baby elephant sculptures

Thirty baby elephant sculptures--one decorated like a Ferrari, another covered in hearts--will make you smile, but their mission in coming to Dana Point, Calif. is serious:  to raise awareness about the endangered Asian elephant.  The sculptures -- actual size of a baby, 4 feet high and 6 feet long -- go on display Aug. 24 and 25, 2013 at Doheny State Beach before they scatter to different parts of the seaside town, reminders of animals half a world away that need our help.  The exhibition ends Nov. 17.  The sculptures will be auctioned off at the end of the show, with proceeds going to the Asian Elephant Foundation.  Mary Forgione  See Elephant Parade at:  http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-trb-california-dana-point-elephant-statues-20130809,0,6569544.photogallery

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Ponzi scheme  (PON-zee skeem)  noun  An investment swindle in which high profits are promised from fictitious sources and early investors are paid off with funds raised from later ones.  After Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), a speculator who organized such a scheme during 1919-1920.  He was neither the first nor the last person to float this or a similar scheme, just someone who did it on a massive scale.  Earliest documented use:  1920.
Potemkin village  (po-TEM-kin VIL-ij)  noun
An impressive showy facade designed to mask undesirable facts.   
After Prince Grigory Potemkin, who erected cardboard villages to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Ukraine and Crimea in 1787.  Earliest documented use:  1904.
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From:  Bill Duncan  Subject:  Ponzi scheme  The house that Ponzi built with his ill-gotten gains still stands in Lexington, MA.  I would guess that its current value is around $2 million, maybe more.  It is just a short walk from the Lexington Green where the American Revolution began.
From:  Carlton Johnson  Subject:  Ponzi scheme  Here is a quotation by Charles Ponzi:  "Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price.  Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims!  It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."
From:  Claudine Voelcker  Subject:  Potemkin village  I thought of this term -- as I'm sure many readers did -- some time ago when I read how Northern Ireland masked recession by putting up fake storefronts for G8 visitors.
From:  Erlinda E. Panlilio  Subject:  Potemkin village  In the Philippines, former first lady Imelda Marcos was known for creating Potemkin villages by concealing the dross of the city's slums behind white walls so that visiting VIPs would not see the rot, sludge, and disorder of her "City of Man".
From:  George Grumbach  Subject:  Potemkin Villages  According to Robert Massie's biography of Catherine (Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman), the Potemkin villages were NOT fake, and it slandered Potemkin so allege.  In chapter 67, "Crimean Journey and 'Potemkin Villages'", Massie argues that those who accused Potemkin were not present, whereas three sophisticated foreign visitors, the Austrian emperor, the French ambassador, and the Austrian field marshall, who were there, did not suggest that the villages were fakes.  

What happens when an entire state floods?  A century ago, hurricane force winds, blizzards, and tornadoes preceded the days of the Great Flood of March 1913.  And then, when the rains came - pouring down two to three months worth of rain from March 23rd through March 27th - every river in the State of Ohio overflowed its banks.  In a flood whose impact would be bigger than current landmark weather events such as Katrina and Sandy - the impact on life in Ohio and 14 other states was overwhelming.  The Flood of 1913 also would bring an end to the Ohio & Erie Canal.  Learn more at:  http://www.ohioanderiecanalway.com/Main/Pages/The_Great_Flood_of_1913_106.aspx

Most communities located along rivers in the state experienced flooding, even those that had not had problems in the past.  In Dayton, flood levies broke, leading to water rising up to twenty feet in the downtown.  In addition, fires broke out across the city as gas lines ruptured, and the fire department was unable to access the fires.  John Patterson, the owner of National Cash Register, was a prominent figure during the flood. He organized relief efforts in the community, even going as far as opening his own factories to act as emergency shelters for those who had been driven from their homes.  When the flood was over, Ohioans began to assess the damage.  At least 428 people died during the Flood of 1913, and more than twenty thousand homes were totally destroyed.  Property damage was extensive, as many other homes were seriously damaged.  Factories, railroads, and other structures also faced major losses.  After the flood waters receded, Patterson and other Dayton residents were determined to prevent a future disaster of this magnitude.  They hired hydrological engineer Arthur Morgan to come up with an extensive plan to protect Dayton from floods.  Morgan recommended the construction of a series of earthen dams on the Great Miami River, as well as modifications to the river channel in Dayton.  Governor James M. Cox supported the plan, helping to gain passage of the Vonderheide Act, which is also known as the Ohio Conservancy Law, in 1914.  The law gave the state the authority to establish watershed districts and to raise funds for improvements through taxes.  Although the Vonderheide Act was challenged in both the state and United States supreme courts in Orr v. Allen (1915 and 1919), the law was upheld.   In 1915, the Miami Conservancy District was created in response to the Vonderheide Act.  It became the first major watershed district in the nation.  http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/1913_Ohio_Statewide_Flood?rec=497 

"At least one" is a mathematical term meaning one or more.  It is commonly used in situations where existence can be established but it is not known how to determine the total number of solutions.  One of the three jokes known to Christopher, the protagonist in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, concerns the preciseness with which mathematicians apply the term "at least one."  As told by Christopher (Haddon 2003, p. 143), the joke runs as follows.  "There are three men on a train.  One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician.  And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).  And the economist says, 'Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.'  And the logician says, 'No.  There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.'  And the mathematician says, 'No.  There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.'  And this is funny because economists are not real scientists and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best."  http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AtLeastOne.html 

Mark Haddon (born 1962) is a British novelist and poet, best known for his 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.  He was educated at Uppingham School and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied English.  In 2003, Haddon won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and in 2004, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best First Book for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a book which is written from the perspective of a boy with Aspergers syndrome.  Haddon's knowledge of Aspergers syndrome, a type of autism, comes from his work with autistic people as a young man.  In an interview at Powells.com, Haddon claimed that this was the first book that he wrote intentionally for an adult audience; he was surprised when his publisher suggested marketing it to both adult and child audiences.  His second adult-novel, A Spot of Bother, was published in September 2006.  Mark Haddon is also known for his series of Agent Z books, one of which, Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars, was made into a 1996 Children's BBC sitcom.  He also wrote the screenplay for the BBC television adaptation of Raymond Briggs's story Fungus the Bogeyman, screened on BBC1 in 2004.  He also wrote the 2007 BBC television drama Coming Down the Mountain.  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1050.Mark_Haddon 

A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887, introducing the world to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.  Though Doyle himself was NOT fond of the character, something about the Holmes stories latched onto popular culture with a death grip.  The Universal Sherlock Holmes(1995) by Ronald B. DeWaal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. http://ineffable-hufflepuff.tumblr.com/post/43110663216/the-appeal-of-the-holmes-mythos-and-what-elementary 

The many incarnations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson exist as adaptations of characters in novels, video games, TV, movies, plays, Internet, music and comics.