Best picks from the net

The Pollution Information Site

Florida is a great place to live. Will you change your mind if you learn how polluted your city is? Test yourself and enter your ZIP code to get a report card on toxic chemicals, air pollutants and water cleanliness. If you're feeling adventuresome, you can find out how your county stacks up against others in Florida or the United States.

Check out the environmental justice report to learn how all the people in your area (especially low-income communities and people of color) are affected. Or maybe you just want to find out how close the polluters are to your home and workplace. Regardless of your motivation, the site goes further to educate readers by giving them the who, what, and where of pollution—and lists tips on how to protect that beloved town.

More information:

EHC Air Quality Program
GIWA - Global International Waters
Environmental Protection Agency
N.I.P.R.: New Ideas In Pollution Regulations
When your surroundings are a filthy mess

Invest abroad

After being featured on PBS’s Frontline/World program in October 2006, Kiva experienced such an increase in traffic that their servers had to be upgraded to support all the potential investors. What Kiva does is provide a Web interface that initiates micro-loans to “unique small businesses in the developing world.” With an investment as little as $25 using either a credit card or a PayPal account, you can make a loan to a true brick and mortar startup. We’ll leave all the specifics for Kiva to explain; you can view their F.A.Q. here.

Water's Journey: Everglades

Water's Journey: Everglades, is an online companion to the PBS series of the same name. It tells the story of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan — the world's most ambitious and expensive restoration project. Start at the beginning with a historical time line of the Everglades. Then view a series of animations showing how the area's man-made and natural systems are interrelated. Now suit up and take a journey through the Everglades, setting out from its headwaters in the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, and winding up in the coral reefs of Florida Bay.

Eyewitness: American Originals from the National Archives

It’s difficult to get close to those people who shaped history or to peek inside the mind of President Harry S. Truman, and not just for the obvious reasons. There is an interactive exhibit, which is designed to complement an exhibit at the National Archives. "Eyewitness: American Originals from the National Archives," allows visitors to explore remarkable photographs and primary documents from the massive collections held by the National Archives. Currently, visitors can view just more than a dozen documents and photographs. There are plans to expand in the near future. Within the General Washington section, visitors will learn about his concern with a potential smallpox infection during the Revolutionary War, accompanied by scanned letters in his own hand. The site offers the first-hand accounts offered by other personages, including George H.W. Bush, John Lewis and documentary photographer Lewis Hine.

31 days of horror

The movie fans at Not Coming to a Theater Near You have embarked on a 31-day tour of monster flicks and every variety of psychological or bloodcurdling terror ever projected onto the silver screen.

According to the site, the scare chords, second deaths, and pools of blood beyond the suspected capacity of the human body are all promised. For each day of the countdown, they review a film from almost 80 years of horror movie making. This year's lineup showcased such hair-raising gems as:

 Big Trouble in Little China
 The Old Dark House from 1932
 The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
 The Curse of the Crying Woman
 The Dark Crystal
 Grizzly
 Onibaba
 Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs
 Faust, a silent horror classic from 1926

The list also includes horror picks from 2005 and 2004.

If these picks don't suit your taste in horror films, check the entertainment section for Movies on Demand only on Bright House Networks.

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