Excerpts from “Jeff and Cyndi’s Excellent Adventure and History Trip” on Sunday, July 12, 2009
The village of Logstown (also Logg's Town, French: Chiningue pronounced Shenango)
was a significant Native American settlement in Western Pennsylvania in the years
leading up to the French and Indian War. The original village was settled by Shawnees,
possibly as early as 1725, on low-lying land on the north bank of the Ohio River, near
present-day Ambridge, Pennsylvania, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. As part of their effort to claim the Ohio Valley, around 1747, the French built about 30 log cabins, some with stone chimneys, on a plateau above the original Logstown village. The French turned over the cabins to the Native Americans. Only 18 miles downriver from present-day Pittsburgh, Logstown predated the French fort there, Fort Duquesne, by at least seven years. Logstown, therefore, became an important trade and council site for the French and Native Americans, as well as, ironically, the British.
Downstream (to the northwest) of Logstown, is Beaver, PA, which came to be located at
the site of Fort McIntosh. General Lachlan McIntosh built Fort McIntosh during the American Revolution in 1778 on a commanding plateau above the Ohio River at what would become the town of Beaver, Pennsylvania. He was assigned by General George Washington as Commander of the Western Department of the Continental Army.
Constructed in 1778, it was the first fort built by the Continental Army north of the Ohio
River, as a direct challenge to the British stronghold at Detroit. It was the headquarters of
the largest army to serve west of the Alleghenies. Its purpose was to protect the western
frontier from possible attacks by the British and from raids by their Native American
allies. The fort, large for a frontier setting, at one time had a garrison of about 1,500 men.
Point of Beginning [from “Measuring America,” by Andro Linklater, 2002 ]
“East Liverpool, Ohio, sits on the banks of the Ohio River just outside the PA border. On
the road above the Bell Company’s dock, PA Rt. 68 invisibly changes to Ohio Route 38.
The place could hardly be more anonymous–even for someone familiar with the
historical significance of the spot. A stone marker carries a plaque headed “The Point of Beginning” that reads, “1112 feet south of this spot was the point of beginning for surveying the public lands of the US. There on Sept 30, 1785, Thomas Hutchins, first Geographer of the US, began the Geographer’s Line of the Seven Ranges.”
from a Findlay, Ohio reader
Monthly Budget Review, July 2009 - Based on the Monthly Treasury Statement for May and the Daily Treasury Statements for June:
"The federal budget deficit was $1.1 trillion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2009, CBO estimates, more than $800 billion greater than the deficit recorded through June 2008. Outlays are 21 percent higher than they were in the first three quarters of 2008, but revenues have fallen by 18 percent. The estimated deficit reflects outlays of $147 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), recorded on a net-present-value basis, and spending of $83 billion in support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
New GAO Reports: Clean Air Act, Water and Biofuels and Electricity Production, Formula Grants, TARP
Clean Air Act: Preliminary Observations on the Effectiveness and Costs of Mercury Control Technologies at Coal-Fired Power Plants, GAO-09-860T, July 09, 2009
Energy and Water: Preliminary Observations on the Links between Water and Biofuels and Electricity Production, GAO-09-862T, July 09, 2009
Formula Grants: Census Data Are among Several Factors That Can Affect Funding Allocations, GAO-09-832T, July 09, 2009
Military Base Realignments and Closures: DOD Needs to Update Savings Estimates and Continue to Address Challenges in Consolidating Supply-Related Functions at Depot Maintenance Locations, GAO-09-703, July 09, 2009
Troubled Asset Relief Program: Status of Participants' Dividend Payments and Repurchases of Preferred Stock and Warrants, GAO-09-889T, July 09, 2009
On November 16, 1776 the American Brig-of-War, the "Andrew Doria", sailed into the harbor of Statia firing its 13-gun salute indicating America's long sought independence. The 11-gun salute reply, roaring from the canons at Fort Oranje under the command of Governor Johannes de Graaff, established Statia as the first foreign nation to officially recognize the newly formed United States of America. http://www.statiatourism.com/history.html
A possible derivation for Yankee is from the Dutch first names "Jan" and "Kees." "Jan" and "Kees" were and still are common Dutch first names, and also common Dutch given names or nicknames. In many instances both names (Jan-Kees) are also used as a single first name in the Netherlands. See other theories at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee
Trivia
Over 1000 beers are made in Belgium.
Apostrophes seen in Europe include sushi’s, pasta’s, pizza’s, sneaker’s, cookie’s.
The Netherlands is probably known as Holland because in the 17th century, the region of Holland was heavily populated and travelers called themselves Hollanders. Today, Holland is split into two regions (North Holland and South Holland). All twelve regions/provinces are listed at http://www.amsterdam.info/netherlands/provinces/
Most early Europeans could not read, and statues and commercial signs were like “cartoons” or marketing tools to communicate stories or denote particular businesses.
The 40-mile stretch of the Rhine River between Koblenz and Mainz has 28 castles perched along its heights. The castles enabled feudal lords to protect their lands and control trade routes.
Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany was copied for the centerpiece of Disneyland.
July 14 is France's national holiday that commemorates the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The Bastille was a fortress in Paris that had been a place where political dissidents were sometimes held for arbitrary offenses at the command of the king. But on this day in 1789, the fortress-prison housed only seven prisoners and none of them were actually political dissidents. Still, for the French people, the Bastille had become a symbol of the royal tyranny they needed to overthrow. Revolutionaries gathered at the base of the fortress in the morning, and just after lunchtime they stormed the Bastille. After hours of bloody skirmishes inside the fortress, 98 of the revolutionary attackers had died and only one of the fort's defender guards had been killed. But the French government's commander, fearing an all-out massacre, had surrendered. It was a catalyst for other events of the French Revolution: Soon, feudalism was abolished, and then the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" was proclaimed. One year after the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, the French established the holiday "Fête de la Fédération," or Feast of the Federation, to celebrate the successful end of the French Revolution, with a constitutional monarchy they'd just established. A few years later came the Reign of Terror, in which French citizens executed Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette and other fellow French citizens. And then in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and declared himself emperor.
July 14 marks the 14th of July Revolution in Iraq, celebrating the day in 1958 in which the Iraqi military overthrew the King of Iraq. It was a military coup to replace the monarch, King Faisal II. King Faisal was largely propped up by the British government, making and upholding alliances with the British that Iraqis resented. The Writer’s Almanac
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
In April, we wrote about a man at a Yankee game last year who was ejected from the (old) stadium for trying to move around during the playing of “God Bless America” during the 7th-inning stretch. The man, annoyed at his ejection, took the matter to the courts. Along with a little help from the New York Civil Liberties Union, he sued the Yankees, two cops, and Ray Kelly, the NYPD's commissioner. (Click here for the lawsuit.) Well--and God Bless Compromise--the suit has been settled. Click here for the AP story. The city did not admit liability in the settlement, but it will pay the Queens resident $10,001 and will pay $12,000 in legal fees to the New York Civil Liberties Union. For its part, the Yankees will pay nothing but said in settlement papers that fans at the team's new stadium are allowed to move freely during the song and there are no plans to change that. “Policy remains as it always has been: Fans are free to move about during the playing of 'God Bless America,'” said Alice McGillion, spokeswoman for the Yankees. WSJ Law Blog July 8, 2009
Back in 2007, the Bureau of Prisons directed its chaplains to purge the prisons of all religious texts. That policy shift, which stemmed from a governmental fear that prisoners might read religious texts and become Islamic extremists after 9/11, sparked huge response. Many thought the move was unconstitutional, and a pair of inmates, citing the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to free religion, sued over the matter.
