Word-play  Frog street sculpture eating a human leg:  ”Tastes like chicken."  Happy frogs on t-shirts, posters and cartoons:  "Times fun when you're having flies."  Nouns switched from usual position:  "Your command is my wish."  

Types of Word Play  http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/Word-Play.htm

Movie star Dorothy Lamour (1914-1996)  was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton.  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0483787/bio

Author Louis L'Amour (1908-1988)  was born  Louis Dearborn LaMoore.  http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm

Dorothy L'Amour:  A Novel (1999) by Lynn Crosbie is an imagined journal on the excesses of the late 1970s.  ISBN 10: 0002254980 / ISBN 13: 9780002254984

http://www.abebooks.com/Dorothy-LAmour-Novel-Crosbie-Lynn-Toronto/11285025802/bd

A trochee (TROH-key) is a metrical foot in poetry—the unit of stressed and unstressed syllables that determines what we call the meter, or rhythmic measure, in the lines of a poem.  A trochaic foot consists of two syllables, the first one stressed and the second unstressed, to make a sound “DUM-da.”  The word “trochee” comes from the classical Greek word for wheel.  A trochee can also be called a “choree,” derived from the ancient Greek word for dance.  Both etymological derivations convey the rhythmic motion of a line composed of trochaic feet.  The chorus of the The Witches’ Spell in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth consists of two lines of trochees:  DOU-ble, / DOU-ble / TOIL and / TROU-ble; FI-re / BURN, and / CAL-dron / BUB-ble.

Bob Holman and Margery Snyder  http://poetry.about.com/od/glossary/g/Trochee.htm

Hobson-Jobson  noun  the alteration of a word or phrase borrowed from a foreign language to accord more closely with the phonological and lexical patterns of the borrowing language, as in English hoosegow from Spanish juzgado.  Origin: 1625–35  Indian English rendering of Arabic   yā Ḥasan, yā Husayn  lament uttered during taʿziyah; an example of such an alteration.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hobson-jobson  Another example of Hobson-Jobson is mox nix coming from the German macht nichts (doesn't matter).

Tongue Twister

My father he left me, just as he was able, One bowl, one bottle, one label, Two bowls, two bottles, two labels, Three bowls . . . keep going as long as you can on one breath

Trivium by Richard Nordquist  "The liberal arts denote the seven branches of knowledge that initiate the young into a life of learning.  The concept is classical, but the term liberal arts and the division of the arts into the trivium and the quadrivium date from the Middle Ages.  "The trivium includes those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to mind, and the quadrivium, those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to matter.  Logic, grammar, and rhetoric constitute the trivium; and arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy constitute the quadrivium.  Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance."

(Sister Miriam Joseph, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, ed. by Marguerite McGlinn. Paul Dry Books, 2002)  http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/triviumterm.htm

Trivium  Latin neuter noun trivium (plural trivia) is from tri- "triple" and via "way", meaning "a place where three ways meet".  The pertaining adjective is triviālis.  The adjective trivial was adopted in Early Modern English, while the noun trivium only appears in learned usage from the 19th century, in reference to the Artes Liberales and the plural trivia in the sense of "trivialities, trifles" only in the 20th century.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivia

Quadrivium a group of studies consisting of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy and forming the upper division of the seven liberal arts in medieval universities  Late Latin, from Latin, crossroads, from quadri- + via way  first known use:  1804

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quadrivium

The Snickelways of York, in Yorkshire, often misspelt Snickleways, are a collection of small streets, footpaths, or lanes between buildings, not wide enough for a vehicle to pass down, and usually public rights of way.  York has many such paths, mostly mediaeval, though there are some modern paths as well.  They have names like any other city street, often quirky names such as Mad Alice Lane, Hornpot Lane Nether and even Finkle Street (formerly Mucky Peg Lane).  The word Snickelway was coined by local author Mark W. Jones in 1983 in his book A Walk Around the Snickelways of York, and is a portmanteau of the words snicket, meaning a passageway between walls or fences, ginnel, a narrow passageway between or through buildings, and alleyway, a narrow street or lane.  Although a neologism, the word quickly became part of the local vocabulary, and has even been used in official council documents.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley

