ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 13, 1997 TAG: 9702130023
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Computer Bits
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
A SHAKESPEARE SITE insults you for being "a paunchy ill-breeding knave," while an economics professor reminds you why bars are in bigger demand than Econ 101 classes.
If you're sitting home with the crud, as many of us have been this winter, the Internet can be a wonderful cure for boredom. You don't have to think. Just play around.
First, search for the word, boredom.
Among the places you'll find is a site for Boredoms, a "wild Japanese band that melds all kinds of music," and one designed by University of Virginia student Brian Lange. Lange can link you up with NBC.com where you can trip over everything from how to find Seinfeld an ideal mate to "Days of Our Lives" archives and the Dave Matthews Band homepage. The band page can eat up a lot of down time because it's filled with good pictures and promises good audio, which this browser was too sick to try.
Next stop is the Native Americans site where you can check out literary references and history and, again, find good art that's not overdone.
Now, if you've warmed up, visit the prime site to help ward off the blahs: shakespeare.com. You can stay here forever.
Wisdom like: "Here's a fish hangs in the net like a poor man's right in the law. 'Twill hardly come out" opens the visit to this spot. But, hark, there's a reference to Shenandoah Shakespeare Express page, which turns out to be about a traveling troupe of Shakespearean actors, including Virginia Tech grad Kate Norris.
Her name reminds us of "The Taming of the Shrew," where the character, Kate, is one to be reckoned with and which also has that interesting part of the young boy who plays the girl. Is that right?
Well, if it's not, we'll be yellow-bellied puttocks. Such language is the stuff of Shakespearean insults, which you can have custom created for friends at a second Old Bard site. Or, you can just ask to be insulted over and over again yourself.
It's great fun! One friend got an e-mail of this: "Thou art a paunchy ill-breeding knave!" Another received: "Thou art an idle-headed tottering jolthead." (And the insults include the person's name. I just won't give them away here.)
While you're in the interactive mode, mosey over to the ambigram site, suggested by Internet World Magazine's March issue and create art from your name.
An ambigram, for all of us who didn't know, is a word that reads the same upside down as rightside up. Ambigrams also are sometimes referred to as designatures and inversions. Now, we have our new words for the week.
* * *
But after getting all excited over Shakespeare and ambigrams, you likely will need calming down again, and the place to do it is the site of Dr. Roger A. McCain, economics professor at Drexel University.
"When saving is negative, it means that assets are decreasing. In economic jargon, negative saving is called dissaving," warns this page that though filled with wonderful information and research on economics will more than cap off a boring evening.
If you still have enough energy when you get there, take the true or false economics quiz.
* * *
Have a higher calling?
A hankering for a ministry without all the hassles of vows, oaths, or even studying the Bible?
There's a site on the World Wide Web that's just for you.
The Universal Life Church - often reputed to be a mail order ordination mill - has gone electronic. You can get ordained on-line in the blink of an eye, then run the certificate right out of your computer's printer.
Based in Modesto, Calif., the church has no prescribed beliefs, laws, God, or anything else. It's run by a "Brother Daniel," who writes in a recent e-mail, "Remember, the church has only two tenets: the promotion of freedom of religion and to do that which is right." Of the latter, Brother Daniel continues, "It is up to the individual, within the law, to determine what is right as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others."
"We are active advocates of the good life in the here and now," Daniel wrote later in the same e-mail message.
Amen.
Websites in Today's Column:
Brian Lange's Page
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~ bdl5c
Native Americans
http://www.Indians.org
Shakespeare
http://www.shakespeare.com
Shakespeare Insults
http://kite.ml.org/insults
Ambigrams
http://ambigram.matic.com
Economics
http://Drexel.com
Ordained
http://www.YBI.COM/ulc/about.html
You can contribute to this column or just comment by E-mail to grege@roanoke.com or rtimes1@roanoke.infi.net or by calling 981-3393 or 981-3237 in the Roanoke Valley, or (800) 346-1234, extension 393, outside the Roanoke area. Previous Computer Bits columns can be found online at http://www.roanoke.com
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