On June 20, we traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, a city described by economist and author Richard Florida as the “most creative small city in America.” Madison is built on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, and was established in 1836 as capital of Wisconsin Territory and in 1848 as capital of the state.
Recommended restaurants in Madison:
L’Etoile http://www.letoile-restaurant.com/
Restaurant Magnus http://www.restaurantmagnus.com/
On June 21, we toured Taliesen (Welsh for “shining brow”) in Spring Green, a National Historic Landmark http://www.taliesinpreservation.org/frank/index.htm , the summer home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright--and found that Wright was fascinated by music, representing the raised notes of a piano with rafters divided into twos and threes, and windows divided to represent half-steps and whole steps. Then we drove to Circus World Museum in Baraboo, the winter home of Ringling Brothers circus. http://circusworld.wisconsinhistory.org/ To be continued

The Supreme Court's Blockbuster Second Amendment Ruling: What the Court Resolved and What it Left Open
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20080627.html

Searchable database of Supreme Court decisions since 1893
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html

toponym waterloo (WOT-uhr-loo) noun A crushing or final defeat
After Waterloo, a village in central Belgium where the Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815. That was Napoleon Bonaparte's last battle. He was decisively defeated by the British and Prussian forces and exiled to the island of Saint Helena.
A.Word.A.Day

Misuse of quotation marks http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

On June 30, 1857 Charles Dickens gave his first public reading (books by this author). He did this for several reasons: to get away from marital discord at home, because he loved to perform in front of an audience, and because he could make more money reading than he could by writing. His first reading, of A Christmas Carol, was held at Saint Martin's Hall in London, and it was so successful that Charles Dickens became one of the first authors to go on huge, international book tours, performing his own work.
On June 30, 1936 the novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was first published. When she handed the manuscript over to editors, it was in terrible shape, with more than 1,000 pages of faded and dog-eared paper, poorly typed and with penciled changes. But they loved the story. They asked Mitchell to change the original title, "Tomorrow Is Another Day," because at the time there were already 13 books in print with the word "tomorrow" in the title. They also asked her to change the main character's name from Pansy to Scarlett.
The Writer’s Almanac

A reader has asked what the percentage is of lawyers in Congress. After checking federal government sites, Google, findarticles.com and the American Bar Association, I have found no recent statistics. The statistics would probably change at least every two years, so interested people may look through a congressional directory to find the current percentage of lawyers. Let me know if you find an easier way to answer this question.

Questions answered about the federal government
http://www.govspot.com/ask/

Public resources from the American Bar Association
http://www.abanet.org/public.html

News release: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has sustained the Boeing Company’s protest of the Department of the Air Force’s award of a contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation for KC-X aerial refueling tankers. Boeing challenged the Air Force’s technical and cost evaluations, conduct of discussions, and source selection decision.
Air Force Releases Statement on GAO's Decision on the KC-45A Tanker
Final Rule (PDF 4 pages) regarding changes to GAO's Bid Protest Jurisdiction concerning OMB Circular A-76, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quality task orders, TSA procurements, and other administrative changes to GAO's Bid Protest Regulations
Boeing Statement on Tanker Protest Ruling
Proposed Rule (PDF, 4 pages) regarding changes to GAO's Bid Protest Jurisdiction concerning OMB Circular A-76, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quality task orders, TSA procurements, and other administrative changes to GAO's Bid Protest Regulations.
Bid Protests at GAO: a Descriptive Guide, Eighth Ed., 2006 (GAO-06-797SP) (PDF, 76 pages)

U.S. - China Strategic Economic Dialogue Fact Sheets
Treasury Department news release
U.S. Fact Sheet
Joint U.S. – China Fact Sheet
Joint U.S. – China Fact Sheet on 10-Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework

News release: The Federal Trade Commission has approved publication of a Federal Register notice announcing final amendments to the agency's Fuel Rating Rule. The notice...was issued pursuant to Section 205 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). The EISA required the Commission to develop labeling requirements for biodiesel, biomass-based diesel, and blends of those fuels (biodiesel fuels).

On June 16, Lori Drew pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization
The theory of the case seems to be that when Drew registered on MySpace she agreed to certain terms of service that required her to, among other things, provide “truthful and accurate registration information” and “refrain from promoting information that” she knew was “false or misleading.”
According to this January New Yorker article and last month’s indictment, Drew — under the guise of “Josh” — struck up a flirtatious online relationship with Megan Meier, a 13-year old MySpace member, that lasted for several weeks. “Josh” allegedly told Megan she was “sexi” and made other sexually suggestive overtures. Then, “Josh” told Megan he was moving away and that the world would be a better place without her. After “Josh” broke off the relationship, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom. U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien has acknowledged this is the first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case.
WSJ Law Blog June 17, 2008

Toponym
sardonic (sahr-DON-ik) adjective
Marked by scorn, mockery, and cynicism.
[After Sardinia, a large island in the Mediterranean. Eating a Sardinian plant was believed to produce facial convulsions as if in a maniacal laughter.]
A.Word.A.Day

Mistrial in Australia after inattentiveness
After 105 witnesses and three months of evidence, Judge Peter Zahra aborted a drug trial that cost $1 million, and discharged the jury after the jury forewoman admitted that she and four other jurors had been playing Sudoku since the second week of trial.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/06/11/can-you-blame-them-lengthy-trial-aborted-after-jurors-played-sudoku/#0
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23846744-17044,00.html

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently limited the ability of employers to obtain e-mails and text messages sent by employees on company-financed devices. Here’s the story from the LAT, and here’s the opinion. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel, reports the LAT, was the first federal appellate decision to provide 4th Amendment protection to electronic messages.
WSJ Law Blog June 19, 2008

June 20 is the birthday of poet and novelist Vikram Seth, (books by this author) born in Calcutta, India (1952), the son of a successful shoe salesman and the first woman chief justice on the High Court of Delhi. After studying philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford, he moved to California and did a master's degree in economics at Stanford. He was particularly interested in Chinese culture, and started a dissertation called "Seven Chinese Villages: An Economic and Demographic Portrait."
Then one day, after he had spent the morning entering economic data of Chinese villages into a computer database, he decided he "couldn't stand it anymore" and walked into the Stanford bookstore and pulled a few volumes of poetry off the shelves. One of them was an excellent translation of Eugene Onegin, Pushkin's novel written in verse. Seth said, "I was so astonished by it, and so affected by it, that I decided that rather than continue working on my dissertation I would take time off to write a novel using the same stanza form, but set in California
The work he set out to write became The Golden Gate, published in 1986, a masterpiece that was 1,300 pages long and consisted of more than 8,000 tetrameter rhymed lines. Set mostly in San Francisco, it was called by Gore Vidal "the great California novel" and gave a sort of poetic analysis of the 1980s young urban professional — "yuppie" — culture.
He finished Golden Gate while living in California, then returned home to India to write his next novel. He thought it would take him a year to finish, but the project expanded and spanned on for several years, and he spent most of his 30s living in his childhood bedroom at his parents' house in India. In 1993, he published his first novel in prose, another huge and ambitious volume, A Suitable Boy, about an intelligent independent Hindu girl who is determined to marry a man of her own choosing rather than be part of an arranged marriage. At 1,349 pages long, it's one of the longest novels to have been written in the English language, and in the opening dedication, Seth playfully inscribed, "Buy me before good sense insists / You'll strain your purse and sprain your wrists."
The Writer’s Almanac

I will attend a conference in Minneapolis June 22 through June 26, and if not time to send news tomorrow before leaving, will continue the muse upon returning home.

