|
These
links are a few years old. They have not been updated.
The Nanoworld Home Page
This incredible site, by the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, opens up the
microworld to our perception. Click on the Image Gallery when you get there and then click
Go to Images List for close-ups of microbes, nonorganic surfaces, human hair. insects, and
so on. There is one thing about this site I'm not crazy about, though -- some of the
images are "colour-enhanced", in addition to being offered in their
original form. I assume that means they are colorized. Despite that, the photographs
are an example of what the web can bring to people, when paired with other
technologies.
These images, from The National Space Science Data Center, go up the
scale of size and show us some of the massive objects that inhabit the universe, including
galaxies and the planets in our solar system. Once again, the images are remarkable and
striking, although seeing the immensity of it all always makes me feel a little insecure.
When you get there, whatever else you do, be sure to click on Data & Services Most
Likely of Interest to General Public and then on Photo Gallery, to get to the links to
Nebulae, Galaxies and Globular Clusters, and Stars and Exotic Objects. The site also
contains links to Mars Pathfinder photographs and information. Some of the images may be
slow to load, but how often do you get to look at the universe.
UFOs! Alien abductions!
Spontaneous human combustion! Crop circles! The Psychic Network! Yes these and a host of
other similar subjects are total bunk. People have vivid imaginations and a will to
believe, and they've been combining the two since the beginning of time, turning sea cows
into mermaids, natural occurrences into miracles, and nightmares into demons. The problem
now is that we have a news media that sees the potential to rake in big audiences and
profits by manipulating information to hype this stuff. It exaggerates, leaves out
essential information, offers unreliable witnesses and shows faked photographs, to create
"news" stories that are pure contrivances. Among those fighting this cloud of
superstition is the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (or CSICOP for "short"), which has
now created a "Council for Media Integrity." CSICOP, and investigators connected
with it, expose all of this, from fake faith healers to alien implants. Much of what it
covers is real-life comedy. Watching it pick apart all these claims is almost as much fun
as believing in this stuff. Almost, but not quite.
If you are
interested in sophisticated psychoanalytic theory (or are willing to find out if you are),
this article by Dr. Charles Brenner can be found at The Abraham A. Brill Library of the New York
Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Brenner is the foremost proponent of classical
psychoanalytic theory that sees human motivation as permeated by conflicts and compromises
between desires and defenses against those desires. But even while Dr. Brenner defends
many elements of the classical psychoanalytic theory of motivation, he has also
significantly altered it, eliminating ideas that he believes are not borne out by
observation, and constructing an elegant and simplified theory. In this essay, he argues
that psychoanalysis can dispense with the idea that the mind consists of an ego, a
super-ego and an Id. To find the essay, click on "Electronic Resources at
Brill", then "Dr. Charles Brenner: Beyond the Ego and the Id, Revisited",
then "Beyond the Ego and the Id, Revisited." The essay requires some work
on the part of the reader, but it is clearly written. There are also a number of other
essays and comments at the site, on this subject and others.
Politics
The CATO Institute
is an organization of moderate libertarians (as opposed to
the more purist libertarians in the Libertarian Party). Its site is full of position
papers and essays on ways to solve problems by reducing the role of government in
America's economy and society. In line with libertarian philosophy, it is economically
conservative (shrink the federal budget; reduce regulation on business) and socially
liberal (eliminate federal anti-drug laws; oppose censorship). One of CATO's recent
efforts was a long and substantive article on its site, that tried to put the
Communications Decency Act in perspective by demonstrating that past government efforts to
regulate media have had a chilling effect on free speech. The article is titled
"Chilling the Internet? Lessons from FCC Regulation of Radio Broadcasting,"
(although it discusses far more than radio broadcasting). You can still find it by
clicking Publications and then typing Chilling the Internet? in the search box.
What are
those wild and wacky conservatives up to now? The Town
Hall is where they gather to tell their story, with links to many of the most
prominent conservative organizations in America.
Ralph Nader
may not be fun at parties but he is one of the most important voices for reform in
America, today. He offers a coherent philosophy, based on the idea that Americans have to
reclaim their rights as voters, citizens, consumers, taxpayers, workers and shareholders.
While some of his ideas turn too far left for people like me, who consider themselves
members of the radical center in American politics, he is the nation's foremost
theoretician for reform and a leader of considerable courage. This site will have a
good deal more on Nader later, and on how his ideas relate to the philosophy of the
radical center. For now, here is a site
that supported Nader for president in the last election. It is still relevant, with plenty
of information on his philosophy. For starters, you may want to check out the links titled
"The Concord Principles" , "great interviews" and "this
speech", which has a long speech by Nader. When you get into "great
interviews" one good place to begin is with his October 13, 1996, interview with The
San Francisco Chronicle. (This site is no longer available. But an effort
will be made to find out if the content is elsewhere)
The Internet
This journey through the
"ping
datascape" is -- well, the truth is, I don't have the vaguest idea what it
is. I know what ping is. (You know what ping is too, don't you?) But what is this:
"On an interactive map you position images, hypertexts, movies, sounds, and objects
located in the WWW, which then form the ping datascape. A virtual camera, called the eye
agent, is constantly moving through the datascape, thereby generating the Ping-movie, a
live and real time flight through the Internet." I took the "flight"
(Disney it wasn't) and saw my "course" as it made its way amid various odd
shapes. Now will someone please tell me what, if anything, I was doing (other than waiting
for this site to download. It was very slow.)
