Writings by

---

Home Professional P.R. Writing Speaking Geeking Terms Other areas About Tom Contact info Tom's other sites bandwidthpr.com spamcon.org openppc.org popcomputers.com Mailing lists: Tgeller-personal Tgeller-business Suespammers

Up one level | To Tom Geller's writings | Home Website reviews for The Net: Humanities Please note that the writing samples below were written around February 1996, and many of the sites reviewed have disappeared, moved, or changed. -- Tom Geller The American Civil War American Studies Web The Ancient World Bjorn Christensson Philosophers Guide Buber's Basque Page Chorus Reviews & Resources for Real World Computing Classics and Mediterranean Archaeology CTHEORY Diogenes' Links To The Ancient World Duke Papyrus Archive Egyptology Resources Electronic Journal of Sociology Exploring Ancient World Cultures History of the United States of America Inda Introduction The International Philosophical Preprint Exchange Irish History Kong Zi -- Confucius Media History Project Modernism Timeline, 1890-1940 Perseus Project Soviet Archives Exhibit SPEED Stephen Loughlin's HomePage -- Aquinas Viking Navy Web Review Wittgenstein and his children World History to 1500 World of History and Literature World War I World War II Archive American Civil War Like Jacqueline Dana's Irish History pages (see separate listing), George H. Hoemann and Mary E. Meyers' Civil War pages are basically just a collection of well-organized links. Unlike the Irish page, however, these links go mostly to outside servers, meaning that the material is less cohesive, and you'll occasionally not be able to get at the information you want. When you can get it, though, most of these links are well-researched: Civil War buffs are notoriously fetishistic. And Hoemann and Meyers are qualified guides to this world of six score and 16 years ago. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top American Studies Web Every Web page has it: the obligatory list of links to other (questionably) relevant sites. The American Studies Web, however, is all links, to sites on matters as diverse as the U.S. Constitution, the San Francisco Diggers, and the great Irish famine of the mid-19th century. It's a huge list, but rather disheveled: neither alphabetization nor subject organization seem to have sullied its pure anarchistic gestalt. Use the "Find" command on your browser if you're looking for specific information, and be sure to go up one level (to http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~davidp/amstud.html) for the whole experience. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top The Ancient World Web There's no reason academic studies have to be dry and daunting. If you have a good guide, the world opens up to you. In this case, the world in question is the ancient one, and your guide is Julia Hayden, a masters' student at the University of Virginia. She knows her stuff: Every entry is sorted, classified, and annotated, and weekly (ha!) updates keep the place fresh. The home page includes archaeology news of interest, though some "news" is outdated. No matter: The quantity of links and the commentary makes this a must-see stop for Ancient World tourists. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Bjorn Christensson Philosophers Guide It's time for a game: Poke-the-Philosopher-in-the-Nose! This page features graphics of 25 European philosophers which, when poked, deliver us to short biographies of the pokees, along with several links to their works (if extant on the net). All the usual suspects are here: Kant, Hegel, Plato, et all. But be prepared to wait, wait, wait: Display of all 25 portraits takes several minutes, even with a fast modem. Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Buber's Basque Page Many of us were given a choice of languages to study in high school: French, Italian, and Spanish. From this list, one would think that all European languages are similar. A visit to Buber's Basque Page puts a quick end to this assumption. The most striking thing about this site is that much of the information is in the Basque language itself. (Basque is a consonant-filled language, unrelated to Indo-European languages.) Dozens of links detail Basque games (like jai alai), as well as food and politics. There's even a link to a Basque lesbian and gay organization. Spelling, however, is spotty -- though I'm sure they're spelling my language far better than I'd spell theirs. Kaixo, Lagunak! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Chorus Reviews & Resources for Real World Computing Visiting the Chorus site is like walking into the party of a graduate school dean: There are dozens of conversations going on, all about wildly diverse, scholarly subjects. For that reason, it's hard to get a take on this site. Is it about computer-assisted language learning? No, but there's lots of stuff about that. Is it about Bible analysis? Software reviews? Well.. no.. The pages are pretty, but that teeny-tiny-italic-type-against-a-pebbled-background effect will make you go blind. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Classics and Mediterranean Archaeology It's appropriate that a site dedicated to the past is so stuck in it. Don't get me wrong: Someone did a terrific job of gathering far-flung Web links and centralizing them in a format handy to scholars. But in the end, it's just an extension of a Gopher site: text-based, with few helpful internal links or explanatory texts, and user-friendly it ain't. Don't expect any commentary on which sites are worthwhile (or even appropriate to your needs). Still, content is more important than technical flash in academia, and this site is a wonderful portal to other resources. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top CTHEORY Remember those dense "journals" the English majors published in college? CTHEORY is one such journal, translated into HTML and released onto the Web. It's about average. Article quality ranges from the insightful and well-researched to the embarrassingly self-serving. It's part of the English Server at Carnegie Mellon University (http://english-server.hss.cmu.edu/), which offers vastly more (and more interesting) material. Still haven't had enough of the genre? Well then, zip on over to ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/, and you'll find literally hundreds more. You have been warned. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Diogenes' Links To The Ancient World Diogenes, a cynical philosopher from Plato's time, used wit and humor to drive home his points. While this site has flashes of wit (e.g., calling Homer a "media correspondent for the gods"), the underlying values seem absent. The site is broken into five areas -- Mesopotamia, the "Holy Land," ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Each area has a dozen links to others' sites, usually with a brief and caustic remark. The place looks nice, with a cool background and some good graphics, but they ultimately don't serve the site well. Maybe next time, Dio! Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Duke Papyrus Archive We're used to classical names for archival Web pages. But while Project Gutenberg isn't centered around that German bookmaker, Duke's Papyrus Archive is all about -- drum roll, please -- Egyptian papyrus! More than 1,300 papyri (yes, that's the plural) are cataloged here, with descriptions, translations, and images of the documents in two resolutions. These pictures were the most exciting part of the site for me: seeing the actual scraps of linen from which scholars have reconstructed an entire world. Fully searchable, although there's not as much cross-linking as there could be. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Egyptology Resources The Indiana Jones movies shattered the myth that archaeologists are stodgy and mildly eccentric old men; this site reminds us that their real community is living, thriving, and online. Community is a big selling point of this site: besides offering the usual links to other sites, there are some bulletin boards, relevant news, and valuable resources, such as a German/Ancient Egyptian wordbook. The techno value is low: the main graphic is at too high a resolution and there are few features more complex than a standard link. But the tone is congenial and smart, and the community is warm. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Electronic Journal of Sociology Scholarly journals usually need to be spiced up, and the Web is a perfect way to do it. So why is the Web-only Electronic Journal of Sociology as dull as a two-pound brick of paper? It has all that you'd expect to find in a paper journal: abstracts (in tiny, unreadable type), articles, and references. But no pictures, no search engines, no indices. Well, there are some smart messaging features, which allow visitors to make comments, but at the moment, there's not much traffic there. The articles are good, but the presentation needs work. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Exploring Ancient World Cultures If anybody needs exposure to world cultures, it's the people of Indiana. Fortunately, the University of Evansville (in that fair state) requires first-year students to take World Culture 101, and has made it exceptionally easy for them to follow course curriculum by putting it on the Web. An unintended bonus is that we too can follow along at home. Evansville students are required to use this page, but the rest of us will want to visit just because it's so compelling. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top History of the United States of America Well, well, well. Another graduate student has discovered the World Wide Web, and has built a site of some of his studies. I sure hope, though, that this isn't all that Charles Winslow has learned about U.S. History. Of the dozens of links, only three seem to work at the time of this writing: those leading to the inaugural addresses of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe. Whoops! That's not James Monroe's address. It's Thomas Jefferson's again, incorrectly linked. It would be charitable to believe Mr. Winslow's "under construction" signs, but let's face it: The site is long dead, and it reeks like Monroe's corpse. Or is that Jefferson's? Content: Poor Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Inda Introduction Inventing and using imaginary languages has been a popular intellectual and artistic exercise for decades: Tolkien gave his creatures their own tongue, and "Star Trek" fans have Klinzhai. Now Gregory Higley, a 26-year-old amateur linguist, has thrown his complex creation, Inda, into the ring. The site gives a peek into Inda constructs with sample phrases ranging all the way from "Hello" to "The matter is finished. I resolved to wait no longer for the king. I would take my revenge at my leisure." Pity there's no vocabulary list. Inda is an impressive feat, deserving its place among other ersatz tongues of the universe. