In many old houses once you break through the lath-and-plaster (or it breaks on you and you need to repair it) there is a disgusting amount of "coal dust" that comes out. Where do these carbon particles come from? Yes old houses used to be heated with coal. But I assume the furnaces had chimneys to vent the combustion products. So why is there so much dust within walls and ceilings?
posted to Ask Metafilter by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:14 PM on October 16, 2007 (21 comments)

For over a decade I have homed at a Mom&Pop ISP. They used to be good but now they are having frequent outages and seem to be soon to expire. I guess I should move my email identitie(s) somewhere else but what is the best way?
posted to Ask Metafilter by MonkeySaltedNuts at 1:18 AM on August 4, 2007 (6 comments)

Any way to search for English web pages that contain specific Chinese characters? For example in Google when I set my preference to English pages only and then search for Huamei with the characters 话梅, I get mostly all Chinese pages.
posted to Ask Metafilter by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:27 PM on July 17, 2007 (9 comments)

What is the origin of the phrase "tie me up and call me Shirley"?
posted to Ask Metafilter by MonkeySaltedNuts at 4:28 PM on April 4, 2007 (15 comments)

Where can I find concise definitions of the legal status of "Native American"/"First Nation" "reservations" in the Americas.
posted to Ask Metafilter by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:25 PM on July 22, 2006 (6 comments)

In this photo, does anybody know what these bicycle riders are transporting in the giant sausages? Does the Russian caption (which I don't read) explain it?
posted to Ask Metafilter by MonkeySaltedNuts at 3:22 PM on January 24, 2006 (14 comments)