The Scout Report - February 28, 1997

February 28, 1997

A Publication of Internet Scout
Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin

A Project of the InterNIC

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML). Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.

IMF Working Papers (1997+) [.pdf]
http://www.imf.org/external/pubind.htm
click on: Working Papers
International Monetary Fund
http://www.imf.org/
As of January, 1997, the International Monetary Fund has begun to provide full text (Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only) of its Working Papers. At present 17 papers are available, on such topics as India's saving performance, the effect labor market policies and growth fundamentals have on OECD countries, the Austrian pension system, and business cycles in Asia and Latin America, among others. Print copy price information and selected abstracts are available. As the IMF has produced an average of 127 Working Papers per year since 1991, this promises to be a major economic working paper repository. The IMF also provides other services from its home page, highlighted by its Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board--metadata records about economic, financial, and demographic data produced by some 27 countries at present, with 15 more expected soon. [JS]
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Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
http://otal.umd.edu/~rccs/
No-frames version:
http://otal.umd.edu/~rccs/noframes.html
"Cyberculture is a collection of cultures and cultural products that exist on and/or are made possible by the Internet, along with the stories told about these cultures and cultural products." This working definition is put forth by the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (RCCS), a not-for-profit organization directed by David Silver of the American Studies Program at the University of Maryland. RCCS hopes to foster a web community where students, researchers, and web builders alike can collaborate and share experiences and projects in the area of cyberculture. Here you will find in one place syllabi for over thirty higher education courses in the US and Canada devoted to cyberculture dating from 1993 to the present. RCCS has also included an annotated bibliography of print articles and monographs on "Cyberculture in Context," "Virtual Communities," "Virtual Cities," and Virtual Identities," as well as a list of recent and upcoming events and conferences addressing cyberculture. [AG]
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Global Environment Outlook-1 Report (UNEP)
http://www.unep.org/unep/eia/geo1/
The United Nations Environment Programme has recently released this report, "a snap-shot of an ongoing worldwide environmental assessment process." It "describes the environmental status and trends in seven regions...summarizes developments over time in regional policy responses...[and] concludes with an exploration, based on model analysis, of what we might expect in the future for a selected number of environmental issues if no major policy reforms are initiated." An executive summary for each chapter is first presented, followed by the full report, which contains over seventy figures and thirty tables. The power of the report lies in its regional analysis. A second GEO report is due to be released in 1999. [JS]
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Black History in Words and Pictures
African American Perspectives--Library of Congress
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html
American Slave Narratives
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/wpa/wpahome.html
Portrait of Black Chicago--NARA
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/americanimage/chicago/white1.html
These three sites provide a glimpse into the richness of African American History. African American Perspectives is a famous pamphlet collection from the Library of Congress American Memory Collection, containing over 350 pamphlets (browsable and searchable) on all aspects of African American history from the early 19th to early 20th centuries. Pamphlets are available in text, SGML, (Standardized General Markup Language) and as .tif images. American Slave Narratives, provided by the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia, contains a small sample of WPA (Works Progress Administration) interviews with former slaves conducted between 1936 and 1938. The small selections from twelve interviews are interesting in that the WPA interviewers tried to transcribe the subjects' dialect as they heard it. Portrait of Black Chicago, a new exhibit from the National Archives and Records Administration, contains nineteen annotated photos by John H. White, a Chicago newspaper photographer, taken for the Environmental Protection Agency's DOCUAMERICA project in the 1970s. The photos provide a "slice of life" of African American Chicago in the early 1970s. [JS]
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History of Mathematics
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/mathhist/mathhist.html
History of Mathematics, provided by David E. Joyce of Clark University's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, contains some unique material including the Regional Mathematics, Chronology, and Timelines sections. Chronology and Timelines each provide timelines for mathematicians BCE and CE in both Western and non-Western civilizations. Regional Mathematics takes the same approach, but first the user chooses a part of the world which s/he is interested in. The site's strengths are its timelines, while its weakness is that the differences between these three core areas are not easily distinguishable. [ATW]
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Expanding Universe: A Classified Search Tool for Amateur Astronomy
http://www.mtrl.toronto.on.ca/centres/bsd/astronomy/
This site, produced by the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, makes it easy for the amateur astronomer, K-12 student or teacher, or interested Internaut to find quality sites quickly. Expanding Universe is organized according to Dewey Decimal Classification, with main entries for: general astronomy sites; observatories, telescopes, and equipment; deep sky and solar system bodies and phenomena; and Earth. Within each category, there are numerous sub-categories. The site also contains an alphabetical terms list for those who prefer that kind of access. While in no way exhaustive, Expanding Universe is a good place to start for the amateur astronomer. [JS]
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H-TEACHPOL: Teaching Post-Secondary Political Science Discussion List
H-TEACHPOL is dedicated to the discussion of issues regarding political science teaching in post-secondary settings. It is a forum to discuss the role of political science teaching within the larger framework of liberal learning, to examine current trends in higher education (e.g., distance learning, service learning, integration of new technologies, assessment, outcome-based evaluation, and declining enrollment in political science courses), to share information about the latest teaching innovations, especially those related to technology and experiential education, and to promote exemplary teaching within the political science discipline. The list is co-sponsored by the American Political Science Association's Organized Sections on Computers and Multimedia and Undergraduate Education, and H-Net (Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine, discussed in the June 14, 1996 Scout Report). [JS]

