census

Schools, pools,
Day care, rideshare,
Traffic lights, historic sites,
Farmland, dunes sand,
Senior centers, reading mentors,
Nutrition, adjudication,
Sanctuaries, libraries . . .

Are funded by counting heads.

Starting today, Census 2010 forms will be mailed out to every residence in this county and state. 10 questions, 10 minutes. That's all it takes to make sure Washtenaw County and Michigan get their fair share of funding for thousands of programs and services vital to the well-being of all our residents. Fill it out, mail it back. Be counted!

Do you need fast answers and facts? You can always call or visit the Ann Arbor District Library!

...

But this is not an advertisement for you favorite local library. Submitted for your approval is a new type of search engine under the name of WolframAlpha. This engine has new, unusual features. It will try to compile and calculate information for the searcher. Give it a try! Here are some suggested searches to try (courtesy of the website):

enter any date (e.g. a birth date)
enter any town (e.g. a home town)
enter any two stocks
enter any calculation
enter any math formula
enter any two first names
enter any food
enter any measurement
enter any chemical formula
enter any musical notes

If you try these you will find calculations and charts for mathematical problems, statistics from towns, stock comparisons, and more.

Give it a try, then leave comments here on how effective the engine is!

baby

Jane Austen Rules! That can be the only explanation for Emma bumping out Emily for top girl's name in this year's Most Popular Baby Names List. The coolest part is the Search Page where you can enter your kids, grandkids or future kids names and find out where they rank. You can check popularity by state, change in popularity and much more. I checked out the Popular Names for Twins and mine did not make the top 100. That's what I get for not being alliterative. BTW, we've got lots of Baby Name books if you don't want your next one on the top 10 list.

readingteensreadordie

Love to read? Hate to read? Maybe you're somewhere in the middle? Please TELL US WHAT YOU THINK! You are invited to take a quick survey to let the authors of the forthcoming book, Connecting Young Adults and Libraries, 4th edition, know about your reading habits and your perception of reading in general. So if you read willingly and often, reluctantly and rarely, or have a more challenging relationship with reading - we encourage you to share your experiences. The authors are Michele Gorman and Tricia Suellentrop. Take the survey here.

arb

Tree Town IS AARP The Magazine's Healthiest Hometown in America. With the mayor and other dignitaries on hand at Nichols Arboretum Education Center today, July 23, AARP made the announcement. Arb walking and Border-to-Border biking definitely put us at the top of the list.

GEdarfur

In an effort to further awareness of the Darfur genocide, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people and created 2 million refugees, Google Earth, in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has produced the Grisis in Darfur initiative. Google Earth has been updated to include recent images of the Darfur region of Sudan; paired with downloadable interactive features this enables users to view in stunning detail over 1,600 destroyed villages, zoom in on over 133,000 structures that have been burned, and view pictures and video that have been uploaded from specific geographic locations. You can download Darfur layers for Google Earth from USHMM directly by clicking here, as well as browse those created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science by clicking here. To learn more about Darfur take a look at the Human Rights Watch resources Darfur Destroyed and Crisis in Darfur, or the Wikipedia entry on the Darfur Conflict.

Is NOT, repeat NOT hunger, according to the Committee on National Statistics. Instead, 35 million Americans last year experienced “low food security” and 10.8 million experienced “very low food security” per the 2005 Household Food Security in the United States report by the USDA. “Hunger” has been banished from the federal government lexicon as “too amorphous.” The U.S. Conference of Mayors, however, continues to count hungry people as “hungry.” Look for their new report in early December. Speaking of banished words, check out the annual lists of banished words from Lakes Superior State College.

cwcc

The Community Collaborative of Washtenaw County has published
Community Needs Assessment 2006 , a comprehensive look at the socio-economic well-being of county residents. Data on unemployment, health care, child poverty, homelessness and more are presented in the report. A Plenary Session for the public to discuss the findings will be held on Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 7:30 a.m. – Noon at the Morris Lawrence Building, Washtenaw Community College.