Register at CrushLink, a free site, and create a top-secret list of your crushes. The site will then send email to the objects of your attraction, letting them know that "Somebody has a crush on you" but withholding your identity. The email will lead your crush to the same site where she'll be encouraged to make up a list of her own crushes… And if you figure on her list, the Web site promises to let both of you know!

And if you have secret admirers who are not on your list, this service could even let them give you hints on who they are. 'You can then update your CrushList as much as you like with this new information in mind.'

CrushLink points out another benefit of this system: 'After all, there's no chance of rejection -- the worst that can happen is you won't match up.'

I Used To Believe

As a child, I was petrified of Old Dame Quick-Eye, a monstrous woman who would come to kidnap me if I didn't finish every crumb off my dinner plate.

Looking back, I can only laugh at the naïveté and innocence that allows children to actually believe such hogwash.

Iusedtobelieve.com is a site that captures the exact 'moment of change, when a childhood belief is suddenly realised to be ridiculous'. Such experiences are classified according to topics like school, science, nature, music and grown-ups.

There's Peet, who though that 'when you wanted to get married, you would put on your tux, and walk around until you found a woman in a wedding dress, and then you'd be married.' His views of Holy Matrimony conflicted with those of Cade Whitbourn who was only later - and hopefully before it was too late - cleared of the misconception 'that you had to marry your siblings'.

Justin perhaps never flushed spiders down the loo when he was a kid. He was deterred less by kindness to insects that by the though that 'it could crawl back up when you were using the toilet!'

The section on reproduction is understandably the most entertaining. Among others, a woman called Julia thought that 'God would at some point make you pregnant, but he would tell you to get married first, and if you didn't get married when he told you to he would make you pregnant to let everyone know you didn't listen and that's why it was bad to be pregnant if you weren't married. Also that you could hold off being pregnant by praying a lot and being really holy, which is why grandmothers and nuns didn't get pregnant.'

That explains a lot!

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

Many of the phrases we use have interesting tales behind them. And this dictionary is here to tell those tales.

For instance, 'the protuberance in the fore-part of a man's throat' is called adam's apple because of a belief that 'a piece of the forbidden fruit which Adam ate stuck in his throat, and occasioned the swelling'.

The phrase 'I am on tenterhooks' implies that ' My curiosity is on the full stretch, I am most curious or anxious to hear the issue. Cloth, after being woven, is stretched or "tentered" on hooks passed through the selvages. 'To make bricks without straw' is 'to attempt to do something without having the necessary material supplied. The allusion is to the Israelites in Egypt, who were commanded by their taskmasters so to do.'

If you're looking for a specific word or phrase, you can use the search engine instead of browsing through the alphabetical listing.

How Safe Is Your Job?

If the current recession has you on tenterhooks and you are concerned about your job situation, take this quiz for rough indications of where things stand, or to put it bluntly, 'your chances of being fired'.

There are 15 questions that are concerned with the upgrading of your skills, positive and negative feedback, volume of work and value-addition. No matter how good your final score is, you are warned: 'Remember, if you're glaringly deficient in any one category, you're still vulnerable!'

At it's most useful, this quiz can be used to identify areas of improvement so that you can feel more valuable - and consequently more secure - on the job.

Also Read -- Sherlock Holmes, physics, coureware online -- Serial killers and popularity contests -- Haunted places, secret to longetivity -- An unusual source of diamonds -- Dissect frogs online, send photo-ecards

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