Alphabetize Your Keyboard

Eat your heart out Dvorak

The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator

Ever wanted to quickly and easily define your own keyboard layout for a language Microsoft doesn't support? Or define your own keyboard layout so you can quickly and easily enter your favorite symbols with a simple keystroke? Well, want no more: the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator is here!

The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) extends the international functionality of Windows 2000+, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista (MSKLC will not run on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME or Windows NT4) by allowing users to:

• Create new keyboard layouts from scratch
  
• Base a new layout on an existing one
  
• Modify an existing keyboard layout and build a new layout from it
  
• Multilingual input locales within edit control fields.
  
• Package the resulting keyboard layouts for subsequent delivery and installation.

Global Development and Computing Portal:
Windows Keyboard Layouts
(many different language keyboards)


Belarusian keyboard

Also see: Dvorak anyone?


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Usable Ultimate Utensils

Great Gear

Kevin Kelly:
Cool Tools

"Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. I am chiefly interested in stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group. There are plenty of places to read about stuff that should be cool, or that looks new and cool, and that might be useful. The recommendations here, on the other hand, are based on people who have used this item and have come to see its superiority. I post things I like and I ignore the rest."

Here are a few of the tools mentioned:

Disposable Suture Set
Micro tools

"The next time you or a friend are in the ER getting stitched up, ask your provider if you can have the suture set when he or she is done. Most places will hand them over if they are the disposable type. Hospitals use disposable suture sets since they are fairly inexpensive and decontamination of the reusable ones can be costly. The curved hemostat, the toothless needle driver, small surgical scissors and the pickups (tweezers) come in handy around the house." -- Fritz Araya

Ikea Tote Bag
Cheap huge tote bag

"Ikea sells these near the cash register. They are large -- about 4 feet by 2 by 2, with two clever lengthened (short & long) handles, made of some nearly indestructible nylon-plasticy mesh fabric in Ikea blue. For a buck, they're amazing. We put a mess at home, in the car, garden, garage. Great for dragging stuff from Sam's Club, or dirt in the garden, hauling firewood or just whenever you've a lot of loose stuff to move." -- Vince Crisci

NoTubes
Puncture-proof bike tires

"Stan's NoTubes system. In the NoTubes system you remove your inner tube from your tire. No tubes! You add a rim strip that seals your spoke holes. Since there is no tube you need a filling stem to put air into the tire.....this is built into the NoTubes rim strip. Then you add some white liquid inside the tire that seals it airtight. It's one of those things that seems like it would never work, but it works amazingly well. I will never go back to tubes." -- Alexander Rose

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Cheerios Stops Itching

And other stuff

Joey Green has written a book about other uses for everyday products like:

• "Relieve itching from chicken pox, poison ivy, poison oak, or pain from sunburn. Pour two cups Cheerios in a blender and blend into a fine powder on medium-high speed. Put the powdered Cheerios into a warm bath and soak in the oats for thirty minutes. It's a soothing oatmeal bath.
  
  
  
• Make "Cheerios Chicken." Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a jelly-roll pan (15.5 inches by 10.5 inches by 1 inch) with aluminum foil. Mix two cups finely crushed Cheerios (from the yellow box), one-quarter teaspoon pepper, one teaspoon parsley flakes, one-quarter teaspoon garlic powder, one-quarter teaspoon dried oregano leaves, and one-half teaspoon salt. Dip four chicken-breast halves (skinned and boned) into one-quarter cup milk, then roll in cereal mix until well coated. Place chicken in pan and drizzle with two tablespoons melted margarine. Bake until done, about twenty to twenty-five minutes. (Above 3,500 feet elevation, bake about thirty minutes.) Makes four servings."

Wacky Uses


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Minton Sparks

Could the air be any fresher . . .

"Sparks talks like Lucinda Williams sings; low, bed-headed and husky with sin, either remembered or imagined. In the syncopated monologues on her new spoken-word album, THIS DRESS, your gas-pumping mama, your fellow Baptists and your unmentionable relatives occupy every slot on the Waffle House jukebox, and when musical guests like Keb'Mos' and Maura O'Connell chime in, you can even dance to 'em.

---Jim Ridley Nashville Scene

With a voice born for gospel and a word artistry that makes you laugh and weep by turns, Sparks offers poems sorrowful and hilarious about the land of the double-wides.

---SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT-June 2005

Minton Sparks.com

RARWriter.com


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Useless but not Worthless Info

A little is dangerous, a lot is too much

A site with information deemed off of center.

