit by a bolt from the blue.  While there appears to have been a decline in the number of lightning deaths since the 1950s, lightning does account for more deaths than other natural disasters such as tornados and the like.  Given that lightning is associated with the 100,000 or so thunderstorms we experience each year, it’s an anomaly that we still do not know how to deal with it well.   

Should you want to take in a little tame lightning, go to Quemado, New Mexico where you can hope to see the best and the worse, as you survey the 400 stainless steel lightning rods stuck in the desert to attract vagrant electricity.  For more on this, see www.lightningfield.org.  Or see the Van de Graaff generator at the Boston Museum of Science, which can product some pretty heavy sparks.  See www.mos.org.  And particularly see www.mos.org/sln/toe/history.html.  More about lightning, Franklin, etc.  appears in Forbes, July 7, 2003, pp. 139-40.

Yet More on Lightning: We are eternally meeting more people who have been struck by lightning and have lived to laugh about it, even if their laughter is a little faint.  Many are from North Carolina.  Maybe that’s why Lightning Strike & Electric Shock Survivors International, Inc. was started in and still resides in North Carolina, Jacksonville to be specific.  To seek aid, counsel, and whatever, go to www.lightning-strike.org.  Moreover, to find out about lighting storms and lightning victims, read a fine story by Robert Sargent in the Tallahassee Democrat at www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/2003/08/19/news/local/6564160.htm.   It places Florida  Number 1 in the lightning field—not in fatalities which belongs to New Mexico-- but in number of strikes.  “With an average 1.3 million flashes a year, or about 20 flashes per square mile, Florida tops every other state, according to Arizona-based lightning-tracking firm Vaisala (see www.vaisala.com/page.asp?Section=32538), which operates the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network.”  Vaisala, incidentally, looks like it intends to be king of the hill in the lightning business, offering an array of equipment to deal with lightning.  We are waiting for it to claim it “is first in lightning.”  Take a peek at its other website at www.lightningstorm.com.

Update: Lightning, notes The Economist (December 6, 2003, pp. 71-72), for all the attention it gets, is still not very well understood.  Ludger Woste at the Institute for Experimental Physics of the Free University of Berlin is using his Terambile (laser) to try to get his arms around the big bolts by artificially generating his own lightning.  

Dr. Dwyer of the Florida Institute of Technology has developed some substantiation for a theory of Alexander Gurevich of the Lebedev Institute in Moscow, who in the early 90s claimed that lightning was ignited by cosmic rays from outer space.  Dr. Hugh Christian of Huntville’s Marshall Spaceflight Center observes that rapid increases in lightning flashes seem to be predictive of tornados.  Other groups have seen connections between lightning and other weather phenomenon: A group in Toulouse, for instance, thinks there may be a relationship to hail storms, while others are linking it to both ozone and greenhouse gas effects.

Update: Lightning Research
The Global Hydrology and Climate Center (http://thunder.msfc.nasa.gov) gets into the history of lightning research as well as its own efforts in the field.  A crackle of thunder lets you know you have gotten to the right site.  The various ways this NASA group gathers data are revealed here, making a further argument for space exploration.  For the average reader or the junior scientist, probably the “Primer,” which gives you a fast A to Z review of lightning, is the best feature of the site.  (7/27/05)

100. Best Website Directory
BestWebsites.com.my, the brainchild of Ainuddin Mohamad in Kuala Lumpur, really looks around the Web, and it will lead you to as many interesting, great websites as you can stomach.  If you don’t get out much or if you live in a wasteland cut off from the world, then this is a great place to go to find out what all the other people in the world are enjoying.  www.bestwebsites.com.my.

99. Your Surgery.com
Your Surgery.com looks at the whys and wherefores of all sorts of surgical procedures including details on what will happen, possible complications, alternatives, etc.  While this is a good site, we would recommend that patients search further to look at the long-term efficacy of surgical procedures so as to better weigh whether the outcomes justify the discomfort and cost.  See www.yoursurgery.com.

