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The Scout Report
December 1, 2006
Volume 12, Number 48
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A publication of the Internet Scout Project.
Sponsored by University of Wisconsin - Madison Libraries.
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==   I N   T H E   S C O U T   R E P O R T   T H I S   W E E K  ========



====== Research and Education ====
1.  Harvard Public Health Review
2.  Center for Christian-Jewish Learning
3.  Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion
4.  Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project
5.  Ask Philosophers
6.  Famous Curves Index
7.  Virtual Labs
8.  Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students

====== General Interest ====
9.  Novel Ideas
10. Snowflakes and Snow Crystals
11. The Cornell Daily Sun Digitization Project
12. Digital Sheet Music Collection: University of Colorado
13. Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth
14. Project Matterhorn
15. 20 voices
16. Restaurant Doctor

====== Network Tools ====
17. Wufoo
18. CallingID for the Internet 1.5.0.150

====== In The News ====
19. Manholes, traffic lights, and tobacco barns intrigue curious explorers
of the built environment


====== Research and Education ====

1.  Harvard Public Health Review
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/review/

Harvard University's School of Public Health has a number of online outreach
websites that address such topics as alcohol use among college students and
HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in the developing world. These topics and
many others are covered in detail in the Harvard Public Health Review, which
is available on this site. One of the more recent issues addressed public
health concerns in China and India such as HIV/AIDS and these two countries'
respective national health care systems. Currently, visitors have access to
issues that date back to Fall 1998. Another feature of the site allows users
to sign up to receive the latest edition of the Review via email. [KMG]


2.  Center for Christian-Jewish Learning [pdf]
http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/

The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College "is dedicated to
the growth of new and mutually enriching relationships between Christians
and Jews." To achieve this goal, the Center has established a wide range of
outreach efforts, including lectures, seminars, and a number of publications
and newsletters. On their site, visitors can learn about these events, and
should also start their online journey by looking directly at the "Center
Archives" section. Here visitors will find archived news bulletins from the
Center and the splendid "Documents Depository". The Depository contains a
number of primary texts on Christian-Jewish relations, most of which are
focused on the United States and the Vatican. Visitors can use a search
engine to look over these documents, or they can browse around at their
leisure. The site is rounded out by a collection of streaming videos that
include panel discussions on such topics as German Protestant theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a noted Nazi resistor. [KMG]


3.  Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion [pdf]
http://www.lawandreligion.com/

Law schools are known for their efforts to create online law journals, and
the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion was the "first online legal journal
dedicated to the study of the dynamic interaction between law and religion."
Started in 1999, the journal has published dozens of articles written by law
students at Rutgers, and they have covered subjects such as the role of
faith-based institutions in community development and the status of female
refugees. Visitors can browse through their online archives to read these
articles, and they may also wish look over their "New Developments" section.
Here they will find brief summaries of current issues in law and religion.
With its broad scope, this online journal will be of interest to those in
the legal field, or those who might be looking for inspiration to start
their own journal in this area. [KMG]


4.  Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project [Windows Media Player]
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/

With its diverse ethnic groups and civic-minded citizens, the city of
Seattle has been a beacon for people seeking an open-minded urban experience
for decades. The story of Seattle's past is a complex one, and this well-
thought out website explores some of the complex struggles for civil rights
in the area over the past one hundred years. Based at the University of
Washington, the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project has worked to
document the stories of civil rights activists in the area, and also present
reports on segregation in Seattle and the various newspapers that have
represented the city's communities of color. Visitors to the site can listen
to some of these activists talk about their lives and read some of their
Research Reports, which include "The Chicano Movement in Washington State,
1967-2006" and "The 1920 Anti-Japanese Crusade and Congressional Hearings".
[KMG]