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top The International Philosophical Preprint Exchange As far as I can tell, this started as an admirable archiving project for philosophy studies in progress. But it seems the project ran out of steam: You'll find journals and articles galore from 1993 and 1994, though very few from 1995 and later. Information is presented in eye-popping ugliness -- graphics too big for your screen and text too small to read (if formatted at all). Worth a stop if you're a serious academic, but better references are available elsewhere. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Irish History Sometimes you come across a Web site that impresses with the depth of one person's passion and dedication. Such is the case for the Irish History on the Web site, managed by Jacqueline Dana. At first blush, it seems like the usual collection of links: but what makes this site unusual is that (a) the links are well-organized and relevant, and (b) a lot of the linked material is by Ms. Dana herself. There's an unquestionable bias toward Irish nationalism, but whether you're for or a'gin' it, the history alone makes this site worth a visit. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Kong Zi -- Confucius "Confucius say," Years ago, this was the introduction to many a joke on TV's "Laugh-In." But how many people have any idea of what Confucius really did say? Well set yersef down, 'cause Jimmy Tucker, a good ol' boy from Lincoln County, Kentucky, is here to enlighten y'all. Jimmy provides a nice, short, interesting (and 100 percent plagiarized) description of Kong Fu Zi, along with links to five of his works.It's a pity there's so little here, because it looks like an attractive beginning. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Media History Project Marshall McLuhan alerted Americans to the intricacies of the media, and watching the watchmen has since become a popular sport. The Media History Project is a great place to learn the basic histories of the telephone, TV, music, comics, and other methods humans have developed to get the word out. Colorful icons and sharp writing egg you on to further discovery, but some links are sadly broken, and the multicolored text is hard to read on some monitors. Teachers will wet themselves over the included syllabi, anal retentives will dig the site's organization, and all will be edified. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Modernism Timeline, 1890-1940 Electronically mediated educational interaction is commonplace nowadays, one example being this sparse site by an English professor, John Mark Eckman. His "Modernism Timeline," though, doesn't live up to the promise of today's medium. It's just a set of links -- one link for each year -- that lead you to pages listing nine or 10 events from the year. No commentary, no background, no graphics, no nuthin': just "1919: R. P. Feynman born, Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio." C'mon, perfesser: you can do better. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Perseus Project Many of us know about the Gutenberg Project, which mostly focuses on putting seminal Western texts of the last 200 years into electronic form. The Perseus Project is similar, but with a more esoteric bent: it's interested in the texts and images of archaic and classical Greece. Managed by a Tufts University professor, the site has heavy-duty corporate support and it shows: Its depth of study is amazing, and it's tied together with various search engines. The entire site is also being released as a four-CD set (!) by Yale University Press next year. That's a lot of stuff! Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top Soviet Archives Exhibit This archive of Soviet documents is arranged around a museum analogy: Go directly to either of the two "floors" or follow the golden footsteps for a guided tour of Soviet history over the last 80 years. Unlike a museum, however, there aren't many pictures to look at, although the knowledgeable guide's talk is full of imagery. Be warned: it's a lot of reading. Missing are the songs, photos, and personal reminiscences that would humanize such a tour. Also, the text is so biased toward cold-war ideas as to threaten its credibility as a history text. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top SPEED SPEED is an online 'zine which, in its own words, "provides a forum for the critical investigation of technology, media, and society." That's a tall order, but SPEED seems to be up to it. The young publication combines the critical writing of an academic journal with the hit-and-run graphic style of Wired, giving both immediate appeal to the eye and delayed gratification for the brain. As of February, they only had two issues up, so stay tuned. But how long can they keep this up? Better visit now before everyone there gets burned out. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Stephen Loughlin's HomePage -- Aquinas Stephen Loughlin, a doctoral candidate in medieval philosophy at the University of Toronto, obviously has a love for his field of study. In particular, he has a thing for Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican theologian of the 13th century. Loughlin's home page for the saint -- who says you have to be alive to have a home page? -- features a short bio and all the scholarly stuff you'd expect from a doctoral candidate, such as a bibliography and a guide to his research. The tech level is low, but who needs tech when you have love? Content: Good Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Viking Navy It's a pity when passion gets subverted by incompetence. That's the situation with the Viking Navy Web page, a sorry advertising vehicle for a fascinating project. In brief, Californian Peter Sjolander is engaged in building Viking-style boats to "perform as well today as they did 1,000 years ago." The site includes some photos, drawings, and descriptions of his experiments, but his appalling writing and HTML coding make the juicy fruit of his experiences inaccessible. Serious nautical history buffs and scholars may find this site interesting, but the casual Web browser would do best to skip it. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Poor Author: Tom Geller Back to top Wittgenstein and His Children A photo as you enter this site encapsulates its tenor well: it's an image of 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein with an angel's halo above his head. Deification of the individual aside, this site offers very little in the way of hard information: mostly, it's a space for people to discuss The Man And His Works using the NetForum messaging system. In that regard, the site is moderately successful, although there's not much chat going on (c'mon, folks! it's a sexy topic!) and some of the links are broken. Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top World History to 1500 If this Web site is a faithful representative of class curriculum, then David Grandy's "World History to 1500" college course is a full but uneven hodgepodge of facts and opinions. The site is almost entirely composed of links -- and lots of 'em! -- to external documents, sans commentary or guidance. For his students at Brigham Young University, that's fine, as they have Mr. Grandy in the flesh to shepherd them from source to source. For the rest of us, however, there's only wandering and wondering, wandering and wondering. Content: Good Aesthetic: Poor TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top World of History and Literature Håkon Winther, a 24-year-old Norwegian student of English and Germanics, has arranged his favorite links in an organized, rigorous fashion, showing not only breadth of interests, but impressive depth. It helps if you share his interests; here goes with a brief listing: in history, he has links on the A-bomb, World War II, Vikings (how Norse!), and Germany. For literature, his turn-ons are Shakespeare, von Goethe, and Dickens. Be sure to visit his main page at http://www.uio.no/~hakonw/home.html for some lighter fare, including a picture of him as a child. How cute! Content: Good Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top World War I This University of Mississippi site on World War I is rather spare, with only four articles and links to three sites, two of them external. But click on the "Return to USA page" link and you'll find the real riches -- an extensive history of the U.S., based at http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/usa.html. This parent site covers not only military history, but also prohibition, the development of black citizenship, and women's suffrage. So, don't stop only at the WWI area: U. Mississippi's U.S. history site is more than the sum of its parts. Content: Excellent Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top World War II Archive Boy, this site is well done. Lots of internal links leading to historical text documents, sounds, and movies in your choice of format. But it's a bit sinister: though it appears to offer a complete picture of the war, nothing could be further from the truth. The server is a propaganda site for our military in Europe, plain and simple. It shows only American good works (sidestepping some of our hideous wartime abuses), and is paid for and developed by Army brats on your tax dollars. Remember this next time Congress cuts funding to school lunch programs. Enjoy the site! Content: Poor Aesthetic: Good TechnoSmart: Good Author: Tom Geller Back to top Web Review The Internet has a long history of hosting periodicals: I remember reading Sarah Kahn's classic novel "Pulp" via the Internet in 1986 as she released it, one chapter per day. Now corporations like GNN continue the tradition with periodicals like Songline Studios' Web Review. This is the creme de la creme: a snazzy, attractive, smart publication that features daily news, intriguing features and fancy-schmancy web tricks. Frames? Got that. RealAudio? Got that. Image maps? In abundance. But be prepared to wait: with all these geegaws, expect the site to take some time to load. It's worth it. Content: Good Aesthetic: Excellent TechnoSmart: Excellent Author: Tom Geller Back to top This page was last updated on Monday, February 09, 2004 at 3:06pm CST. All contents copyright 2005 by Tom Geller.