The Scout Report
August 21, 1998
A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators. 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.
An Acrobat .pdf version of this report is available for printing and distributing locally. For information on Adobe Acrobat Reader, visit the Adobe site.
New From Internet Scout
Research and Education
- Astrobrowse--NASA HEASARC
- Choice Web Reviews URLs
- The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library [IPIX]
- Ecological Regions of North America: Toward a Common Perspective--CEC
- Worldwide Directory of Population Institutions--UN POPIN [Frames]
- Jane's Internet Defense Glossary
- Indiana University Online Copyright Tutorial
General Interest
- Reference re Secession of Quebec--Supreme Court of Canada
- Voting and Registration in the Election of 1996 (P20-504)--US Census Bureau [.pdf]
- Go For IT!--USDOC
- Deutche Bahn European Train Timetables [Java]
- Foodwine.com
- Wrestling as We Liked It: The WAWLI Papers
Network Tools
- W3C Publishes First Public Working Draft of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 1.0
- iMacworld
- President's Information Technology Advisory Committee Interim Report to the President, August 1998
Where Are They Now
Scout Report for Science & Engineering
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/sci-engr/
Volume 1, Number 24 of the Scout Report for Science & Engineering is available. It annotates over twenty new and newly discovered Internet resources in the physical & life sciences and engineering. The In the News section annotates five resources on Near-Earth Asteroids--Hollywood Hype or Scientific Reality? [JS]
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Astrobrowse--NASA HEASARC
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ab/
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center maintains this site, a one-stop gateway for astronomers who are interested in searching for astronomical objects in multiple catalogs. Three interfaces are available at present, a quick overview, a comprehensive resource tree, and a keyword search. Users simply input the name of the object and/or location information, choose any or all of the resources, and enter the search. In addition to HEASARC resources, the site queries high energy data, Optical/UV, Infrared, and Radio/Microwave data catalogs, among others. [JS]
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Choice Web Reviews URLs
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/supurl1.html
Choice Special Issue Purchasing Information
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/98sup.html
The second annual edition of Choice magazine's Web supplement is available, and this site contains links to 482 reviewed sites. Of these, 390 are compiled from reviews in the magazine dating back to the August 1997 Web supplement, and 93 are newly reviewed. Twenty-five major topics are covered in the areas of Reference, Humanities, Science & Technology, and Social & Behavioral Sciences. "Teaching faculty and librarians at academic institutions in the U.S. and Canada" choose and review sites relevant to undergraduate academic libraries. Choice is a product of the Association of College & Research Libraries, part of the American Library Association. Note that this site contains URLs only. For the reviews, three special articles, and a listing of forthcoming Internet related books, magazine purchasing information is provided. [JS]
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The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library [IPIX]
http://www.frick.org/
IPIX Navigation Instructions
http://www.ipix.com/support/fmnavsupport.html
FRESCO Online Catalog
telnet://fresco.frick.org
Telnet to: fresco.frick.org
One of the great steel and railroad barons of the last century, Henry Clay Frick used some of his wealth to amass an awesome collection of art, which he bequeathed to the public upon his death in 1919. Visitors to the Frick site can browse through over 120 of the 1,100 artworks in the collection, including paintings (an eclectic selection of works by Bellini, Constable, Gainsborough, El Greco, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, among others), sculpture, and decorative arts. This can be most easily accessed through the Collection link (select The Frick Collection from the homepage). Each image is accompanied by an annotation and bibliographic information. Those with higher bandwidth connections can take the Virtual Tour and browse the collection via the IPIX Virtual Reality plug-in. Links from the art to the annotations are available. The site also features a link to the Frick Collection's Art Library (select Art Library from the homepage), which is highlighted by the availability of FRESCO (Frick Research Catalog Online), a telnet resource with bibliographic information about more than 40,000 books, periodicals, and exhibition catalogs in the library. [JS]
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Ecological Regions of North America: Toward a Common Perspective--CEC
http://www.cec.org/ecomaps/anglais/index.html
CEC Publications: Environmental Conservation
http://www.cec.org/english/resources/publications/
The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (discussed in the November 12, 1997 Scout Report for Science & Engineering) has just placed online this magnificent resource on the Ecological Regions of North America. Available in English, Spanish, or French, the publication may be browsed on-site or downloaded (.pdf format). Ecological Regions of North America was created as part of a major regional effort "to redraw the North American map in terms of ecosystems and ecological regions instead of political boundaries." The heart of the site is the hyperlinked color map of North American ecological regions; clicking on each ecological region will transport the user to detailed sections providing photos, descriptions, and case studies. For French or Spanish versions, select "Environmental Conservation" on the CEC Publications page. [LXP]
