Cyberspace

When you know the answers to these questions, go to http://www.4Kids.org/detectives/1. What is the mission of the skeletal system?(Go to Http://nsbri.tamu.edu/ HumanPhysSpace/ to find out.)2. What did navigational beacons tell sailors?3. Where were the first dinosaur bones found?THE ART OF NAVIGATIONAye, mate! Your goal is to reach the Americas by sea. But navigating these waters is no easy task, and naval captains have to be smart with maps, weather, ocean currents and the Earth's magnetism.

Broadcast journalist Lawrence Matthews, who said he had received explicit child pornography as part of his job as a reporter, was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison for obtaining pornography over the Internet.The case has been described by some as a key case for First Amendment rights in cyberspace. Matthews maintained he transmitted and received sexually explicit photographs as material for a free-lance article he planned to write for Esquire magazine.U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. rejected his argument, saying there was not enough evidence to show Matthews was working on an article.

You have a new computer. Welcome to the Internet!Here's a little taste of what to expect from your new online newsgroup buddies, eager to share the ways of Netiquette:``Either type in all capital letters and make people hate you, or grow up and type normally.''``You are doing nothing but wasting bandwidth and showing your enormous ignorance.''``Hey! Netiquette calls for a four-line maximum signature. This new one of yours is more than four lines!''Never mind that online etiquette is changing as fast as technology itself.

Trying to find your way around the World Wide Web? Ask a librarian for directions.The American Library Association, in cooperation with America Online, has published a handy guide titled "The Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace for Parents and Kids."The colorful, four-page brochure includes definitions for terms parents should know ("usenet groups," "chat rooms" and "e-mail"), safety tips, suggested family rules and a list of more than 50 great Web sites for kids: from "Arthur the aardvark" to volcanos, with lots of homework help in-between.

Yuri Temirkanov is about to do something for the first time and he's scared."Anything you don't understand, you find frightening," Temirkanov says. "When [scientists] say the universe has no limits, I can't understand that and it scares me."But what intimidates the 60-year-old Temirkanov -- who is generally considered the greatest Russian conductor of his generation and who survived more KGB threats and interrogations than he cares to remember -- is scarcely as grand as the Big Bang theory.

You're a good parent.Over the years you've dutifully carted the youngsters to school and soccer games, muddled through math homework and even managed to stutter through a birds-and-bees talk.But now the kids are spending hours in cyberspace -- a subject that your parental rule book doesn't cover.You've heard that the Internet is the place where the two teen-agers who shot up and booby-trapped their high school in Littlleton, Colo., learned to make bombs, where racists and perverts lurk behind every mouse click, where your kids can find a less delicate version of your birds-and-bees lesson -- complete with illustrations.

Baltimore City Council will return from its holiday recess tonight to broadcast its first meeting over the Internet, when members will introduce legislation to save the city's drug-free zones.Last year, Council President Lawrence A. Bell III spent $150,000 on the high-tech information system that includes digital cameras in the council chambers. Previously,the council relied on camera operators and the city's cable channel to transmit meetings.Despite criticism for the spending while the city faces a $25 million budget shortfall next year, Bell has called the technical addition a revolutionary step in public access that makes Baltimore one of the first cyberspace councils in the nation.

Governor appoints Cornick to Howard college boardDelroy L. Cornick has been appointed to the Howard Community College board of trustees by Gov. Parris N. Glendening.He is professor emeritus of management at Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he served from 1973 to 1991 as professor, department chairman and interim executive assistant to the president.Cornick is adjunct professor of ethics at the University of Maryland University College at College Park.The Columbia resident is a co-founder and associate director of the Center for the Study of Alternative Futures Inc. in Silver Spring.

LOS ANGELES - Securing control of the family computer is no easy task on a weekend night in the McLeod household. But Miranda, it is clear, has had lots of practice.By 9 p.m. on a Saturday, her little brother, Kyle, is banished to a friend's house, and Mom is dispatched to the bills stacked on the floor.Then, looking like a cyberpunk Wonder Woman with silver bracelets, metallic nails and dark hair streaked with blond, the 16-year-old assumes her rightful place in front of the computer screen.

I WAS on my way to the White House when I encountered the topless woman.I'm bopping merrily along and suddenly she's just . . . there, before my eyes, engaging in a rather intimate act of self-gratification, if you catch my drift. And I realize -- hey, I don't need a house to fall on me -- that I've taken the mother of all wrong turns.Wasn't difficult to figure out what had gone wrong: I had mistyped the Web site address of the real White House by three measly letters. So my computer delivered me instead to this ersatz "White House" of carnality and capitalism, where naked women are "first ladies" and for $19.99 a month, I'm promised access to all the "young teens, hot lesbians and hard-core nymphomaniacs" I can handle.

