Google 2008 U.S. Election Coverage
See the latest news, videos, blog posts, and pictures from the conventions.

Library of Congress Country Profile - Afghanistan
Federal Research Division Country Profile: Afghanistan, August 2008

Concerned about its appeal to sponsors, the women’s professional golf tour, which in recent years has been dominated by foreign-born players, has warned its members that they must become conversant in English by 2009 or face suspension. The L.P.G.A. and the other professional golf tours, unlike professional team sports, are dependent on their relationships with corporate sponsors for their financial survival. The L.P.G.A.’s new language policy — believed to be the only such policy in a major sport — was first reported by Golfweek magazine on its Web site August 25.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/sports/golf/27golf.html?em

New GAO Reports: Hurricane Katrina, Medicare Part D
Hurricane Katrina: Continuing Debris Removal and Disposal Issues, GAO-08-985R, August 25, 2008
Medicare Part D: Some Plan Sponsors Have Not Completely Implemented Fraud and Abuse Programs, and CMS Oversight Has Been Limited, GAO-08-760, July 21, 2008

Turned-around phrases seen in different novels
Some the worse for wear
Up to no bad

40 years at the U.S. Open
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/25/sports/tennis/20080825_USOPEN_TIMELINE.html

Feng Shui (the Mandarin pronunciation is foong soyee, the Cantonese pronunciation is Fung Shwey) literally means wind and water. Feng Shui is the Chinese art of harmonic placement.
http://www.naturallyconnected.com.au/fengshui.htm

apograph (AP-uh-graf)
noun: copy or transcript
From Greek apo- (away, off, apart) + -graph (writing).
A.Word.A.Day

August 27 is the birthday of novelist Theodore Dreiser, (books by this author) born in Terre Haute, Indiana (1871). He came from a big family; he was the 12th of 13 children. When he was a boy, his father was injured by a falling beam, and his mother had to take in lodgers and washing to keep the family afloat. Dreiser had to walk across the railroad tracks looking for stray lumps of coal. He left home at the age of 16 and moved to Chicago, where he eventually became a newspaper reporter. One of his co-workers persuaded Dreiser to try writing fiction. One night, when he was trying to come up with an idea for a novel, he wrote the words "Sister Carrie" on a half-sheet of yellow copy paper. Within a year, he had finished the first novel, titled Sister Carrie (1900), about a chorus girl who advances in life by sleeping around.
Doubleday agreed to publish the book, on the recommendation of the novelist Frank Norris. But after Frank Doubleday and his wife read the manuscript, they refused to give the book any advertising or marketing because they thought the novel was shocking and amoral. And it was a big flop when the book came out in 1900. Only 456 copies were sold. Afterward, Dreiser started taking manual labor jobs, working in factories and on railroads. But his wealthy brother, who was a successful songwriter, helped him get a job as an editor. In 1907, Dreiser used his influence to get Sister Carrie republished, and it went on to become a great success. Theodore Dreiser said, "Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail."
August 27 is the birthday of travel writer William Least Heat-Moon, (books by this author) born William Trogdon in Kansas City, Missouri (1939). Of mixed English-Irish-Osage ancestry and the son of a lawyer, he spent the first part of his life immersed in academia, earning four degrees: a bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. in literature, and then a bachelor's in photojournalism. He had been a university professor in the late 1970s when, within the course of a few months, he lost his teaching job because of declining student enrollment at his school, and his wife of 11 years separated from him. He decided to take to the open road and "live the real jeopardy of circumstance." He had a 1975 Ford van, which he made into a camper. Over the course of several months, he traveled 13,000 miles around the United States. He sat in local coffee shops and diners and parks and conversed with residents, listening to people narrate stories of their town. The book in which he chronicled his adventures, Blue Highways: A Journey into America, was published in 1982 and garnered widespread acclaim. He's also the author of PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country (1991) and River-Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America (1999).
August 28 is the birthday of novelist Liam O'Flaherty, (books by this author) born on Inishmore, in the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland (1896). He was the ninth of 10 children, born to a father who fished and farmed and a mother who was once a member of the Plymouth Brethren and whose family came to the islands to build lighthouses. He started writing fiction and sent his first manuscript of a novel to a publisher, but the publisher lost the manuscript — which was 150,000 words long. Within a few years, he had published Thy Neighbour's Wife (1923), The Black Soul (1924), and The Informer (1925). He also adapted The Informer into a screenplay, and the resulting movie won 1935 Academy Award for Best Picture. For the few decades after his first novel came out, he wrote prolifically, publishing 36 works — novels, memoirs, and short-story collections — within 25 years. In 1937, he wrote a historical novel, The Famine, about the potato blight of the 1840s, which caused a huge fraction of the Irish population to die of starvation or to emigrate.
The Writer’s Almanac