Web Sites

Green fink ... cave life... art house... snack time

Whistleblowers!

http://www.foe.co.uk:/camps/ indpoll/whistle.htm

Appropriately for such a green site, this latest Friends of the Earth page invites informants to "grass" on employers and others guilty of polluting the environment. As part of its Industry and Pollution Campaign, FOE provides the opportunity to fink freely by e-mail or fax, warning those concerned not to do so from their place of work in case the message is traced. The invitation aims to embarrass the Government's own Environment Agency, which is accused of failing in its task as official watchdog - its own employees are especially requested to blow the whistle on the bureaucrats. Full confidentiality assured.

Chetro Ketl Great Kiva

http://www.sscf.ucsb.edu/anth/ projects/great.kiva/

An impressive, technically accomplished virtual tour of an underground ceremonial chamber used by the Anasazi people of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in "prehistoric" times, which here seems to mean about 1150AD. The model, created by the University of California at Santa Barbara, allows visitors to wander round the chamber, zoom in for a closer look at the fireplace, pottery or paintings, or take a conducted fly-through courtesy of a Quicktime movie. More bells and whistles, or in this case warrior drums and tribal chanting, are available in various sound formats, and there's even a more pedestrian page-by-page version for the browser-challenged. All this squeaky- clean technology in the service of something quite atavistic. But the site acknowledges the paradox: "You must use your imagination to really feel the true ambiance of a kiva: dark and smoky, with the strong smells of earth and leather and human bodies ..."

A Pintura - Art Detective

http://www.eduweb.com/ pintura/

Curious adults, rather than schoolkids, might be more attracted to this dose of art history disguised as a parody Raymond Chandler detective thriller. Through these mean galleries the visitor must go, in pursuit of a purloined Millet. ("Who is this birdseed guy?"). The private dick with the art history degree guides us through various hypotheses for the stolen painting - Raphael, Titian, Van Gogh, or Picasso - before settling on the 19th-century' "Mister Realism". But by then, the femme fatale, Miss Featherduster, has absconded to Tahiti, at Gauguin's suggestion.

Cathedral of the Hydrogenated Snack Cake

http://www.jetcity.com/ rbsmith/

Snack food turns to soul food here, by simple juxtaposition. Little synthetic cakes, of the type sold in US convenience stores, snuggle up against kitschy religious iconography, as though linked by their lack of a sell-by date. A robed figure cradles a sort-of swiss roll, beneath a halo of bullets. Chocolate logs jut up at Gothic angles in a graveyard, while a doughnut emits a supernatural glow. Twinkies and Little Debbie shortcake rolls, themselves punk icons of dead-end consumerism, are analysed dispassionately, ingredient by ingredient. "Reflect, and let the polysorbate 60 course through you, culminating in a deep spiritual epiphany" l