The latest prison veto, though, may even go a bit further. According to a story, prison officials told an inmate he couldn't read a pair of books authored by President Barack Obama, saying they were “potentially detrimental to national security.” Click here to read The Associated Press story on the incident. WSJ Law Blog July 10, 2009
Featured architect: Renzo Piano (born 14 September, 1937) is a world renowned Italian architect and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize. See picture of his Nemo Science Centre in Amsterdam at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renzo_Piano
New words added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary include some words and expressions that have been around for years or even decades but have gained wider currency because of the Internet. They include "sock puppet," coined as early as 1959, and "flash mob," which can be traced to 1987. There is also the usual new crop of words, this time including entries like "vlog," a blog containing video. Other new additions include staycation, locavore (a person who eats locally grown foods) and frenemy (somebody who acts like a friend but is actually an enemy). The last word was used by British-American writer Jessica Mitford in a 1970s essay, in which she said it had been coined by one of her sisters decades earlier.
http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/90814.html
On July 11, 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird was published. It was written by Nelle Harper Lee, (books by this author) who dropped the "Nelle" because she didn't want anyone calling her "Nellie." She grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, which was the model for her fictional town of Maycomb. When she was a kindergartner, she made friends with her next-door-neighbor, a boy of the same age named Truman Capote. The character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird was based on him.
July 11 is the birthday of Thomas Bowdler, (books by this author) born in Ashley, Somerset, England (1754). He wrote a censored version of Shakespeare's plays, called The Family Shakespeare (1807), because he thought that the Bard's sexual humor was inappropriate for women and children. He said that he "endeavored to remove every thing that could give just offence to the religious and virtuous mind." And we remember him today in the verb bowdlerize, which was named for him. The Writer’s Almanac
On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress, operating under the Articles of Confederation, passed the Northwest Ordinance. Considered to be the most important piece of legislation passed under the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance created and organized the Northwest Territory, which would become that states of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and part of Minnesota. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/2009/07/continetal-congress-passes-northwest.php
Back in 2007, the Bureau of Prisons directed its chaplains to purge the prisons of all religious texts. That policy shift, which stemmed from a governmental fear that prisoners might read religious texts and become Islamic extremists after 9/11, sparked huge response. Many thought the move was unconstitutional, and a pair of inmates, citing the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to free religion, sued over the matter.
The latest prison veto, though, may even go a bit further. According to a story, prison officials told an inmate he couldn't read a pair of books authored by President Barack Obama, saying they were “potentially detrimental to national security.” Click here to read The Associated Press story on the incident. WSJ Law Blog July 10, 2009
Featured architect: Renzo Piano (born 14 September, 1937) is a world renowned Italian architect and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize. See picture of his Nemo Science Centre in Amsterdam at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renzo_Piano
New words added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary include some words and expressions that have been around for years or even decades but have gained wider currency because of the Internet. They include "sock puppet," coined as early as 1959, and "flash mob," which can be traced to 1987. There is also the usual new crop of words, this time including entries like "vlog," a blog containing video. Other new additions include staycation, locavore (a person who eats locally grown foods) and frenemy (somebody who acts like a friend but is actually an enemy). The last word was used by British-American writer Jessica Mitford in a 1970s essay, in which she said it had been coined by one of her sisters decades earlier.
http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/90814.html
On July 11, 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird was published. It was written by Nelle Harper Lee, (books by this author) who dropped the "Nelle" because she didn't want anyone calling her "Nellie." She grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, which was the model for her fictional town of Maycomb. When she was a kindergartner, she made friends with her next-door-neighbor, a boy of the same age named Truman Capote. The character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird was based on him.
July 11 is the birthday of Thomas Bowdler, (books by this author) born in Ashley, Somerset, England (1754). He wrote a censored version of Shakespeare's plays, called The Family Shakespeare (1807), because he thought that the Bard's sexual humor was inappropriate for women and children. He said that he "endeavored to remove every thing that could give just offence to the religious and virtuous mind." And we remember him today in the verb bowdlerize, which was named for him. The Writer’s Almanac
On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress, operating under the Articles of Confederation, passed the Northwest Ordinance. Considered to be the most important piece of legislation passed under the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance created and organized the Northwest Territory, which would become that states of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and part of Minnesota. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/2009/07/continetal-congress-passes-northwest.php
Friday, July 10, 2009
CRS - Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Analysis of Selected Opinions, June 19, 2009: "In May 2009, Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his intention to retire from the Supreme Court. Several weeks later, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to fill his seat. To fulfill its constitutional advice and consent function, the Senate will consider Judge Sotomayors extensive record compiled from years as a lawyer, prosecutor, district court judge, and appellate court judge to better understand her legal approaches and judicial philosophy. This report provides an analysis of selected opinions authored by Judge Sotomayor during her tenure as a judge on the Second Circuit. Discussions of the selected opinions are grouped according to various topics of legal significance. As a group, the opinions belie easy categorization along any ideological spectrum. However, it is possible to draw some conclusions regarding Judge Sotomayors judicial approach, both within some specific issue areas and in general. Perhaps the most consistent characteristic of Judge Sotomayors approach as an appellate judge has been an adherence to the doctrine of stare decisis, i.e., the upholding of past judicial precedents. Other characteristics appear to include what many would describe as a careful application of particular facts at issue in a case and a dislike for situations in which the court might be seen as oversteping its judicial role. It is difficult to determine the extent to which Judge Sotomayors style as a judge on the Second Circuit would predict her style should she become a Supreme Court justice. However, as has been the case historically with other nominees, some of her approaches may be enduring characteristics." See also:
American Bar Assocation Rating Released: Sonia Sotomayor, nominated to be Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court
Comment Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, On The ABA’s Rating Of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, July 7, 2009
Sotomayor Confirmation Hearing To Begin July 13, 2009
Confirmation Hearings: A Timeline That Is Fair To Senators, And Fair To The Nominee
Belgian pommes frites are popularly referred to as "French fries" in the U.S.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_fries_and_toast_French_again
YESTER adjective
Last; last past; next before; of or pertaining to yesterday.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
"YESTER" was first used in popular English literature sometime before 1350. (references) http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Ye/Yester.html
Yesternight and yestermorning are archaic words used as nouns or adverbs.
The First Starchitect by Arnold Berke | From Preservation | July/August 2009
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) launched himself into history by designing for the landed gentry of the Veneto region near Venice. He reworked the architectural grammar of ancient Rome to suit their needs, and via his Four Books of Architecture showed the world how to do it. Palladio had already reworked his own name. He was born in Padua as Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondola, a miller's son, and apprenticed as a stone mason. Count Giangiorgio Trissino, his patron in nearby Vicenza, minted the new name, showed him the writings of Roman architect Vitruvius, then took him to Rome, where the budding designer studied the classical landmarks. Palladio lived mainly in Vicenza, in or near which stand most of his nearly 70 country villas, urban palaces and civic structures, and churches.
