In this thread, Tris states, “Everything is on the Net”. And, in this thread, I said, “There’s pretty much everything and anything on the Net. I tell my daughter that it’s an infinite encylcopedia”.
So, here’s my quetsion: What, if anything, have you been unable to find on the Net? Why do I ask. Well, I’m generally curious to know what’s not out there and I also think that much, maybe all, of what you were unable to find actually is on the Net. In fact, that’s just happened to me. To comment in this thread, I was looking to find a good site regarding waiting lists for health care in Canada. I couldn’t, but puddleglum did.
Ok, this isn’t earth shattering, but I was trying to find something on the net today and was unable to do so. This is really really trivial. I was trying to find information about sweat shirts with the words “Spoiled Brat” emblazoned on the front.
You see some friends and I were at the local pool hall last weekend and there was this guy wearing one and we thought it was quite strange. This pool hall is an old time pool hall. It looks like something straight out of The Hustler or * The Color of Money*. It has a real billiards table and two or three snooker tables as well as 3 or 4 “regular” pool tables. The billiards table seems too be very popular with some of the visiting students from Asia. It was one of these guys that was wearing the shirt. It had just started to get cold for the first time this year and we figure the poor guy didn’t bring many warm clothes with him so he picked up this sweat shirt at a thrift shop. Not only did it have the aforementioned phrase in big plaid letters sewn onto it, but it also had a really big “S” in the middle.
We were trying to figure out who would have gotten such a thing in the first place. It could have been him. It just seemed so strange. I figured there must be some new youth movement that takes pride in declaring themselves spoiled brats or something. I could swear I have seen high school aged girls wearing such things in the past.
A couple of years ago I made the comment that “the Net is like those rivers in Texas – a mile wide and an inch deep” There seemed to be information on a lot of things, but most of it was extremely shallow. Since then it as gotten better (pretty impressive improvement for so short a time). But we’re still a very, very long way from having verything on the Net.
A real example: I was trying to find information on the prehistoric “armored fish” Deinichthys = Dinichthys. I WAS able to find through the Net that this beastie is now called “Dunkleosteus”, but that’s about it. Where did it live? When, exactly? Where can I find papers and refeences? I did a pretty iligent search with multiple search enginers, and found almost nothing. There might be a little more now (I haven’t tried today), but I’ll bet you can’t find much more than its name, its size, and when it lived.
I once went looking for info on milk carton collectors, and didn’t find any. ~ It got to be something of a (very) desperate way to pass the time at the store I work at to try to spot new/different milk crates in the empty stacks first, and after a few weeks we had seen more than 50 different kinds. Seeing an opportunity, I asked the store manager what the deposit on each was and if I could “buy” some. He sad it was a dollar each, and if I paid the deposit, he didn’t care how many I carted off. I envisioned myself as the Milk Carton King of the Midwest, wildly rich, pop-celebrity famous and universally liked. I would even arrange “goodwill” exchanges between different states- heck, even different countries, all in the name of promoting peace and harmony, because all milk cartons are really pretty much the same after all. It was gonna be all so Disney,
But I couldn’t find anybody who’d admit to actually collecting the things, much less wanting to admit to desiring different examples. -Pearls before swine.
A general collection of builder’s photos of railroad freight cars from the 1940’s and '50’s.
Critical evaluations of the various small claims court programs on TV, such as Judge Judy and The People’s Court.
Cartoons by an English artist who goes by the name of Donald Parsnips. I saw some of his stuff in Paris a few years ago; apparently he now does a weekly strip for the Independent (UK) newspaper.
A good explanation as to why badgers can be found in so many places worldwide.
The approximate dates of construction for the first ready-mix cement plants, and when frozen pot poes were first marketed.
Not saying that sites covering these items don’t exist, just that I haven’t found them.
I was looking for information on the sound that a platypus makes and was unable to find it. I was really hoping to be able to hear the actual sounds, but would have been satisfied with a general description of what the sounds were. I found plenty of information on platypuses (platypi?) but nothing on their sounds.
I have a friend from Costa Rica. A couple of months ago, I told him to give me ANYTHING in the world that he could think of to find. He had never really experienced the internet, and I was ready to WOW him.
The MFer told me to find a picture of a Costa Rican Ox Cart. It turns out his father worked his whole life making Ox Carts.
No problem I thought…
I pulled up ten thousand Ox Cart pictures in under a minute. I even pulled up directions on how to MAKE an Ox cart.
None of this was good enough. It seems the Costa Ricans have a SPECIAL ox cart, and Icould not find it.
So that is what I could not find, a picture of a Costa Rican ox cart.
I did find that sight in my search but the one we saw wasn’t like those at all. It was more tasteful than that, if a sweat shirt that exclaims that the wearer is a spoiled brat can be considered tasteful. It was just plaid letters sewn on to the shirt. I guess I was expecting to find some sort of spoiled brat underworld or something. I was really hoping to find an explanation of why someone would want such a thing.
I think I’ll take a different tack on this question. What can you NOT find on the Internet? Reality. Let me explain with an anecdote.
One day my yard guy was out mowing my lawn when it started to rain. He came inside, and I told him to take a break, and I’d show him something cool. I had just discovered satellite weather pictures on the net (this was a LONG time ago) and I said I’d check the weather for him, in just a few seconds we’d know whether more rain was coming or not. But there were some technical glitches, and I struggled for about 15 minutes to download the picture. As I was still pounding on the keyboard, my yard guy went over to the window and said, “hey look, it stopped raining!”
A lot of medical stuff I’ve looked for on the web is in proprietary journals.
More to the point, there was a derivative skateboarder T-shirt showing Betty kissing Veronica in a provocative sort of way. I’d be interested to know where they are commercially available.
Granted many of the things I try to search down are either obscure, or I just haven’t enough info to enter into a search engine. Usually I’ll then post it here, hoping my inadequate memory will at least spark someone out there. In most cases it has. Thanks again, bibliphage for answering many of them.
However, I now feel rather certain that I may go to my grave never knowing what that Russian line Chekov uttered in Star Trek III was, what old TV western purportedly captured a UFO flying by in the background, or what the real story was behind the squad of Marines who cared for a Japanese baby through the battle for Okinawa.
And at the moment, I’m trying to coax a recent photograph of British actress Eve Matheson out of Google.
All in all, ain’t the Net, and especially SDMB, grand?!