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Worldwide Directory of Population Institutions--UN POPIN [Frames]
http://www.visitus.com/~unpopdir/
The United Nations Population Information Network provides this compendium of population institutions drawn from various sources. The directory is browseable alphabetically, regionally, and by organization type, as well as searchable (although the search interface is not well developed at this time). Listings for the hundreds of institutions in the directory includes contact information and hyperlinks when available. A customized personal listing may be downloaded as a comma separated value (.csv) file (if Javascript and cookies are enabled only). The directory is also available in various word processing formats. [JS]
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Jane's Internet Defense Glossary
http://www.janes.com/defence/resources/defres_gloss.html
Jane's Information Group, well-known publisher of defense and aerospace information, provides this handy, no-nonsense glossary of over 20,000 pertinent acronyms and abbreviations. The glossary is both browseable and searchable by acronym or definition. [JS]
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Indiana University Online Copyright Tutorial
http://www.lbs.lon.ac.uk/cef/
The Copyright Management Center of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) offers this email tutorial for Fall Semester 1998. The tutorial is designed "to help educators move away from the fearful image of copyright as an annoying or threatening beast and to work with copyright while maintaining focus on academic pursuits." Subscribers will receive approximately three messages per week, beginning September 2, 1998 and continuing throughout the semester. While the tutorial is aimed at educators, librarians, and staff at Indiana University, anyone is welcome to join the mailing list. Content is provided by the director of the CMC, Kenneth D. Crews, who is a Professor of Law and Library and Information Science, and John O'Donnell, a Library and Information Science graduate student. More information about the tutorial is available at the above URL. [JS]
To subscribe send email to:
listserv@listserv.iupui.edu
In the body of the message type:
sub Copyright-Online-L [your real name]
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Reference re Secession of Quebec--Supreme Court of Canada
http://www.droit.umontreal.ca/doc/csc-scc/en/pub/1998/vol2/index.html
Select: Reference re Secession of Quebec
The Supreme Court of Canada has issued an historic ruling on the constitutional right of Quebec to secede from the rest of the country. The ruling takes the form of the answers to three questions. 1) Under the Canadian Constitution, can the Quebec government unilaterally secede from Canada? 2) Does international law allow the Quebec government to unilaterally secede? 3) In the case of a conflict between #1 and #2, which would take precedence? The Court's ruling is available in multiple formats and in French and English. The University of Montreal's Center for Research in Public Law provides the decision, along with other Canadian Supreme Court decisions. [JS]
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Voting and Registration in the Election of 1996 (P20-504)--US Census Bureau [.pdf]
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/voting.html
The US Census Bureau, as part of its Current Population Survey, collects voting and registration data in congressional and presidential years. Recently, the Bureau has posted data from the 1996 elections online. Selected demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are presented in both text and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. Among the highlights of the report: 54 percent of the voting-age population voted in 1996, down from 61 percent in 1992; and only 66 percent of the voting-age population reported that they registered in 1996, the lowest registration rate since 1968. The site also contains information on the 1994 elections, some projection information, and several brief historical tables. [JS]
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Go For IT!--USDOC
http://www.ta.doc.gov/go4it/
The US Department of Commerce, partly as a result of the response to its recently published America's New Deficit: The Shortage of Information Technology Workers (discussed in the October 17, 1997 Scout Report), has created this site to aid in building and maintaining an information technology workforce. The key to the site is an IT work force program database, which lists education, employment, and training programs. The database is searchable by type of program, geography, sponsorship agency, and keyword. For an overview of the over 170 programs in the database at present, simply click on the Search button without using any of the options. Each entry contains address and contact information for the IT program, a hyperlink when available, and a detailed description of the program. The site will act as a resource clearinghouse for educators, companies, organizations, and individuals. Go for IT! actively solicits new programs for the database. [JS]
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Deutche Bahn European Train Timetables [Java]
http://bahn.hafas.de/english.html
Deutche Bahn AG offers this site, which is sure to be useful to European train travelers. The interactive train timetable allows the user to enter the city of departure and arrival, as well as the date and time, and returns the relevant train schedules. Users can also view station schedules, detailed route itineraries, and graphical route representations (Java). Pricing information is available for selected German routes only. The site is available in English and German. [JS]
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Foodwine.com
http://foodwine.com/
