One of the most popular rooms in big new houses is a library. Rather than being about books, their appeal is often about creating a certain ambiance—a “memory” room or a “TV-free room.” Jeani Ziering, an interior designer in Manhasset, N.Y., says the newfound popularity of libraries is part of a general movement toward traditional design and décor. "When the economy turns bad, people turn to the classics," she says. Libraries are especially appealing during anxious times because they project coziness and comfort, she adds.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB122117550854125707.html?mod=2_1578_leftbox

Doing Business 2009: Comparing Regulation in 181 Countries
World Bank Doing Business Project: "For the fifth year in a row Eastern Europe and Central Asia led the world in Doing Business reforms. Twenty-six of the region’s 28 economies implemented a total of 69 reforms. Since 2004 Doing Business has been tracking reforms aimed at simplifying business regulations, strengthening property rights, opening up access to credit and enforcing contracts by measuring their impact on 10 indicator sets. Nearly 1,000 reforms with an impact on these indicators have been captured. Eastern Europe and Central Asia has accounted for a third of them."
Learn more about reform trends and download country-by-country reform summaries
Download report overview

New GAO Reports: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Aviation Security, DCAA Audits, Defined Benefit Pension Plans, Federal Real Property
Assessment of the Explanation That Immigration and Customs Enforcement Provided for Its Subsequent Transfer from the Spectrum Relocation Fund, GAO-08-846R, September 9, 2008
Aviation Security: TSA Is Enhancing Its Oversight of Air Carrier Efforts to Identify Passengers on the No Fly and Selectee Lists, but Expects Ultimate Solution to Be Implementation of Secure Flight, GAO-08-992, September 9, 2008
DCAA Audits: Allegations That Certain Audits at Three Locations Did Not Meet Professional Standards Were Substantiated, GAO-08-993T, September 10, 2008
Defined Benefit Pension Plans: Guidance Needed to Better Inform Plans of the Challenges and Risks of Investing in Hedge Funds and Private Equity, GAO-08-692, August 14, 2008
Federal Real Property: Progress Made in Reducing Unneeded Property, but VA Needs Better Information to Make Further Reductions, GAO-08-939, September 10, 2008

Duke Lawyers Fire Back at Andrew Giuliani, Move to Dismiss Golf Suit
This is the legal saga of Andrew Giuliani, who sued Duke in July, alleging that he’d been improperly dismissed from the golf team. Now, the Duke Chronicle reports that Donald Cowan and Jim Cooney — the attorneys for the University and head golf coach O.D. Vincent — have filed an answer and a motion for judgment on the pleadings. “Andrew Giuliani is entitled to no more privileges than any other member of the Duke University student body,” the motion says. “Like every other member of the student body, Andrew Giuliani is responsible for both his actions and their consequences.”
WSJ Law Blog September 11, 2008

Anthropologist Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida teamed with the local Kuikuro people in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to uncover 28 towns, villages and hamlets that may have supported as many as 50,000 people within roughly 7,700 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) of forest—an area slightly smaller than New Jersey. The remains of houses and ceramic cooking utensils show that humans occupied these cities for around 1,000 years, from roughly 1,500 years to as recently as 400 years ago. Satellite pictures reveal that during that time, the inhabitants carved roads through the jungle; all plaza villages had a major road that ran northeast to southwest along the summer solstice axis and linked to other settlements as much as three miles (five kilometers) away. There were bridges on some of the roads and others had canoe canals running alongside them. The remains of the settlements (“garden cities”) also hint at surrounding large fields of manioc, or cassava (a starchy root that is still a staple part of the Brazilian diet) as well as the earthen dams and artificial ponds of fish farming, still practiced by people who may be the present-day descendants of the Kuikuro. But, ultimately, these cities died; most likely a victim of the diseases brought by European explorers in the early 16th century, according to Heckenberger. Two thirds or more of the original human inhabitants of Brazil are believed to have been killed by such disease, and the forest quickly swallowed the cities they left behind.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=lost-amazon-cities

