Holiday info

The fire is the wrong place for other holiday detritus as well - der Tannenbaum, for example.

My assistant Una had an Uncle Bob, a manly man who felt throwing the Christmas tree away was a waste of good firewood. So he tossed it in the fireplace - gave him a nice warm glow.

Unfortunately

what was glowing was the roof, presumably ignited by embers.

Fortunately

the fire was small and anybody with a hose could have put it out.

Unfortunately

the hose was frozen solid and the fire department had trouble getting the nearest hydrant to work.

Fortunately

the firefighters were able to throw a ladder up against the house and put out the fire with a chemical extinguisher. They then hacked off a small hunk of charred roof with axes, peered into the crawl space, and declared the fire out.

Unfortunately,

having by now found an operational hydrant, the firemen declared they needed to hose down the roof "as policy," sending a torrent of water through the hole and collapsing the living room ceiling.

Really unfortunately,

the house that all this happened in belonged not to Uncle Bob but his in-laws. Bob bought them an RV and matters were pronounced square, but it was a lesson he won't soon forget, and neither should you.

Labels: Answers, General, Reference

Games for kids (and you)

"Welcome to the SchoolHistory.co.uk downloadable resources centre. This has been updated to allow quick, easy access to our resources kindly contributed by other teachers. There are now over 1,400 pages of resources available."

Labels: Answers, History, Reference

One Stop OneLook

"If you have a word for which you'd like a definition or translation, we'll quickly shuttle you to the web-based dictionaries that define or translate that word. If you don't know how to spell the word, we'll help you do that too. No word is too obscure: More than 5 million words in more than 900 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook search engine.

What can you do at OneLook.com?

Define words:

Type a word into the search box on the front page to retrieve a list of dictionary web sites that define that word. Be sure "Find definitions" is selected.

Translate words:

Type a word into the search box and select "Find translations" to retrieve a list of dictionary web sites that have translations of that word into other languages.

Find words:

Type a pattern consisting of letters and the wildcards * and ? to retrieve a list of words matching your pattern."

Labels: Answers, Reference

Pick a piece

In 1996, Arthur Bebak of Netsurfer Digest jokingly suggested the idea. I put the site online, linked from the now-defunct Useless Web Pages Pages. The original suggestion was to find your birthday in Pi, but things got out of hand. The original pi searcher featured 1.25 million digits. It was upgraded in 1998 to 50 million, in 2001 to 100 million, and in 2005, to 200 million digits to keep up with the times. The Pi Searcher has proven both exceptionally useless (see the comments) and occasionally useful to math & early science classes.

The Pi Searcher lets you search for any string of digits (up to 120 of them) in the first 200 million digits of Pi. You can also show any substring of Pi

The string 09062010 occurs at position 100,612,215 counting from the first digit after the decimal point.

The string and surrounding digits:

69799506351530413700 09062010 38508990326697425579

Labels: Answers, General, Reference

Where are your cousins?

The Gens project is born by the initiative and the experience of a team of graduates in Humanities at the University of Genoa - Italy, who have specialized in history, demography, statistics, archive-keeping and librarianship.

Labels: Answers, General, Reference, World

Who ya gonna believe?

TRUE: The Mississippi state legislature removed fractions and decimal points from the mathematics curriculum of public secondary schools.

FALSE: The restaurant chain formerly known as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" changed its name to KFC to eliminate the word "fried" from its title.

TRUE: At the moment the Titanic hit an iceberg in the north Atlantic, the silent version of the film The Poseidon Adventure was being screened aboard ship.

Labels: Answers, Humor, Reference

Umpty ump definitions and references — maybe even a googol.

"Every File Format in the World"

This is a list of file name extension or suffixes that indicate the format or usage of a file and a brief description of that format.

KAR

MIDI file (text+MIDI) (Karaoke)

Labels: Answers, Reference

Wrong list

The "i-before-e" rule has more exceptions than words it applies to.

Dr. Language has provided a one-stop cure for all your spelling ills. Here are the 100 words most often misspelled ("misspell" is one of them). Each word has a mnemonic pill with it and, if you swallow it, it will help you to remember how to spell the word. Master the orthography of the words on this page and reduce the time you spend searching dictionaries by 50%.

