The Scout Report - January 29, 1999

Scout Report for Social Sciences and Business & Economics
Scout Report for Social Sciences
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/socsci/1999/ss-990126.html
Scout Report for Business & Economics
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/bus-econ/1999/be-990128.html
The ninth issues of the second volumes of the Scout Reports for Social Sciences and Business & Economics are available. The In the News section of the Social Sciences Report annotates eight resources on the disputed Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The Business & Economics Report's In the News section annotates nine resources on regulatory developments in online investing. [MD]
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The BSE Inquiry Home Page [.pdf, Word, .zip]
http://www.bse.org.uk/
In late December 1997, the British Government initiated an Inquiry under Lord Justice Nicholas Phillips to "establish and review the history of the emergence and identification of BSE and the new variant CJD in the United Kingdom," and review and evaluate the actions taken in response. BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), more commonly known as "mad cow disease," has been linked to at least 30 human deaths from CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), a human spongiform encephalopathy resulting from eating infected beef. In late December 1998, the BSE Inquiry began to publish a number of draft factual accounts based on its investigations. At the site, users can download the full text of these in HTML, Word, or .pdf format. Additional resources at the site include full-text transcripts and witness statements, a dramatis personae and glossary, archived press releases, and a BSE timeline. [MD]
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Concordances of Great Books
http://www.concordance.com/
Beneath the no-nonsense text frontpage of this site lies a powerful and extremely useful tool for literature scholars and students. Created by Bill Williams, the Concordances of Great Books site features an online searchable index of 86 authors and 200 full texts. Concordances are generally used to search religious texts for the occurrence of selected words, and the site does contain a number of religious works. However, it also indexes a fine selection of American, European, and Classical literature texts that are no longer under copyright. These include the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare, the complete Sherlock Holmes, nineteen of Charles Dickens' books, works by the Bronte sisters, Tacitus, Melville, Gibbon, George Eliot, and many others. Users have four options: search for one or two keywords, list words in concordance by letter, type in a location in the piece to read the full text, or list words in order of number of occurrences. Additional resources include a selection of related links. [MD]
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World Bank Development Forum
http://www.worldbank.org/devforum/
An electronic venue for "dialogue and knowledge sharing" among international development community members, the World Bank's Development Forum includes ongoing Development Dialogues, or discussion groups, geared to share "high-value information" on key development issues. Each dialogue is open to the public but varies in content, format, and duration. Currently, dialogues on violence against women, rural communications in Africa, foreign direct investment, and social capital are active, with archives maintained at the Join the Discussion page. Complete registration is available online. Note: the World Bank invites the public to join the following upcoming dialogues by February 1, 1999: Knowledge and Information for Development (IKD), Gender and Law (GENDER-LAW), Les Consequences de la Maternite Precoce sur l'Education des Filles en Afrique (EDUC-FILLES), and Attacking Poverty (WDR2001), the first public forum on the World Development Report for 2000/02. [MW]

To join any of the dialogues, send email to:
    majordomo@jazz.worldbank.org
In the body of the message, type:
    SUBSCRIBE NAME OF THE DIALOGUE
    (e.g., SUBSCRIBE IKD or SUBSCRIBE GENDER-LAW)
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Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law [.pdf]
http://www.bazelon.org/
Based in Washington D.C., the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization for people with mental illness and mental retardation. Operating on the principle that "every individual is entitled to choice and dignity," the Center works to reform public systems and provide fair access to housing, disability benefits, and health care for adults and children with mental disabilities. In addition, the organization has created this site which collects a number of mental health law resources for lawyers, advocates, the mentally disabled, and their families. These include legal decisions, articles, analysis, legislative updates, and forms. Resources are grouped by topic, including ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Issues, Aging Issues, Children's Issues, Fair Housing Issues, and Mental Health Care. Visitors to the site will also find announcements, a collection of briefly annotated disability and advocacy links, and an internal search engine. [MD]
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What to Expect Your First Year of Teaching [.pdf]
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/FirstYear/index.html
This online publication, created by Amy DePaul of the US Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, is dedicated to the first year teacher. The site manages to articulate the primary challenges and rewards of teaching in a clear and succinct way, using the words of the teachers themselves. New and Veteran teachers respond to issues ranging from professional isolation to differences in student ability to the unexpected exhilaration of this demanding career. In addition, educators offer tips of their trade, speak to ways that administrators could facilitate their work with students, and let universities and colleges know how teachers could be better prepared to enter the classroom. The document is also available in .pdf format. [JR]
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Oral History Online!
