Net Surf
Surfer, Heal Thyself
You're typing away at the speed of a hundred monkeys, rat-a-tat-tat, spine curled into a perfect C over the keyboard, no sleep for days, fueled on Diet Coke and Tootsie Rolls, eyes resembling a nuclear sunset, rat-a-tat - when suddenly, you make a rogue finger twist toward the Delete button and - ouch! Yes, Evel Geek Knievel, that's your body caterwauling. Luckily, your remedial typing skills, modem, and one semifunctional upper limb are your prescription for some serious - and alternative - cyberhealing.
To those familiar with the Internet's alt.ego, it will come as no surprise that the Web has become a hotbed of information for the world's latest (and oldest) alternative health remedies, practitioners, and news. From acupuncture (www.acupuncture.com/) to yoga (www.yoga.com/), if it'll help cure what ails you, it most likely has a URL.
How many of us take the time to find a good chiropractor before we've thrown out our backs? Or ask a friend the name of her favorite herbalist just in case? More likely, we wait until a serious injury or stress-related illness strikes to even consider spending time and money on a potential cure. If you're hurting for a practitioner and not sure where to turn, try the Web Health Network (www.whn.com/). This site boasts a search engine that will help you locate a healer near you. Fill in the applicable state and city, ZIP code, or area code and you'll be bounced back a list of local practitioners - most with their own Web pages, detailing vitals such as insurance information, years in practice, languages spoken, office hours, certifications, and directions to facilities. Another turbo search engine (173,000 listings of alternative health care specialists) can be found at AltHealth Search (www.althealthsearch.com/).
If you know what type of health care you want but are having trouble finding well-maintained and useful sites, try The Alternative Medicine Homepage (www.pitt.edu/~cbw/altm.html) and Internet and Online Resources (www.halcyon.com/libastyr/netbib.html). Both sites offer extensive links that attempt to separate the best from the balderdash - most listings are accompanied by brief descriptions and commentary. And speaking of snake oil, the Office of Alternative Medicine (altmed.od.nih.gov/), initiated by Congress in 1992 to facilitate evaluation of alternative medical treatments, now has a site where the public can peruse the agency's latest findings on everything from AIDS treatments to natural cures for bipolar disorder.
Need some Saint-John's-wort, but afraid the counterperson at Walgreens might think that you're a crazed hobbit? At the Alternative Health Mall (www.whitehawk.com/healthmall/), you can order herbs, vitamins, minerals, baked goods, and air-purification systems from the privacy of your own knoll. For dead-tree material delivered straight to your sickbed, check out Health & Happiness Publishing (www.health-books.com/), a mail-order bookseller specializing in preventive- and alternative-medicine texts. And for all you women out there who dread the monthly trip to the drugstore to buy tampons, birth control pills, or a pregnancy test kit - when you invariably run into your boss or crush - get thee to The Women's Pharmacy (www.womenspace.com/twp/pharmacy.html), a full-service, licensed mail-order pharmacy with an extensive over-the-counter-product list.
Citizens of climate-controlled, ergonomically incorrect, 12-hour workdays, the jury is in: antibiotics probably won't cure your spasming spinal cord, incessant insomnia, or midmeeting allergy attacks. Now is the time to check out the deep breathing, ginseng, and realignment that await you.Tessa Rumsey (tessa43@aol.com)
Olympics of the Mind
Sparking a student' s enthusiasm is a big challenge, particularly when it comes to science, which in an ordinary classroom can lean heavily toward throbbing monotony rather than scintillating revelation. Interactive museums try to close that gap by developing hands-on teaching environments full of cool gizmos. The Web - with its "what happens when I push this button?" appeal - is the perfect vehicle for bringing this innovation into the home.
Case in point is the cyberspace component of the Sport! Science exhibition at San Francisco' s Exploratorium, which details the egghead principles behind baseball, hockey, bike racing, and other athletic endeavors. For example, The Science of Cycling explains muscle function and endurance training, the physics of wheel-building, aerodynamic drag (which can account for up to 70 percent or more of road-racing pedaling resistance), and the origins of the chain and cog (da Vinci, 400 years ahead of his time).
