Xu Bing, one of China's best-known contemporary artists, didn't think it would be hard to get materials for an exhibit about tobacco in Richmond, a city whose ties to the leaf run long and deep. His installation opened September 10, 2011 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It explores the history, culture, and links between the tobacco industries in the U.S. and China . Mr. Xu was optimistic about finding 500,000 cigarettes for a 40-by-15 foot "Tiger Carpet"; a 40-foot-long uncut cigarette to be stretched—and burned—across the length of a reproduction of an ancient Chinese scroll; and 440 pounds of tobacco leaves compressed into a cube, with raised letters reading, "Light as Smoke." The VMFA spent months searching for a manufacturer to make a long cigarette, a process that involves adjusting equipment to avoid cutting a tube into cigarette lengths. Then the museum faced another problem: The cigarette was made of self-extinguishing paper to conform to fire-safety regulations. And the curator of Mr. Xu's "Tobacco Project" had to arrange to have the museum's heating and air-conditioning system temporarily expel rather than re-circulate air in the building when the long cigarette was burned. Though museum patrons once smoked free cigarettes at exhibit openings, today the museum has a strict no-smoking policy. To buy the half-million cigarettes for the carpet, the VMFA turned to a retired tobacco executive and family friend of Carolyn Hsu-Balcer, a former museum trustee who lured Mr. Xu to the museum. The friend, Marvin Coghill, worked his contacts to negotiate the discount purchase of a brand called 1st Class. He took pains to assure the manufacturer, a unit of Raleigh, N.C.-based U.S. Tobacco Cooperative Inc., that the museum would pay state tax. "I convinced them it wasn't someone buying and reselling cigarettes," Mr. Coghill says. Contacts of Mr. Coghill's also churned out and donated the 40-foot long cigarette. But it was made with self-extinguishing paper, and Mr. Xu wasn't sure it would burn well alone. So he burned a nonextinguishing version that he found in China. See picture and more of the story at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904103404576560600160773970.html

Lyon-style chicken with vinegar sauce from April Bloomfield, chef and co-owner of three New York City restaurants
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/lyon-style-chicken-with-vinegar-sauce

Search Google Scholar for articles. Include patents and legal opinions and journals in your search if desired. http://scholar.google.com/ Samples searches on September 12 for "propietary databases" in articles produced 2,810. When patents were included, I got 4,890. When I searched the subject for legal opinions and journals, the result was 139.

Families that can’t afford to pay from $30 per month for Comcast’s Internet access services now have a less expensive alternative. The cable provider launched a new plan dubbed Internet Essentials, which will cost low-income families only $10 per month for Web access. The new service is part of Comcast’s bid to comply with regulators who required the company to help poor families connect to the Internet in exchange for approval of the acquisition of NBC Universal. Families have to meet four different criteria in order to benefit from Comcast’s Internet Essentials. One of the children has to be enrolled in the National School Lunch Program; families have to be in one of the 39 states Comcast serves; they can’t have had Internet service from the company 90 days prior to joining the program; and can’t have any overdue Comcast bills or unreturned equipment. Once enrolled, Comcast also offers vouchers towards a budget computer worth $150. http://www.pcworld.com/article/237477/comcast_offers_10_a_month_internet_option_for_lowincome_families.html

Three Sam Spades Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon--starring the quintessential hard-boiled private detective, Sam Spade--was adapted for the screen not once, but three times: The Maltese Falcon (also known as Dangerous Female) directed by Roy Del Ruth (1931); Satan Met a Lady directed by William Dieterle (1936); and The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston (1941). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7139/is_200804/ai_n32266621/?tag=mantle_skin;content

A recently discovered planet about 200 light years from Earth reportedly orbits two different suns. This is the first time researchers have witnessed a planet with two stars. The Kepler 16b planet has two suns that orbit one another in 35 days. If a person visited Kepler 16b, they would be greeted by a sky that featured two prominent stars -- and circles both stars in 229 days. The findings were published in Science, and were made using the Kepler space telescope. The Kepler program aims to continue searching for planets similar to Earth that also orbit stars, along with studying how many stars have bodies currently orbiting them. http://www.dailytech.com/Star+Wars+Planet+With+Two+Suns+Discovered/article22756c.htm

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The last Ford Crown Victoria rolled off a Canadian assembly line September 15, marking the end of the big, heavy Ford cars that have been popular with taxi fleets and police departments for decades. Since 1979, almost 10 million Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Cars -- so-called Panther Platform vehicles -- have been sold. Demand for better fuel economy and performance has choked off sales over the years. The Crown Victoria and Town Car get just 24 miles per gallon on the highway, a figure matched by some large three-row SUVs today. "Production levels at the [Ontario, Canada] plant have declined by 60 percent in the last decade as customer preferences shifted to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles," Ford said in its announcement. With the last car rolling of the line Thursday, all production will stop. The automaker has started producing the specially designed Taurus Police Interceptor to replace the Crown Victoria that had been America's most popular police car. Seeing an opportunity, Chrysler Group and General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) are also aggressively marketing their own police car options. Ford has also begun marketing the Transit Connect van as a taxi cab. It was was recently approved for that use use in New York City, but in the longer term New York has agreed to a deal with Nissan to produce what, beginning in 2013, will be the sole New York City taxi option. http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/15/autos/last_crown_victoria/?source=cnn_bin

President Obama’s signing of the Patent Reform Act delivers for all intents and purposes a death knell to a peculiar kind of patent lawsuit: false marking cases. The cases have targeted the manufactures of everything from Frisbees to mascara to paper cups — and the Original Wooly Willy — for being labeled with numbers of patents that are expired. Consumer products manufacturers were spooked after a federal court of appeals ruling in December 2009 said companies could be liable for up to $500 for each individual product marked with an expired number. The new law delivers the old one-two punch to false marking cases, smacking them down on a couple levels. First, it says only the government can file the suits without alleging competitive injury. Previously the suits had qui tam provisions meaning plaintiffs would split the proceeds with Uncle Sam. Next, the law says essentially that expired patent labels don’t constitute false marking. In the most general of terms, it defines false marking as labeling a product with a patent that doesn’t cover the product.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/09/16/rip-false-marking-case-as-we-know-them/