States Create Data Warehouse for Student Info. From Kindergarten Onward
Huge Databases Offer a Research Gold Mine — and Privacy Worries As states create warehouses of information about students, scholars see opportunities to assess the effectiveness of education. The fusion-center debate has an echo in the world of education research. Now that Congress has rejected the idea of a national "unit-record tracking" system for student data, scholars and policy analysts are tantalized by the possibility that states will beef up their own education-data centers. The most celebrated example is Florida, which began in 2001 to assemble a "data warehouse" that allows officials to track a person's progress from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond, including postcollege wages and employment, military service, incarceration, and receipt of public assistance." [The Chronicle of Higher Education. Section: The Faculty, Volume 54, Issue 35, Page A10]

Federal Court Decides License Fees to Be Paid to ASCAP by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo!
ASCAP news release: "The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has made public a decision in the proceeding to determine reasonable license fees to be paid to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) by AOL (Time Warner Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. for their online performance of musical works.
The decision covers license fees for periods starting as far back as July 1, 2002, and continuing through December 31, 2009, for the performance of musical works in the ASCAP repertory by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo! Based on the formula established by the Court, the total payments to be made to ASCAP and its membership by these three services for that full period could reach $100 million. The Court's comprehensive 153 page decision was based on extensive evidence presented by both sides in the case regarding the online performance of musical works by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo!"

Eponym
pantagruelian (pan-tuh-groo-EL-ee-uhn) adjective
1. Enormous
2. Displaying extravagant and coarse humor
[After Pantagruel, a giant king with an enormous appetite, depicted in a series of novels by François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553).]
A.Word.A.Day

Night by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow public domain
Into the darkness and the hush of night Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away, And with it fade the phantoms of the day, The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light.The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight, The unprofitable splendor and display, The agitations, and the cares that prey Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.The better life begins; the world no more Molests us; all its records we erase From the dull common-place book of our lives,That like a palimpsest is written o'er With trivial incidents of time and place, And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

From a faithful reader
Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.
The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% --the percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour: 61,000
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs - Alexander the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

Mark Twain and the typewriter
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/yankee/cymach4.html

Like most modern words, the word "golf" derives from older languages and dialects. In this case, the languages in question are medieval Dutch and old Scots. The medieval Dutch word "kolf" or "kolve" meant "club." It is believed that word passed to the Scots, whose old Scots dialect transformed the word into "golve," "gowl" or "gouf." By the 16th Century, the word "golf" had emerged.
Sources: British Golf Museum, USGA Library