The new political poll?

Pols boast over who's got the most Internet followers

Cook County residents on the edge of your seats, waiting to see what will come of the spring primary for Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner, may be interested in this press release we received from Democratic candidate Todd Connor. It's about "the power of our social media campaign," according to the accompanying tweet on Twitter.com/ToddConnor.

That campaign boasts profiles on social media sites Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn, as well as its own Facebook outreach director, according to the release. Its Facebook group, "Todd Connor for Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner," has garnered more than 1,000 members, and the campaign has more than 450 followers on Twitter.

"In a race for such an important, yet little known and often misunderstood agency, it's crucial that we use every tool at our disposal," Connor said in the release. "Social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter not only help us raise awareness of our campaign, but give us new ways to build excitement and interact with voters across the district."

It begs the question, though: Is this the new political poll -- who has the most followers on Twitter?

If so, how do other area elected officials stack up?

State Rep. Robert Pritchard, who represents Sycamore, has 138 followers, but he only has posted two updates as @RepPritchard since May. State Rep. Mike Tryon, @reptryon, represents Huntley, Algonquin and Lake in the Hills and has 258 followers. His updates vary in frequency, with hours or weeks in between.

Any other area officials online we should be following? Connect with your hometown newspaper via social media and let us know. Search for "The Courier-News" page on Facebook.com or visit us on Twitter (Twitter.com/couriernews) and MySpace (MySpace.com/couriernews).

As successful as last Saturday's Elgin Short Film Festival was, one group went away disappointed. At 3 in the afternoon, before the festival itself began, The Hemmens staff had been planning to screen the full-length movie "Angel Unaware: The Tina Cole Story," about a 32-year-old mentally ill Elgin native who was murdered in Nashville in 2006. But when a half-dozen people showed up to see it -- most of them friends of the real Tina Cole who had read our story about the screening -- they learned the screening had been cancelled. A Hemmens employee said there had been difficulty contacting members of a local bipolar support group and making the right technical arrangements, but the movie will be screened some time in Elgin in future months. It would have been nice if they had let The Courier-News know about the cancellation.

We asked "Angel Unaware" director Leo Hall, who served as a judge in the film festival, to let us know when the movie actually is shown locally. Hall said his crew shot in Elgin for three days, mostly at Lords Park, where Tina Cole liked to hang out and feed the ducks.

PETCO's annual Hamster Ball Derby will take place at 2 p.m. Saturday at 364 Randall Road in South Elgin.

Participants need a hamster and a hamster ball to join in the race.

Practice rounds begin at 1:30 p.m. and winners will receive prizes.

OB/GYN Dr. James Pinto picked unusual dress when he showed up to serve on the judges panel for the Elgin Short Film Festival. The filmmakers, emcee Dean Richards, festival committee members and the other six judges wore business suits and dresses. The doc -- a Renaissance man whose life ranges from delivering babies to bottling wine to making films -- showed up wearing surgical scrubs, as if he had just stepped out of the delivery room.

A poster drawn by Jillian Pignataro, a 10th-grader at Bartlett High School, was one of the second-place winners of Metra's 2008-2009 safety campaign poster design contest.

The contest is designed to promote railroad safety practices to students in kindergarten through 12th-grade throughout northeastern Illinois.

Pignataro rose to the top of nearly 3,000 entries from hundreds of schools to win the honor and a $250 prize, a statement from Metra said.

Maggie Jayne of Our Day Farm in Elgin received accolades last Saturday when her 13-year-old student won the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Children's Jumper Championship at the Showplace Fall Classic Championship Horse Show in Wayne last week, EquestrianMag.com reports.

Northern Illinois University geologists Ross Powell and Reed Scherer are helping lead a multimillion- dollar, five-year investigation of melting ice near the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, according to a release from the university.

NIU is one of nine U.S. institutions involved in the research that is using a 24-foot robotic submarine lowered through more than a half mile of ice into the ocean.