September 24 marks the anniversary of a groundbreaking American invention–a federal court system separate from the individual state courts. The Judiciary Act of 1789 was one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the newly formed U.S. Congress. The law created a dual court system–federal and state–that existed in no other country at the time. The Constitution’s Article III was ratified in 1787, creating a Federal Judiciary that would feature the U.S. Supreme Court at its pinnacle. Left to Congress, however, was the job of fleshing out what the Constitution created.. See more at: http://www.uscourts.gov/News/NewsView/10-09-15/Anniversary_Marks_Creation_of_U_S_Federal_Court_System.aspx

Local television news has become a hotbed for pay-to-play promotions. The trend promises to continue and grow. TV news producers must fill an expanding news hole, particularly in the mornings, where many news programs have been extended from three to four, five and even six hours. And advertisers, fearful of being blocked by viewers with video recorders and mute buttons, don't mind paying for promotional appearances that make them more visible and credible. The practice goes way beyond Los Angeles and a product or two. Be warned if you are watching a self-proclaimed consumer advocate on local TV news pitching cars, electronics, travel and much more. There's a good chance that your friendly small-screen expert has taken cash to sell, sell, sell. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/15/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20100915

Relativity is a famous lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in December 1953. It depicts a world in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply. The architectural structure seems to be the centre of an idyllic community, with most of its inhabitants casually going about their ordinary business, such as dining. There are windows and doorways leading to park-like outdoor settings. Yet all the figures are dressed in identical attire and have featureless bulb-shaped heads. Identical characters such as these can be found in many other Escher works. In the world of Relativity, there are actually three sources of gravity, each being orthogonal to the two others. Each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells, where normal physical laws apply. There are sixteen characters, spread between each gravity source. The apparent confusion of the lithograph print comes from the fact that the three gravity sources are depicted in the same space. See image at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_(M._C._Escher)

Paradise as an enclosed garden The tradition and style in the garden design of Persian gardens (Persian باغ ایرانی) has influenced the design of gardens from Andalusia to India and beyond. he gardens of the Alhambra show the influence of Persian Garden philosophy and style in a Moorish Palace scale from the era of Al-Andalus in Spain. The Taj Mahal is one of the largest Persian Garden interpretations in the world, from the era of the Mughal Empire in India. From the time of the Achaemenid Dynasty the idea of an earthly paradise spread through Persian literature and example to other cultures, both the Hellenistic gardens of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies in Alexandria. The Avestan word pairidaêza-, Old Persian *paridaida-, Median *paridaiza- (walled-around, i.e., a walled garden), was transliterated into Greek paradeisoi, then rendered into the Latin paradisus, and from there entered into European languages, e.g., French paradis, German Paradies, and English paradise. The word entered Semitic languages as well: Akkadian pardesu, Hebrew pardes, and Arabic firdaws. As the word expresses, such gardens would have been enclosed. The garden's purpose was, and is, to provide a place for protected relaxation in a variety of manners: spiritual, and leisurely (such as meetings with friends), essentially a paradise on earth. See more information plus images at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_gardens

There are no yams on the American dinner table. What we call yams are really just a variety of sweet potato. Sweet potatoes were actually born in Mexico, Central, and South America, as well as the West Indies. Their botanical name, Ipomoca batata, was derived from the American Indians of Louisiana who were growing them in native gardens as early as 1540. The Indians referred to sweet potatoes as batatas. In his first voyage to the West Indies Columbus discovered many new foods which he brought back to Spain. Sweet potatoes were among his ship's treasures. The Spanish relished them and began cultivating them immediately. Soon they were profitably exporting them to England where they were included in spice pies to be devoured at the court of Henry VIII. It was the Portuguese who carried sweet potatoes to Asia and Africa where they have become an important staple of the diet even today. There are two major varieties of sweet potatoes, the yellow, drier, more mealy kind with lighter beige colored skins, and the orange, more moist, sweeter ones with reddish skins that are usually called "yams." True yams, however, are nothing like the sweet potato, but are a tuber native to Africa, very starchy, not very sweet, and grow as large as 100 pounds. It was the Southerners, mainly from North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, who adopted the name yams for the darker-skinned orange variety and made them an important part of their cuisine. http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch11.html

Canola oil is pressed from the seeds of a special variety of Brassica napus, a plant in the mustard family closely related to bok choi and turnips. Brassica napus’s unfortunate common name is rapeseed (from rapum, Latin for “turnip”). Rapeseed typically contains high levels of erucic acid (which makes oils go rancid quickly, is toxic in large doses, and may cause cancer) and glucosinolate (which tastes so bitter and unpleasant that it’s undesirable even in animal feed). But in the 1950s and 1960s, Canadian scientists began developing strains of it with lower levels of the problematic chemicals. In 1974, a University of Manitoba professor named Baldur Steffanson introduced a rapeseed variety with extremely low erucic acid and glucosinolate content that was dubbed canola, for CANadian Oil, Low Acid. http://www.chow.com/food-news/53865/where-does-canola-oil-come-from/

The familiar sunflower has provided great examples of adaptation by hybrids. Loren H. Rieseberg of the University of British Columbia and colleagues have found that two widespread species, the common sunflower and prairie sunflower, have combined at least three times to give rise to three hybrid species: the sand sunflower, the desert sunflower, and the puzzle sunflower. Read about wholphin (dolphin-false killer whale), zorses (zebra-horse), beefalo (bison-beef cattle) and, of course, mules (donkey-horse) at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/14creatures.html