When an engagement breaks up, who gets the ring?
It turns out that, like so many areas of the law, it depends. San Diego-based speaker, author and lawyer Jeff Isaac, who goes by the moniker “The Lawyer in Blue Jeans,” says that the law depends on the state, but as a threshold matter, the common-law rule is that an engagement ring is a conditional gift--it is given (often but not always) by a man to a woman with the express condition that the recipient go ahead with the marriage.
In California, this apparently happens so often that the state legislature passed a law. CA Civil Code 1590 states:
Where either party to a contemplated marriage in this State makes a gift of money or property to the other on the basis or assumption that the marriage will take place, in the event that the donee refuses to enter into the marriage as contemplated or that it is given up by mutual consent, the donor may recover such gift or such part of its value as may, under all of the circumstances of the case, be found by a court or jury to be just."
But what happens when the giver backs out, against the will of the recipient? Isaac says that, generally speaking, if the giver is the one who gets cold feet, then he gives up the right to the ring. Of course, the facts surrounding “engagement-ring law,” says Isaac, are rarely so simple. Someone officially breaking off the engagement could, of course, say that he or she had no choice, that the other person's hitherto undiscovered behavior was so intolerable, for example, that it effectively ended the engagement. And is the lawyer in blue jeans always in blue jeans? Indeed. “I have 50 pair,” he says. “I have to wear them. People know me, and if I don't, they call me out on it.” WSJ Law Blog May 13, 2009

Treasury Releases the President's FY2010 Budget 'Greenbook'
News release: "As part of the Administration's effort to develop a budget that invests in our nation's future, the U.S. Treasury Department today released the General Explanations of the Administration's Fiscal Year 2010 Revenue Proposals (Greenbook) to provide details of plans to cut taxes for small businesses and middle class families and close unfair corporate tax loopholes. The plan includes $736 billion in tax cuts for working families over the next ten years and provides almost $100 billion in tax cuts for businesses, providing support to the entrepreneurs who will help drive an economic recovery. The plan also promotes fairness and fiscal responsibility by closing hundreds of billions in loopholes, including $36 billion in tax breaks for oil companies and the $86.5 billion "check-the-box" loophole which allows U.S. companies that invest overseas to shift income to tax havens."

Google News Search Results Now Providing More Content Options
Google News Blog: "Last Thursday we launched a new format for story pages on Google News. These are the pages you see when you click the "all [#] news articles" link of each cluster of articles which cover the same news event--or "story," as we say on the Google News team. The story page includes timely and relevant information from different sources indexed in Google News. Depending on the most recent coverage and materials available for a given story, the page features top articles, quotes from the people in the story, and posts from news blogs. You'll also find image thumbnails, videos, articles from sources based near the story, and a timeline of articles to trace media coverage of the story."

The earliest wind chill index was based on the research of Antarctic explorers Siple and Passel who first measured the combined impacts of varying wind speed and freezing temperatures in 1945. They did this by measuring heat loss from water as it froze in a plastic container suspended from a tall pole. The new Wind Chill Temperature Index, by Randall Osczevski of DCIEM and Maurice Bluestein of Purdue University in Indiana, makes use of advances in science, technology and computer modeling to provide a more accurate, understandable and useful formula for estimating the dangers arising from winter winds and freezing temperatures. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ssd/html/windchil.htm

The nation's first Survey of the Coast, headed by Ferdinand Hassler, a young Swiss immigrant personally chosen for the job by President Thomas Jefferson. It also marked the beginning of the oldest scientific agency in the U.S. Government, what is now called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA—the agency that charts the seacoasts for ships, predicts the path of hurricanes, and protects delicate coral reefs and spawning salmon. Hassler's work was the result of legislation in 1807 that authorized the President "to cause a Survey to be taken of the coasts of the United States" for various purposes. Jefferson had just received reports from the expedition he dispatched to explore the recently purchased Louisiana Territory, the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Now, Congress had given him discretion "to cause proper and intelligent persons to be employed" in carrying out a rigorous survey of the nation's coastline—which would eventually grow to fulfill Jefferson's dream of a nation facing both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Hassler had received a scientific education and had served as both official surveyor of his Swiss canton of Berne and also its attorney general. Like so many others, though, he felt the Old World to be confining, so he sailed to America armed with hope, a large technical library sealed in barrels, and his very own meter, a heavy iron bar marked with the exact length of the French unit of measure.
The Survey of the Coast soon became known as the Coast Survey, and later in the 19th century it was renamed the Coast and Geodetic Survey. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/spring/coast-survey.html

Office of Coast Survey: The Nation’s Chartmaker http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/

What is Roycroft? A handicraft community founded in East Aurora, NY about 1895 by Elbert Hubbard. Hubbard had been a very successful soap salesman for J. D. Larkin and Co. in Buffalo, but wasn't satisfied with his life. So in 1892, he sold his interests in the company and briefly enrolled at Harvard. Disenchanted, he quickly dropped out and set off on a walking tour of England. He briefly met William Morris and became enamored of Morris' Arts-and-Crafts Kelmscott Press. Upon his return to America, he tried to find a publisher for a series of biographical sketches he had written called "Little Journeys." When he was unsuccessful in his attempts to have someone else publish the works, he decided to print them himself. Thus the Roycroft Press was born. Hubbard proved to be such a prolific and popular writer that fame and fortune soon followed. The print shop expanded and then visitors began coming to East Aurora to see this extraordinary man. Initially, visitors were housed in the printworker's living quarters, but this arrangement soon proved inadequate. A hotel was built to house the ever increasing number of visitors. The inn had to be furnished so Hubbard had local craftsmen make a simple, straight lined style of furniture. The furniture became popular with visitors who wished to buy pieces for their homes. In addition, Roycroft craftspeople were skilled metalsmiths, leathersmiths, and bookbinders. The community flourished and was at its peak in 1910 with over 500 workers. It all changed when Elbert and his wife, Alice, were among the fatalities onboard the Lusitania. The Hubbards had been traveling to England to begin a lecture tour when they died. The Community's leadership then fell to Elbert's son, Bert. Though Bert took the Roycrofters to wider sales distribution, changing American tastes led to slowly declining sales figures. Finally, in 1938 the Roycrofters closed shop. http://www.roycrofter.com/

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) evolved his Prairie House type, with volumes developing from a central core, long, low roofs that appeared to float over the structure, corners treated as voids, and enclosing walls that were treated more as independent screens (techniques he called ‘breaking the box’). His organic architecture, in which “function and form are one” and nature is respected break the box, creating open space, where rooms flow from one to the other.
http://www.answers.com/topic/frank-lloyd-wright
http://www.phoenixmag.com/lifestyle/history/200904/so-long--frank-lloyd-wright/3/

Quote: Don't fear failure. Don't crave success. The reward is not in the results, but rather in the doing.
Wilson Greatbatch from his “favorite” two-minute speech, first given in 1987 at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. (b. 1919) American inventor of the implantable pacemaker
http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/ilives/lecture09.html
http://www.hrsonline.org/News/ep-history/notable-figures/wilsongreatbatch.cfm