To join H-TEACHPOL, please send a message to:
listserv@h-net.msu.edu
In the body of the message, type:
sub H-TEACHPOL firstname lastname, institution
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India Ministry of Finance 1997-98 Budget and 1997 Economic Survey
http://indiabudget.nic.in/
Mirror sites
http://www.nic.in/indiabudget/
http://kar.nic.in:443/indiabudget/
The Ministry of Finance of India has made 1997-98 budget documents and a 1997 Economic Survey available at its web site. Budget documents include the budget speech presented by the Finance Minister to Parliament, and an annual financial statement, among other items. The Economic Survey is a narrative thumbnail sketch of the performance of all aspects of the Indian economy for 1995-6, and is accompanied by many statistical tables. [JS]
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1997 UK Elections
General Election 97
http://www.ge97.co.uk/
Site map:
http://www.ge97.co.uk/site/
UK Online Politics
http://www.ukonline.co.uk/
For those Internauts interested in following the upcoming UK general elections, these two sites are good places to start. GE 97, provided by Online Magic, is a compendium of news and information about the elections, highlighted by news stories drawn from various sources, along with primers on the parties and issues, poll data and several frames-based debate forums. UKOnline Politics, provided by the Internet service provider of the same name, is most useful as a meta-site for the elections. It contains pointers to party, election, think-tank, government, and budget sites. [JS]
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FRB Chairman Greenspan Testimony and Speeches
FRB Testimony
http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/BOARDDOCS/TESTIMONY/
FRB Speeches
http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/
Some feel that every time US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Allan Greenspan speaks, the US stock market shudders. He gave testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on February 26, 1997 and the Dow Jones industrial average plunged over 55 points that day (after a rebound from a 122 point loss). You can read the chairman's testimony and his recent speeches at the Federal Reserve Board site (the speeches and testimony of other officials are also available). Read the speeches and testimony, watch the market, and judge for yourself the power of one man in the US economy. [JS]
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Consumer World
http://www.consumerworld.org/
"Consumer World has gathered over 1400 of the most useful consumer resources on the Internet." The brain child of Edgar Dworsky, a consumer education consultant for the Federal Trade Commission, the site offers information on issues from the latest FTC scam to consumer banking to hospital rankings to tax cutting tips to cheap airline flights and more. Information is arranged in myriad, sometimes overlapping, ways. It often takes a few clicks to access specific information, but perseverance will reveal that this site is content-rich. [ATW]
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UExpress--Comics and columns
http://www.uexpress.com/
Universal Press Syndicate and Andrews & McMeel (a publisher and distributor) have put together this site featuring twenty-nine comic strips, Dear Abby, the Bad Golfers Association and an opinion section with William Buckley and Chuck Shepherd, among others. Each comic is updated daily (but two weeks after the original has appeared in the press), and there is an archive of previous strips, a "meet the creator" feature, and bonuses such as the results from Tank McNamara's "Who is the Sports Jerk of the Year?" poll. [ATW]
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Two Music Mailing Lists
UMML-PUB--Underground Music Mailing Lists
http://www.shadow.net/~mwaas/umml.html
CCML--Country Club Mailing List (see subscription information below)
UMML is a weekly periodical, mailing list, database, and information repository dedicated to providing a comprehensive listing of all music-related mailing lists of an underground nature. It pertains to all underground musical genres. It also contains information on nightclubs, radio, e-zines, DJ'ing, music production and composition, concerts and regional information. The UMML-PUB mailing list is dedicated to submission and updates to the UMML database, and issues concerning the existence and/or creation of new mailing lists.

To subscribe send email to:
majordomo@zerius.victoria.bc.ca
In the body of the message type:
subscribe umml-pub

http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/ccml.html
The Country Club Mailing List is a list for discussion about country music and its artists. Open discussion is encouraged regarding the current state of country music, its past and its future. [JS]

To subscribe send email to:
listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu
In the subject of the message type:
subscribe CCML firstname lastname
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A Domain is Born: How Ideas Become Addresses at the InterNIC
http://rs.internic.net/nic-support/nicnews/feb97/regproc.html
Robin Murphy of InterNIC Information and Education services has written this article in the February 1996 issue of the InterNIC News. It provides a concise ten step program that will help prepare you to acquire a domain name and establish an Internet presence. InterNIC, as the global registrar for the .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov domains, is the place most people will acquire their domain names. The article clearly describes the process, from preparation to payment, and is a good place to start for those who wish to acquire a name, but know little about the process. [JS]
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NCSA Ends Active Development of Mosaic Browser
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/NCSAMosaicHome.html
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, the creator of Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, has announced discontinuation of active development of the browser. Now that development in browser technology has become almost exclusively the domain of the private sector, perhaps this is a good time to pause, remember, and appreciate the institution and program that started it all. [JS]
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WebWomen-Graphics--From design to creation to manipulation discussion list
The WebWomen-Graphics list is an offshoot from the WebWomen-HTML mailing list (discussed in the June 21, 1996 issue of the Scout Report). WebWomen-Graphics covers anything pertaining to the creation and/or manipulation of computer graphics, from design to rendering to photo-manipulation to optimizing graphics for web work. [JS]

To subscribe send email to:
webwomen-graphics-request@niestu.com
In the subject of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1994-1997. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

The Scout Report is published weekly by Internet Scout

Susan Calcari
Jack Solock
Matthew Livesey
Teri Boomsma
Aimee D. Glassel
Amy Tracy Wells
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The Scout Report - February 28, 1997

February 28, 1997

Research and Education

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