Aspirin

The inventor of this modern miracle drug saw no use for it. Luckily, aspirin's formula was rediscovered nearly fifty years later and the rest is history. But, did you know that aspirin was included as part of the Treaty of Versailles?

Band-Aids

I'm stuck on Band-Aid 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me. Millions of these little adhesive strip have been sold over the years. Yet, their existence may never have been if it weren't for Listerine.

The Brassiere

Mary Phelps Jacob is widely credited with inventing this article of clothing way back in 1913. Did she really invent this garment? Better yet, did you know that it could possibly kill you? Check out the real answers.

Useless Information


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Postal Codes

International

Don't assume that the ZIP code (or postal code, as it is referred to in many countries outside the United States) has any particular format or length, or that it comprises only digits. For instance, Canadian postal codes consist of two groups of three characters, such as "M5R 3H5"; a French postal code is a five-digit number, as in 92300. In some places, people might add a country or region code in front of the postal code (for example, F-92300)

Universal Postal Union:
Postcodes


Graham Rhind:
Links to Postal Code pages
Graham Rhind has specialized for over 14 years in international address and postal code methodologies.


Columbia University
Frank's Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses

Word will not create a bar code for a Canadian postal code. Under the Canadian postal system, the post office applies bar coding to mail.

More Postal/Zip Stuff:

Melissa data

Campaign Contributions

Individuals that have contributed $200 or more to federal campaigns by ZIP Code.

Canadian Addresses

Lookup any Canadian address and get the Postal Code, time zone and area code.

Income Tax Statistics

Income tax information by ZIP Code. Includes average AGI, number of returns, average refund, filing status, age and more.

Nearest Post Office

Locate the 10 closest post offices to a ZIP Code that accept bulk mail.

Occupants by ZIP

Generate a count of occupant delivery addresses by ZIP Code. Order your Occupant list online.

U.S. Addresses

Lookup any U.S. address and get the ZIP+4 code, area code, time zone, county, address type, street detail and more.

ZIP Codes by County

Obtain a list of the ZIP Codes in any county in the United States.

ZIP Distance

Displays the distance between any two 5-digit ZIP Codes in the United States.

ZIP-City-Phone

Lookup ZIP Codes, city names, the location of phone numbers or the cities covered by an area code.

ZIPs in a Radius

Displays a listing of the ZIP Codes that fall within a radius.

Here are some great links:

Barcode Yourself

Barcode clock


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Folding Tips

Bending cloth

Just to break up a boring dinner setting, learn how to fold napkins.

(things to do while waiting for the news)



Napkin Folding Guide



Napkin Folds

Napkin Folding Tips


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Calculators on the Web

Figure the vigorish

It's sometimes easier to use a preset calculator than it is to write your own in Excel.
Here's a collection of sites:

• Auto Calculators
  
  
• Bond Calculators
  
  
• Budget Calculators
  
  
• College Calculators
  
  
• Credit Card Calculators
  
  
• Home Calculators
  
  
• Insurance - Disability Calculators
  
  
• Insurance - Health Calculators
  
  
• Insurance - Life Calculators
  
  
• Life Expectancy Calculators
  
  
• Choose-to-Save - Life Expectancy
  
  
• Mutual Fund Calculators
  
  
• Paycheck Planning Calculators
  
  
• Retiree Health
  
  
• Retirement Calculators
  
  
• Roth IRA Calculators
  
  
• Savings Calculators
  
  
• Social Security Calculators
  
  
• Social Security Administration - Estimate Your Potential Benefit
  
  
• Stock Calculators
  
  
• Tax Calculators

Calculators


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Gun Laws

How trigger happy is your state?

"Most U.S. states have failing scores when it comes to stopping criminals and other dangerous people from obtaining guns.

Two-thirds of all states score less than 20 points out of 100. Almost half of all states score 10 points or less out of 100.

The state with the strongest gun laws is California with 79 points, followed by New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland."

Brady Campaign

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Bartleby Quotations

Wha'd I say

Churchill, Winston S.

..."man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on."

Here are a few of one hundred + reference sources available free:

Bartleby.com

• American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary
  
• Brewer's Phrase & Fable
  
• Bulfinch's Mythology
  
• Cambridge History
  
• Columbia Encyclopedia
  
• Columbia Gazetteer
  
• Dickinson, E.
  
• Einstein's Relativity
  
• Eliot, T.S.
  
• Farmer's Cookbook
  
• Fowler's King's English
  
• Gray's Anatomy
  
• Lawrence, D.H.
  