98. Vexillology
Probably the most pressing reason to know about this website is to learn what in the Sam Hill vexillology is all about.  It’s the study of flags.  Here you will find all the flags of the world.  Moreover, the 20th International Congress of Vexillolology is to take place 28 July-August 2003 in Stockholm, and it promises to be a most vexing occasion.  You can see here 18,000 pages and more than 32,000 images of flags.  And there’s much more at www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags.  We must admit to particularly liking the link to the National Anthems site where you can learn how 192 peoples sing about their  nationhood.

97. The Ref
Bob Drudge is the father of Matt Drudge, the colorful Yellow Dog journalist of the Internet, the one who uses a reporter Dick Tracy type hat in order to look like Walter Winchell.  But Bob should be more famous than his son, because he has given us a very useful website with links to everywhere where you find out about things.  As with all portals on the Internet, you will waste a lot of time looking around this chock full of stuff site in order to find what you want.  In his secret mind, he fashions himself a reference librarian.  And that’s what this site is about.  If he had a phone, he could be the answer man whom you call into to give you the right response to a Trivial Pursuit question or to  find you an exchange rate or to take you to a King James version of the Bible, so that you can avoid the more pedestrian versions published now.  If it were organized somewhat differently and had slightly more graphic appeal, you would make it your homepage.  But put it in your bookmarks anyway.  See www.refdesk.com.  It’s a place to get quick facts, not deep thinking.

96. Solid State Stuff
We have already posted rankings of the states according to fiscal performance, as prepared by the Fraser Institute.  See Best of Class, item 126L.  Gradually we are finding other state rankings that are of some interest.  Kaiser looks at health throughout the United States, where you can learn, for instance, that Hawaii has the lowest number of deaths per 100,000 people, and the District of Columbia the most.  Generally states in the West and a few in the North have a longer lifespan whereas you will depart early in the South and in the Southwest.  Morgan Quitno Press (www.morganquitno.com) is making a living publishing directories showing which states are best or worst in a number of categories.  Connecticut is the smartest; New Mexico is the dumbest.  Minnesota is the most livable, Mississippi the least.  Mississippi won another award:  it is the unhealthiest, while Vermont comes in as the healthiest.  North Dakota is the safest, and Louisiana the most dangerous.  Who knows whether Morgan’s rankings are correct.  We suspect the Fraser and Kaiser tabulations will help you spot the right place to live.

95. London Pubs
We found the ones we treasure listed here, so it is a trustworthy list:  www.pubs.com.  Put together by Paul Keating, an ITN cameraman, it even includes a pix or two besides detailed information, so it’s worth a look.  He does supply enough of a description to tell you whether any one drinkery is worth the visit.  And if you are just touring, he has done a handy trick of naming the pubs that are near some of the famous sights.

94. Monticello
Obviously this is an advertisement for Jefferson’s home in Charlottesville.  But there are enough historical details, little pictures, resources, and other surprises to make this site alone worth a visit.  See www.monticello.org. 

93. Callin The Dog in Mississippi
We have learned lately that everything good gets done by telling stories.  As we have indicated, some companies are even using myths and stories as a core part of their formal and informal company training.  For fun and instruction we recommend www.AmericanFolklore.net, where you can draw on stories long told around the nation.  So far our favorite is a Mississippi tale called Callin The Dog in which the man who can tell the biggest lie wins a puppy:

Now, the last man to talk knew he didn't have a chance of winnin' that there pup on account of all them tall-tales the others told was so good. So he jest said: "I never told a lie in my life."

"You get the pup!" said the owner of the hound dog. And everyone else agreed with him.

For more about storytelling, see Letters from the Global  Province, 19 August 2002, “Stories R Us” and Agile Companies, number 152, “Donut Stories.”