The Cartwheelers are Memorial Hall Library librarians in Andover, Massachusetts who have formed a book cart drill team. They perform choreographed moves, as a color guard might — except with library book carts instead of flags. The drill team has been great PR for the library, say members. The book cart drill team was started six years ago when Assistant Head of Circulation Gerry Deyermond was handed a book by the assistant director and asked to create something for the Firefighters' Parade. The book was "The Library Book Cart Precision Drill Team Manual" by Linda McCrackin and Lynne Zeiner. Before that, the library's staff has simply marched in the November Firefighters' Parade like most everyone else. But once Deyermond read the manual, members of the staff started pushing the familiar metal book carts decorated with themes pertaining to the library.
http://www.andovertownsman.com/arts/local_story_163155135.html?keyword=secondarystory

In 1934, Paul Otlet of Mons, Belgium sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.” Historians typically trace the origins of the World Wide Web through a lineage of Anglo-American inventors like Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson. But more than half a century before Tim Berners-Lee released the first Web browser in 1991, Otlet (pronounced ot-LAY) described a networked world where “anyone in his armchair would be able to contemplate the whole of creation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?_r=2&8dpc&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Volunteers and library staff move books and items from Special Collections to upper level floors of Main Library at University of Iowa.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uinews/page5/
See pictures at bottom of page. (When in library school, I worked in the Special Collections Department at UI. At the time it was on the top floor and they were building two additional stories above. Besides dirt sifting down on us, we occasionally saw sparks. Don’t worry—we had plastic over all the collection.)

humint
This inelegant abbreviation stands for 'human intelligence'. Originally a CIA term, it is now in common use. It has two connotations: (1) The use of secret agents to collect intelligence (sense 1) - human beings as collectors; and (2) the collection of such intelligence from human beings (e.g. refugees), as opposed, say, to collecting it from intercepted radio signals - human beings as sources.
http://www.grberridge.co.uk/dict_comp_k_o.htm

From: Rudy Rosenberg (rudyrr att.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dornick
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/dornick.html
Doornik is hard to find on a map these days. The town is better known under its francophonic name of Tournai. Situated in the Walloon province of Hainaut, it has fallen on hard times thanks mostly to the Flemish government policy of Belgium. Tournai is definitively French speaking. Tournai, site of many battles in WWI has a wondrous cathedral well worth a visit.

Q, What poem do these lines come from?
The poetry of earth is never dead
The poetry of earth is ceasing never
A. “On the Grasshopper and Cricket”
http://www.bartleby.com/126/28.html
See entire poem at above link.

June 18 is the birthday of musician and songwriter Paul McCartney (1942), born in Liverpool, England, where he picked out chords on a family piano. He sang in the church choir at St. Barnabas, and he got good grades in grammar school at the Liverpool Institute. When he was 14, he learned to play a left-handed guitar and met a local art student named John Lennon. They formed a "skiffle" band called the Quarrymen. The band made its first appearance in 1957 and then spent several years based in a small Liverpool club called The Cavern. They also played several successful club dates in Hamburg, Germany, and when they returned, they met Brian Epstein, who became their manager. He suggested they replace their current drummer, Pete Best, with a young man named Ringo Starr. By 1963, the band, which had changed its name to the Beatles, was the most popular rock and roll group in England. The Guinness Book of World Records lists McCartney as the best-selling composer in popular music history. His song "Yesterday" is the most recorded ever, with more than 2,000 versions. McCartney, also a painter who has had several solo exhibits, has also authored a book of poetry, Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics 1965-1999 (2001).

June 18 is the birthday of novelist Gail Godwin (1937), (books by this author) born in Birmingham, Alabama. She wrote her first story, about a henpecked husband, at the age of nine. After studying journalism at Chapel Hill, she took a job as a reporter for The Miami Herald, but lost it after a couple of years because she couldn't stop herself from adding dramatic highlights to her news stories. She moved to London and got a job with a travel service, and she wrote a novel in her spare time about a woman stuck at home on an island while her husband is working on the mainland. She couldn't get it published anywhere. Then, one day, Godwin wrote the first sentence of a story that began, "'Run away,' he muttered to himself, sitting up and biting his nails." She wasn't sure what it meant, but she said, "A first sentence [like that] sort of excludes a story about a woman in her late twenties, adrift among the options of wifehood, career, vocation, a story that I had begun too many times already — both in fiction and reality — and could not resolve." The result was her short story "An Intermediate Stop," about an English vicar who writes a book about seeing God and becomes famous, only to find that his fame makes him miserable. That story got Godwin accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied under Kurt Vonnegut and was a classmate of John Irving. Her Ph.D. thesis became her first novel, The Perfectionists (1970).
The Writer’s Almanac

On June 19, 1865, over two years after Abraham Lincoln had signed his Emancipation Proclamation, Union general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, TX, to announce the end of slavery. The day, which came to be known as Juneteenth, is celebrated by African-Americans in commemoration of this event. Until that date, Texas had remained almost entirely under Confederate control, and the Emancipation Proclamation had not yet brought freedom to the slaves living there. In 1980, the government of Texas made the date an official state holiday.
http://www.answers.com/
You may sign up for daily e-mails at the link above.

The Food Assistance Landscape: FY 2007 Annual ReportSource: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service
Federal expenditures for USDA’s food assistance programs totaled almost $54.3 billion in fiscal 2007, over 2 percent more than in the previous fiscal year. This rise marked the seventh consecutive year in which food assistance expenditures increased and the fifth consecutive year in which they exceeded the previous historical record. The five largest food assistance programs — the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the Child and Adult Care Food Program, and the School Breakfast Program — accounted for 95 percent of USDA’s expenditures for food assistance. This report uses preliminary data from the Food and Nutrition Service to examine trends in the programs through fiscal 2007. It also discusses a series of recent ERS reports that compile evidence to help answer the question of whether the Food Stamp Program can do more to improve the food choices of participants.
+ Full Report (PDF; 482 KB)

FTC Permanently Halts “Pretexting” Scheme; Defendants Barred From Obtaining or Selling Consumer’ Phone Records to Third PartiesSource: Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission has put a permanent halt to an operation that allegedly obtained consumers’ confidential phone records without their knowledge or consent and sold them to third parties . The defendants are barred from obtaining consumers’ telephone records without their consent and court orders impose judgments on the defendants totaling more than $600,000 — the estimated amount of their ill-gotten gains.
This is the latest in a series of FTC cases targeting telephone pretexters — individuals who use false pretenses to obtain consumers — confidential information. Since 2006 the FTC has charged sixteen individuals and their corporations with violating federal law by pretexting to obtain phone records of third parties. All have now been barred from pretexting and all have been ordered to give up the money they made engaging in the illegal practice.
+ Federal Trade Commission, Plaintiff, v. Action Research Group, Inc., Joseph Depante, Matthew Depante, Bryan Wagner, Cassandra Selvage, and Eye in the Sky Investigations, Inc., Defendants