• Mencken's Language
  
• Oxford Shakespeare
  
• Presidential Inaugurals
  
• Roget's Thesaurus
  
• Strunk's Style
  
• The King James Bible
  

Also see: Project Gutenberg 


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Capable Egg

By Lullaby Baxter Trio

ASIN B000046S0B
Atlantic 2000

About the Artist
Lullaby Baxter (Angelina Iapaulo) is neither fish nor fowl.

"Lullaby Baxter's story couldn't be better: A onetime topless DJ at a Toronto club, Baxter (Canadian-born Angelina Teresa Iapaulo) was discovered when she impulsively sang at an open-mic night.

Her backing band couldn't be better, either: The Oranj Symphonette .Baxter brings to her music torch-song gentility.

"Rooster In Love" is a barnyard-romance yarn that may not be metaphor, while "Mama (Should I Bake A Cherry Pie And Hide You Inside?)" is told from the perspective of a fretting child trying to save mom from some dire, rapidly approaching fate.

"Morty Mort-Morton Showstopper Calhoun," "Knucklehead," and "Ding-A-Ling" are teasing schoolyard chants, while "Mr. Powder-Blue Breadbox," "Horsey Don't Snore," and "The Chatterbox Chronicles" are full of surreal twists worthy of Lewis Carroll.

Capable Egg presents a strange world populated by even stranger people, but Lullaby Baxter Trio's grip on its eccentric material is remarkably restrained and mysteriously magnetic."

Recording Description
Good sound quirky lyrics.

Contents

1. Hopscotch
2. Anyway Song
3. Knucklehead
4. Rooster in Love
5. Mr. Powder-Blue Breadbox
6. Chatterbox Chronicles
7. Mama (Should I Bake a Cherry Pie and Hide You Inside?)
8. Ding-A-Ling
9. Morty-Mort-Morton Showstopper Calhoun
10. Spacegirl
11. Horsey Don't Snore
12. Lullaby
13. Ding-A-Ling (Reprise)

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Hi, Ho, the Vizeo

Free Demos and templates

Have you ever played with Visio?
This site provides demos. Templates and trials.

These templates are available:

• Sarbanes-Oxley Pivot Diagrams
  
  
• Help Desk Flow
  
  
  

  "Here you will see the six data collection points for this example help desk. Call volumes, wait times, and resolution rates are tracked at each point in the process. The diagram flows from left to right and top to bottom. Not every caller will experience each of the steps, if a problem is resolved by a Level One technician, then the caller does not progress to the Level Two technician.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Fault Tree Analysis
  
  
• PC Assembly Process Flow
  
  
• Supply Chain Analysis
  
  
• Value Stream Mapping
  
  
• Factory Floor Assembly Plan
  
  
• Loan Consolidation Process
  
  
• Investment Analysis Report
  
  
• HVAC Controls
  
  
• Military Organization Chart
  
  
• Network Equipment Rack
  
  
• Insurance Claims by State
  
  
• Audit Process
  
  
• Office Space Planning

Visio Toolbox


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You Are What You Eat —With

Old Food Tools

Even before we had Ron Popeil to provide our cutlery, there were knives, spoons, and later forks.

California Academy of Sciences:
The History of Eating Utensils

A History of Eating Utensils in the West:
A Brief Timeline

"Henry Petroski, in The Evolution of Useful Things, makes the argument that it is not so much that necessity is the "mother of invention" as that invention takes place in response to dissatisfaction at the shortcomings of an already existing way of doing things.

The eating utensils we use and the ways we use them are the result of centuries of experimentation."

Medieval and Renaissance Eating Utensils and "Feast Gear"


Ron Popeil (aka Ron "But Wait!" Popeil)

"Born in 1935, he was for all practical purposes orphaned three years later when his parents divorced and he and his brother were shunted to a boarding school in upstate New York.

The one memory of this period is of a Christmas when parents were taking their children home for the holidays. Ron peered through a window at the long, straight road leading to the school, hoping to see his father's car approach. It never did."

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Itsy Spitfires

Bitsy bombers

Here's a collection of paper airplanes that will get you expelled/fired any day of the year.

"They're cute. They're zippy. They're the ultimate time-wasters. Created by paper airplane world record holder and engineer Jeff Lammers, authors of the World Record Paper Airplane series, this calendar features a full year of palm-sized flying machines and detailed folding instructions. Perfect for stirring up a little mischief at the office. 4 1/2" x 5 1/2".

365 Tiny Paper Airplanes Calendar 2011


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Trail Trikes

Recumbent transportation

Greenspeed

Catrike



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25 Chickens and a Rooster

Small change(s)

Changing The Present is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit website offering gifts that make a difference.

