Do you like crafts? Do you like when things go crash, crunch or boom? Put your hobbies together with Disaster Dioramas, a collection of free, downloadable papercraft depicting great historical disasters. The Hindenburg and the Titanic are presently available and more are to come. From the site: "Spiffy up your cubicle and help alleviate work boredom through a fun activity using common office supplies! It's sure to bring lots of hours of conversation and quizzical looks from your co-workers."
August 2008 Archives
Yesterday marked the beginning of Slow Food Nation 2008, a weekend-long celebration in San Francisco dedicated to introducing an environmentally friendly lifestyle of buying organic, locally grown eats instead of less-than-healthy fast food. But just because the festivities are nearly 400 miles away doesn't mean you can't be a part of the Slow Food movement. Read the posts at http://slowfoodnation.org/blog, where you can get information on all things food science and history and smart agriculture. You'll even find recipes for scrumptious, easy-to-make foods, such as goat cheese-stuffed squash blossoms and wild blackberry sorbet with mint and lavender.
If you find yourself inspired, you might want to visit Slow Food LA at www.slowfoodla.com. This chapter of Slow Food USA - the guys who put on this weekend's festival - organizes and keeps tabs on all the food activism happenings in L.A. Up next? The Hollywood Farmers' Market Peak of Summer Tomato Festival on Sept. 7. Information is available at the Slow Food LA Web site or at www.farmernet.com. Get your hands on free samples of more than 30 tomato varieties and learn how to sun-dry your own 'maters. Now that's a sweet way to end the summer.
Even before parents start paying for four years of tuition, there's the expense of taking sons and daughters to college campuses to get a feel for the school.
It's not unusual for parents to spend $3,000 on travel, food and lodging for such visits before choosing a school to attend, said Cliff Kramon, an independent college adviser in a recent Associated Press interview.
That doesn't mean parents and students should skip the visitation process this fall. After all, there's nothing quite like the experience of stepping onto a campus to see if it's a good fit for the student. But there are at least 10 ways to save money:
1. Take virtual tours: Many college Web sites provide virtual tours of campus and residence halls. Sites such as CampusTours.com and eCampusTours.com also provide virtual tours of hundreds of colleges. And CollegiateChoice.com offers one- to two-hour walking-tour videos of some 368 schools; all were filmed by Kramon and cost $15 apiece.
2. Attend online fairs: At College Week Live events, high school students and their parents can ask admissions counselors questions, visit with current students via Webcam, and stop in online booths linking them to other information at no cost. Lists of upcoming college fairs can be found at CollegeWeekLive.com and VirtualCollegeFairs.com.
3. Cluster visits: Organize trips so you visit two or more schools in the same area.
4. Combine with other trips: Counselor Katherine Cohen encourages students to go while schools are in session to get a better sampling of college activity and a chance to sit in on classes. That might mean planning a visit on a holiday weekend, Thanksgiving week or at other times this fall or winter.
5. Schedule two visits in a day: Generally colleges offer an information session given by the school and a campus tour by a student, providing a chance to question both sides.
6. Buddy up: Take a campus tour with a friend interested in the same college or find another student at the local high school who also is considering it.
7. Connect long-distance: Seek out e-mail or other contact with college students. Askaboutcollege.com allows high school students and their parents to ask questions of student volunteers for free.
8. Find an alum: Have your child contact a recent graduate from the same high school who is attending a particular college. Even a quick phone conversation can be helpful.
9. Eat at the dining hall: A student dining hall provides a glimpse of what meals would be like and saves money.
10. Consider a tour package: Companies such as College Visits (www.college-visits.com), Collegiate Explorations (www.cetours.com) and Education Unlimited (www.educationunlimited.com) offer an array of college tours. This option might be a less expensive alternative to see a large number of colleges in your region.
The creative folks at Los Angeles-based GOOD magazine have created an interactive infographic documenting "history's greatest journeys," including trips from travelers like Amelia Earhart, Ken Kesey, Columbus, and Jack Kerouac. Click on a journey for a quick introduction and to see the route plotted on a map of the world, then click "explore" to see historical photos and interesting facts along the way.
