Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Resources and Headlines

Happy Reading for today.

<Karen>



A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans
This collection of images of quilts created by African Americans from Arkansas can be explored by
looking at quilting families, individual quilters, and quilt types such as log cabin, center star or medallion,
combined patterns, and miniature and doll quilts. Provides biographies of the quilters and quilting families,
and related links (a few broken). From the Old State House Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas.
http://www.oldstatehouse.com/piece-of-my-soul/

Traditional Folktales in the Classroom

• Anansi, Tekoma, and the Cow's Belly Folktale Stories spoken in Standard English and Negerhollands English.
  Stories of the people, often passed from elders to the next generation. Help your students learn through the oral tradition.
  The Virgin Islands Dutch Creole folktale was collected by a Dutch anthropologist, J. P. B. de Josselin de Jong, who visited the Virgin Islands in 1923.
  Download, read, and hear each story narrated in both American Virgin Island Creole and Standard English, plus find out how these stories survived in tact from the original storyteller.
• Origin of "The Tales of B'rer Rabbit" first collected on the Laura Plantation
• Gullah Tales - folktales, listen to the words.
• Uncle Remus Tales
• Remembering Slavery: Those Who Survived Tell Their Stories
• In the First Person is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of more than 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world.

Weak control system security threatens U.S.
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/45670-1.html
NEW ORLEANS -- Weak security on infrastructure control systems may
eventually put the country at risk for a coordinated attack on
utilities, warned Jerry Dixon, former acting director of the Homeland
Security Departments National Cyber Security Division.


Red Room
This website's goal is to create a social network for authors and readers. It features pages for authors including
Maya Angelou, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Khaled Hosseini, and Amy Tan, with author biographies, lists of published
works, blog entries, and audio and video clips (such as the 1988 San Francisco high school graduation speech
by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket). Browsable by author or genre. Also includes an events listing.
http://www.redroom.com/

Many 'Hacker Safe' Web Sites Found Vulnerable
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205900444
More than 60 Web sites certified to be "Hacker Safe" by McAfee's
ScanAlert service have been vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS)
attacks over the past year, including the ScanAlert Web site itself.
While the XSS hole in the ScanAlert site and others have been addressed,
some apparently have not been, leaving visitors potentially vulnerable
to client-side attacks.



The Shape of Fashion and Its Underpinnings, 1870-1960
See what undergarments helped create the shape of women's fashions in the late-19th through mid-20th centuries.
"From a tight corset and layer upon layer of undergarments to a simple brassiere, the transition in women's
foundations tells the story of their journey toward liberation." Features images of underwear and corresponding
clothing for the bustle period, jazz age, Dior's "New Look," and more. From the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana.
http://muse.museum.montana.edu/sof/

Foreign hackers seek to steal Americans' health records
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151334-1.html
Foreign hackers, primarily from Russia and China, are increasingly
seeking to steal Americans health care records, according to a
Department of Homeland Security analyst.
Mark Walker, who works in DHS Critical Infrastructure Protection
Division, told a workshop audience at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology that the hackers primary motive seems to be
espionage.


Black History Month: A Medical Perspective
This small, illustrated exhibit looks at highlights and achievements of African Americans in medicine.
It features biographies of black physicians, a timeline of blacks in medical education, and overview of the
black hospital movement (1865-1960s), several folk medicine healing concepts and beliefs,
and related materials. From the Duke University Medical Center Library.
http://www.mclibrary.duke.edu/hom/exhibits/blkhist/

Online crime gangs embrace open source ethos
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/globalization_of_crimeware/
Add the malware bazaar to the list of marketplaces being radically
reshaped by the forces of globalization.
That's the conclusion of Thomas Holt, a professor of criminal justice at
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who says the marketplace
for rootkits, Trojans and other software nasties increasingly transcends
national boundaries. In many respects, malware creation mimics open
source communities, in which legions of programmers spanning the globe
tweak one another's code to add new features and fix bugs.


Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995): Afro-American Librarian and Bibliophile
This exhibit "honors the memory of one the most prominent African-American librarians and bibliophiles of the twentieth century."
Features a biography, transcript of a speech given by Wesley in 1957, an exhibition checklist with selected images of books and
postcards, and a selected bibliography. From librarian James Findlay of the Bienes Center for the Literary Arts
(now Bienes Museum of the Modern Book), Broward County Library, Florida.
http://www.broward.org/library/bienes/lii13600.htm


Data lost on 650,000 credit card holders
http://origin.contracostatimes.com/technology/ci_8000668
PLANO, Texas - Personal information on about 650,000 customers of J.C.
Penney and up to 100 other retailers could be compromised after a
computer tape went missing. GE Money, which handles credit card
operations for Penney and many other retailers, said Thursday night that
the missing information includes Social Security numbers for about
150,000 people.