92. Flying Buttresses
Skyscrapers.com has about as much as anyone needs to know about skyscrapers around the world.  We particularly enjoyed its listing of the 100 tallest office buildings where you learn which countries are stepping out in the world.  For instance, the two tallest are in Kuala Lumpur—Petronas Towers I and II.  Of the top 10, 8 are in Asia, 6 in China when you count Hong Kong.  See www.skyscrapers.com/english/worldmap/statistics/top100skyscrapers/index.html

91. Louise Brooks Society
Louise Brooks did it all and was a pretty good actress besides.  Apparently she’s best remembered for her role of Lulu in the German film, Pandora’s Box, which did not really catch on in its own time (1929 … probably everybody had other things to think about).  Hence, the name of this most interesting website (www.pandorasbox.com).  Apparently the site is home for the Louise Brooks Society, which claims to be the world’s biggest fan club for a silent movie star.  We remember Brooks better for her colorful life than for her roles.  When she escaped Kansas, she went on to dance in New York, mingling with both Martha Graham and Ziegfield along the way.  She lived in the Algonquin Hotel, frequented London café society, had affairs with Charlie Chaplin and a host of other well-known greats and not so greats from stage and screen.  Oddly enough she had a long post-career sojourn in Rochester, New York, the home of Eastman Kodak and the site of vast film archives, curated by her friend James Card.  Perhaps that was the right locale for a film antique.

90. All About the Prez
We should have written about this site before July 4.  It tells you the whole nine yards about presidents—who they were, what they did, who their wives were, etc.  It is mostly free of cant and propaganda, even though it is a government production at www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents.  Good quiz stuff to use with the whole family.

89. Best of the History Websites
Thomas Daccord, who teaches at Noble & Greenough School in Dedham, Massachusetts, has put together this site for students and history educators at www.besthistorysites.net.  We have not ploughed through the site to see if his rating system works.  But, for sure, it will help school kids get through their term papers.

88. Think Tanks
You thought that think tanks were just a U.S. disease, with maybe a few in Europe.  Well, they are all over the place, as we learn on www.nira.go.jp/linke/tt-link.  Now just what is it that they are thinking about in the Kyrgyz Republic?

87. Chinese Art Net
We can testify that the links here don’t always work, but this is good look at Greater China, Singapore, the U.S.A., and a couple of other places where you can tap into decent Chinese art.  Oddly enough, the site is located in Patterson, New York, wherever that is.  See http://www.chineseartnet.com.

86. It's a Small World
Molecular Expressions captures the world of optics and microscopy.  You  get to see all sorts of things really close up in addition to learning about optical microscopy in a slew of tutorials available on the site.  See http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/.

85. Virtual Museums Online
Well, we will give you a choice here.  You can get your museums deadly serious or you can have a little wit.  The self-important site is www.museumstuff.com, which will lead you to a very broad assortment of museums in a number of fields.  But if you need a lot of amusement with your culture, try www.coudal.com/archives/museum.html.  Put together by a creative semi-marketing firm, this site is really advertising of the best sort:  it will get you to the Smithsonian but it will also lure you to The Museum of Firecracker Labels or Manhole Covers Arranged by Country.  This is a smart use of the Web:  every commercial site should include some free, useful, and sometimes amusing information that is not self-promotional but still conveys the spirit of the enterprise.

84. ScienceDaily.com
We got to www.sciencedaily.com initially when we were running down the relationship of stem cells to brain repair.  The Hogans, in their spare time, keep us abreast of developments in several fields, between their jobs as webmaster and teacher.  It is a daily and, unlike a number of the daily web technology letters we receive, the content is consistent and always useful.

83. Bugs Aplenty
In case you ever doubted that the systems that control are lives are riddled with error and liable to crash, then you should visit Mr. Huckle's site from across the water and find that our terra ain't firma.

See http://atzenger19.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/persons/huckle/bugse.html.

82. Best Ways to Care for Maps
The Prime Meridian, Virginia dealers in maps, has a very helpful website, with a useful search mechanism to its collection, links to lots of map people, and sundry other goodies.  we would particularly recommend its section on the Care of Old Maps, a helpful guide whether you are dealing with 19^th-century maps or old prints.  See www.theprimemeridian.com/MapCare.html.  Also, booklovers would be advised to visit the page about search engines to find that rare edition or out-of-print book that has been eluding them at http://www.theprimemeridian.com/webbooks.html.

