bite the dust  fall to the ground, wounded or dead.  The same notion is expressed in the earlier phrase 'lick the dust', from the Bible, where there are several uses of it, including Psalms 72 (King James Version), 1611:  "They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust."  The earliest citation of the 'bite the dust' version is from 1750 by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett , in his Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane:  "We made two of them bite the dust, and the others betake themselves to flight."  Homer's epic poem The Iliad was written in around 700 BC.  That was in Greek of course.  It was translated into English in the 19th century by Samuel Butler and his version contains a reference to 'bite the dust' in these lines:  "Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him."  Whether that can be counted as an 8th century BC origin for 'bite the dust' is open to question and some would say that it was Butler's use of the phrase rather than Homer's.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/65500.html 

The Blue Castle is a 1926 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for her novel Anne of Green Gables (1908).  The story takes place in the early 1920s in the fictional town of Deerwood, located in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada.  Deerwood is based on Bala, Ontario, which Montgomery visited in 1922.  This novel is considered one of L.M. Montgomery's few adult works of fiction, along with A Tangled Web, and is the only book she wrote that is entirely set outside of Prince Edward Island.  It has grown in popularity since being republished in 1990.  The book was adapted for the stage twice; in 1982 it was made into a successful Polish musical and ten years later Canadian playwright Hank Stinson authored another version, The Blue Castle: A Musical Love Story.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Castle 

The Blue Castle from Project Gutenberg Australia http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200951h.html

Some people think that Colleen McCullough rewrote The Blue Castle for her novel, The Ladies of Missalonghi, but McCullough denies it.  "All writing is derivative even when it seems most original.  So, for that matter, is all art, and all music and even science." 

See lengthy newspaper article at:  http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19880118&id=HJIyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9ZYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4412,3971386

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.  It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently generated further publicity.  Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites.  Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.   

Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term after Streisand unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for violation of privacy.  The US$50 million lawsuit endeavored to remove an aerial photograph of Streisand's mansion from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs.  Adelman photographed the beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the government-sanctioned and government-commissioned California Coastal Records Project.  Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, "Image 3850" had been downloaded from Adelman's website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand's attorneys.  As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month.  See examples from 1978-2013 at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect 

On the Return of a Long-Lost Library Book, the World Rejoices  Read the stories (one book returned 221 years after being taken from the New York Society Library) at:  http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/08/library-book/67917/ 

Books on Bikes is a pilot program that uses pedal power and a customized trailer to bring Library services to popular community events around Seattle.  Read all about it at:  http://www.spl.org/using-the-library/library-on-the-go/books-on-bikes 

Full moons occur every 29.5 days on average, when the moon is directly opposite the sun from the perspective of Earth.  This causes its whole disk to be fully illuminated as a large, bright circle.  Usually, when the moon is full, it passes either above or below Earth's shadow, but sometimes, when it is perfectly aligned, it travels right through the shadow, causing a lunar eclipse, when its disk is dark.  Blue Moons don't happen too often, which is why the phrase "once in a Blue Moon," has sprung up to mean only very rarely.  After the event on August 20, 2013, the next Blue Moon isn't set to occur until 2015.  Other names for the August full moon are Full Sturgeon Moon, Full Red Moon, Green Corn Moon and the Grain Moon. 

http://www.space.com/22427-blue-moon-fill-moon-names.html 

Legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard died at 87 on August 20.  Several of Leonard’s books have been made into movies, including “Get Shorty, ” Jackie Brown, ” “Out of Sight” and “Hombre.” The latest to get the big-screen treatment is “The Switch.”  A movie version starring Jennifer Aniston, Mos Def, Tim Robbins and Isla Fisher is scheduled to debut at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.  FX television series “Justified” is inspired by the Leonard short story “Fire in the Hole.”  http://www.freep.com/article/20130820/ENT05/308200074/Elmore-Leonard-Dies-Get-Shorty  See also:  http://www.elmoreleonard.com/ 

Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, into a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States.  The design won the International Interior Design Association’s 2012 Library Interior Design Competition.  MSR stripped out the old ceiling and walls of the building, gave the perimeter walls and bare warehouse ceiling a coat of white paint, and set to work adding glass-enclosed spaces, bright architectural details and row after row of books.  See many pictures at:  http://weburbanist.com/2012/09/04/abandoned-walmart-is-now-americas-largest-library/