Adapting to Climate Change: A Business ApproachSource: Pew Center on Global Climate Change
This report outlines a sensible business approach to analyzing and adapting to the physical risks of climate change. It focuses on a critical first step in assessing these climate impacts: understanding the potential risks to business and the importance of taking action to mitigate those risks. Not all businesses need to take action now; this paper develops a qualitative screening process to assess whether a business is likely to be vulnerable to the physical risks associated with climate change, and whether a more detailed risk assessment is warranted.
+ Full Report (PDF; 397 KB)
See also: Clearing the Air: How Companies Operate in a Climate-conscious Era (Knowledge@Wharton)

Baseball and the Rule of Law RevisitedSource: Thomas Jefferson Law Review (via SSRN)
This is a revised and updated version of my 1999 article “Baseball and the Rule of Law.” In both articles, I argue that baseball is a highly legalistic game that can be used to help us understand how the rule of law operates in courts. The article notes that baseball is the only sport that requires a judicial ruling--a ruling by an umpire--for every play. No player is out or safe, no pitch is a strike or a ball until the umpire makes a ruling that is, in effect, a judicial determination. The article explains how the interpretation of baseball rules (umpires who call high strike zones or low strike zones for example) teach players and fans the nature of judicial interpretation. The article also examines briefly the controversy over the ownership of valuable baseballs caught by fans, the legal issues surrounding stadium franchises, baseball and antitrust, and the way in which baseball affected civil rights through the integration of the Major Leagues starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947.
Several options available for retrieval of full text (PDF; 187 KB).

Reaction to Jeffery Deaver quote on two forms of government
Remember we have at least three forms of government: federal, state and local. Most people also follow rules set up by families, organizations or institutions.

Trouble for Trouble! Judge Knocks $10 Mil from Helmsley Dog's Take
Trouble is the Maltese poodle left behind by the late Leona Helmsley, who died last August at 87. In papers that were reportedly unsealed today, Manhattan surrogate court judge Renee Roth, along with New York State’s Attorney General’s Office, reduced Trouble’s trust fund from $12 million to $2 million. According to the report in the NY Post, the deal also entailed $6 million in payments to Helmsley’s two disinherited grandchildren, amid their allegations that Helmsley wasn’t mentally competent when she signed her will.
Carl Lekic, the general manager of the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel put Trouble’s annual expenses at $190,000, which includes Lekic’s $60,000 guardian fee, $100,000 for ’round-the-clock security, $8,000 for grooming, $3,000 for miscellaneous expenses, $1,200 for food and anywhere from $2,500 to $18,000 for medical care. Helmsley’s will had asked that either her brother or grandson care for the dog, but both took a pass.
WSJ Law Blog June 16, 2008

Portrait of determination
When he was only eight years old, Glenn Cunningham's physicians told him that he would never walk again after suffering from severe leg burns from a gasoline explosion. Cunningham not only walked but was one of the premiere milers in the 1930s.
http://www.kshs.org/portraits/cunningham_glenn.htm

Toponyms are words derived from the names of places. The word toponym is from Greek topos (place)
balbriggan (bal-BRIG-uhn) noun
A knitted, unbleached cotton fabric, used in hosiery and underwear.
[After Balbriggan, a town near Dublin in Ireland, where it was first made.]
A.Word.A.Day

Serviceberry (also called Juneberry) tree
We have one of these trees with hundreds of berries ripe for the picking. Yesterday the tree was shaking as birds, chipmunks and squirrels rampaged. Luckily I had already filled two small bowls for myself.
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/hortcrop/h938w.htm

Due to interest shown in the giraffe piano last week, I’m following up with information on other upright pianos.
“There are four main types of upright grand piano. One of the earliest was the 'pyramid' piano (Pyramidenflügel), with a triangular case that tapered to a flat top. Another approach was represented by the 'bookcase' piano. These are extremely tall, rectangular instruments. The strings run vertically up from the keyboard, and the empty space on the treble side would often be filled with shelves. The 'giraffe' piano (Giraffenflügel) has its strings perpendicular to the keyboard. Its case slopes down elegantly from an extremely tall left side to the short treble side. The fourth type of upright grand piano is the 'lyre' piano (Lyraflügel). This evolved from the pyramid, and was built almost exclusively by Berlin piano makers in the second quarter of the 19th century.”
http://www.ptg.org/resources-historyOfPianos-upright.php


Some of the best soil in the world under water
On 15, residents in Iowa City--where the Iowa River was nearing its projected crest and rising downstream--were struggling with the waters, which submerged part of the University of Iowa’s campus and sent workers scrambling to move books and paintings from the university’s Arts Campus.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/us/16midwest.html?em&ex=1213761600&en=26c8215ba785304e&ei=5087%0A
See picture near confluence of Iowa and Cedar Rivers at link above.

Quote
We’re ruled by two different governments in America: the federal government in Washington and the government of the state we live in. The Bill of Rights only limits what the federal government can do to us . . . The Bill of Rights gives us virtually no protection against human and civil rights violations by state governments. And state laws are the ones that affect our lives much more directly than the federal government . . . ”
The Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver

June 14 is the birthday of American editor and publisher John Bartlett, born in Plymouth, Massachusetts (1820). His Familiar Quotations (1855) is still familiar and in its 17th edition. Bartlett started working at the University Book Store in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he was 16. Here he picked up his habit of collecting quotations, many of which came from the Bible and Shakespeare. "Ask John Bartlett" became a pass phrase among students looking for an odd bit of knowledge. Bartlett bought the bookstore in 1849 and married the granddaughter of a Harvard University president a couple years later. Besides books he enjoyed fishing and whist.
June 14 is the birthday of American novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, (books by this author) born Harriet Elizabeth Beecher in Litchfield, Connecticut (1811). Stowe's most famous work, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), was published in weekly installments for a year in the abolitionist paper National Era before it was published in its entirety. Three million copies of the book were sold before the Civil War began in 1861. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin brought Stowe international acclaim. She was invited to give lectures in Scotland and England and met Queen Victoria in 1856. The book was translated into 37 languages and made into both a play and a musical. George Aiken's dramatization was performed continuously from 1853 to 1934 in the United States. Throughout the Civil War, Stowe advocated for rights for former slaves, although she avoided associations with extremist abolitionists. Following the war, the author set up a school for former slaves in Florida.
Stowe said, "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."
On June 15, 1215, King John of England put his seal to the Magna Carta, one of the first historical documents to state that subjects have rights beyond the power of their rulers. The right to a trial by jury and the right of habeas corpus, which prevents one from being unlawfully imprisoned, have been extrapolated from the Magna Carta. King John was more or less coerced into agreeing to the document by a group of barons who were upset at his disastrous and costly foreign policy.. "Magna Carta" means "great charter" in Latin.
June 16 is the birthday of Joyce Carol Oates,(books by this author) born in Lockport, New York (1938). She's known for novels and short stories in which people's lives are torn apart by violence. She grew up in a rural part of New York, which she later used as the basis for the fictional Eden County, where many of her stories and novels are set. She began making up stories as a child, even before she knew how to write, and drew pictures to record them. The book that had the most profound influence on her life and her writing was Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. She read it when she was about 10 years old, and loved how Alice was calm and rational when facing nightmarish situations. She said that Alice's calmness made a strong impression, and ever since she has tried to write about nightmares and bizarre things in a coherent, calm way.
She published her first story, "In the Old World," in Mademoiselle magazine (1959) just before her senior year of college, and she published her first book of short stories, By the North Gate, a few years later, in 1963. She has gone on to become one of the most prolific writers of her generation, writing more than 70 books in 40 years, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays. She writes almost everything in long hand before typing, and she usually cuts out a few hundred pages from every novel before it is published.
On June 16, 1858, Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Springfield, Illinois, urging that the issue of slavery be resolved once and for all. He said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
The Writer’s Almanac