81. Shake, Rattle, and Roll
One can learn more than you need to know about earthquakes in the U.S. at http://quake.usgs.gov/.   More fun, however, is just to carve out the section on Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada, notably the San Francisco Special Map.  You can get, as we did, a countdown on earthquakes over the last 4 days or so (30 or so from 04/14 to 04/18), broken down into those that occurred during the last hour, the last day, and last week.  It is only an illusion, we claim, that Californians are laid back; as near as we can tell they are vibrating at every moment.   See http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/San_Francisco.html.

80. Nobel People
The Nobel Foundation has turned its website into a tour of the lives of those it has honored as well as a fun place to play animated games and visit interactive science laboratories.  See www.nobel.se.  Also see CIO, April 1, 2002, p.34.

79. Amdahl's Internet Exploration
Amdahl, soon to be renamed Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Inc., has a section of its site other companies should think about emulating.  (See www.amdahl.com/internet.)  What Amdahl provides here is a meta-site that links to newsworthy events, sports, internet news, weather, etc.  The whole effort is called "Explore the Internet," and provides reasons to visit Amdahl frequently.  The usual product brochure material is on the site as well, but it is in this section and in its case histories that Amdahl demonstrates some understanding of how the Internet is to be used.  Sadly, the name of the founder, computer pioneer Gene Amdahl, will soon fade away.

78. March Madness
 High school, not college basketball, was the genesis of the whole idea of March Madness.  Learn all about it at the site of the group that keeps the mania alive.

77. 50.lycos.com
This will let you see what topics and websites do a lot of volume.  It does boast occasional surprises.  One of the top 10 is Scandal Taiwan, the doings of a lady politician there whose mating rituals have been laid out in as much detail as Bill Clinton's idylls with an intern.

76. Movie Mom
Nell Minow, who tries to keep companies in line through her corporate-watch activities, also has figured out how to create kids with angelic minds.  It's MovieMom, a site that lays out what kids should watch.

75. Smartcommunities.org
We find this site valuable because it points you towards the cities and countries that have worked at wiring themselves to achieve smarts in a hurry about on everything.  John Eger, the creator, is a major catalyst in this movement.  See www.smartcommunities.org/links.htm.

74. The Wages of Work
This site provides salary survey data, a way of finding out whether your wages are vaguely competitive.  See WageWeb at www.wageweb.com.

73. Casting a Vote for Civilization
Against the backdrop of war and all its destruction, it was cheering to discover a website devoted to the greatest human accomplishments of the last 2,000 years  (The New Yorker, October 29, 2001, pp. 32-33).  Visitors to www.new7wonders.com can participate in a global internet vote to choose the seven new wonders of the world, the ancient wonders having disappeared, except for the pyramids of Giza.  The seventeen official candidates were culled from 529 Unesco World Heritabge Sites; "wild cards" were added by voter suggestion.  Currently the top three contenders are the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the pyramids at Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.  To date, over 5.68 million people from 238 countries have voted.  (Nearly a quarter of the ballots come from Peru, possibly because Macchu Picchu is a write-in candidate.)  Voting ends on December 31, 2001.

Bernard Weber, a Swiss filmmaker and former museum curator, is the founder of the website and its parent, The New 7 Wonders Society.  Weber's goal is to "promote global awareness of the earth's cultural heritage and to preserve the beauty of nature."  His first real world objective may seem a bit quixotic: to rebuild the statues of Buddha that were destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan earlier this year, first as 3-D computer models, and eventually in situ.  But who knows?  It's dreamers like Weber who may save our souls.

72. Gargoyle Central
Yes, somebody does have the best gargoyle collection on the web.  See http://users.skynet.be/dhs/gargouilles.

71. Government and Science
www.scitechresources.gov, a Department of Commerce site, looks around the government's storehouse of technology.

70. Wireless Updates
Mobile Streams does a pretty good job keeping track of wireless events on its gamut of websites.  It's not well-related or indexed, so you have to hunt around a bit.  Maybe you should begin at www.mobilefirst.com.  But plow around: there's a lot of stuff here.  Forgive Mobile Streams: technology companies never use technology very well.