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/july-august/first-starchitect-sidebar.html
Great houses: Drayton Hall
Some of Andrea Palladio's dictates were ignored when Drayton Hall was built. Rather than have the ceiling heights diminish with each succeeding floor level, as Palladio recommended, Drayton Hall's spaces grow progressively taller from the raised basement to the first floor and on to the second floor. Where Palladio was concerned with structural strength, John Drayton may have been more concerned with comfort in a hot, humid climate and with the theatricality of a grand hall on the upper floor. Despite these variations, Drayton Hall is, nonetheless, a building that was heavily influenced by Palladio's body of work. In fact, Drayton Hall is likely one of the earliest Palladian buildings in America.
http://www.draytonhall.org/research/architecture/palladio.html
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/july-august/searching-for-palladio.html
Walter Ernest Christopher James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896- 1982), was a British peer, agriculturalist, Olympic medalist, and author. He studied agricultural science at Oxford University and later applied the theories of Rudolf Steiner to the family estate at Kent. James coined the term "organic farming"[1] from the concept of "the farm as organism" and has the best claim to being the "father" of organic agriculture[2]. He published the book Look to the Land in 1940, which raises many of the issues current to discussions of organic agriculture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_James,_4th_Baron_Northbourne
Many historical documents missing from National Archives
July 5th, 2009 From the Article:
National Archives visitors know they’ll find the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building’s magnificent rotunda in Washington. But they won’t find the patent file for the Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine or the maps for the first atomic bomb missions anywhere in the Archives inventory.
Many historical items the Archives once possessed are missing, including:
+ Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln.
+ Original signatures of Andrew Jackson.
+ Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
+ NASA photographs from space and on the moon.
+ Presidential pardons. Source: AP
Q. How can I convert Celsius to Fahrenheit?
A. Visit http://www.onlineconversion.com/ and go down to temperature.
To your health: Welsh rabbit (rarebit) on English muffins
Two recipes for easy-to-make English comfort food
http://cookingfortwo.about.com/od/pastabeansandgrains/r/rarebit.htm
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50422
July 10 is the birthday of Marcel Proust, (books by this author) born in Auteuil, France (1871). His entire reputation is built on one novel that is more than 3,000 pages long:
The Remembrance of Things Past, which is sometimes titled In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate translation of the French. In one of the most famous scenes in the novel, the narrator, Marcel, tastes some cake with tea: I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me . . . The Writer’s Almanac
American Bar Assocation Rating Released: Sonia Sotomayor, nominated to be Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court
Comment Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, On The ABA’s Rating Of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, July 7, 2009
Sotomayor Confirmation Hearing To Begin July 13, 2009
Confirmation Hearings: A Timeline That Is Fair To Senators, And Fair To The Nominee
Belgian pommes frites are popularly referred to as "French fries" in the U.S.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_fries_and_toast_French_again
YESTER adjective
Last; last past; next before; of or pertaining to yesterday.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
"YESTER" was first used in popular English literature sometime before 1350. (references) http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Ye/Yester.html
Yesternight and yestermorning are archaic words used as nouns or adverbs.
The First Starchitect by Arnold Berke | From Preservation | July/August 2009
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) launched himself into history by designing for the landed gentry of the Veneto region near Venice. He reworked the architectural grammar of ancient Rome to suit their needs, and via his Four Books of Architecture showed the world how to do it. Palladio had already reworked his own name. He was born in Padua as Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondola, a miller's son, and apprenticed as a stone mason. Count Giangiorgio Trissino, his patron in nearby Vicenza, minted the new name, showed him the writings of Roman architect Vitruvius, then took him to Rome, where the budding designer studied the classical landmarks. Palladio lived mainly in Vicenza, in or near which stand most of his nearly 70 country villas, urban palaces and civic structures, and churches.
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/july-august/first-starchitect-sidebar.html
Great houses: Drayton Hall
Some of Andrea Palladio's dictates were ignored when Drayton Hall was built. Rather than have the ceiling heights diminish with each succeeding floor level, as Palladio recommended, Drayton Hall's spaces grow progressively taller from the raised basement to the first floor and on to the second floor. Where Palladio was concerned with structural strength, John Drayton may have been more concerned with comfort in a hot, humid climate and with the theatricality of a grand hall on the upper floor. Despite these variations, Drayton Hall is, nonetheless, a building that was heavily influenced by Palladio's body of work. In fact, Drayton Hall is likely one of the earliest Palladian buildings in America.
http://www.draytonhall.org/research/architecture/palladio.html
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/july-august/searching-for-palladio.html
Walter Ernest Christopher James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896- 1982), was a British peer, agriculturalist, Olympic medalist, and author. He studied agricultural science at Oxford University and later applied the theories of Rudolf Steiner to the family estate at Kent. James coined the term "organic farming"[1] from the concept of "the farm as organism" and has the best claim to being the "father" of organic agriculture[2]. He published the book Look to the Land in 1940, which raises many of the issues current to discussions of organic agriculture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_James,_4th_Baron_Northbourne
Many historical documents missing from National Archives
July 5th, 2009 From the Article:
National Archives visitors know they’ll find the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building’s magnificent rotunda in Washington. But they won’t find the patent file for the Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine or the maps for the first atomic bomb missions anywhere in the Archives inventory.
Many historical items the Archives once possessed are missing, including:
+ Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln.
+ Original signatures of Andrew Jackson.
+ Presidential portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
+ NASA photographs from space and on the moon.
+ Presidential pardons. Source: AP
Q. How can I convert Celsius to Fahrenheit?
A. Visit http://www.onlineconversion.com/ and go down to temperature.
To your health: Welsh rabbit (rarebit) on English muffins
Two recipes for easy-to-make English comfort food
http://cookingfortwo.about.com/od/pastabeansandgrains/r/rarebit.htm
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50422
July 10 is the birthday of Marcel Proust, (books by this author) born in Auteuil, France (1871). His entire reputation is built on one novel that is more than 3,000 pages long:
The Remembrance of Things Past, which is sometimes titled In Search of Lost Time, a more accurate translation of the French. In one of the most famous scenes in the novel, the narrator, Marcel, tastes some cake with tea: I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me . . . The Writer’s Almanac
Thursday, July 9, 2009
TREASURES OF THE RHINE, Part three
June 25-July 4: Heidelberg, Rudesheim (tour of Seigfried’s Mechanical Music Museum), cruise to Koblenz, Cochem, visit winery, walk in Cologne’s old town, sample beer,
arrive in Arnhem, visit Liberation Museum and Canadian Cemetery, canal cruise and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Utrecht, visit cheese farm, return to ship now docked in Schoonhoven, Dutch singers and dancers are evening entertainment, sail to Rotterdam,
walking tour and visit of porcelain factory in Delft, music quiz after dinner, arrive in Ghent (name comes from Celtic word for confluence of rivers) , full-day excursion to Brugges, movie after dinner, tour city of Antwerp and art museum, farewell cocktails with captain and crew, Captain’s Dinner. Wonderful weather, sights, people, music, food—a highly recommended cruise!
