|
Home Subscriptions Netsurfer Digest E-Zine Netsurfer Education E-Zine Netsurfer Books E-Zine |
| Marshall Brain and His Stuff |
| Global Positioning System |
| How To Use a Compass |
| Asbestos Awareness |
| Chernobyl and Three Mile Island |
| Economic and Game Theory |
| Polling and Statistics |
| Geometry of War |
| Geometry of War, Parte the Second |
| How Lasers Work |
| Terrorist Use of Chemical Weapons |
| Tracing Stolen Art |
| Anthrax |
| The History of Islamic Medicine |
| Information about Prosthetics |
| American Women in Uniform |
| O Death, Where is Thy Sting-a-ling-a-ling? |
| Art and Science of Criminal Investigation |
| Hate Crimes |
| You Think Sipowicz Knows? |
| Living Bridges |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
| Netsurfer Digest |
REVIEWERS' CHOICE
Is there a Mrs. Swamp Thing?
http://www.howstuffworks.com
EARTH SYSTEMS
No matter where you go, there you are
UTA: http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html
Another GPS site: http://www.aero.org/publications/GPSPRIMER/index.html
And one more: http://www.navcen.uscg.mil/GPS/
Less expensive, more evocative, the good ol' compass still has its uses - even if we're not sure how to use one. This page presents a very simple introduction to the skill of orienteering and in particular, compass reading. The absolute basics are covered first, such as what the compass needle does and how to find directions other than north with a compass. The tutorial then moves on to discuss using compasses with maps, covers magnetic declination and for dedicated orienteers, a page on navigating in fog. The author then goes on to recommend some good compasses both for beginners and experts, and of course there is the ubiquitous collection of links.
http://www.uio.no/~kjetikj/compass/
As the second month after the World Trade Center attacks draws to a close, the quality of the air at Ground Zero is still a considerable issue for overseers. In its earliest hours and days, there were suggestions that asbestos might had been freed from some of the shattered buildings. Testing allayed that specific fear. To rediscover the nature and dangers of asbestos, check this technical links page from the US Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).
http://www.pp.okstate.edu/ehs/modules/asb.htm
COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING
Open the pod bay doors, Hal
http://onin.com/fp/fp.html
Washington DC: America's First Attempt at City Planning
With its beaux-arts architectural style, the monumental core of Washington DC evokes in many the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy. Yet when The Mall was built in the beginning of this century, some said it set domestic architecture back 100 years. And in the most practical sense, America's first attempt at city planning was a dismal failure. This grand inner city renovation was supposed to inspire poor Washingtonians to pull themselves up by their boot straps. The poor stayed poor. Bureaucrats nested behind marble walls and, even now, the draw is so strong that tour buses discharge thousands of people from all over the world to see the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the rest. This site's packed with perspective on architecture, American history and human nature that no tour guide could ever give you.http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/CITYBEAUTIFUL/dchome.html
Live from Dallas/Fort Worth Air Traffic Control
If you've flown American Airlines, odds are you've passed through DFW - Dallas/Fort Worth's primary airport. Unless you fly American Airlines planes, odds are you've never heard of DFW. This site provides a RealAudio feed of DFW's air traffic control tower. It's not fancy, but the sound fidelity - with allowances for the nature of aircraft radio - astounded us. If you want to follow along, the site's maps of DFW's runways, taxiways, and ramps will come in handy.http://webevents.broadcast.com/simuflite/index.html
Satellite War over Yugoslavia and Afghanistan
Dubya might be new to the job but he had some experience to draw on. The air war on Yugoslavia dramatically highlighted changes in contemporary warfare: the importance of cooperative regional allies, the grave repercussions of a bombing mistake such as the destruction of the Chinese consulate. Space Today Online's summary of the satellite networks hovering overhead really brings the technological changes and requirements into focus. Some four dozen satellites from nearly two dozen different nations were used in "the largest armada of spacecraft ever brought to bear on a single war in history". We so much take for granted the role of satellites in peaceful tasks that we have to appreciate their role in less friendly engagements. Read more about each type of bird and what it did in Yugoslavia and what it can do in Afghanistan.http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/YugoWarSats.html
Curious about that Class Nimitz air carrier? Or about those F-14 recalling you some "Top Gun" movie? Dive into the "Naval Technology" site, where you will find everything about ships, submarines, Navy weapons and aircraft, from images to technical references. Sorry, no classified material.
http://www.naval-technology.com/index.html
Smart Bombs: How Do They Know?
