Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 21:13:30 -0400
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Sender: The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
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Comments: Originally-From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Subject: TOURBUS -- 26 OCT 00 -- UL SEARCH ENGINE / COPYING URLS
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
TOURBUS Volume 6, Number 29 -- 26 Oct 2000
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\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
FIVE YEARS of Searchable Archives at http://www.TOURBUS.com !!
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
UL Search Engine / How to Copy URLs / More Cancer Sites
Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from the beautiful city of
Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
In light of Europe's recent economic problems, I thought you'd get a
chuckle from this recent post from our friends at satirewire.com:
Beverly, Mass. (SatireWire.com) In an effort to cut production
costs associated with its famous Monopoly board game, Parker
Brothers announced today it will replace its colorful play
dollars with the Euro, a form of cheap fake money widely used in
Europe.
According to Parker Bros. spokesperson Amanda Wright, the company
was looking to make a change from the pink, blue, yellow, green,
and white play dollars it has made for decades, but didn't want
the switch to escalate production costs. It also had to assure
that the new money not be mistaken for actual currency. The Euro
met both requirements. "On international monetary markets, we can
get one Euro for, like, 3 cents, or about five cents cheaper than
it costs to make a blue or pink play dollar," said Wright. "As
for making sure it doesn't get confused for real money, I think
it's safe to say that so far that hasn't been an issue."
[from http://www.satirewire.com/briefs/euro.html]
Seriously, though, if you want to learn more about the European Union
and the new Euro, take a look at either http://www.eurunion.org/ or
http://www.ecb.int/. And, for those of us in the Colonies who want to
learn more about what is happening on the other side of the pond,
check out "The European Union: A Guide for Americans" at
http://www.eurunion.org/infores/euguide/euguide.htm
TOURBUS is made possible by the kind support of our sponsors. A big
thanks to Amazing Bargains, TechSmith, and WellMed for keeping the Bus
rolling. Please visit and say thanks!
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On with the show ...
--------------------------
Urban Legend Search Engine
--------------------------
One of my favorite sites on the Net is the San Fernando Valley
Folklore Society's Urban Legends Reference Pages at
http://www.snopes.com/ .
Created and maintained by the husband-and-wife team of Barbara and
David Mikkelson, Snopes.com is one of the two best urban-legend-
debunking sites on the Net. The other is David Emery's Urban Legends
and Folklore site at
http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/ .
You already know about both of these sites; we've talked about them
a squillion times over the past five years. But there is one thing I
haven't told you about one of these sites. In fact, what I am about
to tell you is one of my best-kept secrets: Snopes.com has a search
engine ... for urban legends!
When someone forwards me an email asking if its contents are true, I
usually just hop on over to
http://www.snopes.com/info/search/search.htm
and type in a few keywords from the email in question. Up pops an
article or two that either debunks or "bunks" the email in question.
I then cut-and-paste the Web page address (see below) of the
appropriate Snopes.com article and include it in my reply. The person
who forwarded me the urban legend thinks I am an urban legend genius,
and all I had to do was type a word or two into a search engine.
And, now that you know about the Snopes.com search engine, you too can
become an urban legend guru or gurette. [First "bunks," now
"gurette." Maybe I should reconsider my decision not to subscribe to
the Oxford English Dictionary!] :)
For example, if one of your friends forwards you an email that says
"don't call area code 809," go to the Snopes.com search engine, key in
"809," and you are taken to a page that gives you links to two
articles that debunk this rampant Internet rumor. You can then
forward the address of that article to your friend. [The 809 story is
kind of true, but it doesn't tell you the whole truth. To learn the
WHOLE truth, check out Barbara Mikkelson's "809 Phone Scam" article at
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/809.htm .]
What makes the Snopes.com search engine so great (and what helps it
beat the living pants off of my own Urban Legend Combat Kit) is the
fact that the search engine searches through THOUSANDS of urban legend
articles written by the Mikkelsons over the past five years. And,
even better, those two can WRITE! Their articles are both
entertaining and informative, two traits sadly missing from most
Internet resources.
My only complaint is that, on occasion, pages inside of the Snopes.com
site take a little while to load. In this case, patience is a virtue.
The quality of the information at Snopes.com is well worth the wait.
------------
Copying URLs
------------
Let's say that you are writing a report or, even better, an email to
one of your friends and you want to include a really long Web page
address (a "URL") in what your writing. You can always type the
address by hand -- h ... t ... t ... p ... colon ... yadda yadda yadda
-- but that can get a little tedious. And, if the address is really
long, you run the risk of making a mistake.
A better way is to just copy the URL from your Web browser and paste
it into your report or email message. But how does one copy a URL?
Well ...
1. Go up to the address bar in Internet Explorer or the location bar
in Netscape (that white, horizontal box near the top of your Web
browser window where you type in Web page addresses);
2. Click once in the address or location bar to highlight the URL of
the Web page you are currently viewing;
3. Copy the URL by either hitting Ctrl + C or going to Edit --> Copy
in your Web browser;
4. Open the document into which you would like to paste the URL;
5. Click your mouse once at the point in the document where you would
like to paste the URL; and
6. Hit Ctrl + V ("paste," although I like to call it "Velcro" because
of the "v") or go to Edit --> Paste.
