The Longitude Prize was a reward offered by the British government for a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude. The prize, established through an Act of Parliament (the Longitude Act) in 1714, was administered by the Board of Longitude. As a result of the disputes and changes in the rules (legislated or otherwise) for the prize, no one was deemed qualified for any of the official prizes. None of the major prizes were ever awarded. However, many persons benefited from awards offered by the Board. In total, over £100,000 was given in the form of encouragements and awards. Read more including significant recipients of the awards at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_prize

The first X PRIZE – the Ansari X PRIZE – was inspired by the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 prize offered in 1919 by French hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first nonstop flight between New York City and Paris. In 1927, underdog Charles Lindbergh won the prize in a modified single-engine Ryan aircraft called the Spirit of St. Louis. In total, nine teams spent $400,000 in pursuit of the Orteig Prize. In 1996, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis offered a $10 million prize to the first privately financed team that could build and fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilometers into space twice within two weeks. The contest, later titled the Ansari X PRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight, motivated 26 teams from seven nations to invest more than $100 million in pursuit of the $10 million purse. On October 4, 2004, the Ansari X PRIZE was won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, who successfully completed the contest in their spacecraft SpaceShipOne. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation

Countdown to City Center reopening On West 55th Street in New York, with the renovation and restoration of its landmark building with a neo-Moorish facade to be unveiled on Oct. 25, City Center hopes to have addressed imperfections and 88 years of wear and tear. City Center has spent $57 million of a $75 million capital campaign in the hope that people will now notice it. A new glass marquee (with heat lamps) shines lights on the exterior as well as on the sidewalk. Protruding signs are now visible from both Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. And new glass doors allow passers-by to look into the building at six large high-definition plasma screens. The New Museum is acting as curator for three installations for those monitors in the first year, beginning with a series of video works by Rashaad Newsome, a New York artist. City Center was not originally meant to be a theater. It was built in 1923 as a meeting hall for the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, or Shriners, and did not become City Center until 20 years later. At the opening, on Dec. 11, 1943, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia conducted the New York Philharmonic in the national anthem. In an evocation of that moment, the center’s reopening gala on Oct. 25 features Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as a guest conductor. The renovation project, designed by Ennead Architects — formerly Polshek Partnership — aims to make the theater feel more contemporary and welcoming. The lobby and patrons’ lounge have been expanded. Restroom capacity has increased by 50 percent. The project also deliberately returns the theater to some of its former decorative glory. The painted ceiling on the mezzanine lobby has been restored, as have that level’s desert-scene murals. The original light fixtures have been refurbished and cleaned. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/arts/design/city-center-gears-up-for-its-grand-reopening.html

A 1,685-pound pumpkin took first prize October 1 at the Great Pumpkin Contest in Elk Grove, Calif. It's not just the pumpkins grown by Leonardo Ureña that are super-size. The corn reaches 25 feet high. Sunflowers have faces 2 feet wide. And the gourds! "It was a really ugly area right there," said Mr. Ureña, pointing, so he built a 70-foot long trellis and planted his giant-breed seeds. "Now we call it the Gourd Tunnel." This stuff isn't edible. The seeds, like the ones for the "991 Ureña" pumpkin, have been cross-bred for shape, not taste. Some of the produce may be sold to restaurants for decoration, some rented to pumpkin patches. People are just delighted by it. But why? Is it the colors: gourds the green of bubble-bath and pumpkins that are pink? I suspect something else. Gourds can grow 4 to 6 inches a day, pumpkins many pounds. Holly Finn Learn the seven lessons from the pumpkin patch at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203476804576616821015503708.html

In Chapter 51 of Perec's masterpiece, "Life A User's Manual" (1978), the character Valène imagines a painting of the apartment house in which he lives with its façade removed, showing all its street-side rooms with their contents and the characters who lived there. The project is laid out as an inventory of items numbered from 1 through 179, and each "item" is a summary of a story told elsewhere in Perec's 99-chapter novel. I was translating the novel, so I had to locate the stories to which the lines referred. But in doing so I noticed (thanks to some prompting) that each line of the inventory was exactly the same length. Exactly 60 keystrokes. On top of that, the inventory is separated into three blocks, two of them consisting of 60 lines and the last one of just 59. The "great compendium," as Perec called it, thus consists of three squares, the last one slightly defective. The muscles that I grew to translate Perec's "great compendium" have gone on helping me to meet challenges I face in translating other texts—and in writing my own. David Bellos http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204612504576609021510407778.html

Life a User's Manual, parts 1-3 inspired by a group read of the book at one Web site: http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/?s=tag&t=georges-perec

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer’s fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers. It has set up a flagship line run by a publishing veteran, Laurence Kirshbaum, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. It signed its first deal with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week it announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which it paid $800,000, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said. Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?_r=1&hp

Oct. 17 Word of the Day
Farrago fuh-RAH-goh (noun) A confused mixture; hodgepodge
Number to Know
2: Today is all about second chances, as it’s Mulligan Day! mulligan is a golf term for a do-over that doesn’t count against you.
This Day in History
Oct. 17, 1933: Albert Einstein, fleeing Nazi Germany, moves to the U.S.
http://www.wellsvilledaily.com/newsnow/x1827971538/Morning-Minutes-Oct-17