NPR: America's Greatest 20th Century Music
NPR Online celebrates popular American music with this impeccable selection of 100 great tunes. An esteemed panel of judges, as well as over 14,000 discerning NPR listeners, helped compile this bookmarkable index -- just click on a title to hear more about the songs. Representing a patchwork of genres -- from classical to country to rock n' roll -- the collection's featured songs include "Good Vibrations" (The Beach Boys), "In The Mood" (Glenn Miller), "Coal Miner's Daughter" (Loretta Lynn), and "Hellhound On My Trail" (Robert Johnson). Now that's a great mix tape.
Tired of using the idle CPU cycles on your networked computer to search for intelligent life in a cold, unfriendly universe? Maybe you'd prefer cultivating a little artificial intelligence closer to home. The Golem@Home Project is a distributed computing experiment that uses the Internet environment to automatically design, evolve, and manufacture prototype robotic lifeforms. You participate by downloading a screensaver designed by scientists at Brandeis University, then, whenever your machine is idle, you sit back and watch the colorful tubular entities evolve all by themselves. Golem (Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro Mechanics) is actually named for a legendary giant clay man.
In crude Hollywood terms, the story behind this site is a Central American Blair Witch Project, but you have to experience it for yourself. The Aztec legend of Llorona (the weeping lady) is based on a sixteenth-century woman who translated for Cortez to the Aztec leader Moctezuma. As the history books teach us, what happened next was not pretty. La Malinche (her given name) was subsequently reviled as the woman who brought death and destruction upon her people, and soon her ghost started appearing. She's been lurking about ever since. Witch? Siren? Harlot? Virgin? Read the stories and judge for yourself.
Electronic Literature Organization
First there was the groundbreaking Project Gutenberg, a collaborative effort to distribute world literature in electronic format. Now, e-books, e-ink, e-publishing, and e-reading devices are part of the daily buzz. The newly launched Electronic Literature Organization aims to serve as hub and gathering place for literati of the Net, providing news, resources for authors and readers, and a growing showcase of online work, from avant-garde hypertexts and visual poetry to more familiar fiction and non-fiction formats. The ELO is also building a directory, which promises to grow into a valuable catalog of digital authors and their online work.
How many people do you know who can look at a poster of Houdini and identify every single pair of manacles, handcuffs, and leg irons strapped to the master magician? Joseph Lauher can, and he can also discuss the internal mechanisms of the classic 1899 Bean-Cobb Handcuff, the unique triple bindings of the 1904 Tower Three Way Handcuffs, or the handy policeman grips of the 1912 Carberry Handcuffs. In short, Mr. Lauher knows a lot about old handcuffs: who made them, how they worked, and how they often failed. He also knows a lot of nifty stuff about the art of escaping. There's nothing kinky going on here; just good clean fun with handcuffs.
This ambitious, German/English scholarly celebration of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) presents priceless autographs -- musical scores handwritten by the composer, digitized and collected online for the first time for worldwide perusal. There's an online exhibition in pictures and sound of musical instruments from Bach's time (trumpet, organ, violoncello piccolo, echo flute, and lute), and ample links to biographical resources including portraits, prints, and reviews. A guided tour takes you on a leisurely stroll through Bach country. Bring plenty of bandwidth.
The Edsel Pages have a clear sense of purpose: "Keeping as many Edsel automobiles on the road as possible. No other agenda, no politics. It's all about the car." The Edsel, or E-car, named for Henry Ford's son, was produced, after years of design and planning, for three glorious years: 1958, 1959, 1960. These days, the Edsel population is seriously endangered, and intrepid owners, clubs, and hobbyists, are committed to fighting Edsel extinction. Consult the Spotter's Guide if you think you've seen one of these elusive machines, just please don't call it a Ford Edsel or an "Oldsmobile sucking a lemon."
In 1986, filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn walked around the parking lot of a Judas Priest concert with a video camera, interviewing the fans. Their short documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot went on to become a bona fide cult phenomenon: endless bootlegs have been copied, Nirvana supposedly played it on their tour bus constantly, and Universal Pictures recently bought a copy as research for their upcoming film Metal God. Washington Magazine says Jeff Krulik "makes the strangest films you've never heard of," and now you can watch them online, including Neil Diamond Parking Lot, the sequel to Heavy Metal Parking Lot. A Harry Potter Parking Lot is in the works.
