Friday, January 31, 1997 Volume 03, Issue 04
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"More Signal, Less Noise"
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STAR WARS AND THE NEW MYTHOLOGY
Star Wars is back. You may not be aware of the hand mythologist Joseph
Campbell had in sewing the "Star Wars" tapestry, but you probably have
some grasp of the archetypal themes woven through the trilogy. Here's
a site that looks at SF in general and its role in the establishment
of a new technical-age mythology. The site is poorly organized, but
content-rich. The highlight of the Star Wars page is an analysis of
what can be expected in the three upcoming Star Wars prequels. Click
on the contents link to access links to large text files: explorations
of the existing trilogy and files containing the scripts. Expect
plenty of theory and a sore clicking finger.
<http://www.dom.net/wrd/new/index.html>
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ONLINE CULTURE
Intelligence lies thickly here. Interviews with such technology
luminaries as Media Labs' Seymour Papert, digital media editor Mitch
Radcliffe, and CyberGrrl Aliza Sherman - all highly active in the
cerebral side of the Internet - prove fodder for browsing in topics as
diverse as artificial intelligence and women and minorities in
technology. Described as "a stage to allow the people who are living
the revolution to speak for themselves", this page has hundreds of
interviews with such relevant people pontificating upon posed
questions, All participants provide their e-mail addresses. It's like
a damned good dinner party. <http://www.totaltour.com/revolution/>
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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
The National Museum of Women in the Arts has launched a Web site that
will help popularize some of the world's greatest artists and bring
visitors to this little known gem. With a permanent collection
encompassing works from the 16th century to living masters and
providing access to a wealth of research resources through their
library, the NMWA holds its own among all of Washington's sights.
<http://www.nmwa.org/>
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NEWHUB UPDATES THE NEWS EVERY 15 MINUTES
Sort of a low-bandwidth PointCast, NewsHub is a free service that goes
out on the Net every 15 minutes to retrieve new news from technically
oriented sites. The page cleanly organizes the news for the user
either by time or by site. The site creator welcomes comments and
suggestions for improvement. Currently the site requires either
Netscape 3.0 or MSIE 3.0, but on th eother hand takes up a whole lot
less space and memory than PointCast. <http://www.newshub.com/>
CLIX HERE
Ever wish that you could switch channels while you're on the Net? If
so, maybe you should put down that remote and take a walk. Seriously,
though, Clix lets you virtually do just that. The variety is pretty
impressive. It's based in Amsterdam, so if that's a city you've always
wanted to visit, now you can tune in to what's hip and happening
there. It's all quite a novel interpretation. <http://clix.net/>
15 MINUTES DESERVES FAME
We're always pleased to find an e-zine which thinks to provide a
snippet of the first few paragraphs of each article. It lets you taste
before choosing a story. This one, titled 15 Minutes, is like browsing
in a bookshop with an atmosphere of great fun. Mud Flap Girl's Sex
Advice kicks some black humour with such suggestions as "No sense in
fooling with girls who don't want it" and "If you can't do it, she can
do it herself." Fast food reviews, Bleacher Bob's Sport discussions,
and Horror Scopes provide a witty approach to alternative columns.
It's yummy. <http://www.15minutes.com/>
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