69. Chiefs of State
We have already told you that there are a couple of things to see on the CIA's site (see entry #19 below).  But we had not mentioned its chiefs-of-state listing which is updated weekly.  It's worthy of attention, since you can expect rapid-fire changes in national leadership for the next few years.  Keep track here at www.cia.gov/cia/publications/chiefs/index.html.

68. Intelligence?
Who knows, but this site has little fragments of information that flag developments that our newspapers are missing in countries around the globe.  Singapore, for instance, has made some serious armaments purchases and has supplanted Subic Bay as America's base in the Pacific rim.  See www.spiescafe.com.

67. Latin Lynn
Lynn Nelson, whom you can read about in Gods, Heroes, and Legends, tells us that he is, oddly enough, best known for his Latin word book, which you can find at www.ukans.edu/ftp/pub/history/Europe/Medieval/aids/latwords.html.   It is still the only universal language, so this is a site worth knowing.

66. Free-Market Boys
The Fraser Institute lists institutes and publishers around the world that carry the cudgels for unbridled capitalism, except when it comes to their own tax status, where they curry special favor with their respective governments.  See www.freetheworld.com/other.html.

65. Tartans to Go
Correspondent Etta MacKay has told us where to look for kilts for any clan.   We came up short on this for Elly's birthday, so we are grateful that we will be ready to deck out the next Scot who comes our way.  For tartans all, see:

www.jhiggins.net (800-426-7268)
www.scottishlion.com (800-355-7268)
www.21stcenturykilts.com (800-566-1467)

64. Virtual Library
http://vlib.org.  This is the place to find out about everything everywhere.  The links lead everywhere in the world, from museums and libraries to institutes, with very serious sites about every heavyweight topic.

63. Academic Finance Site
Links to journals and lots of other things.  See www.cob.ohio-state.edu/fin/journal/jofsites.htm.

62. Ranking the Consultants--Top 50
www.kennedyinformation.com/mc/cn50.html.   What this tells us is that there are too many in the United States, and not enough in Europe and Asia.  Clearly size has no correlation with quality: in professional services, bigger hardly ever means better.

61. Buyer Beware
www.dot.gov/airconsumer/atcr01.htm.   You actually can find out if your airline is in trouble, but goodness knows what you can do about it.  We'll be travelling more on American Eagle, which is a disaster waiting to happen and which should be disciplined by the FAA.  Read this report and weep.  3.7% of its flights are late 70% of the time, while 0% are late on Aloha, TransWorld, and Northwest.  5.7% of its operations (I guess this is flights) are cancelled verses 0.7% on Southwest, etc. etc.

60. History of Cartography
http://ihr.sas.ac.uk/maps.  Tony Campbell has been Map Librarian of the British Library for fourteen years.  Before that he was an antiquarian map dealer and cataloguer.  He also shepherds a journal, conference, and other doings around maps.  The site is wonderful, but naturally he only thinks he's done half the job.  As he puts it, the web only provides a part of the information needed.  Well, it's the best map place we've been to.

59. History Central Catalogue
www.ukans.edu/history/VL.  An international network of history sites dating back to 1993, maintained by the University of Kansas.

58. Hot Stuff
www.chileplants.com is the best thing we have seen on chile peppers.  Hundreds of chiles with pictures and descriptions.  This is the right kind of commercial site, providing excellent and complete information, with the view that it will attract customers to Cross Country Nurseries of Rosemont, New Jersey.  We are surprised at how many very good food sites there are, surpassing by far other e-commerce sites.  The site has excellent links, including www.chilepepperinstitute.org at New Mexico State University, in the state that makes the nation's hottest food.  We suppose that after visiting Cross Country, you should go to Boylan's for refreshment, also located in New Jersey, maker of the country's best root beer and ginger ale.  (For more on Boylan's, see Best of Class #175.)

57. A Site for Value Investors
www.valuepro.net.  Plug in your stock symbol and this site will spew forth your stock's intrinsic value (if it is in the site's database).  This is one way of finding out how much fluff is still in a stock's price.