What's for lunch? It's often hard for us at the Daily Breeze to come up with an answer to that question that satisfies everyone, and things are likely no different at your workplace.
If you can't reach a consensus with your co-workers, want to try to something new or just want to leave it all up to chance, visit the Wheel of Lunch.
Enter your ZIP code and a query (lunch, by default) and spin away. The Wheel links to Yahoo Local and displays the address and phone number of each restaurant listed. Clicking on that information will take to you a page with a map and restaurant reviews from Yahoo users.
Once you've had your fill of the default search, you'll certainly want to spice things up. Queries for a specific type of food (Mexican, Thai, pizza) will best serve you, but you can also find limited results for restaurants offer delivery or take-out options.
Bon appetit! Unless, of course, the wheel lands on the space telling you to skip lunch.
here are review resources for everything, from merchandise on Amazon to local establishments on Yelp.
Don't you wish it could be possible to get reviews on that real estate agent you're considering to hire? Or if you could find out which veterinarian in the phone book is the best for your skittish pet?
With Angie's List, you can find out who's worth the money and service when it comes to repair personnel, wedding planners, pet sitters, dentists, auto mechanics, lawnscapers and more. User-written reviews go through the Angie's List staff before publishing on the Web. There's no chance for contractors to self-promote themselves. Also, contractors can't pay to advertise on the list, so the system remains unbiased. Businesses are allowed to advertise with Angie's List, but they must be highly rated by subscribers.
It costs about $6 a month to subscribe to the service, but once you do, you'll have a wealth of consumer information at your fingertips that'll save you stress, time and money.
Harvard University is the country's oldest, wealthiest and most selective university. Now it's back on top of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, claiming sole possession of the No. 1 spot for the first time in 12 years. Princeton slips to No. 2, ending eight straight years of at least sharing the top ranking. The latest edition hits newsstands Monday, but was to be published Friday on the magazine's Web site.
Yale follows at No. 3, and MIT and Stanford tie for fourth. The University of California, Berkeley is the highest-ranked public university, at No. 21 overall. In a separate list for liberal arts colleges, Amherst moves up one spot to tie Williams, its rival just up the road in Massachusetts, for the top spot.
The ranking formula takes account of factors such as SAT scores, peer reputation, selectivity and alumni giving.
Debuting this year are rankings identifying "Up and Comers" — innovative institutions that college officials identify as poised to move up in the rankings in the coming years. Topping that list are George Mason University in Virginia, Clemson in South Carolina, the University of Southern California and Arizona State.
The U.S. News rankings remain the best-known but have spawned a range of competitors. The latest include Forbes.com, which published its first-ever rankings this month, focusing on student achievement and ranking Princeton at the top.
A big theme this year is the environment. This year's college guide from Princeton Review (not affiliated with the university) includes a new category of "green ratings" for colleges. The National Wildlife Federation this week put out a campus environmental report card that doesn't rank campuses but highlights ones with policies it considers exemplary.
— The Associated Press
Two weeks ago, George Orwell started blogging.
Yes, the man who gave voice to the barnyard in the anti-Stalinist "Animal Farm" and created the original Big Brother in "1984" has joined the blogosphere -- even though he died 58 years ago.
The group behind The Orwell Prize, which honors political writing in Great Britain, is resurrecting its namesake's writings in real time, publishing Orwell's domestic and political musings exactly 70 years after they were written.
The blog is a handful of posts into the four years' worth of diary entries. The publication mirror the composition dates; Orwell's Aug. 9, 1938, entry went up on Aug. 9.
Orwell continued the domestic and political journals through October 1942, meaning the blog entries will cease in October 2012.
So far, Orwell has spoken of the weather, catching snakes, picking barley, ripening blackberries and the growth of a Sardinian mouflon sheep and an ass-zebra hybrid. And that's just his domestic fare. The political stuff comes Sept. 7.
And if you see a typo, don't go after the site administrator. The diaries are published exactly as Orwell wrote them, errors and all.
