Echoes, reverberations and other then-inexplicable auditory illusions may have inspired mankind's earliest artists, according to Steven Waller, a researcher at Rock Art Acoustics in La Mesa, California.  Waller's work spans the globe, from paleo-art in North America to stone circles in the United Kingdom.  In 2012, he reported a startling acoustical discovery about Stonehenge, the famed stone circle in Wiltshire, England.  The stones in Stonehenge create acoustical dead spots, Waller found, very similar to acoustical dead spots created when two pipers stand in a field and play a note simultaneously.  The interference of sound waves creates spots in the field where the noise cancels out.  Stone circles like Stonehenge are also known as "piper's stones," Waller pointed out, and they are the center of a myth about magical pipers playing for a circle of dancing maidens, all of whom turned to stone at the sound of the music.  It's that mythology that leads Waller to believe that Stonehenge may have been built to mimic an acoustical illusion.  Myth and sound collide at other sites, as well.  European cave art is dominated by pictures of herds of bison, stags and other large mammals, Waller said.  In Eurasia, these animals are also associated with thunder gods, because the sound of hundreds of hoofs was thunderous.  Thus, Waller argues, it's no coincidence these animals are painted in caves where the echoes reverberate so much that a few sounds quickly escalate into a thunderous roar.  His measurements bear this out:  He has found that cave areas with a higher level of reverberation are more likely to be decorated with art.  Stephanie Pappas  http://www.livescience.com/48493-sound-illusions-inspired-prehistoric-cave-art.html

The History of KCBS, the World’s First Broadcasting Station
The Bay Area’s only all news radio station, KCBS started out as the hobby of scientist and inventor Charles Herrold.  Giving birth to the world’s first radio station, Herrold and his engineering students began broadcasting regularly-scheduled programming in 1909 on a 14-watt transmitter in San Jose.  Originally, the station simply identified itself as “This is San Jose Calling.”  When radio licenses were issued in 1921, “Doc” Herrold was assigned the call letters of KQW.  The station kept those call letters until CBS purchased it in 1949, broadcasting as KCBS at 740 AM on the dial.  News radio was born in 1968, when KCBS became the first all news station in Northern California.  It was then and continues to be one of the top-rated radio stations in the Bay Area, serving more than a million Bay Area listeners each week.  In October 2008, KCBS began simulcasting its all news programming on the FM dial at 106.9.  KCBS was also one of the first Bay Area stations to broadcast in HD digital sound.  http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/station/kcbs/

American inventor and electrical engineer, Lee De Forest (1873-1961)  is credited for inventing the Audion, a vacuum tube that takes moderately weak electrical signals and amplifies them.  The device helped AT&T establish coast-to-coast phone service, and it was also used in everything from radios to televisions to the first computers.  De Forest was highly creative and active, but many times did not see the potential of his inventions or grasp their theoretical implications.  While working on improving wireless telegraph equipment, he modified the vacuum tube invented by John Ambrose Fleming and designed the Audion (a vacuum tube containing some gas) in 1906.  It was a triode, including a filament and a plate, like regular vacuum tubes, but also a grid between the filament and plate.  This reinforced the current through the tube, amplifying weak telegraph and even radio signals.  De Forest thought the gas was an essential part of the system; however in 1912 others showed that a triode in a complete vacuum would function much better.  In 1913 the United States Attorney General sued De Forest for deceit on behalf of his shareholders, stating that his declaration of rebirth was an “absurd” promise (he was later acquitted).  In 1916 the American inventor made two triumphs:  the first radio advertisement (for his own products) and the first presidential election reported by radio.  http://www.famousscientists.org/lee-de-forest/

James Watt  (1736-1819)  James Watt is famous for improving the design of the steam engine.  Watt's steam engine became the main energy source in Britain's Industrial Revolution.  He invented the term "horsepower" and has a unit of power named after him - the Watt.

http://www.planet-science.com/categories/over-11s/science-celebrities/2011/04/james-watt-1736---1819.aspx

