General Interest
http://www.franklinfurnace.org/
For those not in the know, the phrase “Franklin Furnace” might sound like a type of 19th century heating device. In fact, the Franklin Furnace organization has been dedicated to the proposition that avant-garde art is a very worthwhile endeavor, and their delightful website presents fine information about their work, and about the world of avant-garde art more generally. Based in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, the organization started their work in 1976, and their website offers a nice timeline and introductory essay that documents their own history. Moving along, visitors will definitely want to look over their “Archives” area, which contain a number of online exhibitions and video interview with artists who have worked with Franklin Furnace over the years. Finally, the site also contains a “Scholarly Stuff” section, which features essays on the Furnace and some of the interesting archival techniques they have used to preserve avant-garde art for future generations. [KMG]
http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/homepage.asp
Paul Anka and Francis Scott Key don’t usually come up in the same sentence (or paragraph, most likely), but here in the Songwriters Hall of Fame Virtual Museum both men are part of the heady mix that visitors will find on this interesting and entertaining website. This Hall of Fame has a distinguished pedigree as its first president in 1969 was Tin Pan Alley icon Johnny Mercer, who himself was followed by another tunesmith of note, Sammy Cahn. Visitors to the site can browse through the “Inductee Exhibits” area, which includes information about all the inductees over the past four decades, organized into three broad thematic categories. Along with a brief biographical sketch, visitors can look over a discography for many of the songwriters. For a special treat, visitors can also listen to clips of some of these ditties, including Nat King Cole’s rendition of “Almost Like Being in Love” (penned by Alan Jay Lerner) and Bobby Darin’s very own, “Splish Splash”. [KMG]
The Scout Report hasn’t paid a visit to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) website in a few years, but it was good to learn that they are still providing high-quality materials about the subject directly from their site. Created in 1992, the PRC has maintained this site for well over a decade, and visitors will enjoy looking over some of their fact sheets, reports, and their online chronology of data breaches. On their homepage, visitors can browse a list of topical headings that might be of interest. Some of these topics include direct marketing, financial privacy, medical privacy, and external links that expand on these topics. Within each of these topical sections, visitors can view fact sheets that are both well-written and very pragmatic. Visitors can also browse through the first-hand experiences of consumers who have lobbied effectively to protect their own privacy, and also look over a set of relevant blogs on the subject. Additionally, it is worth noting that many of the fact sheets offered here are available in Spanish. [KMG]
Working as part of a joint venture, Carnegie Mellon University and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety have created the Traffic Statistics on Travel Safety (TrafficSTATS) website and online database. As their homepage notes, the website “provides users with an interactive tool to query information about multiple dimensions of traffic-safety risks.” Using information from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the National Household Travel Survey, the site allows visitors to determine risk comparisons for a wide range of situations. Visitors should definitely start by taking a look at the online tutorial offered here, as it will allow them to work through several basic examples, including comparing risks for people inside and outside a vehicle and examining how risks vary across vehicle type. After going through these examples, visitors will feel at ease when creating their own risk comparisons through the site’s interactive platform. The site also includes information about their methodology and links to presentations and papers that deal with the TrafficSTATS system. [KMG]
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/aviation/
Starting with its rather lyrical title, visitors to this particular National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary website will be taken on a breezy and visually stimulating tour of some of the sites that document America’s aviation history. All told, the site provides information about over 100 sites, including airfields, research and testing facilities, and launch and control facilities. From the homepage, visitors can peruse a list of the sites, look for sites using an interactive map, and read essays on air power, modern aviation, and, not surprisingly, the Wright Brothers. While the sites are spread across 35 states and several US territories, creative voyagers could easily create a number of interesting journeys. Additionally, the site offers a fine set of external links under the “Learn More” tab. [KMG]
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pregnancy/PR99999
The Mayo Clinic is responsible for this very nice site dedicated to providing the web-browsing public with comprehensive and highly readable information about pregnancy. Visitors to the site will find information on planning a pregnancy, understanding pregnancy tests, and managing pregnancy symptoms. Within each of these sections, visitors will find brief articles on specific topics that include weight gain during pregnancy, sings of labor, and coping with pregnancy loss. Additionally, many of these sections also have additional multimedia features, including videos of a fetal ultrasound and a slide show of labor positions. For visitors who don’t find their specific question about pregnancy addressed here, there’s also an area where they can submit their query to a Mayo Clinic specialist. [KMG]
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/earlysigns/index.html
Never afraid to take on controversial topics, American RadioWorks has recently released this special report on the early signs of climate change. For this particular report, they brought together a team of eleven young reporters who were led by noted environmental journalist Sandy Tolan. Their assignment was to identify different places around the world where global warming was making changes to both “life and landscape”. Visitors to the site can listen to the entire radio documentary, or they can also read about some of the individual locations profiled in this presentation. Some of these areas include the fabled snows of Kilimanjaro, the island of Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean, and the town of Churchill in Upper Manitoba, which has been known as “The Polar Bear Capital of the World” for decades. [KMG]
With this website visitors can read selected poetry from the current issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal, which has been published since 1950, but only on the Web much more recently. In addition, in 2006 the full-text archive of all 227 issues of the Journal published since the fall of 1950 was made available online. The editors of the Journal point out "rare texts such as Anne Sexton's first published poem, Langston Hughes' translations of Federico Garcia Lorca's Gypsy Ballads, and a memorial chapbook for William Carlos Williams edited by David Ignatow in 1963 whose list of contributors reads like a Who's Who of mid-twentieth century American poetry." To find any of these highlights, there is an author index which will allow visitors to easily find these texts and many more. For those who like to view the cover art, searching the Archive section provides a browse by decade, with thumbnail images of all the covers, and links to the full text. [DS]
