The Scout Report - March 15, 1996

March 15, 1996

A Publication of Internet Scout
Provided by the InterNIC as a Service to the Internet Community

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) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report. Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report

Send comments and contributions to: scout@cs.wisc.edu

Philosophy on the Net
Philosophy around the Web is a comprehensive page of links to all things philosophical. There are links to philosophy departments all over the world, a large selection of annotated and rated (see thumbs ups) links to individual philosophy pages, "living philosophers" pages, and mostly dead philosophers pages from Apollonius of Tyana to Arthur M. Young. Also provided are pointers to philosophy journals, Usenet news groups, discussion lists, IRC's, conference and seminar listings, world wide philosophy job openings, and several of the author's own writings. This is a well done resource, full of nicely designed and well organized content. Philosophy around the Web is produced by Dr Peter J. King St Hilda's College, Oxford, England.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0337/phil_index.html
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The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization -- FAOSTAT Databases
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has made available several searchable databases containing extensive agricultural data from many countries. Called the FAOSTAT Database, data is provided for production, trade, commodity supply and demand balances, population, land use, and fisheries. Users can select geographical areas, commodities or products, variables relating to those commodities or products, and an annual time series ranging from as early as 1961 to as late as 1995, depending on the series. Results can be downloaded as text tables, bar or line graphs with user definable axes, or CSV file format -- text with comma separated values for easy import into spreadsheet or other statistical applications. It is important to carefully read the help files that accompany each database in order to fully exploit the searching system. The FAOSTAT Databases give the user access to an amazing amount of country data. Note that these databases are forms based. Each is a work in progress.
http://apps.fao.org/lim500/agri_db.pl
For more information on FAO's World Agricultural Information Center (WAICENT), which provides these databases as well as other information collections:
http://www.fao.org/waicent/waicente.htm
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Hubble's Photos of Pluto
The Hubble Space Telescope's photographs of the surface of Pluto are available on the Web. The photographs were taken during a seven day period in late June and early July of 1994, but have just recently become available. To understand the power of the Hubble Telescope, "viewing surface detail on Pluto is as difficult as trying to read the printing on a golf ball located thirty-three miles away!" Along with two resolutions of a surface map of Pluto, there are three resolutions of an entire planet picture, as well as PostScript and Adobe Acrobat PDF illustrations of the planet's orientation during the picture. Explanatory captions are provided.
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/09.html
For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, see the Space Telescope Science Information Service:
http://www.stsci.edu/
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New Astronomy -- A new electronic, refereed journal
Elsevier Science will begin a fully electronic and refereed journal in astronomy and astrophysics later this year. "New Astronomy" will be available via the Web as well as in print. Elsevier states the journal will publish "articles in all fields of astronomy and astrophysics: theoretical, observational and instrumental. 'New Astronomy' includes full length research articles and letter articles. The journal covers solar, stellar, galactic and extragalactic astronomy and astrophysics. It reports on original research in all wavelength bands, ranging from radio to gamma-ray." The journal's Web site provides a listing of receiving editors, as well as a call for papers. It will be a scholarly journal of "rigorously refereed" papers and aims to provide a short publication time, with accepted articles being made immediately available electronically. Detailed instructions on submittal are at the site.
http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/33/29/show/
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Library of Congress Learning Page
The Library of Congress (LOC) has organized its digitized American Memory collection in a way designed to fit the needs of students and educators. The new site is called the LOC Learning Page. Resources to help educators incorporate the Library's primary sources into their curriculum are provided on the "Educator's Page," as well as answers to technical questions about the online materials. The electronic collections are arranged alphabetically by keyword, as well as by media type. The "Pathfinder Pages" arrange the collection by types of events, people, places, and topics. The entire site is searchable, and under "Search Suggestion List" a synonym list for key word searching has been provided. While the American Memory collection has been available for some time, the Learning Page is a significant enhancement for K-12 educators and students, and everyone else.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/
For more information on LOC's digitized American Memory historical collections:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html
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Teaching and Learning on the Web
The Maricopa County Community College District of Phoenix, Arizona presents Teaching and Learning on the Web. This is a searchable collection of almost 300 sites that use the Internet for teaching and learning. Users can search over 35 subject categories ranging from Anthropology to Writing. Although most resources are college level, a small sampling of K-12 resources are included as well. Do a key word search on k-12, high school, or kid in all categories to retrieve the primary or secondary level resources. Maricopa encourages submissions, which can be made through a form available on the home page.
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tl/index.html
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State Dept. Human Rights Country Reports -- 1995
U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1995 are available via the State Department's Foreign Affairs Network gopher site. Reports are available for over 190 countries. An "Overview" file, prepared by John Shattuck, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, gives a thumbnail sketch of the State Department's views on world wide human rights issues, and can be found under "Preface and Overview." Each country report is available as an ASCII text file and countries are arranged alphabetically by continent. See Appendix A for detailed information about the reports. All reports are available in one DOS .exe compressed file under the "Zip" menu. Reports for 1993 and 1994 are also available.
gopher://dosfan.lib.uic.edu:70/1D-1%3A22373%3Ax1995%20Report
Gopher to: dosfan.lib.uic.edu
Select: Publications and Major Reports/Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
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Way Cool Software Reviews
The "Way Cool Software Reviews" project encourages students, teachers, and parents to make available their evaluations of software that they think of as truly "way cool." Everyone is welcome to contribute reviews of software they have at home or use at school. Students with disabilities are particularly encouraged to contribute, as are reviews of software that may be appropriate for individuals with disabilities. Reviews are distributed via a mailing list and are available at the Web site. Way Cool Software Reviews is a joint project of the A. J. Pappanikou Center Technology Lab at the University of Connecticut and the Chatback Trust of the United Kingdom.
http://www.pappanikou.uconn.edu/wcool.html
Send email to:listserv@Uconnvm.uconn.edu
In the body of the message type:
subscribe wycool-L Your name
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its a bunny -- Literary e-zine
"its a bunny" is a new Montreal, Canada based e-zine for new English fiction, poetry and art. It is a stylishly done endeavor that seeks to provide an outlet for writers and artists. The present issue, Winter 1996, contains four works of fiction, two poems, two essays, and fourteen paintings. The site also points to several other literary e-journals.
http://www.maclawran.ca/bunny/current/bunny.html
Pointers page: http://www.maclawran.ca/bunny/current/other.html
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The Syndicate -- A page of financial pages
The Syndicate is one of the most comprehensive "meta" financial pages on the Net. Each monthly edition contains feature articles, but the "Syndicate Navigator" section is the highlight of the site. It offers a page of links to over 1,000 finance related pages in over 25 categories from accounting and taxes to stock research and forecasts, some of which are annotated and rated. It also offers brokers' information and links, bond information and links, and mutual fund information and links. The Syndicate is a financial page of pages.
http://www.moneypages.com/syndicate/index.html
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Chicago Tribune Online Edition
The Chicago Tribune has launched an Internet edition. The cyber paper contains articles from each issue of the print version in the categories of news, sports, weather, editorial, financial, and stocks, among others. There are also "fun" and "extra" sections. The cyber edition is particularly strong in terms of local and regional news. The full site index gives access to the site's entire contents from one page. Currently the entire electronic version is available at no charge.
http://chicagotribune.com/index.html
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CDNow -- The Internet Jukebox
The Internet Jukebox, provided by CDNow, makes it possible to listen to entire CD's over the Internet if your computer is enabled with the necessary hardware. The Internet Jukebox uses freely available RealAudio 2.0 technology, which enables audio files to be played over 28.8 modems. CD's can be chosen from the categories of classical, pop-rock, alternative, and jazz and blues. While the quality heard over the Net is still not yet that of the CD player in your living room, the 2.0 version of RealAudio is a definite improvement over 1.0. Oh yes, we can't forget to mention that if you like the CD, you can order it from CDNow on the spot. The virtual spot, that is.
http://www.cdnow.com/
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AudioNet
For Internauts with RealAudio 1.0 capability (a 14.4 modem) try AudioNet, the "Broadcast Network of the Internet." AudioNet offers live broadcasts of over ten different talk radio stations, including WOR--New York, WTEM--Washington D.C., and XTRA--San Diego. It also offers several music radio stations, a selection of audio books, and numerous live (and recent) sporting events such as NIT and NCAA Men's and Women's basketball games and college baseball games.
http://www.audionet.com/

Free RealAudio 1.0 and 2.0 players can be downloaded from the above sites. RealAudio 2.0 players will play RealAudio 1.0 sites, but 1.0 players will not play 2.0 sites. For more information on this and other plug-ins, visit the Scout Toolkit:
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/toolkit/webtools/plugins.html
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Email Discussion groups and lists
"E-mail Discussion Groups/Lists - Resources" is a simple collection of information about using each of the three most commonly used software tools for managing electronic mailing lists: Listserv, Majordomo, and Listproc. The site provides the basic commands available to subscribers of each type of list, which are sometimes similar but not the same between types of lists, leading to confusion. The site also provides links to more detailed guides for each of the three types of list managers. Pointers to several search engines for locating discussion lists by topic are also provided.
http://www.webcom.com/impulse/list.html
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MetaCrawler Search Engine
MetaCrawler is a search engine that searches multiple search engines with a single command. It searches nine different engines. Its unique feature is that it will verify that each reference returned is a valid address. While this process takes longer than a normal search, it is well worth the wait. For more information on MetaCrawler, see the Scout Toolkit (see below).
http://www.metacrawler.com/
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Newly added resources to Scout Toolkit
Three searching resources have been added to the Scout Toolkit. Two are searchable index "meta-search" engines, and the third is a subject catalog. The meta-searchers are MetaCrawler (discussed above), and SavvySearch (discussed in the February 23, 1996 issue of The Scout Report). The OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) InterCAT catalog of Internet resources is an experiment in which librarians have created a seachable and browsable database of Internet resources using MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) records.
Metacrawler: http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b1-7.html
SavvySearch: http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b1-8.html
OCLC InterCAT: http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b2-7.html
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1996. 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 - March 15, 1996

March 15, 1996

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Scout Report and Scout Report HTML Subscription Instructions