The Pacific Pinball Museum is a museum that showcases the history of pinball machines since 1879.  The museum is located in Alameda, California,  The museum was founded in 2004 by Michael Schiess, a former museum exhibition designer.  One of his first major acquisitions was thirty-six machines in one purchase.  Fourteen of them were installed in a rented room, which Schiess called Lucky Ju Ju, in Alameda and a jar was placed out for donations.  In 2004 the facility expanded and became a nonprofit, renaming itself the Pacific Pinball Museum.  The museum's exhibitions include approximately ninety pinball machines arranged in chronological order.  In total, Schiess' collection comprises 800 machines.  See pictures including the visible pinball machine at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Pinball_Museum

QUOTE from Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson April 4, 1928, died May 28, 2014), author and poet  "I have no modesty.  Modesty is a learned behavior.  But I do pray for humility, because humility comes from the inside out."   Link to 2007 interview at http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2014/05/28/0528-maya-angelou-dead-at-86.html

In basketball, a flop is an intentional fall by a player after little or no physical contact by an opposing player in order to draw a personal foul call by an official against the opponent.  The move is sometimes called acting, as in "acting as if he was fouled".  Because it is inherently designed to deceive the official, flopping is generally considered to be unsportsmanlike. Nonetheless, it is widely practiced and even perfected by many professional players.  Flopping effectively is not easy to do, primarily because drawing contact can sometimes result in the opposite effect—a foul called on the defensive player—when too much contact is drawn or if the player has not positioned himself perfectly.  Additionally, even if no foul is called on either player, by falling to the floor, the flopping defensive player will have taken himself out of position to provide any further defensive opposition on the play, thus potentially allowing the offense to score easily.  To consistently draw offensive fouls on opponents takes good body control and a great deal of practice.  Players generally become better at flopping as their careers progress.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flop_(basketball)  San Antonio Spurs center Tiago Splitter was fined $5,000 for flopping by the NBA on May 28, 2014.  Lance Stephenson and Roy Hibbert of the Indiana Pacers have each been fined by the NBA in separate incidents for violating the league's anti-flopping rules during Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1155  May 30, 2014  On this date in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated.  On this date in 1958, the remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War respectively, were buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

What color is the blood in our bodies?  The myth is that blood is red when it is filled with oxygen and blue when it does not have any oxygen in it.  This myth is completely false, and don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.  Blood receives oxygen from the lungs, flows through the body and then delivers this oxygen where it is needed before making the round trip back to the heart where it is passed again to the lungs.  The oxygen dissolves in your blood, binding to the red blood cells.  Human blood is always red.  The only difference is that when it is oxygenated, it is a bright red, and when it is depleted of oxygen, it is a darker red . The myth of blue blood may have several origins, (1) veins, which carry the blood once it is low on oxygen, look blueish green, but that's because of the tissue that makes up the veins and is not due to the blood itself.  (2) there is a term "blue blooded" which, especially in previous eras, used to refer to someone who was of royal or noble class.  So, if your family was rich or notable, people may have said that you had "blue blood".  Despite these things, nobody's blood has ever been blue.  http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3964

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Blending is a useful way to name things (vitamin:  vital + amine), places (Mexicali:  Mexico + California), ideas (sitcom:  situational + comedy), companies (Groupon:  group + coupon), and more.  Even the word alphabet is a blend of alpha + beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.

QUOTES by Claude Monet (1840-1928)

"I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."  "My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece."  Link to other resources at http://www.cmonetgallery.com/quotes.aspx

For a species known for its willingness to leap before looking, humanity has a remarkably long history of “hemming and hawing.”  The phrase in that form first appeared in the late 18th century (“I hemmed and hawed … but the Queen stopped reading,” 1786), but other forms (“hem and hawk,” “hum and haw,” etc.) are a few centuries older, and the “hem” and the “haw” are both considerably older than the whole phrase.  The basic meaning of “hem,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is “an interjectional utterance like a slight half cough, used to attract attention, give warning, or express doubt or hesitation.”  If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is the same sound depicted by the interjection “ahem,” the difference being that “ahem” is an actual word used to attract attention to the speaker, rather than producing the sound “hem” itself.  One uses “ahem” in situations where, for instance, making noises with one’s throat might be either rude or ineffective.  The verb “to hem,” meaning to make the noise, dates to the 15th century, and is “echoic” in origin, being an imitation of the sound itself.  “Hem” is also closely related to “hum,” also echoic.  “Haw,” which dates back to the 1600s, is another case of a word imitating a sound, in this case “as an expression of hesitation” (OED).  There are fashions in such things, and today we are more likely to say “uh,” “huh,” or “um” when faced with a sudden decision, but the feeling is the same.  http://www.word-detective.com/2008/10/hem-and-haw/