Those who like their Websites with the look and feel of a print publication will enjoy this great food-related webzine. Foodwine.com includes monthly feature articles, which review new cookbooks and include sample recipes, and regular columns with essays and recipes, such as Culinary Sleuth by Lynn Kerrigan. The July/August Culinary Sleuth celebrates the 61st birthday of Spam. Another highlight is Just Good Food...For Thought by John Ryan, a thoughtful chef and publisher of the Just Good Food newsletter, available by separate subscription. There are also links to recipe indexes, restaurant reviews, and a searchable archive. [DS]
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Wrestling as We Liked It: The WAWLI Papers
Usenet News Access
rec.sport.pro-wrestling.moderated
Partial Archive [Frames]
http://www.twc-online.com/MINISITE/WAWLI/
In America there are serious professional sports (baseball, football, basketball, golf, etc.) and there are "trash" sports (roller derby, tractor pulls, etc.) But for the last century or more, the ultimate king of the trash sports has been professional wrestling. With its scripted morality plays, its faces (good guys) and heels (bad guys), it has played out one of the longest soap operas in history to its marks (true believing fans), as well as millions of others. This type of "sport" is not particularly interested in its own history, but devoted hobbyist J. Michael Kenyon has spent untold amounts of time and effort ferreting that history out. And the WAWLI papers are the result of that work. This irregularly issued newsletter specializes in the grapplers of yesteryear, and Kenyon regularly transcribes newspaper and magazine accounts of the great matches and personalities of such luminaries as Strangler Lewis, Lou Thesz, Frank Gotch, and Stanislaus Zybisko, among others. For those who see today's lilly livered (but acrobatically talented) grapplers as pencil-necked geeks who wouldn't know what to do if they had to battle for more than three minutes, the WAWLI papers will hark back to a time when a cauliflower ear was a badge of distinction. Note: as befits its subject, there is no full archive of postings available. [JS]
To subscribe send email to:
fallguys-request@lists.best.com
In the body of the message type:
subscribe
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W3C Publishes First Public Working Draft of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 1.0
http://www.w3.org/Press/1998/XSL-WD
The World Wide Web Consortium has recently issued the first public working draft of XSL, a stylesheet language which "allows information about presentation to be kept separate from the content. This allows more flexible and efficient Website maintenance, makes Web pages more accessible, and makes the Web faster." XSL, a method of styling XML (Extensible Markup Language, discussed in the April 3, 1998 Scout Report), joins Cascading Style Sheets (discussed in the May 15, 1998 Scout Report) as stylesheet languages the W3C plans to develop. [JS]
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iMacworld
http://www.imacworld.com/
Mac Publishing LLC has created this site, which aims to be a clearinghouse of information about the new iMac computer. At present, the site contains review and tutorial articles, news, and links to other iMac information sources. However, the most interesting and revealing part of the site is the iMac feedback section, where new users of the machine have registered both their delight and dismay in no uncertain terms. New user response is encouraged at the site. [JS]
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President's Information Technology Advisory Committee Interim Report to the President, August 1998
http://www.ccic.gov/ac/interim/
The US National Coordination Office for Computing, Information, and Communications has issued this report concerning "future directions for Federal support of research and development in high performance computing, communications, information technology, and the Next Generation Internet." PITAC has concluded that federal support of information technology is inadequate and generally short-sighted. Their 60-page report is divided into five major sections that first overview information technology, and then discuss federal research priorities, potential focal points, and the implementation and management of new initiatives. The report is available in HTML and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. [JS]
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Volume 2, Number 17, August 18, 1995
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/archive/.html
Roots-L Mailing List
http://www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/
The August 18, 1995 Scout Report announced the Roots-L mailing list, the earliest and largest mailing list devoted to genealogical research. The mailing list, available since late 1987, is astoundingly active, as evidenced by the over 91,000 messages in its archive since July of 1996. In addition to subscription information and the partial archive, the Roots-L site contains a surname list, a library of genealogical information, and links to genealogical resources in every state in the US. Roots-L and its resources are maintained by the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative. [JS]
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The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing any portion of this report, in any format.
From the Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1998.
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
The paragraph below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing the entire report, in any format.
Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1998. The Internet Scout Project (http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The Government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, is preserved on all copies.
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, or the National Science Foundation.
The Scout Report (ISSN 1092-3861) is published weekly by Internet Scout
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