Graffiti is often denounced as
vandalism, but the
deliriously festooned, sprawling warehouses at the western edge of Queens rose
far above that. Blanketed with giddy
images, drawing street artists from around the world, 5Pointz was a decades-old legal haven considered both a “United
Nations of Graffiti” and
a semi-rebellious statement. But
on Nov. 19, 2013, under the cover of night, painters quietly blanketed much of
the walls of 5Pointz with whitewash, erasing the work of hundreds and seemingly
putting the final nail in the long battle between the building’s owners, who
plan to erect luxury apartments wanted to avoid a confrontation,
adding that there would be a 60-foot-high wall near the new towers where
graffiti painters can work again. Cara
Buckley and Marc Santora See picture at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/nyregion/5pointz-a-graffiti-mecca-in-queens-is-wiped-clean-overnight.html?_r=0
Graffiti Alley in Baltimore Tucked away in
an L-shaped alley between North Avenue and Howard Street in Baltimore is an
oasis of color. Bleak, disheveled buildings mask the hidden paintings of
a unique culture of artists: graffiti artists.
Between
the brick buildings you will find graffiti artists spraying the alley with a
fresh coat of paint. They refer to
themselves as writers, and the walls of the alley are their canvas where they
can experiment and develop their style without fear of punishment. Lauren Garcynski, the owner of Random Eye
Candy Photography said the alley is an asset to all forms of artists from
photographers to models to painters. “It’s
never the same thing twice,” she said. “It’s
a really nice place for people to meet each other and be creative and to take
advantage of the space. There aren’t
many places in Baltimore city that encourage artists, especially street
artists, and I think it’s really cool to have areas like the alley.”
Learning by Design: Baltimore Design School by David Robert Weible
It’s 10:30 on a fall
Friday morning in Baltimore. Sleet
batters the faded brick facades of the Federal and Edwardian-style rowhouses in
the city’s Greenmount West neighborhood.
It seems like a normal day in any public high school. But the Baltimore Design School (BDS) is
anything but normal. BDS is one of
roughly a half-dozen public schools nationwide that uses the discipline of
design as a vehicle for secondary education, and the only one that combines
middle school and high school programs. It’s
the result of a $26.8 million adaptive reuse project that converted a
bombed-out machine shop into a progressive center for education. Preservation Magazine Spring 2014
See great pictures at http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2014/spring/learning-by-design-baltimore-design-school.html
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
spoof (spoof) noun
1. A light, good-humored
imitation; parody. 2. A hoax or a prank. verb
1. To satirize gently. 2. To fool using a hoax or a prank. After Spoof, a card game invented by the
comedian Arthur Roberts (1852-1933). Earliest documented use: 1884.
vole (vohl) noun
1. Any of various rodents of the genus Microtus
and related genera. 2. The winning of all
the tricks in some card games. verb.
intr. 3.
To risk everything in the hope of great rewards. Typically used in the
phrase "go the vole". 4. To try every possibility. For 1: Short for volemouse, from Norwegian vollmus,
from voll (field) + mus (mouse). Earliest
documented use: 1805. For 2-4: From French voler (to fly), from Latin volare
(to fly), which also gave us volatile and volley. Earliest documented use: 1680.
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Griselda
Mussett Subject: spoof Spoof
is also a simple game played in pubs and homes, in which players hold a secret
number of coins in one hand behind their backs. Each player guesses the total number of coins.
Some people are astonishingly accurate in their estimates.
From: M Henri
Day
Subject: spoof What has, alas, now become the most frequent
meaning of this word, i.e., the forging of, e.g., email and IP addresses
designed to trick recipients into believing that messages come from someone
other than the real sender, should also be included in the definition. These particular imitations are hardly light
or good-humoured.
From: Charlie
Cockey Subject: vole I
was not aware of "vole" as a verb in English and with the meaning
ascribed to it; but there may be a connection to the expression "to take a
flier". To vole and to take a flier
meaning pretty much the same thing, and "vole" the English verb
coming from the French verb "voler", to fly.
