The possibilities are immense. From learning how to cook crickets to being counseled, the Infobahn does not disappoint. And for those who want to learn a language of a different kind entirely, sign language, the World Wide Web once again obliges. On www.handspeak.com, users are given a crash course in communicating using merely their hands. The list is quite exhaustive and the images do not take too long to download. The good thing about the site is that it sticks to just its chosen topic-teaching sign language and does not digress into e-commerce or add more value to the site by going into related topics.
Sign languages have their own variations across countries and this site covers the American Sign Language.
Of dinosaurs
The `biggest, baddest' carnivorous animal that ever lived was female. She is called Sue and she had a head that weighed 908-kilogram, and is the largest and most complete fossil of a T Rex ever found.
For people who think dinosaurs are the most interesting extinct creature to have walked the earth, they can now satisfy their curiosity and learn more about these creatures by logging on to the site www.nationalgeographic.com/dinorama. Did dinosaurs have feathers? Did they need them? These are questions that are answered by the site. The site also dwells at length on expeditions that discovered the fossil of Sue and thousands of 70-million-year-old dinosaur eggs.
It has reconstructed images of these creatures based on the fossils. The site is loaded with information, however, it concentrates more on the finding of the fossils and the reconstruction of the size, life and times of these creatures.
More trivia
And you thought the human brain was unparalleled in its thought process and uniqueness? Well, it is time to rethink that particular premise. A bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EEG machine, exhibited movement which is virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult man or woman. So much for the brain power of the only creature on earth that can think.
Is that trivia or interesting information? Whatever be your viewpoint, if that is the kind of stuff you would like to read, log on to www.absolutetrivia.com. What really differentiates this particular from others of its kind on the Net is that it is a lot more organised.
All trivia cannot be clubbed together. It must be slotted into various categories like history, geography, festivals, statistics and what have you. Trivia, after all, is serious business.
India finds mention, too, in the hallowed halls of trivial information. Besides population, we come first in one other thing, post offices. India has the most post offices with over 152,792, compared with just over 38,000 in the US.
Inventions do not always have to be about telephones, gramophones, aeroplanes et al. They can also be about little things that make this world a more pleasant to live in.
For instance, iced tea, also had to be invented. And an Englishman called Richard Blechyden can take credit for that. At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Blechyden had a tea concession. On a very hot day, none of the fairgoers were interested in drinking hot tea. Blechyden served the tea cold - and invented iced tea.
