bibtex url

[Lepore, Bryan]

i'd like to shut something off.  i'm not sure what it is or where to start.  
the symptoms :

when i have a .bib file loaded, a url mode is obviously working.  when the 
mouse cursor encounters the url line - not clicking - emacs seems to be getting 
ready to do something (maybe launch a browser).  since i don't want to do 
anything with a url really, the cursor is moved away from the url.  however, 
what this means over a slow connection is whatever is going on (usually 2% 
cpu?), X stalls until X knows emacs isn't going  to launch a browser, or 
whatever it does.

i tried googling obvious things like bibtex emacs mode, but i'm not getting far.

-bryan