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Easy Character Accents in Mac OS X?
joesao writes "How have people been typing accents under OS X? I'm not talking funky key combinations, but simple, 'dead-key' stuff like: a + ` = à. In Windows this is accomplished easily by setting the input locale for keyboards as 'United States-International' but the similar function under System Preferences doesn't have any acceptable keyboards. Unicode isn't an option, either; only a few applications support that. Documentation on Apple's site is scant, and a Google search doesn't yield anything that really works. Anybody out there have a decent keyboard file for Mac OS X?"
I see your web site has already been wiped out by agents of the U.S. government, cleverly disguising the act as an "accident."
It will only be a matter of time now before the Great Satan comes for you, my extremist friend.
Yep, lots of folks, even semi-famous celebrities, are touting the benefits of drinking liquid fresh from their own fleshy spigots.
Puzzling to me, however, is whether proponents of "urine therapy" chugalug their drink of choice on the rocks or, as the Europeans do, at room temperature.
The time I drank some, the liquid, golden waste was as lukewarm as the closed atmosphere of an old station wagon.
My friend, let's call him, "Bud," has a bad habit of relieving himself into beer cans or just about any open container that will hold waste liquids.
I don't know whether Bud has weak kidneys, efficient kidneys, diabetes, a small bladder or an enlarged prostate. But I do know the man can't hold nature's call for more than 15 minutes, max.
He will stop a vehicle in the middle of a residential street, jump out and flood the pavement. Bud has been known to run to the closest alley, nook or cinder-block wall and spray a torrent. He has polluted many a public pool.
Bud even has been cited for indecent exposure -- urinating in public -- such is the urgency always pressing on his internal reservoir.
So it was that Bud had partially filled an aluminum can that once held cool, refreshing and fermented Rocky Mountain spring water. We were drinking Coors beer, shooting the breeze in the parked station wagon.
I momentarily placed my brew on the floorboard. I reached down for the can, drew it to my lips and took a hefty swig.
My conscious brain was expecting a swish and a swallow of a cool, malty beverage. What exploded against the nerve endings in my mouth and tongue, however, was warm and the saltiest liquid on Earth. A cup of water dipped straight from the Dead Sea would have been less-alkaline.
The shocking taste triggered an immediate autonomic response. The muscles from my abdomen to my lips contracted and expanded in a reflexive spew. So quick were the response and rejection of the foul liquid that my lips never opened. The contents in my mouth sprayed with such incredible force through such a small slit that droplets the size of those from a perfume atomizer rained throughout the interior of the car.
"Hey, what is this?!" I asked Bud.
His hysterical laughter, his failure to answer and my knowledge of the contant urgency of his urinary tract were enough information to precisely identify the substance in the beer can and make my stomach retch.
But proponents of urine therapy would have urged me not to worry: "Go ahead and swallow."
Indian yogis reportedly have been slurping their own juice for more than 5,000 years.
More than 600 scientists gathered in Goa, India, for the first World Conference on Auto-Urine Therapy in February 1996. Some proponents in attendance believe human urine can treat everything from baldness to cancer and AIDS.
The use of urine as a topical rub and drink not only is common in India, but also in Japan and Germany and a growing number of countries.
The Internet is home to the Urine Therapy Home Page.
At least two books, "The Golden Fountain: The Complete Guide to Urine Therapy," by Coen van der Kroon, and "Your Own Perfect Medicine," by Martha Christy, provide buckets of knowledge.
Imbibers say the "medical establishment" has been keeping these wonderful treatments a secret because they're so inexpensive and accessible.
The believers say "old urine," aged much like a fine wine, mixed with sulfur powder works wonders for a balding pate.
But what would people close enough to catch a whiff of such aroma say to a person wearing this miracle poultice in public? "Hey, pal, I don't know how to put this delicately, but you smell worse than the men's room in a wino bar and a basket of rotten eggs."
Users say urine is sterile, antiseptic and non-toxic. They point out that it's 95 percent water, 2.5 percent urea