Fund A Business

Loan for a woman

International Medical Corps.
Your gift of $200 can help IMC to give a deserving woman a loan to start her own business. Through a proven "community investment" model, women pay back their loans not to IMC, but to a community bank that consists of the pooled contributions of a group of women.

Expand A Business

Loan for a mother
Foundation for International Community Assistance.

Added income from a $50 loan can help a Tanzanian mother expand her business and feed her children more nutritious food.. And you're providing a self-employment loan, not a gift. Your donation will build discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence as women create their own business.

Rent A Market Stall

Loan for a woman
Foundation for International Community Assistance.

With a $100 loan, a Haitian woman can rent a market stall and increase her income two-fold. And you're providing a self-employment loan, not a gift. Your donation will build discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence as women create their own business.

Support Development

25 chickens & rooster
Operation USA.

Give the gift of life – literally! Giving a loan to purchase and raise animals, such as cows, rabbits, sheep, chickens and roosters is the perfect gift for someone who cares deeply about providing opportunity and empowering a family to lift itself out of poverty.

ChangingthePresent.org


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Medical Untruths

They say it isn't so

For instance:

Everyone must drink at least eight glasses of water a day

This advice is thought to have originated in 1945 from the Nutrition Council in the US, which suggested people needed to consume 2.5 litres of water a day. But the water contained in food, particularly fruit and vegetables, as well as in milk, juice, coffee and soft drinks, also counts towards the total.

Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight

Generations of parents have warned their children not to read in poor light, telling them that it could somehow damage their sight. Though dim lighting can cause stress in the eye, the important thing to remember, say the researchers, is that the effects are not permanent. "Suboptimal lighting can create a sensation of having difficulty in focusing. It also decreases the rate of blinking and leads to discomfort from drying. The important counterpoint is that these effects do not persist."

And more:

The Guardian:
Medical Myths


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Snowflake Patterns

Cut your own

You can create your own cutout snowflakes and the down load the patterns.









Pinterest.com - snowflake drawing easy


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Image Sources

No cost

After awhile the graphics in Office Clipart or even the ones found on Microsoft's Office online appear the same.

Here is a list of 100 locations for royalty free stock images.




Free stock images


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Resetting the body Clock

So very SAD

SAD

A wistful feeling comes over us in late autumn, as the last remaining leaves drop, morning frosts cover the ground, and the sun sets earlier each day. Hot cider and the warmth of a favorite old coat may be all you need to face the coming winter with good cheer, but for many people, fall melancholy deepens to winter depression.

Winter depression is still a mystery to scientists who study it. Many things, including brain chemicals, ions in the air, and genetics seem to be involved. But researchers agree that people who suffer from winter depression -- also known as "seasonal affective disorder," a term that produces the cute acronym SAD -- have one thing in common. They're particularly sensitive to light, or the lack of it.

"Research shows that bright light visual stimulation (light which enters the eyes), can change the timing of the body clock and its timing of sleep or awakening signals to the body. Thus, bright light therapy has been used to treat the range of disorders caused by a mis-timed body clock including shift work, jet lag, sleep onset and early morning insomnia mentioned above as well as winter depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD)."

"Probably the greatest use of bright light therapy is for the treatment of winter depression, especially in very northern countries which have little sunlight in the winter months. These sufferers appear to have delayed body clocks and benefit most from morning light therapy.

At present, the blue LED glasses are still experimental devices. They are not yet commercially available. The Flinders University owns the intellectual property rights and a provisional patent. A commercial partner to manufacture and market the devices under license is still being sought."

Seasonal Affective Disorder


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Shuffle Music

Like those fruity machines

Microsoft Media player can do more things than just play the odd sound file. You can set it up to go through a play list is random order; playing music all day long.



Shuffle Sort


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Charity or Scam

IRS worthy or not

Did someone call asking for money for the Global Relief Foundation, Inc. or some other charitable organization?

You can look them up with the IRS.

BTW, you might think again about these groups:

• Benevolence International Foundation, Inc.
  Palos Hills, Illinois
  
  
• Global Relief Foundation, Inc.
  Bridgeview, Illinois
  
  
• Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development
  Richardson, Texas
  
  
• Rabbi Meir Kahana Memorial Fund
  Cedarhurst, New York

Search for Charities  

Revoked by IRS 


Here's the site for Washington state:
Secretary of State


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Night Skies

The real stars

JPL NASA

Also:
Arachnoid.com

In 1826, the astronomer Heinrich Olbers asked, "Why is the sky dark at night?" By his time, physicists had learned enough to realize that, in a stable, infinite universe with an even distribution of stars, the entire universe should gradually heat up.

