The acronym INO has 14 meanings listed at http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/INO

The acronym RINO may refer to Blue Rhino Corporation, Radio Integrated Navigation Outdoors and Roaming International Network Operator http://www.123fullform.com/tag/45135.  The phrase Republican in name only emerged as a popular political pejorative in the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s.  Buttons featuring the red slash through an image of a rhinoceros were spotted in the New Hampshire State House as early as 1992.  In 1993, former Marine and future California Republican Assembly President Celeste Greig distributed buttons featuring a red slash over the word RINO to express opposition to Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan.  The term came into widespread usage during subsequent election cycles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_In_Name_Only 

Jan. 2 , 2014  In a Dec. 23, 2013 decision http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/60491-it-s-elementary-court-rules-sherlock-holmes-is-public-domain.html, an Illinois federal court held that Holmes and other characters and story elements in more than 50 Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain.  But attorneys for the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this week insisted that the complete characters of Holmes and Watson won’t be freed until the final 10 stories published after 1922 enter the public domain, in 2022.  In the case, the Conan Doyle Estate presented what Judge Ruben Castillo called a “novel argument,” essentially that the Holmes and Watson characters were not completed until the last of Conan Doyle’s stories was published in 1922.  However, the court did not rule on Allison’s argument. Because plaintiff Leslie Klinger did not seek a “judicial determination of the copyright status of the Sherlock Holmes character,” the court did not address the issue.  For Conan Doyle Estate lawyer Benjamin Allison, who said the estate was exploring an appeal of Castillo’s decision, that non-finding may be as good as a win.  After all, absent legal certainty on the status of Holmes’ full character, is it not more likely that potential creators would seek a license, rather than risk litigation, if they are at all unclear about whether theirs is a use of a "completed" character?  Andrew Albanese  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/60503-conan-doyle-estate-says-sherlock-not-free-yet.html 

Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is a painting of c. 1875 by James Abbott McNeill Whistler that exemplified the Art for art's sake movement – a concept formulated by Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier.  This painting was first shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1877 and is one of two works (the other being Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Firewheel) inspired by the Cremorne Gardens, a celebrated pleasure resort in London.  One of his many works from his series of Nocturnes, it is the last of the London Nocturnes and is now widely acknowledged to be the high point of Whistler's middle period.  Whistler's depiction of the industrial city park in The Falling Rocket includes a fireworks display in the foggy night sky.  Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is most famously known as the inception of the lawsuit between Whistler and the art critic John Ruskin.  Affronted by The Falling Rocket, John Ruskin accused Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public's face” in the Fors Clavigera.  As a leading art critic of the Victorian era, Ruskin’s harsh critique of The Falling Rocket caused an uproar among owners of other Whistler works.  Rapidly, it became shameful to have a Whistler piece, pushing the artist into greater financial difficulties.  With his pride, finances, and the significance of his Nocturne at stake, Whistler sued Ruskin for libel in defence.  In court, he asked the jury to not view it as a traditional painting, but instead as an artistic arrangement.  In his explanation, he insisted that the painting was a representation of the fireworks from the Cremorne Gardens. During the trial, Sir John Holker asked, “Not a view of the Cremorne?” to which Whistler was quoted as saying, “If it were a view of Cremorne, it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders.”  However, his case was not helped when The Falling Rocket was accidentally presented to trial upside down.  His explanation of the composition proved fruitless before the judge.  The Ruskin vs. Whistler Trial, which took place on November 25 and 26, 1878, was disastrous for Whistler.  While he didn’t lose, he only won a farthing and was ordered to split his winnings with Ruskin.   After all of the court costs, he had no choice but to declare bankruptcy.  Whistler was forced to pawn, sell, and mortgage everything he could get his hands on.  Whistler included a transcript of the case in his 1890 book The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.  Read more and see the picture at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne_in_Black_and_Gold_%E2%80%93_The_Falling_Rocket 

My keyboard has four keys with slowly disappearing letters: C, O, M, and N.  You can guess why the first three letters are worn.  Do you know why the N is afflicted? 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

The poet Robert Southey once said, "It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."  While he was talking about using fewer words, the same can be said about using fewer letters.  That is, using short words.

bleb  (bleb)  noun  1.  A small blister or swelling.  2.  A bubble.  

Perhaps alteration of blob.  

pi  (py)  noun  1.  A confused mixture, originally a jumble of printing types.  Also spelled as pie.
2.  The 16th letter of the Greek alphabet.  3.  A mathematical constant (approximately 3.14159), representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. 

ruck  (ruk)  noun  1.  A large mass, especially of ordinary people or things.  2.  A crease or wrinkle.  verb. tr., intr.  To make a crease or to become creased.  From Old Norse hrukka (wrinkle, fold). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sker- (to turn or bend), which is also the source of ranch, rank, shrink, circle, circa, crisp, corolla, search, ring, curb, ridge, curve, corolla, and coronary.

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From:  Kiko Denzer   Subject:  pi  One of my favorite stories about pi was in Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, where (in a chapter called "shopfront schools") he describes an adult working with a group of kids on tree identification.  They were trying to figure out if the trees they were looking at met the criterion for diameter, so the adult gave them a tape and told them to go measure.  They quickly realized they couldn't get a diameter without cutting down the trees.  This led to the fundamental question:  "How many diameters in a circumference?" -- and then a series of experiments, first estimating by eye, then laying out circles on the ground and measuring, then trying to determine exactly how many diameters fit into a circle.  "At that point, these five kids, ranging in age from nine to twelve, were within two one hundredths of discovering pi, and I was having a hard time containing myself."  That, I think, is what Aristotle meant when he said, "what we learn to do, we learn by doing."  And a good example of Alexander's point, that "education" is properly a part of the work of the world

From:  Sherman George   Subject:  pi  Late in the 19th century the state of Indiana came close to defining pi as 3.2.  See the full story at http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/second%20level%20pages/indiana_pi_story.htm.  

The 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii was a legal document by anti-monarchists to strip the Hawaiian monarchy of much of its authority, initiating a transfer of power to American, European and native Hawaiian elites.  It became known as the Bayonet Constitution for the use of intimidation by the armed militia which forced King Kalākaua to sign it or be deposed.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1887_Constitution_of_the_Kingdom_of_Hawaii 

Issue 1096  January 13. 2014  On this day in 1893, U.S. Marines landed in Honolulu to prevent the queen from repealing the  Bayonet Constitution.