Nothingness.org
Nothing is something. Nothingness.org, ironically, is rife with interesting material, yielding thought-provoking intensity on every page. It's brilliantly composed in concept, layout and content. Near and dear to my own heart, Nothingness.org will provide entertaining, informative and intelligent ideas for a diverse range of people. It is a renaissance of art, politics, design, history, and ubiquitous web paraphernalia (links, resources, etc.).

The site's creator presents a perspective of social anarchism, highlighting institutions that have continuously flowed through free thought's wake: Dadaism, Situationism, and other various sociopolitical movements. Each section accurately and cogently outlines itself. For example, the Situationist Archive page opens up with a search engine and a detailed, well-organized list of everything contained in the area: text, journals, biographies of key figures Guy Debord and Raol Vaneigem, and lists of related resources.

All the articles include by-lines and dates, so it's easy to find material by your favorite thinkers. Kudos to the site's creators for offering this information - a simple amenity that most sites rarely include. Nothingness.org also offers a French language option. This should help to search information on the Situationists, whose movement exploded in France. By far my favorite section is the poetry area, which, as far as I can tell, is written solely by the site's creator. It's outstanding. When I last counted, there were 36 of these creations, some flowing with rhythmic, seductive dance, and others shouting jarring political revelations. It's fitting the author is such a wonderful writer. Check out his reading list, which is hyperlinked to many of the full texts. (It's masked as "word" in the open-book icon on the front page.)

In an e-mail interview, the creator, who goes by the name Spud, wrote, "I have always advocated copyright-free texts, the dissemination of information, and the virtues of mostly unknown political and art movements. The D.I.Y. attitude of punk rock is the cornerstone of Nothingness.org, and the walls are made of all the paper I have time to build with." And build he does, as a freelance graphic designer for his own company, Dada Typographics; as a moderator of the Graphics mail list; as a 9-to-5 day job drone; and as a Web site maintainer.

Given all these distractions, Nothingness.org is an accomplishment in triplicate. This site displays a genuine "commitment to cause," and everything linked here, displayed here, and sporting the Nothingness.org domain is part of a unified perspective. -SK

A

Bjorn Christensson Philosophers Guide
It's time for a game: Poke-the-Philosopher-in-the-Nose! This page features graphics of 25 European philosophers which, when poked, deliver us to short biographies of the pokees, along with several links to their works (if extant on the net). All the usual suspects are here: Kant, Hegel, Plato, et all. But be prepared to wait, wait, wait: Display of all 25 portraits takes several minutes, even with a fast modem. -TG

C

Buber's Basque Page
Many of us were given a choice of languages to study in high school: French, Italian, and Spanish. From this list, one would think that all European languages are similar. A visit to Buber's Basque Page puts a quick end to this assumption. The most striking thing about this site is that much of the information is in the Basque language itself. (Basque is a consonant-filled language, unrelated to Indo-European languages.) Dozens of links detail Basque games (like jai alai), as well as food and politics. There's even a link to a Basque lesbian and gay organization. Spelling, however, is spotty - though I'm sure they're spelling my language far better than I'd spell theirs. Kaixo, Lagunak!-TG

B

Chorus Reviews & Resources for Real World Computing
Visiting the Chorus site is like walking into the party of a graduate school dean: There are dozens of conversations going on, all about wildly diverse, scholarly subjects. For that reason, it's hard to get a take on this site. Is it about computer-assisted language learning? No, but there's lots of stuff about that. Is it about Bible analysis? Software reviews? Well... no... The pages are pretty, but that teeny-tiny-italic-type-against-a-pebbled-background effect will make you go blind. -TG

B-

Cultronix While this could just as easily fit into the media category, as it features articles, graphics, audio and video clips (as any high ranking e-zine might ), its focus is almost exclusively within the lofty realm of humanities: philosophy, arts, and, of course, culture studies. With multi-syllable paper titles - "Wallowing in the Quagmire of Language" and "Delusional Circuitry" - Cultronix is sure to win the hearts of intellectuals worldwide. Load up this page in your local cybercafe, and you're sure to be a hit.-SK

A-

Deconstruction 23 Small. Insightful. Philosophical. Intellectual. Creative. Insightful. Small. Philosophical. Creative. Intellectual. Insightful. Small. Links and Strong Graphics. But Small and Insightful. Outstanding Layout and Organization. Deconstruction 23 is a movement of creativity and philosophical merit brought to the Web with essays, stories, links and a nice layout. Insightful. But Small. I want more. More. MORE!-SK

B+

Diotima Women & Gender in the Ancient World Complete with essays, bibliographies, and miles of links and images, this is an extraordinary collection of resources that should educate the Internet community about women in ancient times. There is as much local content as off-site pointers, so Diotima serves as both a source and database. Layout is well-executed, especially considering the amazing amount of content. From Semonides to Sappho, there's a lot of info here.-SK

A-

Eighteenth-Century Studies
The entire English server at Carnegie Mellon University is amazing, and the 18th Century history archive is just another wonderful piece of the whole. It's slightly sad, however, that subjects of such extremely high interest potential - Rousseau and Locke, The history of Lady Julia Manderville, and Rare Maps from Revolutionary America, to name a few - are bestowed with dull and unimpressive layouts. Does this treatment endorse the philosophy that such pristine literature and classical brilliance needs to remain far, far away from Internet technology, or does this site merely lack someone to do the HTML dirty work?-SK

