INGREDIENTS: Stuff for Philly-area Students (consists of Swarthmore College, PA and other artificial flavors); Tools (for smoothness when using your computer or Web browser); Topics (consists of Melville's secret mix of himself, hitch-hiking, marijuana, photography, anti-consumerism, politics, labor organization, Micro-community and other stuff); Deep Springs College, CA; and Me.

NUTRITION INFORMATION:

Bits: only 50K and Graphics-LiteŠ for your loading convenience

LAST BREWED on May 28, 1997

Best if consumed before it changes.

Questions or comments about this product....

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Stuff for Swatties (i.e.: people from Swarthmore College)

Swarthmore's an intense liberal arts college outside Philadelphia. Here's a list of the Personal Pages of some of the more computer-oriented students there. All students are given access to space on one of the college's Unix servers upon request, and there are periodic seminars on forging Webpages. The guy who taught me most of what got this page up and going is Justin Hall. That man's everywhere, and his page is thought to be pretty kickin'. Some other Swatties associated with me are Drew, my friend and room-mate, and Tom Kornack, my friend and hall-mate.

Somethings for Swarthmore students' convenience are TRIPOD, the tri-college (Bryn Maur, Haverford, Swarthmore) on-line library catalogue, where we do all our happy book-hunting; and the Stuff in and about Philly is pretty cool.

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Tools and Resources

• Stuff For Your Computer and The Web

  Tired of your clumsy Netscape search-engine? DAD (Digital Audio Directory) has a whole directory of search engines. You have to scroll down a little, past their VERY IMPRESSIVE collection of digital sound equipment resources, to get to the list of search-engines. I've found the AltaVista search engine to be very good, though I haven't worked much with others. The Jumbo Shareware Archive is an amazing network of servers all over the world that carry an enormous archive of shareware and freeware for your enjoyment and benefit. Finally, the Software Finder lets you find software listings by name, type of software, or developer. I haven't used it much, but it should be pretty sharp.

• HTML -- Coding your WebPage

  Coding a web page is the easiest programming I've ever done (not saying alot). It's fun, and it lets you see, literally, how all those images come to your screen. Most people have a favorite cause that they can't find immediate support for. Once good search-techniques develop, the Web may be the place where causes take effect. Here are a couple entry-level tutorial pages by Justin Hall. Spiffin' It tells you how to put in divider-lines, different font-sizes, bold, underlines, paragraph indents, and more. Graphix does what it says.
  

  Some of the raw materials of a page are easier to get from elsewhere on the internet than they are to manufacture all by yer lonesome. One such material is the background pattern that you see on some pages (it can be white, a sort of watermark effect, or subdued photographs with text overlaid. Here's a link to GIF Images for HTML Background , a site (that's moved and I can't find the new address, sorry) where you can shop for the address of a pattern you like, copy the link, and paste it into your own page as a background.

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  Academic Resources on the Internet

  Learning on the Internet

  LearNET Syllabus and Homeschooling Project
  Internet Public Library online research librarians and MOO virtual library/chat space

  Literature Stuff

  Electronic Text: Documents, Libraries and Indices

  Justin Hall's Links to the Literary
  Craig Scrivner's Links to Literature

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Topics

Below are topics of interest to me, along with collections of associated links and my own thoughts and work...

Hitch-hiking (as in, actually using your thumb to get places on the road)

This is an (overly?) ambitious attempt to create a major network of resources for hitch-hikers and other on-the-edge travellers. Find here information, contacts, and literature regarding hitch-hiking.

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Herman Melville

Melville's Moby Dick is my favorite book. Writing in the late 19th century, Melville parallels Nietzschean philosophy and anticipates some of the semiotic theories being brandished as 'cutting edge' today. He also as a sly sense of humor. The Herman Melville Internet Society offers links to text-resources, essays, and biographical records, as well as photographs. If all you want is primary text, click here! And if you want secondary ramblings, here's a (very slowly) growing collection of interpretive and reflective essays on Melville's work.

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Legalizing Marijuana

When, user for user, alcohol consumption is associated with more violent crime and disease than use of marijuana, why is alcohol legal and pot illegal? NORML is a respected national organization dedicated to eliminating the contradictions in substance-control law by making marijuana legal for medicinal and recreational use. At the risk of turning it into a fetish, the Pot Museum pages offer some good information and nice pictures on marijuana, as well as
a history of pot (Canada).

