Darby Conley is an American cartoonis best known for the popular comic strip Get Fuzzy. Conley was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1970, and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. His first cartoons appeared in the Doyle High Trailblazer, his school paper in Knoxville, Tennessee. His single-panel strip of weirdness won him first place in a News-Sentinel student cartoon competition in 1986, thus planting the idea of someday becoming a professional cartoonist. He went on to earn a Fine Arts and Art History degree from Amherst College. After submitting his Gary Larson-esque efforts to syndicates for years, a few representatives advised Conley that a strip with regular characters and some continuity might prove easier to "sell". As an animal lover, Conley decided to feature a cat and dog; some fine-tuning resulted in the strip Get Fuzzy. Comics syndicate United Media agreed in 1999 to publish Conley's new strip, which first appeared in September of that year. Get Fuzzy began its run in 75 papers, an unusually high number for a newcomer. But the strip’s runaway popularity was even more unprecedented. With remarkable rapidity, the circulation had more than doubled, the first book of collected strips was published, and talks were being conducted over the production of plush toys, a TV show, and even a movie. Comics that Conley has cited as personal favorites include Bloom County, The Far Side and The Adventures of Tintin. Conley has also stated that his sense of humor was shaped in part by the likes of comedy/science fiction author Douglas Adams and legendary comic troupe Monty Python. Many "one-shot" Get Fuzzy strips feature wordplay and puns that reflect these influences. He is also a fan of the band Ween. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Conley

Darby Conley named his characters in Get Fuzzy after baseball players Bucky O'Neil and Satchel Paige, and Rob Wilco after two of his friends with the same first name. Bucky's and Satchel's personalities are extreme simplifications of the stereotypes of "cat" and "dog". The unusual title of the strip came from a concert poster he once created for his brother's band, the Fuzzy Sprouts. "Life's too short to be cool," the poster read, "Get Fuzzy." http://www.nya-nya.us/getfuzzy/conley.html

King of the Sea “The head of an average-sized whale is from fifteen to sixteen feet [about one-third the length], and the lips open some six or eight feet; yet to such a mouth there is scarcely any throat, not sufficiently large to allow a herring to pass down it. This little scaly fellow [the herring], some fourteen inches in length, would choke a monster whale, and is hence called `the king of the sea.” —C.Thomson: Autobiography, p. 132. http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/king-sea.html

King of the Sea story from the Isle of Man http://www.isleofman.com/heritage/ePedia/Arts/Literature/folklore/ManxFairyTales/06-herringKing.aspx

The herring is the king of the sea
The herring is the fish for me
The herring is the king of the sea
Sing whack-fol-do-dol-lay.
The Herring's Head (extract) See more lyrics at: http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2923

Charles Cros (1842-1888) was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude, France, 35 km to the East of Carcassonne. He developed various improved methods of photography including an early color photo process. He also invented improvements in telegraph technology. He is perhaps most famous as the man who almost, but not quite, invented the phonograph. No one before M. Charles Cros had thought of reproducing sound by making an apparatus capable of registering and reproducing sounds which had been engraved with a diaphragm. The inventor gave the name of Paleophone (voix du passé) to his invention. On April 30, 1877 he submitted a sealed envelope containing a letter to the Academy of Sciences in Paris explaining his proposed method. The letter was read in public on the 3rd December following. In his letter, after having shown that his method consisted of detecting an oscillation of a membrane and using the tracing to reproduce the oscillation with respect to its duration and intensity. Cros added that a cylindrical form for the receiving apparatus seemed to him to be the most practical, as it allowed for the graphic inscription of the vibrations by means of a very fine-threaded screw. An article on the Paleophone was published in "la semaine du Clergé" on October 10, 1877, written by l'Abbé Leblanc. Before Cros had a chance to follow up on this idea or attempt to construct a working model, Thomas Alva Edison introduced his first working phonograph in the USA. Edison used a cylinder covered in tinfoil for his first phonograph, patenting this method for reproducing sound on January 15, 1878. Edison and Cros apparently did not know of each other's work in advance. In the early 1870s Cros had published with Mallarmé, Villiers and Verlaine in the short-lived weekly Renaissance littéraire et artistique, edited by Emile Blémont. His poem The Kippered Herring inspired Ernest Coquelin to create what he called monologues, short theatrical pieces whose format was copied by numerous imitators. The piece, translated as The Salt Herring, was translated and illustrated by Edward Gorey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Cros