Bartering for goods may be something of the past, but Commuto is trying to bring trading back, Web-style.
With this online bartering system, you can post a wish list of items you want and put up a list of all that stuff collecting dust in your garage or attic. You'll eventually get automatic notifications whenever someone else posts something from your wish list.
Membership is free, and unlike eBay, it doesn't cost anything to post listings. Transactions don't even need shipping costs.
Mostly books, video games and DVDs are up for trade, but you can also find couture clothing and accessories, furniture and kitchen gadgets. (An espresso machine was up for grabs as of Monday; if you're lucky, it'll still be there.)
Commuto is more local than you might think. The program is still in its early stages, but there are already users in Torrance, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Rancho Palos Verdes and other cities.
Do you need to go to the gym more often? Would you like to call your mother once a week, but keep forgetting? Do you need a gentle nudge to remind you to do something cultural such as going to the theater?
At www.hassleme.co.uk, you can receive reminders as often you like via e-mail.
The first time you have to respond to an initial e-mail that's sent to you when you sign up. After that, you can let the site "hassle" you as often as you like.
You'll be more fit, your mother will be happy and you'll get a little culture in your life.
Move over, Phillip Marlowe.
It used to be that only a well-connected private eye could dig up the dirt on a suspicious neighbor, a potential employee or that beautiful woman you met at the grocery store and asked to dinner.
But last month a Sacramento-based company started providing that information to the public, The New York Times reports.
Free and supported by ads, CriminalSearches.com claims to include criminal records for all 50 states directly from local courthouses. It has arrests and convictions for all types of crimes and -- in some areas -- even data on traffic violations.
You can even check out your entire neighborhood with a map that displays the addresses and names of those with arrests and convictions. E-mail alerts can notify you when someone in the area gets into trouble or a new person with a checkered past moves in.
The site surely provides what can often be a valuable public service, but it also sets up controversy. People's pasts are no longer their own secrets to spill or keep.
Pay sites like Intelius.com and PeopleScanner.com have offered the same information, but required a credit card number for access, which could have kept many from making inquiries.
The Internet is a haven and resource for the Olympics-obsessed as well as the casual viewer. Here's a selection:
www.NBCOlympics.com
This site should be a first stop for all things Olympic, big and small. Thus far, it's the most-visited Olympics-related Internet site, with more than 4 million unique U.S. visitors on Aug. 9 -- the first official day of competition, according to Nielsen Online.
The site has a wealth of information, including news, features, medal counts, athletes' biographies, games, polls, histories of each event, live-streaming video of events and video of completed events.
The Web site and the NBC Universal TV networks NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, Telemundo and Universal HD are slated to offer more than 3,400 hours of programming during the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, with each event getting some degree of TV/Internet coverage.
There's even a link to a Spanish-language version of the site.
http://en.beijing2008.cn
The official Web site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games -- in addition to the traditional scores, schedules, photographs, video, athletes' bios and event histories -- also is an excellent resource for someone actually visiting the Games, with information on transportation, tickets, event venues, food, hotels, sightseeing, shopping and other activities.
For example, one can learn that lv da gun, a jelly roll-like cake that's nicknamed "Rolling Donkey," is made with soybean flour, water and brown sugar.
"At the end of preparation, the bean-flour cake rolls in the soybean flour . . . (and) looks like a donkey rolling over in dust," according to the site.
In addition to English, there are also Chinese, French, Spanish and Arabic versions of this site.
www.olympic.org
The official site of the Olympic Movement originates in the United Kingdom and is about all things Olympic -- and not just Beijing.
Get the latest news from the International Olympic Committee. Search a complete list of medal winners going back to 1896. Find out current Olympic and world records in a variety of events and how those records have evolved over time. Take a virtual tour of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. See and rate pictures and videos at the site's multimedia gallery.
www.infoplease.com/sports/olympics/2008
Trivia fanatics will thoroughly enjoy this encyclopedic site filled with tons of Olympics factoids as well as quizzes and crossword puzzles on everything from Olympic mascots to the Ancient Greek Games and Olympic sports.
