Mousetrap - 79

On the Origins of Darwin
The Complete Works of Charles Darwin
Darwin is one of the best-known names in science. The impact he made on our thinking was immense, and this site could show you why in a way that’s far beyond the bits we learned in school. It claims to be the first ever complete collection of all Darwin’s publications, bringing many of them to the to the web for the first time. Among them, transcripts of some of his handwritten diaries, like the one he kept on the Beagle. It features complete text, down to publishers’ ads, and gives you both formatted text and scans of the original pages. There’s a complete bibliography, naturally, and translations as well, and audio versions, plus works by others that help you understand Darwin, like contemporary reviews. of his books or obituaries and recollections of Darwin. A good entry point to the site is http://darwin-online.org.uk/features.html.

Crymm 2.0
Extortr
A site that pokes a bit of fun at several things. Most obviously the trend in deliberated misspelled words as names of online services (Flickr, Ryze, etcetera). And then there’s the whole Web 2.0 buzz about many-to-many and services that put power into the hands of users, letting them generate content. Of course there’s a fun to be had reading the fake extortion notes and examples and suchlike. Wish it were real, though. There’s a couple of people I’d like to add to my Extortr list..

Green Eggs and Dr Seuss
Dr. Seuss Parody Page
Everybody’s come across a bit of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss. At the very least, you’ve come across a parody or a rip-off, but didn’t know it at that time. Well, this fan has a bunch of links to parodies of his works and style. On the main site. seuss.org, you’ll also find links to a brief bio, to other sites, and to his books. Just to make it clear, this is not an officially-sanctioned site.

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 19th November, 2006.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap