Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwghome.html
Correspondence between Woody Guthrie and staff of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center) at the Library of Congress are at the heart of this new site from the Library of Congress American Memory series. The featured 53 items (84 pages) of material by, about, and to Woody Guthrie were penned mostly in the early 1940s. The collection provides "reflections on [Woody Guthrie's] past, his art, his life in New York City, and the looming Second World War. . . ." Materials on this site are part of the Woody Guthrie Manuscript Collection and the American Folklife Center. Along with the letters themselves, the site also features a well organized finding aid to give users an overview of all Guthrie archival materials at the Library of Congress, a biographical sketch, and a timeline of Guthrie's life. [REB]
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The 2001 Nobel and Ig Nobel Prizes
2001 Nobel Prize Winners
http://www.nobel.se/
2001 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2001
This week, the Nobel Foundation announced the winners of its six awards for 2001, the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize. The United Nations and its Secretary General Kofi Annan were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Prize in Literature went to V.S. Naipaul "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." Three Physics laureates were awarded, and the Nobel prize for Chemistry went to an international team of researchers. (The Nobel Foundation's online "e-museum" was reviewed in the August 8, 2000 Scout Report for Social Sciences & Humanities.) At the official Nobel Website, press releases for these categories, as well as Economics and Physiology/ Medicine, can be read in English, French, German, or Swedish, and links to the Curriculum Vitae and publication lists of the laureates are given. Back in the United States, another set of awards were passed out this week: the Ig Nobels. Awarded by humor rag The Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobels honor people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced." This year's illustrious Ig Nobel laureates include, for Medicine, the publisher of "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts," in the Journal of Trauma, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society (Literature), and the Peace Prize goes to the Lithuanian who built an amusement park known colloquially as "Stalin World." [HCS]
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Quadrennial Defense Review, 2001 [.pdf]
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr2001.pdf
Every four years, the military issues the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report, a document that is key in setting military goals and priorities. This 79-page report, issued September 30, 2001, is divided into seven main sections (e.g., Defense Strategy, Revitalizing the DoD Establishment) and includes a statement by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The report explains that, "Even before the attack of September 11, 2001, the senior leaders of the Defense Department set out to establish a new strategy for America's defense that would embrace uncertainty and contend with surprise, a strategy premised on the idea that to be effective abroad, America must be safe at home." In the service of that new strategy, the QDR outlines DoD's four main policy objectives: to assure allies and friends of the US' steadfastness and military capability, to dissuade adversaries from undertaking programs potentially threatening to the US, to deter threats by increasing "the capacity to swiftly defeat attacks and impose severe penalties for aggression," and when deterrence fails, to decisively defeat any adversary. A central objective of this review was to shift the basis of defense planning. The report explains that overall the strategy seeks to move the US military "from a 'threat-based' model that has dominated thinking in the past to a 'capabilities-based' model for the future." [TK]
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"Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, 11 September 2001" [MS Word, .pdf]
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/news.asp?NewsId=2686
10 Downing Street has posted a sixteen-page document reviewing the evidence that points to Usama Bin Laden as the agent of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The document, which is available in HTML, .pdf, and MS Word formats, opens with a disclaimer: "This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Usama Bin Laden in a court of law. Intelligence often cannot be used evidentially, due both to the strict rules of admissibility and to the need to protect the safety of sources. But on the basis of all the information available HMG is confident of its conclusions as expressed in this document." The document covers a great deal of ground, tending more toward assertion than a display of the evidence itself. It begins with the bold statement, "Usama Bin Laden and Al Qaida, the terrorist network which he heads, planned and carried out the atrocities on 11 September 2001," and repeatedly emphasizes the involvement of the Taleban in Bin Laden's activities, but those looking for the specific documents or intelligence leading to these conclusions will find only minimal satisfaction here. The penultimate page explains: "There is evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of Bin Laden and his associates that is too sensitive to release." [TK]
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Biological and Chemical Weapons -- MEDLINEplus
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/biologicalandchemicalweapons.html
One of the latest in MEDLINEplus' special collections, the Biological and Chemical Weapons page addresses health issues at the forefront of many people's minds these days. As with other MEDLINEplus special collections, this page offers links to news stories, sites providing general information and overviews, information about specific conditions, and relevant organizations. While the sites are not annotated, the page provides a useful introduction to these health issues. The links here are all authoritative and range from the National Center for Infectious Diseases' (NCID) faq on anthrax to Johns Hopkins University's Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies to National Library of Medicine's TOXNET Databases. MEDLINEplus is offered by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and was last mentioned in the April 14, 2000 Scout Report. [TK]
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Aurora Gallery
http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_01oct01.html
Those living in lower latitudes might not have been aware of the recent solar and geomagnetic activities that triggered a spectacular aurora borealis the week of September 30. Two interplanetary shock waves, spawned by solar coronal mass ejections, swept past our planet September 28-29. Then on October 1, the interplanetary magnetic field around Earth turned south, causing geomagnetic storms to rage off-and-on for the next 48 hours. Luckily for those who missed the excitement, SpaceWeather,com features a page of beautiful, color .jpeg photographs of the auroras from such places as Finland, Quebec, and Alaska during September 29-October 3. Along with the images are the photographers' names, comments, and camera setting specifics. [HCS]
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healthfinder Espanol -- HHS
http://www.healthfinder.gov/espanol
This site is a Spanish language edition of the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) healthfinder page (the English language version was reviewed in the April 18, 1997 Scout Report). healthfinder provides sources of selected information in Spanish and is intended to serve as a guide for pragmatic, health-related decision-making. The page opens with immediate access to sixteen pre-selected themes ranging from cholesterol to diabetes to AIDS and provides further access to a larger range of topics through an alphabetical listing. Users may also search for information not directly accessible under the pre-established headings. Although this version of the site is not as comprehensive as the English version, users will find it a good starting point to access consumer health information in Spanish. [LMB]
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Two for Teachers
Apple Learning Exchange [QuickTime]
http://ali.apple.com/ali/
TeacherNet
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/teachers/
The Apple Learning Interchange (API) site contains a wealth of educational resources, spanning the full spectrum from preschool through to college. Subject areas (including math, science, English, language arts, the humanities, and even philosophy) are highlighted and indexed cleanly with an eye to satisfying both students and teachers. Arguably the site's strongest assets are its QuickTime clips, several of which feature the University of Chicago's Tyrannosaurus Rex, Sue. For all its glitziness, ALI offers a great deal, especially from a pedagogical point of view, including a list of ready reference materials, such as the new Roget II Thesaurus and a periodic table as well as games and puzzles to teach science and math facts. As if all of this weren't enough, ALI's site also provides registered users (registration is free) with online pedagogical instruction. Of course, as the name implies, the site does prominently feature Apple technology. The second site listed above, Teachernet, is geared toward British educators and those interested in the British educational system, especially parents. The site gives a full overview of Britain's educational apparatus, its nationally administered curriculum, as well as extensive lists of national, regional, and community contacts for organizations of all sorts. While not yet operational, another attractive feature of the site will allow anyone to ask an "expert" questions regarding education in Britain. From a pedagogical perspective, one of the most useful elements of the site is its Teaching and Learning component, which offers a fully stocked bank of lesson plans across numerous disciplines. An interactive discussion area, a repository of educational case studies across the curriculum, and suggested plans for classroom day trips round out the site. [WH]
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