Edmond Hoyle,  (1671 or 1672-1769) English writer, perhaps the first technical writer on card games.  His writings on the laws of whist gave rise to the common phrase “according to Hoyle,” signifying full compliance with universally accepted rules and customs.  Hoyle’s life before 1741 is unknown, although he is said to have been called to the bar.  For the use of the pupils to whom he began teaching whist that year, he prepared A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742), which went through 13 editions in his lifetime.  His revised laws of 1760 remained authoritative until 1864, when the Arlington and Portland whist clubs in London adopted a new code.  The Hoyle codification of the laws and strategy of backgammon (1743) is still largely in force. He also wrote treatises on chess (1761) and other games.  Familiar with the laws of probability, he appended to one of his books a life table for annuities.  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/273605/Edmond-Hoyle

remainder  noun: part or portion that is left, as after use, subtraction, expenditure, the passage of time; another name for difference; future interest in property; number of copies of a book left unsold when demand slows or ceases, which are sold 

at a reduced  price by the publisher  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/remaindered

Zen counting to improve teamwork and communication:  Have the group count from one to ten.  The larger the group, the harder this is and the longer it can take.  Start by giving them instructions and letting them ask questions, but don't allow them to plan any strategy (for example, there should be no designated order).  The rules:  Only one person can talk at a time; if two people speak at once, the group must start over.  No one person can say two consecutive numbers.  No gestures allowed.  If they become good at it, have them try with their eyes closed.  http://www.teampedia.net/wiki/index.php?title=Zen_Counting

Amazon and author story followed up with May 25, 2014 article on Amazon and Apple.  Read the article and link to other articles at http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/05/25/apple-amazon-hachette-antitrust/?source=yahoo_quote  Thank you, muse reader.

Scarcely two weeks has passed since we celebrated the partial digitization of the American Museum of Natural History’s jaw-dropping collection http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/05/01/19-legitimately-astounding-photos-from-the-museum-of-natural-historys-newly-digitized-archives/, and already another museum is liberalizing its own policies online.  This time it’s New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has announced that more than 400,000 high-res images from the museum’s collections will now be available for free digital download and use in any non-commercial medium — Facebook, Tumblr and personal blogs included.  Copies of the images were online previously, explained Met spokeswoman Ann Bailis, but the new policy is intended to expand access further.  Essentially, the museum is recognizing — much like the Museum of Natural History and the Digital Public Library of America — that the Internet can prove a compelling means to make public domain materials tangibly, usefully public.  The newly freed images are available on the museum’s Web site and tagged with the acronym “OASC,” for Open Access for Scholarly Content; new images will be added to the program on a regular basis.  Caitlin Dewey  See graphics at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/05/21/more-than-400000-pieces-from-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-are-available-for-download-online/?hpid=z7

Massimo Vignelli, an acclaimed graphic designer who gave shape to his spare, Modernist vision in book covers and shopping bags, furniture and corporate logos, even a church and a New York City subway map that enchanted aesthetes and baffled straphangers, died May 27, 2014 at his home in Manhattan.  He was 83. An admirer of the architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Mr. Vignelli moved to New York from Italy in the mid-1960s with the hope of propagating a design aesthetic inspired by their ideal of functional beauty.  He preached clarity and coherence and practiced them with intense discipline in everything he turned out, whether kitchenware, public signage, books or home interiors.  “Massimo, probably more than anyone else, gets the credit for introducing a European Modernist point of view to American graphic design,” Michael Bierut, a partner at Pentagram, a leading graphic design firm, said.  His clients included American Airlines, Ford, IBM, Xerox and Gillette.  St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan had him design an entire church.  His brochures for the National Park Service are still used. Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys all gave out Vignelli-designed shopping bags in the 1970s.  He designed the signs for the New York and Washington subways and suggested the name Metro for the Washington system.  Mr. Vignelli described himself as an “information architect,” one who structures information to make it more understandable.  But when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released his new subway map in 1972, many riders found it the opposite of understandable.  Rather than representing the subway lines as the spaghetti tangle they are, it showed them as uniform stripes of various colors running straight up and down or across at 45-degree angles — not unlike an engineer’s schematic diagram of the movement of electricity.  What upset many riders even more was that the map ignored much of the city aboveground.  It reduced the boroughs to white geometric shapes and eliminated many streets, parks and other familiar features of the cityscape.  Tourists complained of getting off the subway near the southern end of Central Park and finding that a stroll to its northern tip, 51 blocks away, took more than the 30 minutes they had expected.  Gray, not green, was used to denote Central Park; beige, not blue, to indicate waterways.  Douglas Martin  Read more and see graphics at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/business/massimo-vignelli-a-modernist-graphic-designer-dies-at-83.html?_r=0

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1154  May 28, 2014  On this date in 1503, James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor were married.  A Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England signed on that occasion resulted in a peace that lasted ten years.  On this date in 1588, the Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, heading for the English Channel. 