If you're not in the cross hairs, a smart bomb is certainly preferable to a dumb one. Target strike capability is dramatically improving. According to the Pentagon, 100% of American bombs used in the Kosovo war used high technology guidance systems, compared with only 9% of munitions used during the Gulf War. The Net Book of Ordnance and General Destruction talks about ordnance in terms of specs, offering detail well beyond our ken. How Stuff Works report tells how smart bombs are getting smarter - if not wiser, of course. The Los Angeles Times article looks at what happens when smart bombs do stupid things. While you're visiting Marshall Brain at his How Stuff Works site, check out the principles of physics that keep helicopters in the air and - although we thankfully haven't heard of their use thus far - how flamethrowers toss fire.Ordnance: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/8976/missiles.htm
Stuff: http://www.howstuffworks.com/cruise-missile.htm
Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000084654oct24.story
Helicopters: http://www.howstuffworks.com/helicopter.htm
Flamethrowers: http://www.howstuffworks.com/flamethrower.htm
Your Tax Dollars at Work: Tomahawk Cruise Missiles
Find out what's been happening with this Nixon-era weapon, now that those nuclear warheads have been removed from the Tomahawk missile. During the Gulf War, some were loaded with small spools of carbon- carbon fiber thread, for example. The fiber spools unwound and fouled up Iraqi electric grids. The Tomahawk page, connected to the Softwar.net site, also describes the different guidance systems which make this 4,190 pound device able to fly through a one square meter path to a destination up to 1,553 miles away.http://www.softwar.net/bgm109.html
This site really is just about military-quality - and we mean that in a good way. It provides a frequently updated database of the world's naval ships, organized into regions. The USA and Russia have the most detailed information, but the entries for other nations are still amazingly comprehensive. Individual records usually contain information about the vessel in question such as displacement, dimensions, propulsion systems, crew, and any special equipment carried. In addition, hull numbers for each vessel are provided, along with the year they were constructed, the fleet they belong to, and their home port. There's probably more relevant information here than at any official Navy site.
http://www.hazegray.org/worldnav/
How does London-New York in an hour, via supersonic submarine sound? What, you ask, happened to drag, that old enemy of anything trying to move very fast in a dense medium such as water? One way around it, as this article tells us - originally published in New Scientist - is to exploit cavitation, normally something naval folk want to avoid, because it's noisy, wasteful, and damaging. In typical New Scientist style, this article examines the new ideas with flair and journalistic excitement while mindful of the facts. Under the right conditions, a single bubble or supercavity can form around a moving object lowering drag and thus increasing speed dramatically. Achieving those conditions in water, however, is formidably difficult. During the Cold War, Russia experimented with superfast torpedoes that used a rocket motor to achieve very high speeds aided by a region of supercavitation around the torpedo. More recently, US researchers have broken the sound barrier in water (that's 5400 km/h, Folks!) with fired projectiles designed to undergo cavitation, an idea that's being used in developing a mine clearing gun. While military and civilian applications look intriguing, clearly there's a lot of work yet to be done, so you might as well hold off on ordering that underwater Concorde ticket for the moment.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a397c938f46bc.htm
Sometimes it's probably better just not to know, but the Internet does make that hard. This report informs us that "within Europe all fax, e- mail and telephone messages are routinely intercepted by means of ... the ECHELON global surveillance system". So who's worrying about that? The European Parliament for one; if you were ever curious about what that body gets up to, it seems that delving into such matters and considering uses and abuses of such monitoring is on the list. This site presents - in all its 22000-word glory - the first part of a four-part document, written in officialese and inclined inevitably to foster a feeling of paranoia. It's called Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information and it's the result of a survey of expert opinions commissioned as a working document for the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment Panel of the European Parliament in 1999. It makes fascinating reading that anyone interested in surveillance, government control, and privacy measures should at least skim. And if you really want more, the links to the other three parts are given here as well.