Plenty of bells and whistles pack this site: intuitive hypertext, contextual links, Q&A resources, QuickTime VR movies, JavaScript animation, and streaming vid clips of folks like the San Jose Sharks and mountain bike champ Ruthie Matthes. And while preteens may find the text too thick, older students, fans, and athletes alike will dig this interface between sweat, skill, and brain.
Tune In
The closest thing to TV on the Web is edaily. The site's interactive serial drama The Shadow and the City encourages readers to click on " hot" objects to move the story along. I followed a deadpan detective to a bar, drank coffee with him, lit matches, smoked cigarettes, made small talk with the bartender, found a bloody hammer, and eventually clicked the "freaking lightswitch" to discover a dead body in a Chinatown store - all in my first installment. It left me hankering for more.
The site's other attraction, EDTV, is an offensive, raunchy, and scarily hilarious showcase of Web sketch comedy. The satirical skits hit all the big media targets - especially O. J. and Chuckie Manson - via the America's Funniest Most Wanted stand-up comedy show. Other targets include Newt, Agent Scully, Hale-Bopp followers, the Kennedys, and Yoda. Watch Michael Jackson breast-feed his baby in A Gender Moment, or see how "this lame white boy (90210's David Silver) became a fly gangsta rappa in just 24-7" with Hooked on Ebonics.
My favorite gag? The cornily animated talking mouths of each celebrity's cutout image.
May the Farce Be with You
Filmmaker George Lucas scored the marketing coup of the decade with the rerelease of his sci-fi classics as the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition. He managed this feat with the help of diehard fans, who stood patiently in line to watch the films as if they were brand-new. But the real reason loyalists packed those theaters may turn out to be Jose's Star Wars Multimedia Bloopers, a collection of gaffes and trivia bits from the originals. With hundreds of images and sound clips, the sequentially arranged presentation is clean. Who could resist a chance to see these gems on the big screen?
Bowl-a-rama
Yuuji Hayashi is toilet obsessed. Hayashi's Tokyo Toilet Map Web site is - you guessed it - a locator (with pictures!) of commodes in various train stations and public rest rooms. The Tokyo resident rates toilets for cleanliness, smell, size, and paper availability. And it's his broken-English captions that make the pictures come to life: "I stopped breathing when I take picture," he writes about an experience he had with one feces-covered lavatory. The grittiest part of the site, however, is the Shockwave-enhanced "How to use Japanese style toilet bowel," a sort of how-to (complete with illustrations) for virgin toto users. We've heard that the Web is full of shit, but...
Art Seen
New York's SoHo has long been viewed as a mecca for what's hip in postmodern art, and artseensoho offers deeply rich images of just what art there means. Click anywhere on the site's detailed street map and you're led into a convincing virtual neighborhood. You come upon a dense concentration of clothing stores, eateries, theaters, and storefronts as fashionably constructed as gallery entrances.
Of course, the soul of this site, of SoHo itself, lies in the contents of the galleries, with exhibits ranging from 17th-century erotic Indian watercolors to Perry Hoberman's 1997 installation spoofing corporate architecture.
Links to international art museums, such as Spain's Museo del Prado, and magazines, including ArtDaily, reinforce the sense of SoHo as a gateway to an artistic consciousness embracing, in addition to traditional arts, the sensuous arts of urban life: intelligent dressing and dining, and open-ended sojourns through beckoning streets and marketplaces.
Divide and Conquer
The Adlers have made divorce a family business. Warren Adler's popular book The War of the Roses is the penultimate tome of how-low-can-you-go separation tactics (a sequel is in the works). Now son Jonathan is trying to repair the damage with www.maritalstatus.com/, which bills itself as the "complete consumer site covering divorce and remarriage" and offers tons of information on a variety of topics, including how to hire a good divorce lawyer, how to plan a successful remarriage, and how to manage divorce's impact on children. On the interactive side, consult with top lawyers, financial planners, and counselors or share your sob story at the requisite lonely hearts club. There's even a contest with a US$1,000 prize for the worst divorce story - as a cautionary tale only, of course! And the inconsolables can commiserate and correspond with the King of Pain himself - Warren Adler, who is prominently featured on the site. An enlightened divorce is just a mouseclick away!
