Killing Time

First there was google, a search engine that was leaps and bounds beyond its nearest rival that made finding information on the web oh so easy. Then Yahoo games. Who knew that so many people liked to play boggle online? Next came CNN - what better way could you waste your afternoons? And of course, CNN has to be followed with Slate for a more substantive follow-up on the daily news. Then came the blogs - every morning I check my seven favorite blogs to see if there is anything new/interesting. And don't forget TheMovieSpoiler and Apple movie trailers - yes, it kills your appetite for actually going to movies, but it's a lot quicker and cheaper.

But my new web-surfing passion, the grand daddy of them all, the time killer to kill all time killers, is Wikipedia. Yes, it's an online encyclopedia (yawn) but it's really cool. The articles are up-to-the-minute current and are hyperlinked to related articles/concepts. If you have a tabbed browser, it's a dream. You can keep opening cool-looking links in background tabs as you read an article and then read the related articles and the related links. I spent 2 hours reading about science fiction books, the Fermi paradox and Von Neuman probes this afternoon. Everything you can think of is there, from popular novels (now I don't have to read The Da Vinci Code) to detailed science and math concepts (check out supernovae), to up-to-date information about current events (read all about Harriet Miers or the guys who won the nobel prize in physics today).

The only problem with it is that sometimes the pages load slowly (it's run by a non-profit group and there are no advertisements or fees for using it, so they have to rely on donations to upgrade their hardware and bandwidth). I will be sending them a donation soon.