Labels: Answers, General, Reference

How to check it

Labels: Answers, General, Reference

Weather maps from around the world

Labels: Answers, General, Links, Reference, World

Google dictionary

"To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word "define," then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results.

You can also get a list of definitions by including the special operator "define:" with no space between it and the term you want defined. For example, the search [define:World Wide Web] will show you a list of definitions for "World Wide Web" gathered from various online sources."

"WordWeb Pro is a quick and powerful international English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to lookup words from almost any Windows program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. There are also many proper nouns and usage examples. You can search for words matching a pattern, find and solve anagrams, and optionally search a large number of extra word lists."

Labels: Answers, Free Stuff, Help, Links, Reference

Stats on a map

"This project started some eight years ago.

An attempt to do justice to the term 'political' and 'geo-political' globe.
Trying to tell the lie (of abstraction and visualization) that tells the truth.

By now there are more than 200 different globes."

Labels: Answers, Reference, World

Information on everything

ZIP-City-Phone

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

Phone Numbers

Enter a phone number or area code and get city, state, county, time zone and more.

Street Name

Enter any street name in the U.S. and get a listing of which states and cities have the street name. Even displays local street address detail.

U.S. Place Names

Get location information on over 1,000,000 geographic places including lakes, streams, populated areas, schools, churches & more.

City, State & County Demographics

The latest data available from the 2000 census on 46,455 counties, states, cities and places in the U.S.

Nearest Mailing House

Find the nearest recommended mailing house in your area.

Business List Counts

Use free list counts to discover new markets. Find more customers like your best customers.

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.

Canadian Addresses

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

Home Sales by ZIP Code

Number of home sales and average sell price by ZIP Code.

SIC Code

Get business counts by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Code and descriptions of SIC codes.

Campaign Contributors

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

Climate Averages

Monthly low, average and high temperatures by ZIP Code.

People Finder

Locate anyone nationwide. Search billions of public records.

Occupants by ZIP

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

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.

ZIPs in a Radius

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

Area Codes in a Radius

Displays a listing of the Area Code + Prefixes that fall within a radius.

ZIP Code Demographics

Demographics by ZIP Code. Including population, family, housing, race, age and more.

Nearest Post Office

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

Income Tax Statistics

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

Worldwide Place Names

Location information on over 5,000,000 geographic names worldwide.

Nonprofit Organizations

Information on a nonprofit organizations by ZIP Code. Includes address, revenue, assets, type of foundation and more.

Also:
Other information sites



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Labels: Answers, Help, Reference, Search

London Underground

"This is a method for documenting business processes, based on the design elements of the London Underground diagram. We have used this technique in place of standard flowcharts, for all kinds of process-related documents including quality systems, to give a fresh and user-friendly look to what can be rather boring material. If you want to give your company processes a new lease of life and get staff using them regularly, this really will help."

Kay Initiatives Ltd.

Instructions include a guide book and PowerPoint Template. This used to be free, but now there is a charge for the materials. (About $27 for the PowerPoint Template).

Underground Map as Wallpaper.
Click on this link and then Right-click on the image and choose "Set as Background."

Also see:

Sometimes it's quicker to walk:
London Tube Map with Walklines

Edward Tufte:
London Underground Map.

Also:
London Underground Blog



See all Topics

Labels: Answers, General

One if by air. Two if by slime

"Never underestimate a pigeon carrying a memory card, hovering above your head, ready to download"-yossi vardi

"Calculating the bandwidth by dividing the amount of data by the flying time of the last pigeon, show that the bandwidth achieved by the pigeons was significantly larger that that available through commercially available ADSL broadband Internet connections: about 2.27 Mbps (Mega bit per second) as compared to 0.75 - 1.5 Mbps. [Please note that all measured times are of an observer on the ground. If measured by the moving pigeon it self, times are a bit shorter, according to Einstein's relativity theory].

Yet the Wi-Fly TCP (Transmission by Pigeons) protocol of wireless internet has had its limitations. First, pigeons cannot fly through Windows. Second, since they don't fly in darkness either, this method's bandwidth drops to zero 50 percent of the time. Finally, there's the problem of droppings download."

A New Israeli test confirms: PEI (Pigeon Enabled Internet) is FASTER then ADSL

(Thanks to PaulScarfe.com )

Also:

Google Pigeon ranking

And:

"The use of snails as data communications agents was not considered before now. As we show in this paper, the negative attitude towards using snails in communications networks is an example of bounded rationality2 impeding bold and creative engineering.

Snails are widely assumed to be slow animals. Yet the literature on sluggish speed is surprisingly limited, and few have actually bothered to measure and record it formally. Further, reported gastropod speeds vary widely with species and circumstance, ranging from 0.0000233 to 0.00284 meters per second.

. . . a certain segment of the network's backbone was implemented by shuffling magnetic tapes in a station wagon in the Australian outback. This has prompted Andrew Tanenbaum to note that one should "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes."

Labels: Answers, General, Humor, Reference

What's on your card?

There's data encoded in your Social Security number! (not a lot, but some).
You can tell in what state the card was issued:

"The first three (3) digits of a person's social security number are determined by the ZIP Code of the mailing address shown on the application for a social security number. Prior to 1973, social security numbers were assigned by field offices. The number merely established that his/her card was issued by one of the offices in that State."

Social Security Number Allocations

If you're an employer, you can verify if the number is valid:
Social Security Number Verification
(There are three types of cards)

Here are some stories about Social Security :

" The most misused SSN of all time was (078-05-1120). In 1938, wallet manufacturer the E. H. Ferree company in Lockport, New York decided to promote its product by showing how a Social Security card would fit into its wallets. A sample card, used for display purposes, was inserted in each wallet. Company Vice President and Treasurer Douglas Patterson thought it would be a clever idea to use the actual SSN of his secretary, Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher.



The wallet was sold by Woolworth stores and other department stores all over the country. Even though the card was only half the size of a real card, was printed all in red, and had the word "specimen" written across the face, many purchasers of the wallet adopted the SSN as their own. In the peak year of 1943, 5,755 people were using Hilda's number. SSA acted to eliminate the problem by voiding the number and publicizing that it was incorrect to use it. (Mrs. Whitcher was given a new number.) However, the number continued to be used for many years. In all, over 40,000 people reported this as their SSN. As late as 1977, 12 people were found to still be using the SSN "issued by Woolworth."

History

Other things on the site include:

Slider puzzles
(Including such luminaries as: Otto von Bismarck, Frances Perkins, and Arthur Altmeyer )

Both Nixon and LBJ recorded conversations in their offices. The SSA has some of them you can listen to about SS matters:
LBJ and Nixon tapes

Social Security Number



See all Topics

Labels: Answers, General, History, Reference

Shape or substance

"The legibility of a typeface should not be evaluated on its ability to generate a good word shape.

Word shape is no longer a viable model of word recognition. The bulk of scientific evidence says that we recognize a word's component letters, then use that visual information to recognize a word. In addition to perceptual information, we also use contextual information to help recognize words during ordinary reading, but that has no bearing on the word shape versus parallel letter recognition debate. "

The science of word recognition
by Kevin Larson
From EyeMagazine

Suggested by:
Microsoft Typography

Also see:
Cmabrigde



See all Topics

Labels: Answers, Reference

Doorway or PC?

U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program Website

"Earthquakes pose significant risk to 75 million Americans in 39 States. The USGS is the only Federal agency with responsibility for recording and reporting earthquake activity nationwide. Citizens, emergency responders, and engineers rely on the USGS for accurate and timely information on where an earthquake occurred, how much the ground shook in different locations, and what the likelihood is of future significant ground shaking.

The USGS estimates that several million earthquakes occur in the world each year, but many go undetected because they occur in remote areas or have very small magnitudes. The USGS now locates about 50 earthquakes each day; 20,000 a year."

• Current Earthquakes
  
  
  • USA
    
  • World
  
  
• NEIC Current Earthquake Information
  
• ShakeMaps
  
• Seismogram Displays
  
• Past & HistoricalEarthquakes
  
• Earthquake Notification E-mail

Also:
Ask USGS
Earth Science Information Center

Tsunamis research at USGS



See all Topics

Labels: Answers, General, Reference, World

Statistical treasure trove

"Census 2000 and Trend Data going back to 1990, 1980, and sometimes even further, on a growing list of topics, including population growth, population by race, age structure, family structure, and income."

