Various URLs

Various websites mentioned on The WELL lately:

• The Wonderful Caddis Worm: Sculptural Work in Collaboration with Trichoptera -- If the world gives you gold and precious gems, make your home out of them.

• BubbleWarp (flash req'd)

• Eyemaze's GROW game --- part fascinating, part maddening

• Arngren.net --- ugliest website of the month

• Hey Hey 16k! -- We bought it to help with your homework! (reqs flash)

• Happiness is being ISO 8601 certified!

Tales from Middle Earth

Fascinating anecdotes going on in the movies conference, both in the I, ROBOT topic, and the LOTR: Return of the King topic, from a new WELL member who lives and works in New Zealand . . . and spent years working on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings.

The Canada Quiz

Meanwhile, in topic 2224 of the media conference, folks are sharing their scores from taking the quiz the government of Canada offers potential emigrants.

If Bush wins in November (or is it December, I didn't read the memo), expect Canada to be the new residence of some WELL folks.

Pitchforks and Torches

There's a huge scandal raging in the Media conference right now on The WELL, having to do with a certain WELL user who's a professional media figure and is known to some audiences across the country for his on-air program. Evidently someone took some of his posts from the media conference and sent them to his producer, who made a stink and got him in trouble, and now there's a huge stink on The WELL about who the perp was. Apparently a similar thing happened with another longtime WELL user who happens to be a well-known regional media personality (I completely missed that scandal, don't even know when it happened), and the prevailing theory seems to be the same person must've done both deeds.

Meanwhile, the flame.ind conference, always poised for fresh witchhunts and false accusations, having found out about W.N.O.T.W. the same day as the media scandal erupted, put two and two together and came up with eleven: they're insinuating that the perp is yours truly. Sorry, boys and girls, I'm not the perp and I have no idea who is. But you go ahead and keep insinuating that I am, since it appears to make you feel better.

Update: the flamers are besides themselves at this point, one calling me "moron" for the above paragraph, evidently thinking I wrote it as a response directed to a specific posting made a little after 8am this morning in the flame conference. Not that it matters to them, but they're wrong, my "perp" comment was actually directed at an insinuation made last night, not this morning, in the same flame.ind conference. But there's no reasoning with this mob right now, though. They keep pounding the site, clicking on every single link (here, try this one, and be SURE to check out this one!) on the site, like the Eye of Sauron searching desperately for the One Ring.

Vue Conference Updates

There must be umpteen topics in as many conferences going on this week about Michael Moore and his film Fahrenheit 9/11. Angie Coiro's started a public one in the pre.vue conference (topic 86) which you can read here.

For me the most interesting interview in the past year of the Inkwell.vue conference has been Gary Wolf interview regarding his book on the history of Wired magazine. More recent fare includes an interview with Francesca De Grandis, a self-described "feminist, mystic, and healer".

Boosting Signal

Don Mussell, aka (dmsml) on The WELL, travels around the world installing and maintaining radio antenna towers. KPFA-FM in Los Angeles had a transformer malfunction in its tower at the top of Mount Wilson, and (dmsml) was there, way up on the tower, to fix it, and take pictures. Here's a link to his main site, which has more pictures for tower buffs.

Jeopardy

WELL user (nitpicker) is appearing on the Jeopardy game show on TV starting on Tuesday, May 25th.

Band Name Origins

(texture) mentioned this in the Music conference, a website where you can read about the origins of many band names:

http://www.heathenworld.com/bandname/

Flo Control

Geeky pet owners and their pets.... user (wiggly) mentioned this great URL in the genx conference.

Au in the Merc

Wagner James Au, longtime WELL user, is written up today in the San Jose Mercury News, in a story about his involvement in the "Second Line" virtual world gaming environment. Read the story here.

Patrick Henry College: The Bush Connection

In various conferences around The WELL, user (barbaral) has been posting a URL to an article in The Independent, a UK news publication. The article's entitled "The Bible College That leads to the White House. Read the article. It's fascinating. This is a very unusual college. What's most unusual is how many students from this school are winding up as interns in White House and other federal government agencies, sometimes winding up in jobs in Iraq.

In the genx conference someone suggested a group form to head to PHC and offer an alternative curriculum of wine, women, and song... Oh, those Genxers are such a subversive bunch.

The website for the school itself is worth reading. Especially the Strategic Intelligence Program, part of the Department of Government.

Integer Sequences

Whoda thunk there'd be an Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, maintained by a research lab at AT&T? It's actually very interesting to browse. Heard about it from a posting by (rbr) in genx.1860.512.

Interpreting Friendster Photos

(mcow) mentioned in the vc conference (virtual communities), topic 482, resp 68, this hilarious page from a website called "Buttafly" entitled The Buttafly Guide to Interpreting Friendster Photos. Right on the money.

