J Murdoch posted this question in this week’s Free-For-All Friday.  I thought we might be able to help ‘em out.

Does anyone know of any good New Year’s Eve events in Decatur? We’re looking for something fun, not too DJ-ey, and maybe a little dressy.

“$250?!  I’ll extricate myself thank you very much.  Uh…could you give me a hand?”

From the AJC…

The county has adopted a $250 fee for anyone who must be cut from a crash by the county’s Fire Rescue Department. The service had been free.

The county projects making $750,000 on this new fee, which means it’s projecting around 3,000 nasty car wrecks next year.

Agnes Scott College announced today that it has launched a new way for students, faculty and staff to communicate with librarians; via text message.  In addition to the increasingly popular librarian IM chat, students on-the-go can now ask their school librarian simple questions via text.

“Cell phones are so ubiquitous that it made sense to offer this convenience to students, faculty and staff,” said Elizabeth Bagley, director of library services at Agnes Scott. “We’re expecting it to be popular around campus and potentially with our students abroad.”

Other potential uses?

Beyond answering short questions, the library foresees future uses for texting such as being able to alert students or faculty when an interlibrary loan book has arrived for their research, [Director of Library Services Elizabeth] Bagley said.

Take note children looking for a career path, “librarian” may be the coolest job out there in about 5-10 years.

Editorial

There’s been a lot of talk of late, both here and in much larger discussion circles, about how the erosion of urban centers has permanently changed entire industries.  The sacrifice of the corner market at the alter of supermarkets is a frequently cited example.  Simultaneously, there’s also been a sickening amount of narcissistic talk about the demise of hometown newspapers.

Yet rarely do these two concurrent discussions overlap.

To my knowledge, urban planners and journalists don’t spend much time tracing the connections between the city one builds and the city the other covers.  Yet it’s no secret that a city’s layout can have important implications on its methods of communication, so it stands to reason that newspapers may also have been affected by their urban environments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Diane sends in the announcement for a fuzzy and chilly 5k run coming in January.

We need volunteers to help with the dog portion of the “Run With The Dogs” fundraiser for the Decatur High Athletic Booster Club. Our group is going to do a couple of contests between the dogs as well as provide water at the final and dog biscuits. Would you like to help? We’re looking for a few high school kids and/or parents that like dogs. The run is on Saturday, Jan 9th  and we need volunteers around 8:45 – noon. We also need a couple of folks to make posters either on or before Friday, Jan 8th.

If interested, please contact Kathleen Maloney at ekm1959@comcast.net or call 404-667-0763 – leave a message

The web site is : http://rungeorgia.com/runwiththedogs.html