Netsurfer Science 03.16

You've no doubt read reports about The Netherlands decision to legalize physician-assisted suicide. That hot-button topic is only the latest one, though, to make headlines. Cloning, selective reduction, pregnancy help for women who are naturally past the age of conceiving, informed decision making, fetal tissue transplants, animal experiments, clinical trials, withdrawal of support, the use of scarce resource; the critical list goes on. Bioethics aren't confined to esoteric philosophical exercises or episodes of 'ER'. Chances are we'll all have to face a question in bioethics someday, if we haven't already. In a larger sense, whether we live in a country offering universal health care to its citizens or where the ability to pay shapes the care that we get, we face bioethical questions daily. To learn more, consult Bioethics.net. It stitches together a forum, a virtual library, and links to main bioethics sites. A must-see site, to keep yourself up-to-date on an increasingly important subject.
http://www.med.upenn.edu/~bioethic/

EARTH SYSTEMS
No matter where you go, there you are

The Big Lake They Call Gitchigumi

November Fury by Grace Smith, and the Witch of November by Mace Bentley and Steve Horstmeyer are two takes on an old tragedy involving a ship and a storm, this time on an inland sea with weather that can be ferocious and deadly. On November 10, 1975, the giant Great Lakes ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, Captain Earnest McSorley in command, was in deep trouble. Battling a savage storm on Lake Superior, the 729-foot ship was listing, had lost both radars, and was close to shoals. Another freighter battling the same high winds and surging waves, the Arthur M. Anderson, was providing radar guidance. One minute the Edmund Fitzgerald was on the Anderson's radar screen, the next minute it had disappeared. None of the 29 crew was ever found. The two fascinating sites complement each other nicely. Grace's site is feeling and succinct. Mace and Steve's is the longer of the two, complete with radio traffic between the two ships before the Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly went silent, and details about how such storms are spawned. As for us, well we can never see the name Edmund Fitzgerald without hearing the Gordon Lightfoot song.
Fury: http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/school/html/feature/learner/learner4.htm
Witch: http://www.weatherwise.org/98ndbentley.html
Lightfoot's song: http://www.dvhi.net/poetry/wreck.htm

The Bermuda Triangle

Tobias Gibson, who lived near the area of the Bermuda Triangle for a decade, says he has been researching presumed paranormal activity, particularly the Bermuda Triangle, for over 20 years. He makes no bones in declaring that the Bermuda Triangle mythology is just that. Although he enjoys how science fiction writers have used the Bermuda Triangle myths to spin fascinating stories, he clearly hates the pseudoscientists who propagate these stories to make money. In a relatively scholarly way, the author introduces the topic, cites sources, and illuminates aspects of the Bermuda Triangle that relate to the myths surrounding it. Some interesting sections address the Sargasso Sea, the dimensions of the triangle, the Gulf Stream, gas bubbles from beyond, and celestial and magnetic issues. Don't let the cartoon style graphics fool you when you first see this page. The author caps his offering with the origin of the term Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle You'll be surprised where it came from.
http://blindkat.tripod.com/triangle/tri.html

Greenpeace Arctic Action

You can forgive the slow loading of the first page if you appreciate the vivid photos that will appear within a moment. Greenpeace is a controversial militant preservationist organization that is perhaps best known for its activities concerning whaling. However, whaling is only one of the issues with which Greenpeace is concerned. This site reveals some of Greenpeace's activities in the Arctic, notably aboard the barge Agattu. After boarding the barge on its way to Prudhoe Bay carrying equipment for an oil drilling project, the activists sent a fax to Sir John Browne, chief executive officer of British Petroleum, urging him to order the barge to turn around and to cancel the Northstar Project. Arrest photos follow.
http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/arctic/index.htm?d

NASA Oceanography

Who can forget that first glimpse of Earth from a spacecraft on its way to the moon? So huge, yet so tiny against the backdrop of stars, our big blue marble glimmered like a gem in a sea of diamond dust. It changed us somehow. It made us feel lonely in the universe, yet inextricably tied to one another by the planet we share. From the days of ancient mariners, we have explored the vastness of our oceans. What we have found in the age of space exploration is that the earth looks very different from miles above it than it does from the helm of a wooden ship. It is this perspective that NASA seeks to exploit as it contributes to global ocean science through a program of satellite missions and research projects with its partners. Missions, projects, partnerships, learning, startling images, and more are to be found at this intriguing site.
http://oceans.nasa.gov/

COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING
Open the pod bay doors, Hal

Rubik's Puzzles

Ask yourself: Do you really want to do this? Have you talked to your spouse, friend, kids about it or discussed it with your doctor or minister? Even better question: should Erno Rubik be allowed to put up this sort of site? What about us, you ask? Surrounded by our support group we ventured into this dangerous place. We discovered information about a wide range of Rubik's puzzles including the classic Cube as well as newer games such as Rubik's Rings, Rubik's Shell, the Darth Maul Cube, and Rubik's Revenge. The site also has games for sale, games for downloading, and games for playing online, in easy (hah!), normal, and hard difficulties. There are also downloads including a screen saver, and an animated cursor as well as links to related sites. Sure we survived to tell the tale, but venture in here at your peril!
http://www.rubiks.com/

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

SolarViews

If you're so inclined, we invite you to an orgy of images and information about the little galactic neighborhood defined by our own solar system. We take them for granted now, but the fact is we are unique in all history for our ability to spy so readily and reliably on our neighbours, to speculate on their parentage, how they use their resources, how they heat and cool their homes, what kind of housekeepers they are, and how they relate to the little ones in their orbits. The opportunity to eavesdrop should be enough alone to attract us to this site; SolarViews is even more special, though, also by virtue of the immense volume of images, animations (.avi files), drawings, and documents that the site offers. If just looking isn't enough, though, you can try to solve some interactive Java puzzles.
http://solarviews.com/eng/homepage.htm

MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY
42

Artful Mathematics

This is - dare we say - a two-fold review, considering as it does a pair of fine sites that deal with the relationship between the art of paper folding and mathematics. While neither site will require you to pull out your calculator or protractor, there's no question that - like knots - this gentle art has strong ties to the hard sciences. Learning Mathematics with Origami focuses mainly on the fascination of origami, and how it has served as an inspiration to mathematicians, architects, designers, and sculptors; the authors offer sketches of its historical background as well as numerous links to lesson plans and other teachers' resources. Origami Mathematics is definitely more hands-on, providing various geometric constructions - and even pondering four-dimensional origami. Either site contains the sources for enough information to construct college mathematics or engineering credit courses for those students who aren't really into math, and who would just rather fiddle around with bits of colorful paper.
Learning with Origami: http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~vbeatty/origami/learning/
Origami Mathematics: http://chasm.merrimack.edu/~thull/OrigamiMath.html

G-Forces

1. You're interested in aerobatic flying, the effect of gravity, or both. 2. Log onto this site and read the 4500-word document, A Hazard in Aerobatics - Effects of G-Forces on Pilots, by D.C. Beaudette, Acting Director of Flight Operations, Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration. 3. Peruse sections including Gs and their physiological affects, tolerance to Gs, and avoidance of G incapacitation. 4. Thank Netsurfer for bringing this to your attention. 5. Understand why we are writing this way when you get to the site.
http://avstop.com/AC/AC91-61.html

The Physics Connexion

Bill Kimler calls his site, 'a fresh oasis for the weary physics student', and indeed the place is mostly recreational, with physics humor, a gallery of amusing phony photographs, cartoons, and excerpts from a physics textbook published in 1850. On the serious side he also gives us some worked equations, divided into those requiring and those not needing calculus, a list of annotated links to other physics sites, and teaching material he's used and would be happy to let you steal. The site's not for kiddies, as its only 'hate' e-mail and the flurry of get-a-life responses attest, referring to an item in the humor section called Sex and the Single Electron, involving a high voltage probe and a test socket. That one had us smirking, and we also liked Is There a Santa Claus, which fearsomely tackles a perennial question from a physics perspective. We found some of the tricks pretty neat as well.
http://www.servtech.com/public/wkimler/

ARCHEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
What is past is prologue

