Steig Larsson, author of Millennium trilogy books—“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2008, American edition), “The Girl Who Played with Fire” (2009), and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010)—and who was born in a village in the north of Sweden in 1954, was an ardent leftist all his life. In the nineteen-eighties, because of immigration, Sweden, like other European countries, saw a sharp increase in racism. Suddenly, there were neo-Nazis and Aryan leagues, and the people involved were no longer crazed souls operating mimeograph machines in basements but smooth characters, in suits, running for public office. In 1995, Larsson and some friends in Stockholm founded a quarterly magazine, Expo, with the declared mission of safeguarding “democracy and freedom of speech by . . . documenting extremist and racist groups in society.” Expo was undisguisedly the model for Millennium, the journal that is Blomkvist’s home base in the trilogy. Larsson’s anti-authoritarian writings won him and Expo many enemies. The printers and distributors of the magazine had their windows smashed. Larsson received death threats. He took precautions. He allowed no photographs. In restaurants, he and his companion, Eva Gabrielsson, sat so that he could watch one exit, she the other. Despite all this, Larsson is said to have been a happy man, who lived the life he wanted. He smoked three packs a day, subsisted on hamburgers, and often worked around the clock. He consumed popular novels, especially crime fiction, by the cartload. And then, in 2001, in a move that no one has been able to explain satisfactorily—and about which, for a long time, he told almost no one—he began writing crime fiction. Later, he said that he did it for fun. Or he said that it was for money—that the books were going to be his “retirement fund.” He wrote fast, easily, and late at night. Larsson submitted the manuscript to Piratförlag, a publishing house with a strong line of crime novels. The editors there never opened the package. (They did not read manuscripts from first-time authors.) Today, one almost pities them. The publisher that accepted the Millennium trilogy—Norstedts Förlag, the second firm Larsson contacted—has sold three and a half million copies of the books. In part because Larsson was not alive when the books were published, the Millennium trilogy has been surrounded by a number of controversies, the juiciest being the question of who should be receiving the fortune the books have earned. The most deserving beneficiary, as many people saw it, was Eva Gabrielsson, who was not only Larsson’s companion for three decades but who also, at various times, supported him, not to speak of putting up with the fact that he normally came home around midnight. The two of them never married, however. Larsson—and, later, Gabrielsson—said that this was a way of protecting her; she would not run his risks. Years earlier, Larsson had written a will leaving his entire estate to the Communist Workers’ Party of his home town, but the will was not witnessed and therefore was not valid. When Swedes die intestate, everything is awarded to their kin—a strange law in a country where unregistered unions are almost the rule. I n any case, Larsson’s money has gone to the two surviving members of his immediate family, his father and his brother. These two men were not unaware of the awkwardness of their position. They gave Gabrielsson Larsson’s half of the apartment that she shared with him. They also proposed to pay her $2.7 million, by way of a settlement. She refused this offer, at which point the dealings between the two parties grew nasty. Gabrielsson told the press that Larsson had been alienated from his father and brother. They, in turn, suggested that Gabrielsson was psychologically disturbed. The story became even more exciting when the news got out that Gabrielsson had Larsson’s laptop, which, according to several sources (including her), contained more than half of a fourth novel, plus notes for the remainder—in other words, enough material so that someone else could finish it and it could still be called a Stieg Larsson novel. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/10/110110crat_atlarge_acocella

Festina lente is a classical adage and oxymoron meaning "make haste slowly" or "more haste, less speed". Favorite sayings of Augustus were: "More haste less speed," "Better a safe commander than a bold," and "That is done quickly enough which is done well enough."