From: Philip
Bergan Subject: vole In
Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Scoop (1938),
owing to a misunderstanding, a London newspaper sends John Boot, a nature
writer, to cover a war in Africa instead of a well-known travel writer of the
same name. As an example of the
"particularly high-class style" of the former, Waugh offers: "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing
vole."
Muse reader
contributes a quote: “This library has
something offensive to everyone. If you
are not offended by something we have, please complain.”— Dorothy Broderick,
writer
A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet
Society, the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies
for the Internet. An RFC is authored by engineers and computer scientists in the form of a memorandum describing methods, behaviors,
research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and
Internet-connected systems. It is
submitted either for peer review or simply to convey new concepts,
information, or (occasionally) engineering humor. The IETF adopts some of the proposals
published as RFCs as Internet
standards. Request for Comments
documents were invented by Steve
Crocker in 1969 to help
record unofficial notes on the development of ARPANET. RFCs have since become official documents of
Internet specifications, communications protocols, procedures, and
events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments
Remember the computer-powered glasses of Google called Google Glass? The company has tried to register the single
word "Glass" as its trademark, using the same futuristic font,
instead of the earlier success of trademarking "Google Glass." Now, it just wanted to call it
"Glass." Yet the U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office (USPTO) have objections as clear as glass, as stated in
its letter to the company. For one,
trademark examiner Atty. John Dwyer said the trademark might create confusion
among consumers since the trademark looks too similar when compared to other
pending or existing computer-software trademarks that also have the word
"glass." Secondly, the examiner also pointed out that
"Glass" is simply descriptive even with Google's attempt in providing
a distinctive formatting. It is a
generic term or word that merely describes a product and those kinds of words
can't have trademark protection under federal law for the reason that it
doesn't show an acquired distinctiveness.
Two weeks ago, Google's trademark lawyers Katie Krajeck and Anne Peck of
Cooley LLP defended their stand and trademark application to USPTO in a
1,928-page letter. Two companies have opposed Google's
bid, apparently. Federal Holding Company and Border Stylo, LLC separately filed
on December 16, 2013 Notices of Opposition against Google's application to
register the mark "Google Glass." Research says Google isn't the first tech
company in such attempt to trademark a generic term. An example is Facebook
that made attempt to patent the word "book." Lori Sandoval
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/5273/20140406/uspto-shatters-google-attempt-to-trademark-glass.htm
Mickey Rooney
— the elf-like Hollywood legend whose acting career spanned from silent-era
films to the 2011 “Muppets” movie — died at the age of 93 on April 6, 2014. Despite his poor health, Rooney had been
working on a film titled “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In an acting career that spanned over eight
decades, Rooney appeared in more than 200 films and countless TV shows. Laurence Olivier once called the 5-foot-3
Rooney, “The greatest actor of them all.”
Bill Hutchinson See pictures at http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/mickey-rooney-dead-93-article-1.1747934
Peter Matthiessen, the only writer to win the National Book Award in both fiction and
nonfiction, was both an elegant novelist and a rugged naturalist, a traveler
known for his graceful yet spare descriptions of the wildest places on Earth. Over six decades, he produced acclaimed
volumes of natural history based on his treks through East Africa, New Guinea
and the Amazon. He chronicled the plight
of disappearing tribes. He wrote books
about Cesar Chavez and Native American activist Leonard Peltier. He became a Zen devotee and wrote of a painful
spiritual journey as he hiked through the Himalayas in "The Snow
Leopard." He also helped found the
Paris Review, the renowned literary magazine, which he used as a cover during
his brief career as a spy for the CIA. Matthiessen died April 5, 2014 at a hospital
near his Sagaponack, N.Y., home at the age of 86. His final work, "In Paradise," a
novel inspired by a Zen gathering he attended at Auschwitz, is due out April 8. Steve Chawkins http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-peter-matthiessen-20140407,0,534784.story#axzz2yCIVnbSh
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1132
April 7, 2014 On this date in 529,
the first draft of Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) was issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.
In 1141, Empress Matilda, became the first female ruler
of England, adopting the title 'Lady of the
English'
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