Police Recover Stolen Computer Router
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=7738505
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Metro police found part of the computer system stolen
from the Davidson County Election Commission offices Christmas Eve.
A computer router was recovered late Thursday afternoon. Police did not
disclose where they found it.
Robert Osbourne, who is charged with burglary and theft, was calm and
cooperative when police questioned him.
He gave police clues about where to start looking for the stolen laptops
that contained information about registered voters including Social
Security numbers.



22nd Century
Website for the pilot episode of a 2007 PBS program about technology and innovation.
Features video of stories about cochlear implants, "eyetap" ("glasses that continuously record what you see
and have the ability to interject new information into what you are watching"), an electrode implanted in the
brain of a man to restore communication abilities lost in an accident, and related topics.
Also includes interviews, writings, and links to related resources.
http://www.pbs.org/22ndcentury/


Prepare For The Next Disaster
The private sector owns 85% of this country's critical infrastructure,
and the government simply cannot protect it all, nor should it be
expected to. So this year, the most important resolution any corporate
executive can make is to develop, maintain and test its own business
continuity program, or "BCP."



BioEd Online: Biology Teacher Resources From Baylor College of Medicine
This website's goal is "to provide useful, accurate, and current information and materials that build
upon and enhance the skills and knowledge of [K-12] science educators." It features streaming video
presentations, a slide library of lesson plans and activities, "hot topic" pages, and science news.
In addition to topical content, the site includes teaching strategies and lab techniques.
Also includes a special section with K-5 content. From the Baylor College of Medicine
http://www.bioedonline.org/


One year later: Five takeaways from the TJX breach


American Library Association: ALA Wikis
Compilation of wikis (collaboratively produced and edited content) from American Library Association (ALA)
sections and groups (such as the Association for Library Services to Children and the International Relations
Round Table). Also includes wikis from ALA conferences and symposiums, exhibitions, and specific programs,
and reference and background material. An RSS feed is available for recent changes to most of the wikis. From the ALA.
http://wikis.ala.org/readwriteconnect/index.php/ALA_wikis

Skype Flaw Turns Videos Into Weapons
A programming error in eBay's Skype communications software could give
cyber-criminals a new way to sneak their malicious software onto a
victim's PC.


Plug Into eCycling: Recycle Your Cell Phone
Background and details about this U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiative,
launched in early 2008, to encourage cell phone recycling. "[D]espite the large number of programs,
most consumers still do not know where or how they can recycle their cell phones. Consequently,
less than 20 percent of unwanted cell phones are recycled each year." Includes a fact sheet and podcast,
places to drop off and mail in cell phones, and related material. From the EPA.
http://www.epa.gov/cellphone/

571 MoD LAPTOPS ARE LOST IN LAST 10 YEARS
The Ministry of Defence has admitted that an amazing 571 of its laptops
have been lost or stolen in the past 10 years.
The disclosure comes as police continue to search for a stolen MoD
laptop with details of 600,000 potential recruits to the Royal Navy and
RAF.


Jihadi software promises secure Web contacts
An Islamist Web site often used by al-Qaida supporters carried updated
encryption software on Friday that it said would help Islamic militants
communicate with greater security on the Internet.
The Mujahideen Secrets 2 was promoted as "the first Islamic program for
secure communications through networks with the highest technical level
of encoding."
The software, available for free on the password-protected Ekhlaas.org
site, which often carries al-Qaida messages, is a newer version of
Mujahideen Secrets issued in early 2007 by the Global Islamic Media
Front, an al-Qaida-linked Web-based group.
"This special edition of the software was developed and issued
by...Ekhlaas in order to support the mujahideen (holy war fighters) in
general and the (al-Qaida-linked group) Islamic State in Iraq in
particular," the site said.



SANS director confirms the CIA confirmed ... absolutely nothing



Military Hackers Turn To Commercial Electronic Attack Tools
Chinas integrated air defenses based on cheap, sometimes stolen digital
technology are now considered potentially more threatening to the U.S.
than Russians. The wholesale use of commercial products has made Chinese
networks flexible, easy to upgrade and tough to exploit.
That opinion, rapidly taking hold in the U.S. electronic warfare
community, is part of the tsunami of air defense analysis following
Israels demonstration of its ability to shut down Syrias Russian-built
air defenses long enough to conduct a bombing raidand then allowed the
radars to come back on in time to see the Israeli aircraft disappearing
over the border (AW&ST Nov. 26, 2007, p. 28).