Global warming is dissolving the Alpine glaciers so rapidly that Italy and Switzerland have decided they must re-draw their national borders to take account of the new realities. The border has been fixed since 1861, when Italy became a unified state. But for the past century the surface area of the “cryosphere”, the zone of glaciers, permanent snow cover and permafrost, has been shrinking steadily, with dramatic acceleration in the past five years. This is the area over which the national frontier passes and the two countries have now agreed to have their experts sit down together and hash out where it ought to run now. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/melting-snow-prompts-border-change-between-switzerland-and-italy-1653181.html\
Dole Food Co. has filed a defamation suit in Los Angeles against two Swedish filmmakers whose recently screened documentary chronicles a lawsuit alleging that workers in Nicaragua were rendered sterile after being exposed to the pesticide DBCP on Dole's banana farms. The documentary—called Bananas —tells the tale of the first U.S. trial involving the pesticide claims against Dole. In 2007, a jury in Los Angeles awarded $5.8 million in damages to six Nicaraguan workers in Tellez v. Dole, No. BC312852 (Los Angeles Co., Calif., Super. Ct.). But in April, Los Angeles County, Calif., Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney threw out two similar cases against Dole in Los Angeles after finding that the plaintiffs and their lawyers—particularly lead plaintiffs' attorney Juan J. Dominguez of the Law Offices of Juan J. Dominguez in Los Angeles—committed fraud in bringing the claims. Specifically, the judge found that plaintiffs and their lawyers had falsified work documents and claims of sterility and that evidence revealed a "truly heinous and repulsive" scheme of pervasive fraud involving Dominguez that was "cemented together by human greed and avarice," according to the complaint, which was filed on July 8. The suit was filed one day after a panel of the California 2d District Court of Appeal ruled that the Tellez judgment, which Dole had appealed, should be reviewed in lower court to determine whether it was tainted by potential fraud. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202432119262&Dole_Food_sues_filmmakers_alleging_documentary_was_based_on_fraud_&slreturn=1
The Museum of the City of New York celebrates the four-hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the original Dutch colonies in New York with an exhibition of works by twelve Dutch photographers, most residents of the city, who explore our shared history. The result: “Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered.” http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2009/07/06/090706gonb_GOAT_notebook_aletti
Manu Dibango was one of countless people whose lives were changed by Michael Jackson’s music, although in Dibango’s case the changing was mutual. He was born and reared in Cameroon, and was already a local favorite when he recorded a song for the Cameroon soccer team. The result was a 1972 single called “Mouvement Ewondo,” but it was the B side—“Soul Makossa,” a honking, galloping funk track—that was the real hit, in Africa, in Europe, and in America, where it came to be seen as one of the first disco records. A generation of disk jockeys learned to wield the power of the song’s famous introduction: a hard beat, a single guitar chord, and Dibango’s low growl. He named his song after the makossa, a Cameroonian dance, but he stretched the word out, played with it: “Ma-mako, ma-ma-ssa, mako-makossa.” About a decade later, Dibango was in Paris, listening to the radio at his apartment, when he heard something familiar: those same syllables, more or less, in a very different context. The d.j. was playing “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” the unconventional first song from “Thriller.” The galloping rhythm sounds a bit like “Soul Makossa,” and near the end Jackson acknowledges the debt by singing words that many listeners mistook for nonsense: “Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa.” Soon, Dibango’s phone started ringing. Friends and relatives were calling to offer their congratulations: Michael Jackson was singing his song! But Dibango’s pride turned to puzzlement when he bought the album, only to find that the song was credited to Michael Jackson and no one else. Dibango eventually worked out a financial agreement with Jackson, and he made his peace with “Thriller,” which might be (depending on how you keep score) the most popular album of all time.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/07/06/090706ta_talk_sanneh
The term "second string" (or the phrase 'to have more than one string to your bow') derives from the fact that medieval archers would carry a second string, in the event that their "first string" snapped. http://www.solarnavigator.net/sport/archery.htm
“Second wind” means that when you run very fast, you reach a point where you gasp for breath, slow down but keep on pushing and after a few seconds, you feel recovered and pick up the pace. Some people think that you just slow down and allow yourself enough time to recover from your oxygen debt, but research from the University of California in Berkeley may give another explanation. When you run fast, your muscles use large amounts of oxygen to burn carbohydrate, fat and protein for energy. If you run so fast that your lungs cannot supply all the oxygen that you need, you develop an oxygen debt that causes lactic acid to accumulate in your muscles to make them burn, and you gasp for air. The muscle burning and shortness of breath caused by the accumulation of lactic acid forces you to slow down. This recent research shows that the lactic acid that accumulates in muscles when you run very fast is actually the first choice of your muscles for fuel when you are running so fast that you can't get in all the oxygen that you need (American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, June 2006). So your muscles switch to burning more lactic acid for energy, you need less oxygen and then pick up the pace. http://ezinearticles.com/?Second-Wind:-A-New-Explanation&id=288592
July 9 is the birthday of Ann Radcliffe, (books by this author) born in London (1764). Her most famous novel was The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which is probably best remembered today because it is the book that Jane Austen satirized in Northanger Abbey (1818).
July 9 is the birthday of Matthew Lewis, (books by this author) born in London (1775). He wrote to his mother: "What do you think of my having written, in the space of 10 weeks, a romance of between three and four hundred pages octavo? It is called The Monk, and I am myself so pleased with it, that, if the booksellers will not buy it, I shall publish it myself." The Monk became a huge sensation and went through many editions, and from there on out, Matthew Lewis was called "Monk" Lewis.
July 9 is the birthday of the "Queen of Romance," a woman who wrote more than 700 books: Barbara Cartland, (books by this author) born in Birmingham, England (1901). The Writer’s Almanac
June 25-July 4: Heidelberg, Rudesheim (tour of Seigfried’s Mechanical Music Museum), cruise to Koblenz, Cochem, visit winery, walk in Cologne’s old town, sample beer,
arrive in Arnhem, visit Liberation Museum and Canadian Cemetery, canal cruise and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Utrecht, visit cheese farm, return to ship now docked in Schoonhoven, Dutch singers and dancers are evening entertainment, sail to Rotterdam,
walking tour and visit of porcelain factory in Delft, music quiz after dinner, arrive in Ghent (name comes from Celtic word for confluence of rivers) , full-day excursion to Brugges, movie after dinner, tour city of Antwerp and art museum, farewell cocktails with captain and crew, Captain’s Dinner. Wonderful weather, sights, people, music, food—a highly recommended cruise!