If you want to know the history of the Olympics dating back to antiquity or who has won the most gold medals in Olympic history, this site has it.
-- L.A. Johnson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As unemployment and the cost of living goes up, donations to charities go down. For families in need, that means school supplies may be harder to come by.
World Vision, a charity that helps children around the world, reports that donations for its annual school supply programs are way down.
In 2007 the organization helped roughly 41,000 school children by providing them with backpacks, pens, pencils, notebooks and other supplies. This year, as the economy continues to falter, that number will drop to 30,000 children. According to a press release:
At the World Vision Storehouse in New York City, backpack requests topped 16,000 this year, but just over a third of those in need will receive backpacks.
In Seattle, a faltering local economy has led to a 40% drop in backpacks for distribution.
In Los Angeles, more than 4,500 children are on waiting lists this year.
"School supplies may become luxury items for many families," says Phyllis Freeman, World Vision's Storehouse Director in Los Angeles. "The price of gas has affected families' budgets. The working poor will have a more difficult time this year. Parents are facing lay-offs or reduced salaries."
To help with donations, go to www.worldvision.org/schooltools.
Who knows what students need better than teachers? There are a couple of great Web sites where teachers can make requests for classroom items and you can fund a specific need. They're kind of like gift registries for specific classrooms.
Here are some stats to guilt you into giving, also from World Vision:
According to a recent study by National School Supply & Equipment Association, 94% of teachers buy supplies at their own expense, spending an average of $395 every school year. First-year teachers often spend more than $1,000 on supplies for students.
iloveschools.com lists eight requests from teachers in Torrance, three in Redondo Beach and 18 in Carson.
At Donorchoose.org, teachers write descriptions of projects they'd like funding for but can't get from their districts. You choose something near and dear to your heart and then fund all or part of it. For example, if you're a book lover, you might want to help Mrs. M in San Pedro get a set of books for her kindergarten class.
RELATED POSTS:
Freecycle networks in the South Bay
Meaningful gifts for teachers
Back-to-school lunch ideas
Every Monday Matters
Database of South Bay eateries where kids eat free
Cheap outings for children in the South Bay
It's summer concert season, which means more nonstop tours, festivals and basically more fun. But with artists leaving behind a massive carbon footprint at every site they visit, many are taking their fun more seriously, from running their tour buses on biodiesel to turning everything green, from cups to plates to food, and even their merchandise. And with over 80 percent of a concert's CO2 footprint coming from fans' commute, they're naturally calling on their fans to join in on the effort.
Reverbrock.org is the place where artists and fans can converge on this front. The Web site connects with artists such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews, Andrew Bird, Norah Jones, Jose Gonzalez and many more to make their shows more eco-friendly. So far, they have "greened" 50 tours, with a total of 754 events. They've reduced 37,619 tons of CO2 and 264,453 gallons of biodiesel. They're involved with 1,396 enviro-groups and have reached more than 4.6 million fans.
So how can you hop on the biodiesel bandwagon? Say you're going to the Dave Matthews concert-- just visit PickupPal , and you can choose whether you'd like to drive or catch a ride with someone. You already know you have something in common, so you can argue about how Dave Matthew's first album was totally better than his third all the way to the show.
If you're really into it, you could go that extra mile and volunteer, giving you a chance to spread the word and catch your favorite show free of charge.
Disappearance of the bronze bust of George Freeth from the Redondo Beach Pier is sad, but it does offer an opportunity to ponder and appreciate the contributions of this pioneer of Southern California beach culture.
His role in the development of surfing and some of his personal history can be traced in Web sites that explore the further development of surfing. The California Surf Museum site details Freeth's efforts to develop the sport he associated with his Hawaiian mother's family by reshaping the cumbersome boards of the time, as well as his famed rescue work in California.
