Courtesy of the Census Bureau, we present Facts for Features: Labor Day 2013 which contains a multitude of links and categories dealing with the world of work in the United States. A previous blog entry offers additional sites.
Archive for August, 2013
What is the “War Powers Resolution”?
Commonly called the War Powers Act, this legislation was passed by the Congress in 1973 over President Nixon’s veto. Its purpose is to curb the presidential ability to send American troops into hostile situations without first consulting with Congress. There is an inherent tension in the Constitution: Article 1, section 8 gives Congress the right to declare war and raise and support troops, while Article 2, section 2 defines the role of President as Commander in Chief.(For access to the original historical documents for these two articles, please consult the excellent Founders’ Constitution; lengthy explanations are contained in the CRS Annotated Constitution.) Further sites of importance include: War Powers (Law Library of Congress); War Powers Resolution: Presidential Compliance (CRS, A MUST READ); War Powers Act of 1973 (Times Topics); Congressional Hearings and Documents (HathiTrust); War Powers (Brookings); Balance of War Powers: The U.S. President and Congress (Council on Foreign Relations); War Powers of the Constitution in Historical Perspective (Parameters, 1980); Unconstitutional War: Strategic Risk in the Age of Congressional Abdication (Parameters, 2011); The Continuation of Politics by Other Means: The Original Understanding of War Powers (California Law Review, 1996 – a highly-cited article, it really is a 300+ page monograph); and John Yoo’s War Powers: The Law Review and the World (California Law Review, 2012, a rebuttal of the previous piece). Update: please listen to this BBC report – Congress and the Commander in Chief; also, please read this CRS document – See Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications.
2012 School Health Policies
The School Health Policies and Practices Study is a CDC survey conducted every six years; the last one was in 2012. An overview provides aggregate state and school district data on a variety of health policies: health education, physical education, mental health services, nutrition services, etc. Trends Over Time: 2000-2012 shows how various policies and mandates have been incorporated into school districts’ operations; i.e., the selling of “junk food” (2) or the establishment of violence prevention programs.(3) Much greater detail and data are available in the full report; each chapter ends with a bibliography. This should be required reading for school health nurses and administrators.
Welcome to the 2013/2014 Academic Year
We at the Library extend best wishes and felicitations to both new and returning students. Please remember that we are here to help you, no matter what your information needs. The regular hours for the Library look like this: Monday-Thursday 7:30am – 10pm; Friday 7:30am – 5pm; Saturday 9am – 5pm; Sunday 11am – 5pm . Changes to the schedule are here.
Here are some handy NJCU sites for you. When you need to contact a department or faculty member, use the university’s online campus directories. To purchase textbooks for your courses and to see if there are used cheaper copies or a rental option, access the bookstore. If you need to consult master course lists or catalogs, you may come to the Library or peruse the latest versions here. And let us not forget the Office of Campus Life. Since parking is at such a premiun around here, familiarize yourself with the parking rules and regulations. For those taking mass transportation, check this NJ Transit site. Cafeteria hours, menus, specials, etc are available at this Gourment Dining site. All students should read the NJCU Student Handbook – the Gothic Guide(2010 draft) – and be familiar with NJCU’s Academic Integrity Policy, Copyright Policy and Related Guidelines, and its Responsible Use of Computing Resources; other student policies should also be consulted. Also, please peruse the award-winning Gothic Magazine, read The Gothic Times (your student newspaper) and keep up with the Gothic Knights sports teams at this official and informative site. Learn about NJCU through this informative historical timeline and visit the accolade-laden Jersey City Past and Present. Make the most of your time here
Mom Was Right: Broccoli Is Good For You
Eating broccoli can possibly slow down osteoarthritis or prevent it altogether. That is the premise of experiments now being undertaken in England. It would appear that a strain of “super broccoli” contains a compound that when ingested is transformed into another compound that inhibits osteoarthritis. An abstract of the scientific article is available.
Online Primary Sources for American History: Presidential Taping of White House Conversations
For a period of over two years President Nixon had the White House “bugged” to record conversations he had with various individuals. Many of these tapes are now available from the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. In addition, conversations about the Watergate trial can also be listened to and transcripts can be read as well. It must be remembered that President Nixon was not the only president to engage in this type of recording; this goes back to FDR. A great place to find more of these recordings is the Presidential Recordings Program from the Miller Center. At the moment, this resource gives access to full recordings and, in many instances, transcripts of press conferences from President Roosevelt to other tapes from President Nixon not included in the above releases.(These are under “Tapes & Audio Files” on the lefthand side of the page). Also, under “Transcripts” will be found hundreds of conversations from JFK, LBJ, and RMN. Updates are added on a regular basis. A good primary source for modern American history.