WOMEN DRIVE what's on television - husbands and boyfriends decide on movies," says NBC's reigning brilliant, Tina Fey. So, Vanity Fair magazine hits its stride again with an April issue crammed with everything you ever wanted to know about funny women like Ms. Fey, Sarah Silverman, Amy Poehler, et al.; rich payouts to the wealthy we mostly never heard of, but a few will be familiar among those who reaped the financial whirlwind in 2007; feuds and fights...

Elton John's recent public outburst about the Internet's effect on pop -- he suggested that a five-year cyberspace shutdown might be the only way to renew the music's creativity -- was greeted with eye rolling and the general consensus that he should splurge on an iPod. But his consternation is understandable. The music industry is in tatters; the noise that amateurs once kept to themselves emanates from every corner of cyberspace, and between the money-obsessed mainstream and the hype-addled underground, there's no agreement on what will endure.

WASHINGTON -- An expensive National Security Agency initiative to search the world's communication networks for security threats is hitting early but significant snags, prompting intelligence officials and lawmakers to raise questions about its funding and its future. Dubbed "Turbulence," the NSA's ambitious effort is part bloodhound and part attack dog. It attempts to continuously troll cyberspace to sniff out threats from terrorists and others, then rapidly tip off analysts who can mobilize defenses.

The whistlestop campaign tour has given way to the daily download, as the shape and pace of politics continue to evolve. In this new world, old media are easily bypassed. This election year we're seeing a seismic shift in the way TV interacts with politics and politicians. After decades of setting the agenda -- influencing how campaigns operate, even defining the choices presented to voters -- television is being snubbed in the run-up to 2008. The Internet is stealing the thunder from television, forcing the networks to play catch-up.

In a new study based on a random telephone survey of 2,513 adults nationwide, researchers at Stanford University found that of the 56.3 percent who responded, one out of eight exhibited at least one symptom of what could be classified as Internet addiction. "We often focus on how wonderful the Internet is, how simple and efficient it can make things," said lead author Dr. Elias Aboujaude in a statement. "But we need to consider the fact that it creates real problems for a subset of people."

The image on the brown T-shirt is simple, a colorful outline of the Southwest's craggy hills. The message under the picture - "New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico" - has galvanized thousands of Latinos, who are taking their protests from the streets to cyberspace. "I was born in Mexico, so when people make comments about Mexico I take it personally," said Carime Hernandez, 24, of West Palm Beach, Fla. Hernandez took action. She went to BlueLatinos.org and sent an e-mail demanding that the chairman of Urban Outfitters, the retail chain that sells the tops, remove them from the store.

CYBERSPACE, TO ITS early denizens, was supposed to be a prelapsarian world, free from the taint of commerce and other vices of "meatspace" (as the material world is known), full of sweetness and light and universal siblinghood. In fact, the storyline was Genesis in reverse. Our troubles started when Eve ate the apple of knowledge. Now knowledge had accumulated to the point where it could undo the damage, reconstruct the apple (or Apple) and restore our innocence. As many were saying a decade ago, technology was the real counterculture.

"Into the Tangle of Friendship: A Memoir of the Things That Matter," by Beth Kephart. Houghton Mifflin. 224 pages. $23. With grace and quiet wisdom, with lyrical prose and astonishing insight, Beth Kephart embarks in her new book on a journey through the country of friendship. "What do any of us know about friendship?" she writes. "What can we make of how it changes over time, how it is about wonder at first, then self-definition, then survival, how it is always about comfort, about simply being here, alive?

Visit these Web sites to find the answers, then go to www.4Kids.org/detectives/. * How much can modern North American bison weigh? * How long was the Wright Brothers' first flight? * What toy is broken in the story "Alfy's Broken Toy"? WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM Once considered "lords of the prairie," buffalo are one of this country's most noble, legendary animals. At American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation, you'll learn about how these great mammals were almost wiped out by greedy hunters a century ago. Roam across the Web to www.pbs.

Dirty streets aren't the only eyesores Mayor Martin O'Malley has sworn to clean up. Now he's taking a broom to cyberspace. First stop: Baltimore's official Web site. In a low-key ceremony Thursday, the mayor relaunched the home page with a new look and address: www.baltimorecity.gov. "The mayor wants to make city government more open, so people can get answers to their questions quickly and easily," says Steve Kearney, a policy researcher in the mayor's office who led the team responsible for redesign.