An article by Ben Marcus describes Freeth's role in giving surf pointers to famed author Jack London, during London's 1907 visiti to Hawaii. A London article about surfing in The Lady's Home Companion, a popular magazine, did much to popularize surfing. At http://www.beachcalifornia.com/fth.html check out the text of the memorial plaque on the pedestal of the missing statue.
The opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic Games falls today on Aug.
Here are some tidbits on the significance of the number:
• In the United States, the wedding and gift registry site Wedding Channel has seen a 213 percent increase in weddings for Aug. 8, 2008, compared with the same Friday last year on Aug. 10, said Summer Krecke, the deputy editor.
• Along with great fortune, the number eight is the atomic number for oxygen. There are eight days of Hanukkah. The symbol for infinity takes on the shape of eight, and there are eight planets (Pluto was demoted).
• Want to find your lucky date? Go to the Lucky Days and Dates Calculator and find out when the gods will be on your side this year.
Photographer Mike Stimpson proves that you're never too old for Lego. His recreations of classic images have the look of the originals, on a much smaller scale. For even more fun, check out his set of Star Wars portraits. See if you can find Bigfoot!
To buy prints and see more photos, visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/balakov.
The Cummings family, which includes two children with special needs and an octogenarian aunt with dementia, lost everything when a fire gutted their home in the Walteria neighborhood of Torrance last month. The community has rallied around them, holding bake sales and setting up lemonade stands that have raised thousands of dollars for the family, which is leasing a home in Redondo Beach while their Torrance house is restored.
It'll be a long process -- expected to take about a year -- and your help is still needed. That's where a new blog, After the Cummings Fire, comes in.
The blog's first entry explains:
We created this blog as a central place to come to see what the Cummings family really needs. They will have the ability to update this list as they receive items, so we can really zero in on what will be most helpful to them.
An entry from the family itself follows: "We will miss ... Walteria. ... Our family is in awe with your generosity, kindness and support."
My first-born starts kindergarten in a few weeks. So I turned to the Web to research the latest in packing school lunches. I want her to eat healthy stuff, be eco-friendly and feel loved.
I found bento.
Here's a lovely description from one site I found:
'O-bento' is what the Japanese call a packed meal, usually lunch. Bento boxes have internal dividers, and sometimes several stacked layers, so different kinds of food sit in their own little compartments... and the goal is to make the whole package as attractive as possible - from considering the colour combinations of the food and presenting and garnishing it as neatly and artfully as you can...
The most informative and down-to-earth site I found for the novice bento-er was Lunch in a Box. Blogger Biggie, who won a 2007 Food Blog Award for Best Kids/Family Blog, focuses primarily on speed and nutrition in packing lunches for her preschooler. She also lived in Japan for nine years and speaks Japanese, so some of her tips and recipes are culled from Japanese cookbooks for you purists.
Her site is where you'll find a tips page that covers everything from the science of choosing the right size bento box and how to care for bento gear to smart packing strategies to keep a meal looking like you designed it to look.
If her site inspires you as much as it did me, you need to start shopping for some bento gear before school starts. Fortunately, the South Bay has quite a few Japanese markets that stock cheap and cute bento stuff. In Torrance, you can find things like cutters that turn a simple hot dog into a tulip to an egg shaper that turns a hard-boiled egg into a car. Find the goods with Biggie's Bento Store Locator.
Find more info on bento at:
Cooking Cute's links and resources
Adventures in Bento Making
Dallas Morning News' tips for bentoesque school lunches
I liked the idea that with a bento box, you can avoid disposable food containers like plastic sandwich bags. The bento supply aisles are full of cute little re-usable containers in fun shapes and colors that kids will love using. You can also avoid plastics and go with stainless steel containers if you're worried about the plastic factor.
Tips for packing a no-waste lunch box
I also liked that bento is supposed to be creative. I'll likely include comic strips and photos clipped from the Breeze, or some of my husband's doodles. Here are some more ideas I found that I might incorporate in my daughter's boxes:
Clever strategies for packing fun lunches
Lunch box love letter ideas from Tiffintin.net
Dumb jokes to include in the notes
Continue reading 17 links for building the coolest school lunches ever.
