©01 The Media Desk
The List
[NOTE: All links will open in a new browser window. These sites worked as of the date of review. This is not to be taken as an endorsement of these sites by the Desk. No compensation for either reviewing or listing the sites mentioned. For other sites, visit the Desk's links page.]Deep thinking? OK. A large, although slightly dated, philosophical and intellectual site is www.rigeib.com/thoughts/thoughts.html Thoughts Worth Thinking.
Tired of thinking thoughts already? How about Sports?
Type in the abbreviation of the sport of your choice and .com and you will go to the home page of almost every major professional sport going.
NFL.com, NHL.com, NASCAR.com, and so on. If that doesn't work for say, pro beach volleyball, there are clearinghouses for sports such as ESPN.com and the sports pages of CNN.com which are brought to you by Sports Illustrated, people that seem to know a bit about sports. There you can find almost anything you want. [links on next page]Want to read the news? Besides the usual usatoday.com and the aforementioned cnn.com you can also visit news sites that defy description such as drudgereport.com and ananova.com of course the major portals also have news links and even an actual newsroom type of arrangement. But there is also Pravda.com the Russian news source, and the tokyoglobe.com and the BBC.com for the overseas take on things.[see next page for links]
Something Spicy? Well, it doesn't get much spicer than peppers.com. No it doesn't. The Desk is partial to 'You can't handle this hot sauce'. Find it at number 4 in the top 20 list.
Oh, you meant something racy spicy. Try www.rcrracing.com/ for a NASCAR team or nhra.com for the National Hot Rod Association. [link on next page]
Oh, you meant something sexy racy spicy... well. OK, we've got that too. See www.aafo.comSlight joke...
For the more Adult side of the web, pick a search engine, not a directory, a Search Engine, such as Altavista or Google or even Webcrawler and put in the topic of your choice. Altavista.com used to be the premier search engine on the web, and also one of the first in wide use. Then it went commercial, and, for a time, was almost useless. They've started to get their act back together now, but... well, we'll wait and see. Google.com is the best thing going right now. Like the others it pulls information from several sources, including having a robot search the web and track and categorize new pages and changes to older pages. Google claims to do this as often as every other week searching over a billion and a half pages. Webcrawler was the first major search engine to 'crawl' the web, and is still one of the better search engines, now its part of Excite, but the Desk doesn't hold that against it.
Why use more than one? Simple, prove it to yourself. Look for something on Altavista, then cut and paste your search query into one of the other ones, and see what comes back. Compare the results for yourself. Getting millions of responses may not be the best answer to your search. You can manipulate Altavista's search a little more easily than the others using plus and minus signs to force it to include or exclude a term. It takes some experimentation but you can get the results on most searches down to a few thousand relevant pages. While on Google, it will automatically return pages that include your terms categorizing them its own way by relevance.
Oh, by the way, Altavista has an 'Adult Content' filter on it. Check the settings under 'Family Filter' above the Search button. [links on next page]
Now... How about some fun?
Jellybelly.com
Yes the jellybean people. Take a virtual factory tour, see some artwork, and (when it works (which isn't often)) get free samples snail-mailed to you.www.sixflags.com [link on next page]
Amusement parks online. WARNING: make sure your speakers are turned down before you go to this one. They have seen fit to have some rather loud sound effects pumped through their home page in a veritable audio assault without warning. Pick your park and see what rides they have and what's new.www.kidsdomain.com/games/[link on next page]
There's enough games here to keep anybody, not just kids, busy for quite a while.javaboutique.internet.com [link on next page]
This one has games, clocks, emailers, utilities, and some things that defy easy description. If you're into the more arcane side of the Web... enjoy.www.si.edu
Whoa... this one isn't exactly a 'fun' site. But it is interesting.
It's the Smithsonian Institution.
While it is really NOT an on-line version of the museums, there are exhibits and information available, you can find articles and pictures, and there are some interactive things to do. Also available is everything going on with anything Smithsonian-wise.So there you go Miss Mary.
Oh, and for the brownies... try this one... International Brownies
For just a list of these links see Best Links
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