SPIEGEL Surfs the Web Welcome to Friday Time-Wasters
Sure, the days are slowing getting shorter, but if you're unfortunate enough not to be on vacation in the month of August, minutes can seem like hours and hours can stretch on into days. Especially on a Friday. So with apologies to results-oriented bosses everywhere, we present three links designed to make the minutes ( or hours)go just a little bit faster.
First up is Babble , a self-described "word game superchild of Scrabble and Boggle." If this image alone doesn't conjure it up, let us describe: everyday, the site posts a new five by five grid of letters. Players aim to make as many four or more letter words out of the grid as possible, with extra points awarded for word-length and using tricky letters. Reportedly highly addictive. Next, Sodaplay offers something for you more constructed-minded types. Using Flash, build and manipulate odd little animated creatures, and watch them dance as you monkey with the dials that control their universe. You can build your own from scratch, or choose from a host of pre-built Sodas -- and you can race them, too. Finally, the aptly-named Cartoon Generator . Choose from a range of pre-drawn characters and objects, enter in your own though and speech bubbles, and then send your creations around.
An Idiot's Guide to Cricket
This summer sees England host Australia in one of the world's most famous sporting competitions. The Ashes series is already underway and pits two teams of eleven men in a very British version of baseball . Games can last up to five days, the number of runs can exceed 500 in each innings and the game boasts a litany of obscure terminology (googly, L.B.W., full toss and silly mid-off to name but a few).
The contest dates back to 1882, when Australia beat England for the first time. A "bail" (more jargon - the thing the bowler throws a ball at, to try and get a batsman out) was burnt ceremonially and the remains were then kept in a commemorative urn. The two teams now play five games against each other in the series, and the winner gets to take the urn home. Simple really!
Children's Drawings from Darfur
Nothing offers as moving a depiction of the devastation of war as the drawing of a child. And though the media has inundated us with horrific photos of the two-year-old conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, a series of drawings by children in refugee camps makes the scope of the tragedy clear. The children were not told what to draw, but were simply offered crayons and paper as Human Rights Watch researchers talked with their parents. Their pictures not only offer a child's view of violence, but indicate that the massacres they witnessed remain at the forefront of their imaginations. One image shows two bodies on top of each other -- one an assailant, the other a victim. Another shows armed men on horseback charging forward. In a third, a victim bleeds onto the page.
The assailants, Arab militias known as the "janjaweed," have conducted a systemic attack on the civilian population in an attempt to "cleanse" it of its black Sudanese population. The United Nations has called the conflict the world's current worst humanitarian crisis, but has stopped short of calling the massacre a genocide. Still, 180,000 to 400,000 people are believed to have died so far and some two million others have fled their homes and now live in refugee camps. Countless women have been raped and kidnapped for use as sex slaves.
The conflict began in early 2003 after black Sudanese rebels began attacking government targets, claiming their region was being neglected. While the government admits it mobilized opposition to the rebels, it denies being in control of the janjaweed. Human rights groups -- including the Darfur Advocacy Project -- think otherwise and provide background on the conflict and tips on how to help stop it. The same goes for Save Darfur which also has an online petition that asks the US Congress to do more for Darfur.