Gold coins were minted for Augustus which bore the image of a crab and a butterfly, which was considered to be emblematic of the adage. Other pairings used to illustrate the adage include a hare in a snail shell; a chameleon with a fish; a diamond ring entwined with foliage; and, especially, a dolphin entwined around an anchor. Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany had festina lente as his motto and illustrated it with a tortoise with a sail upon its back.
Erasmus praised the adage in his great work, Adagia, and used it especially to compliment his printer — "Aldus, making haste slowly, has acquired as much gold as he has reputation, and richly deserves both." Aldus used the corresponding symbol of the dolphin and anchor as his printer's mark. He showed Erasmus a Roman silver coin, given to him by Cardinal Bembo, which bore this symbol on the reverse side. The adage was popular in renaissance times and Shakespeare alluded to it repeatedly. In Love's Labour's Lost, he copied the crab and butterfly imagery with the characters Moth and Armado. The great Onslow family of Shropshire, have the adage as their motto. This is a pun upon the family name — on-slow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente

Camel (Camelus)
Dromedary (one-hump): Camelus dromedarius
Bactrian camel (two-humps, endangered): Camelus bactrianus
Camels live in dry desert areas of southwestern Asia, the Sahara Desert in North Africa and along the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East and Indian desert areas. There is a large feral population of dromedary camels in the Australian outback. When running, a camel can reach a speed up to 40 mph in short bursts, 25 mph for longer periods of time. Camels do not have hooves. The foot of a camel is made up of a large leathery pad, with two toes at the front, the bones of which are embedded in the foot. The padding makes the gait of a camel silent, and keeps it from sinking in the sand. The camel also has pads of thick leathery skin, on its leg joints, enabling it to kneel or lay in the hot sand. Similar to giraffes, camels move both legs together on each side of their body to walk. There are a number of different sounds that the camel can make. Grumpling, bellowing and grunting sounds are common. They also can bleat like a goat or lamb. They also make a loud roaring noise. As a domestic animal, the camel is used for milk, food and transportation. Camels can carry up to 200 lbs on their back for distances in the heat. Their dung is so dry that it can be used to fuel fires. http://www.desertusa.com/animals/camel.html

The words alms, amends, cattle, clothes, doldrums, ides, pants, pliers, scissors, shorts, smithereens, and trousers are all plural but have no singular form.
Many words, such as deer, moose, and sheep, are spelled and pronounced the same way in both their singular and plural forms. More interesting words with this property are congeries, kudos, premises, shambles, series, and species.
Fish can be both singular and plural, yet fishes is also a correct pluralization of the word.
The words bourgeois, chassis, corps, faux pas, gardebras, précis, pince-nez, and rendezvous all have plurals spelled the same way but pronounced differently.
The plural of human is humans.
The plural of foot is feet. The plural of goosefoot is goosefoots.
The plural of moose is moose. The plural of goose is geese. The plural of mongoose is mongooses.
The plural of mouse, the rodent, is mice. The plural of mouse, the computer hardware device, is mouses. http://www.rinkworks.com/words/wordforms.shtml

Seen on church sign in Toledo
Bizarre (should be bazaar, a sale of miscellaneous contributed articles to benefit some charity, cause or organization)

Transcript and video of Barack Obama January 12 speech in Tucson The video is 34 minutes long, and you can read the transcript in under ten minutes.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/barack-obama-tucson-speech-transcript-video-arizona-memorial-2747009.html

Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of Wedding Gowns is on exhibit through January 30 at the Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive. Wedded Perfection features over 50 gowns from the late 18th-century to modern designers including Vera Wang, Yohji Yamamoto and Geoffrey Beene. One of the gowns belonged to the great-grandmother of a muse reader. The exhibit will be in Utica, New York June 19 through Sept 18 at the Munson William Proctor Museum of Art.

Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of Wedding Gowns, ISBN 978-1-904832-84-3, by Cynthia Amnéus with essays by Katherine Jellison and Sara Long Butler has been published by D Giles Limited in association with the Cincinnati Art Museum. The volume contains full-length colour plates and exquisite details of nearly 60 wedding gowns and dresses from the late 18th century to the present day, drawn from Cincinnati Art Museum’s internationally renowned permanent collection, are supplemented with loans from major designers. http://www.gilesltd.com/books/catalogue/exhibition-catalogues/wedded-perfection/