Aral Sea

There's a new topic getting off to a somewhat uneven start in the media conference called "Misinformation" (topic 2230), but a user named (hal) posted two great links there, on the incredible eco-disaster that is the Aral Sea.

When I was growing up, I was a serious geography buff, and loved studying maps. I always wanted to go to the Aral Sea kind of like Feynman always wanted to go to Tuva. The Aral Sea was, after all, the largest lake in the world, a huge body of water in the middle of Asia. Alas, it isn't so huge anymore.

First link is to a fascinating page developed by UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme.

The second link show is a photo of what it looks like from the ground. Photo reminds me of a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only this time, it's for real.

Robert Caro News

In the books conference, someone mentioned on April 7th that he'd heard that Pulitzer-winning author Robert Caro spent three months in the hospital recently, is out now, and has not been to Vietnam as part of the research-gathering for the next volume of Caro's famous LBJ biography covering the Presidency years.

Can't find a peep about Caro being ill in Google News. I hope he's ok! The world is a better place having Caro around.

Found Items

There's a fascinating topic in tbe books conference called "Items Found in Used Books" that was started back in 2001.

Recently someone posted a description of an amazing item found in a used 1907 edition of the Iliad: a World War II-era flyer that had evidently been released by American planes passing over Germany, it was written in German, and assured the reader of America's honorable intentions in winning the war, and supplying Britain with ships, airplanes, tanks, etc.

Earlier posts include how one person found $200 inside a library book, and how another person knew someone who'd left $20 in their master's thesis at a library, and upon going back years later, discovering the money hadn't been removed.

Quicken Naggers

In the genx conference, which is essentially a placeholder for talking about anything and everything, there's a topic (1801) called "HELLO forevermore", a long-standing WELL tradition of topics called "HELLO" where the postings can be about anything but usually start as "HELLO, my car didn't start today, and I found out it's going to cost $1100 to fix" or "HELLO, my boss just fired the whole department, then said he was kidding!".

Today someone posted something about his having to pay taxes using money from his 401K. The reponses that followed alternated between gasps of horror and comforting reassurances. Then (lendie), an accountant, replied urging the original poster to reconsider tapping money out of their 401K, that there were other, safer methods. I responded:

Finally, an instance where a talking Microsoft paperclip might be useful: you're in the middle of Quicken, and it notices you're withdrawing money from your 401K to pay other bills, and before you can do the withdraw a Quicken wizard pops up and says, "Whoa dude, you'e doing what? Here. There's a better way that avoids penalties..."

Call it Lendie[tm]!

Another WELL person (mtrbike) responded with a great idea of "Quicken Naggers" -- and provided a list of things a Quicken Nagger (think Intuit version of that awful MSFT paperclip) would nag you about, as if it were your own personal comptroller.

Intuit, are you listening?

The Kindred Spirit

The socal (Southern California) conference has been the scene of an amazing ongoing narrative by a user named (duca), and his adventures living aboard a boat named THE KINDRED SPIRIT in the San Diego Bay. It all started back on November 18th of last year, when (duca) posted a gonzo-style dialogue in a quiet "live aboard in San Diego" topic whose previous response was dated October 1996.

Ever since November, (duca)'s stories have ruled "socal". In the past few weeks, he's been moving from one marina to the next, using every trick in the book to find ways to live aboard his boat even in marinas where live-aboard is verboten. Today's posting suggests the marina's on to him. It's going to be interesting to see how this unfolds.

What's really remarkable about (duca)'s writing is how vivid and spicy the dialogue is with all the crusty characters he encounters on the water. Either he's making it up, or he has a) a gift of phonographic memory, remembering everything that was said that day. It's like a Fear and Loathing on San Diego Bay crossed with The Old Patagonian Express. I once posted a reply asking him, exactly how does he get such vivid dialogue? How does he remember it all? Tape recorder, or vivid memory? Never got a reply...

Kill Bill vol 1 DVD

They're talking about the new Kill Bill Volume 1 DVD in the movies conference, topic 2978. Andy Klein, aka (saiyuk), an L.A. movie reviewer, longtime WELL user, and host of movies, is shocked tonight to learn from (beau) that the full text of his review of the movie is included in the DVD package. (saiyuk) says that back in March, Miramax told him they weren't going to include his review in this release despite plans to do so, but had instead pushed it out to the Special Edition version of the DVD that'll come out later. Despite his having had a copy of the DVD for a week, he'd not bothered to open it, believing his review wasn't in there. Ha! A pleasant surprise to find out it is indeed.

[I'm assuming this is the text of the review in question.]