This sort of page is just about impossible to keep up to date.
Please feel free to abuse me if you find links that don't work,
however I will appreciate it more if you give me the up-to-date version of the link.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

One of the most wonderful things ever written!
Oh if only
the generals, the commissars and the capitalists, could all just realise it means what it says and that without it our species will soon be reaching its "use by" date.

Help yourself science

Website
of the
Australian Broadcasting Commission

The Descent of Man - A Four Part Radio Series and a Website on neo-Darwinism, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

ABC Children's TV

Scientific American

Always a good read, I have bought every copy since about August 1986. Since 2003 and I subscribed to the digital version which is cheaper and far quicker to access for someone in Australia. It is not so easy on the eyes to read a magazine on-line of course but the paper version is always a month late in Western Australia which means that if somebody is posting to a discussion group about an article in it, I can't respond.

Periodic Table: Webelements

Play and learn with the periodic table. I consider the periodic table and modern atomic theory to be one of the wonders of the modern age.

Science & Consciousness Review

Very good value! - well worth a look!

New Scientist Planet Science:
The Last Word ...

Interesting questions and plausible answers. You don't have to be English to enjoy this.

Australian Skeptics Home Page

Thought provoking and entertaining!

The Challenge

Aus$100K to anyone who can prove their psychic abilities [less $20K spotter's fee if appropriate]. Why aren't the "new age" people all beating on the door to demonstrate what they so strongly believe in?

NB: James Randi the American skeptic and showman is offering US$1 million for scientifically acceptable proof of psychic phenomena.

Quackwatch
Home Page

Publications, etc by Susan Blackmore

Sue Blackmore's home page

Memes Central

Dr Blackmore has written some very readable stuff on the nature of consciousness [and she has the most succinct definition I have ever come across] and has, for many years, rigorously tested all manner of claims of psychic phenomena.
Result? [From what I have read:] "Psi" is wishful thinking; people believe in ESP, etc, because they want/need to, not because real evidence supports it. She is now investigating memes in a big way.

Consciousness Wiki

A Wiki Book; dedicated to enumerating and elucidating all the various theories about consciousness; a serious and good quality spin off from the amazingly useful and ever growing Wikipedia.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Daily entries from the 17th century London diary

The annotations, created each day by an eclectic bunch of enthusiasts,
shed light and much good humoured insight on the life and times of Samuel Pepys.

There are now mouse-over tips giving instant background for the characters our Sam names in his entries and links to a comprehensive and ever-growing encyclopedia.

The Amazing World of Birds

Designed and written solely by MrGordonRamel@yahoo.com

"Welcome to the beautiful, the wonderful, the truly amazing world of birds"

I went looking here for information about birds eyes. I was interested to find out about bird eyes with two fovea per eyeball.
[Some birds have this facility for use, apparently, in switching their attention from food/prey, etc, in front of them to potential predators approaching from the side or behind them.]
I found the plain-English descriptions of bird anatomy and habits both easy to comprehend and useful. Mr Ramel does not talk down to his readers but provides succinct and understandable explanations with simple clear diagrams that add real value.
[For example I never knew before reading there, that bird eyes have a sclerotic ring of small bones in the cornea around the site of the lens to which muscles attach which change the shape of the lens.]

Designed and written solely by MrGordonRamel@yahoo.com

AND,
for similarly well presented information about INSECTS,
try Mr Ramel's
"Wonderful World of Insects" page.

I went here looking for information about insect eyes and the arrangement of ganglia, etc, within the insect head and body. I stayed and read all sorts of, one again very clear and succinct, further information about many other aspects of insect anatomy.

I thoroughly recommend both these and the related sites to students and children of all ages! [When the inner child is absent, the grown-up is just a hollow shell.]

John McCrone
Harland Harrison: The Verbal Process Creates the Illusion of Consciousness

Jan Holmgren-: Consciousness The Detector Approach

Some Contributors
to JCS Online
& other
Consciousness related
on-line forums

They each have their own "materialist" slant on the basis of consciousness and their personal websites are well worth reading IMHO .

Doug Newman - Structure of consciousness site

"Welcome to my web site which relates conscious experience
to a self-referential process."


Steven Lehar: The Epistemology of Conscious Experience 1; A Cartoon Epistemology 2
In my opinion a quite brilliant and beautifully drawn cartoon series illustrating the case for a representational identity theory of consciousness. There are links to detailed descriptions of his theory. He makes a very good case for an analogue model of self and world within the brain.

1	2
"A brief illustrated presentation of the epistemology of conscious experience, and its implications for the computational function of visual processing."	"An informal cartoon presentation of the central epistemological debate between naive realism and representationalism"

Center for Consciousness Studies -
University of Arizona

Plentiful resources/food for thought for those interested in what consciousness might actually be. The directors are David Chalmers - inventor of that baleful term "The Hard Problem", Stuart Hameroff, & Alfred Kaszniak.

Patricia Churchland

"Can Neurobiology Teach us Anything
about Consciousness?" by
Patricia Smith Churchland
University of California, San Diego
Salk Institute. 9/25/95

Stephen Deiss

Welcome to Applied Neurodynamics "The 20-20 MINDSITE"
(Neural Network Systems, Theory, Communications & Applications Engineering)

Web page for Stephen Deiss

I liked Stephen's essay on Free Will through Determinism
I am working towards reading through his other essays before I get much older.

Journal of Memetics -
new site under construction as at 18 Oct 2005

Journal of Memetics - old site, now a free access archive

Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission - on-going discussion between academics about the nature of memes and how best to study them.

Stereograms by Koay Kah Hoe

Stereograms - the basis of "Magic Eye" pictures, including: theory of how they work,; handy free program for making them, and; samples to practice looking at.

What I like about stereograms is they offer a tangible example of how the brain constructs images of the world, and they are thus good evidence that all the rest of our experience is constructed, I.e. created by the brain rather than some kind of naive direct contact with the external world.

Boris Starosta -
Stereoscopic Art & 3D Photography

Stereo photography and 3D viewing using several different systems. This site has many examples of double pictures for cross-eyed viewing - which I call the poor mans 3D. The 3D effect is very powerful though and the process of viewing, once mastered, allows one to experience several interesting things about the nature of 3D perception which is one of the major tasks our brains accomplish. This site has a range of subject matters catering for a wide range of tastes and interests. It also provides explanations of the principles of 3D photography using the different systems as well as links to many other sites specialising in 3D art and rendition.

Some of my favourite sites:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Science & Consciousness Review

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

The Amazing World of Birds

Continuous Development