Occupational Outlook Handbook and Career Guide to Industries. 2010-11 Editions, Now Online News release: "The 2010-11 editions of the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Career Guide to Industries were released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Handbook and the Career Guide can be accessed online at www.bls.gov/oco and www.bls.gov/oco/cg, respectively. The print version of the Occupational Outlook Handbook is expected to be available in the spring of 2010. Considered the Government's premier source of career information, the Handbook and Career Guide profile hundreds of occupations and dozens of industries, respectively. Both publications provide comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable labor market information that has helped millions of people plan their future work lives. In addition, this information has proven invaluable to counselors, students, jobseekers, career changers, education and training officials, and researchers."

100 notable books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/100-notable-books-of-2009-gift-guide/list.html

The ten best books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/10-best-gift-guide-sub/list.html

Six-foot tall Torvald Alexander, 38, just back from a New Year's costume party, was wearing a red cape and the Norse god Thor's silver-winged helmet when he spotted the raider in his front room rifling through a desk. Mr. Alexander, who runs building firm Alexander & Summers in Edinburgh, Scotland, said the burglar threw himself out of a first floor window of his £350,000 home in the Inverleith area of the city after being caught red handed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4059789/Burglar-scared-off-by-man-dressed-as-Thor-after-New-Year-party.html The story is a year old, but good enough to relate now.

Thor movie to be released July 2010: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/thor/

Another good year-old story Puzzle fan Graham Parker has finally solved his Rubik's Cube after 26 years' worth of attempts. Friends offered to solve it for him but he "had to do it himself."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4217732/Rubiks-Cube-finally-solved-after-26-years-by-avid-fan.html

Quote
Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives.
John Wooden Legs - late 19th c. Cheyenne
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/JohnWoodenLegs.html
This quote has been mistakenly attributed to UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.

Mesopotamia is a region, not a country.
In the narrow sense, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, north or northwest of the bottleneck at Baghdad, in modern Iraq; it is Al-Jazirah ("The Island") of the Arabs. South of this lies Babylonia, named after the city of Babylon. However, in the broader sense, the name Mesopotamia has come to be used for the area bounded on the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and on the southwest by the edge of the Arabian Plateau and stretching from the Persian Gulf in the southeast to the spurs of the Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northwest.
http://history-world.org/mesopotamia_a_place_to_start.htm
Timeline B.C.
3500 Sumerians settle on banks of Euphrates
3000 Introduction of pictographs to keep administrative records.
1700 Hammurabi brings most of Mesopotamia under his control, and introduces law code. http://history-world.org/mesopotamia_9000.htm
Besides establishing a highly efficient agriculture, the Sumerians invented new materials including glass and became outstanding glaziers. They were also metal- workers using gold, silver, copper and bronze. But without doubt the most important invention of these competent people was the wheel.
http://ancienthistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/sumer_the_birth_of_civilisation