“Mind your own beeswax” and “it’s none of your beeswax” are common phrases you might hear being shouted by six-year-olds on the school playground.  For the uninitiated, they basically mean “mind your own business” or “it’s none of your business,” but some people think it’s more complicated than that.  There is a popular story that says back in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, women who suffered from disfiguring marks left by small pox used beeswax to smooth out their complexion.  One suggested theory is that if someone got too close or was staring too long, a woman would say “mind your own beeswax,” as in, “stop staring at mine.”  Another is that the beeswax would start to melt if a woman sat too close to the fire, and their companions would have to tell them to “mind their own beeswax” which was dripping off their chins.  Beeswax has been commonly used in cosmetics for years, most notably in Burt’s Bees products, but this origin story is pure myth.  The story started being circulated by a chain e-mail called “Little History Lesson” which made the rounds in 2000.  The first record of “mind your own beeswax” actually appears in 1929 in a children’s book, with additional early records following in 1934 and 1939, quite a few years after women were supposedly slathering wax on their faces and coining popular expressions about it.  There is no evidence to suggest that “beeswax” is anything more than a funny, and convenient, substitution for “business.”  The phrase “mind your own business” has been around for a long time, and is incredibly straightforward:  it is a phrase to tell someone to pay attention to their own affairs rather than yours.  It’s thought that changing “business” to “beeswax” probably softened the phrase, making it sound a little less harsh.  One etymologist, Mark Forsyth, has noted that the word “beeswax” was slang for “tedious bore” in the 19^thcentury.  Therefore, the phrase “mind your own beeswax” might in fact be “mind your own, beeswax.”  That is, “nose out, you bore.”  However, Forsyth admits that the substitution theory carries a lot of weight too, since the words “business” and “beeswax” sound quite similar.  Emily Upton  http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/origin-phrase-mind-beeswax/

Ten amazing facts about bees  http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/12/10-amazzzzing-bee-facts-infographic/

The “bee” in “spelling bee” simply means something to the effect of “gathering” or “get together”.   The earliest documented case of this word appearing with this meaning was in 1769, referring to a “spinning bee”, where people would gather to protest purchasing goods from Britain due to the high taxes on those items.  Other gatherings that were commonly labeled with “bee” were:  apple bee, logging bee, quilting bee, barn bee, hanging bee, sewing bee, field bee, and corn husking bee, among others.   Basically, any sort of major competition or work gathering, with a specific task in mind tended to get the “bee” label added on the end.  With many of these bees being tedious work events, it was also customary to serve refreshments and provide entertainment at the end of the task.  The first documented case of a spelling bee called such was in 1825.  However, it is likely that there were spelling bees before this date.  Daven Hiskey  Find theories on the etymology of "bee" as a gathering  at http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/06/what-the-bee-in-spelling-bee-means/

The Idler Academy http://idler.co.uk/academy/, an offshoot of the magazine which offers courses in everything from philosophy to ukulele playing, has announced the shortlist for its 2014 Bad Grammar award, set up to highlight "the incorrect use of English by people and institutions who should know better".  The shortlist is headed by Tesco, for using "less" not "fewer" in reference to numbers on loo-roll packaging – "Same Luxury. Less Lorries" – and for describing its orange juice as "most tastiest".  Next comes the NHS, for confusing subject and object in a letter – "Your appointment has now been organised to attend Queen Mary's Hospital … " – and featuring a rogue apostrophe:  "The RDC Suite's are clearly signposted".   Unfortunately named cafe chain Apostrophe also fell victim to the curse of the apostrophe in a marketing slogan, "Great taste on it's way".  Historian and MP Tristram Hunt is indicted for "tautology and other errors".  He was accused by Michael Gove of bad grammar in the House of Commons earlier this year, for the tautology "ongoing continuing professional development".  The Army Careers Office is included for using "you're" for "your" on a sign in a window:  "For any inquires [sic] please contact you're nearest Army Careers Office."  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/bad-grammar-award-shortlist-english-language-nhs-tesco