You will also discover the connection between a rubber band, your refrigerator, and the universe.

Photographs:
Events in the night sky

StarDate Online
StarDate is the public education and outreach arm of the University of Texas McDonald Observatory.

English and Spanish radio programs air daily on more than 500 stations.

Fourmilab Switzerland
To make a sky map, enter the latitude and longitude of your observing site and press the "Make Sky Map" button

This site is developed and maintained by John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD:

Space Watch
by Imaginova Spaceware


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Who's Smarter

My barista can take your electrician

I.Q. is not really a guarantee of vocational/financial success.

There are about as many college professors with scores below 100 as there are Kindergarten teachers who register above 120.

Here's a link to how the testing breaks down:


IQ Distribution of Various Jobs


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How Many Die

Hospital scorecard

All right, you need that old appendix ripped out; or maybe a hip replacement.

Where do you go if you have a choice?

Here is a collection of hospital performance nationwide that you may find useful.

It will tell you how many patient deaths there are in any one hospital, as well as how well patients are reimbursed.

DartmouthAtlas


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Find Found Things

Where'd it go?

A Research Project of the Information School
at the University of Washington

Keeping Found Things Found™

"What is KFTF?

The classic problem of information retrieval, simply put, is to help people find the relatively small number of things they are looking for (books, articles, web pages, CDs, etc.) from a very large set of possibilities. This classic problem has been studied in many variations and has been addressed through a rich diversity of information retrieval tools and techniques.

A follow-on problem also exists which has received relatively less study: Once found, how are things organized for re-access and re-use later on? What can be done to avoid the need to repeat the process by which the information was found in the first place? (If, indeed, it is possible to repeat this process.) We refer to this as the problem of Keeping Found Things Found™ or KFTF."

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Numbers in Persective

Visual concepts

"This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so.

The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned."

Building Blocks, 2007
16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62".

Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.

chris jordan, Seattle


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Scrub DVD Scratches

Methods tested

Which is better toothpaste or Brasso when it comes to cleaning that DVD?

Or



Paul Michael has done the testing for you and provides videos of the results.


Removing scratches


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Noodling for Flatheads

By Burkhard Bilger

ISBN 0-684-85010-9
Scribner 2000


About the Author

Has written for all the usual suspects: The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and the New York Times.



Book Description

"Bilger kicks off the tour from his hometown in Oklahoma, where he 'noodles'--thrashes a limb around in catfish-thick waters--hoping to land a fabled 80-pound monster with his bare hands. In Louisiana, he challenges the misgivings any nonenthusiast might have about cockfighting.
Even though it's illegal in most of the country, the bloodsport is thriving in the Bayou State, replete with trade magazines, well-produced venues, and American Kennel Club-worthy breeding strategies. The same passion for efficiency goes into the moonshining business, where Bilger is taken under the wing of one of the few shiners willing to lead him through his sourmash operation. A few nights later, however, Bilger is on the other side, on a raid with the local sheriff.
Squirrel-brain consumption is still popular in hamlets throughout Kentucky, even after a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine blamed a neurological disease on the dish. Bilger treats each eccentric character with a distant respect and hints at the melancholy of losing tradition, no matter how bizarre."

Quote

"tick tick tick

I'm nostril-deep in murky water, sunk to the calves in gelatinous muck.

Noodling, I know, is the fishing equivalent of a shot in the dark. For his master's thesis at Mississippi State University, a fisheries biologist named Jay Francis spent three years noodling two rivers.

All told, he caught 35 fish in 1,362 tries: 1 fish for every 39 noodles."

To "noodle" is to dangle your arm in the water until a catfish swallows your hand. The fish record catch includes one at 111 pounds.

"When clamped on your arm, catfish also have an unfortunate tendency to bear down and spin , like a sharpener on a pencil."

... "once that thing gets to flouncin' and that sandpaper gets to rubbin', it can peel your hide plumb off."

Here's the trailer for the movie
Okie Noodling


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World Countdown or Up

Time to die

Here's a clock that shows what is happening second by second.

How many are being born and how many are dying and by what means.


PoodWaddle.com:

World Clock

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Euro to Lira

Pint's a pound

This application allows you to complete many different types of conversions; it includes all the mathematical functions offered in Microsoft Calculator.

It will also do currency conversions.

Microsoft Calculator Plus

Exchange rates are downloaded from the European Central Bank.
You can enter non-European rates by hand.

A more extensive currency conversion tool can be found at:
The Full Universal Currency Converter®



None of them verify that a pint's a pound the world around.
How much does a gallon weigh?


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