Global warming is dissolving the Alpine glaciers so rapidly that Italy and Switzerland have decided they must re-draw their national borders to take account of the new realities. The border has been fixed since 1861, when Italy became a unified state. But for the past century the surface area of the “cryosphere”, the zone of glaciers, permanent snow cover and permafrost, has been shrinking steadily, with dramatic acceleration in the past five years. This is the area over which the national frontier passes and the two countries have now agreed to have their experts sit down together and hash out where it ought to run now. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/melting-snow-prompts-border-change-between-switzerland-and-italy-1653181.html\
Dole Food Co. has filed a defamation suit in Los Angeles against two Swedish filmmakers whose recently screened documentary chronicles a lawsuit alleging that workers in Nicaragua were rendered sterile after being exposed to the pesticide DBCP on Dole's banana farms. The documentary—called Bananas —tells the tale of the first U.S. trial involving the pesticide claims against Dole. In 2007, a jury in Los Angeles awarded $5.8 million in damages to six Nicaraguan workers in Tellez v. Dole, No. BC312852 (Los Angeles Co., Calif., Super. Ct.). But in April, Los Angeles County, Calif., Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney threw out two similar cases against Dole in Los Angeles after finding that the plaintiffs and their lawyers—particularly lead plaintiffs' attorney Juan J. Dominguez of the Law Offices of Juan J. Dominguez in Los Angeles—committed fraud in bringing the claims. Specifically, the judge found that plaintiffs and their lawyers had falsified work documents and claims of sterility and that evidence revealed a "truly heinous and repulsive" scheme of pervasive fraud involving Dominguez that was "cemented together by human greed and avarice," according to the complaint, which was filed on July 8. The suit was filed one day after a panel of the California 2d District Court of Appeal ruled that the Tellez judgment, which Dole had appealed, should be reviewed in lower court to determine whether it was tainted by potential fraud. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202432119262&Dole_Food_sues_filmmakers_alleging_documentary_was_based_on_fraud_&slreturn=1
The Museum of the City of New York celebrates the four-hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the original Dutch colonies in New York with an exhibition of works by twelve Dutch photographers, most residents of the city, who explore our shared history. The result: “Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered.” http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2009/07/06/090706gonb_GOAT_notebook_aletti
Manu Dibango was one of countless people whose lives were changed by Michael Jackson’s music, although in Dibango’s case the changing was mutual. He was born and reared in Cameroon, and was already a local favorite when he recorded a song for the Cameroon soccer team. The result was a 1972 single called “Mouvement Ewondo,” but it was the B side—“Soul Makossa,” a honking, galloping funk track—that was the real hit, in Africa, in Europe, and in America, where it came to be seen as one of the first disco records. A generation of disk jockeys learned to wield the power of the song’s famous introduction: a hard beat, a single guitar chord, and Dibango’s low growl. He named his song after the makossa, a Cameroonian dance, but he stretched the word out, played with it: “Ma-mako, ma-ma-ssa, mako-makossa.” About a decade later, Dibango was in Paris, listening to the radio at his apartment, when he heard something familiar: those same syllables, more or less, in a very different context. The d.j. was playing “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” the unconventional first song from “Thriller.” The galloping rhythm sounds a bit like “Soul Makossa,” and near the end Jackson acknowledges the debt by singing words that many listeners mistook for nonsense: “Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa.” Soon, Dibango’s phone started ringing. Friends and relatives were calling to offer their congratulations: Michael Jackson was singing his song! But Dibango’s pride turned to puzzlement when he bought the album, only to find that the song was credited to Michael Jackson and no one else. Dibango eventually worked out a financial agreement with Jackson, and he made his peace with “Thriller,” which might be (depending on how you keep score) the most popular album of all time.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/07/06/090706ta_talk_sanneh
The term "second string" (or the phrase 'to have more than one string to your bow') derives from the fact that medieval archers would carry a second string, in the event that their "first string" snapped. http://www.solarnavigator.net/sport/archery.htm
“Second wind” means that when you run very fast, you reach a point where you gasp for breath, slow down but keep on pushing and after a few seconds, you feel recovered and pick up the pace. Some people think that you just slow down and allow yourself enough time to recover from your oxygen debt, but research from the University of California in Berkeley may give another explanation. When you run fast, your muscles use large amounts of oxygen to burn carbohydrate, fat and protein for energy. If you run so fast that your lungs cannot supply all the oxygen that you need, you develop an oxygen debt that causes lactic acid to accumulate in your muscles to make them burn, and you gasp for air. The muscle burning and shortness of breath caused by the accumulation of lactic acid forces you to slow down. This recent research shows that the lactic acid that accumulates in muscles when you run very fast is actually the first choice of your muscles for fuel when you are running so fast that you can't get in all the oxygen that you need (American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, June 2006). So your muscles switch to burning more lactic acid for energy, you need less oxygen and then pick up the pace. http://ezinearticles.com/?Second-Wind:-A-New-Explanation&id=288592
July 9 is the birthday of Ann Radcliffe, (books by this author) born in London (1764). Her most famous novel was The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which is probably best remembered today because it is the book that Jane Austen satirized in Northanger Abbey (1818).
July 9 is the birthday of Matthew Lewis, (books by this author) born in London (1775). He wrote to his mother: "What do you think of my having written, in the space of 10 weeks, a romance of between three and four hundred pages octavo? It is called The Monk, and I am myself so pleased with it, that, if the booksellers will not buy it, I shall publish it myself." The Monk became a huge sensation and went through many editions, and from there on out, Matthew Lewis was called "Monk" Lewis.
July 9 is the birthday of the "Queen of Romance," a woman who wrote more than 700 books: Barbara Cartland, (books by this author) born in Birmingham, England (1901). The Writer’s Almanac
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
TREASURES OF THE RHINE, Part two
June 21: We boarded the Viking Sun, a four-year old, 433-foot long ship, with 99 cabins and a crew of 44 http://www.cruisecompete.com/ships/viking_sun_cruises.html
in Breisach, Germany. By the vote of its inhabitants in 1950, Breisach was the first European town to declare itself for a United Europe. http://www.breisach.de/html/seiten/text.phtml?nav=40&lang=en
Our first dinner was Swiss.
June 22: We walked around Basel (name comes from Celtic word for water) and toured an art museum. Welcome cocktail hour with the captain and crew was followed by dinner.
June 23: We toured the Black Forest, seeing stork’s nests on the way on high roofs. Yes, we saw a demonstration of cuckoo clocks, and had an opportunity to purchase Black Forest Cake. One of our fellow travelers joked that the Black Forest was named for Black Forest Cake. In the afternoon, we toured Colmar, the birthplace of sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904). On February 18, 1879, Bartholdi earned U.S. Patent #11,023 for a "Design for a Statue." This statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World," would become one of the most famous monuments of world history. http://corrosion-doctors.org/Landmarks/statue-sculptor.htm
Dinner was French, followed by a lecture on the European Union.
June 24: We had a bus and walking tour of Strasbourg (more stork’s nests) and saw the Council of Europe building http://www.coe.int/ The European Parliament meets in Strasbourg and also has a complex in Brussels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament
As usual, four-course dinner on the ship. TO BE CONTINUED
Bankruptcy Court Approves Plan to Sell G.M.'s Assets
New York Times DealBook: A federal judge late on July 5 approved a plan by General Motors to sell its best assets to a new, government-backed company, a crucial step for the automaker to restructure and complete its trip through bankruptcy court. The decision by the judge, Robert E. Gerber, of Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, came after three days of hearings to address the 850 objections to the restructuring plan and after he received a revised sale order from G.M.’s lawyers. In his 95-page opinion, Judge Gerber wrote that he agreed with G.M.’s main contention: that the asset sale was needed to preserve its business, in the face of steep losses and government financing that is slated to run out by the end of the week.
Related postings on General Motor's bankruptcy and the financial system
WSJ: New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis, - Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown, by Stan Liebowitz, Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Dallas: "...the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began--the third quarter of 2006--during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)"
Lender Processing Services' June Mortgage Monitor Report Shows Foreclosure Starts Increased to Second Highest Level Since 1992
Resource of the Week: Roundup of Recent Posts About eBooks…and Some Kindle Stuff by Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price July 6, 2009
Why eBooks? Why now? Because the Fourth Annual World eBook Fair got underway July 4…which means you have free access to more than two million eBooks through August 4. Also, the Kindle DX—with its larger screen format—just made its appearance…and apparently sold out quite rapidly. Word from Michael Hart, the Founder of Project Gutenberg, that once again this year the World e-Book Fair will take place from July 4th-August 4th. This is the 4th year of the annual book fair. It starts on July 4th to celebrate the 38th anniversary of Project Gutenberg which began on July 4th, 1971. Once the event begins you’ll find FREE access to over 2.5 million full text eBooks that you can download to your computer. Some titles can also be downloaded and read on certain types of mobile phones.
