In early 2010, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Yelp, Inc. and alleged that it had attempted to force a Long Beach veterinary hospital into paying $300 a month "to suppress or delete reviews that disparaged the hospital."  The following month, nine additional businesses joined the class-action lawsuit and "two similar lawsuits" were filed.  Yelp denied that its sales force was "strong arming" businesses and in response to the lawsuits, Yelp altered its "review policy" and added new web features in April 2010 to deter misconceptions by business owners.   In an effort to increase review process transparency, Yelp stopped offering business advertisers the option to bring a positive review to the top position.This collection of 2010 lawsuits was combined into one "potential class-action lawsuit" and was dismissed by San Francisco U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in 2011.  Despite objections from the plaintiff's lawyer,Chen ruled that Yelp's choices for which user reviews to display on the site were covered by the Communications Decency Act which protects Internet companies from liability concerns caused by user-generated content.  In August 2012, two New Haven, CT business owners alleged that Yelp had removed positive reviews after they declined to buy advertising.  In October, Yelp "began using a computer filter to help uncover companies that purchase[d] fake positive reviews" and published the names of those companies.  ABC news reported that several companies were offering to pay people to publish positive reviews on the Yelp website and that "according to various online reports, as many as 30 percent of online reviews are fake."  In November, CBS Denver reported a complaint from a "small business owner" about Yelp's review filtering system.   In 2013, a California court upheld Yelp's right to use "an automated review filter to suppress" inappropriate business reviews using an undisclosed criterion.  Yelp successfully defended itself in a similar case (Levitt v. Yelp) in 2011.  In July, an article in the International Business Times reported that the company continues to be criticized outside the courtroom and that "anti-Yelp sentiment is rampant on the Internet and social media."  As of July 2013, the Federal Trade Commission has received almost 700 complaints against Yelp in the prior 4 years.  In October 2012, the company's web site began using a consumer alert (or badge of shame) on those business listings which they concluded were guilty of buying reviews.  The alert is designed to remain for 3 months before being removed.  In August 2013 Yelp Inc. launched a series of town hall style meetings in an attempt to remove misconceptions amongst local business owners.  The company plans to hold these events in 22 major American cities before year end.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp,_Inc. 

hodgepodge (n.)  also hodge podge, hodge-podge, early 15c., hogpoch, alteration of hotchpotch (late 14c.) "a kind of stew," especially "one made with goose, herbs, spices, wine, and other ingredients," earlier an Anglo-French legal term (late 13c.) meaning "collection of property in a common 'pot' before dividing it equally," from Old French hochepot "stew, soup," first element from hocher "to shake," from a Germanic source (cf. Middle High German hotzen "shake").  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hodgepodge  Hodge-podge is a word used to describe a confused or disorderly mass or collection of things; a "mess" or a "jumble."  The forerunner term hotchpotch is still (also) used, especially in British English.  Hodge-podge or Hodgepodge may also refer to:  Hodge-Podge, a character from the comic strip Bloom County; Hodge-Podge, a type of mutton soup; Hodgepodge, a Neal Morse album.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodge-podge 

In European history, the Middle Ages, or Medieval period, lasted from the 5th to the 15th century.It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the early modern period.  The Middle Ages is the middle period of the traditional division of Western history into Antiquity, Medieval, and Modern periods.  The period is subdivided into the Early, the High, and the Late Middle Ages.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages 

Electricity is the lifeblood of many aspects of our world.  Without volts and amps, many of our technological innovations would cease to exist.  Even our bodies wouldn't function without an electrical charge zipping through our cells.  But what electricity gives, electricity can take away.

Although this form of energy is vital to so much of our lives, it's one of those things that are only good in the right amounts.  Too much electricity can electrocute people.  Likewise, it can kill our modern electronics and machines.  But thanks to Michael Faraday, the brilliant 19th-century scientist, and one of his namesake inventions, the Faraday cage, we humans have developed plenty of ways to control electricity and make it safer for our computers, cars and other inventions -- and for us, too.  Faraday cages shield their contents from static electric fields.  An electric field is a force field surrounding a charged particle, such as an electron or proton.  Nathan Chandler 

Read much more at:  http://science.howstuffworks.com/faraday-cage.htm 

D-Day, the Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor

·         During the hour before midnight on 5 June, 1944, the roar of hundreds of aircraft engines in a constant stream could be heard over villages near airfields in southern and central England.  Three airborne divisions were taking to the air in over 1200 aircraft. 

·         On the water, the armada was the largest fleet that had ever put to sea.  Nearly 5,000 landing ships and assault craft were escorted by six battleships, four monitors, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers and 152 escort vessels, with 277 minesweepers clearing channels ahead of them.  Most were British, American and Canadian, but there were also French, Polish, Dutch and Norwegian warships. 

·         On 13 July, the British Second Army held what was supposed to be a victory parade in the Place Saint-Martin.  A Scottish pipe band began to play.  The bewilderment on the faces of the French crowd was plain.  They had never heard the 'Marseillaise' played on bagpipes.

·         The United States Army was the most mechanized force that the world had ever seen . . . a single tank on average consumed 8,000 gallons of fuel a week . . . the 3rd Armored Division estimated that just following the road, the division required 60,000 gallons a day . . . on top of the fuel, an armored division required thirty-five tons of rations per day for 21,000 men including all those attached to it . . .

·         The leading American elements from the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron and the 4th Infantry Division entered Paris 25 August at 07.30 hours from the southern side.  They found ‘the people bewildered and afraid of us.  They were not sure whether we were Americans or Germans.'  But once they were convinced of the Americans' identity ‘then the fun started'.

·         Altogether 19,890 French civilians were killed during the liberation of Normandy  . . .  this was on top of the 15,000 French killed and 19,000 injured during the preparoty bombing for Overlord in the first five months of 1944. . .  it is a sobering thought that 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied action during the course of the war . . . a figure which exceeds the total number of British killed by German bombing. 

Books by Antony Beevor 

Crete – The Battle and the Resistance, London, 1990

——, Stalingrad, London, 1998
——, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, London, 2002
——, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, London, 2006
——, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009
Beevor, Antony & Cooper, Artemis, Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, London, 1994
Beevor, Antony & Vinogradova, Lyuba, [eds.] A Writer at War – Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945, London, 2005  http://www.antonybeevor.com/index.php/previous-books/the-second-world-war/bibliography-ww2-2/ 

Military designations of days and hours

D-Day is the unnamed day on which an operation commences or is due to commence.  This may be the commencement of hostilities or any other operation.  The most famous D-Day was June 6, 1944, when "Operation Overlord" began.  Contrary to popular belief, the "D" does not stand for any specific word – the most popular being disembark. (NATO).  According to http://www.history.army.mil/faq/ddaydef.htm the "D" stands for "Day".

H-Hour is the specific time at which an operation or exercise commences, or is due to commence (this term is used also as a reference for the designation of days/hours before or after the event). (NATO)  Find terms starting with all letters of the alphabet at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_designation_of_days_and_hours