In 2010, Rui Saito, a Japanese tango dancer, and her Korean partner were competing in the prestigious competition in Buenos Aires known as El Metropolitano when Ms. Saito says an Argentine woman in the audience came up to them and said she didn't appreciate their presence. "'What are foreigners doing dancing tango?'" Ms. Saito said the woman told her. "'You don't know tango.'" Later, Ms. Saito says the woman heckled them as they danced. This year, things got more bleak for foreigners at the Metropolitano. Organizers inserted a new rule stipulating that the May event would be open only to "aficionados and/or professionals of Argentine nationality." In a hearing last month, Metropolitano organizers argued that they had a right to impose entry restrictions because the winners will represent Buenos Aires here this August in the finals of a larger event it calls the "Dance World Cup," which last year attracted 460 couples from 21 countries. City tango spokeswoman Valeria Solarz says that, of course, foreigner dancers will be welcomed with open arms to the World Cup. But she adds that it's only fitting that dancers bearing the hopes of Buenos Aires in the World Cup have roots here. In a concession to the foreign litigants, Metropolitano organizers offered to hold special side competitions for non-Argentines—and Judge Liberatori now says that may be the best outcome foreigners can realistically hope for. But shunting non-Argentines into a "tango ghetto" just isn't acceptable, according to Christian Rubilar, the foreign dancers' Argentine lawyer. "The dance floor is supposed to be the most democratic space in Argentina," says Mr. Rubilar, who is not only a constitutional law expert but also a tango dancer himself. Mr. Rubilar says that in 2010, Ms. Saito and her Korean partner, the pair that was heckled, might have won the Metropolitano, but they were barred from the finals by requirements that at least one of the pair have resided three years in Buenos Aires. Ms. Saito said they had the proof, but organizers kept demanding more paperwork. In court filings, city lawyers said that many foreigners didn't have their paperwork in order and discrimination hasn't been a factor. It seems paradoxical, in light of the present dispute, that tango originated among European immigrants here and in Uruguay in the late 19th century. The dance is "a blend of sex and chess," says tango expert Christine Denniston. After some down decades, tango started a renaissance in the 1980s, coinciding with the end of a repressive dictatorship in Argentina and the launch of a wildly successful international dance and musical show called "Tango Argentina." Last year, 100,000 foreign visitors came to Buenos Aires for August's "World Cup" and accompanying festival—a doubling of attendance in just two years. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576456210544473444.html

College students are flocking to North Dakota in ever greater numbers. Out-of-state students account for about 55% of the 14,500 enrolled at North Dakota State University, as well as at similarly sized University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Nonresident students at North Dakota's 11 public colleges constitute a higher ratio than in almost every other state. High school juniors and seniors scouring online college guides find North Dakota universities are inexpensive and well-regarded, with modest-sized classes typically taught by faculty members rather than adjuncts or graduate students. This isn't happening by accident. A dozen years ago, a years-long decline in the number of state high school graduates was accelerating. Faced with the prospect of closing academic departments or entire schools, university leaders instead moved to attract more students, particularly from beyond state borders. The state poured money into improving academics. In the National Science Foundation's rankings by federal research expenditures—a key measure of prestige for research universities—North Dakota State and University of North Dakota each jumped ahead of more than 30 other institutions over the past 11 years, to the 147th and 143rd spots, respectively. While improving its schools, North Dakota kept tuition low. In recent years, state revenues gushing from an oil boom in western North Dakota have given the state more resources to lure nonresidents. The state has a long tradition of spending generously on higher education. Some in the heavily Republican state have complained that it is academically "socialist." To make sure no North Dakotans had to travel far to attend college, the state has 11 public colleges, including half as many four-year institutions as Minnesota—a state with eight times as many people. In 1999, the state legislature assembled a committee of 63 leaders of government and business to debate whether to cut classes and departments. After all, North Dakota in 1999 produced fewer than 9,000 high school graduates, down from 10,740 in 1980. In the end, however, the so-called "Roundtable" committee vowed to bolster their university system in a bid to exploit its potential as an economic development asset. All along, North Dakota's 11 public colleges had provided economic stability to up-and-down agricultural towns like Mayville and Dickinson. In a May 2000 report, the committee laid out a plan to attract ever-greater numbers of nonresident students to North Dakota universities, and help those universities spawn private enterprise that would hire those students upon graduation. Higher education would become a "primary engine in reversing" the state's economic and demographic woes, the report said. A key to attracting out-of-staters was undercutting other states on price. The highest-priced public colleges in North Dakota—UND and NDSU—officially charge nonresident students about $17,000 in tuition and fees. That's half what nonresident students pay at many public colleges elsewhere. And it's less than some in-state rates at public colleges in places like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But as it happens, few nonresidents at UND or NDSU pay anywhere near that rate. That's because North Dakota belongs to consortiums in which it and about 20 other states agreed to charge each other's students no more than 1.5 times in-state rates. As others raised tuition, North Dakota held its price down. In many cases, North Dakota waived the premium, enabling out-of-staters to enroll full-year for about $7,000, lower than resident tuition in most other states. Read more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304231204576406042109860376.html?mod=WSJ_comments_MoreIn_Education