For 2013/14, NJCU Still Charges the Lowest Tuition/Fees in the State
According to the chart that accompanies this Star Ledger article on tuition/fees in New Jersey charged by four-year colleges, NJCU once again is the bargain destination for an education. This reinforces the pattern of recent years in which NJCU has always charged the least for a bachelor’s degree.
What Does the New Health Reform Act Mean for You?
This plainly-written report from Consumer Reports – Health Reform: Seven Things You Need To Know – spells out in clear language what we can expect as more provisions of the Affordable Care Act are enacted in 2014. It disspells many false rumors that have been circulating about this mandate. A couple of other excellent places for more information are the Kaiser Family Foundation as well as the American Public Health Association.
Digital American Cookbooks
Want to know how to dress a turtle? Go to p.21 of this cookbook – American Cookery: Or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards, and Preserves, and All Kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plum to Plain Cake… – published in 1798 and considered the first cookbook written by an American for Americans. The collection this work comes from, Feeding America, contains reproductions of 76 historic cookbooks, each one accompanied by a short essay placing it in historical context. A glossary of cooking terms and images of old cooking implements are accessible as well. Another site of importance is from the Culinary History Collection at Virginia Tech. Over two hundred volumes are represented here; while many are historic in nature, more than a few date from the late 20th century. Also, the site is accompanied by an informative blog. Good eating!
Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Report
More formally titled as Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Strategy, this document essentially tells us that more superstorms are on the way, and that a combination of federal, state, and local agencies is necessary to coordinate recovery, rebuilding, and reshaping of the landscape. A term repeatedly used is “resilience,” or the ability to bounce back from horrific damage to infrastructure, housing, and the environment. Recommendations are made in many areas, from strenghtening the electrical grids and internet connectivity to providing for a hold on foreclosure activities in devastated areas. Each recommendation is accompanied by background information, the lead agency/agencies, and current status. A valuable planning document. Analyses/reports can be found at: The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger, Brookings Institution, Sierra Club – New Jersey Chapter, and New Jersey Future.
National Security Reports – August 2013 Update
Tools and Tradeoffs: Confronting U.S. Citizen Terrorist Suspects Abroad (Brookings); 2013 Targeting U.S. Technologies: A Trend Analysis of Reporting from Defense Industry (Defense Security Service); Congressional Primer on Responding to Major Disasters and Emergencies (CRS); Terrorism Risk: A Constant Threat – Impacts for Property/Casualty Insurers (Insurance Information Institute); Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents (CRS); Chemical Facility Security: Issues and Options for the 113th Congress (CRS); Economic Benefits of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to Weather Outages (Executive Office of the President); Managing Cyber Security as a Business Risk: Cyber Insurance in the Digital Age (Experian); and Protecting U.S. Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack: Re-assessing the Current ‘Design Basis Threat’ Approach (Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project).
How Educators Can Use Facebook in Their Classrooms
This report from the Education Foundation, a UK-based think tank – Facebook Guide for Educators – details how teachers in two schools introduced the use of Facebook, what aspects of the social media site they utilized (Timeline, Group, etc). and what was the experience of those who used this teaching tool. Embedded links lead to other sites of interest as well. This short twenty page guide contains a plethora of information, along with strategies to get started. It is well worth a perusal.
How Americans Use the Internet
This NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) report – Exploring the Digital Nation: America’s Emerging Online Experience – shows that: “For the first time in eight years, this study goes beyond new findings on computer and Internet adoption in the United States to also present data on Americans’ online activities – what Americans do once they connect to the Internet. The dataset contains information collected from more than 53,000 households, reporting on what Americans do online – including enjoying entertainment, communicating with friends, job searching and training, and researching health conditions and care, among other activities.”(9) Numerous figures and tables present socioeconomic data on a wide variety of topics; i.e., “Personal Characteristics by Type of Device to Access the Internet”(33) to “Home Computer, Internet, and Broadband Adoption by Demographic Characteristics and Geographic Location.”(40) A great deal of statistical breakdown by state is also included for comparative purposes. The Census Bureau’s Computer and Internet Use page yields relevant data as well, some of it historical in nature.
