Screenwriter Dan Turkewitz, back in 2006, shot off a note to the nine Supreme Court justices, reporting that “There are parts of the story that deal with the legality of [Maine joining Canada] and, of course, a big showdown in the Supreme Court is part of the story.” Continued Dan: At the moment my story is a 12 page treatment. As an architect turned screenwriter, it is fair to say that I come up a bit short in the art of Supreme Court advocacy. If you could spare a few moments on a serious subject that is treated in a comedic way, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts. I'm sure you'll find the story very entertaining. According to Dan's brother Eric, Justice Scalia was the only justice to respond. His brief letter read: I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, “one Nation, indivisible.”) Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit. I am sure that poetic license can overcome all that - but you do not need legal advice for that. Good luck with your screenplay.
WSJ Law Blog February 17, 2010

Three things must happen for you to see a rainbow's colors. First, the sun must be shining. Second, the sun must be behind you, and third, there must be water drops in the air in front of you. Sunlight shines into the water drops, which act as tiny prisms that bend or "refract" the light and separate it into colors. Rainbows have no end. We usually don't see the full circle because the horizon of the Earth is in the way. But if the sun is very low in the sky, either just before sunset or just after sunrise, we can see a half circle. The higher the sun is in the sky, the less we see of the rainbow. The only way to see the full circle of a rainbow in the sky is to be above the raindrops and have the sun behind you. You would have to look down on the drops from an airplane. http://www.wxdude.com/Rainbows.html

How could global warming be driving our massive snowstorm pattern? One word: moisture. A warmer atmosphere holds more water. Plus, warmer surface temperatures are triggering more evaporation of ocean water worldwide. That water goes up, up, up into that atmosphere. And what goes up must sooner or later come down. This is precisely what scientific studies are now documenting. Water vapor in the global atmosphere jumped by about 5 percent in the 20th century, P.Y. Groisman and his colleagues reported in 2004. This while there has been an observed, significant uptick in heavy winter precipitation events in the Northeastern U.S., according to a 2006 study. And all the while, global temperatures have risen sharply, including an average warming of 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the Northeastern U.S.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.warming14feb14,0,6844763.story

No red, white or blue in six flags? Muse reader continues: Turns out there are only three flags (this from my daughter) without R, W or B in them: Jamaica, Mauritania and Libya. ;-)

What ten countries have four letters in their names?
You may search and find the list through a search engine--one answer gives twelve countries--or you may play the game at: http://www.sporcle.com/games/4letter_countries.php

Think “Lincoln” and “New York,” and the juxtaposition would most likely conjure up the tunnel or the performing arts center. Until this year, it might have also evoked the majestic Lincoln Building at 60 East 42nd Street. With barely a nod to the former president, the owners of the 53-story tower, which opened 80 years ago, changed the name to One Grand Central Place, removed the bronze plaques on which the Gettysburg Address and his second Inaugural Address were immortalized, and evicted Daniel Chester French’s sculpture of the “seated Lincoln,” the model for the Lincoln Memorial, from the lobby. The Lincoln statue was apparently purchased by Lawrence A. Wein, who bought the building in the early 1950s. He was the father-in-law of Peter L. Malkin, the chairman of W & H Properties, which now owns it. Anthony E. Malkin, president of W & H, said the statue was moved to improve traffic flow and installed in the building’s law library off the lobby “in respect of a president who was himself a lawyer, and as a more befitting spot in our building for a noted work of art.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13lincoln.html

Walter Fredrick Morrison, who at 17 sent the lid of a popcorn tin skimming through the air of a California backyard and as an adult remade the lid in plastic, in the process inventing the simple, elegant flying disc known today as the Frisbee, died February 9 at his home in Monroe, Utah. He was 90. Beloved of man and dog, the Frisbee has for more than half a century been the signature product of Wham-O, a toy and sporting-goods manufacturer based in Emeryville, Calif. The company has sold more than 200 million of the discs since acquiring the rights to Mr. Morrison’s Pluto Platter, as it was then known, in 1957. At least since antiquity, mankind has been hurling flat, round objects — or flying discs, as they are known in aficionados’ parlance — aloft. But Mr. Morrison is widely credited as having designed the first commercial flying disc expressly manufactured and marketed as such. Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee in 1958, influenced by the Frisbie Pie Company in Connecticut, whose tins Yale students hurled for sport. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/13morrison.html

At the opera
There's a memorable scene in the 1935 comedy classic A Night at the Opera, in which Groucho Marx interrupts a deadly serious operatic aria with the astute commentary, "Boogie-Boogie-Boogie!" The opera on stage in that scene is among the most popular of all time, Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore. The aria is sung by Azucena, one of the most complex and compelling characters in any opera. Naturally, in the film, the highbrow audience is aghast at Groucho's rude behavior. Il Trovatore is an easy mark, an opera ripe for parody The opera has a complicated, basically unsavory and highly implausible story. Plus, to have any chance at all of understanding it, you first have to learn a background story that's even more complex and unlikely. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112934663

Mozart composed "The Opera of Operas" - Don Giovanni - especially for Prague and he personally conducted its world first performance in 1787 at the Prague Estates Theatre (Stavovské Theatre). National Marionette Theatre presents this brilliant opera in the unique version using the classical marionettes. Tall marionettes as well as the stylish period costumes and original stage effects can be seen in the performance. It lasts about two hours, and a shortened version can be arranged. http://www.mozart.cz/gb/giovanni_gb.html
Note: We saw this in Prague, and orchestra members as well as singers are marionettes.

When the curtain falls on Richard Wagner's "Goetterdaemmerung," conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, in Salzburg at the end of March, the audience will be released into a dark world of greed and trickery. After what's been going on behind the scenes ahead of the opening of the Salzburg Easter Festival, Wagner will seem like deja vu. Since the festival's executive director Michael Dewitte was dismissed indefinitely in December following accusations of fraud, the organization's efforts to save face have become increasingly difficult. Dewitte was allegedly involved in rerouting sponsors' funds to a secret foreign bank account, cheating on expense accounts and paying for services that may not have been rendered to the festival. According to Audit Services Austria, the financial damage caused by Dewitte could amount to as much as 2 million euros (nearly $2.8 million). In one particular case, he is accused of siphoning 300,000 euros from a donation and transferring it to an apparently non-existent Caribbean-based company with a bank account in northern Cyprus. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5220087,00.html

Sometimes, the hardest part of writing is writing the third word. You know, the one right after "Chapter One." Recently, as I chugged into the day's writing, the first thing I did was delete the beginning. By that time, I was about 13,000 words into the manuscript, and I didn't need them anymore. I've used that same basic opening at least two or three times, and it always gets cut. But you have to start somewhere, and as has been said over and over: "You can't fix a blank page." But what about that last page? The one where you can't turn any more pages. It's been said that your first page sells the book. Your last page sells the next book. Guest post by Terry Odell The Writing Bug February 17, 2010