http://cryptome.org/dst-1.htm
Progress in NonLethal Weapons Research
Issued by the Department of Peace Studies at the Centre for Conflict Resolution and written by Dr. Nick Lewer, Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, Research Report Number 2 is up online. Sounds like a must read, right? As in when you must get to sleep and just can't. With topics such as Modular Crowd Control Munition, Ground Vehicle Stopper, Maritime Vessel Stopper Acoustic Programme, and Vortex Ring Gundetails, the report makes fascinating reading. Still, although there's no denying we'd rather be hit by rubber bullets than the lead kind, the document leaves the nagging concern that the easier and more effective nonlethal methods of control are, the more likely they are to be used to excess. And, indeed, the report reflects such worries, with its reference to the UK police regularly breaching guidelines for correct use of 5% spray, and mention of the potential use of nonlethal weapons for repression. The tone of the report is matter of fact and sober, and there's lots more of like ilk here as well, including a link to Research Report No. 1, if your thirst isn't fully slaked by quaffing this document.http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/nlw/censdera.html
These grainy green images are getting disturbingly familiar. Anonymous warriors offload, ready to go about their very serious business. These two sites illuminate the subject of night vision scopes and binoculars. The devices use the principle of light amplification to enhance our ability to see in low light conditions. They do this by focusing light onto photo cathodes, which employ a phosphor screen that generates photons to provide an amplified image. Different devices have different levels of light amplification and optical magnification. The first site is the briefer and less detailed of the two. And, once more, How Stuff Works sheds smart light on a subject.
How I: http://www.pimall.com/nais/n.nv.html
Stuff: http://www.howstuffworks.com/nightvision.htm
|
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.
|
Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY
42
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island
Fears in the wake September 11 have been generalized and specific. The powers that be are taking a second look at targets tempting to terrorists out to make deadly statements in a big way. Chillingly, some of those powers have fixed their attention on security at nuclear power plants. Could those sites be exploited for terrorism. It seems that we learned lessons from the two most disastrous accidents in the history of generating electricity from the atom. American nuclear sites are said to be able to withstand impacts as large as that resulting from a downed aircraft. (That danger was entirely theoretical at the time, of course.) No. If it's any comfort, the proven dangers at nuclear facilities come from within, falling under the rubrics of faulty design, mechanical failure and operator error. Look to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island for the evidence. The simplified mechanics of these tragedies are documented at a site established by Ljubisa R. Radovic, Associate Professor of Fuel Science at Penn State. Learn how not to withdraw your control rods, and how to maintain proper coolant levels. The alternatives could be very costly (say, billions), and nuclear infamy has a very long half-life.Radovic's site: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~radovic/Chernobyl.html
Dr. Meshkati's Chernobyl page: http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~meshkati/chernobyl.html
Chernobyl.com: http://www.chernobyl.com/chernobylphotos.htm
Accounts of Chernobyl effects: http://www.halcyon.com/blackbox/hw/accounts.html
If you are used to thinking of games as only child's play, think again. For economists and psychologists, the fun of games is a very serious matter. This site explains game theory clearly as a study of interactions between groups and people. Better, it deals with how intelligent individuals interact with one another in an effort to achieve their own goals. Put in these terms, game theory embraces many aspects of our life, and of our nations' interactions, ranging from choosing between alternatives and considering the consequences, to trade and manufacturing, to seeing what happens when you play the same game, but with different rules. You only need to look to the shadings of the nigh global alliance, to see the practical applications of game theory. Scheduled for holiday release, the film, A Beautiful Mind, is a biopic of economist John Nash, the Nobel Prize winner who detailed game theory during the Cold War. The film stars Russell Crowe, so it won't want for attention. But, we know you'll look deeper.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/
CNN has one every day, but we wouldn't put too much store by the results of answers rendered by a self-selected sample. They're polls and we'll be seeing a lot of them. Lots and lots of them throughout the so-called war on terrorism. All sides will be looking to shore up their positions with tools that test the public's tolerances. (Osama bin Laden, of course, prefers a more direct approach.) Especially in times of change, statisticians have a great time polling populations, extrapolating society's moods, and generally annoying those of us trying to sit down to dinner or watch The West Wing. This page goes into great detail to explain some of the methods and techniques pollsters use to produce the mountains of statistics that inevitably appear. Links to related Web sites, such as The United States Bureau of Census and other various statistics pages are interspersed throughout the site. There are also a few 'activities' that allow Web surfers to perform hypothetical samples of voters, providing a practical way to see how statistics can be manipulated.
