Shelley Howells: That's a knot of toads and a sulk of teenagers

COMMENT

The net is increasingly behaving like a particularly dysfunctional family member - embarrassing at times, ridiculously inconvenient.

What with the expense, the porn, the spam, the perverts, the hoaxes, the viruses, the scams, the pop-up ads and the fortnightly column to fill, we could be excused for taking out a non-molestation order and avoiding the whole shebang.

But, like that rogue cousin, it's unavoidable and so darn charming that we keep going back for more.

I've recently bookmarked a bunch of sites - silly, fascinating, informative - that have helped remind me why I still love browsing.

Consider the expression "bunch of sites". Is it a bunch, or a gaggle, or a herd?

Okay, so I have yet to track down the correct collective noun for websites, but bookmark the collective noun page from the Wild Animal site and you'll not be stuck for words next time you come across more than three toads, for instance (that'd be a knot of toads).

The Collective Noun page has some more creative solutions, such as a camp of transvestites and a sulk of teenagers.

We've had hours of online entertainment since discovering the world of online dissection.

Thanks to modern technology, we can avoid the gore and smell of real dissections, but still satisfy the 8- (and 40-) year-old's curiosity about what's inside various bits of livestock.

Frog guts is a fabulous demo site, complete with virtual scalpel and pins to hold back peeled skin, that allows you to "dissect" a frog, then dig around and try to find the correct bits.

Anatomically Correct: The On-line Cat Dissection will have puss looking at you oddly, and vice versa.

There are fascinating (really) owl-pellet dissections (FYI: owls swallow their prey whole, then spit out the leftovers as pellets of fur and bones), a satisfyingly gross cow's eye dissection and many, many more (google "online dissection" and you've cured a rainy day).

Another wonderful resource that could only be done online is South Seas, which provides an interactive journey with Captain Cook on his first Pacific voyage of discovery (1768-1771).

The Aussie site is still under construction, but is terrifically useable. I'm loving the map that allows you to click on any part of the voyage and read from the journals of Cook - and others, including Joseph Banks - relating to that part of the trip. It's easy, and interesting, to compare the different journals' accounts of the same day. The site also includes an "encyclopaedia" of 18th century Pacific life and a glossary of nautical terms.

For a more up-to-date view of New Zealand, have a look at Nasa's visible Earth site. It has images of us (and the rest of the world) taken from space. Actually, "images of cloud-cover over New Zealand" would be more accurate.

An often useful, always interesting, site is the New York Times Newsroom Navigator, the page of net resources used in the Times newsroom.

The site is such a popular resource that it has specific pages for students, teachers and parents.

It is a good first-stop shop for net research and reference (downside: heavily US-based).

This frequently updated site always provides something new, like the link to the sensational Museum of Online Museums, a collection of sites sure to restore even the most jaded surfer's faith in the net.

Anyone still bitter about the renovation of the old Freemans Bay Bushells billboard can take solace in Faded Ad Campaign, an exhibition of photos of beautifully unrestored crumbling ads.

There's the haunting Circus of Disembowelled Plush Toys and a Treasury of Macrame Owls.

You could write a thesis on the Museum of Pantyhose Packaging. Seen en masse, such packaging takes on a rather disturbing edge.

But, for the despairing, spaminfected web surfer, the Museum of Obsolete Computers' array of lumbering uglies is a good reminder of just how good we have it today.

* Email Shelley Howells