Executive Order  A presidential policy directive that implements or interprets a federal statute, a constitutional provision, or a treaty.  The president's power to issue executive orders comes from Congress and the U.S. Constitution.  Executive orders differ from presidential proclamations, which are used largely for ceremonial and honorary purposes, such as declaring National Newspaper Carrier Appreciation Day.  Executive orders do not require congressional approval.  Thus, the president can use them to set policy while avoiding public debate and opposition.  Presidents have used executive orders to direct a range of activities, including establishing migratory bird refuges; putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II; discharging civilian government employees who had been disloyal, following World War II; enlarging national forests; prohibiting racial discrimination in housing; pardoning Vietnam War draft evaders; giving federal workers the right to bargain collectively; keeping the federal workplace drug free; and sending U.S. troops to Bosnia.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Executive+Order  Find a list of executive orders (EOs) from George Washington to Barack Obama as of January 20, 2014 at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php  Presidents issuing the highest numbers of EOs are Franklin D. Roosevelt (3, 522) and Woodrow Wilson (1,803).  William Henry Harrison is the only president to issue no EOs.  John Adams, James Madison and James Monroe each issued one.

How to Begin and Lead a Book Discussion Group  http://www.iowacenterforthebook.org/discussion-groups

A Novel Idea "Librarians reimagine book clubs with the help of technology" by Apryl Flynn Gilliss  pp. 45-49 in May 2014 issue of American Libraries  Find 5 tips to starting your own online book club (p. 47) and 3 tools to help with your online book club (p. 48) at http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/issue/may-2014

reduplicative by Richard Nordquist  A word or lexeme (such as mama) that contains two identical or very similar parts.  Also called a tautonym.  The morphological and phonological process of forming a compound word by repeating all or part of it is known as reduplication.  The repeated element is called a reduplicant.

Examples: chit-chat, flim-flam, riff-raff, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, mumbo-jumbo, wishy-washy  http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/redupterm.htm

Argle-barle is a reduplication of argle (alteration of argue).  Read about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's use of argle-bargle in dissent of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2013 that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.  http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/06/brouhaha-behind-argle-bargle-linguistic-explanation/66630/

Fake stories on Internet:  1.  Those identical twin girls were not born holding hands.  2. Solange did not send that tweet about Jay-Z.  3.  New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger is not on Twitter.  4.  Mallard Air is not “the Midwest’s newest budget airline.”   Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/05/16/what-was-fake-on-the-internet-this-week-ufo-attacks-solange-tweets-and-those-twins-born-holding-hands/

Amazon’s power over the publishing and bookselling industries is unrivaled in the modern era.  Seeking ever-higher payments from publishers to bolster its anemic bottom line, Amazon is holding books and authors hostage on two continents by delaying shipments and raising prices.  “How is this not extortion?  You know, the thing that is illegal when the Mafia does it,” said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, echoing remarks being made across social media.  The battle is being waged largely over physical books.  In the United States, Amazon has been discouraging customers from purchasing titles from Hachette, the fourth-largest publisher by market share. On May 22, 2014, it escalated the dispute by making it impossible to order Hachette’s forthcoming books.  It is using some of the same tactics against the Bonnier Publishing Group in Germany.  But the real prize is not the physical books.  It is control of e-books, the future of publishing.  Amazon is by far the dominant e-book company and feels it deserves more of the digital proceeds than it is getting.  James Patterson, one of the country’s best-selling writers, described the confrontation between Amazon and the publishers as “a war” in a Facebook post titled “Four of the most important paragraphs I’ll ever write.”  “Bookstores, libraries, authors, and books themselves are caught in the cross fire of an economic war,” he wrote.  “If this is the new American way, then maybe it has to be changed — by law, if necessary — immediately, if not sooner.”  Patterson is published by Hachette.  His forthcoming novels are now impossible to buy from Amazon in either print or digital form.  Amazon has begun to refuse Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling’s new novel, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  In some cases, even the webpages promoting the books have disappeared.  Anne Rivers Siddons’ new novel, The Girls of August, coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition.  Only the audio-player edition is still being sold (for more than $60).  Otherwise it is as if it doesn’t exist.  

David Streitfield and Melissa Eddy  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2014/05/24/amazon-holds-books-to-hurt-publishers.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1153  May 26, 2014  On this date in 1805 Napoléon Bonaparte assumed the title of King of Italy and was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano, the gothic cathedral in Milan.  On this date in 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress.  On this date in 1865, General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.  

