Mike Falick's Blog

City of Houston to Hold Kendall Branch Library Update Meeting on July 1, 2008 at 7:00p

The City of Houston sent me the email that appears below concerning a meeting to update the community on the new Kendall Branch Library.

Many of you will remember the hundreds of emails, multiple meetings, and significant community effort made to concerning the Library.  Ultimately, the City decided to relocate to property located at 609 North Eldridge.

I had not started this blog while the Kendall Branch Library discussions were occurring, but if you are interested in the history, here are a few documents:

My March 30, 2005 email to the community with many additional community member emails concerning the Library

SBISD flash email dated May 10, 2005

May 11, 2005 email from Councilmember Pam Holm regarding City's decision to relocate the Library

____________________________________________

Community Meeting On Kendall Library

WHEN: Tuesday, July 1, 2008

WHERE: Tracey Gee Community Center, 3599 West Center Drive, Houston, Texas 77042

TIME: 7:00 PM

INVITED: All Area Residents and Library Patrons

PRESENTERS: City of Houston: General Services Department Houston Public Library City Council Member Pam Holm

The City of Houston will presenting an update on planning for the new Kendall Library to be constructed at 609 North Eldridge. For more information please contact Amy Yancy in Council Member Pam Holm's office at 832-393-3007 or at amy.yancy@cityofhouston.net We look forward to your attendance!

Dr. Stephen Klineberg's Presentation to the Greater Houston Partnership

I attended the Greater Houston Partnership's luncheon today during which Dr. Stephen Klineberg gave his annual presentation on the Houston Area Survey.  The 2008 Houston Area Survey: On Crime, Traffic, Land Use, Ethnic Relations, Immigration Attitudes, and the Houston Future presents a very interesting look at what Houstonians believe about our city.

As was reported in this morning's Houston Chronicle, the Survey results show that traffic has replaced crime as the biggest problem in the Houston area today. In addition, 86% of the survey's respondents believe that undocumented immigrants present a serious problem for the City.  70% of the respondents also said they believed that the Katrina evacuees have been a bad thing for the City.

The PowerPoint presentation Dr. Klineberg gave is available here.  More information is also available on Dr. Klineberg's Houston Area Survey website.

Spring Forward: Don't Forget to Move Your Clocks Forward 1 Hour Tonight

Tonight is the night when daylight savings time begins, so don't forget to reset your clocks one hour forward.

If you are curious about daylight savings time, the Daylight Savings Time website has lots of information, including dates for changing your clocks and how DST got its start.

The PoliJAM Times: A Constantly Updated News Site

In looking for information this weekend on the Presidential campaign, I came across a new website called The PoliJAM Times, a news aggregator that is self-updating. 

It is an incredibly thorough site that provides up-to-the minute news on a wide variety of issues.  It also includes a large list of other political news sites and blogs.

Which Jobs Make People the Happiest?

Time magazine has posted a website where you can see how happy people are in a very wide variety of jobs.  Teachers are very close to the top (happiest), even happier than lawyers.

Evel Knievel: 1938-2007

If you were 8 in 1973 and didn't have this toy, you really missed out (on the opportunity to grind your knuckles on the concrete as you tried to get Evel to jump over whatever you set up).

RIP Evel........

Here's Evel's 1971 jump at the Astrodome:

FreeRice.com: Improve Your Vocabulary While You Help Fight Hunger

Do you want to improve your vocabulary?  Do you want to help  fight hunger?  Well, FreeRice will let you do both . . . at the same time.

According to the FreeRice website, FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

The website states that

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

YourStreet: Hyper-local News and Information Site Allows You to Post Your News

Here's a new website that gets down to the neighborhood level to provide news and local information.  YourStreet "scans thousands of newspaper sites and local blogs each day to bring you the most comprehensive local news available anywhere." YourStreet then plots the news stories on an interactive Google map.

Here's a review of YourStreet from the MIT Technology Review:

A new startup called YourStreet is bringing hyper-local information to its users by collecting news stories and placing them on its map-based interface, down to the nearest street corner. While there have been many companies that combine information and maps, YourStreet is novel in its focus on classifying news by location. (See "A New Perspective on the Virtual World.")

When a user opens the site, it detects her location and shows a map of that area, stuck with pins that represent the locations of news stories, user-generated content called conversations, and people who have added themselves to the map. The user can zoom in or out of the map or look at another location by entering a place name or zip code into a search bar. CEO and founder James Nicholson says that what sets YourStreet apart is its extensive news service: the site collects 30,000 to 40,000 articles a day from more than 10,000 RSS feeds, mostly from community newspapers and blogs. "We're not relying on the users to provide us with articles," Nicholson says. The stories featured on the site aren't of a specific type, and users will find the locations of murders marked alongside the locations of upcoming music shows. Stories featured on the site are teasers, and, if a user clicks to read further, she will be directed back to the source of the information.

Newser: Customizable Online News Service Gives You the News the Way You Want It

Here's another Web 2.0 site.  Newser is an online news service that scans Internet news sources and, using human and machine-driven aggregation, delivers the best information in concise, efficient summaries, together with photos, video and audio and links to original stories.

As described by the Newser website:

Newser does the reading for you. Our editors select the day's most important and most talked-about stories from the 100 top news sources, along with compelling pieces from less-known sites that might otherwise be overlooked.

In succinct, lively summaries, newser’s editors distill articles and opinion pieces, telling you what you need to know, what you want to know, and where to go for the best coverage.      

You can't follow 100 news sources, but we can follow them for you. Think of us as a front page for the Internet.             

Newser is the first online news service to fully leverage the Web and is creating the first major news brand native to that medium.

 

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and here is the official website which is loaded with very good information.