Hi, kids! I want to apologize for my sending out this week's TOURBUS post so late. Your fearless bus driver recently had his braces tightened [for the uninitiated, braces are a medieval torture device used by orthodontists to inflict immense amounts of pain ... and, as an afterthought, braces are also sometimes used to straighten teeth], so I have spent the last couple of days curled into a ball, whimpering. :(

My teeth still hurt a little, so I am going to make today's post a little short. Before we start the latest voyage of our little bus of Internet happiness, though, I want to take a moment to thank the folks who are making today's TOURBUS post possible:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
     Authentic apparel from Timberland, Duck Head, Woolrich and
        Calvin Klein is available from Aardwulf Apparel at
+--------------------( http://www.aardwulf.com )---------------------+

Okay. Enough intro. Let's start touring!

Since I am a big fan of useless trivia, I have two really cool useless trivia sites that I want to share with you ...

HARPER'S INDEX

• Number of Kenyan orphans Olympic runner Kipchoge Keino has adopted : 100
• Percentage of all gold refined last year worldwide that was made into jewelry : 76
• Number of countries whose GNP last year was less than the amount spent worldwide at Wal-Mart : 161

Okay, I'll admit that Harper's Index really isn't "essential" information. It's still cool, though. And thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can now find Harper's Index on the Net! :)

If you have a Web browser, you can find the last three months of Harper's Indexes at http://www.harpers.org/harpers-index/listing.html

By the way, the Indexes on this page are in chronological order, so you have to go to the bottom of the page to read the most recent Harper's Index.

THE INTERNET INDEX

• Number of US states with "wanted lists" of child support offenders on the Internet: 7
• Percentage of comics in the Boston Globe with Internet addresses: 63
• Percentage of the first 20 ads in the October '96 Scientific American with Web addresses: 75 Percentage of the first 20 ads in the October '96 Scientific American with toll-free numbers: 70

Again, this is pretty much useless trivia. But it is still cool. :)

The Internet Index is the individual effort of Win Treese, and it is not distributed as regularly as Harper's Index. In fact, in the past 34 months there have only been 15 Internet Indexes. Fortunately, you can find all of the old Internet Indexes on the Web at http://www.openmarket.com/intindex/

You can also subscribe and receive all future issues of the Internet Index for *FREE* by sending an e-mail letter to internet-index-request@OpenMarket.com

with the command

subscribe

in the body of your e-mail letter.

That's it for this week! :)

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TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
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RACEHORSES (noun) 1. available means  2: computable wealth
                  3: immediate and possible sources of revenue

Usage:  "Kin ya tell me where tha human racehourses office is?"
         or  "We must preserve our natural racehorses."

(Special thanks goes to John Chancey for today's wurd)

YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD
HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html