5.  Ask Philosophers
http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/

From time to time, all of us have wondered to ourselves any number of
philosophical questions, ranging from "What is love?" to "How can we know
what is true?" These are both very compelling questions, and most people
probably would like to know a bit more about each one of these queries.
Fortunately, the year 2005 saw the launch of this website, whose dictum is
"You Ask. Philosophers answer." Visitors can pose a question, and if it
hasn't been answered in detail already, one of the participating
philosophers will respond in a few days with an answer. Visitors can also
just browse through previously answered questions on the left-hand side of
the homepage, where they will find categories that include animals,
business, children, feminism, and rationality. Visitors can also learn a bit
more about the site's conception and purpose here, and they will be pleased
to learn that there is a nice list of related sites offered, which includes
links to the radio show, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Philosophy,
complete with archives. [KMG]


6.  Famous Curves Index
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Curves/Curves.html

Throughout history, there have been many famous curves. In this case, the
famous curves profiled here have names such as rhodonea, right strophoid,
and the Kampyle of Eudoxus. These curves belong to the world of the
mathematical sciences, and they are offered up for teachers and the
generally curious by the staff at the School of Mathematics and Statistics
at the University of St. Andrews. Visitors can scroll through the complete
list of curves (there are over eighty here), and click on each one for an
illustration and a listing of the equation that would create such a curve.
The site is rounded out by an interactive map that lets users learn about
the birthplaces of famous mathematicians from Leibniz to Babbage. [KMG]


7.  Virtual Labs [Shockwave]
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/vlabs/index.html

Over the past few years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's
Biointeractive website has garnered critical acclaim from a number of
international organizations that evaluate various multimedia products that
educate Internet users about science and technology. Most recently, their
Virtual Labs area on the site has been well-received, and they are visually
entrancing and easy to use. Currently, the site contains five full virtual
labs, and they include those that allow students to learn how to identify
various bacteria and another one that casts participants as a young intern
who is learning how to identify heritable diseases of the heart. Each
virtual lab contains resources for instructors, along with an interactive
quiz. [KMG]


8.  Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students [pdf]
http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/

Writing can be a formidable task, and at times, there can be few things more
frightening than the emptiness of a blank page. The good people at the
University of Vermont are aware of this fact, and this helpful website will
be of use to both students and educators alike. The site is divided into
sections that contain resources for students and instructors, and visitors
will find the homepage easy to navigate. Some of the specific resources
include short pieces on how to write for different audiences and how to
design both presentation slides and scientific posters. After looking over
these materials, visitors can also look at sample memos, letters, and
resumes as well. Finally, the site is rounded out by several presentations
that can be used by instructors in the classroom. [KMG]



====== General Interest ====

9.  Novel Ideas [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6484932

Writers block comes up on all of us, and at times, it can manifest itself at
the most inconvenient times. The good folks at National Public Radio decided
to ask a number of authors about their own experiences with both writer's
block and creating novels, and their findings are contained within the heart
of this website. Visitors to the site can peer into the minds of Scott
Turow, Blue Balliett, Geraldine Brooks, along with numerous others here.
After reading their responses, visitors can also view a list of related web
resources, including links to previous NPR stories on the author in
question, or they can also chime in with their own questions and comments.
Additionally, visitors can sign up to receive notifications of newly added
author interviews via an RSS feed. [KMG]


10. Snowflakes and Snow Crystals
http://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Eatomic/snowcrystals/

Professor Kenneth Libbrecht at Caltech University is very interested in
crystal growth and pattern formation in ice. So interested in fact, he went
ahead and created this lovely website that documents the very wide, and very
interesting world, of "snowflakes, snow crystals, and other ice phenomena."
First-time visitors should look over the "Snowflake Physics" section, which
includes a snowflake primer, crystal faceting, and of course, a set of
musings on that much-discussed question: "Is it really true that no two
snowflakes are alike?" The site also contains a section on "Historic
Snowflakes", which contains the thoughts and insights of Johannes Kepler,
Rene Descartes and Robert Hooke (among others) on mysteries of snowflakes
and snow crystals.  The site is rounded out by clutch of snow activities,
snowflake "hot spots", and a snowflake image for users' desktops.  [KMG]


