We hope everyone has had a wonderful summer, and that none of our readers have recently been hit by a motorcycle. In our family, we can tell you firsthand that is not a fun experience. . . especially not in Cambodia.
www.snopes.com is the first website I’ll recommend, for its ability to expose the nonsense that passes for so-called information in email these days. I have a very curmudgeonly attitude regarding all of those messages that friends forward to me with jokes, pseudo-scientific warnings and political diatribes. I realize that people are just being helpful when they inform you that there will be two moons on August 27 and NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN!!! Furthermore, just like my redneck friends, I would be outraged to learn that refugees to this country are handed huge sums of money by the federal government that are far in excess of what the average pensioner will ever see. It is amazing to be informed that: cats will suck the breath out of babies; rice thrown at weddings is dangerous to birds; elephants are afraid of mice and a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. The fact is that all of the above “facts” are untrue and if your well-meaning correspondents had taken a moment to check out this garbage at snopes.com they wouldn’t be clogging your Inbox with it. David Pogue (see below) recently interviewed David and Barbara Mikkelson, the founders, sponsors and caretakers of Snopes, and you can read some of their fascinating experiences at: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/at-snopes-com-rumors-are-held-up-to-the-light/
If the whopping 88 characters of the above address is a bit overwhelming, you could simply go to http://tinyurl.com/25ofsy7 instead and read the very same page. That’s because I converted the original to this shorter version at www.tinyurl.com This nifty free utility allows you to condense web addresses by simply pasting the original into a box and clicking one button.
New York Times columnist David Pogue is one of the best at keeping us up to date in the world of technology. He isn’t condescending, and he does have a serious side, but he takes his subject with a grain of salt and pokes a bit of fun at the foibles of the industry. You can find his columns and videos at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/ and read his blog at http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/
Closer to home, I am a big fan of www.ottawa.ca for its thorough yet navigable and readable approach to all facets of life in our city. You can pay a parking ticket, find a recreation programme, avoid road construction sites, contact your councillor, attract or avoid black bears (your choice) and, perhaps most importantly, learn how to make an origami liner for your compost bin. One potentially useful resource at the Ottawa site is the maps, which are up to date with new city streets that don’t yet appear on Google Maps, Mapquest or your GPS.