CNET's news site is the best source on the web for news
about computers and the Internet, with stories of general interest, as well as stories
that are primarily of interest to professionals and aficionados. It offers its own
articles and those drawn from other sources, which will also give you a chance to see who
else is writing about these subjects. From what I've observed, CNET scores high marks for
comprehensiveness, clarity of vision and integrity. It must have been the first on its
block to get a domain name since the Internet address for its news site is the perfectly
generic, www.news.com.
Computer Currents - A lot of practical information on
computers and the Internet. Plus a computer training directory, ISP directory, and
extensive web site reviews, divided by category. A free hard copy of Computer Currents,
with local advertisements from computer stores, can also be found in many parts of the
United States.
The
Consumer Project on Technology , created by Ralph Nader, has information on various other needed reforms in
telecommunications, the Internet, and so on. The site is basically a compendium of
documents, but there is material here that some people will find of interest.
News
The Washington Post on
the web also scores high on comprehensiveness, clarity of vision and integrity, as a
general news source. Plus lots of "back of the book" stuff on computers, other
countries, and a host of other subjects. They've also added some improvements that make
the site easier to navigate. Here are some routes you might follow after you get to the
front page for the site:
** Click More Top News on the main page for a round-up of some of the day's main stories,
in addition to those headlined on the front page.
**Click Today's newspaper on the left sidebar, for a more complete list of stories.
** Click Editorials & Opinion, at the bottom of the main page, for The Post's opinion
columnists, including David Broder, who is a good no-nonsense political analyst, and
Richard Cohen, who is one of the best columnists in America, with insight, a moral
vision, and a willingness to criticize both parties.
** Click Style, also at the bottom of the main page, then click Style columns on the left
sidebar of the Style page, then click Media Notes under Monday for criticism of the news
media by Howard Kurtz.
** Click Technology Post at the bottom of the main page for stuff on computers and the
Internet.
You can also search through two weeks of articles from The Post or Associated
Press, on a page that offers other searches, as well.
The online news source, MSNBC,
which is a joint effort of Microsoft and NBC, is a good read with an excellent choice of
subjects and comprehensive links on the subjects it covers.
Reuters is basic,
no-frills, news wire fare, giving you the latest updates on events, selected and sorted
into categories. In addition to a main page with news summaries and links to the longer
stories, it also has the following pages: "News, World, Biz, Tech, Politic, Sport,
Scoreboard, Entertain, Health." Plus, you can access New York Times columns
from the index page. If you want summaries of the articles for each section, go to the
index page and access each section from there, via the "summaries" links.
Academic and
Intellectual
The Voice of
the Shuttle is a massive set of links for academics and ferocious intellectuals. Here is the main index, which will take you to sets of links
on cultural studies, philosophy, literary theory and so on. The
site is the handiwork of Alan Liu, a professor in the English Dept. at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. A red meat buffet for the intellectual carnivore.
This excellent site on Personality and Consciousness
includes summaries of the work of ten theorists and theories in psychology, including
Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Freud and Jung, and a section on Buddhist psychology. It can
be found on the site, Gigantopithecus,
which has a sleek new look. The site now also includes an active message board.
One of the things I
regret is not having continued to read Joseph Campbell after I got out of college. He
always seemed to me both brilliant and flaky. Now (having still not had a chance to read
much by him, recently) I think he may have been brilliant. His idea, that much of
contemporary fiction is a form of creative mythology, is essential for understanding
contemporary movies and television, especially science fiction and fantasy. (Northrop Frye
said something similar -- science fiction is displaced mythology.) This link to The Joseph Campbell Foundation includes a small sampling
of his work, a bibliography and links to other myth-oriented sites. If you can't find
what you 're looking for, just keep clicking . Sooner or later everything makes an
appearance.
For the sensitive soul, Inter-Links includes a set
of links to poetry on the Web, including traditional fare at Project Bartleby, and a long list
of links to poets at Yahoo. Unfortunately, many poetry sites only let you download their
poems one at a time, which makes downloading large numbers of poems all at once very time
consuming. Unless you have software that lets you grab the entire site, you are probably
better off either reading the poetry online (and saving what you want as you read) or
buying it in book form.
Not
"reviewed"
Institute for Psychological Study of the
Arts (IPSA) - Psychoanalysis and the arts.
The National Association of Scholars - Defending traditional liberal arts
education and the Western canon.
Postmodern Theory: Critical
Interrogations by Douglas
Kellner, and Illuminations: The Critical
Theory Website.
CTheory - simulation, technology, postmodernism.
Disinformation
- Angry truth-telling from the left.
We The People and Jerry Brown
Christianity
Versus Postmodernism at the Xenos
Christian Fellowship. Theoretical essays include A Brief History of Literary Theory
and Postmodernism: The 'Spirit of the Age'. A more direct statement is found in
Understanding Today's Postmodern University.
The Western Cannon: "Contained within are links
to some of the greatest minds of Western civilization." Plus, the Annotated Index
to Web Sites on Modernism.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
________________________________________________
|
|