Economic Crisis – August 2013 Update
How Bad Was It? The Costs and Consequences of the 2007–09 Financial Crisis (Federal Reserve, Dallas); Evaluating early warning indicators of banking crises: Satisfying policy requirements (BIS); and The relationship between the housing and labor market crises and doubling up: an MSA-level analysis, 2005–2011 (BLS).
The World Bank and Educational Technology
As the World Bank states: “With globalization, the information revolution, and increasing demands for a highly skilled work force, it is clear that nations must accord high priority to building the capacity to effectively utilize technology in education.” (ICT and Education-Overview) To that end, the World Bank is involved in a myriad of tasks, from compiling reliable educational statistics to fostering programs in various developing countries, many of these activities guided by its 2010 document ICTs & Education: Issues and Opportunities. Its SABER-ICT page details its efforts to collect verifiable educational technology statistics from around the world: “Today, many of the education systems that are popularly considered to be ‘high-performing’ in their use of ICTs appear to have earned this designation for the wrong reason—not because they are able to point to rigorous data about the cost-effective impact of their ICT investments, but rather largely because they have ‘lots of ICTs’ ‘. A master list of national ICT policies is provided; we find it ironic that the list does not provide links to the various documents. However, a wonderful document that does provides links is its Mobile learning and textbooks of the future, e-reading and edtech policies: Trends in technology use in education in developing countries, a book developed from its Edutech blog – we recommend a weekly visit to this very informative site, if only to read about the ongoing ICT surveys being conducted by the World Bank; for example, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education in Five Arab States: A comparative analysis of ICT integration and e-readiness in schools in Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Palestine and Qatar. Consider this web site a portal into a world of edtech information on the supranational level.
Back to School Statistics
We have both retail and government reports on this topic. The National Retail Federation has released its report expecting a decrease is back-to-school spending while the Census Bureau has published its Back to School: 2013-2014 feature with many links of interest.
American Civil War Animated Maps
Sometimes it is very difficult when reading about the history of a battle to have a good picture in your head of what actually transpired. Movements of large bodies of troops over various terrains from different directions at varying times can leave a reader confused as to the actual troop placement. To remedy that civilwar animated.com features the major battles in an animated fashion. Brief biographies of the commanding generals are included along with informative narratives. Each battle’s presentation is based upon scholarly sources that are noted at the beginning of each section. This site is certainly worth looking at to get a clear picture out of the fog of war.
Historic Film Journals and Magazines Online
Would you like to peruse Variety from 1905 to 1926, or Film Daily from 1918 to 1948, or look at the Radio Annual and Television Yearbook from 1938 to 1964? These and dozens of other relevant titles are now accessible courtesy of the Media History Digital Library. Currently this site holds over 800,000 pages from these titles; depending on your search, you can retrieve movie advertisements stretching over decades for long-lived actors. Searches can be limited by date, title, collection, format, or language. A must stop for any film fan or film historian.
Online Primary Sources for American History: World War II Interviews/Oral Histories
World War II ended almost sixty years ago; those who were part of that global struggle are disappearing very rapidly, and all we have left are their thoughts/memories. These repositories have captured what they experienced. The Cornelius J. Ryan Collection at Ohio University has a digital exhibit containing dozens of eyewitness accounts. It is a little awkward to navigate, but a patient researcher will find much of value here. The Drop Zone concentrates on America’s elite services: Raiders, paratroopers, glidermen, Rangers, etc. The Rutgers Oral History Archives has a special section on World War II interviews; hundreds are available. The Library of Congress hosts the Veterans History Project that holds over 2400 World War II interviews, some containing sound and video recordings. The National World War II Museum features two dozen taped interviews. Rosie the Riveter World War II Homefront Project details through numerous interviews life in the San Francisco area during the war. The Georgia World War II Oral History Project contains many recorded interviews, some over an hour long. The New York State Military Museum’s Veteran Oral History Program also offers interviews on a more local level. Thousands of oral histories from the British perspective can be found at BBC WW2 People’s War
What is the European Parliament?
Look no further than this CRS report The European Parliament that traces the development of what was once a consultative body into what is now a formidable legislative entity; the BBC’s Guide to the European Parliament is also a noteworthy site for information. And let’s not forget the Parliament’s own homepage.
Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog 