WEBAGE:

WOW!: http://tinyurl.com/fvf83 Click on the picture!

The Pessimists Mug: <http://www.despair.com/pessimistmug.html> - The
whole site is great!

Pro or Con Hillary 2008: http://www.michaelhodges.com/missing.html
(funny cartoon)

iPod if M$ marketed it: http://tinyurl.com/kwl69

Super Hero's Gone: http://www.goneandforgotten.com/

Computing History: http://tinyurl.com/fhzyh - Mach 1 Google

Ballorama: http://www.newportharbor.us/computerworks.htm Maximize
you browser, click the link, and enjoy!

A moose bit my sister!: http://www.whatdoesthatmean.ca/node/3

The Devil's Dictionary: http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/

Skull & Bones Clothing: www.skullandbonesjps.com Pathetic!

Guerrilla Gardening (UK): http://www.guerrillagardening.org/ We
need more of this!

I'm Geoff Fortytwo: http://g42.org/tiki/tiki-index.php Trippie!

Twinkie Experiments : http://www.twinkiesproject.com/ Weird
Science!

Peeps Research: http://www.peepresearch.org/ When you just can't
eat one more Peep!

Zero PC & TV : http://www.cybernetman.com/ This is simple! What
are next terminals?

============================
ZINGER 1:
A tour bus driver is driving with a bus load
of seniors down a highway when he is tapped on his shoulder by a
little old lady.
She offers him a handful of peanuts,
which he gratefully munches up.
After about 15 minutes, she taps him on his shoulder
again and she hands him another handful of peanuts.
She repeats this gesture about five more times.

When she is about to hand him another batch again
he asks the little old lady,
" why don't you eat the peanuts yourself?".
"We can't chew them because we've no teeth", she replied.

The puzzled driver asks,
"Why do you buy them then?"
The old lady replied,

"We just love the chocolate around them."

============================
ZINGER 2: Bar Humor <green with envy>

A Rabbi walks into a bar with a frog on his shoulder.

The bartender asked where did you get that!?

The frog goes "Brooklyn, there are hundreds of them!"


============================
FUN & GAMES: "Japanese Intelligence Test" <14 minutes>

http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/riverIQGame.swf

Click on link, and then click on the big blue circle. Use the
rules below.
This is going to do your head in, but it can be done.
Apparently this is an IQ test given to job applicants in
Japan:
"Everybody has to cross the river".

The following rules apply:

Only 2 persons on the raft at a time
The father can not stay with any of the daughters, without
their
mother's presence
The mother can not stay with any of the sons, without their
father's presence
The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family
member, if
The Policeman is not there
Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to
operate
the raft
To start click on the big blue circle on the right.
To move the people click on them.
To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of
the
river.

===========================
HOUSEHOLD:

A sealed envelope - Put in the freezer for a few hours, then slide a
knife under the flap. The envelope can then be resealed.(hmmmmmm...)
* * *
Use Empty toilet paper roll to store appliance cords. It keeps them
neat and you can write on the roll what appliance it belongs to.
* * *
For icy door steps in freezing temperatures: get warm water and put
Dawn dish washing liquid in it. Pour it all over the steps. They
won't refreeze. (wish I had known this for the last 40 years!)

