Two good causes, oddities, and loads of information about cities and towns in the United States caught be attention on the Web this week.  Plus, a mental challenge that escaped my attention earlier rounds out this week’s selection of websites. 

Outpost For Hope (www.outpostforhope.org). This is something akin to an Amber Alert, except that the grassroots organization which built the website focuses on advocacy for kids off the grid. Not only  missing children, either, are posted here. The organization works with families, social services and law enforcement to provide guidance, education and training. They work toward the goal of reunification. The missing persons are, as best I can guess, not necessarily in harms way. They are people who have walked away from their former lives. This site might be helpful to someone you know, so pass on the information.

Operation Happy Note (www.operationhappynote.com). The website helps a volunteer effort to send musical instruments to deployed service men and women around the world. This project appears to boost the morale of soldiers, judging from the photos posted at the website. One volunteer group holds concerts in Minnesota to raise funds and awareness of “Operation Iraq & Roll.” Donated guitars, and there have been many of them sent off, appear to be a big hit with the soldiers. If you have dusty instruments lying around unused, perhaps you would like to learn more about this project. Log on and find out more.

Oddities (http://oddee.com/). This blog focuses entirely on oddities of our world. A link took me to /item_91568, “7 Incredible Natural Phenomena You’ve Never Seen.” Three of the phenomena I read about (and viewed pictures of) were the raining fish of Honduras, red rain in India, and a fire rainbow in Idaho. Very interesting. I browsed some of the other offerings at Oddee and would say that half are truly worth reading and the rest is trivial junk.

City Data (www.city-data.com). Certainly not the only demographics information site, yet I liked the amount of information, the bar graphs, statistics, and general look of this website. Plug in a zip code and you will unearth all sorts of information, including a breakdown of the zip’s population by gender and race, the average adjusted gross income and other tax information, graphs related to the age of homes in the zip code, and most interesting to me, the companies that have received federal contracts. Maybe all this is boring to you, but not to people in real estate, or those thinking of relocating. Or the curious, like me.

  Ponder This (http://dominoresearch.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_ponder.nsf). Do yourself a favor and go directly to www.refdesk.com and click the link near the bottom of the right sidebar. It is much easier than writing down the extra-long url above. Once on the site, you can read the month’s challenge—guaranteed to make you ponder, and keep your mind sharp. Everyone who correctly solves the puzzle will find his name listed the following month, along with the solution. Personally, I hated those types of math reading quizzes. The January challenge reminded my of those dreadful math classes of long ago. On the other hand….I forgot what I was going to say.

Amid the Chaos of War, Gifts of Music - washingtonpost.com

This is a great story I stumbled across while reading the paper earlier this week. I truly can't imagine what it's like to be a soldier in Iraq but I know what a solace music can be. Kudos to Steve and Barb Baker from Fergus Music, in Fergus Falls, Minn!

http://www.operationhappynote.com/index.html

technorati tags:music, Iraq, soldiers, instruments, guitar, mandolin

Blogged with Flock