Hannah's Socks is just over 12,000 pairs of socks short of meeting their 2010 goal of collecting 150,000 pairs to help families in need! There's still time to collect and donate socks, but they need them by December 30. Do you have new socks or other new clothing 'essentials' (men's, women's and children's briefs, T-shirts, thermals, pajamas, etc.) to donate but you're unsure where to go? No problem! You can drop off donations at locations in Toledo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Southern Michigan. See addresses of locations at: http://www.hannahssocks.org/find-a-drop-off-point If you have a large donation and/or need to make other arrangements, contact Hannah's Socks at: http://www.hannahssocks.org/contact and they'll be happy to help you.

Some 50 million Americans at least occasionally experience tinnitus, pronounced tin-EYE-tus or TIN-i-tus. And 16 million U.S. adults had it frequently in the past year, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some two million find it so disturbing that it interferes with sleep, work, concentration and family relationships. The incidence is rising these days along with the aging population and personal music players cranked up high. "Now we have 12-year-olds complaining of tinnitus. We never had that previously," says Jennifer Born, a spokeswoman for the American Tinnitus Association, a nonprofit education and advocacy group. Tinnitus is also the No. 1 service-related disability among veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq, due to brain injuries from explosive devices.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703727804576017473782047928.html

Internet users may not realize how much information they're giving up just by browsing the Web. Digital marketers like RapLeaf, for example, are getting better at sniffing through people's Web-browsing histories and online identities to compile user profiles that can be sold to advertisers. These targeted marketing campaigns have drawn the ire of some members of Congress and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which, on December 1, called for the United States to create a "do not track" list for the internet, which would let users essentially opt out from all targeted marketing and tracking. "Industry must do better," the agency says in its report, which warns consumers that if they use the internet, location-tracking smartphones or online social networks, they're likely sending information about themselves, and possibly friends, to an unknown list of advertisers and marketers. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/12/13/end.of.privacy.intro/
Case in point: On December 13, I received a phone call from an insurance company saying that an Internet lead on me indicated that I had questions on health insurance. Not so.

An IBM computing system named "Watson" will compete on the first-ever man vs. machine competition, which will air Feb. 14, 15 and 16, with two matches being played over three consecutive days. Jennings and Rutter, the show's two most successful contestants, will face off against Watson for a grand prize of $1 million, second place earning of $300,000 and third place of $200,000. Rutter and Jennings will donate 50% of their winnings to charity, and IBM will donate all of its winnings to charity.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2010/12/ibm-computer-to-compete-on-jeopardy-/1

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted the first major chess tournament for computers, the 1st United States Computer Chess Championship, in September 1970 in New York. The event was organized by Dr. Monty Newborn, Professor of Computer Science at McGill University. It was won by CHESS 3.0, a chess program from Northwestern University, written by David Slate, Larry Atkin, and Gorlen. Six programs competed that year. In 1994, the last ACM chess tournament was held in Cape May, New Jersey. The 24th ACM tournament was won by DEEP THOUGHT II. The ACM chess events were cancelled in 1995 as DEEP BLUE was preparing for the first match against world chess champion Garry Kasparov. See list of all tournaments at: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ACM-ComputerChessWall.html
Virginia law on passing a stopped school bus has been clear for 40 years. "A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or school driveway for the purpose of taking on or discharging children." Yes, drivers must stop a school bus which is, er, stopped. Wait. Is something missing there? Indeed. The preposition "at" was deleted in 1970 when the law was amended, the statute's history shows. And a man who zipped past a school bus, while it was picking up children with its lights flashing and stop sign extended, was found not guilty recently by a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006753.html

What are combining forms? You can think of them as the Legos of language. As the name indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can't attach to another affix).
exogamy (ek-SOG-uh-mee) noun
Marriage outside one's tribe or a similar social unit.
From Greek exo- (outside) + -gamy (marriage). First recorded use: 1865. The opposite is endogamy. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mark Morris's "The Hard Nut" has returned for the first time in eight years, and will play through December 19. The modern-dance choreographer created it back in 1991, when his company was in residence at Belgium's Theatre de la Monnaie and had access to state-funded deep pockets - a full orchestra, set and costume shop, rehearsal space. Thus the lavishness of "The Hard Nut" - and the difficulty in performing it nowadays. In this work, he marries the full Tchaikovsky score with the complete E.T.A. Hoffmann story. You're seeing only a fragment of it in most ballet company versions, but Morris goes further. Of course, Marie (as his heroine is called, in keeping with the Hoffmann) receives the nutcracker doll from her "family friend" Drosselmeier. Her brother Fritz breaks the doll. And in Marie's dream, her devotion transforms it into a prince. After all that, Drosselmeier tells Marie a story-within-a-story about a hero's quest to find a magic nut, the hard nut of the title, that will restore beauty to a princess who is under a rat's evil spell. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202991.html

BAM Gilman Opera House 30 Lafayette Avenue between St. Felix Street and Ashland Place Brooklyn 718-636-4100
Next Wave Festival: The Hard Nut
through December 19 To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Mark Morris Dance Group reprises its irreverent and much loved The Hard Nut, a retro-modern take on the holiday favorite The Nutcracker. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus participates in this dance work appropriate for all ages.
The Nutcracker: A World Premiere
Dec. 23-Jan. 2 With a cast of over 100 performers, American Ballet Theatre's world premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's Nutcracker features the classic Tchaikovsky score and sets and costumes by Richard Hudson (who won a Tony Award for his set designs for The Lion King).
http://www.nyc-arts.org/venues/view/id/145