August 6, 2011 Happy 20th birthday to the World Wide Web! The word Internet was coined in December of 1974 as a way to describe a global system of computers connected via the TCP protocol. The Internet is the technological underpinning that makes the World Wide Web possible. It's the system of local area networks, regional networks, and other separate networks that are all interwoven such that computer A can connect up to computer B (or smartphone C) to facilitate an exchange of information. The Web, in contrast, is analogous to a handshake – just one method a person can use to interact with another person in some capacity. Tim Berners-Lee didn't connect up all the computers in the world in 1991. Rather, he developed three different technologies that made it possible for users to better find and share information among these connected systems. The first technology, uniform resource locators (URLs) can be thought of as mailing addresses for information –the location of a file within the World Wide Web that's dynamically mapped to the file's actual location on a system within the Internet itself. The second, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), is the fuel a Web browser needs in order to display the text, graphics, and hyperlinking system that powers the very Web itself. It runs hand-in-hand with the third technology, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or the backbone rules that allow for requests and file transmissions to occur between Web browsers and Web servers. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390583,00.asp

PITTSBURGH—One Sunday afternoon recently, Jody Noble-Choder opened her sprawling backyard—with its fish pond, winding stone path and meditation platform nestled at the edge of the Allegheny River—to about 400 curious visitors. The main attraction: a plastic-mesh-enclosed chicken run and a gray coop with green trim inhabited by five hens: Buffy-the-Wormslayer, Attila-the-Hen, Motherclucker, Bonita and Juanita. This is the plucky cousin of the genteel garden tour: the urban chicken coop tour. Austin, Texas, has the Funky Chicken Coop Tour. Portland, Ore., has the Tour de Coops, and Dallas has A Peep at the Coops. More than half a dozen other cities—including Seattle, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Madison, Wis., Bend, Ore., Davis., Calif.—have their own tours to show off coops. "Some chicken people are coming out of the closet," said Ms. Noble-Choder, a corporate lawyer who organized this summer's first Chicks-in-the-Hood Pittsburgh Urban Chicken Coop Tour. She paid $1,200 for her coop, which has heated roosts and an automated door opener, but many coops are humble do-it-yourself affairs requiring little more than a few two-by-fours, some chicken wire and straw. Seven families displayed their coops, and adults paid $5 each to go on the self-guided tour. Between ticket and T-shirt sales, the fledgling group took in more than $1,800, which it donated to a food bank. Coop tours are a sign that more city dwellers are becoming interested in urban farming and raising chickens, say city officials. Pittsburgh passed an ordinance requested by residents earlier this year that enables people to keep up to three chickens and two beehives on a 2,000-square-foot lot. Rob Ludlow, the owner of backyardchickens.com, which calls itself the largest and fastest-growing community of chicken enthusiasts in the world, said his group exceeded 100,000 members on July 27, doubling its membership from last year. Chickens are a "multipurpose pet," Mr. Ludlow said, noting that hens eat bugs and produce fertilizer in addition to laying eggs. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904292504576479960464282684.html

Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character who has become an icon for the Walt Disney Company. Mickey Mouse was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. He was voiced by Walt Disney from 1928–1946 theatrically, and again from 1955–1959 for the original ABC TV The Mickey Mouse Club television series. The Walt Disney Company celebrates his birth as November 18, 1928, upon the release of Steamboat Willie, although Mickey had already appeared six months earlier in an unfinished test screening of Plane Crazy. Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character created by the Disney studio for Charles Mintz of Universal Studios. The Opry House, first released on March 28, 1929, was the second short released during the year. This short introduced Mickey's gloves. "The Barnyard Concert", first released on March 3, 1930, featured Mickey conducting an orchestra. The only recurring characters among its members were Clarabelle as a flutist and Horace as a drummer. Their rendition of the Poet and Peasant Overture (by Franz von Suppé) is humorous enough; but it has been noted that several of the gags featured were repeated from previous shorts. Another Mickey short was originally released on March 14, 1930 under the title Fiddlin' Around but has since been renamed to Just Mickey. In The Band Concert, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon filmed in Technicolor, Mickey conducted the William Tell Overture, but in the cartoon is swept up by a tornado, along with his orchestra. It is said that conductor Arturo Toscanini so loved this short that, upon first seeing it, he asked the projectionist to run it again. Mickey made his most famous classical music appearance in 1940 in the classic Disney film Fantasia. His screen "role" as The Sorcerer's Apprentice, set to the symphonic poem of the same name by Paul Dukas, is perhaps the most famous segment of the film. The segment features no dialogue at all, only the music. The apprentice (Mickey), not willing to do his chores, puts on the sorcerer's magic hat after the sorcerer goes to bed and casts a spell on a broom, which causes the broom to come to life and perform the most tiring chore—filling up a deep well using two buckets of water. When the well eventually overflows, Mickey finds himself unable to control the broom, leading to a near-flood. After the segment ends, Mickey is seen in silhouette shaking hands with Leopold Stokowski, who conducts all the music heard in Fantasia. "Mickey Mouse" is a slang expression meaning small-time, amateurish or trivial. In the UK and Ireland, it also means poor quality or counterfeit. However, in parts of Australia it can mean excellent or very good. It is sometimes erroneously stated that the Mickey Mouse character is only copyrighted. In fact, the character, like all major Disney characters, is also trademarked, which lasts in perpetuity as long as it continues to be used commercially by its owner. So, whether or not a particular Disney cartoon goes into the public domain, the characters themselves may not be used as trademarks without authorization. However, within the United States, European Union and some other jurisdictions, the Copyright Term Extension Act (sometimes called the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act' because of extensive lobbying by the Disney corporation) and similar legislation has ensured that works such as the early Mickey Mouse cartoons will remain under copyright until at least 2023. However, some copyright scholars argue that Disney's copyright on the earliest version of the character may be invalid due to ambiguity in the copyright notice for Steamboat Willie. The Walt Disney Company has become well known for protecting its trademark on the Mickey Mouse character, whose likeness is closely associated with the company, with particular zeal. In 1989, Disney threatened legal action against three daycare centers in Florida for having Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters painted on their walls. The characters were removed, and rival Universal Studios replaced them with Universal cartoon characters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse

spa·ghet·ti noun
from Italian spaghetti "pasta made in long strings," from spaghetti, plural of spaghetto "little string," from spago "string": a food made chiefly of a mixture of flour and water dried in the form of thin solid strings
The Italian word spago means "cord, string." The suffix -etto in Italian, like the suffix -ette in English, means "little one." Added together, spago and -etto become spaghetto, which means "little string." "Little string" describes very well the shape of a strand of spaghetti. The word spaghetti is actually the plural form of spaghetto. http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?spaghetti

Five famous misquoates from literature 5) “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar). 4) “I must go down to the sea again.” John Masefield (Sea Fever). 3) “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” William Congreve (The Mourning Bride).
2) “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). 1) “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes). Find correct quotes plus a link to famous movie misquotes at:
http://cjlevinson.com/2007/09/22/5-famous-misquotes-from-literature/

The origins of many English phrases are unknown. Nevertheless, many people would say that they know the source of this one. It is widely attributed to Marie-Antoinette (1755-93), the Queen consort of Louis XVI. She is supposed to have said this when she was told that the French populace had no bread to eat. The original French is 'Qu'ils mangent de la brioche', i.e. 'Let them eat brioche' (brioche is a form of cake made of flour, butter and eggs). Two notable contemporaries of Marie-Antoinette - Louis XVIII and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attribute the phrase to a source other than her. In Louis XVIII's memoir Relation d'un voyage a Bruxelles et d Coblentz, 1791, he states that the phrase 'Que ne mangent-ils de la croûte de pâté?' (Why don't they eat pastry?) was used by Marie-Thérèse (1638-83), the wife of Louis XIV. That account was published almost a century after Marie-Thérèse's death though, so it must be treated with some caution. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 12-volume autobiographical work Confessions, was written in 1770. In Book 6, which was written around 1767, he recalls: At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat pastry!" Marie-Antoinette arrived at Versailles from her native Austria in 1770, two or three years after Rousseau had written the above passage. Whoever the 'great princess' was - possibly Marie-Thérèse, it wasn't Marie-Antoinette. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/let-them-eat-cake.html

Website of the Day Movie Stinger moviestinger.com Do you leave the movie theater as soon as the credits roll? You may be missing out on extra scenes tacked on during or after the credits. This site lists movies and video games that have extra footage.
Number to Know 69.5 inches: The length of the world’s largest zucchini. Today is Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbors' Porch Night, so if you have extra zucchini, share it with your neighborhood!
This Day in History Aug. 8, 1974: Watergate scandal: President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day. http://www.ardmoreite.com/newsnow/x1312843222/Morning-Minutes-Aug-8