Book Sources include:
+ Project Gutenberg
+ Digital Pulp Publishing
+ Internet Archive
+ The World Public Library (normally a fee-based site)
+ E-Books About Everything
++ Direct to World eBook Fair Web Site and Database
NDIIPP Launches New Digital Preservation Video Series
July 6th, 2009 From the Announcement:
The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has released a new video: Bagit: Transferring Content for Digital Preservation.
Just over three minutes long, the video is aimed at librarians, archivists, and others interested in working with digital content. The Bagit production is the first in a planned series of videos that will address specific digital preservation issues. Currently, the Library has a number of online video presentations featuring NDIIPP partners discussing their projects. View Video/Access Transcript Collection of other NDIIP Videos
July 7 is the birthday of "the dean of science fiction writers," Robert Heinlein, (books by this author) born in Butler, Missouri, in 1907. He served in the Navy, but when he got sick and was discharged, he was too weak to get a normal job. So when he saw an ad in a pulp fiction magazine offering $50 for the best story by an unpublished author, he decided to give writing a try. In four days, he had finished a story about a machine that could predict a person's death. It was published in 1939, and he went on to write almost 100 novels and short stories, including his famous novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). He said, "I took up writing because I needed money. And I continued to write because it's safer than stealing and easier than working."
The Writer’s Almanac
June 21: We boarded the Viking Sun, a four-year old, 433-foot long ship, with 99 cabins and a crew of 44 http://www.cruisecompete.com/ships/viking_sun_cruises.html
in Breisach, Germany. By the vote of its inhabitants in 1950, Breisach was the first European town to declare itself for a United Europe. http://www.breisach.de/html/seiten/text.phtml?nav=40&lang=en
Our first dinner was Swiss.
June 22: We walked around Basel (name comes from Celtic word for water) and toured an art museum. Welcome cocktail hour with the captain and crew was followed by dinner.
June 23: We toured the Black Forest, seeing stork’s nests on the way on high roofs. Yes, we saw a demonstration of cuckoo clocks, and had an opportunity to purchase Black Forest Cake. One of our fellow travelers joked that the Black Forest was named for Black Forest Cake. In the afternoon, we toured Colmar, the birthplace of sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904). On February 18, 1879, Bartholdi earned U.S. Patent #11,023 for a "Design for a Statue." This statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World," would become one of the most famous monuments of world history. http://corrosion-doctors.org/Landmarks/statue-sculptor.htm
Dinner was French, followed by a lecture on the European Union.
June 24: We had a bus and walking tour of Strasbourg (more stork’s nests) and saw the Council of Europe building http://www.coe.int/ The European Parliament meets in Strasbourg and also has a complex in Brussels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament
As usual, four-course dinner on the ship. TO BE CONTINUED
Bankruptcy Court Approves Plan to Sell G.M.'s Assets
New York Times DealBook: A federal judge late on July 5 approved a plan by General Motors to sell its best assets to a new, government-backed company, a crucial step for the automaker to restructure and complete its trip through bankruptcy court. The decision by the judge, Robert E. Gerber, of Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, came after three days of hearings to address the 850 objections to the restructuring plan and after he received a revised sale order from G.M.’s lawyers. In his 95-page opinion, Judge Gerber wrote that he agreed with G.M.’s main contention: that the asset sale was needed to preserve its business, in the face of steep losses and government financing that is slated to run out by the end of the week.
Related postings on General Motor's bankruptcy and the financial system
WSJ: New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis, - Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown, by Stan Liebowitz, Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Dallas: "...the focus on subprimes ignores the widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began--the third quarter of 2006--during which more than 4.3 million homes went into foreclosure.)"
Lender Processing Services' June Mortgage Monitor Report Shows Foreclosure Starts Increased to Second Highest Level Since 1992
Resource of the Week: Roundup of Recent Posts About eBooks…and Some Kindle Stuff by Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price July 6, 2009
Why eBooks? Why now? Because the Fourth Annual World eBook Fair got underway July 4…which means you have free access to more than two million eBooks through August 4. Also, the Kindle DX—with its larger screen format—just made its appearance…and apparently sold out quite rapidly. Word from Michael Hart, the Founder of Project Gutenberg, that once again this year the World e-Book Fair will take place from July 4th-August 4th. This is the 4th year of the annual book fair. It starts on July 4th to celebrate the 38th anniversary of Project Gutenberg which began on July 4th, 1971. Once the event begins you’ll find FREE access to over 2.5 million full text eBooks that you can download to your computer. Some titles can also be downloaded and read on certain types of mobile phones.
Book Sources include:
+ Project Gutenberg
+ Digital Pulp Publishing
+ Internet Archive
+ The World Public Library (normally a fee-based site)
+ E-Books About Everything
++ Direct to World eBook Fair Web Site and Database
NDIIPP Launches New Digital Preservation Video Series
July 6th, 2009 From the Announcement:
The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has released a new video: Bagit: Transferring Content for Digital Preservation.
Just over three minutes long, the video is aimed at librarians, archivists, and others interested in working with digital content. The Bagit production is the first in a planned series of videos that will address specific digital preservation issues. Currently, the Library has a number of online video presentations featuring NDIIPP partners discussing their projects. View Video/Access Transcript Collection of other NDIIP Videos
July 7 is the birthday of "the dean of science fiction writers," Robert Heinlein, (books by this author) born in Butler, Missouri, in 1907. He served in the Navy, but when he got sick and was discharged, he was too weak to get a normal job. So when he saw an ad in a pulp fiction magazine offering $50 for the best story by an unpublished author, he decided to give writing a try. In four days, he had finished a story about a machine that could predict a person's death. It was published in 1939, and he went on to write almost 100 novels and short stories, including his famous novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). He said, "I took up writing because I needed money. And I continued to write because it's safer than stealing and easier than working."
The Writer’s Almanac
Monday, July 6, 2009
TREASURES OF THE RHINE, Part One
On June 20, we traveled to EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, located in France, and serving Basel (Switzerland), Mulhouse (France), and Freiburg (Germany). Our cruise ship, Viking Sun, was supposed to be docked in Basel, but due to high water (ship was unable to get under a bridge) was actually waiting for us in Breisach, Germany, about an hour away. I will share stories of our two-week adventure in installments—and today will just relate a few encounters of human interest. We visited a cheese farm near Gouda (pronounced HOW-da in Dutch), a winery in Cochem, Germany (town floods about three times a year) where we could see vines hanging on a steep cliff behind the shop, and enjoyed Dutch singers and dancers one evening on the ship. On most days, we had lectures, demonstrations, and entertainment scheduled in addition to walking tours.
TO BE CONTINUED
Holden Caulfield Stays Young: Salinger Wins Copyright Suit
U.S. District Court judge Deborah Batts followed up on her temporary restraining order from last month, and permanently banned publication of an unauthorized sequel to J.D. Salinger's uber-famous novel, Catcher in the Rye. Click here for the NYT article; here for the opinion; here and here for previous LB coverage of the case. Judge Batts ruled that the novel, penned by an American living in Sweden who used the pseudonym J.D. California, did not fit into the fair use exception in copyright law because the book did not constitute a critical parody that “transformed” the original. The book imagines a grown up Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the original, wandering the streets of New York after having escaped from a retirement home. WSJ Law Blog July 2, 2009
Great buildings: Desert House
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Kaufmann_Desert_House.html
For the best of Architectural History and Current Architecture combined,
search the complete archives of ArchitectureWeek and GreatBuildings.com at once.
