__ Net Surf __
__ Ready to Rumble in Tornado Alley __
You've got to be pretty daring, or downright stupid, to put yourself in the path of something that can snap you in two like a brittle twig especially when it's headed right for you. Tired: Running with the bulls in Spain. Wired: Chasing twisters in Tornado Alley. (Stretching through Oklahoma and Texas, the region is home to the heaviest tornado activity in the US; it's also the setting for Warner Bros.'s big-budget Twister, which revolves around professional storm chasers.)
Twister hunting is an ultimate hack. Storm chasers collect meteorological statistics on the fly to better understand how tornadoes are formed. Racing in their "geekmobiles" small cars or trucks armed with data gathering equipment these folks risk their lives in the interest of science, seeking out these maelstroms of destruction. Most, however, are also thrill seekers who have turned twister chasing into an "extreme sport."
Before you duct-tape thermometers, barometers, and weather vanes to your two-door compact, bear in mind that running with the twisters is, well, dangerous. You could really get hurt or at the very least damage your car's finish as vicious winds hurl a bunch of crap at you. Storm Chasing with Safety, Courtesy, and Responsibility (www.nssl.uoknor.edu/personal/Doswell/Chasing2.html) is required reading for those even thinking of engaging in this sort of activity. Author Charles Doswell describes in detail what happens during a chase and what can go wrong offering pointers on how to avoid or, when necessary, deal with perilous situations. Doswell's tone is cautionary. He strongly counsels against "core busting" (aka "punching"), a cool-sounding term that describes driving into the heart of a storm. Based on his own experiences as a professional storm chaser, he advises aspiring tornado trackers to keep the wind at their back, their vehicle speed to nonreckless minimums and to make sure there's always plenty of gas in the tank.
If, after reading Doswell's words of warning, you are still convinced that "Yup, charging into curtains of baseball-sized hail and driving through possibly life-threatening, howling winds is for me," then at least become educated on exactly what it is you're hunting. Check out the Storm Spotter's Guide (www.nssl.uoknor.edu/~nws/spotterguide.html), which lists terms and definitions associated with "supercells" (the long-living thunderstorms that produce tornadoes). Reference photos illustrate this online guide, helping you identify various weather systems.
A chaser's online resources aren't complete without a bookmark at the Storm Chaser Home Page (taiga.geog.niu.edu/chaser.html). Sitemaster Gilbert Sebenste has made this Web locale the indisputable HQ for twister runners. It's all here: current forecasts, eyewitness reports from chasers, a gallery of photos, FAQs, tech talk even how to contact chasers who need partners.
Going up against a tornado an enormous beast of wind and earthen debris that roars like a thousand trains derailing is most definitely not the smartest way to spend your leisure time. So if you're gonna do something dumb, don't do it in a dumb way. As the storm chaser's motto puts it, "Chase if you can, bust if you must, but at all times, learn." Howard Wen (102766.1042@compuserve.com)
Based in Arlington, the Texas Severe Storms Association (www.galileo.net/~tessa/) dedicates itself to severe weather research in the Lone Star State. The site provides news and membership information for one of the country's most prominent, seriously minded storm-chasing entities.
Storm Chaser, the homepage of Warren Faidley, a professional photographer who cases tornadoes and captures them on film, offers dramatic weather shots at (www.indirect.com/www/storm5/).
Motherlink notice: Obviously, before you can chase a tornado, you've gotta find one. WeatherNet's WeatherSites (cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet/servers.html) highights the "hotspots" of storm activity and points to general weather information.
__ >Remolding the Inner Child __
In an increasingly cruel and nonsensical world, Dysfunctional Pottery by John Britt (www.erinet.com/claydude/britt1.html) seems curiously apropos. Britt's sadistic designs are the consumer goods of a postmodern hell ("While this work is functional, it may take years of therapy to get each to function well") a comment on the dismal incongruity of life as expressed in slabs of Standard Ceramics's Low Fire White Clay #105. Teapots that look like strange, mangled animals. Ceramics fired to look like rusted cans. Artifacts excavated from an ancient culture gone horribly awry or our own, taken to its twisted, logical extreme.
__ Following Trane's Tracks __
Jazz, once esoteric and underpatronized, has dressed up for the glitzy, sycophantic '90s and commuted into cyberspace through jazzcentralstation.com/. Thanks to copious, conscientious content and a smoothly designed page well woven with fashionable links and click buttons there's more than just shallow Real Audio interview clips or links to promotional merchandise. Here, you can hop on "tracks" to several cities and discover their musical histories and club listings, sell your sax, see who might want you to blow with them, link to relevant newsgroups, or experience performances by jazz greats both living and dead. A fun ride for fans of all genres, hip or square.
__ Lunar Language __
Imagine if Lewis and Clark, instead of writing journal reports just before bedtime, had made audiotapes of everything they said during their westward exploration of the United States. We'll never know the exact words shared between these intrepid explorers, but we can eavesdrop on the discussions of Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972. These guys were recorded virtually every moment of their various missions. And thanks to historian Eric Jones, who edited the transcripts, there's more to read at ees.lanl.gov/APOLLO/ than mere lunar play-by-plays. Jones interviewed 10 of the 12 astronauts as they listened to countless hours of intragalactic conversations, then wove their recollections into the available texts.