56. Internet Public Library
This site, a project of the University of Michigan School of Information, has some 2,000,000 visitors per month.  We arrived here because of its extensive literary criticism collection. 

55. Graffiti
Art Crimes (www.graffiti.org) has a more limited view of graffiti than we espouse.  Graffiti, for us, was always the witty philosophical stuff found on bathroom walls in Irish bars.  The folks who put together this site mean the stuff that used to cover subway cars in New York City, until new politicos beat the stuff and recaptured New York for its average joes.  Nonetheless, this site is well worth a visit, as it shows a cheery dedication to spray-can outpourings from 43 countries, creations that run parallel to the semiotic scratchings of academics in their journals or the obsessiveness of hackers and code-breakers around the virtual world.   In other words, this is what you do when you can't stop.

54. Bloodshot Eyes
A classmate and pal of old just heard Wynonie Harris singing "Don't Roll Your Bloodshot Eyes at Me."  He thinks the song dates back to an expedition we took in the 50s to Pennsylvania, but I can't remember so I must have been bloodshot.  At any rate, I recommend to Chet The Global Hangover Guide (www.hangoverguide.com), which comes to us from a commercial artist in Germany.  It's really not a very good site, but what do you expect?  Probably you should try the hangover cures, though, which are as good as anybody else's.  And skip the bars, which are pedestrian atrocities.  The world needs a hangover site as we try to get over the last decade.

53. Best Gone With the Wind Site
We spotted this when we were doing our Annual Report on Annual Reports 2001.   There are a skillian Gone sites, but this one seems to be the most fun.   See www.franklymydear.com.   Clearly it has the best URL.

52. Bad Astronomy
The Bad Astronomer is Philip Plait, a University of Virginia Ph.D. who's spent time at   Sonoma State University and at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.  He's helpful in putting the blocks to bad science and particularly to bad astronomy.  But there's more to his site than informed crankiness.  Mr. Plait's movie reviews are marvelous examples of how educational and engaging academic reads of Hollywood productions can be.  He also gives us his top ten picks for websites, even though he actually has eleven and then a whole bunch more, since, like all charming academics, he can't make up his mind.  So this is an astronomy plus site. 

51. Finding the Right Hotel
This is not as easy as it looks.  None of the big chains, save Four Seasons, are really that good, even though each has a singular virtue.  For instance, Westin always has a phone on the desk as well as the bedside table, so you can work in the room.  An acquaintance claims that it has gone to great length to have the best mattresses.  By and large, however, you must look to small, one-off hotels for quality.  And they're not always easy to find.   But even the lists of small hotels have some real losers.  Caveat Emptor.  Check like the devil.  Helpful lists include Small Luxury Hotels of the World (www.slh.com) and Preferred Hotels and Resorts Worldwide (www.preferredhotels.com).  There are also newsletters like Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report, but the same cautions apply.

50. Bringing William Blake to Digital Life
Academic textual scholarship--that is, the study of how texts were physically produced and how they should be reproduced "accurately"--seems to many outside academia an esoteric and lackluster pursuit.  For example, by examining “pause” marks in the Declaration of Independence, American cultural historians have shown how the document was meant to be spoken rather than read silently, and in the process have convincingly argued that Thomas Jefferson may have been a horribly shy public speaker.  Indeed, this may not seem overly revolutionary to most.

However, with The William Blake Archive, the rewards of textual scholarship become easily recognizable.  Created and edited by Blake scholars from the University of Rochester, the University of California at Riverside, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this web "archive" makes plain how important the way a text looks is to how we read and interpret it.  For Blake, of course, presentation was everything.  But until the past decade, the technology did not exist for an accurate representation of both his words and his plates--his genius for artistic multi-disciplinarity--outside of printed books, books that are not cheap, to say the least.  As one of the editors notes about the work on the archive, "We felt and I see now that we were on the frontiers of something, but we weren’t sure what."  (See “Collaboration Takes More Than E-Mail: Behind the Scenes at the Blake Archive" in The Journal of Electronic Publishing, December 1997.)

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