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You see, we have a most egregious attention-deficit challenge, an ailment we had years before it was trendy. We've always had difficulty staying on topic for any length of time, and now we have these tantalizing little strings of colored underlined text to make our lives that much more difficult. For us, all too often, URL stands for "UnRelated Link." (For other people we know - those who troll the Net for "artistic photography" - URL signifies Unbelievably Raunchy Lesbians, but that's a whole other story and certainly a whole other web site. See, we told you we have trouble staying on topic...)  

Anyway, the links below will take you to sites that we in Cosmic Relief Land have found entertaining, enlightening, or just plain useful. In the interests of staying on the subject, more or less, we will resist the urge to share all of our favorite sites (you know, food, music, favorite dog sites, and stuff like that), because we're pretty sure that you don't really give a darn about who our favorite singers are or what kind of dogs we have (although, speaking of "links we love," we do keep a few miniature dachshunds around the house. But that's neither here nor there.). We'll stick to the sites that are relevant in some way to Cosmic Relief.

We realize this Links page can in no way be described as comprehensive, mainly because we're basically pretty lazy. We also realize that it is probably grievously outdated and that some of the links are dead. We still consider it a work in progress, however, so watch for additions to the list. And we're always open to suggestions (translate: we're always willing to let others do our work for us), so if you run across--or have--any sites you think are relevant to this list, let us know. E-mail CosmicRelief@juno.com (subject: Links). Happy surfing, and we hope you find your way back here soon. Thanks for stopping in.

 Skep-ti-CULT ® World-Wide Cabal: The mother of all no-holds-barred parody sites. This group's mission is to "laugh at kooks...and promote sanity and free speech." Their numbers, and power, are growing. "Once contained to a small group of hecklers in the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.art-bell, we are now generally recognized as a thorn in the ass of woo-woo freaks and would-be censors around the Net. The paranoid fruitcakes inhabiting the Internet keep us in business and spell out what we must do." (Currently this site is hosting Tim Hill's Art Bell Parody Page; see link above.)

 The New Age Curmudgeon: Trey Stokes is a man of many talents. Trey, who made a bit of a stir in the media recently with the infamous "alien autopsy", is one of the principals of the special-effects production company Truly Dangerous. He's worked his magic in many movies, such as Species, The Blob, Starship Troopers, The Abyss and, recently, My Favorite Martian. We only wish he had more time to devote to his curmudgeonly rants, because they are Truly Hilarious.

 Kenneth C. Moyle: Academician and part-time cynic Ken Moyle wrote an essay a couple of years ago on "Why I Hate the Celestine Prophecy." It's still generating hate mail from diehard Redfield fans, so it's well worth reading. We look forward to more brilliantly funny material from Ken.

 The "other" Cosmic Relief site: Okay, so someone beat us to the domain name, but we're not complaining. Unlike us, the dude who runs this delightful alien art site, Tom Ross, is a real artist. And he has some real cool stuff for sale, such as T-shirts.

 Dilbert: We don't want to be the only web site on the Net to not have a link to Scott Adams' ongoing skewering of the suits, particularly as we ourselves escaped from corporate America over 10 years ago, for many of the reasons depicted in Adams' comic strip.

 The Skeptical Skoundrels: The Skoundrels, aka Skeptical Shaun and Doubting Dave, are two cute and wacky guys who, it might be argued, also belong in the category below. But seeing as how they're pretty darned funny, we decided to put them up here with our favorite misfits. These guys have really been around; visit their site and you'll see gen-yoo-ine pictures of them with aliens and such. Seeing is believing! Though Shaun and Dave are careful to note that they don't speak for all skeptics, their site is a delightful introduction to skepticism (that is, unless you're on a first-name basis with the Face on Mars, but at least they provide an e-mail address for you to send your hate mail).

 Council for Secular Humanism (formerly CODESH): Originally the sister organization to CSICOP (see above), and since its inception a forum for thoughtful atheists, agnostics, humanists and miscellaneous free-thinkers. They also publish an intriguing magazine, Free Inquiry.

 The Skeptic: From our friends in the UK, this magazine represents yet another worthy attempt to provide a counter-balance to the angels, UFOs and rampant miracles that seem to have broken out all over the planet.

 Russell Sipe: We discovered publisher and author Russell Sipe during the Comet Hale-Bopp hoo-ha back in November of 1996. (Russell was one of the voices of sanity amidst the apocalyptic hysteria surrounding the comet and its "mysterious companion.") Russell has an impressive resume; he founded the world's first computer game magazine, and has created many spiffy web sites, including Sky&Tel's DEEP IMPACT Web Site, and Halebopp.Com, one of the most popular astronomy sites on the Internet.

 False Memory Syndrome Foundation: This international organization, formed in 1992 to help families being falsely accused of incest and other forms of abuse, has served as a clearinghouse for information about the recovered/repressed memory debate. Side note: One of the organization's founders, Dr. Pamela Freyd, Ph.D., is co-author of Smiling Through the Tears, an informative and entertaining book about false memories and related topics. The book is chock-full of cartoons, including a reprint of a cartoon from Cosmic Relief (the Cosmic reprint appears on page 58).

 The Neural Surfer: Controversial San Diego cult-buster David Christopher Lane, whom we first discovered in his guise as an Eckankar debunker, has created a freewheeling site that covers a lot of ground, spiritually and philosophically speaking. For over 20 years, Lane has been infuriating true believers with his books and articles exposing the plagiaries, lies and scandals of various new religious movements. You'll get a taste of it all on this site, which, in addition to Eckankar, takes on Da Free John, cults, consciousness studies, Ken Wilber, Deepak Chopra, Sathya Sai Baba, mysticism, the development of new religious movements in North America, Indian and American gurus, Eastern and Western philosophy, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, parapsychology, ethics, and theosophy. And when you're ready to take a break, there's some stuff about bodysurfing too. Whew.

 Eckankar: Once upon a time, we confess, we counted ourselves in the ranks of the Eckists. Back then, Eckankar's proud slogan was, "Not a religion...a way of life," and the organization seemed to take pains to distance themselves from mere religion. These days, however, they're "The Religion of the Light and Sound of God," and at least in our home town, they take out a weekly display ad in the religion section of the newspaper that rivals the great big ol' First Baptist Mega-Complex. Go figure.

 The Life Training: More grist for our confession mill. Yeah, we took the training...oops, make that Training, with a capital "T," many years ago. Obviously, it didn't take--which certainly doesn't mean it has no merit, just that we're not particularly trainable. We did, however, pick up a bunch of buzzwords--these folks were among the first to exploit the word "empowerment"--and we learned far more than we wanted to know about the sordid, seamy biographies of our fellow Trainees.

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