Here are a couple of websites you’ll want to check out:
WorldNetDaily reader Tom Huff, founder and president of Paths of Patriots, Inc., says the websites are offered as a free community service from his service and support organization for veterans.
Huff writes, “The websites are to help Americans, especially American veterans who participate in the programs, have a totally transparent way to communicate in writing, on the web, with their government and for those in government, to whom the American people write, to have a totally transparent way on the web with which to respond to letters received through the program.”
The Daily Jabber
WorldNetDaily readers Mirela and Jim Brennan at The Daily Jabber are on a mission to support veterans in an easy way. But they need your help. Here’s a link explaining what they’re doing.
Let the people decide
Don Forward of Florida says The People Decide is pretty handy for reviewing legislative bills and acts of Congress.
Politicians at bat
Blogger and baseball statistician Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has developed a way to analyze poll data that’s more accurate than those compiled by the experts.
Silver’s methodology? He uses his personally developed baseball statistics technique to aggregate the polls and weights them according to their individual accuracy.
Result? Amazingly accurate predictions. In fact, during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, bloggers sought out Silver’s site to read the stitches.
Pollster also aggregates data, with a bonus. It has a web interface that lets you remix it if there’s a poll you don’t trust.
Speaking of sports …
Are you ready for some football? Love to keep up with sports gossip? Head to ProFootballTalk’s Daily Rumor Mill, a site that scours news from TV and sites like Yahoo! Sports, ESPN and the NFL Network, then adds its own spin. Site founder Mike Florio posts updates about 20 times a day.
Football Outsiders gives you statistical analyses.
And hoop addicts can score at HoopsHype.
From the Twitterverse
Hundreds of irate Glenn Beck fans Twittered their displeasure last week when his weekday TV program on Fox News was twice pre-empted by the seemingly ubiquitous TV appearances of President Obama.
For future reference, you can catch Beck’s shows at your convenience at Glenn Beck Clips and News You Can Believe. Twitter Beck here.
Twitter with the Terminator
Since joining the social networking site last year, the governor has drawn 1.15 million followers. Schwarzenegger now ranks fourth in the Twitter world among politicians, after President Barack Obama, former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain.
The official video network for baby boomers!
TV days – 30 years of TV history, including old commercials, Saturday morning cartoons you grew up with and more. You can download them, or order them on DVD. TV memorabilia collector Ira Gallen spent over 30 years locating and restoring and transferring to videotape thousands of original 16mm and 35mm films, television shows, kinescopes and commercials from the golden age of television, with the help of The Museum of Television and Radio in New York.
Duck Dodgers and his crew bring you all your favorite cartoon classics from the earliest to the latest. Who voiced your fave characters? Who were the artists behind them? You’ll find everything from Yogi Bear to Betty Boop at Classic Cartoons, along with links to other cartoon enthusiasts.
Fresh from the family tree
If you’re interested in more than TV history, here are some free sites to help you trace your personal history.
My Heritage offers genealogy software, search and research tools and a database of members, family trees, photos and free genealogy sites.
Family Search is a site sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Ancestor Hunt allows you to search the Mormon Church’s huge genealogy record collection in a free search engine. Also provides dozens of links to other related search engines.
Pick a word!
This is probably the most unique and useful dictionary and thesaurus – an amazing online graphical and visual dictionary, Visuwords is fun! Think of a word and Visuwords turns it into a universe of connecting words. The words bounce off each other until they settle down. It’s addictive, especially for wordsmiths.
Please press one …
Whoever thought this one up deserves a gold star! A website called Fonolo does the walking for your fingers. It places the call to whatever large corporation you’re trying to reach, and instead of descending into voicemail hell, Fonolo presses the right buttons and stays on hold for you until a live person answers. Then your phone rings and you can talk to a human about your account. Fonolo even allows you to record your conversation as an MP3. Fonolo shows you a visual map of the phone trees of various big companies and allows you to pick your point of entry. A computer does the rest.
Funniest video on YouTube
Watch this :50 home movie and tell me you aren’t laughing!
Movie trivia
World Net Daily Surfin’ Safari readers Jeanne C. of Grafton, Wis., Virginia H. of Glenview, Ill., and Bud F. of Clemson, S.C., correctly answered last week’s movie trivia question. They identified the character Chief Gillespie, played by Rod Steiger in the five-time Oscar winning movie “In the Heat of the Night,” a film about a black detective played by Sidney Poitier who is asked to investigate a murder in a racist southern town.
Our movie trivia question this week: Name the movie, the character and the actor who said:
“And if you want to talk about your oath of office, I’m here to tell you face to face, President Lyman, that you violated that oath when you stripped this country of its muscles – when you deliberately played upon the fear and fatigue of the people and told them they could remove that fear by the stroke of a pen. And then when this nation rejected you, lost faith in you and began militantly to oppose you, you violated that oath by not resigning from office and turning the country over to someone who could represent the people of the United States.”
Send your answer to me at the email address below. The first three readers to guess correctly will be announced in next week’s Surfin’ Safari.
