Science News “Shuffle” Philosophy
 

As I stated on the Purpose page: “Sassafras4u closely reflects the way I prefer being presented with my daily hit of science news: serendipitously and without preconceptions about what I will be interested in.”

I don't like to predetermine what I might be interested in reading and I make a deliberate effort to avoid immediately beginning to browse in the "research mode" (trying to find new information about a specific narrow topic).

I enjoy being constantly surprised to read about a subject that I never beforehand suspected I was interested. As you use this site, I hope you’ll find this to be true for you as well.

I like to think of it as my iPod Shuffle for news: I know I’ll be interested in whatever comes up but don’t know exactly what will show up next.

This is very much like visiting a museum with diverse exhibitions: you may go specifically to see one particular exhibition but then find yourself even more interested, once you're there, in another, completely different one.
 

“Sci/tech Articles”

You may notice that my definition of what constitutes a “sci/tech article” is rather broad. You’ll also find miscellaneous articles thrown in here and there that are humorous or deal with food, for example, but this merely reflects my current interests.
 

Personal Archive

The ability to use my favorite search engine to scan the Internet for specific information is still available to me as before but now I have the additional capability of conveniently searching my own personal archive of articles, adding to my growing archive each day.
 

Browser’s “Find” Function

The collection of an entire month’s spreadsheets is available for download as a single compressed archive.

Once expanded, each day’s spreadsheet can be dragged into your browser window to view. Remember that you can always search the spreadsheet for specific words by using your browser’s “Find (in this page)” function.
 

Desktop Search Engine

Since the spreadsheet (html) files are also just text files, I know that they will be included in any search I perform using my favorite desktop search engines, such as Spotlight on the Mac or Google desktop.

As well, any text-file articles that I have stored in my archive will be included in this search, ensuring that I will be able to easily retrieve articles I’ve saved.