"Many of the most important social trends affecting America have a strongly regional flavor. Figure out where you fit in with demographic maps showing where the elderly predominate (think: the Great Plains), where the nuclear family is (and isn't) the norm, and how "diversity" breaks down regionally."

"State and county-level rankings by population growth, race, educational attainment, language, gender, and more."

"Segregation Exposure and Dissimilarity Measures for 1246 individual US cities with population exceeding 25,000 and for all metropolitan areas, based on single and multiple race populations as identified in Census 2000."

CensusScope

University of Michigan:
Social Science Data Analysis Network

The site was suggested by the eclectic J-WalkBlog of John Walkenbach.




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Labels: Answers, General, Reference

And other stuff

• "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."

Labels: Answers, Books, General, Products, Reference, Tutorials

A little is dangerous, a lot is too much

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.

Labels: Answers, General, Humor

And more

"docstoc is a user generated community where you can find and share professional documents. Find free legal documents and free business documents. Upload your documents for all the world to share."

• Differences between a Will and a Trust
  
• Employment Agreement
  
• Cohabitation Agreement
  
• Real Estate Purchase Contract
  
• On Target Marketing Plan Book
  
• Interactive W-9 from EchoSign
  
• Promissory Note
  
• Excel Formulas Help
  
• Venture Capital Firms in California (full contact info)
  
• How to Write a Mission Statement
  
• LLC Company Agreement
  
• Rental Agreement
  
• Last Will And Testament

Labels: Answers, Free Stuff, Reference

The world around

• Imperial pints are 20 fl. oz., not 16--making them smaller than their US counterparts.
  
  
• Imperial fl. oz. weigh approximately an ounce; US ones do not.
  
  
• One pint (pt) -- 16 ounces
  
  
• One fluid pint (fld Pt) -- 16 fluid ounces (fld Oz)
  
  
• One liter of water weights one kilogram and fits in a cube with 10cm in each dimension

" German-made Measuring Cup includes the measurements for liters, milliliters, grams, cups, and ounces all-in-one. Separate measuring sections for Cereal, Rice, Sugar and Flour are offered and a convenient pouring spout. Removable rubber base keeps the measuring cup from sliding during use. This is a handy, multi-use baking aid when you are elbow deep in your Oma's German Recipe."

"Grains, Scruple (20 grains), Minim (20 scruples), Drachm/Dram (60 minims; 1/8 or 1/16 oz), Gill (5 Brit oz), Bucket (4 Brit gallons), Firkins (9 Brit gallons), Bag (3 bushels), Seam (8 bushels), or Butt (2-4 barrels or 2 hogsheads). Since fresh water on ships was stored in a butt, and people congregated and gossiped there, the term scuttlebutt now refers to gossip, not just the fountain!"

Also:
Euros to Lira



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Labels: Answers

Figure the vigorish

• 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

Labels: Answers, General

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."

• 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

Quotes:
Yahoo Reference

Google Quotations



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Labels: Answers, Books

They say it isn't so

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."

Labels: Answers

Ease of use

Say you're walking down the street in a strange town, and you'd like to find a Starbucks.
(OK the question might be how not to find a Starbucks.)

Dial (1-800) GOOG-411, on your obnoxious cell phone. Speak your location and what you are looking for and you'll be connected to the harassed barista of your choice. There is no charge for the service.

It also works from a real phone. It also finds other businesses than just coffee pushers.


Goog411



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Labels: Answers, Free Stuff, Help, Search

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."

Labels: Answers, General, Products

IRS worthy or not

• 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

Labels: Answers, General, Search

My barista can take your electrician

Labels: Answers

Hospital scorecard

Labels: Answers

Where'd it go?

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."

Labels: Answers, General, Help

Who's living in your neighborhood?

ZIPSkinny displays US Census data for any selected Zip code .

You can find out how old your neighbors are and how much money they make.

Find out how many graduated from high school and how many are single.

Here's part of the information available about someone's vacation home.



ZIPSkinny.com



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Labels: Answers, General, Search

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.

Labels: Answers, Art

Methods tested

Labels: Answers

Time to die

Labels: Answers, World

Pint's a pound

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

For other conversions see:
Convert Anything

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



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Labels: Answers

From a Crabby Lady

"Sometimes when you're stuck on a problem using an Office program, you need help and you need it NOW (not unlike the "I need it NOW!" urgency for a very nearby public restroom for your recently trained 2-year-old). You just want to be able to type a word or a phrase into search and have your answer immediately returned in the form of a simple, short article that explains it all.

