On Thanksgiving Day, Dick Van Dyke appeared at a mission on Skid Row, going from table to table and entertaining the residents while they ate. “I sing and dance,” he said. “That’s my job.” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/12/13/101213ta_talk_goodyear

Searching YouTube for terms flash mob hallelujah on December 12, I found 306 mentions. The performances of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus have been held around the world, often in mall food courts. The Masterworks Chorale of Toledo organized a performance on December 11. So far, the earliest and biggest I have found was held October 30, 2010 in Macy's downtown store in Philadelphia.

Random Acts of Culture are making quite a national impression. After surprising shoppers with a 650-person performance of Hallelujah in Philadelphia (the YouTube video has 5 million hits and counting), Knight partnered with the Florida Grand Opera and the Arsht Center to surprise shoppers at the Macy’s shoe department in Miami with six performances of “Toreador” from Carmen. Knight Foundation is funding 1,000 Random Acts of Culture over the next three years in eight cities, as a way to bring classical artists out of the performance halls and into our everyday lives. There were 78 Random Acts of Culture as of November 30, 2010. Check out RandomActsofCulture.org for more.

Rising ocean levels brought about by climate change have created a flood of unprecedented legal questions for small island nations and their neighbors. Among them: If a country disappears, is it still a country? Does it keep its seat at the United Nations? Who controls its offshore mineral rights? Its shipping lanes? Its fish? And if entire populations are forced to relocate -- as could be the case with citizens of the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other small island states facing extinction -- what citizenship, if any, can those displaced people claim? "At the current negotiating sessions and climate change meetings, nobody is truly addressing the legal and human rights effects of climate change," said Phillip Muller, the Marshall Islands' ambassador to the United Nations. "If the Marshall Islands ceases to exist, are we still going to own the sea resources? Are we still going to be asked for permission to fish? What are the rights that we will have? And we are also mindful that we may need to relocate. We're hoping it will never happen, but we have to be ready. There are a lot of issues we need to know the answer to and be able to tell our citizens what is happening," he said. Frustrated by the dearth of answers to the questions he was posing, Muller said, Marshall Islands leaders contacted Columbia Law School. Michael Gerrard, who leads the law school's Center for Climate Change Law, picked up the challenge and issued a call for papers. http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/08/23/23climatewire-if-a-country-sinks-beneath-the-sea-is-it-sti-70169.html?pagewanted=all

sesquipedality (ses-kwi-pi-DAL-i-tee) noun The practice of using long words. From Latin sesqui- (one and a half) + ped- (foot). First recorded use: 1759.
Literally speaking, sesquipedality is using words that are one and a half feet long. A related word is sesquicentennial (150th anniversary). Nothing wrong with using a sesquipedalian word once in a while, if it fits, but it's best to avoid too many long, polysyllabic words. This dictum doesn't apply to German speakers though, as Mark Twain once observed, "Some German words are so long that they have a perspective." There's a bean subspecies commonly known as a yardlong bean. It's really misnamed as it's "only" half a yard long. Its scientific name, Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis, is more precise.
periphrasis (puh-RIF-ruh-sis) noun A roundabout way of saying something, using more words than necessary. Via Latin, from Greek periphrasis, from periphrazein (to explain around), from peri- (around) + phrazein (to speak, say). First recorded use: 1533.
paralipsis (par-uh-LIP-sis) noun Drawing attention to something while claiming to be passing over it. From Latin paralipsis, from Greek paraleipsis (an omission), from paraleipein (to leave on one side), from para- (side) + leipein (to leave). First recorded use: 1550. Paralipsis is especially handy in politics to point out an opponent's faults. It typically involves these phrases: "not to mention", "to say nothing of". "I won't speak of", "leaving aside" A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Nobel Lecture, In Praise of Reading and Fiction, by Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of The Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal. fiction is more than an entertainment, more than an intellectual exercise that sharpens one’s sensibility and awakens a critical spirit. It is an absolute necessity so that civilization continues to exist, renewing and preserving in us the best of what is human.
See entire speech at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html

A copy of the world's most expensive printed book has sold at auction in London for £6.5m ($10.3m), but why is John James Audubon's Birds of America such a collectors' item? If you ever see a copy of Audubon's Birds of America lying round a junk shop, you should consider buying it. It should stand out. The largest version of the book was in what printers call double elephant folio - an enormous 39.5 by 26.5 inches (100cm by 67cm), to allow lifesize illustration of birds. Even by today's standards, the vividness of its illustrations of birds is extraordinary but when it was being released in the 1830s it was mindboggling. It is perhaps no great surprise that one of the 119 complete copies in existence should fetch millions. Audubon, born in Haiti and largely self-taught, spent well over a decade of his life on the magnum opus, which has prints of watercolours of birds and an accompanying volume of ornithological description. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11937736

The president of the United States is not chosen by a nation-wide popular vote. The electoral vote totals determine the winner, not the statistical plurality or majority a candidate may have in the nation-wide vote totals. Electoral votes are awarded on the basis of the popular vote in each State. Note that 48 out of the 50 States award electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis (as does DC). For example, all 55 of California's electoral votes go to the winner of that State election, even if the margin of victory is only 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent. In a multi-candidate race where candidates have strong regional appeal, as in 1824, it is quite possible that a candidate who collects the most votes on a nation-wide basis will not win the electoral vote. In a two-candidate race, that is less likely to occur. But it did occur in the Hayes/Tilden election of 1876 and the Harrison/Cleveland election of 1888 due to the statistical disparity between vote totals in individual State elections and the national vote totals. This also occurred in the 2000 presidential election, where George W. Bush received fewer popular votes than Albert Gore Jr., but received a majority of electoral votes. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#popularelectoral

Of our 44 presidents, four received fewer votes than their opponents but still became president.: #6, John Quincy Adams; #19, Rutherford B. Hayes; #23, Benjamin Harrison; and #43, George Bush.