11. The Cornell Daily Sun Digitization Project [pdf]
http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/

College newspapers can be a veritable treasure trove of information about
the cultural and social life of a given institution, and the Cornell Daily
Sun is certainly no exception. Recently, the Cornell University Library and
the Daily Sun embarked on a new digitization project to provide online
access to previous editions of the paper dating back to the year 1880.
First-time visitors to the site may want to start by just browsing through
some of the back issues in all of their detail. Of course, visitors can also
perform advanced and basic searches, but it should be noted that just typing
in "Ithaca" will return many, many results. Other interesting searches
include "Stalin" and "Saul Alinsky", and no doubt there are others that will
pique the interest of even the most casual user of this site. [KMG]


12. Digital Sheet Music Collection: University of Colorado
http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/music/smp/index.html

Do you know the enchanting song that begins with the lyric "You may talk of
golden strands, In the distant foreign lands"? Perhaps not, but if you
browse over to the Digital Sheet Music Collection at the University of
Colorado you can learn all of the words to "Colorado, My Own", a ditty which
was all the rage in 1916. So far, several hundred pieces of sheet music are
currently available, all of which have been selected from the University's
own collection of approximately 150,000 items. Visitors to the site can
learn about the digitization process, peruse a list of additional sheet
music sites, and of course browse the complete archive of digitized songs by
title or theme. [KMG]


13. Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.sfmoma.org/kiefer/index.html

Heaven and Earth, a major exhibition by German artist Anselm Kiefer,
organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, has traveled to Montreal
and Washington DC. SFMOMA, Heaven and Earth's final North American venue,
October 2006 - January 2007, presents this interactive web feature to
accompany the show. The exhibition includes over 40 paintings, made from the
wide variety of materials that Kiefer typically uses in his work - clay,
lead, ash, sand, gold leaf, dried plants and bits of machinery, as well as
techniques such as melting, rubbing with dirt, and burning. Kiefer's
paintings tend towards the monumental - <i>The Hierarchy of Angels</i>,
1986-87, loaned by the Walker Art Museum, is roughly 10 x 20 feet - but the
Web feature makes up for its size limitations by allowing you to study
details of paintings up close. For example, you can zoom in on the rough
hunks of lead that Kiefer calls meteorites in <i>Angels</i>, as well as
examining the iconography of another painting, <i>Osiris and Isis</i>, 1985-
87.  You can also hear Kiefer speak about his work in excerpts of a
videotaped interview conducted at the Tate Modern in London, June 5, 2005
[DS]


14. Project Matterhorn
http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=ppl1

Most people have heard of the Manhattan Project, but a great many have
probably never heard of Project Matterhorn. Started under the leadership of
Lyman Spitzer at Princeton University in 1951, this was the code name given
to a controlled thermonuclear research effort. With support from Princeton
and the US Atomic Energy Commission, Spitzer began to outline the basic
concept for creating the stellarator, which was a device for confining and
heating ionized hydrogen gas to release fusion energy for the production of
power. Recently, the Digital Collections group at Princeton digitized many
of the primary documents associated with this project, and this site
represents their fine efforts thus far. On the site, visitors can view the
documents that described the proposed stellarator, and other documents which
discuss how various particles and bodies might interact within this device.
[KMG]


15. 20 voices [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.twentyvoices.com/

Over 85 years have passed since the Armenian Genocide of 1915, but the
families of those that endured this event have not forgotten about this
tremendous tragedy. This website, designed in conjunction with a recent
documentary, tells some of the stories from that time, and it also offers an
overview of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire before and during 1915.
First-time users will want to start by viewing the 8-minute video that
provides a comprehensive introduction to these events. After viewing this
film, visitors can view an interactive section that talks about Armenian
life in Turkey. Overall, the website is visually engaging, and one can
imagine that it could be well-suited for use in the classroom as part of a
discussion on cultural geography. [KMG]


