Journey of Mankind

A really cool shockwave program lets you travel the Journey of Mankind, showing a virtual global journey of modern man over the last 160,000 years. You follow the migration of the human race over time, complete with the changes in global climates and detailed description of various pinpoints along the way. Really impressive.

Food porn

Search no more through your dust-ridden bookshelf for that one cookbook your mom gave you when you left for college. Forget how to make salad dressing? Cook's Illustrated, Web site companion to the popular magazine, is the resource for all cooks, struggling or experienced. The database for those searches is something you'd pay for (though compare the cost of a few cookbooks to this; not a plug, just my honest opinion).

There are a few free resources available to random visitors, however, including a bulletin board, free articles and recipes, and extra content from the magazine. A variety of reviews will help identify the cheese grater that can take the pressure, become a spotter of the better butter, or taste a little of New Orleans in a really good key lime pie.

(Given its title, let's see this one get blocked by over-conscious content filters...it's not a new phrase, just appropriate.)

The Easter Egg Archive

The world is awash with secrets. Some are between people, some exchanged by computers, and still others are hidden right in front of you, little golden riddles begging to be solved. The Easter Egg Archive is endeavoring to uncover some of these hidden gems, giving you a glimpse into the creative minds of those who created the things you read, see, and hear. Most well known are such subtleties appearing in the use of computers: a Mac carries with it little pieces of art, while Windows can tell you about volcanoes around the world.

These little surprises can also be in books or even art. For instance, Michelangelo's own portrait is hidden somewhere in the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. What probably draws the most people to the Archive, however, is in all likelihood its vast assembly of secrets for more than 350 different video games.

The Bureau of Missing Socks

It's no longer the single sole-draining task of each and every man, woman, and child. The Bureau of Missing Socks follows aggressively on the heels of organizations like state bureaus trying to deal with the effective stocking of fisheries. Officials of the bureau proudly sport the stripes on their uniforms as they actively stretch money transferred from the US defense budget searching for the solution to this long-hosed riddle. They've collected a database to let you share the absence of your own sock, in hopes that someone will happen upon some darning evidence. Dig through the holes of your elastic memory to try to figure out where The Other One(tm) may have gone. Worried that you won't find it? Aww, s'ok; don't sweat it.

Internet 3-Card Monte

A couple of universities in America are doing research into the claim that some ISPs are inserting ads into web pages as they are given to your browser.

You can help by visiting the experiment which will tell us which Irish providers may be changing the content you're reading.

TechTip: Use an Email Privacy Mask

There's a neat trick you can play on the companies that manage your magazine and newsletter subscriptions. When you fill out the form for subscribing to Bathroom Stainers magazine, instead of your full name you could use a different first name---say, "BS Keane". Thus if that company happens to sell your address for others to pester you, you'll know who made that junk mail end up appearing.

A handy place called Sneakemail models a similar concept in the digital realm. You get to generate a disposable email address, which will quietly deliver to your real address. When you give that Sneakemail address to a Web form or some other online business, you avoid the risk of your real address being abused or bought and sold. Instead, this pseudo-address is the information that works as an extra guard, protecting you against unwanted solicitations.

Messages will still reach you, but in a way that you maintain; toss the address away once trash starts to appear, and start afresh with a new Sneakemail address.

Morphing classical art

About three minutes of mind-warping effects: watch the smooth morphing between the faces that are on 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art.

Bloggin' 'bout my generation

A great comic is available from xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language; doesn't fit on our pages, but you can visit it at http://xkcd.com/c274.html

Learn-It-Yourself DIY (it's no lie)

If you've just gotten a house, perhaps your first, that has some---shall we say, "issues'' attached to it. Months follow where you're learning how to fill holes and sand walls, wire plugs and seal toilets, replace windows and varnish floors.

The list seems boundless. Friends cite movies about endless house restoration projects with a little hint of sarcasm in their voice, but all you can hear is the hardware store's register calling out its joy at receiving more of your money.

It'll be your home when you're done, though, and you'll feel good about it soon. Really.

The DIY Network, derived from a popular television show, collected together various tasks from the program's episodes. The result is a relatively solid range of tips and explanations on how to take on each new problem that you've just noticed.

Take on each fix-up job separately, use guides like DYI Network to flesh out your understanding of the problem, and know that the end result will be a home of your own creation, crafted from your imagination and own hard work.

Really.

Mike the Valiant Headless Chicken

In all honesty, as you read through the story you have to wonder. Maybe the editors of Life Magazine were bribed. It's hard to offer other explanations as to why they published in 1945 a story, with photos, about what some might call an absolute miracle. Lloyd Olsen, endeavoring to impress his mother in law one September day, was quite careful in his method of beheading a rooster destined for dinner on their farm. (You see, mom-in-law had an appetite for chicken necks.) Somehow as Lloyd's axe fell, it left enough circuitry in Mike's brain stem for him to survive another eighteen months. More than fifty years later, people still flock to the town of Fruita Colorado to join in a symbolic salute to Mike and his brethren. Even if they don't go to his festival, Mike's fans can peruse his site for some (good!) chicken recipes, pictures of past festivals, and inch a little closer to becoming a vegetarian---in spirit, anyway.