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/statistics/
In 1537, 55 years before Galileo discovered the laws of projectiles and 150 years before Newton published his Principia, a mathematician changed the face of both science and warfare. Niccolo Tartaglia, a Verona native, published the small tome, La Nova Scientia, a book that methodically reasoned out the science behind artillery - early projectile motion - as well as range-finding and surveying. Tartaglia's work was the beginning of a renaissance in the science of war, a sweeping movement that covered most of two centuries and wrought changes in everything from the way that cannon were fired to the manner in which fortifications were built. Oxford University's Museum of the History of Science has an intriguing exhibit on the pursuit of a Geometry of War, and it seems to be a story prophetic of future scientific advances made by human conflict.
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/geometry/content.htm
Geometry of War, Parte the Second
After pouring over the texts and diagrams of the Oxford exhibit, you still might need a little conceptual help. Another museum, the Singapore Science Center, has just the thing: a hands-on cannon projectile simulation. Bring your Java-capable browser and a little curiosity. There's no night scope and the ball is only as smart as you are, but manipulating the variables is instructive in its own way.http://www.sci-ctr.edu.sg/interexh/java/Cannon/index.html
It's only about 30 years since scientists have been able to produce light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation - better known as laser beams. (Like SCUBA and MODEM, the LASER has joined the ranks of the lower case.) Once scientists began to understand how to stimulate electrons to get a controlled stream of energy, the laser became increasingly useful and commonplace. Read about how lasers use gas, semiconductors, and other media to generate energy streams of varying frequency.
http://members.aol.com/jimb3d/lasers.html
Terrorist Use of Chemical Weapons
"...The train slowed to a stop to allow more passengers on, then sped along to its destination, the central government district in Tokyo. Many of the passengers found it strange that a man who got on at the last stop was wearing sunglasses, but soon dismissed it remembering how safe the subways and their homeland have always been. Well, they were mistaken." No, this isn't the beginning of the latest Tom Clancy bestseller, but the introduction to a paper about use of chemical weapons by terrorists. Here you'll find classification of chemical weapons, and discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of their use as a weapon of mass destruction. The authors also consider the future of chemical weapons, and solutions to fight and prevent their use. There is, however, no do-it-yourself recipe book for homemade chemical weapons, fortunately.http://www.uberhip.com/people/godber/research/cwpaper.html
ARCHEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
What is past is prologue
RAWA: http://www.rawa.org/museum.html
Trace: http://www.trace.co.uk/
Endangered art: http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,450009,00.html
UNESCO: http://www.unesco.org/opi/eng/unescopress/2001/taliban-crisis.shtml
MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY
It's alive! It's alive!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/anthrax.htm
The History of Islamic Medicine
The term "Arabic medicine" has been widely used to describe the body of healing knowledge native to Middle Eastern and North African countries. But this site adopts the term "Islamic medicine" to emphasize spiritual underpinnings that the authors feel elevate scientific cultural achievement to divine work. And the scientific achievements are fascinating. Read about how 9th-century Persian writings on smallpox were referenced in European medicine through the 18th century. How Middle Eastern physicians and alchemists preserved and built on much of the world's scientific knowledge all but lost to European culture during the dark ages. And anyone in the healing arts may be deeply moved and refreshed by the devotion in the words of The Oath of a Muslim Physician.http://www.mic.ki.se/Arab.html
Afghanistan is among the most heavily mined landscapes in the world. Add to that its general level of poverty, the low priority given to health care, the dismal economic and social prospects for victims of land mines, and the inevitable morbidity suffered among both military and civilian populations in current events, and you have a grim picture indeed. War teaches us much about trauma, 'though in this case we suspect that the lessons are much like the tree falling alone in the forest. Closer to home, one of the discoveries about the phantom limb phenomenon is that a person suffering from it earns a not inconsiderable potential benefit. That person will likely have fewer problems succeeding with a limb prosthesis. Surprisingly, prostheses are as old as history. We know not only of amputations in prehistory, but that old civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome left us hints about the use of limb prostheses. Now, prostheses can be built in many shapes and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated, in an effort to offer a more functional replacement of the original limb. There are, for instance, special pivots for amputees who play golf, and costs for the most complex computer assisted varieties can vary 20- fold from the basic models. You can learn more about prostheses and amputations at the site of the Northwestern University Prosthetic- Orthotic Center.
