Rupert Murdoch instituted a paywall at the Times Online (London) web site on June 15th. He has also blocked search engines from listing stories from the Times. Anyone connecting to the site is referred to a sign-up page requiring a £1 subscription payment to proceed. Most analysts expected a drop in casual viewers, and the numbers don't disappoint the disappointers. GigaOm claims a drop in online readership by about 65%. The Guardian claims numbers of 90%, a bit more brutal. GigaOm suggests that the Times is comfortable with the drop as it is likely meant to shore up the print side of the business by making it easier for readers to get the news that way. http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/

"Mad Men" is a show about feelings, and if you know that sensation you get on April Fools' Day when you visit a legitimate news website only to finish a story and realize is was all a scam, you may have experienced the same thing when you encountered a fake vintage comic strip called "Those Madison Avenue Men!" Meant to pass for the comic that originally inspired "Mad Men" from the early 1960s, the strips were instead put together by Bruce Handy and Frank Thorne (who incidentally did not create "Heathcliff") for Vanity Fair. Under the guise of a failed tale that ran for "a mere 43 weeks before being canceled," the "only surviving examples of 'Those Madison Avenue Men!'" are actually just a tribute to Season 4, which kicks off on AMC this Sunday, July 25. http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/22/mad-men-season-4-comic-strip-tributes/

English author P.D. James, who splits her time between London and Oxford, was a successful career woman working as a hospital administrator and later in various government jobs, including as a magistrate in London and Middlesex. But she had always wanted to write a novel. "I remember a moment in my 30s," James says, "when it suddenly dawned on me that if I went on delaying writing that I'd be a failed writer telling my children and grandchildren that I'd desperately wanted to be a writer. I thought that this would be appalling and that I'd really have to make time and get started." James, born in Oxford in 1920, grew up in Ludlow and then in Cambridge, where she attended the Cambridge High School for Girls. She left school at 16 and was married at 21 to Ernest Connor Bantry White. Their daughters, Clare and Jane (named for Jane Austen, James' favorite author), were born during World War II. White, who spent part of the war in India with the Royal Army Medical Corps, returned suffering from mental illness. He was hospitalized and finally institutionalized. He was 44 when he died in 1964. James never remarried. In a story that in some ways mirrors that of another celebrated British author, J.K. Rowling, James wrote her first novel, Cover Her Face, the first in the Dalgliesh series, in her late 30s on the train while commuting to and from work. Cover Her Face was published in 1962 and was critically praised. Despite its success and that of subsequent novels, James didn't retire to write full time until 1979. Phyllis Dorothy James—she chose P.D. James as her pen name because she decided it "would look best on the book spine," but she's Phyllis to her friends—has written 18 novels since 1962. Fourteen of them star Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard. http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-07-20-james20_CV_N.htm

A minimal pair consists of two words that differ in only one sound. Examples: cat, hat; meet, greet; bus, buzz; ten, teen

The largest house in America has 250 rooms and 4 acres of floor space. Indoor bathrooms were considered a luxury in the 1880's, and the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina has 43 of them. Eleven million bricks would enclose 34 bedrooms, 65 fireplaces and an in house bowling alley. (An on site kiln would produce 32,000 bricks per day) Electricity, fire alarms, central heating, elevators and telephones were cutting edge technology of the day, and Biltmore House had them all. A swimming pool with underwater lights, a gym and private dressing rooms are all examples of the types of indoor recreation featured in this house. More than 1,000 workers would toil for 6 years on this mammoth project. An entire town had to be built to house the workforce and a 3 mile long railroad spur was built, just to deliver men and materials to the site. http://north-carolina-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/biltmore-estate-in-north-carolina-is-americas-largest-home

Jonesborough Tennessee’s tale begins over two centuries before the National Storytelling Festival began in 1973. Storytelling was not the only first for Jonesborough--its historic district was among the first from Tennessee to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the county was the first district to be named in honor of George Washington, the first publisher of a periodical devoted exclusively to abolishing slavery was located here, and Jonesborough is the first and only home of the National Storytelling Festival. Click on following link, reduce print size to 100% for ease in reading: http://www.jonesboroughtn.org/files/JBVG2010.pdf

From muse reader: Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library markets itself with an adaptation of the Old Spice Guy gimmick. "I know I always do what "8 out of 5 dentists recommend." "Anything's possible when you're in the library." See at: http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2010/07/best-college-library-marketing-video-ever.html Thanks, David.

It's become the library promo heard (and seen) 'round the world. The viral success of the "New Spice" ad for Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library has the folks at the library's Multimedia Production Unit--who produced the ad and now have made a behind-the-scenes short--beside themselves. The promo spoof of the popular Old Spice ad has been mentioned on CNN, CBS and The Huffington Post. Libraries at Baylor and other schools have touted the ad, displaying a mix of admiration and rank jealousy. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogs/vulture/49967797-56/spice-library-behind-multimedia.html.csp