Payback For Many Hybrids Grows As Gas Costs RiseSource: Edmunds.com (Green Car Advisor)
In a piece posted last month, we reported that the payback period for hybrid cars shrunk a bit in March, with four models—30 percent of the market segment at the time—whose fuel savings could amortize the so-called hybrid premium in under 5 years. Higher demand has stiffened sales prices for hybrids and other cars and crossover SUVs with decent fuel economy while dealers and manufacturers are discounting less-efficient conventional gasoline models to try to move them off the lots.
That boosts the difference between the retail price of a hybrid and the equivalent gasoline model in a manufacturer’s lineup, and makes it harder for the hybrid to earn back its price premium from fuel savings alone. There are a few exceptions. Ford’s Escape hybrid SUV and its Mercury Mariner sibling and Saturn’s Vue Greenline mild hybrid SUV all saw slight dips in the payoff period, while payback for Toyota’s Prius remained unchanged, according to June figures just prepared by Edmunds.com analysts. Tax credits and really good fuel economy helped shrink the price difference and made payoff easier.

Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by the Federal Reserve
The Beige Book, June 11, 2008: "Reports from the Federal Reserve Districts suggest that economic activity remained generally weak in late April and May. Three Districts described economic activity as softer, weaker, or lower, with an additional four Districts reporting slower, sluggish, or modest economic growth. The remaining five Districts of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, St. Louis, and San Francisco described activity as stable or little changed in recent weeks.
Consumer spending slowed since the last report as incomes were pinched by rising energy and food prices. Higher energy prices also appeared to damp domestic tourism. Reports on non-financial services varied across Districts and industries. Manufacturing activity was generally soft in recent weeks, with weak demand for housing-related and some other products but with increasing demand for exports. Residential real estate markets remained weak across most Districts. Commercial real estate conditions varied across Districts, as did reports on nonresidential construction activity. Lending activity also varied across Districts and market segments, though tighter credit standards were reported for most loan categories. Districts reporting on the agriculture and energy sectors noted improved crop conditions and increased drilling and extraction activity.

EPA: Green Buildings On the Rise
News release: "Green building continues to gain momentum as it demonstrates numerous opportunities to improve the impacts of buildings on the environment and health. To acknowledge this growing trend and EPA's expanded role in it, EPA has released a new video on green buildings in its Green Scene series. The video features Dr. Bill Sanders, director of EPA's National Center for Environmental Research, talking about how EPA is encouraging and supporting green building, and how homeowners can take simple steps to green their homes."

smithereens (smith-uh-REENZ) noun
Tiny fragments.
[Probably from Irish smidirin, diminutive of smiodar (fragment).]
A.Word.A.Day

How to get images on Google: go to http://www.google.com/ and click on images at top left. Examples:
Organ pipe cactus

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=organ+pipe+cactus&gbv=2
Pipe organ

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22pipe+organ%22&gbv=2
Giraffe piano

http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=%22giraffe+piano%22

Trade Deficit Increases in April 2008
"The Nation's international deficit in goods and services increased to $60.9 billion in April from $56.5 billion (revised) in March, as imports increased more than exports." (10 June 2008)
FT900: U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services. Current Release: April 2008

Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (ISP-I-08-23) Feb 2008, Unclassified
"HIV/AIDS has become the world’s most important public health crisis. Approximately 33 million people are infected worldwide; two thirds of those are concentrated in a dozen African countries. The number of new HIV infections each year worldwide is 2.5 million people. The incidence of HIV among adults from 15 to 49 years of age has risen to 15 percent in many countries and is estimated at 30 percent in some southern African countries. Because of the scale of this disease, it threatens the political stability of the affected countries and their neighbors, and undermines their prospects for prosperity."

June 11 is the official state holiday of Hawaii, Kamehameha Day. It's a holiday that's been celebrated since 1871, when the ruler of Hawaii named the holiday in honor of his grandpa, Kamehameha the Great, who established the kingdom of Hawai'i — Kamehameha, a man known as "Napoleon of the Pacific." Today, the festival includes hula dancers and a floral parade and traditions that celebrate ancient Hawaii, because Kamehameha the Great tried to preserve these ancient traditions and not lose them to the influence of Europeans.
June 11 is the day that listeners first heard FM radio, when American inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong gave a demonstration in Alpine, New Jersey, in 1935. FM stands for "frequency modulation," because Armstrong's idea was to create sound by varying the frequency of a radio wave instead of varying its amplitude, which is what happens in AM radio.
The Writer’s Almanac

Aftermath of nature’s wrath
Two days ago we had three Norway maple trees. Because of wind damage we now have two, and a whole new look for our front lawn. Here’s hoping the “open” look won’t invite any more people driving under the influence to treat it as a roadway. (Longtime readers will remember two such instances.)

More wrath
One of the most scenic getaways for Chicagoans is devastated. Weekend rains of biblical proportions dumped so much water into Lake Delton that it literally burst its banks.Tens of thousands of gallons of lake water barreled through the woods, taking with it a roadway, several houses, boats, fish and lake bed. It emptied into the nearby Wisconsin River and was gone in hours.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061008-lake-delton-flood-,0,1757046.story

Andrew Carnegie saw public libraries as temples of learning and centers of culture. They should be free to all. Many were not. They should be designed with open stacks of books and materials, so visitors could browse them and discover new things. The librarian's counter should be at the center and not blocking the door. Carnegie backed up his library ideas with money, but he faced down a number of problems. Some authors protested that widespread libraries would cut their royalty fees. Others believed open libraries would be magnets for the "disreputables." The steel man ignored the critics. From 1883 to 1929, the Carnegie Corp., his charitable foundation, funded construction of 2,500 libraries in the United States, Britain and Ireland.
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=415538&Category=8&subCategoryID=

Mildred Dorothy Sommer, a librarian from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, a 1928 graduate of the University of Michigan, will help countless others attend the university she loved.
She died last year at age 100, leaving $5.2 million, the bulk of her fortune, to fund graduate fellowships at U-M's College of Literature, Science and the Arts.
It is the largest single bequest payment to the LSA college during the university's $2.5-billion Michigan Difference fund-raising campaign that began in 2004.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080606/NEWS05/806060434

hubbub (HUB-ub) noun
Excited fuss or tumult of a crowd.
[Perhaps from Irish ubub (an interjection of contempt).]
A.Word.A.Day

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.A thief who stole a calendar got 12 months.When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.

