This Is Earth. You Know That, Right?

Click on this link for The Traveler IQ Challenge.
You have to work fast and exact if you know your stuff in order to travel on to the last six levels. Watch especially for the comments on your work. "You nailed that one" feels great. "This is Earth, you know that, right?" is just plain humbling.

Helping the Environment. Please.

This is the longest blog entry you will EVER find from me. I promise.

I urge you to take this small action to change the world today.

I added Catalog Choice dot org to my blog this week on Tuesday, April 8th. I want to update my own progress:
My husband, Gerry, and I are spending a sleepy Saturday night tearing off the back covers of all the numerous catalogs we receive (sometimes in four different names) to this address. It just sickens us to see them in the mail each day, falling out of the mailbox, slipping off the pile on the kitchen counter and stacked in the pile to take to the recycling center. I URGE you to take this time and go to Catalog Choice dot org and set up your account - you can set up a name at your address, another name at your address, a name at another address. It's really simple to add it all to your account. We can simply NOT ignore this important step in helping the environment. (Next? the flyers in the newspapers.)

Tear off the back cover and save it to a pile. Once a month or so you can go to Catalog Choice dot organd choose the name the catalog is addressed to, the address (if you have more than one) and the customer number if it is available and apparent on the mailing label. It really is so simple to go green.

Choose "I want to help the environment" as your choice. However, if one person at the address actually LIKES getting the catalog (as in the case of several we receive) choose the option: "Duplicate mailings to this address." We like Levenger, Solutions among a very few others.) If you HATE the catalog, well say so and choose"I have no interest in this catalog." Send the message that it is just too much.

This is a VERY important first step for both the environment and for advocating this consumer initiative movement and I can't tell you how good it felt to take ourselves off of all those lists. We plan to do this once per month and really cut down on the mail in our small mailbox at the curb.

By the way, we were unlucky with mailings from colleges, associations and professional publishers. Once again, thanks to library trustee, Holly Collins, for this great tip.

Razzmatazz

The Crayola 64-crayon box celebrates its 50th birthday. And did you know that you can order a custom box of up to four colors - one row of each? Take a look at the Crayola Crayon Chronology, "a summarized history of the 120 core colors." Did you know that there are 23 colors in the 'red' family? And that one of them is named 'piggy pink?'

No Personality

Read how they are taking the personal touch out of China's branch libraries. From Library Link of the Day[Photo: Shenzhen Special Zone Daily]

Catalogs versus Trees

Catalog Choice dot org is a great little tool for keeping the world green. Stop those catalogs from arriving in your mail. Thanks to Holly Collins for the tip.

Now, if only we can do something about the newspaper inserts.

Freecycling: Going Green With Stuff

I've been a member of Freecycle.org in several areas since the turn of the century. In 2003 I got rid of a barely-used karioke machine that my teenaged daughter HAD to have back in the 90's. (She was our Madonna-in-the-making at the time but she leads a very respectable corporate life in New York City today wearing button-down white shirts and practical heels.) Anyway, the mother who picked up that little bit of 'freecycling' (the karioke machine) was absolutely thrilled with the pricetag. If you haven't yet discovered Freecyle, find a convenient local group through the website. There are 2685 members of the Marlboro/Sudbury group. If you sign up for the digest-form, you'll receive one email per day ... but you might lose out if you are looking for something. However, if you hope to rid yourself of stuff (as most of us are) you'll receive reply emails as quickly as they are sent.

The Last Lecture

Professor Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture, is in print April 8. Watch the entire lecture, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, given last September 2007 at Carnegie-Mellon University. It is poignant and inspirational.

Champions

The proud champions of the 2008 Dover Town Library Spelling Bee - the Dover Foundation team: Marguerite Eckles, Brent Johnstone and Rebecca Delgado.

First Runners-Up were Ellie Herd, Christine DiMartino and Karen McKoy of the library team, Carpe Spellum.

"It was a wonderful, amazing, successful night ... congratulations to [the] champions who edged out Carpe Spellum on the third page of the Especially Difficult Extra Words Just in Case (aka the Killer Bee words). Well done, all, and thank you!" Kate Haviland, Board of Library Trustee Chair

The Bee was held at the Chickering School on April 3rd from 7-9 pm. The Friends and Trustees of the Dover Town Library, the community, the sponsors are to be congratulated for a wonderfully successful fundraiser. Our library depends on these gifts and donations for library materials and adult, young adult and children's programs throughout the year.

In the Dark

Google.com writes

"Google users in the United States will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour.On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. Given our company's commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event."

You Heard It Here

Click on this link:
Bee there! to hear the message.
You can visit this very cool site, a text-to-speech translator which has many uses, among them TSS functionality on your website. When trying it out, however, don't forget to translate your English in another language first. Otherwise you'll be in stitches listening to "I'd like to find a nice red wine" in an Italian accent, but not Italian! Thanks to my husband Gerry who is always on the lookout for cool links ... and for making me laugh.

Being Human

Read Wired magazine's very interesting article, Algorithms Are Terrific. But to Search Smarter, Find a Person. From Library Link of the Day. Some bloggers are trying to do this on a very small scale, finding interesting items or links among all the billions everyday.

November 2008 Is Just Around the Corner

Read this article written in 1968 that predicts Forty Years In the Future. I'm still waiting for the intelligence pill:

" No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory. Everyone is able to use his full mental potential."

From the extensive archives, Blog.ModernMechanix.com
The site has lots of other stuff to browse but beware - you'll spend way too much time and might forget to invent that intelligence pill.

All Things Considered

Listen to the NPR podcast by Martha Woodroff.

Book-centered sites like LibraryThing, Goodreads, Shelfari, aNobii and BookJetty, among others, allow readers to keep track of books they have read or books they want to read or buy — and see what others are reading and recommending.

Vernal, as in Equinox

FactMonster.com brings you fast facts about the Rite of Spring.

Translated literally, equinox means "equal night."

FactMonster even has poetry about spring.

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King. Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
No. 1333 (c.1875)