Federal Reserve Beige Book, September 3, 2008
Summary: Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicate that the pace of economic activity has been slow in most Districts. Many described business conditions as "weak," "soft," or "subdued." Consumer spending was reported to be slow in most Districts, with purchasing concentrated on necessary items and retrenchment in discretionary spending. Districts reporting on auto sales described them as falling or steady at low levels. Tourism activity was mixed but received support from international visitors in several Districts, and the demand for services eased in most Districts. The transportation industry was also adversely affected by rising fuel costs. Manufacturing activity declined in most Districts but improved somewhat in Minneapolis and Kansas City. Most Districts reported that residential real estate markets remained soft. Commercial real estate activity was slow in most Districts, and some reported further slackening in demand for office and retail space.
Full Report, Federal Reserve Beige Book, September 3, 2008

Public/private partnership to build first sustained petascale system for open scientific research
News release: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has announced that they have finalized their contract with IBM to build the world's first sustained petascale computational system dedicated to open scientific research. This project, called Blue Waters, is supported by a $208 million grant from the National Science Foundation and will come online in 2011...The system will deliver sustained performance of more than one petaflop on many real-world scientific and engineering applications. A petaflop is computing parlance for 1 quadrillion calculations per second...More than 200,000 processor cores will make that performance possible. They will be coupled to more than a petabyte of memory and more than 10 petabytes of disk storage. All of that memory and storage will be globally addressable, meaning that processors will be able to share data from a single pool.

Italy has sent 14 works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for an exhibition at the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles--the first major loan since Italy and the Getty made peace after a long and bitter battle over contested antiquities. The Getty’s show features 60 works by the 17th-century Baroque master including paintings, drawings and sculptures from museums including Rome’s Galleria Borghese and Palazzo Barberini as well as Florence’s Bargello Museum. Bernini and the Birth of Portrait Sculpture runs at the Getty until October 26 before moving to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa from November 28 to March 8, 2009.
http://www.livinginitaly.co.uk/italian-news/bernini-exhibition-los-angeles/

Film Flam is Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry's funny and penetrating look at the movie industry Take a look at this book and see why—if you are both reading a book and seeing the movie made from it—you should see the movie first. In these essays he illuminates the plight of the screenwriter, cuts a clean, often hilarious path through the excesses of film reviewing, and takes on some of the worst trends in the industry.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Film-Flam/Larry-McMurtry/e/9780743216241

Keepers (books I would read again)
French Lessons by Peter Mayle
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Salt by Mark Kurlansky

The idea of making fuller use of the hours of daylight over the summer months, usually by putting clocks forward one hour, was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin, and later by William Willett, an English builder.
Time Zone Standard Time Daylight Saving
USA Eastern -5 hours (09:41) -4 hours
USA Central -6 hours (08:41) -5 hours
USA Mountain -7 hours (07:41) -6 hours
USA Arizona -7 hours (07:41)
USA Pacific -8 hours (06:41) -7 hours
USA Alaska -9 hours (05:41) -8 hours
USA Aleutian -10 hours (04:41)
USA Hawaii -10 hours (04:41)
Arizona did observe DST in 1967 under the Uniform Time Act when the state legislature did not enact an exemption statute that year. In March 1968, the DST exemption statute was enacted and the state of Arizona has not observed DST since 1967 (however, the large Navajo Indian Reservation, which extends from Arizona into two adjacent states, does).
http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/5632/Daylight-Saving-Time.html

Daylight Saving Time has been used in the U.S. and in many European countries since World War I. At that time, in an effort to conserve fuel needed to produce electric power, Germany and Austria took time by the forelock, and began saving daylight at 11:00 p.m. on April 30, 1916, by advancing the hands of the clock one hour until the following October. Other countries immediately adopted this 1916 action: Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, and Tasmania. Nova Scotia and Manitoba adopted it as well, with Britain following suit three weeks later, on May 21, 1916. In 1917, Australia and Newfoundland began saving daylight. The plan was not formally adopted in the U.S. until 1918. 'An Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States' was enacted on March 19, 1918. [See law]
During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time, called "War Time," from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. [See law] From 1945 to 1966, there was no federal law regarding Daylight Saving Time, so states and localities were free to choose whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time and could choose when it began and ended.
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html

In time for Constitution Day on September 17, Montpelier, the 26-room Virginia home of James Madison, has been reborn. The home was largely concealed behind 20th century alterations and additions. In 1983 the then-Madison estate-owner Marion duPont Scott donated the property to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. James Madison was immortalized in American history when, at the signing of the Constitution in Philadelphia on Sept. 17, 1787, he was named by the other 43 signatories of the document as "The Father of the Constitution." James Madison was a reticent person and not a dynamic public speaker, judging by most historical accounts. Nevertheless, it was he who did the most talking at the Constitutional Convention as he debated, countered arguments against the document and promoted it toward adoption and ultimately tried to convince the 13 former Colonies that they, as members of a loose confederation, should become part of something to be called "The United States of America." http://www.jmu.edu/montpelier/issues/spring97/madison.html
The duPont family purchased Montpelier in 1900 and turned it into a 55-room mansion with wings. A top-to-bottom restoration started in 2003, funded mostly by the estate of Paul Mellon. http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2008/september-october/montpelier.html

Big tree lists
See lists of the largest trees in practically every state with Michigan featured first.
http://www.michbotclub.org/big_trees/champion_list.htm