HISTORY
Timeline
If you love history, you'll love IndiaWorld's vast timeline (www.itihaas.com). Curious about Buddha's enlightenment, invasions of Alexander the Great, the Moghuls, Marco Polo's visit, British colonization, the Freedom Struggle or India's recovery from British rule and subsequent reforms? They're all here, divided in four parts: Ancient India, 4000 bce to 1000 ce; Medieval India, 1000 to 1756; Modern India, 1757 to 1947; and Independent India, 1947 on. Plus you'll find newspaper clippings, essays and images focusing on topics like the Harappa Civilization and the demise of the Aryan Invasion theory. And if you don't like to study the past, well, this website is history.
CD-ROM
Untruth to Truth
W alk through a virtual temple. Follow a 24-step guide to performing puja in your home shrine. And take a beautiful animated tour of a soul's emanation from, and evolution to, God in the charming CD about Hinduism, "From Untruth to Truth." Learn all about Gods and Goddesses, meditation, temples, samskaras, festivals, vows, Sanskrit chants and the CD's inspirer, Ma Amritanandamayi, in a 3D environment. US$39. Windows. Write: MA Center, PO Box 613, San Ramon, California 94583-0613 USA, E-mail: macenter@ammachi.org.
VEGETARIANS
Car Crisis?
Graham spencer, founder of Excite, one of the Internet's top search engines and directories, found he had a hard time making a decision on a car. "I wasn't going for a luxury mobile," he told host Robert Cringely on a recent PBS documentary, "Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet." "But I wanted a pretty nice car, with lots of gadgets [sunroof, global positioning system, onboard computer, TV, etc.]. The problem was that I'm also vegetarian so I didn't want leather seats. Almost no car manufacturers put all the gadgets in a version of their car without leather seats. So you can either have leather seats and gadgets or no leather seats and no gadgets." The program never indicated if Graham finally got the car of his dreams.
INTERNET
Neurosis
Is world wide web surfing damaging your social health? "Yes," says a study by Robert Kraut of Carnegie Mellon University published in Science. His team installed computers with free Internet connections for 169 people in 73 homes that previously did not have Net connections. Over the next one to two years, they found that as participants logged more hours on the Net, they had less interactions with family and friends. They felt lonely and scored higher on standard depression tests–even when on line as little as one to four hours a week. So, step outside and soak up sun with a friend, instead of just reading weather reports on cnn.com!