That's it. The URL magically appears in your document! :)
This works wonderfully for Web pages you have already opened, but what
about pages you haven't opened? For example, let's say that you do a
keyword search for "809" at Snopes.com and find a hit for an article
or Web page that interests you. You can copy that hit's URL without
ever having to load it. Here's how. (And if all of this confuses
you, I promise it will make more sense the first time you try it.)
1. Instead of clicking on the link to open it, RIGHT-click (on, on a
Mac, press the Control key and then click) on the link in which you
are interested.
2. A pop-up menu will appear. In Netscape choose "Copy Link Location"
or in Internet Explorer choose "Copy Shortcut." This copies the URL
for that particular link to your clipboard.
4. Open the document into which you would like to paste the URL;
5. Click your mouse once at the point in the document where you would
like to paste the URL; and
6. Hit Ctrl + V or go to Edit --> Paste.
Cool, huh? These two techniques will save your poor little fingers
from countless hours of having to copy Web page addresses by manually
keying in URLs into your Word documents and emails. And I use both of
these technique every week to copy the Web page addresses you see in
each of my TOURBUS posts.
-------------------------------------------------
A Little Housekeeping RE: The Breast Cancer Sites
-------------------------------------------------
The NFL for Her breast cancer campaign that I mention in my last post
has come and gone. In fact, 1.75 million unique users logged onto
NFL.com during the NFL's Breast Cancer Awareness Day on Tuesday,
October 24. As part of the initiative, the NFL donated US$50,000 to
the Komen Foundation.
THANK YOU FOR HELPING MAKE THIS CAMPAIGN A SUCCESS!
Unfortunately, I get the real sinking feeling that urban legend
creators are going to have a field day with this one, telling people
that the NFL will donate $1 to cancer research for everyone you
forward an email message to, that the NBA will donate $1 to a dying
kid if you sign a petition, and so on. Let's keep this from
happening. If someone sends you one of these emails, nip it in the
bud. And the search engine at snopes.com can help you find the
ammunition to do it. :)
In related news, Yahoo's health section recently pledged to donate one
dollar to the Komen Foundation for every person who clicked on the
pink ribbon at http://health.yahoo.com/ between October 15 and
November 15. The total donation, however, would be no more than
US$5,000.
The response to Yahoo's campaign has been so great that Yahoo has
doubled its original pledge to US$10,000. That's the good news. The
bad news is that the campaign is now over. Yahoo has received the
5,000 clicks it was looking for and will not be making any more
donations in return for your clicking on the pink ribbon.
A lot of people were late to Yahoo's campaign, and there is now a mass
email campaign to get people to visit Yahoo's health section. Let's
nip this one in the bud too. The campaign is real, but it is over.
There is no longer any point in forwarding a message to all of your
friends telling them to click on the pink ribbon on Yahoo's health
page. :(
----------------------
Some More Cancer Sites
----------------------
I have received so many emails from people recommending cancer sites
that I think my poor little email inbox is about to explode! THANK
YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! If I haven't replied to your emails, please
forgive me. It may take me a while to catch up ... but I am loving
every minute of it. :)
For those of you who are new to TOURBUS, to celebrate the 10th
anniversary of my being diagnosed with and eventually beating cancer,
I am ending each of my TOURBUS posts between October 16 (the
anniversary of my diagnosis) and December 24 (the anniversary of my
last dose of chemotherapy) with pointers to some of the Net's best
cancer sites.
From Leonie
http://www.breasthealthnetwork.com/home/
"It seems to be a pretty comprehensive site for Breast Cancer and
Breast Health"
From Tom
http://listserv.acor.org.
"They have huge resources for just about every kind of cancer
including wonderful listserv messaging where people with similar
kinds of cancer can interact with each other. I belong to the
CLL list since I have this particular type of leukemia. It is a
huge source of information and provides hope to many who would
otherwise be in the dark.
From Meredith
http://www.lymphoma.org/
"I'm a cancer survivor too, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, stage 4,
diagnosed in early '86. I would like to nominate the Lymphoma
Research Foundation of America (LRFA) ... It's a good
organization with an emphasis on research and support."
From Peter
http://www.canteen.com.au/
"An Australian link for you to consider ... [it is] the site of
the organisation over here that addresses issues of teenagers
with cancer, and teenagers with friends with cancer."
And finally ...
From an unnamed doctor
http://www.quackwatch.com/00AboutQuackwatch/altseek.html
"This site helps inform people about worthless cancer treatments
which have been responsible for a lot of suffering and needless
death. As a doctor I have seen several people spend all the
money their families had on quackery, which probably hastened
their deaths.
Great advice, doc. Remember, folks, "alternative medicine" is another
way of saying "unproven medicine." For information about legitimate
cancer trials, check with your doctor or visit the National Cancer
Institute's Cancer Trials page at
http://cancertrials.nci.nih.gov/ .
That's it for this week. Have a safe and happy weekend and we'll talk
again next week.
---------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE WEEK
---------------------------------
FEE-UHL (Verb). To supply or provide to the fullest extent.
Usage: "Bubba, fee-uhl up that there gas jug!"
[Special thanks go to Ken Forgie for today's word]
You can find all of the old Southern Words of the day at
http://netsquirrel.com/crispen/word.html
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