Welcome to this week's eclectic selection of Picks, where we're pleased to tell you that you're still alive. If you don't believe us, plug your name into the Social Security Death Index Search, which will look for you in the Death Master File of the Social Security Administration, a database of over 50 million records. You're bound not to see yourself there and we're very happy about that. But if you're morbidly curious or genealogically-inclined, you'll surely find the SSDI to be quite the resource.
If that isn't enough to prove to you your very-much-aliveness, try Tombstone Tourist, where (again) we doubt you'll find yourself. Tombstone Tourist is dedicated "to all those who have spent countless hours in cemeteries trying to find the final resting places of the rich, the famous, the infamous, and those with just really cool tombstones." Providing many worthwhile links on this grave matter, the site also has a Gravesite of the Month feature, and the dirt on a handful of cemeteries. Hmmm. Interesting.
An entirely different kind of interesting is what you'll find at the Arctic Studies Center, the latest addition to the web presence at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. The Center is "dedicated to the study of northern peoples, their history and environment." Here, you can, amongst other things, read about a native culture on the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia, follow a team of curators as they put together a new exhibit, or learn about the collaboration between the Repatriation Office and "native peoples to determine the future of Native American objects currently in" the Museum's collection.
In similar museum-like news, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation recently made its way online. The non-profit organization was founded in 1982 to raise funds "for the restoration and preservation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island." At the site you can read about the results of this effort, which include the island's Immigration Museum, the American Immigrant Wall of Honor, and the very cool History Center, which, when completed, will serve as a resource for researching family immigration history. The Center will include an electronic database of "the historic data on the 20 million immigrants who arrived through New York Harbor and Ellis Island between 1892 - 1924." Currently, the site also includes a collection of related links and information on how to contact the organization.
From the great outdoors we have this offering: Yellowstone Journal, an independent newspaper covering, yup you guessed it, Yellowstone National Park. The journal publishes five times a year, and as its table of contents indicates, offers a wide array of interesting reading material about the region. There's much to peruse here. For instance, follow the progress of gray wolves, whose numbers have been growing since their reintoduction to the park in 1995, explore Yellowstone's Fossil Forest on a day hike, or let off steam while watching geysers at this informative site.
There's a new dictionary in Webville. It's the kind of resource that tells you "Speedo" is not a bathing suit popular with Olympic swimmers, but rather a font technology from Bitstream, Inc., that "Unix" stands for "Uniplexed Information and Computing System", that "IrDA" means "Infrared Data Association" and is a "method for communication between electronic devices, using 880-nm infrared light." As if this weren't already obvious. And the name of this resource? The Dictionary of PC Hardware and Data Communications Terms. The site exists as a way to order a hard copy version of Mitchell Shnier's useful dictionary, and is fully searchable online.
Finally, while on the subject on all things computer-related, here's a question: how's your MQ? You know, your MYST Quotient? Just how well do you know MYST? If you'd like to prove that knowledge, be sure to take The MYST Trivia Challenge, sponsored by WorldVillage and Broderbund Software. The challenge begins on August 1. Before then, you can ready yourself by going over the contest rules or the prize list. Take your pick(s).