To remove old wax from a glass candle holder, put it in the freezer
for a few hours. Then take the candle holder out and turn it upside
down. The wax will fall out.
* * *
Crayon marks on walls? This worked wonderfully! A damp rag, dipped in
baking soda. Comes off with little effort (elbow grease that is!).
* * *
Permanent marker on appliances/counter tops (like store receipt
BLUE!) rubbing alcohol on paper towel.
* * *
Whenever I purchase a box of S.O.S Pads, I immediately take a pair of
scissors and cut each pad into halves. After years of having to throw
away rusted and unused and smelly pads, I finally decided that this
would be much more economical. And now a box of S.O.S pads last me
indefinitely! In fact, I have noticed that the scissors get sharpened
this way!
* * *
Blood stains on clothes? Not to worry! Just pour a little hydrogen
peroxide on a clo! th and p roceed to wipe off every drop of blood.
Works every time!
* * *
Use vertical strokes when washing windows outside and horizontal for
inside windows. This way you can tell which side has the streaks..
Straight vinegar will get outside windows really clean. Don't wash
windows on a sunny day. They will dry too quickly and will probably
streak.
* * *
When the bulb is off, spray a bit of perfume on the light bulb in
any room to create a lovely light scent in each room when the light
is turned on.
* * *
Place fabric softener sheets in dresser drawers and your clothes will
Smell freshly washed for weeks to come. You can also do this with
towels and linen.
* * *
Candles will last a lot longer if placed in the freezer for at least
3 hours prior to burning.
* * *
To clean artificial flowers, pour some salt into a paper bag and add
the flowers. Shake vigorously as the salt will absorb all the dust
and dirt and leave your artificial flowers looking like new! Works
like a charm!
* * *
To easily remove burnt on food from your skillet, simply add a drop
or two of dish soap and enough water to cover bottom of pan, and
bring to a boil on stove top.
* * *
Spray your TUPPERWARE with nonstick cooking spray before pouring in
tomato based sauces and there won't be any stains.
* * *
Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in the refrigerator and it
will keep for weeks.
* * *
When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar to help bring out
the corn's natural sweetness.
* * *
Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in! half an d rub it on your
forehead. The throbbing will go away.
* * *
Don't throw out all that leftover wine: Freeze into ice cubes for
future use in casseroles and sauces. (Left over wine? What's
that?! :)
* * *
To get rid of itch from mosquito bites, try applying soap on the area
and you will experience instant relief.
* * *
Ants, ants, ants everywhere .... Well, they are said to never cross a
chalk line. So get your chalk out and draw a line on the floor or
wherever ants tend to march. See for yourself.
* * *
Use air-freshener to clean mirrors. It does a good job and better
still, leaves a lovely smell to the shine.
* * *
When you get a splinter, reach for the scotch tape before resorting
to tweezers or a needle. Simply put the scotch tape over the
splinter, then pull it off. Scotch tape removes most splinters
painlessly and easily.
* * *
Now look what you can do with Alka Seltzer. Clean a toilet. Drop in
two Alka Seltzer tablets, wait twenty minutes, brush and flush. The
citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous China.
* * *
Clean a vase. To remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or
cruet, fill with water and drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets.
* * *
Polish jewelry. Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water
and immerse the jewelry for two minutes.
* * *
Clean a thermos bottle. Fill the bottle with water, drop in four Alka
Seltzer tablets, and let soak for an hour (or longer, if necessary).
* * *
Unclog a drain. Clear the sink drain by dropping three Alka Seltzer
tablets down the drain followed by a cup of white vinegar. Wai! t a
few minutes, then run the hot water.
* * *
Do your friends a favor. Pass this timely (and some not-so-timely)
information on to a friend! I just did.
Makes you wonder about ingesting Alka Seltzer, doesn't it?

=======================================
KID POLITICS: "How to spot a baby conservative"

Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and
traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ...

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who
always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to
the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a
conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that
social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The
confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going
to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the
right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw
him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional
investigation into his research funding.

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his
wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking
more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of
personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by
teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no
reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators
were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had
been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea
about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking
again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids
tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults
who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable
with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose,
turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The
girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little
introspective.

Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative
of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results
hold. He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided
by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The
more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way
things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a
mostly flattering picture for liberals. It also runs contrary to the
American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives.

Of course, if you're studying the psychology of politics, you
shouldn't be surprised to get a political reaction. Similar work by
John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 drew a political
backlash. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the
psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are
dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who
crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to
conservatism. Critics branded it the "conservatives are crazy" study
and accused the authors of a political bias.

Jost welcomed the new study, saying it lends support to his
conclusions. But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the
University of Arizona who was critical of Jost's study, was less
impressed.

---
`I found (the Jack Block study) to be biased, shoddy work, poor
science at best'

Jeff Greenberg - University of Arizona

***

"I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best," he said
of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can
as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He
suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely
become fervid party members.

The results do raise some obvious questions. Are nursery school
teachers in the conservative heartland cursed with classes filled
with little proto-conservative whiners?

Or does an insecure little boy raised in Idaho or Alberta surrounded
by conservatives turn instead to liberalism?