An analysis of real estate listings priced at $1 million and up shows that "perfect" listings—written in full sentences without spelling or grammatical errors—sell three days faster and are 10% more likely to sell for more than their list price than listings overall.  On the flip side, listings riddled with technical errors—misspellings, incorrect homonyms, incomplete sentences, among others—log the most median days on the market before selling and have the lowest percentage of homes that sell over list price.  The analysis, conducted by Redfin, a national real-estate brokerage, and Grammarly, an online proofreading application, examined spelling errors and other grammatical red flags in 106,850 luxury listings in 52 metro areas in 2013.  For an industry without a universal stylebook, real-estate agents vary greatly in their listing descriptions.  While some brokerages have created internal guidelines, much of the actual writing is still left up to the discretion of listing agents.   Aside from errors, the analysis also looked at style preferences in listings.  One of the most common: phrases written in all-capital letters.  These listings saw the least success in terms of sale price, with only 5.6% of homes selling above list price.  The practice is most common in Las Vegas, where 28.5% of listings were written in all capital letters in 2013, compared with 8.4% of listings nationwide.  

Sanette Tanaka  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304677904579537701330465152?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304677904579537701330465152.html

on the horns of a dilemma  faced with the choice between two equally unpalatable alternatives; in an awkward situation  Synonyms:   between the devil and the deep blue sea, between a rock and a hard place, between Scylla and Charybdis  http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/on-the-horns-of-a-dilemma

Breakfast Cereals Compared by ACalorie Counter  

A sortable table comparing over fifty cereals from Post, Kellogg's and General Mills with explanations of terms such as trans fat and HFCS, and list of best and worst cereals at http://www.acaloriecounter.com/breakfast-cereal.php

A pangram is a sentence that contains all letters of the alphabet.  Less frequently, such sentences are called holalphabetic sentences.  Interesting pangrams are generally short ones; constructing a sentence that includes the fewest repeat letters possible is a challenging task.  However, pangrams that are slightly longer yet enlightening, humorous, or eccentric are noteworthy in their own right.  By far the most well-known pangram is, "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog."  Curiously, this sentence is often misquoted by changing "jumps" to "jumped."  The past tense version, lacking an "s," is not a pangram.  Often, too, it is misquoted as "the lazy dog" rather than "a lazy dog."  Find examples of pangrams from longest to shortest at http://www.rinkworks.com/words/pangrams.shtml

"How many letters are in the alphabet"?  The answer is 11, because it takes 11 letters to spell "the alphabet".  That's a riddle, of course.  English has 26 letters; Russian has 33; Maori has 13 plus 2 digraphs (NG and WH).   Although there's some disagreement, Hawaiian may have the fewest letters at 12, and Tamil the most with 247.

The Amstel is a river in the Netherlands which runs through the city of Amsterdam.  The river's name is derived from Aeme stelle, old Dutch for "area abounding with water".  Amstel beer is named after the river.  The Amstel brewery, as a lot of other breweries, was situated close to the Amstel river because clean river water was used to produce the beer.  Amsterdam took its name from the river.  The city developed out of a small fishing village called "Amstelredam", built in the 13th century alongside a dam at the mouth of the river.  The town was granted city rights around 1300.  The hamlet developed into the small town "Amsteldam", which later became "Amsterdam".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstel

To be in high cotton (or tall cotton) is to feel good.  It's an idiom from having a good harvest.

The latest twist on phishing is spear phishing.  No, it's not a sport, it's a scam and you're the target.  Spear phishing is an email that appears to be from an individual or business that you know.  But it isn't.  It's from the same criminal hackers who want your credit card and bank account numbers, passwords, and the financial information on your PC.  The spear phisher thrives on familiarity.  He knows your name, your email address, and at least a little about you. The salutation on the email message is likely to be personalized:  "Hi Bob" instead of "Dear Sir." The email may make reference to a "mutual friend."  Or to a recent online purchase you've made.  Because the email seems to come from someone you know, you may be less vigilant and give them the information they ask for.  And when it's a company you know asking for urgent action, you may be tempted to act before thinking.  How do you become a target of a spear phisher?  From the information you put on the Internet from your PC or smartphone.  For example, they might scan social networking sites, find your page, your email address, your friends list, and a recent post by you telling friends about the cool new camera you bought at an online retail site.  Using that information, a spear phisher could pose as a friend, send you an email, and ask you for a password to your photo page.  If you respond with the password, they'll try that password and variations to try to access your account on that online retail site you mentioned.  If they find the right one, they'll use it to run up a nice tab for you.  Or the spear phisher might use the same information to pose as somebody from the online retailer and ask you to reset your password, or re-verify your credit card number.  Take a look at your online presence.  How much information is out there about you that could be pieced together to scam you?  Your name?  Email address?  Friends' names?  Their email addresses?  Are you on, for example, any of the popular social networking sites?  Take a look at your posts.  Anything there you don't want a scammer to know?  Or have you posted something on a friend's page that might reveal too much?

