August 17, 2006

Blood

The blood supply in Maryland is critically low. Please drink lots of fluids, get your haemoglobin going, and give ...

Takoma Park Volunteer Fire Department and Lions Club Blood Drive
Thursday August 31st 2006
2-8 PM
Takoma Park Municipal Building 7500 Maple Avenue

Go to the Greater Chesapeake and Potomac Region - American Red Cross and enter Drive Code 8243 to schedule your appointment ( or just come)

All participants will receive a special Salute Your Local Heroes T-shirt.

Posted by library at 11:47 AM

August 15, 2006

Upcoming Elections

2006 races

Primary: September 12, 2006
General Election: : November 7, 2006
Where do you vote?

You must be registered by 9 PM August 22 to vote in the primaries.

  • You can pick up a voter registration application at the library
  • Or you can request a form via mail by calling the 24-hour recorded information line at 240.777.VOTE and leaving your name and address after the message
  • Or you can print out this pdf version of the application

You can use this same form for address, name or party changes. But it is too late for a change in party affiliation that would work for the upcoming primaries, the deadline for that was in June.

Political contributions made by Takoma Park residents.

Candidates: (The web sites are only the ones we found easily with a cursory search. We will add others as we locate them.)

Montgomery County Council District 5
Valery Ervin (D)
Hans Riemer (D)

Montgomery County Council At Large
Tufail Ahmad (D)
Hugh Bailey (D)
Marc Elrich (D)
Reggie Felton (D)
Nancy Floreen (D)(I)
Amber Gnemi (R)
Joseph P. Horgan (Green)
Bill Jacobs (D)
Cary Lamari (D)
George Leventhal (D)(I)
Robert Bo Newsome (D)
Janice L. Norman (unaffiliated)
Adol T. Owen-Williams II (R)
Donell Peterman (D)
Bette Dale Petrides (D)
Shelly Skolnick (R)
Michael L. Subin (D)(I)
Duchy Trachtenberg (D)

State House of Delegates, District 20
Gareth Murray (D)(I)
Sheila Hixson (D)(I)
Aaron Klein (D)
Heather Mizur (D)
Tom Hucker
Linda Schade (Green)

State Senate, District 20
Ida Rubin (D)(I)
Jamie Raskin (I)

Governor and Lieutenant Governor
Bob Ehrlich (R)(I) & Kristen Cox (R)
Martin O'Malley (D) & Anthony Brown (D)
Ed Boyd (Green) & James Joseph Madigan (Green)
Chris Driscoll (Populist) & Ed Rothstein (Populist)

State Comptroller
William Donald Schaefer (D)(I)
Peter Franchot (D)
Janet Owens (D)
Stephen Abrams (R)
Anne McCarthy (R)
Mark Spradley (R)
Gene Zarwell (R)
Bob Auerbach (Green)

Attorney General (Joseph Curran Jr. is not running for reelection)
Doug Gansler (D)
J. Wyndal Gordon (D)
Tom Perez (D)
Stu Simms (D)
Scott Rolle (R)

US Congress District 8
Chris Van Hollen Jr. (D)(I)
Deborah Vollmer (D)
Gus Alzona (R)
Jeff Stein (R)
Dan Zubairi (R)
Gerard Giblin (Green)

Senator (Senator Sarbanes is not running for reelection)
Ben Cardin (D)
David Dickerson (D)
George English (D)
James Hutchinson (D)
Anthony Jaworski (D)
A. Robert Kaufman (D)
Allan Lichtman (D)
Thomas McCaskill (D)
Kweisi Mfume (D)
Josh Rales (D)
Dennis Rasmussen (D)
Bob Robinson (D)
Theresa Scaldaferri (D)
Mike Schaefer (D)
Charles Smith (D)
Blaine Taylor (D)
James Werner Jr. (D)
Lih Young (D)
Ray Bly (R)
Earl Gordon (R)
Tom Hampton (R)
John Kimble (R)
Edward Madej (R)
Dan Muffoletto (R)
Richard Shawver (R)
Michael Steele (R)
Corrogan Vaughn (R)
Daniel "Wig Man" Vovak (R)
Kevin Zeese (Green)

Posted by library at 05:08 PM

August 14, 2006

Aug 18th

The library, and most City offices, will be closed Friday, August 18th.

Posted by library at 01:00 PM

August 01, 2006

Mosquito Repellents

Last week we had this reference question: do mosquito repellent bracelets work?

Check with your pediatrician to see what he/she recommends.

Then, if you want to check the literature, the key publication was
Fradin, Mark, M.D., Day, John, M.D. (2002) Comparative Efficacy of Insect Repellents Against Mosquito Bites. (The New England Journal of Medicine, volume 347: 13-18). Don't like footnotes? You can read a synopsis of the results and note what the paper says about bracelets (that they don't work even when they contain an ingredient, Deet, that is effective when used in a spray, towelette or lotion).

Then please look at this chart listing the relative effectiveness of various mosquito repellents, references at the bottom. (This pdf version of the chart is from the Davis County, Utah government site but the data is derived largely from the original Fraden charts.)

The Centers for Disease Control have some general information on the effectiveness of repellent ingredients. See also their 2006 update.

Last year BoingBoing had an interesting post about the wording advertisers can, and can't, use.

Please note:
1. Deet is a plasticizer and will destroy certain plastics and synthetic fabrics so be careful where you spray or rub it it.
2. Zappers aren't very effective, at least against mosquitoes. They kill moths. You can research that one yourself.

This information is in Fradden's Table 1, but is hard to read in the original.


1. Off! Deep Woods (SC Johnson) 200-360
2. Sawyer Controlled Release 180-325
3. Off! Skintastic (SC Johnson) 90-170
4. Bite-Blocker for Kids (HOMS) 16-195
5. Off! Skintastic for Kids (SC Johnson) 45-120
6. Skin-So-Soft Bug Guard Plus (Avon) 10-60
7. Nurapel (Tender) 7-60
8. Herbal Armor microencapsulated 1-55
9. Green Ban for People (Mulgum Hollow Farm) 1-45
10. Buzz Away (Quantum) 5-30
11. Skin-So-Soft Bug Guard (Avon) 1-30
12. Skin-So-Soft Bath Oil (Avon) 1-30
13. Skin-So-Soft Moisturizing Suncare (Avon) 1-15
14. Gone Original Wristband (Solar Gloooow) .017-1.33
15. Repello Wristband (Repello Products) .017-0.63
16. Gone Plus Repelling Wristband (Solar Gloooow).017-.048

The Utah chart is probably more helpful as you can use it to evaluate the efficacy of other brands or brands that have been reformulated. If you hate pdf files look at this html translation.

Posted by library at 02:18 PM
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