Main cloud components
Alto – high
Cirrus – lock of hair
Cumulus – heap
Nimbus – precipitation-bearing (Latin for "raincloud")
Stratus – layer (Latin for "spread out")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cloud_types
On July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More was beheaded in the Tower of London for refusing to recognize his longtime friend King Henry VIII as the head of the Church. Thomas More was a barrister, a scholar, and a writer. He was the author of Utopia (1516), a controversial novel about an imaginary island named Utopia, where society was based on equality for all people. It is from this novel that we get our word "utopia."
On July 6, 1812 Ludwig van Beethoven wrote two famous love letters to an unknown woman. Beethoven wrote the letters from the Czech resort town of Teplitz, which his physician had recommended for his health, and there he became friends with the poet Goethe. And over the course of two days, he wrote three letters to a mysterious woman who has come to be known as "the Immortal Beloved."
On July 6, 1957 John Lennon and Paul McCartney met at a church dance in Liverpool, England. John Lennon was almost 17, and Paul McCartney had just turned 15. Lennon had formed a band called the Quarrymen. They were all right, but not great, and they couldn't play at bars because they were all underage. But they got a gig playing at St. Peter's Church for the annual summer garden party, on a stage in a field behind the church, and then again that night in the dance hall at the church. Paul McCartney heard the band and thought they were pretty good—especially John Lennon. Paul went to school with one of the band members, who took him over to the band and introduced him while they were setting up for their second show. Paul said that he played guitar, and also that he knew how to tune one. No one in the band could tune their own guitars—they took them to a specialist—so they were impressed. Paul taught John how to tune, and he sang him a few recent rock songs, including a medley by Little Richard. And about a week later, John asked Paul to join the band. The Writer’s Almanac
On June 20, we traveled to EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, located in France, and serving Basel (Switzerland), Mulhouse (France), and Freiburg (Germany). Our cruise ship, Viking Sun, was supposed to be docked in Basel, but due to high water (ship was unable to get under a bridge) was actually waiting for us in Breisach, Germany, about an hour away. I will share stories of our two-week adventure in installments—and today will just relate a few encounters of human interest. We visited a cheese farm near Gouda (pronounced HOW-da in Dutch), a winery in Cochem, Germany (town floods about three times a year) where we could see vines hanging on a steep cliff behind the shop, and enjoyed Dutch singers and dancers one evening on the ship. On most days, we had lectures, demonstrations, and entertainment scheduled in addition to walking tours.
TO BE CONTINUED
Holden Caulfield Stays Young: Salinger Wins Copyright Suit
U.S. District Court judge Deborah Batts followed up on her temporary restraining order from last month, and permanently banned publication of an unauthorized sequel to J.D. Salinger's uber-famous novel, Catcher in the Rye. Click here for the NYT article; here for the opinion; here and here for previous LB coverage of the case. Judge Batts ruled that the novel, penned by an American living in Sweden who used the pseudonym J.D. California, did not fit into the fair use exception in copyright law because the book did not constitute a critical parody that “transformed” the original. The book imagines a grown up Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the original, wandering the streets of New York after having escaped from a retirement home. WSJ Law Blog July 2, 2009
Great buildings: Desert House
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Kaufmann_Desert_House.html
For the best of Architectural History and Current Architecture combined,
search the complete archives of ArchitectureWeek and GreatBuildings.com at once.
Main cloud components
Alto – high
Cirrus – lock of hair
Cumulus – heap
Nimbus – precipitation-bearing (Latin for "raincloud")
Stratus – layer (Latin for "spread out")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cloud_types
On July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More was beheaded in the Tower of London for refusing to recognize his longtime friend King Henry VIII as the head of the Church. Thomas More was a barrister, a scholar, and a writer. He was the author of Utopia (1516), a controversial novel about an imaginary island named Utopia, where society was based on equality for all people. It is from this novel that we get our word "utopia."
On July 6, 1812 Ludwig van Beethoven wrote two famous love letters to an unknown woman. Beethoven wrote the letters from the Czech resort town of Teplitz, which his physician had recommended for his health, and there he became friends with the poet Goethe. And over the course of two days, he wrote three letters to a mysterious woman who has come to be known as "the Immortal Beloved."
On July 6, 1957 John Lennon and Paul McCartney met at a church dance in Liverpool, England. John Lennon was almost 17, and Paul McCartney had just turned 15. Lennon had formed a band called the Quarrymen. They were all right, but not great, and they couldn't play at bars because they were all underage. But they got a gig playing at St. Peter's Church for the annual summer garden party, on a stage in a field behind the church, and then again that night in the dance hall at the church. Paul McCartney heard the band and thought they were pretty good—especially John Lennon. Paul went to school with one of the band members, who took him over to the band and introduced him while they were setting up for their second show. Paul said that he played guitar, and also that he knew how to tune one. No one in the band could tune their own guitars—they took them to a specialist—so they were impressed. Paul taught John how to tune, and he sang him a few recent rock songs, including a medley by Little Richard. And about a week later, John asked Paul to join the band. The Writer’s Almanac
Friday, June 19, 2009
Woody Ray Densen, a state district judge in Houston, was indicted on June 18 by a Harris County grand jury on a felony charge of criminal mischief after he was captured on video tampering with his next-door neighbor's car. According to the Houston Chronicle, Densen was recorded on a surveillance camera walking by his neighbor's 2006 Range Rover and making contact with the vehicle twice on May 23. The next-door neighbor, Adam Kleibert, discovered a series of scratches made by a key to the rear door of his vehicle. The damages totaled nearly $3,000, Kliebert said. Click here for the Houston Chronicle story, which includes the surveillance video allegedly showing Densen in the act. Check it out, LB readers; it's really pretty remarkable. (Hat tip: ABA Journal).
Of cities with 500,000 people or more, Baltimore reported the most homicides in 2008. With 234 homicides - 37 per 100,000 city residents - Maryland's largest city outpaced Detroit, which reported 33.8. Or did it? A Detroit News story claims that the Motor City's police department intentionally underreported its number of homicides. The story suggests that was intentional on the part of city officials. The article, which accuses Detroit police of an intentional “chronic undercounting” of homicides, pointed out that police there count murders differently than almost every other major city in the U.S.
Rather than report anything and everything that might classify as a homicide, Detroit police take a wait-and-see approach on killings that they think may have been accidents, suicides or acts of self-defense.
Most other cities--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia included--simply follow what the medical examiner says and reports them to the FBI as homicides. Detroit police dispute that method. “There's homicide and there's murder,” said Detroit Police Dep. Chief James Tolbert. “Now when the medical examiner still says it's a homicide and we go on about our investigation and (in the course of) our investigation we present documents to the prosecutor's office, they can say it's self-defense. It's ruled medically a homicide. But in the eyes of the prosecutor's office they will not charge anybody with this.” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy disagrees with that approach. “It is very, very clear in the language,” Worthy said. “Lawful self-defense is still a homicide and it still has to be counted as a homicide and it still has to be reported to the FBI.” WSJ Law Blog June 18, 2009
OpenCongress Project Launches Project RaceTracker
"The RaceTracker project on the OpenCongress wiki tracks every election for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and state governor. RaceTracker is a free, open-source, fully-referenced, and non-partisan public resource. It is coordinated by the crew at the SwingStateProject."