16. Restaurant Doctor
http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/index.html

Most people probably don't want to hear the words "restaurant" and "doctor"
in the same sentence, but for those seeking assistance with managing their
own restaurant, hearing those two words together may be just the tonic they
require. The restaurant doctor in question here is Bill Marvin, and he has
created this site for those seeking free resources that address the
mercurial nature of the restaurant business. Visitors can click on over to
the "Free Resources" section and take a look at Marvin's helpful electronic
newsletter, which contains insights on everything from maintaining staff
morale to dealing with changes in the industry. Additionally, visitors can
pose queries on relevant topics on the restaurant forums that are available
here. [KMG]



====== Network Tools ====

17. Wufoo
http://www.wufoo.com/

Creating online forms for everyday use can be difficult, and some may just
throw up their hands and hire a programmer or consultant. But before making
that call, users may want to try Wufoo. Wufoo lets users create all types of
online forms quickly, including mailing lists, surveys, invitations, and
event calendars. This version is compatible with all computers running
Windows 98 and newer. [KMG]


18. CallingID for the Internet 1.5.0.150
http://www.callingid.com/Default.aspx

Caller ID was a novel feature that entered the world of telecommunications
over a decade ago, and the more one thinks about it, it would make sense to
have something similar for websurfing as well. This application
automatically shows whether sites visited are real or not, and it also
displays the site owner's name and physical address. This version is
compatible with computers running Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, and 2003. [KMG]



====== In The News ====

19. Manholes, traffic lights, and tobacco barns intrigue curious explorers
of the built environment
When Traffic Lights Make Us Stop and Think [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6528475

Tobacco Barns: Stately Relics of a Bygone Era [Real Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6536351

Celebrate Tobacco Barns
http://www.hpo.dcr.state.nc.us/ctb/ctb.htm

Vernacular Architecture of the World: Great Buildings Online
http://www.greatbuildings.com/types/styles/vernacular.html

Covers to Discover
http://www.covers-to-discover.com/gb/

Traffic Signal Museum
http://www.trafficsignalmuseum.com/

Around this time of year, most people are running around to meet up with
family and friends for holiday gatherings and life is most certainly a bit
more hectic. With all of these added responsibilities, it is no wonder that
most people aren't probably actively thinking about those facets of the
human-built world that seem quite mundane. Fortunately, there are people out
there who are interested in these tiny details, and they are continuing to
document these interesting, and sometimes overlooked, aspects of our world.
One such person is Brian Hayes, who happened to be interviewed on National
Public Radio this past week. Hayes is a student of industrial landscapes,
and he has spent the past fifteen years researching fire hydrants, power
lines, and of course the ubiquitous manholes. Along with others who are
concerned with the fate of vernacular buildings such as tobacco barns, Hayes
and his like continue to work to understand the roles that these features of
the landscape play in our daily lives. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to a National Public Radio (NPR) piece on
the work of Brian Hayes, and it contains a number of insights into the
things that one might encounter in an industrial landscape. The second link
leads to another NPR piece from this Tuesday that discusses the long decline
of the tobacco barn (and the accompanying farms) in Kentucky. Moving along,
the third link leads to the "Celebrate Tobacco Barns" site offered by the
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Office of Archives and
History. Here, visitors can read about the different types of tobacco barns,
and also view a map that indicates where the remaining barns in the state
are located. The fourth link will take users to the Vernacular Architecture
page at the Great Buildings Online site, where they can learn about
everything from a yurt to the igloo. The fifth link leads to the Covers to
Discover website, where visitors will learn about the great manhole covers
of the world. Lastly, the final link leads to the Traffic Signal Museum,
which serves as an online repository documenting the various traffic signals
of the world, including such models as the four-way beacon and the stoic
single face model. [KMG]





>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2006.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

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