B

Existential Home Page
I've searched high and low for an existential home page. I'm therefore discouraged that I must settle for gray backgrounds, and rather mediocre jaunts through my favorite philosophical movement and collection of personalities because there is little else available online. This site is a classic example of a big fish in a very small pond. It's a nice introduction to the movement, but will most likely be repetitious for anyone who has taken an introductory philosophy class.-SK

C

Exploring Ancient World Cultures
If anybody needs exposure to world cultures, it's the people of Indiana. Fortunately, the University of Evansville (located in Indiana) requires first-year students to take World Culture 101, and has made it exceptionally easy for them to follow course curriculum by putting it on the Web. An unintended bonus is that we too can follow along at home. Evansville students are required to use this page, but the rest of us will want to visit just because it's so compelling.-TG

A-

History of the United States of America Well, well, well. Another graduate student has discovered the World Wide Web, and has built a site of some of his studies. I sure hope, though, that this isn't all that Charles Winslow has learned about U.S. History. Of the dozens of links, only three seem to work at the time of this writing: those leading to the inaugural addresses of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe. Whoops! That's not James Monroe's address. It's Thomas Jefferson's again, incorrectly linked. It would be charitable to believe Mr. Winslow's "under construction" signs, but let's face it: The site is long dead, and it reeks like Monroe's corpse. Or is that Jefferson's?-TG

F

Humanities External Degree Catalog Index Earn a humanities Masters degree from California State University, Dominguez Hill, entirely online. At $120 per unit, students can make use of the Internet to study philosophy, art, literature, history and music. You'll communicate with professors via e-mail, and use the Web, if you please, to receive assignments and participate in online courses. From the surface, this looks like an interesting program. Register and get started from this Web site.-SK

B

I-Channel Ellis Island Ellis Island: the gateway to America's gold-paved streets of opportunity. Ack. Ack. Now all those discombobulated immigrants have some online evidence to show for their tedious waits in line, sometimes 10,000 hungry, sea-sick people thick. The Ellis Island pages in fact offer a very informative and interesting perspective of arrivals to the "New World." There are plenty of pictures, historical accounts and general facts to pique interest and awareness, and it's all organized fairly well.-SK

A-

Inda Introduction
Inventing and using imaginary languages has been a popular intellectual and artistic exercise for decades: Tolkien gave his creatures their own tongue, and "Star Trek" fans have Klinzhai. Now Gregory Higley, a 26-year-old amateur linguist, has thrown his complex creation, Inda, into the ring. The site gives a peek into Inda constructs with sample phrases ranging all the way from "hello" to "The matter is finished. I resolved to wait no longer for the king. I would take my revenge at my leisure." Pity there's no vocabulary list. Inda is an impressive feat, deserving its place among other ersatz tongues of the universe.-TG

B-

Kong Zi - Confucius "Confucius say" Years ago, this was the introduction to many a joke on TV's "Laugh-In." But how many people have any idea of what Confucius really *did* say? Well sit yersef down, cause Jimmy Tucker, a good ol' boy from Lincoln County, Kentucky, is here to enlighten y'all. Jimmy provides a nice, short, enlightening (and 100 percent plagiarized) description of Kong Fu Zi, along with links to five of his works.It's a pity there's so little here, because it looks like an attractive beginning.-TG

D+

Special Collections: The Siege and Commune of Paris A revolutionary's dream come true. View 1,200 images - landscapes, portraits, political caricatures and architecture - from the siege and commune of Paris, 1870 to 1871. The site is heavily armed with an accurate search engine, but is also "browsable" for those who aren't so certain of what they hope to find. It's a wonderful collection for any curious historian. The overall layout is dry, gray and boring, but the images of battles and burning buildings certainly make up for an otherwise dreary blandness.-SK

B

Stephen Loughlin's HomePage - Aquinas
Stephen Loughlin, a doctoral candidate in medieval philosophy at the University of Toronto, obviously has a love for his field of study. In particular, he has a thing for Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican theologian of the 13th century. Loughlin's home page for the saint - who says you have to be alive to have a home page? - features a short bio and all the scholarly stuff you'd expect from a doctoral candidate, such as a bibliography and a guide to his research. The tech level is low, but who needs tech when you've got love?-TG

C+

The Darmok Dictionary
I can understand a life dedicated to studying the subtleties of the "Star Trek" universe. But to a single episode? That's the premise behind The Darmok Dictionary, an exegesis of the allegorical language used in the brilliant "Next Generation" episode "Darmok." The site's author picks apart linguistics with the assiduousness of a doctoral candidate, using sound clips, references to other episodes, storytelling techniques, Asian languages, and comments posted in the Fidonet Trek forum. There's really not much to this site besides text, but it engaged me from beginning to end.-TG

B+

The International Philosophical Preprint Exchange
As far as I can tell, this started as an admirable archiving project for philosophy studies in progress. But it seems the project ran out of steam: You'll find journals and articles galore from 1993 and 1994, though very few from 1995 and later. Information is presented in eye-popping ugliness - graphics too big for your screen and text too small to read (if formatted at all). Worth a stop if you're a serious academic, but better references are available elsewhere.-TG

D

World History to 1500
If this Web site is a faithful representative of class curriculum, then David Grandy's "World History to 1500" college course is a full but uneven hodgepodge of facts and opinions. The site is almost entirely composed of links - and lots of 'em! - to external documents, sans commentary or guidance. For his students at Brigham Young University, that's fine, as they have Mr. Grandy in the flesh to shepherd them from source to source. For the rest of us, however, there's only wandering and wondering, wandering and wondering.-TG

B-

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