Two heavy-hitting litigators, Skadden’s Tom Nolan and Quinn Emanuel’s John Quinn, went to Riverside, California, a couple weeks ago to fight over dolls. According to the Daily Journal, they’ve also been fighting over hotel rooms. The piece (link unavailable) reports that when Quinn and his legal team, who are representing Mattel, tried to book rooms in Riverside’s Mission Inn , a century-old historic landmark, they found that Nolan’s clients, MGA Entertainment, had the hotel sign a contract barring Quinn and his team from sharing the accommodations. Nolan, whose L.A. office is about 55 miles away from Riverside, said MGA and its former counsel in the case, O’Melveny & Myers, decided the contract was necessary because they had concerns about accidental delivery of their case file boxes or faxes to opposing counsel’s rooms during trial.
Quinn and Nolan are in Riverside to litigate the Bratz-Barbie dispute, in which Mattel accuses MGA of essentially stealing the idea for Bratz dolls. Mattel is trying to seize ownership of the $500 million per year Bratz franchise. MGA denies wrongdoing, and accuses Mattel in a separate suit of copying Bratz. Quinn reportedly asked District Judge Stephen Larson, who is presiding over the Bratz trial, to deem the contract unenforceable and clear the way for his firm to stay at the inn. Larson declined to resolve the dispute. But the contract didn’t end up being an issue. In a conference with Larson, Nolan said, lawyers representing the Mission Inn pointed out that there was “an exception to the exclusionary contract” that gave Quinn & Co. the option of booking rooms at the Mission through a travel agent, but not directly through the inn.
“It didn’t prevent us from staying” at the hotel, said Quinn. Quinn said he and most members of his team opted instead to register at the nearby Riverside Marriott, but half a dozen of his colleagues ended up with rooms at the Mission Inn. He said he opted for the Marriott ($149-$350/night) because it had more amenities for trial preparation and was “less expensive” than the Mission Inn ($215-$2,000/night).
Nolan said an issue arose the day Quinn Emanuel and Skadden lawyers checked in at the hotel. He said a delivery person inadvertently routed a package for a Quinn lawyer to the room of a Skadden partner. Nolan said his colleague brought the box to the Quinn attorney. Now, the entire Quinn legal team, according to the Daily Journal, has since moved to the Marriott.
WSJ Law Blog June 9, 2008

In Barbie and Bratz Case, Is the Chronology the Key?
Heading into the Barbie vs. Bratz copyright trial, it had been assumed that the legal battleground would be a timeline of events: Was Carter Bryant, the designer of the pouty-lipped Bratz doll, still an employee of Mattel when dreamed up the now-$500 million per year franchise owned by MGA?
But according to Isaac Larian, the founder of closely-held MGA, that factual dispute doesn’t pose a problem for his company. On Friday, Larian testified that even if Bryant “was working on [Bratz] or refining them while he was at Mattel, I don’t see a problem.” Still, he said, it was his understanding that the original idea for the doll came to Bryant in 1998 when he was not employed in the toy industry. Here’s the story from the WSJ’s Nicholas Casey, and here’s more on the trial from the L.A. Times.
Mattel, represented by Quinn Emanuel’s John Quinn, accuses MGA of essentially stealing the idea for Bratz dolls, and is trying to seize ownership of the Bratz line. MGA, rep’d by Skadden’s Tom Nolan, denies wrongdoing, and accuses Mattel in a separate suit of copying Bratz.
On Thursday, reports the WSJ, Larian argued that MGA had made no deliberate effort to siphon off doll designers working at Mattel and often simply hired employees laid off from the toy giant. Mattel introduced a November 1999 email, however, where he appeared to contradict this: “Why are we waiting for a layoff?” he asked his employees. “We should aggressively recruit from inside Mattel.” The trial continues this week with the testimony of Mattel CEO Bob Eckert.
WSJ Law Blog June 9, 2008

First came the Amazon book rankings. Then newspapers started tracking the most popular articles on their sites and journalists. But would you believe that academics could become caught up in such petty, vain competition? Of course, you say. Still, short of hanging out in the stacks at the library and peeking over shoulders, the pursuit of that particular vanity had to wait for the Internet, and the creation of the Social Science Research Network, an increasingly influential site that now offers nearly 150,000 full-text documents for downloading.
The network is a business set up in 1994 by five people who saw a niche in online academic research. They pooled their money and began building relationships and the infrastructure to post so much material. All but one comes from the world of economic and legal scholarship, and it is in those areas that the network is strongest, adding an estimated 45,000 articles or so a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/media/09link.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

On June 16, James Joyce aficionados the world over celebrate Bloomsday.
The day is named after advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, protagonist of Joyce's novel Ulysses. The entirety of this book recounts an ordinary day, June 16, 1904, as various characters go about their ways in Dublin, Ireland.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/keats03.html
See whole poem at above link.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two-tired.A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, and resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.A boiled egg is hard to beat.

Act of nature
Severe winds during the last week have sheared off heavy limbs from our three Norway maples. After hearing a loud crack last night, I found one of the limbs had crashed into a bedroom, but it didn’t break the glass. When the mess is cleaned up, I’ll inspect the outside of the house.

To your health Edamame salad
Cook edamame (Japanese soybeans) one or more minutes. Drain and run cold water over them. Add other vegetables of your choice and toss with salad dressing. Many other recipes here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=edamame+salad+recipes

Get thousands of images of Toledo’s Glass Pavilion in seconds.
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&q=glass+pavilion+toledo

Around Toledo
Chef Ryan Reiter and owners Phil Dew and Mark Osborn open the doors of the historic Park Lane on the first Saturday of every month for a simple four-course meal. Cost is $20 per person. The building contains apartments and corporate suites, and is located at 142 23rd Street, one block from The Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion. Call for dinner reservations at 419/255-4006 or 419/255-4007.

In the “we couldn’t make this up if we wanted to” department, the office of Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA, has announced the arrest of James Delayo, the chief inspector for Cranes and Derricks. Delayo, a veteran of the New York City Department of Buildings, has been charged with accepting bribes from crane operators and crane companies. The Manhattan DA’s office has been investigating the spate of construction site incidents in Manhattan; however, these charges relate to events between 2002 and 2007 and are not connected to the recent crane accidents in New York City, according to a spokeswoman at the Manhattan DA’s office.
WSJ Law Blog June 6, 2008

On June 4, Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the keynote address at the annual Games For Change conference, which was held at Parsons New School For Design. In the speech, she said she’s spearheading a project called “Our Courts,” which she reportedly described as an “online, interactive civic education project for seventh-and eighth-graders” that familiarizes students with the legal system.
“If someone told me when I retired from court that I’d be talking at a conference about digital gaming, I’d think they’d had one drink too many,” O’Connor told the crowd. “Only one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government,” she lamented, “but two-thirds can name a judge on American Idol.”
O’Connor said that the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 has “effectively squeezed out civics education” from public schools. That’s why she wants to work alongside University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Paul Gee to create “Our Courts.”
WSJ Law Blog June 6, 2008

Buckminster Fuller envisioned a “New Era Home,” which would be “erectable in one day, complete in every detail,” and, on top of that, “drudgery-proof,” with “every living appliance known to mankind, built-in.” The hexagonal-shaped, single-family home was to be stamped out of metal and suspended from a central mast that would contain all its wiring and plumbing. When a family moved, the Dymaxion House could be assembled and taken along, like a bed or a table. Fuller constructed a scale model of the house, which was exhibited in 1929 at Marshall Field’s as part of a display of modern furniture. When Marshall Field’s displayed his model house, it wanted a catchy label, so it hired a consultant, who fashioned “dymaxion” out of bits of “dynamic,” “maximum,” and “ion.” Fuller was so taken with the word, which had no known meaning, that he adopted it as a sort of brand name. The Dymaxion House led to the Dymaxion Vehicle, which led, in turn, to the Dymaxion Bathroom and the Dymaxion Deployment Unit, essentially a grain bin with windows.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_kolbert
In the late 1940s, 30,000 people wanted to buy R. Buckminster Fuller's round Dymaxion House, which was made of aluminum and Plexiglas, assembled in a factory, weighed only 6,000 pounds and was designed to be disassembled, tucked into a cylinder and air-freighted anywhere in the world. But only two prototypes were made, and William L. Graham, an entrepreneur from Wichita, Kansas, bought both.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DC133CF933A05752C0A964958260
http://www.absolutemichigan.com/dig/michigan/buckminster-fullers-dymaxion-house/
http://www.yesterland.com/dymaxion.html

