Where can you buy a one dollar bill for five dollars? Well, besides going to just about anyone on the street with that enticing offer (they probably won’t believe you), you could also have pulled off this neat trick at a special U.S. Treasury sale in San Francisco. They sold some bills in sheet form, a configuration that has been available for many years, and they also sold a new item: dollar bills for Chinese New Year. These “lucky” dollar bills have auspicious serial numbers and come in colored folders. They are also available online from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Store in their Lucky Money Line.

The Fastap Keypad looks like a promising new phone key arrangement. Start exercising those thumbs now! (via CamWorld)

A cat treks 353 miles back home to its family. It’s another one of those “how do they do it?” animal mysteries. Skittles, an orange tabby, was left behind during a summer stay in southern Wisconsin. He managed to make his way back to Hibbing, Minnesota, a little the worse for wear, but probably quite relieved to have found his owners. (via Obscure Store)

Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds was published in 1841 and the complete text is available online. You’ve heard of Tulip-mania, the Crusades and alchemy. There are a few other interesting topics covered in this book that you may not be aware of. From the introduction to Volume 1:

“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Alas, this being 1841, the Dot Com phenomena is not covered, but it probably fits into the Tulip template quite well.

A Law Librarian’s Guide to Researching Airline Ticket Prices is lengthy but informative. First, background information about airline ticketing systems and fare classifications is covered. Then various types of discounters and strategies for cheap tickets are described. Finally, there is a table of online ticketing services and their prices for sample flights. It is an article worthy of a law librarian and useful to anyone seeking cheaper fares.

Following Sony’s Vaio Pen Tablet to a not-ready-for-primetime grave, IBM’s ThinkPad TransNote has been discontinued. With a price starting at $2,999 and no true handwriting recognition, this paper pad replacement had few takers. Will Microsoft’s second (at least) trip into the pen computer market with their Tablet PC technology need another round of innovation before it hits the mainstream?

Interesting tidbits from Fran Gage’s book “Bread and Chocolate“:

In American colonial times, sugar was not as refined as nowadays and contained impurities. Cooks who needed a pure sugar would boil it with water and skim it, then mix it with egg whites which attached to other unwanted bits in it. I remember seeing a tan-colored cone of sugar during my grade school visits to historical houses.

Although what we know as “the baking potato” is always a Russet Burbank, the potatoes sold as “red” and “white” have many possible varieties. Gage called her major supermarket’s PR firm and they had to investigate before they sent her a list of the ones they had sold under those color labels.

There are three varieties of blood orange: Moro, Tarocco, and Sanguinelli. Gage liked the Moro the best.

I am going to bet that we were not the only Tivo-owners who recorded the Super Bowl so that we could fast-forward through the game and watch just the commercials. It definitely felt backwards!

The International Dark-Sky Association had hoped that New York’s Governor Pataki would sign a bill to reduce the amount of light pollution through better designed outdoor light fixtures and regulation of lighting. But The NY Times reports that Pataki vetoed the bill, citing the cost of replacing lights and also the possibility of increased lawsuits as people sue the state for bright highway or prison lights. It had taken seven months of negotiations for the bill’s sponsors to try to satisfy Pataki’s concerns with the bill, but it wasn’t enough. They will try again this year, but while New York’s Democrat-heavy Assembly is keen on the idea, the Republican-controlled Senate will be as tough to appease as Pataki.

The Nonverbal Dictionary has more than the expected body language motions likes yawns and frowns. It also lists things like emotions, new car smell (an aroma cue), the Big Mac, interior design and the ever-popular homunculus. It is part of the website of the Center for Nonverbal Studies. The definition of nonverbal communication “includes body movement, gesture, facial expression, adornment and fashion, architecture, mass media, and consumer-product design”, thus the resulting breadth of the dictionary terms. (via sylloge and xBlog)