http://www.nupoc.northwestern.edu/
ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY
All that we see or seem
http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/
O Death, Where is Thy Sting-a-ling-a-ling?
Why is selling life insurance in Cleveland a skate compared to selling in Madrid, where an agent is likely to get a door slammed in her face? Because life insurance is ridiculous, say the Spanish. They have a completely different view of death from Americans, who buy more life insurance than any other nationality. This site uses cultural comparisons; philosophical, artistic and historical ruminations; and, government studies to look at the event shared by every being. The point of view is sociological, as summed up in the declaration that 'death' is a socially constructed idea. This site is so chock full of references and links to solid scholarship, statistics, and ethical action groups, you don't have to agree. And there's practical advice, too: how to arrange a funeral, and how to search for Great Aunt Fanny's grave site, may she rest in peace. Our title is from the World War I era song, "For You, but Not for Me".http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/death.html
Art and Science of Criminal Investigation
Authorities are playing their strategies close to the chest, but each day comes a new little tidbit of information reveals just how thorough the criminal investigation is into the events of September 11. We don't expect to find their how-to book of investigative techniques, so we won't raise hopes that you'll find the highest level of insider information here. But, imagine yourself with that special ability to divine a description, method, perhaps even motive, simply by observing a crime scene. Reality isn't quite so neat, but crime scene reconstruction is often the first step in a criminal investigation. Reconstruction tries to answer questions like what happened and how it happened. Reconstructions come in many forms and each type requires different information. To learn more about it, check this site, a must for fans of the genre. Once you've learned enough, you can try to solve the online case study.http://crimeandclues.com/introduction.htm
Nothing bewilders us more than the propensity of humans to hate other people for the most inexplicable of reasons, including skin color, religion, language, location, and so forth. In a century that has seen seemingly endless outpourings of hatred and the systematic application of state-sponsored genocide, it's incredible that the seductive lure of hatred continues to poison. The American Psychological Association's Hate Crimes Today site is an attempt to expose this problem to public view. The site basically consists of an article, An Age-Old Foe in Modern Dress, which discusses the topic in some detail. It points out that "most hate crimes are carried out by otherwise law- abiding young people who see little wrong with their actions". Personal prejudice, feeding off lies, myths, and ignorance, fuels most of this activity. The article concludes with some useful thoughts on what we each of us can do to help deal with the problem.
http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/hate/
You and a good friend are caught under suspicion of a heinous crime. Put in separate interrogation rooms, you and your friend are each offered the same deal: squeal on the other guy, and you get a commuted sentence. You know that if you both keep mum, the police can't prove anything. If you squeal on your friend, and he says nothing, you'll be much better off than he will; if you both confess, you both get a sentence that's not as severe as if the other guy had ratted you out. What do you do: rat out your friend, or stay quiet and hope he does the same? What strategy would you use if you and your friend are caught over and over, and you have the chance to make the decision again, each of you knowing full well the outcome of the last encounter? This is the iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD), a scenario used to model chaotic and complex systems in everything from biology to economics. It can even predict the blood-sharing behaviors of vampire bats, who, on a bad night, turn to their roostmates for a little sustenance.
http://www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/~brembs/ipd/ipd.html
RESIDUE
We can't be sure what else is out there
Brooklyn: http://www.lihistory.com/6/hs601a.htm
San Francisco bridges: http://www.americahurrah.com/SFBridges.htm