Blinders, also known as blinkers or winkers, are a piece of horse tack that restrict the horse's vision to the rear and, in some cases, to the side. They usually are made of leather or plastic cups that are placed on either side of the eyes, either attached to a bridle or to an independent hood. Blinkers that have a peep hole cut in the back of the cup are known as visors. Many racehorse trainers believe these keep the horse focused on what is in front of him, encouraging him to pay attention to the race rather than other distractions, such as crowds. Additionally, blinkers (then usually known as winkers) are commonly seen on driving horses, to keep them from being distracted or spooked, especially on crowded city streets. A “set of winkers” can refer to the whole bridle, particularly the heavy bridle used on draft horses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinders

A falcon's hood is used in the manning process (acclimatising to humans and the human world) and to keep the raptor in a calm state, both in the early part of its training and throughout its falconry career. Out of all the falconer's aids the hood is the most important piece of equipment. There are various styles and types of hood for raptors within falconry. The hood is hand made, often from kip leather or suitable kangaroo leather. There are two standard types used in American/European Falconry: the Anglo Indian hood (non-blocked) and the Dutch Hood. The Anglo-Indian Hood is made from one piece of leather. The Dutch Hood is a three piece hood blocked on a special mould called a "hood block", which is designed to best represent the shape of the raptor's head, also allowing space for the eyes with an adequate neck width. It is essential that the hood fits the raptor in a comfortable way or the raptor will reject the hood outright, making training very difficult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falconry_training_and_technique

hoodwink verb (tr) 1. to dupe; trick 2. Obsolete to cover or hide [originally, to cover the eyes with a hood, blindfold]
hoodwinker noun http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hoodwink

CouchSurfing is a hospitality exchange network and website with almost 2.7 million members. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing
CouchSurfing International, Inc. is incorporated as a non-profit, and the following is from their mission statement: "CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding."
couch surfing Slang Sleeping on friends’ sofas while traveling.

New attention is being paid to a class action lawsuit filed in late January in U.S. District Court in Northern California against AT&T. The suit claims that the company's billing system records data use up to three times the actual use, including "phantom" charges that occur when the phone is not in use. AT&T says the issue is just a misunderstanding about how data is used and billed. The complaint cites independent research that tested how data is charged after some iPhone users noted charges that exceeded the 200MB limit of AT&T's $15 per month data plan. In addition to data usage that exceeded expectations, some users also noticed data charges that were recorded at odd hours of the night when the phone was not in active use. The independent tests were conducted with multiple devices over a period of four months, and allegedly show that AT&T's billing system regularly recorded data use that exceeded actual use by 7-14 percent, on average. In some cases, AT&T reportedly recorded data use as much as 300 percent of the actual use. To confirm the "phantom" data charges, a computer engineer hired by the law firms involved in the case took a brand new iPhone, turned off all push notifications and location services, did not set up any e-mail accounts, and made sure no applications were running. After 10 days of sitting idle, AT&T recorded 35 instances of data use totaling over 2MB. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/05/lawsuit-alleges-att-overcharging-smartphone-users-for-data-use.ars

Ohio, the Buckeye State, received its nickname because of the many buckeye trees that once covered its hills and plains. But that's only partly the reason. We have to go back to the feverish presidential campaign of 1840 for the rest of it. William Henry Harrison, a Virginia-born Ohioan and military hero, was a candidate for the White House, but his opponents commented that he was better suited to sit in a log cabin and drink hard cider. Some of Harrison's leading supporters, who were experts in promotional know-how, decided to turn into a positive reference what was supposed to be a negative one. They dubbed him "the log cabin candidate," and chose as his campaign emblem a log cabin made of buckeye timbers, with a long string of buckeyes decorating its walls. Furthermore, in parades, his backers walked with buckeye canes and rolled whisky barrels. The campaign gimmicks were successful. "Old Tippecanoe," as Harrison was often called, beat President Martin Van Buren in the latter's bid for re-election, and thereafter the buckeye was closely associated with the state of Ohio. The name itself is of native origin. Because the markings on the nut resembled the eye of a buck, the Indians called it "hetuck" or "buckeye." The name Ohio, meanwhile, can be traced to an Indian word meaning "great" and was first given to the historic river that borders our state. http://www.lkwdpl.org/buckeye/buck01.htm

See information on the Ohio buckeye tree plus pictures at: http://www.oplin.org/tree/fact%20pages/buckeye_ohio/buckeye_ohio.html

Did you know that a large percentage of plastic bottle caps are not recycled? The ReCap Co. will re-purpose them into doormats. To date, they have received over 1 million plastic caps. The company is very interested in getting schools, universities, churches, businesses, and other organizations involved in collections. Please feel free to contact us for further information about collecting at your facility. To help us in our quest for caps you may donate any number of bottle caps to: The ReCap Co., 6465 Lewis Rd., Loveland, Ohio 45140 http://www.recapcompany.com/index.html
TripAdvisor.com is the world's largest travel site that assists customers in gathering travel information, posting reviews and opinions of travel related content and engaging in interactive travel forums. TripAdvisor.com is part of the TripAdvisor Media Group, operated by Expedia, Inc. TripAdvisor is a pioneer of user-generated content. The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the website is supported by an advertising business model. TripAdvisor has been criticized for allowing reviews to be posted by anyone about any hotel, without the need for supporting evidence. In September 2010 a group of over 420 hospitality operators considered taking TripAdvisor to court over unfounded and unedited reviews posted by the website’s visitors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TripAdvisor

An "exoskeleton" has been designed by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni and a group of mostly graduate students. In a way, the dream first took root in 2000, when Kazerooni's team got a grant from the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency -- a division of the U.S. Department of Defense -- to make something to allow people to carry heavy loads, according to Berkeley's media relations department. The idea was to allow people to trek across rugged or remote terrain for extended periods, such as when military medics carry an injured soldier or when firefighters trudge up stairs. Four years later, that culminated with the creation of BLEEX -- the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton. The contraption, with a backpack frame, is connected to a person's legs, using its own power source to move them without putting undue stress on the muscles of the human attached to it. http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/16/california.paraplegic.graduate/