From Safety to Social Activities, City’s Site Has It All

Want one site where you can link to Colorado Springs Airport flight updates and live Interstate 25 traffic cams?

How about if that site also hooked you up to Ridefinders, allowed you to pay your parking tickets online and told you geocache guidelines for regional parks?

The Colorado Springs city government Web site does all of that and much more. Examples: You can file code enforcement complaints, view police department maps showing where certain types of crimes are occurring, and check out the hours (and the offerings) at the Pioneers Museum.

www.springsgov.com

ASTRONOMY

NASA’s recent discovery of an as-yet unnamed 10th planet — “located more or less in the Kuiper Belt” — is going to take some getting used to after all these years with nine.

The description offered on the NASA Web site and the links to additional material will help get us started toward understanding this planet-come-lately, “in a dark realm beyond Neptune where thousands of small icy bodies orbit the sun.”

The site includes photos, an artist’s rendering of the planet and an audio version of the story.

science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/29jul_planetx.htm

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4730061.stm

www.space.com/scienceastronomy

EVOLUTION

Talk about ambitious! The BBC report on evolution offers “4,000 million years crammed into one Web site.” It has the full text of Darwin’s Origin of Species — with an illustrated guide — and essays on Darwin and his findings, including dissenting views to his ideas.

In Biotopia, you can create your own creatures and set them free with an unlimited number of other such creatures in a virtual environment.

You also can browse through the Extinction Files and the Fossil Roadshow or view short films in the Natural Selections collection.

www.bbc.co.uk/education/darwin

BRAIN TEASERS

Designed primarily for high school students, the Quiz Hub is still great exercise for anybody with a brain.

It covers a range of topics with chess puzzles, word games and “Concentration” to go with social studies, language, current events and math sections. Much of the content is free, but if you want full access to the scores of games and puzzles available here there’s a $40 annual subscription fee. There is a free trial offer for schools.

quizhub.com/quiz/quizhub.cfm

TENSION RELIEVER

If you’ve reached that point in the office where everything just seems like too much and you need a break, then cruise over to the Virtual Food Fight site and hurl some (virtual) haddock at a coer, friend or family member.

You have your choice of projectiles — including grandma’s apple pie and mashed potatoes — and can launch them via e-mail to 10 targets at once. Ah, the splendid release of it all.

www.virtualfoodfight.com

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0126 or bainbird@gazette.com