6/28/01   Cosmic Mystery Tour    Following hyperlinks in last Friday's offering from Astronomy Picture of the Day, I stumbled upon the Cosmic Mystery Tour. It is, in essence, a hyperlinked, illustrated course in cosmology. Here you can find out what happened to Hoyle's Steady State theory of the origin of the universe; learn what moved faster than the speed of light; discover MACHOs and WIMPs. This site also explains the horizon problem and describes a type of inflation that got way out of hand. It includes many diagrams, images, sound files, and QuickTime movies.

6/12/01   Astronomy Picture of the Day   "Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer." The archives extend back to 1995.

6/03/01   The Empire That Was Russia   A few years before the Russian revolution, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii worked with a method of creating photographic slides that could be projected in color. The Library of Congress converted these slides into wonderful full-color images ranging from medieval monasteries, to railroads and factories , to the daily life of Russia's diverse population. You can also learn how these photographs were originally made, and how the L of C produced the images here.

5/24/01   Mt. Athos in Images      Set in an area of outstanding natural beauty, the eastern peninsula of Halkidiki in Greece, called the peninsula of Athos, Mt. Athos is a treasury of Orthodox Christian practice, spirituality, art, and history. This site shows you all of it in images of haunting serenity. The top page shows a map of Athos, and lists the Monasteries, nine of which are linked to pages of images. For the brave, this site can be viewed in Greek.

5/17/01   Jim's Hubble Telescope Photo Gallery   Jim's site has 40 images from the Hubble telescope, along with links to extensive descriptions and even more images on other sites. A real feast for the eyes.

5/10/01  Native American Home Pages    Back in 1996 I discovered that when I wanted to learn anything about Native Americans, the only name I needed to remember was "Lisa Mitten". Ms. Mitten maintains a list of annotated links which she hopes will "facilitate communication among Native peoples and between Indians and non-Indians by providing access to home pages of Native American Nations and organizations, and to other sites that provide solid information about American Indians." Ms. Mitten is the Yahoo and Altavista of all things Indian -

5/03/01  Andrew's Film Site   Andrew is a young movie lover of 14, who uses his site to share his enthusiasms and opinions. He tells us where and when his fascination with movies started, and lets us see him learning. He gives us lists of his favorites - even a list of all the movies that he's seen, and his ratings of them. There are lots of interesting reviews, a few essays, and a terrific Links page. (I found this site because it also has the title, "My Two Cents", which was the first title of this site.)