Schoolhouse Rock Turns 40  Back in the heyday of Saturday mornings, back when cartoon viewing was a scheduled date for 8-year-olds and their ­cereal bowls, back before Nickelodeon made animation into a 24-hour buffet, there arose a phenomenon that was good and pure and true.  It was called “Schoolhouse Rock.”  “I still play the songs in my jazz jobs,” says Bob Dorough, who wrote and voiced much of the original “Schoolhouse” canon.  “I used to play very hip songs, but then one of the waiters — who would be 25 or 30 — would say to me, ‘your voice sounds familiar.’  ” Dorough would reveal why.  The waiter would get excited.  “Oh!” he would say.  Can we have one, please?”   “Schoolhouse Rock” wasn’t a show.  It was the thing between the shows — two to three insterstitial, educational minutes about math or grammar or science.  It was “Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your ­Adverbs Here,” teaching young viewers how to modify verbs in a jaunty, helium-induced ditty (“Slowly, surely, really learn your adverbs here.  You’re going to need ’em if you read ’em”).  It was “Naughty Number Nine,” accompanied by a bluesy video depicting a feline pool shark.   Dorough was a jazz composer in the early 1970s when he turned to writing advertisements to earn extra cash.  One day he was called in by David McCall, a Madison Avenue adman, who had a job offer.  Dorough was hoping for a cushy little jingle, something well-paying and easy.  “But instead he said, ‘Bob, my little boys can’t multiply, but they can sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.’ ”  Couldn’t Dorough write something, McCall wondered, that would be both catchy and informative?  Something that didn’t talk down to kids?  Something cool?  Dorough returned two weeks later with “Three Is a Magic Number.”  And it was cool.  Not preachy, not medicinal.  Kids liked it, but what’s more interesting is how they kept liking it.  How “Schoolhouse Rock” has remained an irony-free experience, how the Gen-Xers it was designed for have nurtured and protected it, deep into middle age.  In 1996, Atlantic Records released an album of the day’s alternative stars covering their favorites:  Blind Melon with a mellow “Three Is a Magic Number,” Moby with an aggressive “Verb: That’s What’s Happening,” Man or Astroman blaring “Interplanet Janet” with earnest devotion.  “Schoolhouse Rock’s” original run lasted from 1973 until 1985.  It reemerged in the mid-1990s for several years, before disappearing from television.  Monica Hesse  http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/schoolhouse-rock-at-40/2013/01/04/0679e738-5699-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html

New Year's Offering by Martha Esbin

It grew tall like Jack's beanstalk

straining toward the sky

on New Year's Day two buds peeped out of their green prison

the next day the big buds popped out shaped like beaks and two small buds appeared

the next day funnel-shaped pink and white flowers opened fully with six large petals

my trumpet, my amaryllis

Lawmakers need to overhaul the tax code completely to reduce the “significant, even unconscionable, burden” placed on taxpayers just to file a tax return, the Internal Revenue Service’s ombudsman told Congress on Jan. 9.  In her legally required annual report to Congress, the national taxpayer advocate, Nina E. Olson, estimated that individuals and businesses spend about 6.1 billion hours a year complying with tax-filing requirements.  That adds up to the equivalent of more than three million full-time workers, or more than the number of jobs on the entire federal government’s payroll.  And filing is only becoming more complicated as lawmakers haggle over new tax breaks.  Since 2001, Congress has made nearly 5,000 changes to the United States tax code, or more than one a day on average.  Catherine Rampell  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/business/irss-taxpayer-advocate-calls-for-a-tax-code-overhaul.html?_r=0

IBM was awarded the most patents from the U.S Patent and Trademark Office in 2012, boasting a record-setting 6,748 patents for the year, the company announced on Jan. 10.  Big Blue beat out Samsung, Canon, Sony and Panasonic to handily win the top spot on the list of companies granted the most U.S. patents last year.  This is the 20th consecutive year that IBM has topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients, the company said.  Among the patents IBM received was one for an invention included in its Watson computer system, featured on the game show "Jeopardy!," that enables a computer to provide answers to questions that people ask it.  It was also awarded a patent for a technique it invented that reduces energy consumption in cloud computing equipment.   Jennifer Martinez  http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/276549-ibm-tops-us-patent-recipient-list-in-2012   

Jeffrey O’Connell, a legal scholar who helped devise the model for “no fault” auto insurance to protect traffic accident victims, lower car insurance rates and curb ambulance-chasing lawyers, died Jan. 6 at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 84.  In 1965 Mr. O’Connell joined with Robert E. Keeton, another law professor, to write “Basic Protection for the Traffic Victim:  A Blueprint for Reforming Automobile Insurance,” a book in which they proposed to do away with a system in which an accident victim had to sue another driver to collect damages, in most cases from the second driver’s insurer.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/business/jeffrey-oconnell-legal-scholar-of-no-fault-coverage-dies-at-84.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0 

Evan S. Connell, a versatile writer praised for his spare portrayal of the frost and repression within a fictional upper-class Midwestern family as well as for his account of the very real and bloody battle that was Custer’s Last Stand, was found dead Jan. 10 in an assisted-living facility in Santa Fe, N.M.  He was 88.  His acclaimed and best-selling first novel, “Mrs. Bridge,” published in 1959, captured the emotional remoteness of a Kansas City family that was much like the one in which Mr. Connell had been raised.   A decade later Mr. Connell wrote a sequel, “Mr. Bridge,” and the two united many years later in “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” the 1990 Merchant Ivory film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.  He wrote at least 18 books, including collections of poetry and short stories.  In “The Patriot,” a novel published in 1960, he wrote about a naval aviation student’s fears of failure — including fear of failing his father.  Forty years later, in his novel “Deus Lo Volt!” he wrote about the brutality of the Christian crusades in the Middle East.  Four years after that, in 2004, he published a biography of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/arts/evan-connell-88-novelist-in-multiple-genres.html?ref=obituaries

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

nouveau pauvre  (NOO-voh POH-vruh)

adjective:  Recently impoverished.  noun:  One who is newly impoverished.

From French nouveau (new) + pauvre (poor), patterned after nouveau riche. 
Earliest documented use:  1877.

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From:  Duncan MacLaren  Subject:  Nouveau pauvre
In the UK, nouveau pauvre has a more nuanced meaning than simply 'newly impoverished'.  The nouveau riche are those who have acquired money and aspire to the lifestyle of the aristocracy, but without the knowledge to make 'tasteful' choices.  Conversely, then, the nouveau pauvre are the old aristocracy who retain the knowledge to be 'tasteful', but lack the money to live as their forebears.  NR means new stone lions at the gates of your owner-occupied council house:  NP means old, crumbling stone lions at the Lodge House of your country estate.