The U.S. Postal Service's restructuring plan is likely to slow the pace of mail delivery across much of the country. This map, from The Washington Post, shows (in darker blues and purples) the areas most likely to experience slower mail delivery under the proposed restructuring. The article also allows you to enter your Zip code to compare how the delivery of mail posted from your Zip code is expected to change if the postal service restructuring plan is approved.
. www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/dejoy-usps-delays-by-zip-code-map/
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If you are a word nerd like me, you may enjoy the Time Traveler feature of the online Merriam-Webster dictionary: pick a year, and you can see all of the words that are known to have entered the lexicon that year. Click on a word for meaning, etymology, synonyms, fun facts about the word, and examples of recent usage. (For what it's worth, "nerd" first appeared in the sense I just used it in 1951.) www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1656
Want to check the COVID vaccination rates for your county or for a location to which you might be traveling? This interactive map shows various metrics measuring COVID cases, deaths, and vaccinations by county in the U.S. www.tmj4.com/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-map
This cool interactive map of the contiguous U.S. allows you to place a raindrop anywhere and see where it ends up, including a detailed look at its course and the terrain through which it travels. river-runner.samlearner.com/
This free typing game from the Mr. Nussbaum Fun + Learning site combines typing and tornadoes! The faster one types various tornado-related words, the more powerful a "tornado" one can spawn. The game, designed for elementary and middle school students, also includes links to other information and activities about tornadoes. Prefer destroying alien spaceships to learning about tornadoes? The Mr. Nussbaum site also has a typing game that provides practice typing (and spelling) words from various vocabulary lists, including one you create yourself, to stop an alien invasion. Tornadoes: mrnussbaum.com/tornadomaker Alien invasion: mrnussbaum.com/spellerz-customizable-online-spelling-and-typing-game
One of the sticking points in the infrastructure bill before Congress is spending nearly $100 billion to encourage companies to build out affordable broadband internet networks. This map shows the severity of the broadband problem in rural America: in the counties shown in blue, fewer than 15% of households are using the internet at speeds of at least 25 Mbps (the minimum speed to be considered broadband). Mousing over the map in the article reveals that even in many counties shown in gray, substantially fewer than 40% of households have broadband. www.theverge.com/22418074/broadband-gap-america-map-county-microsoft-data
Interested in learning a bit of a new language this summer? The Live Lingua Project, founded by a former Peace Corps volunteer, is a repository of free lessons in more than 150 languages spoken around the world! www.livelingua.com/project/
Under the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's Debt Service Suspension Initiative, 73 of the world's poorest countries have been eligible to suspend payments on external debt through Dec. 2021 in order to "concentrate their resources on fighting the pandemic and safeguarding the lives and livelihoods of millions of the most vulnerable people." This interactive map from HowMuch.net allows users to see which countries (in pink) have taken advantage of the DSSI program and, perhaps more interesting, which other countries hold that debt (in blue after clicking on a pink country). howmuch.net/articles/the-state-of-external-debt
Test your geography knowledge with this quiz, which I found a bit harder than usual without resorting to the obscure :-) Be sure to read the information that accompanies each answer. play.howstuffworks.com/quiz/world-geography-quiz
It's not too late to catch the last six "At Home Anthro Live" events of the year. These free 30-minute programs from the Penn Museum are designed to introduce elementary and middle school students to anthropology, archaeology, and world cultures. Tuesdays 1:00-1:30 ET, advance registration required: www.penn.museum/events/kids-family/at-home-anthropology-live
Reuters (UK) has created a series of interactive maps and graphs tracking COVID vaccine rollout in 80 countries around the world (and all 50 U.S. states): graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/vaccination-rollout-and-access/
Parents sometimes think that because their children have grown up with the internet, students can reliably find and distinguish credible online information. Having taught college-prep research and writing classes for years, I can confirm this is largely untrue. This video from Stanford University's library system aims to improve students' information literacy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ122WakNDY [For more detail, this SUNY website walks students through a series of steps to help them determine if a given source is a credible source of information or not, with a short quiz at the end. subjectguides.esc.edu/researchskillstutorial/ch5]
The anti-corruption NGO Transparency International has released its 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index. The interactive map shows country corruption scores and gives users an opportunity to delve into historical data and analysis. (Spoiler alert: the United States has fallen to 67/100, tied with Chile for 25th least-corrupt country.) www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020
If early February is cold and dreary where you are, you might want to check out one of these virtual field trips. Options include museums, farms, zoos, a recycling center, Buckingham Palace, and even an M&M factory: www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a32403098/virtual-field-trips-for-kids/
The Centers for Disease Control has an interactive map tracking COVID vaccinations by state, detailing the numbers of vaccines distributed and administered, in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population. Alaska and West Virginia have managed to vaccinate the greatest proportion of their populations (~10% have received 1 or more doses). Missouri and Idaho have vaccinated the least (~4% of their populations have received 1 or more dose). covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
The philosophy of language considers, among other things, the interplay between language and thought: how does the way we talk or write about something affect the way we think about it? This short exercise helps illustrate this phenomenon: www.philosophyexperiments.com/framing/Default.aspx
Archived data from the alternative social media app Parler is being used by a developer nicknamed "Patr10tic" to create an interactive map of events in and around the Capitol on Jan. 6. Users can click on the map pins to watch video snippets recorded by Parler users in those locations: thepatr10t.github.io/yall-Qaeda/ (from www.theverge.com/2021/1/14/22231749/parler-interactive-map-video-gps-capitol-attack)
Today is part of Pongal, a three- or four-day Hindu harvest festival celebrated in South India (particularly in Tamil parts of the country). One of the foods traditionally associated with Pongal is a rice and jaggery dish. Jaggery is not unlike brown sugar, usually made from sugarcane (as shown in this video) or palm sap: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikvAfQYYmV8
Having re-watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" recently, I was again struck by the wonderful Dr. Seuss line about the Grinch "puzzling and puzzling ... till his puzzler was sore." If you enjoy puzzling until your puzzler is sore, you may enjoy these logic puzzles and paradoxes from the University of Rochester's philosophy department: www.sas.rochester.edu/phl/puzzles.html
I won't be able to teach my "Mission Possible: Global Issues, Leadership Choices" until summer at the earliest, but in the meantime, you can visit Nation States to create and run your own online country: www.nationstates.net/
After Dinner Conversation has published a large and growing collection of short stories (and podcasts) designed to stimulate discussion about philosophical topics. Most are available for free download. https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/book-club-downloads
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center recently added a map, updated daily, showing U.S. intensive care unit capacity by county. Go to coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map and click on the arrow at the bottom right corner of the map; the ICU capacity map is the 7th map. (The darker the color, the closer the county is to maximum ICU capacity.)
Need to travel outside the U.S.? This interactive map shows COVID restrictions based on country of origin and destination. For example, at present, a traveler from the United States can go to Colombia, Brazil, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Turkey, and Serbia with relatively few restrictions. www.skyscanner.com/travel-restrictions
Test your geographic knowledge with this short quiz that requires only one thing: name any country with a four-letter name... then a five-letter name ... then a six-letter name ... up to a 13- letter name: www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/country-naming-geography-quiz
This short looping video from Visual Capitalist compares the continents by land area, population, and GDP: www.visualcapitalist.com/animated-map-the-comparative-might-of-continents/
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