A court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan. The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court last Friday approved lawyer Mark McCormack’s application to use Facebook to serve the legally binding documents after several failed attempts to contact the couple at the house and by e-mail. Here’s the AP story. WSJ Law Blog December 16, 2008

Class Action? Perdue Accused of Secreting Giblets in Chickens
One of this Law Blogger’s first summer jobs entailed operating an aluminum crusher at a can recycling center. Customers were paid by the pound—at the time, circa 1994, prices ranged from 31 to 34 cents. On occasion, you’d find that customers bulked up their bags with non-aluminum items, such as lawnmower engines and old clothes.
We were reminded of that scheming today when we read about what Courthouse News Service reports may be the first federal class action based on concealment of chicken giblets. In the complaint, Perdue Farms is accused of disposing of “an enormous quantity of extra giblet parts” by a “secret practice” of stuffing extra hearts, gizzards and necks into its whole chickens, thereby “dispos(ing) of its extra giblets” and tricking customers into paying the regular per-pound price for them. WSJ Law Blog December 18, 2008

U.S. Government Releases FY 2008 Financial Report
News release: The Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget has released the Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government. The report details the U.S. government's current financial position, as well as its short-term and long-term financial outlook, complementing the President's Budget to be released in the spring of 2009...Revenue results in this year's Financial Report were $2.7 trillion, increasing slightly by $34 billion or just over 1 percent, compared to last year. Total costs were $3.6 trillion, an increase of $.7 trillion or 25 percent compared to last year. Net operating cost increased to $1 trillion, up from last year's net operating cost of $275.5 billion.
GAO: U.S. Government’s 2008 Financial Report Demonstrates Significant Problems, December 15, 2008
"The FY 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government (Financial Report) published by the Department of the Treasury includes GAO's report on the accompanying U.S. government's consolidated financial statements for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2008 and 2007, and the associated reports on internal control and compliance with significant laws and regulations." Related postings on financial system

Exceptionalism is the perception that a country, society, institution, movement, or time period is "exceptional" in some way and thus does not conform to normal rules or general principles. The uniqueness theme was introduced by the German romantic philosopher-historians, especially Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Fichte in the late 18th century.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:Exceptionalism&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

Emil von Reznicek (1860-1945) is remembered mainly for the overture to his opera Donna Diana, composed in 1894. The overture is a popular stand-alone piece at symphony concerts and also served as the theme for the American radio (1947-1955) series Challenge of the Yukon, which later migrated to the TV series (1955-1958) Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. It was also used in the 1950s on the BBC's Children's Hour by Stephen King-Hall for his talks on current affairs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_von_Reznicek

Old-Time Radio - Music Theme List
http://www.classicthemes.com/oldTimeRadioThemes/radioThemeList.html

The Spell Checker poem, originally composed in 1991, made its first official appearance in The Journal of Irreproducible Results in 1994. Since then, it has made its way around the Internet under various titles, including "Spell Checker Blues," "Owed to a Spelling Checker," and "Spellbound." Almost always the poem is attributed to Anonymous or, more playfully, "Sauce unknown."
http://grammar.about.com/od/spelling/a/spellcheck.htm

Recommended Web sites for book lovers from a muse reader:
http://www.librarything.com/
http://www.goodreads.com/

My Own Book is an organization where teens visit disadvantaged K through 3rd graders, read a story aloud, tell about the public library, and then each child gets to choose their very own book from a selection of brand new books. Finally, a book plate is added to the book with the child's name on it. We are spreading the love of reading: one book at a time, one child at a time. http://www.myownbook.net/

On December 19, 1843 Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, whom Dickens described as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire."
On December 19, 1941 the Office of Censorship was created. It was a special emergency wartime agency ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He appointed Byron Price to head the agency. Price was a veteran journalist, the general manager of the Associated Press. Price advocated a system of voluntary censorship for the presses, and it was successful during World War II because the war had popular support.
The Writer’s Almanac