Exaggerating with numbers

eight days a week--Beatles song and a movie

turn it up to eleven--Spinal Tap movie

110 percent (effort)--motivational talk

25/8--pun on 24/7 (also non-stop, restless; also a song by Mary J. Blige)

"Graphic novel" is a term gaining acceptance that is used to describe bound narratives that tell a story through sequential art with or without text.  These may have been conceived originally as novel-length works or be compilations of previously serialized stories.  Find a guide to research including awards, publishers, journals, collections, museums and exhibitions, conventions and conferences, blogs, news, and discussion sites at

http://library.columbia.edu/subject-guides/graphic_novels.html  See also http://www.slj.com/category/books-media/graphic-novels/ and http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/57093-how-graphic-novels-became-the-hottest-section-in-the-library.html

Who Was Betty Crocker? by Tori Avey   Before Betty Crocker was synonymous with boxed cake mix and canned frosting, she was a “kitchen confidante,” a maternal and guiding presence in kitchens across America.  She was the “Dear Abby” of cooking, a woman people could trust with their most frustrating kitchen woes.  Surprising, then, that Betty Crocker isn’t actually a real person.  She is the brainchild of an advertising campaign developed by the Washburn-Crosby Company, a flour milling company started in the late 1800’s that eventually became General Mills.  Gold Medal Flour, a product of Washburn-Crosby, helped to kick-start Betty’s career.  She was “born” in 1921, when an ad for Gold Medal Flour was placed in the Saturday Evening Post.  The ad featured a puzzle of a quaint main street scene.  Contestants were encouraged to complete the puzzle and send it in for the prize of a pincushion in the shape of a sack of Gold Medal Flour.  The response was overwhelming; around 30,000 completed puzzles flooded the Washburn-Crosby offices.  Many of the completed puzzles were accompanied by letters filled with baking questions and concerns, something the Washburn-Crosby Company hadn’t anticipated.  Read an extensive history and find images from 1936, 1955, 1965, 1969, 1972, 1980, 1986 and 1996.  For her 75th anniversary in 1996, painter John Stuart Ingle gave her an olive skin tone that could belong to a wide range of ethnicities.  Ingle created this version of Betty by digitally morphing photographs of 75 women that General Mills felt embodied “the characteristics of Betty Crocker.”  Betty Crocker’s first namesake grocery item was a soup mix, which became available in 1941.  Her famous cake mix appeared on store shelves in 1947, and the bestselling Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book was published in 1950.  It is still being sold today, millions of copies later, under the title The Betty Crocker Cookbook. http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/who-was-betty-crocker/

Banter means light, witty talk with good-natured teasing or arguing; chatter means quick, extensive, and/or aimless talk; patter means quick or monotonous speech, as in delivering a humorous speech.  Find a list of 75 Synonyms for “Talk” by Mark Nichol at http://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-synonyms-for-talk/  Search Daily Writing Tips and link to categories and popular articles at http://www.dailywritingtips.com/about/

The Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos by Alex Santoso  Find pictures of various versions and learn the stories behind DreamWorks SKG:  Boy on the Moon, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM):  Leo The Lion, 20th Century Fox:  The Searchlight Logo, Paramount:  The Majestic Mountain, Warner Bros.:  The WB Shield and Columbia Pictures:  The Torch Lady at http://www.neatorama.com/2008/12/03/the-story-behind-hollywood-studio-logos/

Lady Justice was originally known as the goddess Themis. In Greek Themis means ‘order’.  Her other interchangeable names are Justicia or Justice.  She is also associated with the goddesses Astraea, Dike, Eirene, Eunomia, Fortuna, Tyche, and Ma’at.  http://sculptorsdominion.org/UserFiles/File/08LadyJusticePressCOPY.pdf

The purpose of ma'at (law/justice/truth) among the Kemet (Kmt Khemet) people of ancient Upper and Lower Egypt was to divert chaos (Isfet).   See graphics at http://maatlaws.blogspot.com/  

Download royalty free scales of justice images at http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/scales_of_justice.html

How Paperbacks Helped the U.S. Win World War II  by Jennifer Maloney  “A decade after the Nazis’ 1933 book burnings, the U.S. War Department and the publishing industry did the opposite, printing 120 million miniature, lightweight paperbacks for U.S. troops to carry in their pockets across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.  The books were Armed Services Editions, printed by a coalition of publishers with funding from the government and shipped by the Army and Navy.  The largest of them were only three-quarters of an inch thick—thin enough to fit in the pocket of a soldier’s pants.  Soldiers read them on transport ships, in camps and in foxholes.  Wounded and waiting for medics, men turned to them on Omaha Beach, propped against the base of the cliffs.  Others were buried with a book tucked in a pocket.  “When Books Went to War:  The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II” by Molly Guptill Manning tells the story of the Armed Services Editions.  To be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on December 2, 2014, the book reveals how the special editions sparked correspondence between soldiers and authors, lifted “The Great Gatsby” from obscurity, and created a new audience of readers back home.  The program was conceived by a group of publishers, including Doubleday, Random House and W. W. Norton.  In 1942 they formed the Council on Books in Wartime to explore how books could serve the nation during the war.  Ultimately, the program transformed the publishing industry.  “It basically provided the foundation for the mass-market paperback,” said Michael Hackenberg, a bookseller and historian.  It also turned a generation of young men into lifelong readers.”  http://www.bespacific.com/wsj-paperbacks-helped-u-s-win-world-war-ii/

A parade (also called march or marchpast) is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons.  Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind.  In Britain the term parade is usually reserved for either military parades or other occasions where participants march in formation; for celebratory occasions the word procession is more usual.  The longest parade in the world is the Hanover Schützenfest that takes place in Hanover every year during the Schützenfest.  The parade is 12 kilometres long with more than 12,000 participants from all over the world, among them more than 100 bands and around 70 floats and carriages.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade  See also http://www.germany.travel/en/events/events/schuetzenfest-fair-in-hannover-203.html

Boston has hosted its annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the nation’s longest-running public parade, since 1737.  The second oldest annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade is held in New York City, which had its first St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 1762 (fourteen years before the Declaration of Independence.), and Philadelphia, which had its first in 1771.  http://www.ibtimes.com/st-patricks-day-parade-2014-top-10-largest-parades-schedules-route-maps-new-york-boston-chicago-more

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1222   November 25, 2014  On this date in 1874, the United States Greenback Party was established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.  On this date in 1915, Albert Einstein presented the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.