| The Noiseways Project This "virtual tour of various scenic and not-so-scenic locations in New York City" attempts to prove that a tranquil sound environment contributes as much as scenic beauty to our experience of place, particularly public recreational spaces. Photographs and accompanying sound samples demonstrate that noise is stressful and disruptive. Studies in contrast include Central Park, with and without vehicular traffic, the sounds of aircraft competing with human conversation at Battery Park City, and the unnerving song of the New Jersey Turnpike. Don't miss the exquisite bridge pictures. |
| The Mother Jones 400 MotherJones.com presents "news and resources for the skeptical citizen," including special features like this list of top contributors to the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign. Search by parameters such as state, industry, and party affiliation, or read profiles of influence makers as diverse as Democratic contributor S. Daniel Abraham, former chairman of Palm Beach, Florida-based Slim Fast Foods. (Wait a minute, didn't they have some kind of ballot problem in Palm Beach?) Connect the dots between sources of wealth, corporate interests, and industry affiliations for a forecast of the political agenda of the next four years. |
| The MegaPenny Project This elegant exercise in number visualization offers the answer to the age-old question, "What do a billion pennies look like?" WARNING! SPOILER AHEAD -- A billion pennies look like five massive blocks of copper each roughly the size of a school bus. But that's not all! A million pennies resembles a good-sized bookshelf, one-hundred billion stacked pennies forms a giant monolith half the length of a football field, and a stack one quintillion pennies is just ridiculously big. This is a wonderful way to kill five minutes. We suggest you work your way up from the first stack of sixteen. |
| Audience Magazine Audience has been discussing new films and revisiting old ones since 1968, and they've got the copy to prove it. Read an interview with acclaimed cinematographer Conrad Hall (Butch Cassidy, American Beauty), a piece on films from John Irving novels, and a look at the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The six-point Fistful of Flicks ratings system ranks films from a "Must -- An artistic, successful work, with the allegories accomplished for all metaphors, and the view left fulfilled, purged, stunned, or happy -- depending on the filmmakers' intentions" to "Awful: So inartistic, so negative, that it really bugs you. Picket the theater." |
| Seattle Stories A handful of web developers hosts this lively forum on all things Seattle. On Starbucks: "the ultimate in painless coffee obtainment; my own mechanical, stainless-steel, impersonal paradise." On all-night diners: "pit-stations of dejection where you can look any way you want, feel any way you want..." And the recent Six Point Eighter: "There's something very surreal about hearing all of the steel beams in your building groan and squeak, about watching your desk move away from the wall, about dashing into the hallway, watching trendy postmodern light fixtures swaying from their pivot in the ceiling, some falling, some merely thrashing." |
| National Anthropological Archives The Smithsonian's Natural History Museum is home to this rich collection of anthropological artifacts, documents, and exhibits. Camping with the Sioux presents the 1881 diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher in the Dakotas. An American Artist in Alaska introduces the watercolors of Henry Wood Elliott (1846-1930), who painted the Eskimo and Aleut ways of life and the whales and seals that sustained them. Other images include body ornaments from Brazil and a naturalist's 1933 field journal from Honduras. |
| Phoons from Around the World We are pleased to report the sighting of a brand new species of web silliness: the phoon. The word "phoon" was invented to describe an archetypally human pose which the site creator first discovered in his family photo album and then began to notice as a recurring posture in painting and sculpture, and everywhere that people work, play, and act foolish. Here's how to do it: "Stand on one foot, lift your other foot behind you, bend your arms like you are jogging, and put an elbow behind you and an elbow in front of you." Try it and you're guaranteed to crack a smile. |
| Pong-Story Wow. David Winter's exhaustive archive of FAQs, historical essays, equipment photographs, and biographies digs deep into the murky depths of computing history to chronicle the development of the world's first video game. Learn about the Magnavox Odyssey, the first video-game console, check out photos of early Atari prototypes, and (yes) download picture-perfect Pong simulators. Multiple choice quiz: the world's first video game was invented in 1958, 1965, 1971, or 1973? Find the answer on this page. |
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