In an unprecedented bout of internationalism, five of the world’s major ballet companies will participate in a 20-hour-long live streaming event that will give ballet fans worldwide an intensive behind-the-scenes look at company classes, rehearsals and coaching.  The event, called “World Ballet Day,” will take place on Oct. 1, and features the Australian Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, the Royal Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet in successive four-hour slots, beginning at 12 p.m. local time in Melbourne, and moving across continents and time zones to Moscow, London, Toronto and San Francisco.  The live stream will be available on YouTube and on each ballet company’s website.  Viewers will be able to ask questions and interact with each company via a live forum throughout the day, and are invited to film themselves doing a pirouette and submit it for later inclusion in a short film.  And in case anyone can’t stay awake to fully compare and contrast, the full streaming will be available afterward on YouTube.  Roslyn Sulkas  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/five-ballet-companies-join-for-live-streaming-world-ballet-day/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

I bet you didn't know that the New York Public Library is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Library Way this month.  You may have no idea where it's even located.  Library Way extends from Park to Fifth avenues along 41st Street.  And it's distinguished by 44 bronze sidewalk plaques featuring quotes from the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Julia Alvarez, Mark Twain and Tom Stoppard.  There are actually 98 plaques, according to library spokeswoman Amy Geduldig—an equal number on both sides of 41st Street that are identical to each other.  The quotes were selected during the 1990s by a panel that included representatives from the library; the Grand Central Partnership, which manages the Grand Central Business Improvement District; and the New Yorker magazine.  And the plaques, which are graphically intriguing in their own right, were designed by Gregg LeFevre.  Ralph Gardner, Jr.  http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-great-library-way-1411003094

Behind every championship team is a strategy that may sound strange to everyone else.  Auburn's happens to taste that way, too.  Beyond the usual explanations for Auburn's remarkable rise from 3-9 in 2012 to winning the Southeastern Conference last year is a secret that hadn't been revealed until now.  Over the last two seasons, the Tigers have been experimenting with an elixir-like potion.  "We were doing beet juice," says Auburn dietitian Scott Sehnert.  Before each game, between team warm-ups and the opening kickoff, Auburn's staff distributes small pouches of beetroot concentrate.  The players swirl the beetroot crystals around their water bottles and then slug the deep-purple concoction—which they don't exactly savor.  "The worst thing in the entire world," said Auburn tight end C.J. Uzomah.  "It is nasty."  But they aren't drinking it for the taste.  In recent years, sports scientists have seized on the discovery that beetroot juice is rich with nitrate.  That has led to multiple studies revealing possible performance benefits that range from increased muscle efficiency to decreases in fatigue levels.  Ben Cohen  Read much more and see pictures at http://online.wsj.com/articles/auburns-secret-sauce-beet-juice-1410978433

Montana-based poet and photographer Tyler Knott Gregson has written at least one new poem a day for his blog http://tylerknott.com/ over the past five years.  Every morning, he posts a photo with a caption and a haiku.  Around lunchtime, he puts up a longer poem, composed on a typewriter and scanned into his computer.  He shares the works on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook—and he hasn't missed a day yet.  The Wall Street Journal  September 19, 2014

The Nebula Award for Best Novelette is given each year by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) to a science fiction or fantasy novelette published in English or translated into English and released in the United States or on the internet during the previous calendar year.  A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novelette if it is between 7,500 and 17,500 words; awards are also given out for pieces of longer lengths in the Novel and Novella categories, and for shorter lengths in the Short Story category.  The Nebula Award for Best Novelette has been awarded annually since 1966.  Find list of  winners from 1966-2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novelette

Established in 1895, Stone Laboratory is the oldest freshwater biological field station in the United States and the center of Ohio State University’s teaching and research on Lake Erie.  The lab serves as a base for more than 65 researchers from 12 agencies and academic institutions, all working year-round to solve the most pressing problems facing the Great Lakes.  The Gem of Lake Erie.  Gib.  The Rock.  Gibraltar Island has many names and a long history.  Originally a territory of the state of Connecticut, it was purchased by New York banker Pierpont Edwards in 1807.  Soon after, it became a key in the War of 1812 when, on September 10, 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry used the island as a lookout point to spot the approaching British fleet before the Battle of Lake Erie.  Read more, see pictures, and link to resources at http://stonelab.osu.edu/about/

The Scottish referendum on Sept. 18, 2014 was interesting not just for what it said about Britain, but also for what it said about the state of political forecasting.  The polls were volatile; they often gave conflicting signals; and it took them until the last few weeks to even start to suspect that this would be a close race. T he major polls in the past week ranged from a 6-point lead for the Yes vote to a 7-point lead for the No vote.  And this wide range wasn’t because of wild fluctuations in public opinion.  It was the result of two surveys that were taken within a day of each other.  The prediction markets, on the other hand, yielded much more reliable forecasts.  Despite the demise of Intrade, these markets remain extremely active, and over at Betfair, bettors rated the chances of a No vote at around 80 percent, an estimate that remained remarkably stable over the past week, fluctuating by only a few points.  British bookies were laying similar odds.  According to The Financial Times, a Ladbrokes spokesman argued earlier this week that the referendum would be the biggest political betting event in history, noting that his firm had taken more money in bets than the last British general election and American presidential election combined.  Betting on the likely winning margin also suggested that the No vote was most likely to win by around 4 points.  Yes, bettors underestimated the winning margin, but they were still closer than the election-week polling average.  My own research with Microsoft’s David Rothschild suggests that pollsters could do a better job if they learned from prediction markets.  Instead of focusing on whom people say they plan to vote for, ask them instead to focus on who they think will win. Typically, asking people who they think will win yields better forecasts, possibly because it leads them to also reflect on the opinions of those around them, and perhaps also because it may yield more honest answers.  It’s an idea with particular relevance to the case of the Scottish referendum.  As Stephen Fisher, an associate professor of political sociology at the University of Oxford, has noted, there is a historical tendency for polling to overstate the likelihood of success of referendums, possibly because we’re more willing to tell pollsters we will vote for change than to actually do so.   Such biases are less likely to distort polls that ask people who they think will win.  Justin Wolfers  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/upshot/scotlands-no-vote-a-loss-for-pollsters-and-a-win-for-betting-markets.html?abt=0002&abg=0

If it hadn’t been for The New Yorker, A.R. Gurney’s 1988 play might have never made it to the Great White Way.  At the show’s Broadway opening on Sept. 18, 2014 at the Brooks Atkinson Theater the playwright explained that he submitted the script to the publication in the 1980s for consideration.  When he received a rejection note saying they “don’t publish plays” Gurney and his agent figured the editors were right and “Love Letters” was in fact a play.  A very low maintenance, cost-effective two-hander.  The two-actor cast — Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy — required only a table and two chairs.  From there, with the text of the letters in front of them, the duo read the 90-minute epistolary tale of the lifelong correspondence between a man and a woman who may or may not be the love of each others’ lives.  Dennehy and Farrow are the first of a crop of big-name actors who will rotate in and out of the show in the coming months.  Among the actors on board for stints in the show are Alan Alda, Candice Bergen, Stacy Keach, Diana Rigg, Anjelica Huston and Martin Sheen.  Addie Morfoot  http://variety.com/2014/scene/news/brian-dennehy-mia-farrow-love-letters-broadway-opening-night-1201309461/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1194  September 22, 2014  On this date in 1789, the office of United States Postmaster General was established.  On this date in 1869, Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premiered in Munich.