Monarchs of Britain—some surprises—there is a Danish Line and three different Plantagenet Lines http://www.britannia.com/history/h6f.html
Silent letters
Comb, climb, exhibit, hour, light, sign, scene
Q. What does the prefix hemi mean?
A. It is Greek for half. http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa052698.htm
There are dozens of words starting with hemi—you know about hemisphere. More unusual words are hemidemisemiquaver, a musical note having the time value of a sixty-fourth of a whole note---and hemistich, half a poetic line of verse.
The music for "On, Wisconsin!" was composed in 1909 by William T. Purdy with the idea of entering it in a Minnesota contest for the creation of a new university football song. Instead, Carl Beck persuaded him to dedicate the song to the University of Wisconsin football team, and Beck collaborated with the composer by writing the lyrics. The song was introduced at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in November 1909. It was later acclaimed by world-famous composer and bandmaster, John Philip Sousa, as the best college song he had ever heard. Lyrics more in keeping with the purposes of a state song were subsequently written in 1913 by J. S. Hubbard, editor of the Beloit Free Press, and Judge Charles D. Rosa. Hubbard and Rosa were among the delegates from many states convened in 1913 to commemorate the centennial of the Battle of Lake Erie. Inspired by the occasion, they provided new, more solemn, words to the already well-known university football song. Although "On, Wisconsin!" was widely recognized as Wisconsin's song, the state did not officially adopt it until 1959. Representative Harold W. Clemens discovered that Wisconsin was one of only 10 states without an official song. He introduced a bill to give the song the status he thought it deserved. On discovering that many different lyrics existed, an official text for the first verse was incorporated in Chapter 170, Laws of 1959, and it is contained in Section 1.10 of the statutes. http://www.50states.com/songs/wisconsin.htm
Find your state symbols and songs at: http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/
http://www.50states.com/ohio.htm
June 19 is the birthday of novelist Salman Rushdie, (books by this author) born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India (1947). He was born just two months before India gained independence from Great Britain. His family loved literature and oral storytelling. His grandfather was an esteemed poet who wrote in Urdu, the language of Pakistan. His father had studied world literature at Cambridge in England, and his mother, Rushdie says, was "the keeper of the family stories. She has a genius for family trees; forests of family trees grow in her head, and nobody else can possibly understand their complexity." He's never published the first novel he wrote, and calls it a failure. The first to be published was Grimus, in 1975, and though he got a nice advance for it, the book didn't sell well. He decided to use the money from the advance to travel in India, he said, "as cheaply as possible for as long as I could make the money last, and on that journey of fifteen-hour bus rides and humble hostelries [his next novel] Midnight's Children was born." After he completed the manuscript for Midnight's Children in 1979 and sent it to his editor, he learned that the first reader had reported after reading the thick manuscript: "The author should concentrate on short stories until he has mastered the novel form." But the second reader was more enthusiastic, and the book was published in 1981 to great acclaim. It won the Booker Prize and marked Rushdie as one of the most important fiction writers of his generation. The Writer’s Almanac
Of cities with 500,000 people or more, Baltimore reported the most homicides in 2008. With 234 homicides - 37 per 100,000 city residents - Maryland's largest city outpaced Detroit, which reported 33.8. Or did it? A Detroit News story claims that the Motor City's police department intentionally underreported its number of homicides. The story suggests that was intentional on the part of city officials. The article, which accuses Detroit police of an intentional “chronic undercounting” of homicides, pointed out that police there count murders differently than almost every other major city in the U.S.
Rather than report anything and everything that might classify as a homicide, Detroit police take a wait-and-see approach on killings that they think may have been accidents, suicides or acts of self-defense.
Most other cities--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia included--simply follow what the medical examiner says and reports them to the FBI as homicides. Detroit police dispute that method. “There's homicide and there's murder,” said Detroit Police Dep. Chief James Tolbert. “Now when the medical examiner still says it's a homicide and we go on about our investigation and (in the course of) our investigation we present documents to the prosecutor's office, they can say it's self-defense. It's ruled medically a homicide. But in the eyes of the prosecutor's office they will not charge anybody with this.” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy disagrees with that approach. “It is very, very clear in the language,” Worthy said. “Lawful self-defense is still a homicide and it still has to be counted as a homicide and it still has to be reported to the FBI.” WSJ Law Blog June 18, 2009
OpenCongress Project Launches Project RaceTracker
"The RaceTracker project on the OpenCongress wiki tracks every election for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and state governor. RaceTracker is a free, open-source, fully-referenced, and non-partisan public resource. It is coordinated by the crew at the SwingStateProject."
Monarchs of Britain—some surprises—there is a Danish Line and three different Plantagenet Lines http://www.britannia.com/history/h6f.html
Silent letters
Comb, climb, exhibit, hour, light, sign, scene
Q. What does the prefix hemi mean?
A. It is Greek for half. http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa052698.htm
There are dozens of words starting with hemi—you know about hemisphere. More unusual words are hemidemisemiquaver, a musical note having the time value of a sixty-fourth of a whole note---and hemistich, half a poetic line of verse.
The music for "On, Wisconsin!" was composed in 1909 by William T. Purdy with the idea of entering it in a Minnesota contest for the creation of a new university football song. Instead, Carl Beck persuaded him to dedicate the song to the University of Wisconsin football team, and Beck collaborated with the composer by writing the lyrics. The song was introduced at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in November 1909. It was later acclaimed by world-famous composer and bandmaster, John Philip Sousa, as the best college song he had ever heard. Lyrics more in keeping with the purposes of a state song were subsequently written in 1913 by J. S. Hubbard, editor of the Beloit Free Press, and Judge Charles D. Rosa. Hubbard and Rosa were among the delegates from many states convened in 1913 to commemorate the centennial of the Battle of Lake Erie. Inspired by the occasion, they provided new, more solemn, words to the already well-known university football song. Although "On, Wisconsin!" was widely recognized as Wisconsin's song, the state did not officially adopt it until 1959. Representative Harold W. Clemens discovered that Wisconsin was one of only 10 states without an official song. He introduced a bill to give the song the status he thought it deserved. On discovering that many different lyrics existed, an official text for the first verse was incorporated in Chapter 170, Laws of 1959, and it is contained in Section 1.10 of the statutes. http://www.50states.com/songs/wisconsin.htm
Find your state symbols and songs at: http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/
http://www.50states.com/ohio.htm
June 19 is the birthday of novelist Salman Rushdie, (books by this author) born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India (1947). He was born just two months before India gained independence from Great Britain. His family loved literature and oral storytelling. His grandfather was an esteemed poet who wrote in Urdu, the language of Pakistan. His father had studied world literature at Cambridge in England, and his mother, Rushdie says, was "the keeper of the family stories. She has a genius for family trees; forests of family trees grow in her head, and nobody else can possibly understand their complexity." He's never published the first novel he wrote, and calls it a failure. The first to be published was Grimus, in 1975, and though he got a nice advance for it, the book didn't sell well. He decided to use the money from the advance to travel in India, he said, "as cheaply as possible for as long as I could make the money last, and on that journey of fifteen-hour bus rides and humble hostelries [his next novel] Midnight's Children was born." After he completed the manuscript for Midnight's Children in 1979 and sent it to his editor, he learned that the first reader had reported after reading the thick manuscript: "The author should concentrate on short stories until he has mastered the novel form." But the second reader was more enthusiastic, and the book was published in 1981 to great acclaim. It won the Booker Prize and marked Rushdie as one of the most important fiction writers of his generation. The Writer’s Almanac
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