Americans are generous. In 2010, they gave $290.89 billion, according to the Giving USA Foundation—and that's from all sources, including individuals, corporations, foundations and bequests. But how much do you really know about the nonprofit world—about the finances, the institutions and the people who dominate it? Take a quiz from The Wall street Journal and find out. John M. Leger
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577044012134154658.html

Confusion on the Web: Seen this month: "we'll please your pallet" Pick the correct word from the list below:
The noun palate refers to the roof of the mouth or the sense of taste. The noun palette refers to an artist's paint board or a range of colors. The noun pallet is a straw-filled mattress or a hard bed. http://grammar.about.com/od/alightersideofwriting/a/PalatePalettePalletGlossary.htm

Oversharing on the Web: too much trivial information, strong reactions without checking facts

Poached Scrambled Eggs adapted from Daniel Patterson
Beat the eggs, cook quickly in a whirlpool of boiling water, drain immediately. Find recipe and directions at: http://events.nytimes.com/recipes/12047/2006/01/08/Poached-Scrambled-Eggs/recipe.html
More on Daniel Patterson, his "eccentric eggs," and an adaptation of NY Times recipe at: http://www.doriegreenspan.com/2007/03/eccentric-eggs-from-daniel-patterson.html

Most historians agree that Gabriel Mouton, the vicar of St. Paul's Church in Lyons, France, is the “founding father” of the metric system. He proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. Mouton based it on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the Earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). He also proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length (about 25 cm). A pendulum beating with this length would have been fairly easy to produce, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. Over the years, his work was revised, improved, and extended by a number of French scientists. The political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the French Revolutionary National Assembly was the Bishop of Autun, better known as Talleyrand. Under his auspices, the French Academy appointed several committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures for France. One of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth's meridian (i.e., one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the North Pole). Although the metric system was not accepted with enthusiasm at first, adoption by other nations occurred steadily after France made its use compulsory in 1840. The standardized structure and decimal features of the metric system made it well suited for scientific and engineering work. Consequently, it is not surprising that the rapid spread of the system coincided with an age of rapid technological development. In the United States, by Act of Congress in 1866, it became “lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealings or court proceedings.” (Note that there has never been a law explicitly making it legal to use the inch-pound system nor defining those units' values. In fact, it wasn't until the Mendenhall Order, in 1893, that the units of the inch-pound system were finally officially defined — in terms of metric measurements.)
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/origin.html

Pinto may refer to:
Conspiracy of the Pintos, a rebellion against Portuguese rule in Goa, India in 1787
Ford Pinto (1971–1980), a subcompact car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company for the North American market
Ford Pinto engine, unofficial nickname for a 4 cylinder internal combustion engine built by the Ford Motor Company in Europe
Gallo Pinto, a dish traditional to Nicaragua and Costa Rica consisting primarily of beans and rice
Pinto bean, a type of mottled bean
Pinto horse, a horse coat color that consists of large patches of white and another color Find as names and places at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinto

Thomson Reuters, the company created when Thomson, a Canadian purveyor of professional information for lawyers, accountants and others, bought Reuters in 2008, and Bloomberg are the big fish in the professional-publishing pond, at least eight times larger than their nearest competitor. Bloomberg, besides expanding its terminals business, which has over 300,000 customers (at about $20,000 a pop), is pushing into government-related news and data. In 2010 it launched Bloomberg Government, which competes with Congressional Quarterly, a sister company of The Economist. In September it made its biggest purchase ever, spending $990m on BNA, a legal- and tax-information firm. http://www.economist.com/node/21541413

Nicolas Sarkozy born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa; 28 January 1955) is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier. Sarkozy is a Frenchman of mixed national and ethnic ancestry and is the first president of France to be a mixed heritage. He is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál, in some sources Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál István Ernő), a Hungarian aristocrat, and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah who is of Greek Jewish and French Catholic origin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy

Rules for writing fiction Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This article is based on Elmore Leonard's ten writing rules. Find rules from Margaret Atwood, P.D. James and others. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one Link to second part of article with rules by Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx and others.

December 19 events
1606 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who found, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.
1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis.
1843 – Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol goes on sale.
1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.
1946 – Start of the First Indochina War.
1975 – John Paul Stevens is appointed a justice of The United States Supreme Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_19
December 20 events
1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.
1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
1989 – United States invasion of Panama: The United States sends troops into Panama to overthrow government of Manuel Noriega. This is also the first combat use of purpose-designed stealth aircraft.
1996 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X.
1999 – Macau is handed over to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.
2005 – US District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of "intelligent design" in his ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
2007 – Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_20