http://us.norton.com/spear-phishing-scam-not-sport/article

Nigeria’s Boko Haram:  Frequently Asked Questions by Lauren Ploch Blanchard  Congressional Research Service 7-5700  May 20, 2014  Boko Haram emerged in the early 2000s as a small Sunni Islamic sect advocating a strict interpretation and implementation of Islamic law for Nigeria.  Calling itself Jama’a Ahl as-Sunna Li-da’wa wa-al Jihad (roughly translated from Arabic as “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”), the group is more popularly known as Boko Haram (often translated as “Western education is forbidden”), a nickname given by local Hausa-speaking communities to describe the group’s view that Western education and culture have been corrupting influences that are haram (“forbidden”) under its conservative interpretation of Islam.  

Read 20-page report at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43558.pdf

Frank Reginald Scott (1899-1985) was a poet, lawyer, constitutional expert, and political activist. As an undergraduate student at McGill University, he edited several literary journals with A. J. M. Smith and published poetry by A. M. Klein.  Part of the Montreal Group of poets, Scott helped to shape modernist poetry in Canada.  He wrote over twenty books and won the Governor General’s Award for both poetry and non-fiction.  Read his poem Laurentian Shield at

http://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/laurentian-shield

The Canadian Shield, also known as the Precambrian Shield or Laurentian Plateau, covers about half of Canada as well as most of Greenland and part of the northern United States; an area of 4.4 million square kilometers (1.7 million square miles).  It is the oldest part of the North American crustal plate and contains fossils of bacteria and algae over 2 billion years old.  The shield is composed of granite and the earth’s greatest area of exposed Precambrian rock (igneous and metamorphic rock formed in the Precambrian geological era 500 million years ago).  http://www.canadianshieldfoundation.ca/?page_id=39

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1152  May 23, 2014  On this date in 1568, the Netherlands declared their independence from Spain.  On this date in 1829, an Accordion patent was granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna.  On this date in 1911, the New York Public Library was dedicated.

A penny dreadful (also called penny horrible, penny awful, penny number, and penny blood) was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing one (old) penny.  The term, however, soon came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries".  The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap pulp paper and were aimed primarily at working class adolescents.   These serials started in the 1830s, originally as a cheaper alternative to mainstream fictional part-works, such as those by Charles Dickens (which cost a shilling [twelve pennies]) for working class adults, but by the 1850s the serial stories were aimed exclusively at teenagers.  The stories themselves were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of Gothic thrillers such as The Monk or The Castle of Otranto, as well as new stories about famous criminals.  Some of the most famous of these penny part-stories were The String of Pearls:  A Romance (introducing Sweeney Todd), The Mysteries of London (inspired by the French serial The Mysteries of Paris), and Varney the Vampire.  Highwaymen were popular heroes; Black Bess or the Knight of the Road, outlining the largely imaginary exploits of real-life English highwayman Dick Turpin, continued for 254 episodes.  Working class boys who could not afford a penny a week often formed clubs that would share the cost, passing the flimsy booklets from reader to reader.  Other enterprising youngsters would collect a number of consecutive parts, then rent the volume out to friends.  In 1866, Boys of England was introduced as a new type of publication, an eight-page magazine that featured serial stories as well as articles and shorts of interest.  It was printed on the same cheap paper, though it sported a larger format than the penny parts.  American dime novels were edited and rewritten for a British audience.  These appeared in booklet form, such as the Boy's First Rate Pocket Library.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful

shilling shocker  (UK, dated)  A cheap paperback book produced for the mass market in 19th century Britain.  A typical 'shilling shocker' often consolidated twelve to fifteen episodes of a serial novel whose chapters had previously been published separately as penny dreadful pamphlets.  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shilling_shocker  Best-known shilling shocker is probably Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera.

