The best tip for a quick return on your search is to think of the most unusual word in whatever it is you are trying to find. Better yet, the most unlikely combination of unusual words. Example: I recalled hearing a radio report from a couple of years ago about the curious origin of the Bond movie theme song in a musical based on a book by V.S. Naipaul. Easy search. Type in

Naipaul 007

How often will they come up together? Well, more often than you would think -- 10,000 hits on Google; 21,000 on cuil -- but the December 2005 NPR story is right up there at the top.

I checked out the PUMA Pac website, which posts a long series of anti-deadender emails (worth the read), and then I went on to read some of the voluminous comments that follow. Good luck understanding any of the self-annointed PUMAs! Here's a sample comment with a religious angle that makes W look almost sane:

"33 years ago I had a vision~~It was of the end of life as we know it. And I have been watching events unfold in the exact same procession since then, most notably with the explosion of Mt St Helens. But economically and socially as well. Watching Obama’s rise sends chills up and down my spine with the premonition that this may, indeed, be the False Prophet. According to the Mayan, Totec, Navajo and other native calendars and prophecies, the world as we know it will end on Dec 21, 2012. I’ve seen absolutely no reason to dispute that in all these 33 years since I was first blessed with the vision. Now is the time for the best of us to create our greatest good. Believe me, it WILL have an affect on the outcome."

I use a Sansa, which I love, but this also worked fine on my earlier iRiver T30 (which still works fine but, at 1 gig, doesn't hold as much).

Step one: check out the CDs from the library.

Step two: rip 'em all.

Step three: load to the Sansa.

This is, no doubt, technically illegal, but I figure as long as I have the disks out of the library, I have a right to listen to them in any form I want.

I recently bought a second Sansa (used, refurbished, 8 gig, $79 including shipping -- can't beat that) to hold my music, so I have my 2-gig dedicated to the ebooks. As long as you make sure the disks are named consecutively (e.g. DanteClub Disk1 etc), they play through seamlessly from the first disk to the last. No need to earmark or pagemark or whatever -- the Sansa always remember where you stopped it, and starts up from the same point when you turn it back on. Works for me!

I guess that makes sense. Robin is really Dick "Grayson," obviously a pseudonym. Like all "true heroes," Cheney "often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised." And he sure has the "violating our values" part down pat, whether he's doing it to "uphold our values" or not.

DVD or download? This is the first generational divide where I've found myself coming down firmly on the old geezer side. (I'm going on 52.) I don't think it has anything to do with technical ability. I've been playing with computers since the days of mainframes, when the "monitor" was a giant line printer, and today I find that I'm much more familiar with basic programming than 95% of supposedly "tech-savvy" youth. It's just that when I buy something, I want to hold it in my hand. Same thing with CDs (which you don't mention -- too old-fashioned, no doubt!). I've never downloaded a song. If I like a song, a singer, an album (there's my age again!), or a band, I buy the CD and rip it to my computer. My mp3 is populated with songs from real CDs that sit on the shelf behind me. And my DVD collection continues to grow...

McCain should have skipped the bratwurst and had a jelly donut instead, so that he could have upstaged Obama's flowing rhetoric with the truthful statement (drumroll, please): "Ich bin ein Berliner essen."

"George W. Bush . . . turned out to be among the friendliest presidents ever to Israel."

With friends like Bush, who needs enemies?

Eight years of stagnation on the diplomatic front, deterioration in Gaza and the West Bank, steadily increasing occupation of the "territories," ongoing settler militancy and intransigence -- all aided and abetted by the silent president, who fails to see anything wrong with this picture.

Ah, those were the days! And weeks, and months, and (seemingly) years... Seriously, after no more than 12 months you should start getting enough sleep again to keep from collapsing in a narcoleptic heap in the middle of the day!

The author and the people she quotes seem pretty clueless about the common use of "awesome" in its original sense in the modern US evangelical movement. One of the most popular evangelical songs is about "our awesome God." Bush can make any word sound inappropriate, but at base this is evangelical code language.