Dialect coach Tim Monich taught Brad Pitt to talk like he was from somewhere deep in the mountains of Tennessee. He taught Matt Damon to speak as if he were South African, and Hilary Swank to speak like Amelia Earhart. In early September, having nearly finished teaching Gerard Butler, who is Scottish, to speak as if he were from New York, for “The Bounty,” Monich began teaching Shia LeBeouf to speak as if he grew up on Long Island, for “Wall Street 2.” http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/09/091109fa_fact_wilkinson

Tim Monich is listed as dialect coach in 130 productions:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0598106/

Book hook from another reader
John Jakes fiction series Once I read the first one, I couldn't stop!

Defense agencies must improve their oversight of contractor business systems to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse
"The November 2, 2009 hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting probed the precision and accuracy of counting contractors by the Department of Defense, the strategic withdrawal in Iraq and the role of contractors, and the cooperation between the Defense Contracting Management Agency and the Defense Contracting Audit Agency with coordination from the Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy to improve oversight of contractor business systems."
Joint Statement of Christopher Shays and Michael Thibault, Co‐Chairs, The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan Hearing: Counting Contractors: Where Are They and What Are They Doing?
The Commission issued its Special Report on Contractor Business Systems on Sept. 21, 2009, to call attention to concerns about the contractors’ systems and agency oversight."

Poverty Expert Says Nearly Half of U.S. Children will use food stamps
"49 percent of all U.S. children will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood," says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. "Food stamp use is a clear sign of poverty and food insecurity, two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child's health." According to Rank, the substantial risk of a child being in a family that uses food stamps is consistent with a wider body of research demonstrating that U.S. children face considerable economic risk throughout their childhood years. "Rather than being a time of security and safety, the childhood years for many American children are a time of economic turmoil, risk, and hardship," Rank says." [Link]

Foreign Affairs Features Article Know Thine Enemy - Why the Taliban Cannot Be Flipped, by Barbara Elias, Director of the Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Taliban Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
"The chief objective of both Taliban groupings is to control territory in Central and South Asia. Al Qaeda’s agenda, meanwhile, is diffuse, global, and inherently anti-American. So what has kept the al Qaeda–Taliban alliance together? The boons al Qaeda receives are obvious -- safe haven, support, and training grounds. Exactly how the Taliban benefits is less clear, especially when one considers the high costs the alliance has carried for them...The reason the Taliban have chosen repeatedly not to seek legitimacy through governance or diplomatic compromise has little to do with the incentives offered them and everything to do with how their leaders see the world. The fact is that the Taliban and al Qaeda are neither permanently bound by ideology nor held together merely by a fleeting correspondence of interests. Their relationship is rooted in more complex issues of legitimacy and identity."

Written laws are like spider's webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and the poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful. Anacharsis, Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BCE and made a great impression as a forthright, outspoken "barbarian," apparently a forerunner of the Skeptics and Cynics. http://quotationsbook.com/quote/22563/

Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. Solon, Greek statesman and poet (active 594 B.C.) formulated an influential code of laws and has been regarded as the founder of Athenian democracy. He is numbered among the Seven Sages of Greece. http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/authors/solon_quotes.html

Seven Sages of Greece
Solon of Athens - "Nothing in excess"
Chilon of Sparta - "Know thyself"
Thales of Miletus - "To bring surety brings ruin"
Bias of Priene - "Too many workers spoil the work"
Cleobulus of Lindos - "Moderation is the chief good"
Pittacus of Mitylene - "Know thine opportunity"
Periander of Corinth - "Forethought in all things"
See the Muse Calliope surrounded by Socrates and the Seven Sages at: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/LX/SevenSagesOfGreece.html

daymare (DAY-mayr) noun
a terrifying experience, similar to a nightmare, felt while awake
Coined after nightmare, from a combination of day + mare (an evil spirit believed to produce nightmares). Ultimately from the Indo-European root mer- (to rub away or to harm) that is also the source of mordant, amaranth, morbid, mortal, mortgage, ambrosia, and nightmare. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

On November 5, 1872, women's rights advocate Susan B. Anthony illegally cast her vote in a New York Congressional district election. Read the indictment subsequently brought against her and the transcript of her address to the jury, plus JURIST's trial analysis from Professor Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Anthony was fined $100 after a directed verdict. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/