Natural History Museum's Wildlife Garden [QuickTime]
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/garden/
Britain has at times been referred to as "a nation of gardeners," so the Web browsing public should not be taken unawares to read that the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Garden in London has developed a Web site that is both pleasing to the eye and rather informative as well. For those planning a visit to London, there is information about the hours and operation of the garden itself, along with details about the various scientific work conducted there on a regular basis. The Habitats section offers a brief overview (along with some nice photos) of each of the major regions represented in the Garden's grounds. Those covered here include the chalk downland, lowland heath, oak woodland, and that most British of environments, the hedgerow. Perhaps the most entertaining section of the site is the interactive area, where visitors can listen to bats flying over the garden, peruse a gallery of lovely images, and examine a pictorial record of the garden during the year 2000. [KMG]
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Vatican Museums
http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Home.html
With some of the most exquisite frescoes in Europe, the Vatican created this Web site that highlights some of their remarkable holdings, many of which are situated within the various rooms of the Apostolic Palace. As many travelers may be unable to wait in the seemingly endless lines that are a hallmark of visiting the Vatican, the site offers a nice overview of some of the works that have been commissioned by different popes over the past five hundred years. In the "Vatican Museums Online" section, visitors can browse through the various rooms, including the Sistine Chapel, the Ethnological Missionary Museum, and the Gregorian Egyptian Museum. Visitors may also take a virtual tour of each room, aided by a Java interface that includes a zoom and scroll feature. Additionally, a highlights section features 30 works of great importance within the Vatican, among them the works of Raphael, Botticelli, and Michelangelo. [KMG]
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Two on Poet Robert Lowell
Academy of American Poets: Robert Lowell
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=10
Salon.com: Robert Lowell, "The Voice of the Poet" [RealOne Player]
http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/lowell/index.html
Born into one of Boston's most prominent families (and growing up to detest it), Robert Lowell was perhaps the most important poet writing in English during the second half of the twentieth century. After leaving Harvard to study at Kenyon College, Lowell went on to study at Louisiana State University under the novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren. Lowell's second book, Lord Weary's Castle, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1946, and remained in the eye of the public until his death at age 60 in 1977. At this first site (provided by the Academy of American Poets), visitors can read about Lowell's life and read some of his finest poems, including For the Union Dead, Man and Wife, and The Drunken Fisherman. The second site (provided by Salon.com) affords visitors the opportunity to listen to Lowell read two of his own works, Skunk Hour and Dunbarton. Overall, these sites work well as a nice introduction to one of the 20th century's most gifted poets. [KMG]
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The Gutenberg Bible at the Ransom Center
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/
Widely understood to be one of the single most important inventions in human history, the development of movable type by Johann Gutenberg in the 15th century made it possible to produce a large number of copies of a single work in a relatively short period of time. Utilizing their own copy (one of 48 remaining around the world) of Gutenberg's Bible, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin has created this informative site about both this amazing book and the printing process used to create this work. Most visitors will want to start by viewing selected passages from this remarkable book available here, among them excerpts from Genesis and the 23rd Psalm. One particularly engaging feature is the "Anatomy of a Page" section where visitors can learn about the different parts of the pages in the Gutenberg Bible, including the abbreviations made by the scribes, the illuminations, and rubrics added by the scribes indicating the conclusion of a given book within the Bible. [KMG]
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Corporate Crime Reporter [pdf]
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/index.html
Published since 1986, the Corporate Crime Reporter is a legal newsletter that highlights recent news items about ongoing corporate crime prosecutions, along with featuring interviews with prominent attorneys who work in this rather intriguing field of law practice. The interview section is quite interesting as users can read long-form interviews with major players such as Dan Webb (who was a prosecutor in the Iran-Contra Affair) and Neil Getnick, who prosecuted the Bayer corporation after it was suspected they bilked Medicaid out of approximately $100 million. Visitors can also view various related documents, such as the indictment of Martha Stewart and a Justice Department memo regarding the federal prosecution of business organizations. The site is rounded out by several reports on the top 10 white-collar crime defense lawyers and the top 100 corporate criminals of the 1990s. Overall, the site will be of great interest to legal professionals, or those who are interested in learning more about the complex world of corporate crime in the United States. [KMG]
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Luciferous Logolepsy
http://www.kokogiak.com/logolepsy/
Developed by Alan M. Taylor, a Web site developer based out of Seattle, Washington, the Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. The name of the project is (not surprisingly) based on two obscure words: Luciferous, which means illuminating and logolepsy, which means an obsession with words. As Taylor himself notes, "For the purposes of this project, words are included that may stretch any basic definitions. Particular attention has been paid to archaic words, as they tend to be more evocative." Visitors may elect to browse through this collection alphabetically, or through the search engine provided online. Web crawlers with an unquenchable desire to know the meanings of such words as quantulum, quartan, raceme, or wanion, will not be disappointed by this fun site. [KMG]
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