Posts Tagged ‘the U.S.’

U.S. City Water Quality Reports Are Out

Monday, December 14th, 2009

If you live in the U.S., you’ll be happy (or maybe not so happy, as the case may be) to know that information is becoming more transparent. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released its latest figures on municipal water quality in the U.S. The former link goes to the EWG site itself, and the latter has links to other areas for water-loving exploration. I haven’t been able to drink water straight from the tap in my hometown of San Diego for decades—it’s only bottled or seriously filtered for me. Where does your city fall?

Library of Congress Photos on flickr

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

The U.S. Library of Congress has decided to begin making available thousands of its photos through the photo site flickr. For the time being, the ownership of these photos are being designated as having “no known copyright restrictions.” There is a more complete description of this designation, the photos, etc. here. This is a new classification, so we’ll have to watch how it plays out. In the meantime, they are asking that the online community view the photos and add comments and tags, so that they can be further classified. That seems to be a reasonable request, and it could be a lot of fun for those of you with lots of time on your hands. ;-)

So begins the sabbatical…

Sunday, March 26th, 2006

Well, I locked up my office and said most of my goodbyes for the next year. Here starts the adventure of going on sabbatical for a full year. After living in Japan for 90% of the past 20 years, I am looking forward to jumping back in to American life.

Of course, the main event is writing the dissertation, and I will strive to share what I can when I can. The Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences at Nova Southeastern University has a great program that has been flexible enough for me to survive the courses from as far away as Japan. Now, I’m looking forward to digging into the box of books I just sent as well as those in the The Sherman Library.

That box also has some of the books I plan to read to retool my English language courses. I teach English to science students, so the focus will be on that population. Look for book reviews and ideas for teaching and learning.

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