Cottonopolis  Manchester, U.K. in 1800 was a town covered by a canopy of smoke pouring from tall chimneys.  Fifty steam-powered cotton mills dominated the skyline.  They were the skyscrapers of their day.  The town that people nicknamed Cottonopolis was taking shape.  Two hundred years later, no working mills remain.  A new skyline has emerged.  Manchester remained the hub of the world cotton goods market until the Royal Exchange closed in 1968.  Some firms adapted by turning to synthetic fibres, such as polyester and fibreglass.  Today, Manchester is still a city shaped by cotton.  Converted mills and warehouses have found new life as offices, hotels and flats, alongside new high-rise buildings.

http://www.mosi.org.uk/explore-mosi/explore-revolution-manchester/revolution-manchester-themes/cottonopolis.aspx

Flect and flex are root-words from the Latin, flectere, to bend.  Find a list including flexible, deflect and reflect at http://www.english-for-students.com/flex.html

The heroine of “Find Me I’m Yours,” a new novel by Hillary Carlip, is a quirky young woman named Mags who works at an online bridal magazine and is searching for love in Los Angeles.  But the story also has another, less obvious protagonist:  Sweet’N Low, the artificial sweetener.  Sweet’N Low appears several times in the 356-page story, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  In one scene, Mags, a Sweet’N Low devotee, shows off her nails, which she has painted to resemble the product’s pink packets.  In another, she gets teased by a co-worker for putting Sweet’N Low in her coffee.  “Hellooo, isn’t it bad for you?” the friend asks.  Mags replies that she has researched the claims online and found studies showing that the product is safe:  “They fed lab rats twenty-five hundred packets of Sweet’N Low a day ... And still the F.D.A. or E.P.A., or whatevs agency, couldn’t connect the dots from any kind of cancer in humans to my party in a packet.”  The scene was brought to you by the Cumberland Packing Corporation, the Brooklyn-based company that makes Sweet’N Low. Cumberland Packing invested about $1.3 million in “Find Me I’m Yours.”  Product placement in a novel might strike some as unseemly.  But “Find Me, I’m Yours” is not like most novels.  It’s an e-book, a series of websites and web TV shows, and a vehicle for content sponsored by companies.  And if it succeeds, it could usher in a new business model for publishers, one that blurs the lines between art and commerce in ways that are routine in TV shows and movies but rare in books.  Alexandra Alter  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/business/media/e-book-mingles-love-and-product-placement.html?_r=2

November 23, 2014  Ever since it opened in 1933, a 70-story limestone skyscraper has towered over mid-Manhattan as a symbol of global capitalism and of a prolific American family that remains synonymous with prodigious wealth.  The family patriarch, John D. Rockefeller, was America’s first billionaire, and it was his son, John Jr., who dauntlessly broke ground for 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the midst of the Great Depression.  Through it all, into what is now the seventh generation, the Rockefellers’ vast financial and personal empire has been managed by as many as 200 employees from a lofty command post adorned with priceless Impressionist and Modern artwork.  But in 2000, the Rockefellers sold off 30 Rock and nine other landmark Rockefeller Center office buildings in the 22-acre Art Deco complex to Jerry I. Speyer and the Lester Crown family of Chicago, though they retained their presence in the building by keeping one floor as a rented space.  About 44 staff members will work for the Rockefellers when they move to a 19,000-square-foot space at 1 Rockefeller Plaza around the middle of next year.  Rockefeller & Company, which manages the investments of the Rockefellers and other wealthy families, has opened shop separately at 10 Rockefeller Plaza.  “We decided to start again at 1 Rock,” David Jr. said.  “This is the first time this generation has gotten to say what their needs are.”  He will move into an office in the 34-story building that faces the skating rink.  Sam Roberts  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/nyregion/why-are-rockefellers-moving-from-30-rock-we-got-a-deal.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1223  November 26, 2014  On this date in 1789, a national Thanksgiving Day was observed in the United States as recommended by George Washington and approved by Congress.  On this date in 1863,  Abraham Lincoln proclaimed November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November.  (Since 1941, it has been on the fourth Thursday.)