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/ROHO/ohonline/#collections
The Bancroft Library at the University of California-Berkeley has recently begun a project to place portions of its oral history collection online in full text. The transcripts will be marked up in SGML using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), which will allow complex searches of the entire text. In addition to the transcripts themselves, the remainder (photos, prefaces, contents pages) of the published volumes will also be encoded to provide complete access. At this stage, the Suffragists Oral History Project, which offers the text of interviews with twelve suffragists and women's activists for searching or browsing, is the only project available online in complete form. Projects under construction include the Disabled Persons Independence Movement and the BioTech Project. Among the future planned additions are oral histories of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, the Earl Warren gubernatorial era, and African-American Alumni at the University of California. Historians of California and oral historians will want to monitor the site as it develops. [MD]
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Internet Resources on Genocide and Mass Killings
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide.htm
Internet Resources on Genocide and Mass Killings is an extensive compilation of primary materials and annotated links related to "twentieth-century genocidal and mass man-made killing occurrences." Divided into fifteen sections, subject coverage includes topics such as The Jewish Holocaust, War Crimes and Criminals, Yugoslavia and Kosovo, among others. Most of the original documents in the compilation have been uploaded to the site, facilitating navigation and research. Documents not residing at the site are linked via succinct annotations. The compilation is searchable and updated continuously by its creator Dr. Stuart D. Stein, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of West England. [AO]
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Learning Guide Five: Thresholds of Change -- Edsitement
http://edsitement.neh.gov/guides/g_intro2.htm
The National Endowment for the Humanities's Edsitement Website (described in the October 31, 1997 Scout Report) has recently added to its collection of online learning guides. This new guide explores thresholds of change, which include cultural and political thresholds such as those crossed by African-Americans rising up from slavery, and some of the internal thresholds individuals cross by courage, faith, and love. Nine lesson plans are grouped into four themes: Escaping Slavery, Facing Opposition, Keeping Faith, and Falling in Love. Each lesson plan is fully described and utilizes online resources for background and primary materials. The main page of each theme offers annotations for the Websites used and links to additional learning tools. The four previous learning guides are accessible from the main lesson plans page listed above. [MD]
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PollingReport.com
http://www.pollingreport.com/
Provided by The Polling Report, a bimonthly public opinion monitor, this new site offers very frequently updated polling results and data. Updated whenever a new poll is released, the site provides a daily glimpse into public opinion trends. Users may select from polls grouped in three categories (Politics and Policy, Business/ Economy, or The American Scene), browse the most recent additions, or choose from selected polls featured on the main page. Current selections focus on the impeachment trial, the State of the Union Address, and the 2000 presidential election. Additional resources include a collection of articles on public opinion and survey research from The Polling Report and an internal search engine. [MD]
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I'll Make Me A World
http://www2.blackside.com/immaw/
At this site, users can preview "I'll Make Me A World," a six-hour public television special, which will be broadcast beginning February 1. The series is a production of Blackside, Inc. of Boston, and is being produced in association with Thirteen/WNET in New York. Covering the time period 1900 to the present, I'll Make Me A World features the lives and work of African-American writers, dancers, painters, actors, filmmakers, and musicians, such as Quincy Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Spike Lee, Chuck D, Uta Hagen, Bill T. Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, Ben Vereen, and Alice Walker. At the Website, users can query a database of the featured artists, using criteria including discipline, place of birth, and period of artistic activity. For example, a search for female visual artists active in the 1930s retrieved biographical information on Gwendolyn Bennett, Gwendolyn Knight, and Augusta Savage. These entries may include video clips, images of the artists and their work, and links to sources of additional information. All entries indicate in which hour of I'll Make Me A World the artist appears (link to Airdates for the complete schedule). [DS]
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WWF 1998 Annual Report [.pdf, 28p.]
http://panda.org/wwf/Report98/index.html
The World Wildlife Fund (last described in the October 9, 1998 Scout Report) recently placed its 1998 Annual Report online. The world's largest independent conservation organization has begun to move beyond promoting awareness of environmental issues to developing practical and sustainable solutions to current and future problems. In the report, the Director General identifies three trends that must be addressed to halt environmental erosion: the widening poverty gap, rapid urbanization, and the growing influence of business and industry over governmental regulation. The annual report is divided into topical sections, each of which outlines relevant WWF conservation efforts, successes, and challenges in different areas, including Brazil, Sea Change, Market Forces, Fresh Water, and Raising Funds. Users may read the report online or download the full text in .pdf format. [MD]
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Math in Daily Life -- Annenberg/ CPB
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/dailymath/
What are your odds of hitting it big at the casino? Should you buy or lease a car? How much will you have when you retire? All of these questions involve math, and this latest addition to the Annenberg/ CPB Projects Learner Online site (described in the September 12, 1997 Scout Report) explores the use of basic mathematical concepts in daily decision-making. The exhibit is divided into several topical sections exploring probability and gambling, compound interest and credit cards, population growth, geometry in the home, and ratios and recipes. In addition to an overview of the topic, each section offers several links to selected related sites and online tools, and two feature interactive learning activities. [MD]
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Crop Production -- Annual Summary -- USDA [.pdf]
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/field/pcp-bban/
The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) (described in the June 4, 1998 Scout Report for Business and Economics) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has recently released the annual summary of US crop production. Available in text or .pdf format, the summary contains "annual US data for acreage, yield, and production by crop." In addition to statistical tables, the report includes reviews of crop progress and the weather in 1998. Reports from 1995-98 are also available in text format only. [MD]
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The Bolshoi Theatre [Frames, Javascript]
http://www.bolshoi.ru/eng/frame.html
The Bolshoi Theatre site is a useful stop for anyone who wants to learn more about this 160-year-old architectural landmark or its performances and players. The site not only provides a calendar for this season (the theatre's 223rd) and brief biographies for the current company, but also offers much in the way of historical background and pictures. The About the Bolshoi section is divided into three subsections -- History, Legends, and Architecture -- which together review the basics of the Bolshoi's past. The descriptions are all overwhelmingly positive, supplying a wide-ranging, if uncritical, vision. We are told, for example, that the success of Fedor Fedorovsky, Academician of Painting, is due in large part to his "revelation of the inimitable national character and the power of the people's creative spirit." Nonetheless, the site is a good introduction to an esteemed institution. [TK]
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CampusSafety.org [.pdf]
http://www.campussafety.org/
Provided by Security On Campus, Inc., "the only national, non-profit organization geared specifically and exclusively to the prevention of college and university campus violence and other crimes," this site supplies information on campus crime and prevention for current and prospective students, parents, and community members. Visitors to the site will find campus crime statistics (in .pdf format), detailed summaries and the full text of campus security laws, victim assistance and binge drinking prevention resources, and links to recent campus crime news. Users can also subscribe for email notification of site updates. [MD]
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British Literature.com
http://www.britishliterature.com/
Created by unabashed Anglophile Christopher D. Ball, this site contains a wide and varied selection of all things related to British literature. Fans of Dickens, Bronte, Auden, and their countrymen and women will find author profiles (some under construction), short articles on various mediums and historical eras, brief pieces on over 50 literary locales, photos, downloadable traditional music in MIDI format, reading suggestions, and a number of related links. A useful site for introducing students to personalities and elements of British literature, but perhaps best suited for personal use by enthusiasts. [MD]
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Four Sites for the Super Bowl
Superbowl.com [RealPlayer, Windows Media Player]
http://superbowl.lycos.com/
NFL.com: Super Bowl XXXIII [RealPlayer]
http://www.nfl.com/sb33/
ESPN: Super Bowl XXXIII
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs98/superbowl/
Super Bowl ads: computers, wrestlers and lingerie
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news/ap/990127/ap-superbowlad.html
Super Sunday is fast upon us, which means limitless pregame hype and analysis, a hopefully exciting match-up on the field, and unbelievably expensive television commercials (an average of $1.6 million for 30 seconds). Superbowl.com, the official Website of the Super Bowl, offers the latest news (in text, RealAudio or Windows Media Player), team reports, videos, player biographies, message boards, and interactive games. The NFL's site also offers news, team reports, and analysis. In addition, the site takes advantage of the league's archive, with a multimedia section containing film highlights from the season and photo and video highlights from last year's Super Bowl. As with the other two sites, ESPN offers a wide selection of feature stories on the game, but also provides more detailed analysis, with scouting reports, playoff rosters, depth charts, stats, and playoff histories. Super Bowl records, lists of past MVPs and winners, and a photo gallery round out the site. An estimated 400 million people worldwide (140 million in the US) will watch the Super Bowl, making it one of the most lucrative few hours of the year for television ad salespeople. These spots have also been used by companies to unveil new products (such as the Mac in 1984) or launch major new ad campaigns. For those who are interested but don't want to be surprised, Associated Press Business Writer Skip Wollenberg's article (provided by Yahoo!) reviews some of the new commercials that will appear on Sunday. [MD]
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HTML Tidy
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
Is your HTML embarrassing? Do advanced users point out shortcomings in your HTML Web pages? Or do you just want to tidy your site up? HTML Tidy is a simple yet effective utility that examines HTML files for errors and can report these errors or even fix them. Further, this utility, created by Dave Raggett under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium, goes beyond repairing errors by providing an automatic conversion of HTML into XML, a "pretty printer" to indent your HTML for easy readability, and several other handy features. This utility is provided as a standard, Unix-esque command-line program which facilitates bulk processing of files, but a separate Windows GUI is also available. HTML Tidy is available as an executable for Win95/98/NT and the BeOS. The source code is freely available and can easily be compiled under numerous Unix systems. [CL]
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McAfee's Virus Information Library
http://vil.mcafee.com/villib/query.asp
McAfee, the well-known anti-virus software company, offers this free library, containing information on over 40,000 known PC viruses. Virus details include their source, how they infect your computer, and how to remove them. Users can search for viruses by keyword or browse by category. The site also lists new viruses, the year's top ten, and hoax viruses. Although in most cases the instructions for virus removal include the use of a McAfee product, the site is still an excellent source of virus information. [MD]
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TechTool
http://www.micromat.com/techTool_Pro/index_techTool_Pro.html
TechTool is a powerful system-level utility from MicroMat Computer Systems that provides a variety of useful diagnostic tools for any Macintosh (System 7 or higher). It can analyze system files for damage (through System 8.5.1), store and zap PRAM (parameter memory used to store system level settings), and aid in saving and rebuilding the desktop database. TechTool can also show a wide variety of information about your Macintosh, including the date of manufacture, hours of use, general hardware configuration, and a listing of all devices on a network. [PMS]
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Pentium III and Privacy
Boycott Intel Campaign Page
http://www.bigbrotherinside.com/
Intel Pentium(r) III Processor
http://developer.intel.com/design/pentiumiii/
"Going Private," -- PCWorld Online
http://www.pcworld.com/current_issue/article/0,1212,7521,00.html
Privacy Analysis of Your Internet Connection
http://www.consumer.net/Analyze/
On January 20, Intel revealed that every one of its new Pentium III chips would include a unique Processor Serial Number (PSN), which would help online vendors positively identify users. This announcement was immediately met with strong condemnation by privacy groups, who argued that the unique PSN represented a significant threat to consumer privacy. Three organizations, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Junkbusters, and Privacy International, quickly organized a campaign to boycott Intel and any computer manufacturer that includes Pentium III processors. Intel responded by stating that the chip would be shipped with the PSN off as the default setting, the reverse of their original plan. This has not satisfied the privacy advocates, who met with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday to lobby for a recall of the chip, which is already being shipped to computer manufacturers. The Boycott Intel Campaign page, a cooperative effort by the three privacy groups, lays out their concerns, the reasons for the boycott, and why they are unsatisfied with Intel's proposed solution. Intel's Pentium(r) III page offers the technical details of their new chip (although the PSN is not mentioned). Users concerned with online privacy issues will enjoy Carol Lane's article in a recent issue of PCWorld Online. Lane offers an overview of the privacy threats inherent in using the Internet and gives tips on safer surfing, blocking spam, and email security. Consumer.net, a consumer information organization, supplies a free privacy analysis on-site. By visiting, users will learn just what information sites can collect about them. Additional resources concerning online privacy can be found in Signpost, the Scout Report's database. These include the FTC's About Privacy site, which posts reports, news, and congressional testimony; Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a non-profit consumer education group offering a number of privacy resources; and the PRIVACY Forum, a moderated discussion list relating to privacy and the information age. [MD]
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