Amber Waves — June 2008Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
Feature articles in the June 2008 issue include: Who Will China Feed?; Food Stamps and Obesity: What We Know and What It Means; World Trade Organization and Globalization Help Facilitate Growth in Agricultural Trade; Defining the “Rural” in Rural America. Other articles cover such topics as Marketing Loans Induced Acreage Expansion in U.S. Dry Peas; ERS and Collaborators Model Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreaks; Lower Income Households Spend Additional Income on Foods Other Than Fruits and Vegetables; Almonds Lead Increase in Tree Nut Consumption; Pest Problems Abroad May Affect Compliance with U.S. Safeguards; Soil Conservation Preserves Reservoir Benefits Nationwide; A Look at the Economic Well-being of Farm Households; Farm Size Behind Regional Differences in Hog Output and Productivity. Also includes selected statistics on agriculture and trade, diet and health, natural resources, farm households, and rural America. Permalink

Phrase origins and meanings
Music
pull out all the stops
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/290100.html
face the music
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/8/messages/137.html

Games/sports
knuckle down
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/knuckle-down.html
cover all the bases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_idioms_derived_from_baseball

Covering the bases, 2005 speech by SEC commissioner at Stanford University
http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch062105lct.htm

Each morning sees some task begin,Each evening sees it close;Something attempted, something done,Has earned a night's repose.
http://www.horseshoeingmuseum.com/poem.htm
See complete poem at above link.

Around Toledo
Zoe’s Food & Spirits is located in a small shopping center at the northwest corner of McCord and Dorr. We enjoyed the favorite dish of our waitress: blackened ribeye steak. We took about half of our dinners home for another meal. No cover charge when they have live music. Stop at Asian grocery store in same center for edamame (Japanese soybeans)
http://members.tripod.com/aerogreen/edamame.htm

Online Guide to the House and Senate Members of the 110th Congress
"This online Guide to the House and Senate Members of the 110th Congress is intended to be a single point of access for Member information from several different official sources. Both congressional offices and the public will be able to:
Access data concerning House and Senate Members from various publications including: the Congressional Pictorial Directory, Congressional Biographical Directory, and the Congressional Directory.
Search for and retrieve individual Members by Name, Hometown, State/Territory, District, Term Count, Bio Data, Birth Date, Place Of Birth, WebSite, Zip Code, Counties/Parishes, Office Building or groups of Members by state, party affiliation, or number of terms.
Link to individual Member's corresponding information in the Biographical Directory maintained by the House and Senate and link to individual member web pages."

Capturing King Coal: Deploying Carbon Capture and Storage Systems in the U.S. at Scale
News release: "A WRI [World Resources Institute] analysis of the complex challenges that investors would face when deploying carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies shows that until government policies support large-scale demonstrations it is unlikely that CCS will be able to fulfill its potential in combating climate change. Carbon capture and storage, the process whereby carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant is injected deep underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change, could play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while allowing for the continued use of coal as an energy source. Coal is one of the cheapest fuels for power generation, and its affordability and large domestic reserves make it likely to remain so for some time.
Capturing King Coal: Deploying Carbon Capture and Storage Systems in the U.S. at Scale, May 2008. Hiranya Fernando, John Venezia, Clay Rigdon, Preeti Verma

Proofpoint’s Outbound Email and Data Loss Prevention in Today’s Enterprise, 2008 report - ["the survey was fielded in the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia to explore global concerns.]
"Email remains the most important medium for communications both inside and outside the enterprise. But the convenience and ubiquity of email as a business communications tool has exposed enterprises to a wide variety of legal, financial and regulatory risks associated with outbound email. Enterprises continue to express a high level of concern about creating, managing and enforcing outbound messaging policies (for email and other communication protocols) that ensure that messages leaving the organization comply with both internal rules, best practices for data protection and external regulations. In addition, organizations remain very concerned about ensuring that email (and other electronic message streams) cannot be used to disseminate confidential or proprietary information...The results show that data protection concerns are not confined to the US and that globally, email, webmail, FTP, blogs message boards, media sharing sites and social networking sites are a source of concern as well as real-world risk for IT professionals working in large enterprises."

New Study Sheds Light on the Growing U.S. Wind Power Market
News release: "For the third consecutive year the U.S. was home to the fastest-growing wind power market in the world, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Specifically, U.S. wind power capacity increased by 46 percent in 2007, representing a $9 billion investment in new wind projects. At this pace, wind is on a path to becoming a significant contributor to the U.S. power mix: wind projects accounted for 35 percent of all new electricity-generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2007, and more than 200 GW (gigawatts, or billion watts) of wind power are in various stages of development throughout the country."
Annual Report on U.S. Wind Power Installation, Cost, and Performance Trends: 2007

In Texas-Arkansas Spat, Judge Orders Parties to Midfield
We’ve always known that folks from both Texas and Arkansas take their college football pretty seriously. Apparently, so do their judges. In the case of Waggoner v. Wal-Mart, which is being litigated in the Western District of Texas, a discovery dispute arose over the location of a deposition for a Wal-Mart representative. The choices were San Antonio, Texas, and Bentonville, Arkansas.
Acknowledging the delicate nature of the problem, Judge James Nowlin, in an order <http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/waggoner.pdf> , wrote:
The Court is sympathetic with the Defendant’s argument. Surely Defendant’s corporate representative, a resident of Arkansas, would feel great humiliation by being forced to enter the home state of the University of Texas, where the legendary Texas Longhorns have wrought havoc on the Arkansas Razorbacks with an impressive 55-21 all-time record.
On the other hand, the Court is sympathetic with Plaintiff’s position. Plaintiffs might enter Arkansas with a bit of trepidation as many residents of Arkansas are still seeking retribution for the “Game of the Century” in which James Street and Darrell Royal stunned the Razorbacks by winning the 1969 National Championship.
Judge Nowlin’s solution? He ordered that the deponent appear on the steps of the Texarkana Federal Building, 500 State Line Avenue, TX/AR 71854.
While he chose to split the baby, Judge Nowlin, in a footnote, revealed where his football loyalties lie: “It is worth noting,” he wrote, “that the Razorbacks, who disgracefully retreated from the Southwest Conference to the gentler pastures of the Southeastern Conference, could have likely learned a lesson about stamina and perseverance in the face of battle by visiting the Alamo in San Antonio.”
WSJ Law Blog June 4, 2008

Gaming U.S. News by sneaking students through the back door?
Over at Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports blog <http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2008/06/schools-that-ta.html> he takes a look at the schools that take the largest number of transfers as a percentage of their first-year class. Why take transfers? Leiter suggests a reason: Since 22.5% of the U.S. News ranking of a school is based on the median LSAT and GPA of the One L class, it’s easier to report better medians by keeping One L classes small. “Of course,” writes Leiter, “a school that reduces the size of its 1L class needs to make up the lost revenue, and one way to do that is by taking a large number of transfers. The transfers are ‘invisible’ as far as 22.5% of the US News ranking is concerned, though their tuition dollars still pay the bills.”
Here are the ten schools that take the largest number of transfer students, relative to the size of their first-year class: 1) Florida State University; 2) Rutgers University, Camden; 3) Washington University, St. Louis; 4) University of Illinois; 5) Georgetown; 6) NYU; 7) Emory; 8) UCLA; 9) Northwestern; 10) Columbia.
WSJ Law Blog June 4, 2008

Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.
Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.” The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”
Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught.
Flaws in Darwinian theory are listed on an anti-evolution Web site, strengthsandweaknesses.org, which is run by Texans for Better Science Education.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/us/04evolution.html?ref=us

A Manhattan skyscraper that is home to The New York Times became the site of twin daredevil stunts on June 5, with two men scaling the 52-story office tower within a matter of hours. The Times moved into the new building, covered with slats that helped the climbers, last year.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-X9EiTPmtPeKpyu5eoS_apDk-9AD914GBPO0

Missing pyramid found
On June 5, Egyptian archaeologists unveiled a 4,000-year-old missing pyramid that is believed to have been discovered by an archaeologist about 175 years ago and never seen again.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/06/MN7M1143AD.DTL

June 6 is the birthday of the poet, novelist, and children's author Maxine Kumin, (books by this author) born in Philadelphia (1925). She won the Pulitzer Prize for a book inspired by her New Hampshire farm titled Up Country: Poems of New England (1972). In college, an instructor handed back comments on her poetry that read: "Say it with flowers, but for God's sake don't try to write poems."

TOLEDO EVENTS
Valentine unveils mural
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080605/COLUMNIST10/806050350/-1/ART

Old West End festival June 7 and 8
http://www.dotoledo.org/gtcvb/events/event_detail.asp?key=3283
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080605/ART03/806050304

New on LLRX.com
The Art of Written Persuasion: The Rise of Written Persuasion In this column, Troy Simpson writes on persuading judges in writing. This first article in the series surveys the history of written advocacy in three jurisdictions--England and Wales, Australia, and America--to show why good written advocacy is vital to the modern lawyer.

Federal Reserve Website Access to Historical Documents of the Federal Open Market Committee
"The Federal Reserve Board's website now features convenient access to historical documents of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) for the years 1978 through 2002 [note: use the drop-down menu on the upper left side of the page]. Greenbooks, Bluebooks, and other documents related to FOMC meetings join the transcripts, minutes, and policy announcements that had previously been available on the Board's site. The Greenbook and the Bluebook are prepared by Board staff and distributed to FOMC meeting attendees the week before each scheduled meeting. The Greenbook, officially entitled "Current Economic and Financial Conditions," provides in-depth analysis of the U.S. and international economies and includes the staff's economic forecast. The Bluebook, entitled "Monetary Policy Alternatives," provides background and context on monetary policy alternatives the FOMC could consider."

GPO and the American Printing Industry Move Forward with Sustainable Environmental Stewardship, Prepared Remarks from Robert C. Tapella, Public Printer of the United States May 31, 2008
"Today, for many documents, there is no longer a requirement for typesetting, printing, or binding, and there is no tangible document to make its way to library shelves or otherwise be preserved for the future. Authors begin the process by digitally recording their manuscripts on a personal computer and then making their documents available through web portals. With growing frequency, there is often no need for an original printing of multiple copies. Such documents are said to be “born digital and published to the Web.” this publishing strategy has become so common today, that more than half of the Government information products we make available to our depository library partners never see ink-on-paper."

The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded on June 4, 1917. Laura Richards and Maude Elliott won the prize for biography, with their book about the 19th-century writer and suffragist Julia Ward Howe. Jean Jules Jusserand (zhawn zhool zhoo-say-RAWN), the French ambassador to the United States from 1902 to 1925, won the prize for history: With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope of the New York World won the prize for journalism, and when he picked up his award, said: "I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula of failure — which is try to please everybody."
On June 4, 1919, the 19th Amendment to the constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed by the United States Congress
After the Congress passed the amendment on this day in 1919, it had to be ratified by a majority of state legislatures. The state that tipped the balance was Tennessee and the man who cast the deciding vote was the twenty-four year old representative Harry Burn, the youngest man in the state legislature that year. Before the vote, he happened to read his mail, and one of the letters he received was from his mother. It said, "I have been watching to see how you stood but have noticed nothing yet…Don't forget to be a good boy and…vote for suffrage." He did.
The Writer’s Almanac

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas. When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, 'Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.'

Books coming to Shumaker charity sale in Toledo
White Sister by Stephen J. Cannell hardbound 340 pages
a Shane Scully novel
http://www.cannell.com/

By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz hardbound 353 pages
http://www.deankoontz.com/

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child paperbound 477 pages
Eleventh book in the (You don’t mess with) Jack Reacher series
http://www.leechild.com/badluck.php
NYT review of the book featuring Reacher, the “Paul Bunyan of the thriller world”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/books/14masl.html?ex=1180411200&en=0b3b3de00ea6227e&ei=5070

Dirty Work by Stuart Woods paperbound 348 pages
Stone Barrington (of counsel to a prestigious New York law firm) novel
www.stuartwoods.com

Blood Works by Michael Connelly hardbound 391 pages
Terry McCaleb, recovering from a heart transplant, investigates murders against the advice of his doctor
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/mccaleb.html

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters hardbound 511 pages
It won the CWA Historical Dagger prize for historical crime fiction and was picked more than any other novel as a Book of the Year 2002.
www.sarahwaters.com

Is Google violating a California privacy law? Sites need to link to their privacy policy “located on the homepage or first significant page after entering the Web site.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/is-google-violating-a-california-privacy-law/index.html?ref=technology

The production of traditional books rose 1% in 2007, to 276,649 new titles and editions, but the output of on-demand, short run and unclassified titles soared from 21,936 in 2006 to 134,773 last year, according to preliminary figures released by R.R. Bowker. The combination of the two categories results in a 39% increase in output to 411,422.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6564566.html

110 Countries Agree to Cluster Bomb Ban, Despite U.S. PressureSource: Friends Committee on National Legislation
More than half the world’s governments agreed on May 28 to ban the production, use, stockpiling and export of all existing cluster munitions. Meeting in Dublin, Ireland, representatives of 110 nations completed negotiations on a new international treaty that commits their governments to stop using these weapons and to destroy their existing stockpiles within eight years.
The U.S. government did not attend the negotiations. But in the end all other major NATO countries joined with the majority in agreeing to ban these weapons, which are designed to kill or maim every living thing in an area as large as two football fields. The vast majority of victims of cluster bombs have been civilians.
Read more on the treaty negotiationsRead the final text of the treaty (PDF; 79 KB) Permalink


When is 'Under Seal' Not 'Under Seal'? GE Finds Out the Hard Way To say lawyers and technology mix like oil and water might be an overstatement. Still, from time to time we come across a tale in which a smallish technological problem leads to big headaches for lawyers. It always makes us wonder if life in the law weren’t a little less thorny back before the days of email and electronic discovery, back-up tapes and terabytes of data.
The latest saga comes courtesy of the class action sex-discrimination brought case against General Electric. (Click here for a previous post about the case). According to this story in the Connecticut Law Tribune, plaintiffs lawyers at Sanford, Wittels & Heisler in Washington, D.C. filed several documents with the court in which it had redacted certain passages about GE.
WSJ Law Blog May 29, 2008