Other times you might like to watch someone show you how it's done, although it isn't always possible to wander the hallways and look for an unsuspecting coworker to enlighten you.

Office Online offers a multitude of ways to get "show me now!" help as well as other types of assistance. Today I'll cover six of them."

Labels: Answers, Help

Four pecks to a bushel

"Convert is an easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!"

Also see Josh Madison's Chinese restaurant get well card.

OnlineConversion.com does more conversions online.
(A Hogshead is 63 Gallons)

Export911 has conversions and calculators.

Also:
Convert between bits/bytes/kilobits/kilobytes/megabits/megabytes/gigabits/gigabytes

Labels: Answers, General

Cooperation

Three great locations for looking up answers are:

WOPR.com Woody Leonard is the author of dozens of books about Microsoft Office. The WOPR site has a forum where questions are asked and answered.
(Go to the Lounge)

TechRepublic is part of CNET networks. There is an active forum and also discussions, white papers and downloads.
(Go to Forums)

Google Groups searches all of the public news groups for answers. When you are looking at a page of results, it is usually more productive to examine hits that have two or more responses. One entry is, most often, just a question.
(deja.com takes you directly to the Groups archive)

For a search of the links that I have collected, enter you question here:
Search. You'll also find lists of tutorials and just plain interesting sites.

Also:
Blog Topics



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Labels: Answers

Low pay by state

Since 1997, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15. The new Congress plans to introduce legislation raising the minimum wage to $7.25-an increase that is long overdue.

This minimum wage increase would boost earnings for 13 million American workers-9.8 percent of the United States workforce.

Six million families with children-46 percent of the total low wage-earning families with children-currently receive all of their earnings from minimum wage jobs.

Raising the minimum wage will increase annual earnings to $15,000 from $10,700.

Without this increase, a family of three supported by one minimum wage earner will live roughly $5,400 below the federal poverty line.

At the 350 largest public companies, the average CEO total direct compensation was $11.6 million in 2005. At this rate of compensation, it takes the average CEO only one hour and 55 minutes to earn the annual pay of a minimum wage worker.

Labels: Answers, History

Times

Here is a location that will give you times for sun and moon, rise and set,
Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight. and Astronomical Twilight anywhere in the world.

SunriseSunset.com



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Labels: Answers, Calendars

True Believers

Snared by a cybercult queen

SEAN ROBINSON: The News Tribune

"Shaini Goodwin lies like a lover, and people pay to listen.

Her whispers promise the irresistible: peace, wealth and forgiven credit card debt".

National Economic Security and Reformation Act

NESARA initiates PEACE IMMEDIATELY and

1. Provides forgiveness of credit card, mortgage, and other bank debt as remedy for bank and government frauds;
   
2. Abolishes the IRS; creates flat rate non-essential "new items only" sales tax revenue for government;
   
3. Initiates U.S. Treasury Bank System, which absorbs the Federal Reserve, and new precious metals backed U.S. Treasury currency;
   
4. Restores Constitutional Law;
   
5. Requires resignations of current administration to be replaced by Constitutionally acceptable NESARA President and Vice President Designates until new elections within 120 days;
   
6. Requires the President Designate to declare "Peace" enabling international banking improvements to proceed smoothly; ends U.S. aggressive military actions immediately, and many more improvements.

Quatloos.com

Quatloos.com is a public educational website covering a wide variety of financial scams and frauds, including wacky "prime bank" frauds, exotic foreign currency scams, offshore investment frauds, tax scams, "Pure Trust" structures and more.

ScamBusters.org

Internet ScamBusters Helps You Protect Yourself From Clever Scams -- Online and Offline

MuseumofHoaxes.com

The Museum of Hoaxes was established in 1997 in order to promote knowledge about the phenomenon of hoaxes.

Snopes.com

In a strict folkloric sense, no. Urban legends are a specific type of folklore, and many of the items discussed on this site do not fall under the folkloric definition of "urban legend." We are following the more expansive popular (if inaccurate) use of "urban legend" as a term that embraces not only urban legends but also common fallacies, misinformation, old wives' tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip, and similar items.

CSICOP.org

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public.