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Photography

I've always had a vague dream of being a freelance photographer 'on the side.' Digital photography and image-manipulation is gaining a lot of steam and may soon provide a good alternative to the environmentally harmful chemical processes required with film-developing and print-making. PlugIn Systems is a commercial outfit that has some introductory info on the new digital technology. For those not yet ready to stop loading chemical film, Midwest Photo Exchange offers a wide and well-presented selection of new and used camera equipment.

On the product side of things, here're some of my photos (under construction) and some of my hall-mate, Tom Kornack's (ready to rumble!).

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Politics

Alternatives to Republican and Democratic Candidates: Got any? Write me, please! I don't pay a lot of attention to politics as presented through the media, but I'm constantly frustrated by the lack of widely-circulated information on alternative candidates. One of the advantages of such candidates is that they must present an argument to have any hope of winning, rather than just the image of 'DEMOCRAT' or 'REPUBLICAN.'

I don't know if he'll run again in 2001, but I like some of the political reform pushed by Ralph Nader (RealAudio file) of the Green Party. This link is of an October Talk of the Nation radio talk-show on which he appeared. If you don't already have it, you can probably get the necessary RealAudio software here.

The National Debt Clock below is taken from National Debt Clock html.

Someone maintains a population clock based on projections by the US Census Bureau at Population Clock.

Community-development from the ground up and regardless of political standpoint (left, right, center) is of great importance. Check out my new addition, Intersect, an experiment in the development of geographically-basedMicro-community on the Web.

I have become interested in labor organization lately. The AFL-CIO is the primary confederation of industrial and trade unions in the US. They have links to specific unions. In Summer '96 a new Labor Party was estabilished in the US. I have created a fictional future in which labor obtains some independent power in American politics, and which involves an international movement to advance the reduction in work-time from an 8-hour to a 6-hour standard.

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Underwear

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Questioning Consumerism

After taking classes in economics, I am reluctant to bash consumer culture. But its so easy, and, liberal economics notwithstanding, consumer-culture deserves some critical attention. The Media Foundation Online, a.k.a. Addbusters, puts consumerism in the light of some of the best satire around today. Closer to my home, Tom Kornack's World Wide Widgets is a less conscious, but none the less amusing and interesting jab at corporate propaganda. My own contributions, Alternatives to Disposable Consumer Products and Fixing Electronics are feeble beginnings on developing durable alternatives to consumer products that are all too increasingly 'disposible.'

Outside of politics, conscious consumption is an important way to change the world. I'll try to build here a list of lists of things other people think should be boycotted for various reasons. The AFL-CIO maintains a list of products which its unions are boycotting. Most people don't want to bother themselves with keeping track of all the things to be boycotted, however, so I've started to develop a solution: focused, short-term boycotts orchestrated by a single organization. Check it out here, and please give me your thoughts, link leads, and support.

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Deep Springs College

Deep Springs College is home to 24-odd male students and a smattering of dedicated professors, staff, and administration. Deep Springs in Brief offers a quick and as-yet incomplete overview of the college, while Details offers links to on-line College Guides, Essays, News-items, and History, most of which should not be accepted at anything like face-value. Deep Springs is great, but mainstream media overemphasize cowboys and ignore students.

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Stuff by Me

I situate this text here because I want the links I have chosen to speak for who I am, not the words I consciously construct. Associations and the pattern that lies between them are a (the?) most cruxial feature of consciousness and identity. Nothing (no sign, no language, no object) has meaning except as it is associated with something else. I've imagined creating a kind of consciousness by making a Web-search program that would constantly tailor its own patterns of association so as best to communicate and provide for human users.

Below is stuff I made. Thanks for checking out my page.

My step-father, Bruce, has a lot of cool fine foods for sale here.

Essays and fiction
Photographs
My Bookmarks
Mail me at Listen! Audio Systems to find out about using your computer as a HiFi digital home-theater pre-amplifier and multi-room home audio control center.

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Contact Rob by email

These pages last updated 5.28.97