Bodies: the Exhibition, on display South Street Seaport in Manhattan, contains room after room of preserved cadavers, cut up and stripped down so as to reveal practically every inch of the human body — muscles, blood vessels, lymph nodes, the whole deal.
While walking through the exhibit last spring, never did we give any thought to the provenance of the bodies themselves. But that’s the topic of a settlement unveiled Thursday between Premier Exhibitions, the owner of the the show, and New York AG Andrew Cuomo’s office. As part of the settlement, Premiere admitted that it could not prove the bodies used were not those of prisoners in China who may have been tortured or executed. The company promised refunds to those who paid to see the exhibit. Here are stories from the NYT and Bloomberg. The settlement came after an investigation into the origin of the cadavers and body parts used in the exhibit.
WSJ Law Blog May 30, 2008

Pity the poor word “elite,” which simply means “the best” as an adjective and “the best of a group” as a noun. What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/opinion/30jacoby.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Along the same line:
A purist is what you call someone you disagree with.
A negative person is what you call someone you disagree with.
Irresponsible debate is language you disagree with.
Debate is language you agree with.
A gadfly is what you call someone you disagree with.
An activist judge is someone whose opinion you disagree with.
An injudicious judge is someone whose opinion you disagree with.
A judge who overreaches is someone whose opinion you disagree with.

Symptoms:
1. Send the same e-mail twice.
2. Send a blank e-mail.
3. Send e-mail to the wrong person.
4. Send it back to the person who sent it to you.
5. Forget to attach the attachment.
6. Hit 'SEND' before you've finished.
7. Hit 'DELETE' instead of 'SEND.'
8. Hit 'SEND' when you should 'DELETE.'
Causes: Haste? Mind wandering? Young and foolish? Old and foolish?

FDIC Report: Quarterly Banking Profile, First Quarter 2008
Quarterly Banking Profile: "Provides the earliest comprehensive summary of financial results for all FDIC-insured institutions. This report card on industry status and performance includes written analyses, graphs and statistical tables." Updated 5/29/08
A recent settlement struck between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors over an antitrust suit alleging that the NAR improperly controlled how home listings are displayed on the Internet might be a boon to home buyers and sellers. Or it might not.
The DOJ’s Deborah A. Garza, the deputy assistant AG for antitrust, called the settlement a win for consumers, certainly, who will now have the benefit of unrestricted competition.” But Laurie Janik, the NAR’s GC, told the NYT that the settlement would have no real impact on home buyers or sellers. I don’t think they’ll see anything different, she said. This lawsuit never had anything to do with commission rates, or discount brokerages. (Here’s another story from the WSJ.)
The 2005 suit, filed in federal court in Chicago, challenged Realtor rules that allowed brokers to block their listings of homes for sale from being displayed on the Web sites of other brokers that offer discounted commissions or flat-rate fees. Under the settlement, the Realtors agreed to adopt new rules that don’t discriminate against online brokers. The settlement says online brokers should be allowed to provide the same information via the Internet that conventional brokers offer to people who walk into their offices.
WSJ Law Blog May 28, 2008



FTC Permanently Halts Pretexting Scheme; Defendants Barred From Obtaining or Selling Consumers' Phone Records to Third Parties
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has put a permanent halt to an operation that allegedly obtained consumers’ confidential phone records without their knowledge or consent and sold them to third parties. The defendants are barred from obtaining consumers’ telephone records without their consent and court orders impose judgments on the defendants totaling more than $600,000 – the estimated amount of their ill-gotten gains.
Federal Trade Commission, Plaintiff, v. Action Research Group, Inc., Joseph Depante, Matthew Depante, Bryan Wagner, Cassandra Selvage, and Eye in the Sky Investigations, Inc., Defendants. (United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida Orlando Division) Civil Action No.: 6:07-CV-0227-ORL-22JGG File No. 072 3021

New on LLRX
Commentary: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 Beth Wellington focuses on the issue of pay inequity through an exploration of the positions taken by the administration, Congress, the Supreme Court and various journalists.

Law Lexicon: stare decisis Latin for "to stand by that which is decided." Precedent decisions are to be followed by the courts.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s065.htm
Merriam Webster: stare decisis a doctrine or policy of following rules or principles laid down in previous judicial decisions unless they contravene the ordinary principles of justice
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stare+decisis

Radiocarbon dating of cremated bodies excavated from Britain's Stonehenge have solved part of the mystery surrounding the 5,000-year-old site: It was a burial ground for what might have been the country's first royal dynasty. The new dates indicate burials began at least 500 years before the first stones were erected at the site and continued after it was completed, British archaeologists said on May 29th. Stonehenge, concentric circles of massive stones surrounded by a ditch and earthen bank, is aligned with sunrise at the summer solstice, and researchers have long viewed the monument as both an astronomical observatory and a cemetery.
Excavations at Durrington Walls, two miles northeast of Stonehenge, revealed a village that is now thought to contain as many as 1,000 houses and a wooden henge that is virtually identical in design to Stonehenge but is aligned with sunrise at the winter solstice. It was built at the same time as Stonehenge.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004447134_stonehenge30.html
Images of Durrington Walls
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22durrington+walls%22&gbv=2
Images of Stonehenge
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=stonehenge
Note that not of all of Stonehenge survives—some of the stones were quarried, and some vandalized.

On May 31, 1790 Congress enacted the United States copyright law. The law gave authors exclusive rights to publish and sell maps, charts, and books for a period of 14 years, with a chance to renew the copyright for another 14 years. There have been many changes to the U.S. copyright law since 1790. In the 19th century, copyrights became available for photographs, paintings, drawings, and models. In 1909, musical rolls for player pianos became covered by the law. In the last 30 years, copyright law has expanded to include cable TV, computer software, tapes, CDs, DVDs, and, most recently, MP3s.
Copyright terms have also gradually gotten longer. Up until 1998, copyrights lasted for the life of the author plus an additional 50 years before they went into the public domain. But in that year, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended the duration of copyrights by 20 years. The act was supported by a group of large corporations, led by Disney. Most of Disney's famous characters were scheduled to enter the public domain between 2000 and 2004, but now other artists and companies won't be able to use them in their books and movies and songs until at least 2019 - which means that Disney has another 11 years of making money off Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and all the rest.

June 1 is the birthday of novelist Colleen McCullough, (books by this author) born in Wellington, Australia (1937). She went into neurophysiology, the study of the nervous system. She did all kinds of work in the laboratories at Yale, but because she was a woman, was paid about half as much as her co-workers. So, to try to make a little extra money, she decided to write a novel.
Her first novel, Tim, was published in 1974. That book sold well, but her first great success was The Thorn Birds (1977), an epic novel that tells the story of an Australian family across three generations. It became an international best seller and enabled McCullough to quit her job and devote all of her time to writing.

On June 2, 1865 the Civil War came to a formal end. Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, surrendered, and the last Confederate army ceased to exist. The war that cost 620,000 American lives was over.

June 2 is the birthday of John Hope, born in Augusta, Georgia, (1868). He was an educator and an advocate of liberal-arts instruction for blacks. He publicly disagreed with Booker T. Washington's 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" speech, where Washington called for blacks to focus on technical training and to abandon, at least for the time being, the struggle for political and social equality. Hope became the president of Atlanta University, the first graduate school for blacks, and was one of the founders of the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He said, "We have sat on the riverbank and caught catfish with pin hooks. The time has come to harpoon a whale."
The Writer’s Almanac