Pew Research News IQ Quiz

What’s Your Political News IQ?

Take the Quiz

To test your knowledge of prominent people and major events in the news, we invite you to take our short 12-question quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with 1,001 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national survey conducted Nov. 11-14, 2010 by the Pew Research Center.

http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/ Try it!

November 19, 2010

• Christmas-Cookies.com – hundreds of Christmas cookie recipes

http://www.christmas-cookies.com/
For those of you who give home-made cookies for Christmas presents and want to get an early start on baking, here’s a treasure house of recipes for cookies – chocolate snowflake macaroons, fudge-pecan chewies, no-bake cathedral windows, cornflake wreath cookies, low carb snickerdoodles, rosettes, and about 550 other varieties.

• Earth and Industry

http://earthandindustry.com/
This site looks for stories on companies that are successfully “maximizing profits while being responsible citizens of this earth.” Among the recent stories: “Despite Recession, Green Building Soars in U.S.,” “America Recycles Day: Inside Single-Stream Recycling,” “Walmart Launches Sustainable Agriculture Strategy.” Unfortunately, operational difficulties with the site make it difficult to browse by category.

• Environmental Health – Centers for Disease Control

http://cdc.gov/environmental/
Offers info on a wide variety of topics including specific health problems (air quality, asthma, childhood lead poisoning prevention, mold, etc.), toxic substances in the environment, education and training for environmental health, and CDC programs addressing environmental health issues. Also links to the CDC’s environmental health data and publications.

• Feeding America: Hunger-Relief Charity

http://feedingamerica.org/#
It’s a good time to remember that these days, 1 in 6 of us – including many once-employed workers – can no longer afford to put enough food on the table for their families. Feeding America (formerly known as America’s Second Harvest) lets you see the faces of America’s hungry children and adults, and gives you a way to assist them.

• Hybrid Reality: the Co-Evolution of Humans and Technology

http://bigthink.com/blogs/hybrid-reality
An intriguing blog from The Big Think web site, devoted to exploring “the co-evolution of humans and technology.” Some sample posts: “Badly Burnt? Spray on Some New Skin,” “Loving Robots – Come On, You Can Do It,” “Did Google Maps Spark a War?”, “You Will Never Have to Drive Again.”

• Learn Job Skills on the Web

http://infotoday.com/searcher/ sep09/McDermott-Internet-Express-Learn-Job-Skills-on-the-Web.pdf
A helpful review of help on the web for people who need to improve their skills in Word, Excel, Outlook, Spanish, English, writing, and more. If you have difficulty getting this PDF to display, go back to the root, , find the article on the table of contents, and click on Free PDF

• Marine Toys for Tots Foundation

http://www.toysfortots.org/
It’s not too early to think about donating to the campaign or helping out. You can donate online or find local offices here.

• Mediate.com – where mediators are found

http://www.mediate.com/index.cfm
If you would rather work out a resolution that both parties can agree to than take a conflict to court, you can seek a mediator here. You can also read about how mediation works, and learn how experienced mediators resolve issues like divorce, bullying, workplace problems, health care disputes, and more. Training resources for mediators are available here as well.

• MedWatch: the FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program

http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/default.htm
Where the Food and Drug Administration posts safety alerts for medications and medical devices, and where patients and doctors can report any adverse effects they have encountered. This is useful for consumers, but vital for medical personnel who prescribe the drugs and routinely use the medical devices.

• Should the President’s Tax Cuts Be Made Permanent – Tax Notes

http://www.urban.org/uploadedPDF/1000616_TaxBreak_030804.pdf
Don’t know what to think about the proposed extension of the Bush tax cuts? Here are some economic analyses from various viewpoints. See also “Tax Cuts: Myths and Realities, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities” , and “The Economic Impact of Tax Cut Proposals: a Prudent Middle Course,” from Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi, .

• Thanksgiving Activities for Kids

http://holidays.kaboose.com/thanksgiving/
A little something to keep the kids out from underfoot while you’re being frazzled in the kitchen. Includes word games, coloring pages, puzzles, mazes, and more.

• Thanksgiving Tips – Allrecipes.com

http://allrecipes.com/info/holidays-events-and-occasions/thanksgiving/main.aspx
A particularly good place for those who are preparing their first Thanksgiving dinner, since it includes not only recipes for the main course, stuffings, sides and desserts, but also a how-to video, and answers to questions like how big a turkey to buy, how to make the perfect gravy, how long you can keep your cooked turkey in the freezer, etc.

For more great finds by Marylaine, please visit: Neat New Stuff on the Net.

Search Engines Are Source of Learning

Taken from the Mango blog: http://blog.mangolanguages.com/2010/11/12/now-theres-even-more-mango-to-love/

From the our new website, and new product features, to new courses and languages, the Mango elves have been very busy around here.What are we celebrating this fine, foggy, Friday?  We have just launched an additional 9 language courses!

What are the new language courses? Well, I’m glad you asked:

Farsi Complete 2.0

ESL French Complete 2.0

ESL German Complete 2.0

ESL Greek Complete 2.0

Hebrew Complete 2.0

ESL Italian Complete 2.0

Korean Complete 2.0

ESL Korean Complete 2.0

Vietnamese Complete 2.0

You will find a link to Mango here.

For pictures from libraries around the state check out:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyomingsnapshot/show/

See more pictures here.

PrintWhatYouLike is a free online editor that lets you format any web page for printing in seconds  saving money and the environment.  It helps you eliminate printing web pages full of ads, empty space and other junk you don’t want.  Enter a URL and you get a screen with the web page image and legend of options such as to show or hide the  background, images, and  margins; change the font size and style; and save as various format. The best part – on the page itself, you can choose different areas/pieces of the page (indicated by their red box that highlights as you mouse over it) and the  isolate, remove, widen, re-size, save clip or select only.  View the demo for details.

[Source: Misconception Junction]

Thank goodness for librarian Kee Malesky — who, for 20 years, has been saving NPR’s hosts and reporters from themselves. Malesky is the organization’s longest-serving librarian, and Simon says he suspects that she is actually the source of all human knowledge.

In her new book, All Facts Considered: The Essential Library of Inessential Knowledge, Malesky catalogs some of the facts that she has researched so dutifully over the years.

A Few Of Malesky’s Favorite Facts, Distilled
(Full explanations of these tidbits of knowledge can be found in All Facts Considered.)

Red hair, the rarest human color (less than 2 percent of the population), is caused by a variation in what is called the “Celtic” gene.

George Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue in about three weeks and found his inspiration in the sounds and rhythm of a train as he traveled to Boston.

Tiny parasites — eyelash mites called Demodex — live and die on the faces of most of us; they walk around, eat, rest, mate and lay eggs.

The great Russian epic Doktor Zhivago was first published in Italy, not in the Soviet Union.

A Steinway grand piano comprises about 12,000 individual parts, and it takes 450 skilled artisans to create one.

Candidates in the 2008 U.S. elections spent as much money on their campaigns as it cost to build the nuclear submarine USS Jimmy Carter.

At any given moment, there are 10 quintillion individual insects on Earth — flies, mosquitoes, beetles, bees, etc.

There are 785 million illiterate adults in the world, and two-thirds of them are women.

The oldest zoomorphic structure in the U.S. is Lucy the Elephant, a former hotel in Margate, N.J.

The first e-book was the Declaration of Independence, typed into a computer in 1971 by the founder of Project Gutenberg.

Read the rest of the article or listen to an interview with Ms. Malesky here.