Nebula Science Fiction was the first Scottish science fiction magazine. It was published from 1952 to 1959, and was edited by Peter Hamilton, a young Scot who was able to take advantage of spare capacity at his parents' printing company, Crownpoint, to launch the magazine. Because Hamilton could only print Nebula when Crownpoint had no other work, the schedule was initially erratic. In 1955 he moved the printing to a Dublin-based firm, and the schedule became a little more regular, with a steady monthly run beginning in 1958 that lasted into the following year. Nebula's circulation was international, with only a quarter of the sales in the United Kingdom (UK); this led to disaster when both South Africa and Australia imposed import controls on foreign periodicals at the end of the 1950s. Excise duties imposed in the UK added to Hamilton's financial burdens, and he was rapidly forced to close the magazine down. The last issue was dated June 1959. The magazine was popular with writers, partly because Hamilton went to great lengths to encourage new writers, and partly because he paid better rates per word than much of his competition. Initially he could not compete with the American market, but he offered a bonus for the most popular story in the issue, and was eventually able to match the leading American magazines. He published the first stories of several well-known writers, including Robert Silverberg, Brian Aldiss, and Bob Shaw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Science_Fiction

Andrew Borakove didn't know it seven years ago when he started an Internet gong store, but gongs are economic indicators. When the economy was going gangbusters, salesmen were piling into gongs. Sales people seem to like making customers bang gongs to ease the pain of buying something they might not be able to afford. "But as soon as the recession hit, bam! It stopped," says Mr. Borakove. Gong sales shifted over to the meditation market. He was walking on the beach, in 2005, when the idea hit him: He would start an Internet business. It would be based someplace cheap and noncoastal. It would be called "Gongs Unlimited." "More people need gongs than you'd think," he said. Before the crash of '08, some of his biggest customers were car dealers. "Big Bob" Ladendorf of Victory Motors in Royal Oak, Mich., bought two. "Everybody that buys a car, they have to bang the gong," he says. Subprime borrowers banged, too. "I supplied Countrywide Financial," said Mr. Borakove. After the crash, Mr. Borakove said, "suddenly I was selling to a whole lot of yoga teachers." Among them is Mehtab Benton, 61, a Texan with a yoga operation in Austin. "Hard times are good times in the yoga business, and that's good for gongs," he says. Mr. Benton, author of the book, "Gong Yoga," says he once tried learning the clarinet, but "it took too much time. A gong, you play right away
BARRY NEWMAN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181151324644504.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_10_1

HOMONYMS
dis•crete adjective
1. apart or detached from others; separate; distinct
2. consisting of or characterized by distinct or individual parts; discontinuous.
3. Mathematics a. (of a topology or topological space) having the property that every subset is an open set. b. defined only for an isolated set of points
c. using only arithmetic and algebra; not involving calculus
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrete
dis•creet adjective
1. judicious in one's conduct or speech, especially with regard to respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature; prudent; circumspect.
2. showing prudence and circumspection; decorous
3. modestly unobtrusive; unostentatious
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discreet
Google is getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies and replacing them with one. The new policy covers multiple products and features. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012. Find links to Google privacy, terms of service and FAQ at: https://www.google.com/policies/#utm_source=googlehp&utm_medium=hpp&utm_campaign=en-us-hpp_pp
Memidex is an online dictionary and thesaurus. See an example using the words bush league and wilderness: http://www.memidex.com/bush+wilderness

"POTUS” is an acronym for “President Of The United States.” The shorter “POT” stood for “President of the” in the book The Phillips Telegraphic Code (1879) by Walter Polk Phillips. “POTUS” has been cited in print since at least 1895. Similar acronyms include “SCOTUS” (Supreme Court Of The United States), “FLOTUS” (First Lady Of The United States), “VPOTUS” (Vice President Of The United States) and “COTUS” (Constitution Of The United States). http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/potus_president_of_the_united_states/
SOTU means State of the Union address.

OAKLAND (Reuters) Riot police fought running skirmishes with anti-Wall street protesters in Oakland on Jan. 28, firing tear gas and bean bag projectiles and arresting more than 200 people in clashes that injured three officers and at least one demonstrator. The scuffles erupted in the afternoon as Occupy activists sought to take over a shuttered downtown convention center, sparking cat-and-mouse battles that lasted well into the night in a city that has seen tensions between police and protesters boil over repeatedly. "Occupy Oakland has got to stop using Oakland as its playground," Mayor Jean Quan, who has come under criticism for the city's handling the Occupy movement, told a late evening press conference. "Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland," she said. City Council President Larry Reid said a group of protesters broke into City Hall, damaging exhibits and burning a U.S. flag. Elsewhere, the National Park Service said on Jan 27 it would bar Occupy protesters in the nation's capital, one of the few big cities where Occupy encampments survive, from camping in two parks where they have been living since October. That order, which takes effect Jan. 30, was seen as a blow to one of the highest-profile chapters of the movement. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/sns-rt-us-oakland-proteststre80s005-20120128,0,522990.story

Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian skit from Jan. 28 A Prairie Home Companion
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2012/01/28/scripts/ruth.shtml

Researchers have "cloaked" a three-dimensional object, making it invisible from all angles, for the first time. However, the demonstration works only for waves in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It uses a shell of what are known as plasmonic materials; they present a "photo negative" of the object being cloaked, effectively cancelling it out. The idea, outlined in the January 2012 issue of New Journal of Physics
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/14/1/013054, could find first application in high-resolution microscopes. Most of the high-profile invisibility cloaking efforts have focused on the engineering of "metamaterials" - modifying materials to have properties that cannot be found in nature. The modifications allow metamaterials to guide and channel light in unusual ways - specifically, to make the light rays arrive as if they had not passed over or been reflected by a cloaked object. Previous efforts that have made 3-D objects disappear have relied upon a "carpet cloak" idea, in which the object to be cloaked is overlaid with a "carpet" of metamaterial that bends light so as to make the object invisible. Now, Andrea Alu and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have pulled off the trick in "free space", making an 18cm-long cylinder invisible to incoming microwave light. JASON PALMER http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16726609