Or do the whiny kids grow up conservative along with the majority of
their more confident peers, while only the kids with poor impulse
control turn liberal?

Part of the answer is that personality is not the only factor that
determines political leanings. For instance, there was a .27
correlation between being self-reliant in nursery school and being a
liberal as an adult. Another way of saying it is that self-reliance
predicts statistically about 7 per cent of the variance between kids
who became liberal and those who became conservative. (If every self-
reliant kid became a liberal and none became conservatives, it would
predict 100 per cent of the variance). Seven per cent is fairly
strong for social science, but it still leaves an awful lot of room
for other influences, such as friends, family, education, personal
experience and plain old intellect.

For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more
flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really
did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have
recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place.

Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to
tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe
that's just moral certainty.

The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection
and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-
indulgent and ineffectual.

Whether anyone's feelings are hurt or not, the work suggests that
personality and emotions play a bigger role in our political leanings
than we think. All of us, liberal or conservative, feel as though
we've reached our political opinions by carefully weighing the
evidence and exercising our best judgment. But it could be that all
of that careful reasoning is just after-the-fact self-justification.
What if personality forms our political outlook, with reason coming
along behind, rationalizing after the fact?

It could be that whom we vote for has less to do with our judgments
about tax policy or free trade or health care, and more with the
personalities we've been stuck with since we were kids.

Kurt Kleiner is a Toronto-based freelance science writer
-------------------------------------
GARDENING: "Guerrilla Gardeners" <I'm sure the government will stop
this outrageous behavior>

Blooming street craze that leaves authorities seeing green

By Will Pavia


IT IS the latest gang to explode in the concrete canyons of South
London, bringing not knives, nor drugs, nor guns — but plants.
They congregate at night beside roundabouts and road junctions, armed
with trowels and spades.



The authorities say there is little they can do to stop the rapidly
expanding guerrilla movement from planting every neglected patch of
soil with rows of hyacinths, rosemary and Day-Glo primulas, tidying
up afterwards and returning regularly to water and weed.

They call themselves the Guerrilla Gardeners and in five months they
have grown from one man with a passion for shrubs to more than five
hundred. On a Thursday night they appeared at a triangular traffic
island a mile south of Waterloo, carrying sacks of mulch, a water
dispenser and tools. They started weeding.

"I've just joined," said Anne Slater, 66, a human resources manager
from Stockwell, South London. "We came here two weeks ago and it was
absolutely covered in weeds."

A night employee of Morley College, which overlooks the junction,
said: "It was like a flash mob. Suddenly there was nearly a hundred
people out there, gardening."

The Guerrilla Gardeners were back the next night, to plant rows of
lavender, hellebores and a holly bush.

This week it was a smaller detachment carrying out maintenance and
more planting at the site they call "Project Nine". By day all are
urban professionals: charity officers, tax consultants and
managers. "It's anarchic but in a nice way," said Mrs Slater. "My
stepdaughter is standing by to bail me out in case we all get
arrested."

The police have questioned the guerrillas but in an area of London
with one of the highest crime rates they usually have more pressing
engagements.

The local authority is in a quandary. There may be legal issues but
Southwark Council does not wish to clamp down on the gardening. It
would prefer to work with the guerrillas, a spokeswoman said.

Richard Reynolds, 28, the group's founder, thinks that would
entail "a lot of red tape, rather than simply gardening". On a
lunchtime trip to water "Project Nine" he met the man from Transport
for London who is officially charged with tending the site.

"He was only allowed to do something here once every three months,"
Mr Reynolds said. "If he wanted to water a border in the Old Kent
Road, health and safety wanted him to shut down the dual carriageway.
It would cost £600 just to water. I can come and do it on my way to
work."

Mr Reynolds, the son of a vicar from North Devon, is an Oxford
graduate, and an advertising account planner.

His urban gardening drive began two years ago when he moved to a
tower block overlooking Elephant and Castle, South London, decorated
with empty concrete pots.

He went out after midnight and replanted the beds in the entrance
way. Similar midnight missions followed.

So it began. He set up a website to chart the progress and to call on
repressed gardeners to join up. Cash donations flooded in. Members
receive regular e-mails notifying them of the time and postcode of
the next project.