The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal contains everything from Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, and 17. (Mission 16 should be up later this year.) The transcripts already offer a few links to photographs, but eventually, says Jones, voice tracks, videoclips, maps, background documents, and equipment drawings will also be added. That's one small step for a nerd, one giant leap for nerdkind.
__ Troma Trauma __
Why should Joe Eszterhas get all the big bucks? (Especially after Showgirls.) Troma Studios, the so-bad-it's-good film company responsible for such classics as Surf Nazis Must Die and The Toxic Avenger (not to mention Kevin Costner's auspicious début, Sizzle Beach, U.S.A.), wants you to write its next picture or at least two pages of it. Like a giant campfire story that's passed around the circle to be completed, The Great 1996 Troma Script-Writing Contest (www.troma.com/contest.html) invites would-be Web writers to read the existing script fragments for Battle of the Bikini Subhumanoids: Class of Nuke 'Em High Part IV and submit the next two pages, via email. Troma will post the 40 winning entries as they're chosen, rewarding the authors with a screenwriting credit and 50 bucks. "We're constantly on the lookout for new talent," says Troma co-founder Michael Herz. "And now that we have 40 writers instead of just one," adds fellow founder Lloyd Kaufman, "we have a much larger chance of discovering a future Pulitzer Prize recipient." Time to polish up that acceptance speech.
__ Mystery, Science, and Industry __
Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry is enough of a landmark to have received the ultimate badge of hip: it's provided punch lines on cable's Mystery Science Theater 3000. This year, the museum decided to broaden its reach.
At www.msichicago.org/, virtual visitors can delve into the mysteries of the AIDS virus, watch a QuickTime movie of the museum's Boeing 727 being rolled across Lake Shore Drive, or even see chickens hatching. All very educational. But connoisseurs of true weirdness will point and click directly to Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle, a vast miniature construction that doesn't really have anything to do with science or industry but is one of the museum's most popular exhibits anyway. There's also plenty of helpful info for people planning an actual visit to this vast South Side institution, including a chance to win free passes.
__ POP-i Seed __
Digizines come a dime a dozen, but if you're searching for a rarity, pop on over to POP-i (www.popi.com/). This multimedia music magazine features reviews of the latest releases from a variety of bands, including Gren, Little Feat, and Teenage Fanclub. Every review is accompanied by downloadable sound bites representing each song on the album, as well as GIF or JPEG images of the cover art and band members. If an interview exists for that band, a hyperlinked option takes you to that section of POP-i, where .wav files and QuickTime videos highlight the interactive interviews. Other sections include the self-explanatory Riff of the Day and the aptly titled Most Irritating Sound of the Week. It may not soothe the savage beast, but it's worth a visit.
__ (Text)-Pour Me Another __
Webaholics (www.ohiou.edu/~rbarrett/webaholics/ver2/) features a myriad of sexy, texty true confessions from happily hooked Web surfers. Yes, it feels as nauseatingly lurid and obnoxious as, say, Jenny Jones. But it's not as embarrassing, probably because you don't have to watch flustered lower-middle-class faces egged on by a leering millionaire host. Visit Webaholics and you'll be witness to thousands of postings from sanguine or unhappy yet utterly Webstruck sods. A certain Steve grieves, "I've pawned all of my furniture Š all I have left is my PC." Poor ghouls, you'd think they'd link up to the AA site for some spiritual advice. Then, the realization hits you: you're no better than they, as you frenetically click the links to their homepages to see what peculiar dementia spawned their particular jones. The only upside? We will all go down together.
__ Pass da Mouse, Mon __
With the same hokey '70s-style graphics and homegrown, public-access channel ambience that marks its analog, the High Times Web site (www.hightimes.com/) has a passion for hooch shared by countless smokers, jokers, and midnight tokers. In the Smoke Lounge you can browse "Pot Shots," the High Times horticultural equivalent of a centerfold, featuring images of both primo pakalolo and groovy paraphernalia. Stop at the Temple of Wisdom, where you'll find info on everything from cannabis cuisine (see "Hot Redneck Red Pepper Ganja Linguine") to hemp history. You may want to check the going rate of grass in Trans-High Market Quotations, or peruse more than two decades of archives.
Leafing through the latest issue online, however, you'll notice one drawback: HT's editors opted not to make the entire magazine available on the Web only selected features and columns are posted. Meanwhile, the site's creator, Erik-Loren Council, says a chat area is on the way a kind of virtual hookah den, you might say. Spark it up.
Random ASCII Art o' the Month
Plastikman
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/pHreakuency/__coaxial__/Connor Dickie/ eMail��>connor@icis.on.ca
__ Thanks to the Wired 4.05 Surf Team __
Dan Amrich (danamrich@aol.com)
Joel Brown (joelb@twinpines.chi.il.us)
Michael Behar (michaelb@wiredmag.com)
Dave Cravotta (cravotta@kaiwan.com)
Harold Goldberg
J.C. Herz (mischief@phantom.com)
Jeff Kaliss (jkaliss@well.com)
Brent Sampson (brents@rmii.com)
