American Heritage Book of English Usage
The 1996 edition of this "practical and authoritative guide to contemporary English" is another powerful tool from the great Bartleby reference library on the Web. A friendly volume that will help you make intelligent decisions when communicating in speech or writing, it presents sound guidelines and specific controversies in grammar, style, and word choice. Users will be entertained and enlightened by forays into danger zones of pronunciation, gender and sexist language, ethnic terms, and a somewhat dated look at the quirks of email.
Here's a site for market watchers seeking trends, patterns, and financial paradigms. Created by Industry Standard news director Thomas Goetz, BubbleEconomy.com is an independent project that aggregates insight from a variety of news sources. Goetz's annotated links cover the "blowers," folks in the media who used to "pour water on the fires of frenzy ... before reporters started getting paid like lawyers," and the "bursters," who are trying to anticipate and prepare us for the pop. You don't have to choose sides to watch which way the wind blows -- BubbleEconomy is an intelligent break from the gusts of hype.
The first thing we read on KidsPost was titled Cool New Games for Wired Kids -- straight coverage of the most recent Electronic Entertainment Expo, with news of Lego's soon-to-be-released digital video moviemaking kit as well as the latest Pokemon and skateboarding video games. This is a kid-friendly edition of an online newspaper. It includes informative feature articles handily archived by topic, a photo gallery called Shutterbug, a collection of web-based games that require Flash, links to study resources, and the usual assortment of polls and posts. It's interesting to see how a major news player courts the next generation of readers online.
The Chicago Historical Society at Northwestern University uses the image of a 19th-century book to organize an intriguing exhibition focused on Mary Todd Lincoln's mysterious cloak, allegedly worn the night her husband was shot. Pictures and text depict public reaction to Lincoln's violent death in the aftermath of the Civil War. A virtual tour of the Textile Conservation Laboratory shows how forensic historians attempt to verify the gory garment's authenticity using DNA testing. It's an elegant look at our ongoing preoccupation with historical relics and our fascination with slain presidents and fallen heroes.
This is pretty straightforward. Eric Leuliette's mother started keeping a list of books read by her son when he was in the first grade. Eric took control of the project in the fifth grade. Now a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Space Research in Austin, Texas, Dr. Leuliette proudly presents the complete archive, from Seven Little Postmen to Geons, Quantum Holes, and Black Foam: A Life In Physics. The longest book? That would be Les Miserables, weighing in at 1492 pages. So far our fearless hero has plowed through 1783 books for a grand total of 395,007 pages.
Mike is one of those guys who likes to open up electronic gadgets, take a peek inside, then put them back together. He takes a real anatomical interest in the way machines work. He also has a huge collection of antique glass valves, neon lamps, Geissler tubes, Tesla coils, and Weston cells. He explains how each component works, who invented them, what they're made of, and how you can take them apart. He also includes a diagram of his home audio/video setup that reads like a London Underground map.
Prepare to be funkified. A crack team of bass-slappin' scientists have assembled a comprehensive table of the essential electrofied elements of Funk. What is Funk? We're not sure. We know it starts in your booty and contains the following key players: James Brown, Dolemite, Wilt Chamberlain, George Clinton, Bruce Lee, Pam Grier, and Rerun. We're not saying this collection of stone-cold characters and pop culture namechecks is completely airtight (Bruce Campbell? Barney Fife?), but it's still a bumpin' good time.
Each week, the Yahoo! Picks Staff toils relentlessly to bring you the most dazzling, creative, and unique sites on the Web. This one isn't exactly dazzling, but it does bring a unique perspective to the world of meat decomposition. While we can't condone this sort of behavior, we get a kick out of the demented enthusiasm of the project's creator (and his sidekick, Stinkymate). The pictures are rather disgusting and stomach-turning, but this site's look at the lifespan of a plate of raw meat left unattended in a neighbor's yard is absolutely engrossing. We would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to our more sophisticated readers. For the rest of you, dig in.