Penny Dreadful TV series, 2014-  "Victorian-era London is stalked by extraordinary characters from classic horror stories."  See episode titles and air dates at http://epguides.com/PennyDreadful/

Radio spectrum refers to the part of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to radio frequencies – that is, frequencies lower than around 300 GHz (or, equivalently, wavelengths longer than about 1 mm).  Electromagnetic waves in this frequency range, called radio waves, are used for radio communication and various other applications, such as heating.  The generation of radio waves is strictly regulated by the government in most countries, coordinated by an international standards body called the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  Different parts of the radio spectrum are allocated for different radio transmission technologies and applications.  In some cases, parts of the radio spectrum is sold or licensed to operators of private radio transmission services (for example, cellular telephone operators or broadcast television stations).  Ranges of allocated frequencies are often referred to by their provisioned use (for example, cellular spectrum or television spectrum.  Find frequencies as designated by ITU, IEEE, EU, NATO and US ECM--and by application (for instance, broadcasting and radar) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_Radio_Bands#ITU

A band is a small section of the spectrum of radio communication frequencies, in which channels are usually used or set aside for the same purpose.

US ECM= US Equity Capital Markets

ECMs=Electronic Counter Measures

English speakers love to create new words by blending existing ones together into "portmanteau words."  Sometimes a particular word gets pulled into so many portmanteaus that a fragment of that word becomes "liberated" to become an affix all by itself — but one that has a much more specific meaning than what you get with affixes like un-, -ly, or -ness.  The best example might be the suffix -gate, which jumped free of the name Watergate to embark on a successful career turning any noun into a scandal.  The linguist Arnold Zwicky coined the term libfix for these creations.  Neal Whitman  Find a list of libfixes including cation, erati, verse and zilla at https://theweek.com/article/index/249302/a-linguistic-tour-of-the-best-libfixes-from--ana-to--zilla  NOTE that the word Bridgegate is about the plan to create traffic gridlock at the George Washington Bridge in 2013, apparently as political payback.

Portmanteau is a literary device in which two or more words are joined together to coin a new word.  A portmanteau word is formed by blending parts of two or more words but it always refers to a single concept.  The coinage of portmanteau involves the linking and blending of two or more words and the new word formed in the process shares the same meanings as the original words.  It is different from a compound word in that it could have a completely different meaning from the words that it was coined from.  Portmanteau, on the other hand, shares the same semantic features.  For example, the word “brunch” is formed by splicing two words “breakfast” and “lunch”.  Find examples of portmanteau words including from the works of Charles Dickens and James Joyce at http://literarydevices.net/portmanteau/  NOTE that dinnerware and glassware are compound words.  From software--we have portmanteau words:  scareware, malware, spyware and shareware.

scape from landscape used as a libfix:  nightscape, dayscape, streetscape, cityscape, moonscape, seascape

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System  Search over 7.4. million records, with 568,1000 images, video and sound files  from Smithsonian museums, archives and libraries at http://siris.si.edu/

QUOTES from Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille  "Real men don't ask directions."  

"Today must be your annual smart day." 

In 1974, a young Professor of architecture in Budapest (Hungary) named Erno Rubik created an object that was not supposed to be possible.  His solid cube twisted and turned - and still it did not break or fall apart.  With colourful stickers on its sides, the Cube got scrambled and thus emerged the first “Rubik’s Cube”.  It took well over a month for Erno to work out the solution to his puzzle.  Little did he expect that Rubik’s Cube would become the world’s best-selling toy ever.  As a teacher, Erno was always looking for new, more exciting ways to present information, so he used the Cube’s first model to help him explain to his students about spatial relationships.  Erno has always thought of the Cube primarily as an object of art, a mobile sculpture symbolizing stark contrasts of the human condition: bewildering problems and triumphant intelligence; simplicity and complexity; stability and dynamism; order and chaos.For this magic object to become the most popular toy in history a few chance meetings had to take place.  As with many of the world’s greatest inventions it did not have an easy birth.  After presenting his prototype to his students and friends Erno began to realise the potential of his cube.  The next step was to get it manufactured.  The first cubes were made and distributed in Hungary by Politechnika.  These early Cubes, marketed as “Magic Cubes” (or “Buvos Kocka”), were twice the weight of the ones available later.  See a picture of the original cube and a timeline of the cube story at http://rubiks.com/history

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1151  May 21, 2014  On this date in 1881, the American Red Cross was established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C.  

On this date in 1934, Oskaloosa, Iowa, became the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens.