MUSE READER SHARES HIS COLUMN
Q: A lot of businesses these days refuse to accept anything larger than a $20 bill to pay for goods and services . How can this be legal on their part when printed right on the front of all bills is the statement, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"? If someone wanted to press the issue, and the police had to get involved, how would that be handled? -- Robert Waxler, Findlay.
A: Who better to ask about our paper money than the people who literally make it, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington? "We've had this question in the past and this is how we respond: The government simply cannot force a private business to accept anything monetary that it doesn't want to accept," said spokeswoman Claudia Dickens. "Certainly, if it was a government institution, yes, they would have to accept it. But not a private business," she said. Interestingly, Dickens had a different take on what that statement on our money means. "The statement ... is exactly what (the bill) is," she said, "but it does not in any way imply that a merchant has to accept it." Courtesy of Peter Mattiace, editor of The Courier, Just Ask column appearing each Monday. See rest of the answer at:
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Jan/JU/ar_JU_011810.asp?d=011810,2010,Jan,18&c=c_13

Free video courses from leading universities: http://academicearth.org/
23 "newest courses" listed

Children's board games help reinforce lessons learned in the classroom by Mari-Jane Williams Candy Land, for example, in its 61st year, might be one of the best deals going in early childhood education, using visions of sweet treats to disguise lessons in color recognition and counting. And its colorful cousin Chutes and Ladders has been subtly instilling early math skills since 1943 by exposing kids to the concept of numbers. There are so many benefits to playing board games. For years, they've been known to help children with social interaction, taking turns and learning to follow rules and to win and lose gracefully. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011202134.html

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur
"what is asserted without reason may be denied without reason"
See many Latin phrases translated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_(full)

obscurantism (uhb-SKYOOR-uhn-tiz-uhm, ob-skyoo-RAN-tiz-uhm) noun
1. Opposition to the spread of knowledge.
2. Being deliberately vague or obscure; also a style in art and literature.
From Latin obscurare (to make dark). A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Ron Frazier (ronfraz@verizon.net)
Subject: Palindromic Dates
Concerning palindromic dates... I did write a small BASIC program to generate all palindromic dates and count the days between successive dates. Both ways of writing dates have 366 palindromic dates in the years between 0001 - 9999, but the distributions are quite different and have interesting patterns. The complete list is here.
The last palindromic date of the 10th millennium will be: 09/29/9290! The last date of our (the 3rd) millennium will be: 09/22/2290.

Towards the end of the First World War with the disintegration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Palestine was among the several former Ottoman Arab territories which were placed under the administration of Great Britain under the Mandates System adopted by the League of Nations pursuant to the League's Covenant (Article 22) .
All but one of these Mandated Territories became fully independent States, as anticipated. The exception was Palestine where, instead of being limited to "the rendering of administrative assistance and advice" the Mandate had as a primary objective the implementation of the "Balfour Declaration" issued by the British Government in 1917, expressing support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". During the years of the Palestine Mandate, from 1922 to 1947, large-scale Jewish immigration from abroad, mainly from Eastern Europe took place, the numbers swelling in the 1930s with the notorious Nazi persecution of Jewish populations. Palestinian demands for independence and resistance to Jewish immigration led to a rebellion in 1937, followed by continuing terrorism and violence from both sides during and immediately after World War II. Great Britain tried to implement various formulas to bring independence to a land ravaged by violence. In 1947, Great Britain turned the problem over to the United Nations. After looking at various alternatives, the UN proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized (Resolution 181 (II) of 1947). One of the two States envisaged in the partition plan proclaimed its independence as Israel and in the 1948 war expanded to occupy 77 per cent of the territory of Palestine. http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/ngo/history.html

More on banned music
Public performances of Wagner's music in Palestine ceased the day after Kristallnacht, in 1938. The then-Palestine Philharmonic, which had debuted two years earlier performing Wagner under the baton of Toscanini, removed the overture to Der Meistersinger from its program in a protest against that tragic night in Germany, and the ban has continued ever since. (A similar ban on Wagner's music in the Soviet Union lasted for fifty years, until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989). Wagner was not alone -- Richard Strauss and Carl Orff, both Nazi-affiliated in their lifetimes, were also banned for decades. The state-run New Israeli Opera Company avoids not only Wagner operas but all operas in German, with the exception of the occasional Mozart singspiel or Viennese operetta.
http://www.zeek.net/music_0405.shtml

Tried, tasted and approved
We tried two recipes from allrecipes.com recently and enjoyed them. Take a look at
pork tenderloin in bourbon http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pork-Tenderloin-in-Bourbon/Detail.aspx
and rosemary braised lamb shanks http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rosemary-Braised-Lamb-Shanks/Detail.aspx