Urban Legends

Internet hoaxes, email rumors and urban legends

VMyths.com

Learn about computer virus myths, hoaxes, urban legends, hysteria, and the implications if you believe in them. You can also search a list of computer virus hoaxes & virus hysteria

Symantec.com

Symantec Security Response uncovers hoaxes on a regular basis. These hoaxes usually arrive in the form of an email. Please disregard the hoax emails - they contain bogus warnings usually intent only on frightening or misleading users.

McAfee.com

There are a lot of viruses out there. But some aren't really out there at all. Virus hoaxes are more than mere annoyances, as they may lead some users to routinely ignore all virus warning messages, leaving them vulnerable to a genuine, destructive virus.

About.com – Hoax Encyclopedia

Virus hoaxes, scams, and chain letters abound in email. Before forwarding that dire sounding warning or too good to be true promise, check the validity of it here. Chances are, it's a hoax.

TrendMicro.com

Hoaxes

PurPortal.com

That story that your misguided (yet sweet) friend just sent to you and forty other people sounds true... Put it to the test here.

InfoPlease.com

The Hoax Files

Labels: Answers

See what they mean

" Welcome to Nolo's Legal Glossary, your life-raft in the sea of legal jargon. Do you need to know the meaning of sprinkling trust, toxic tort or some equally puzzling legal term? Look it up here. Our glossary contains plain-English definitions for hundreds of legal terms, from the common to the bizarre."

Toxic tort

A personal injury caused by exposure to a toxic substance, such as asbestos or hazardous waste. Victims can sue for medical expenses, lost wages and pain and suffering.

Willful tort

A harmful act that is committed in an intentional and conscious way. For example, if your neighbor builds an ugly new fence and you intentionally run it down with your truck, that's a willful tort. But accidentally backing into the fence as you pull out of your driveway is not willful, though it's still a tort.

Labels: Answers

Advice from the past

"Take a step back in time as I share words of wisdom from my collection of about 1,000 classic advice books in a quest to solve modern-day dilemmas.

The books span from 1822 to 1978 and cover the age-old topics of dating, love, living together, marriage, health, beauty, puberty, sex, etiquette, housekeeping, home economics, and home repairs. I've spent years scouting out used bookstores and thrift shops to locate these treasures of self help. "

Labels: Answers

Nerd Conversation Nibblets

• Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
  
  
• The dollar symbol ($) is a U combined with an S (U.S.)
  
  
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
  
  
• The Statue of Liberty's tablet is two feet thick.
  
  
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
  
  
• Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.
  
  
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
  
  

Labels: Answers

Neither

Interestingly enough, although Georgia celebrates Washington's Birthday, the Governor is accorded the right to designate when state holidays occur. In Georgia, Washington's Birthday is recognized the day after Christmas.

There is an urban legend that when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was implemented in 1971, President Richard Nixon issued a proclamation calling for a Presidents' Day on the third Monday to honor all U.S. presidents.

Each February both the Law Library at the Library of Congress and the Nixon Library field an upsurge in calls on this question. No evidence of this exists in Nixon's official papers.

Labels: Answers

Info Tools

Google, the largest search database on the planet, currently has around eight billion web pages indexed. That's a lot of information. But it's nothing compared to what else is out there.
Google can only index the visible web, or searchable web. But the invisible web, or deep web, is estimated to be 500 times bigger than the searchable web. The invisible web comprises databases and results of specialty search engines that the popular search engines simply are not able to index.

1. Clusty - A metasearch engine that combines the results of several top search engines.
   
   
2. Intute - A searchable database of trusted sites, reviewed and monitored by subject specialists.
   
   
3. INFOMINE - A virtual library of Internet resources relevant to university students and faculty. Built by librarians from the University of California, California State University, the University of Detroit-Mercy, and Wake Forest University.
   
   
4. Librarians' Internet Index - A search engine listing sites deemed trustworthy by actual human librarians, not just a Googlebot.

• Deep Web Search Engines
  
• Art
  
• Books Online
  
• Business
  
• Consumer
  
• Economic and Job Data
  
• Finance and Investing
  
• General Research
  
• Government Data
  
• International
  
• Law and Politics
  
• Library of Congress
  
• Medical and Health
  
• Science
  
• Transportation

Labels: Answers, Search