Some of the most spectacular moments of the Olympic Games opening ceremony, which was watched by three billion people, were faked
The global television audience watched as a series of giant footprints, lit up by fireworks, proceeded through the night sky from Tiananmen Square to the Bird's Nest stadium, not realizing they were watching a computer-generated animation. Even the giant television screens within the stadium itself broadcast the fake images. The fireworks were real outside the stadium, but those shown in the stadium and on television had been filmed months in advance.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/china-faked-awesome-olympic-opening-ceremony-13936327.html

New Website Fuelly Tracks Your Gas Mileage To Help Save Gas and Money
Fuelly is a site that lets you track, share, and compare your gas mileage. Sign up, add a car, and begin tracking your mileage. By recording and analyzing your mileage, you can see how much money you can save with small driving changes. You can also see how your mileage compares with EPA estimates and the mileage of other drivers using Fuelly. Tips and a discussion forum also offer ways to save. The site is free.

And you thought Bach was dignified
On August 4, 1705 in Arnstadt, Germany, J.S. Bach and a bassoonist named Johann Heinrich Geyersbach cross paths late a night and an argument ensues--Geyerbach threatens Bach with a stick and Bach draws his sword--both are hauled up before the city magistrate and reprimanded for their behavior.
Composers Datebook from American Public Media

Guide to Bach tour in Arnstadt
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Tour/Arnstadt.htm

A previously unknown portrait of a woman by Vincent van Gogh has been revealed. Scientists used a new technique to peer beneath the paint of van Gogh's 1887 "Patch of Grass." Already it was known there was something there, likely a portrait of some sort. Van Gogh was known to paint over his work, perhaps as much as a third of the time. Behind the painting, done mostly in greens and blues, is a portrait of a woman rendered in browns and reds.
http://www.livescience.com/history/080730-van-gogh.html

Articles from LiveScience
http://www.livescience.com/common/archive/

tenderfoot
A newcomer or a beginner at something, one not used to hardships.
Originally the term was applied to newcomers to ranching and mining districts in the western United States.
A.Word.A.Day

Quotes
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English essayist and poet

Novel of the week according to The Week, August 15, 2008
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Written as a series of letters between a London columnist and a small Channel Island community that survived Nazi occupation

April 12 is the birthday of classics scholar Edith Hamilton, (books by this author) born in Dresden, Germany (1867). Her parents were both Americans, and she grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She started learning Latin and Greek when she was seven years old, and she went on to study classics in Europe at a time when women were not often admitted to universities. It wasn't until after her retirement that she began to publish books about Greek civilization like The Greek Way (1930). Academics hated the fact that she didn't use footnotes, but her books were incredibly popular. For many years, most American children first learned about Hercules and Medusa and Odysseus from her book Mythology (1942), which was an illustrated retelling of all the important Greek myths.
April 12 is the birthday of mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart, (books by this author) born in Pittsburgh (1876). Shortly after she and her husband married, the stock market crashed in 1903, and they lost a lot of their assets. She began to write to bring in extra money. The first book she published, The Circular Staircase (1907), was a mystery novel and it became a big hit, eventually selling more than a million copies.
From this book comes the start of her role as the "mother" of the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing—in which the protagonist is largely clueless about something that most people would have picked up on, usually related to criminal activity. From her writing, we get the cliché "the butler did it."
The Writer’s Almanac