News, Information, and Vaguely Educational Things

NewsIsFree: Your Personal News Portal

http://www.newsisfree.com Search the news or build your own customized news feed from 18,000 online news sources.

Roadside America

http://www.roadsideamerica.com Going somewhere? This is "your online guide to offbeat tourist attractions." Always check this whenever you're planning a road trip to find out what to see on the way.

Coudal Partners

http://www.coudal.com/moom.php The Museum of Online Museums. This site provides links to a wide variety of online museums and shows.

Snopes

http://www.snopes.com If you get email that sounds like it's possibly an urban legend (particularly if it says "Pass this on!"), check it out first on Snopes and make sure you're not just cluttering up other people's in-boxes with mythology.

Primitive Ways

http://www.primitiveways.com Look here to find out more about bow scraping, fire drills, and other ancient and fascinating skills.

Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

http://www.uexpress.com/newsoftheweird For when life is looking just a little too sane.

Bathroom Readers' Institute

http://www.bathroomreader.com/home.html The BRI publishes several dozen large books of short articles and trivia specifically designed to be read in the bathroom.

The Institute of Official Cheer

http://www.lileks.com/institute/index.html Pop culture re-examined, including the classic Gallery of Regrettable Food. Also check out the parent site, http://www.lileks.com, for more strange excursions into parts of our collective pasts.

The Baby Name Wizard's Name Voyager

http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html How popular is your name now? How popular was it 10, 50, or 100 years ago? What are people naming their babies now? Fun stuff to see how times change.

Panoramic Photographs (American Memory from the Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/panoramic_photo Approximately 4,000 panoramic photos between twenty-eight inches and six feet long with an average width of ten inches. These photos were taken between 1851 and 1991 and feature American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. They're wonderful slices of life and history that will almost certainly put you in a reflective mood.

Flickr

http://www.flickr.com An online digital photo site for blogging and sharing digital photos under a Creative Commons license.