What do gardenia and hector have in common? They are both eponyms (words based on a person’s or character’s name).
http://www.myspellit.com/lang_eponyms.html

Thousands of glass art objects by Dale Chihuly—strange, striking, beautiful, and combined in fantastic arrangements—currently populate the special exhibit galleries of San Francisco’s De Young Museum. They range from palm-of-your-hand pieces to gigantic supernovas of glittering glass tentacles, singular, vivid, bowls big enough to float baby Moses down the Nile, and hallucinogenically hued “marbles” blown as big as sofa hassocks. This is the first comprehensive Chihuly exhibit in a major museum, and will remain open until September 28. See fantastic pictures at following link. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-08-28/article/30975?headline=DeYoung-s-Chihuly-Glass-Exhibit-a-Dazzling-Array-of-Color-and-Form

Ohio, Indiana and Illinois readers may want to see royal sculptures and regalia from the West African Kingdom of Benin on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. This exhibition, open through September 21, and representing six centuries of Benin's artistic heritage, brings together more than 220 of these masterworks from collections around the world and makes its sole North American stop at the Art Institute of Chicago. http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/benin/index

September 13 is the birthday of Roald Dahl, (books by this author) born in Llandaff, South Wales (1916). He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing. Every so often, a plain gray cardboard box was issued to each child, filled with 11 chocolate bars. It was the children's task to rate the candy, and Dahl took his job very seriously. About one of the sample candy bars, he wrote, "Too subtle for the common palate." He later said that the experience got him thinking about candy as something manufactured in a factory, and he spent a lot of time imagining what a candy factory might be like. Today, he's best known for his children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
September 14 is the birthday of novelist Hamlin Garland, (books by this author) born in West Salem, Wisconsin (1860). Garland thought he would support himself as a farmer in South Dakota, but after three of the harshest winters of his life, he decided to give up the farm and move east. He wound up in Boston where he began to write for the newspapers, and he eventually decided that he wanted to write fiction about the life of pioneers that he had left behind. At that time, almost no one had written authentically about pioneer life. People in the East believed that farmers lived in the beautiful countryside and that their lives were simple and noble. Hamlin Garland said, "There is no gilding of setting sun or glamour of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmer's [life]." In 1891, he published his first collection of stories, Main-Travelled Roads, and within a few years he was famous. He went on to become one of the most respected novelists of his generation, best known for his autobiographical trilogy, A Son of the Middle Border (1917), A Daughter of the Middle Border (1921), and Back-Trailers from the Middle Border (1928).
September 15 is the birthday of Robert McCloskey, (books by this author) the author and illustrator of children's books, born in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1914. He grew up loving music, especially the harmonica. He said, "The musician's life was the life for me — that is, until I became interested in things electrical and mechanical. … The inventor's life was the life for me — that is, until I started making drawings for the high school annual." He got a scholarship to art school in Boston, and he did well there. One day, he went to visit an editor of children's books in New York City, and he brought along his portfolio. It was filled with fantasy scenes, with magic and strange beasts. He took the images and the characters and the stories from life there, and he wrote and illustrated a picture book about a regular boy in a regular Midwestern town. The boy can't whistle, so he learns to play the harmonica, and the boy and his harmonica save the day when the mayor's homecoming celebration is almost ruined. This book was called Lentil (1940), and the next year he published Make Way for Ducklings (1941), which won a Caldecott. In 1987, bronze sculptures of Mrs. Mallard and the ducklings from the book were installed in the Boston Public Garden. McCloskey also wrote Blueberries for Sal (1948) and Time of Wonder (1957).
September 15 is the birthday of James Fenimore Cooper, (books by this author) born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789, the 11th of 12 children. One day, he was reading aloud to his wife, a book about English social life, and he said, "I believe I could write a better book myself." His wife told him to prove it, so James Fenimore Cooper began his first novel. It became the novel Precaution (1820). He also wrote The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground (1821), The Pioneers (1823), and The Last of the Mohicans (1826).
The Writer’s Almanac