Published by the New Jersey Tourism Office, these guides can either be downloaded or ordered in print. They include a general guide to the state, as well as guides geared to specific audiences: African American. Asian, or Latino. In addition, there are booklets for eco-toursim, golf, lighthouses, and New Jersey historic sites. Many of these guides are full of useful information, such as museums, restaurants, and historical landmarks. You might also want to visit the Travel Guides section of The New York Times for its take on New Jersey and the rest of the world.
Archive for Fun
Complete List of 2011 Emmy Award Winners
Please come here for the full list of nominees and winners. Biographical information on nominees and winners is found at emmys.com; more can be found at biography.com and and the television section of IMDb. EmmyTVLegends provides interviews with the movers and shakers of television from actors/actresses to producers, writers, and directors. And don’t forget to visit the Encyclopedia of Television.
Live!! The Beatles at Washington Coliseum
In celebration of the Beatles and Apple iTunes finally reaching an agreement for the downloading of the Beatles’ corpus of work, iTunes is making available the historic Washington Coliseum concert which took place two days after their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. You can watch it in its entirety; all you need to do in download QuickTime for free. (We know this may sound sacrilegious but we preferred The Yardbirds and John Mayall.) Read a transcript of the press conference they held before the concert. If you don’t want to put more “stuff” on your computer, various snippets (single songs mostly) of the concert are on YouTube.
2010 July 4th Celebrations in New Jersey
Days, dates, times and brief descriptions of various celebrations throughout the state are here and here. The largest shows are the Macy’s and the Kaboom festivities. Unfortunately, since Jersey City and other municipalities cannot afford the cost of putting on their own displays this year, it is advisable to consult the above sites for displays near you.
Baseball Biographies
Well, it is spring after all, and that can only mean one thing -baseball! We are unreconstructed Brooklyn Dodger fans and even if this means dating ourselves, we remember The Silver Fox (aka Duke Snider to you uninitiated) patrolling the outer reaches of Ebbets Field, the shadow of which we grew up in. For those who like to indulge in tracking your favorite players, we hereby list for you some sites that prove of value. The Baseball Biography Project, sponsored by the Society for American Baseball Research, has as its goal to present in-depth articles on those who played, managed, or had an impact on baseball. You can search or browse the list; the browse function allows you to narrow by achievement, demographics, era, or awards and honors. At the time of this writing there are about 1330 biographies present or soon to be completed; each one has a bibliography attached to it. As far as we can see, no current ballplayer is examined, but biographies are available for those who played in the “modern” (post 1976) era. Current players as well as past athletes are profiled in The Ballplayers: A Baseball Player Encyclopedia. The biographies are very brief, just “bare bones” so to speak, but their life stories are augmented with a veritable flood of statistics. If career statistics are more your priority, then check out Player Search from MLB. Searches can be conducted for either “active” players or “historical” players; then stand back for the numbers! Historic Baseball Player Biographies does what is says with links to The Ballplayers: A Baseball Player Encyclopedia site for the statistical side. Baseballlibrary.com presents The Ballplayers that has both active and inactive players. Each entry is hyperlinked and contains brief statistical information, a chronology, and “related info,” which is in reality links to full text articles on the player in question. For those who still cannot get enough, we recommend the Baseball Digest along with its issues back to July 1945.
Spalding’s Baseball Guides
Now that baseball season is once upon us, and we can focus on something other than Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire and steroids in baseball, here is a link to baseball of yesteryear, including that odd offshoot of indoor baseball. These Spalding Guides, 1889-1939 are presented by that bastion of America’s pastime, the Library of Congress. Not only are these guides replete with information and statistics on both the major and minor leagues, they include editorials by some of the best sportswriters of the times. For additional elucidation, please read Baseball Guides Galore from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
Facts and Figures for the Holiday Season
Brought to you by those busy folks at the Census Bureau.
Daylight Saving Time
As with everything else in this country, the concept of daylight saving time is attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Just remember that we gain an hour on Sunday; heed the mantra: “spring ahead, fall behind.” For additional information, we recommend: Daylight Saving Time (WebExhibits); Saving Time, Saving Energy (nationalatlas.gov); Does Daylight Saving Time Conserve Energy? (Scientific American); Daylight Saving Time (CRS); Advancement of Time or Changeover Dates (US Code); and Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Indiana (National Bureau of Economic Research). And although most of us say “daylight savings time,” it technically is “daylight saving time.”
