Gallery of misused "quotation marks". Kinda like that "K" for "Kountry" flair, quotes for emphasis has been one of my pet peeves, probably ever since I got a recipe from my sister titled Grandma's "Brownies". Sometimes I wonder how people can be so blinded to their double-entendres. Evan Davies' site is not that new and has been around the block, but the humorous examples still ring true.

Curious George: Vector maps? Are there any sources for free vector form (Adobe Illustrator, Postscript, etc) maps that I can use for quick personal projects? I have been looking through Google and can only find companies selling the files at ridiculous prices. Am I screwed?

Curious George: Sleep disorders. Do any monkeys here have any weird sleep syndromes? Not counting the more common things like insomnia. more inside

Vice Presidential debate. Anyone watch it? What's your take? And do you think it will affect the vote? more inside

Curious George: Shatner Priceline.com ads. What happened to those old William Shatner ads (We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, etc)? Priceline.com yanked them from their website and only has the new ones. The old ads were weirder and goofier. Can they be downloaded anymore?

Curious George: Dying peacefully? Seeing the story on Janet Leigh's death it was written that she "died peacefully at home". This reminds me of concepts like dying of old age, and how old people in tribal cultures would go off to die. It got me to wondering: is it physiologically possible to "die peacefully"? Do the primal survival instincts just get turned off like a switch? Or can we pretty much count on a gasping struggle in those last seconds if we're not mercifully knocked out with anesthetics?

Curious George: Yellow ribbon stickers. In recent weeks I've seen an explosion of yellow ribbon vehicle stickers that look exactly like the sample on the left. The funny thing is that they're not on sedans -- 98% of the ones I see here in Austin are on big pickups and SUVs (many of them with GW04 decals). No sedans are sporting them. What's the story behind this sticker? Is this purely an impulse item at Wal-Mart? Or is it being mailed out to GOP supporters to help sway the vote?

Mount St. Helens is restless and has become an item of regional interest: Scientists warn that a small or moderate blast could spew ash and rock as far as three miles from the crater around Mount St. Helens in the next few days. Keep tabs on the mountain with the USFS webcam. Pick Wikipedia for an encapsulation or fatten up with 488 Slashdot comments.

Curious George: On leaving the US. Is anyone here toying with the idea of emigrating from the US if Bush wins re-election? more inside

Flight of the Valkyrie. Forty years ago to this day was the first flight of a huge Mach 3 aircraft, as big as a DC-10. The XB-70 Valkyrie lifted into the skies at Palmdale, California and embarked on an intensive testing program. After its role as a bomber was abandoned, NASA helped it build a mountain of research for the doomed Boeing 2707 SST. The XB-70 was an icon of an era in which technology was grandiose and inspiring, and anything seemed possible.

Curious George: Spyware prevention I am wondering if you monkeys know of a good Win2K app that will aggressively prevent backdoor registry changes, startup changes, and software installs. Even though I have the latest AdAware + defs, don't use IE, and scrutinize my task manager and startup files, I'm still getting stuff sneaking in. I can't seem to pin anything down on Google... too much noise and untrustworthy content.

Transoceanic cables. Once proclaimed the eighth wonder of the world but now largely forgotten, transoceanic cables did more to shrink the world than anything else. Read about the Herculean efforts that went into the first Atlantic cable. Then check out the great links, maps, and more. Listen to the Ocean Telegraph March and other inspired tunes. Even nowadays, transcontinental cables are high-tech, with fiber-optic lines piping the Internet through the oceanic abyss.

Devastating hurricane to make landfall tonight. In the next few hours, Hurricane Ivan will be coming ashore in Alabama and far west Florida. The central pressure of 931 mb would make it the third most intense landfall in the United States since 1961, rivalled only by Hurricanes Andrew (1992) and Camille (1969). Let's hear about those blogs, if you know of any.

Curious George: Stalking? Just wondering what you monkeys make of this situation. more inside

2-mile wide mushroom cloud spotted in North Korea. According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration had received recent intelligence reports that may indicate North Korea was preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test explosion.

Press photos. Over the years I have gotten annoyed with squinting at those crude 400 x 300 pixel images that accompany online news stories. I'm curious if anyone knows of a source of quality headline news press photos (for the general public). more inside

Curious George: Where does the deficit come from? I see that the U.S. has a $3.9 trillion debt, and in 2003 had the highest deficit in recorded history ($375 billion). What keeps Bush/Congress from, say, creating a $425 quadrillion defense budget? Can we theoretically just keep racking up a debt that goes on forever? And how does this affect the average Joe Sixpack?

Curious George: Parables for the Limbaugh masses? I have been wondering whether short, interesting parables, koans, thought exercises, or allegories exist that might give a conservative guy like my dad or one of my Limbaugh-listenin' friends something meaty to mull over. more inside

Come on down! Hilarious Bloopers [RealMedia], noteworthy contestants, and some curious still clips from that icon of game shows, The Price is Right.

Plinian eruptions are at the upper end of a volcanic eruption spectrum. Ejecting at a velocity of over 1000 mph, the ash columns in a Plinian eruption may reach 30 miles in height. Mt St Helens, during the first several hours, was a classic Plinian eruption, producing an 80,000 ft ash cloud, bizarre ash mammatus, and memorable eyewitness reports. They've been a subject of numerical simulations. Researchers speculate they may have been a factor in the Dark Ages.