Theban Mapping Project

Quick now! Geography test: where oh where is - was - Thebes? No prizes if you know other than the natural satisfaction of feeling smug, superior, and fortunate in how you were educated! The Theban Mapping Project is a stylish adventure with Dr. Kent Weeks exploring tomb KV 5, considered by some to be the greatest archeological find of the 20th century, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Like many admirable sites, it's multilingual, available in English, French, or German (or all three if you insist on showing off). The navigation here is clumsy, we hope not on purpose, for it's it is easy to get misdirected into what is just a travel agent page; that's great if you're into real voyaging, but our purpose was merely virtual. The key here is to use What's New to explore what is here, or to click on any of the keywords (Theban Necropolis, Valley of the Kings, KV5, or Egyptology) across the top of the page. What this place badly needs is a good map - a good site map, without which it's hard to follow in any orderly sequence. Still there's more here than at first seems to be the case, much of it deeply fascinating. More's promised as the archeological work continues. This looks like one to stay tuned to.
http://www.kv5.com/intro.html

A Virtual Trip into the Great Pyramid of Giza

We're spending a lot of time thinking about neighborhoods here today, and it's happened again. It's obvious, the best way to visit the world's great monuments, is seeing them live - so to speak - but who has the time and the money to spend for such a task? We are among those, common mortals, who have to search alternative methods to explore our world. One of these methods is the Web. Surfing this site will let you learn all about the history of the great pyramid of Giza, as well as visit it in all its parts, thanks to photos and explanations, without having to worry about scorpions, sunburn, pharaoh's curses and so on. But, we agree, it would be better to be there.
http://guardians.net/egypt/gp1.htm

Navigating as Polynesians Did

What about a cruise across the Pacific Ocean? The idea suits us fine, except the mode of travel we have - canoe, to be exact - demands that we provide our own locomotion. At least you won't be alone. Ancient Polynesians first explored a great part of the Pacific and, since 1975, members of the Polynesian Voyaging Society have replicated their voyages with the same types of canoes. At the society's site, you'll learn more about their voyages, canoe-building skills, navigational arts, and their celebrative tour around the islands of Hawai'i. This site has everything you need, including resources for teachers who want in keeping the Polynesians' incredible lessons alive.
http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/pvs/welcome.html

MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY
It's alive! It's alive!

Eeeeew!

Since few potential Nobel laureates long to make their marks in the field of human gross-out response, we have surprisingly little solid science on disgust. (Even "Pink Flamingos" film maker John Waters went Hollywood as soon as he could.) London's Channel 4 The Anatomy of Disgust site points out that it has been called the 'forgotten emotion of psychiatry'. Still, Freud, Darwin, the London School of Hygiene, and anthropologist Mary Douglas have courageously stepped into this squishy, smelly unwholesome heap. Read about the political manipulation of the human disgust response, exemplified in the caste system of India, which personifies disgust in its lowest rung of untouchables. And don't miss the section on art, which may help put disgusting works such as "Piss Christ" in a context more people can handle.
http://www.channel4.com/nextstep/disgust/intro.html

Butterflies

Ponder the improbable life of the Monarch butterfly - the only insect to perform a cross generational 5000-mile migration spanning the northern and southern hemispheres. At this virtual rookery of butterfly science, budding entomologists can read about butterflies in the wild and in captivity; collectors can pick up tips on sugaring - luring for capture - on breeding, and preserving and mounting specimens. Some articles are contributed by amateur entomologists, others come on the authority of the likes of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Scientific American magazine, and various entomological societies in the United States.
http://butterflywebsite.com/Articles/constructlist.cfm?type=collectinginsects

The Stuff of Dreams

The great scientist Mendeleev said his groundbreaking periodic table of the elements came to him in complete form in a dream. Jack Nicklaus credited a crucial improvement in his golf game to dreaming of a new way to grasp his club. Remembered dreams can seem more real than waking experiences, yet analysis can yield maddeningly amorphous results. Clinical studies in many branches of psychiatry ask basic questions about dream language, meaning, problem solving capacity, and relationship to waking reality. The Dreaming Articles Online site posts papers from leading researchers who document their findings from varied disciplines, including anthropology, childhood trauma, spirituality, and art.
http://www.asdreams.org/

Netsurfer Recommendations

Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the cover or title to order the item at a hefty discount from Amazon.com and Beyond.com and send a few pennies our way as well.

Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages
Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine
Oxford Univ Pr (Trade); ISBN: 0195136241

Think of it. As much as the world's map has changed over the past century, the inventory of nations always hovers in the very low hundreds. However much the number fluctuates and the shape of the map changes, the inventory of the languages spoken in those nations - quite apart from dialects and regional variations - numbers 5000. If you've read Netsurfer Science for any length of time, you've seen more than one site that speaks to disappearing cultures and languages. The decline is so persistent, in fact, that it will be mere decades before half those tongues join the ranks of history's dead languages, erasing regional distinctions and assimilating indigenous peoples. It's no slight to the world's major languages that English is the lingua franca of global business - even of air control. There are many reasons to lament this reliance on a dwindling number of languages. We do believe that the subtleties of some languages, on the lips of fluent speakers, capture the subtleties of culture. Nettle and Romaine chronicle the sad stories of singular people who live out their last years knowing that they will take a culture and language to the grave with them. Less successfully, the authors link the death of languages to the global decline in environmental quality. We're among the many skeptics who think their case fails, but it doesn't diminish the tragedy of the loss on either front.

ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY
All that we see or seem

Social Class and Stratification

Sorting members of a society according to some criteria of "importance" in the society has been with us since humans put down their clubs long enough to congregate together. The Hewett School of Norwich Norfolk UK has waded in on this pervasive practice with some interesting observations. Those of us who rub shoulders with others in our daily routines have ample opportunities to observe this stratification process at work. The criteria vary, but the results are the same; individuals are sorted into levels of esteem in which they are held by the culture doing the sorting. For example, there are ample examples of nations and regions that sort people according to race. In Northern Ireland, people are sorted according to which religion they embrace. In academic circles, people are sorted according to the level of academic degree they may hold. The sociology department of Hewett takes this phenomenon a step further and asserts that in most modern industrial societies, "our system of social stratification is much more fluid - that is, we experience a good deal of social mobility - people through generations or perhaps in their life time, moving up or down the social scale". If you're interested in your social status and how it came to be, this page is a good place to start.
http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/class/class.htm

POPIN

The United Nations Population Information Network is a serious site that covers the subject thoroughly, its depth and breadth providing seemingly infinite resources on the topic. The site's main sections comprise an electronic library, population trends, regional information, and the International Conference on Population and Development. Among these are crowds of electronic documents and information resources. One that attracted our attention is InfoNation, a statistical database that allow users to view and compare data on up to seven member states of the UN at a time. Choose up to four data fields to examine from among the four categories of data geography, economy, population and social indicators. One could spend hours just playing with this alone. Also intriguing is the multilingual dictionary of demographic and reproductive health technology, and the worldwide directory of population institutions. UN Agencies have always been sensitive to the need to disseminate information widely and equitably, and this is just one great example of that. They've also always depended on cooperation between member countries and decentralized information collection. One consequence is that the quality of data sometimes varies from country to country. With that caveat in mind, this online resource is a populous, well-run warehouse full of invaluable records, tools, and documents. If the subject interests you, we suggest you POPIN.
http://www.undp.org/popin/

SCIENCE LITE
Where are you, Mulder?

Journal of Theoretics

The Journal of Theoretics is a bimonthly, nonprofit, scientific "peer-reviewed" Internet journal devoted to "all areas of scientific endeavor"; it's edited by Dr. James P. Siepmann, a retired physician, author, and the inventor of the Oshkosh Premier Humidifier. The current issue contains four primary articles, covering such topics as "absolute time," anti-gravity via virtual tachyons, consideration of banned Russian Background (or Zero-Point) Field research, and a field theory that is not only unified, it's ubiquitous. Operating clearly beyond the fortifications of recognized or academic scientific realms, the editor boldly proposes a lassez-faire approach to scientific publishing, where content is judged based on logical consistency rather than trifling matters such as experimental verification. Referring to the scientific method as outdated, the Doctor leads his 11 peers (who boast one PhD among them) on to new realms of scientific realization. And while it may very well be time to lay siege to the Ivory Tower, the soldier/scientist will do well to ensure that he does not take a long walk off of a short peer. Battle points awarded for independent thinking; subtracted for wide HTML formatting.
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/

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CREDITS

Publisher: Arthur Bebak Editor: Judith David Contributing Editor: Production Manager: Bill Woodcock Netsurfer Communications, Inc. President: Arthur Bebak Vice President: S.M. Lieu	Writers and Netsurfers: Jason Alderman Jonathan Baum Kate Brown Davide di Lazzaro Craig Kott Michael Luke Elizabeth Rollins Roy J. Winkler
NETSURFER SCIENCE © 2000 Netsurfer Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. NETSURFER SCIENCE is a trademark of Netsurfer Communications, Inc.