Free Movie Scripts Online
Want to read Quentin Tarantino’s script for his latest – Inglourious Basterds? Or the revised final screenplay for our favorite movie – The Searchers? Or for the Alien movies, the Back to the Future series, Sunset Boulevard, or Army of Darkness? They and hundreds of others repose at the Internet Movie Script Database. Ranging across the decades and genres, this unique repository allows readers access to drafts, shooting scripts, and screenplays in a simple HTML format. For those who love movies and wonder how they get to where they do, the IMSDB is certainly a place to start.
The “Missing Link” Fossil
Much is being made of this recently unveiled complete fossil. Is it indeed the magical “missing link”?. We really doubt it. It is unique in and of itself because it presents such a full specimen, unheard of in paleontology. Read the scientific article on this fossil, and then look at what these sites have to say: National Geographic, BBC(videos), New Scientist, ScienceNow, Nature, Guardian, and The New York Times. Guess where the first fossilized dinosaur bones were discovered? China? Africa? The Rockies? How about New Jersey? If you, gentle reader, rendered your considered opinion by choosing the Garden State, you are correct. Read all about it at Hadrosaurus.com, a delightfully informative site. Resources on paleontology can be found at this National Academies Press site and at another location interviews with paleontologists are available. A wonderful place to explore is the International Palaeontological Association where you can search for practitioners of this science throughout the world and dig up where fossil collections are located all over the globe; these are but two of its useful features.
St Patrick’s Day Parades in the Area
This list gives parades for New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Slainte!!
Emerald Guide to Baseball
Once again the harbinger of spring – baseball – is upon us. For your delectation, the Society for American Baseball Research is making freely available its Emerald Guide to Baseball, a compendium of virtually every statistic on every minor/major league team from the previous season. This almost 600 page tome should statisfy all of you number-crunching fanatics of America’s pastime.(Free registration is required.)
Happy Square Root Day!
For Valentine’s Day
Just in time from the Library of Congress: Chocolate: A Resource Guide (accompanied by web sites), and Cooking with Love and Chocolate(an extensive bibliography of works held by the Library). Reading Chocolate Companies and Recipes can become addictive and fattening! And do not forget to get recipes from the Feeding America site which contains historic American cookbooks. Look at this yummy recipe for Chocolate Irish Moss Blanc Mange.
Origins of Science Fiction Terms
What on earth is a filk? How do you sharecrop? And can you feel positive about a positronic brain? These and other imponderable questions can be answered through Science Fiction Citations, a public site sponsored by the venerable Oxford English Dictionary. Set up to allow outsiders to contribute science fiction words/terms to the OED, this is still the only site of its type open to the public; we believe other sites devoted to different topics were planned, but as of yet only science fiction, with its committed and knowledgeable audience, has been given an “in” into the workings of the OED. Terms are arranged into three separate categories: science fiction, criticism, and fandom. The earliest appearance of each word is given along with other suggested citations which may antedate the apparent first appearance. Definitions, of course, are given. You’ll excuse us if we get back to our edisonade.
Super Bowl XLIII
For those who need some Super Bowl sites to visit, try these: you can get recaps of all the previous games here; trivia games can also be enjoyed; the Census Bureau has its own feature for you to peruse; and visit the official NFL site. Read this 1878 New York Times article about a football match between Fordham and Columbia.
2008 Year in Review
Top Ten of Everything for 2008
Thanks to Time and CNN, there is no longer any need to wade through dozens of magazines or web sites to come up with top ten lists. Here in one spot, every possible category known to man resides with a suitable year-end list.
“A Night with the Jersey Devil”
Just in time for Halloween, Bruce Springsteen’s musical homage to New Jersey’s favorite monster is freely available here. For additional information on this legend, please visit this New Jersey Pinelands Commission site, or this contribution from Weird N.J., or this article from the New York Times, or this hyperlinked report from the New Jersey Digital Highway.
Haunted Libraries
We’ve all heard of haunted houses and haunted castles, but haunted libraries? Here is a delightful listing of libraries inhabited by spectral beings. Libraries from around the world are also included. And of course, New Jersey is represented as well. For those who want to read about ghostly doings, please peruse these ghost stories.
“All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses” from Complete Poetical Works
