A Ventura County, California water district on July 15, 2015 formally approved a settlement with actor Tom Selleck, whom it had accused of illegally delivering water to his Hidden Valley ranch.  In a closed session, the board of directors of the Calleguas Municipal Water District accepted the settlement offer from Selleck, in which he agreed to pay $21,685.55--the investigative costs incurred by the district--and to immediately stop having water from Calleguas delivered to his ranch.  On July 6, Calleguas filed a complaint against the "Magnum P.I." and "Blue Bloods" actor and his wife, Jillie, accusing them of having water from a fire hydrant in Thousand Oaks delivered to their 60-acre estate in Hidden Valley.  The couple's property is located outside the boundaries of Calleguas' service area, so delivery of potable water to Selleck's home violates district law, the complaint said.  

Matt Hamilton  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-water-district-settlement-selleck-20150715-story.html

Canals and navigations are human-made channels for water.  In the vernacular both are referred to as 'canals'.  The main difference between them is that a navigation parallels a river and shares its drainage basin, while a canal cuts across a drainage divide.  A canal can be created where no stream presently exists.  Either the body of the canal is dug or the sides of the canal are created by making dykes or levees by piling dirt, stone, concrete or other building materials.  The water for the canal must be provided from an external source, like streams or reservoirs.  Where the new waterway must change elevation engineering works like locks, lifts or elevators are constructed to raise and lower vessels.  Examples include canals that connect valleys over a higher body of land, like Canal du Midi, Canal de Briare and the Panama Canal.  A canal can be constructed by dredging a channel in the bottom of an existing lake.  When the channel is complete, the lake is drained and the channel becomes a new canal.  One can also build two parallel dikes in an existing lake, forming the new canal in between, and then drain the remaining parts of the lake.  The eastern and central parts of the North Sea Canal were constructed in this way.  In both cases pumping stations are required to keep the land surrounding the canal dry, either pumping water from the canal into surrounding waters, or pumping it from the land into the canal.  Canalization and navigations A stream can be canalized to make its navigable path more predictable and easier to maneuver.  Canalization modifies the stream to carry traffic more safely by controlling the flow of the stream by dredging, damming and modifying its path.  This frequently includes the incorporation of locks and spillways, that make the river a navigation.  Examples include the Lehigh Canal in Northeastern Pennsylvania's coal Region, Basse Saône, Canal de Mines de Fer de la Moselle, and Aisne River. Riparian zone restoration may be required.  Lateral canals  When a stream is too difficult to modify with canalization, a second stream can be created next to or at least near the existing stream.  This is called a lateral canal, and may meander in a large horseshoe bend or series of curves some distance from the source waters stream bed lengthening the effective length in order to lower the ratio of rise over run (slope or pitch).  The existing stream usually acts as the water source and the landscape around its banks provide a path for the new body.  Examples include the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Canal latéral à la Loire, Garonne Lateral Canal and Juliana Canal.  Smaller transportation canals can carry barges or narrowboats, while ship canals allow seagoing ships to travel to an inland port (Manchester Ship Canal), or from one sea or ocean to another (Caledonian Canal, Panama Canal).  The oldest known canals were irrigation canals, built in Mesopotamia circa 4000 BC, in what is now Iraq and Syria.  The Indus Valley Civilization, Ancient India, (circa 2600 BC) had sophisticated irrigation and storage systems developed, including the reservoirs built at Girnar in 3000 BC.  In Egypt, canals date back at least to the time of Pepi I Meryre (reigned 2332–2283 BC), who ordered a canal built to bypass the cataract on the Nile near Aswan.  In ancient China, large canals for river transport were established as far back as the Warring States (481–221 BC), the longest one of that period being the Hong Gou (Canal of the Wild Geese), which according to the ancient historian Sima Qian connected the old states of Song, Zhang, Chen, Cai, Cao, and Wei.  By far the longest canal was the Grand Canal of China, still the longest canal in the world today, and the oldest extant one.  It is 1,794 kilometres (1,115 mi) long and was built to carry the Emperor Yang Guang between Beijing and Hangzhou.  The project began in 605 and was completed in 609, although much of the work combined older canals, the oldest section of the canal existing since at least 486 BC.  Even in its narrowest urban sections it is rarely less than 30 metres (98 ft) wide.  Greek engineers were the first to use canal locks, by which they regulated the water flow in the Ancient Suez Canal as early as the 3rd century BC.  Read much more, see pictures, and link to the canals of Europe and North America at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal

You can use the word cave to help you remember the difference between convex and concave polygons.  A convex polygon has all its vertices, or corners,  pointing out from the center, but a concave polygon looks like it has been 'caved in.'  Elizabeth Often  

See graphics at http://study.com/academy/lesson/concave-convex-polygons-definition-examples.html

Book World:  5 stories to relish even with your eyes closed by Katherine A. Powers  Read descriptions and find length of audio books--also link to "23 books we've loved so far this year" at http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-world-5-stories-to-relish-even-with-your-eyes-closed/2015/07/02/04cd2822-f8c3-11e4-9030-b4732caefe81_story.html

Ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and less commonly on other grasses such as wheat, has an interesting history.  During the Middle Ages, ergotism, a severe reaction to ergot-contaminated food (such as rye bread), was common and was known as St. Anthony's fire.  This illness was often cured by visiting the shrine of St. Anthony, which happened to be in an ergot-free region of France.  Additionally, some historians believe that ergot played a role in the Salem witch hunt of 1692.  They think that some women in Salem developed peculiar behaviors and accused other women of being witches as a result of eating ergot-contaminated food.  http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-431-ergot.aspx?activeingredientid=431&activeingredientname=ergot

Public libraries are charged with meeting the information needs of every citizen in the community--no matter the age, economic or education level.  In a time of radically changing information resources and technology devices, this is no small task and the need for a public library is more evident than ever before.  Learn about  Credo Online Reference Service, Literati Public and Homework Help at http://corp.credoreference.com/markets/literati-public.html

Literary Twist  The Friends of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library launched its new chapter--Literati--with a book swap, live music, food and drinks.  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.840977075983536.1073741830.719134451501133&type=3

July 9, 2015  After a hospital error, two pairs of Colombian identical twins were raised as two pairs of fraternal twins.  Read an extensive story by Susan Dominus of how they found one another at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/magazine/the-mixed-up-brothers-of-bogota.html

Birth tourism is travel to another country for the purpose of giving birth in that country.  Reasons for the practice include access to the destination country's healthcare system, circumvention of communist China's one-child policy and (in countries that recognize jus soli) birthright citizenship for the child.  The United States and Canada are popular destinations for birth tourism.  Another target of birth tourism is Hong Kong, where the right of abode is awarded at birth instead of citizenship.  To stop birth tourism, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom have a modified jus soli, granting citizenship by birth only when at least one parent is a citizen of the country or a legal permanent resident who has lived in the country for several years.  However, the United States grants unconditional citizenship by birth.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_tourism

A House Judiciary subcommittee took up the question of abolishing birthright citizenship on April 29, 2015 prompted by legislation sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and 22 other lawmakers that would end automatic citizenship.  The 14th Amendment, King told the panel, “did not contemplate that anyone who would sneak into the United States and have a baby would have automatic citizenship conferred on them.”  Added King, “I’d suggest it’s our job here in this Congress to decide who will be citizens, not someone in a foreign country that can sneak into the United States and have a baby and then go home with the birth certificate.”  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/house-republicans-try-to-gut-a-key-constitutional-principle/2015/04/29/a365c4c4-eeb6-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html

Percival Lawrence Lowell (1855–1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars.  He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.  The suggestion of its name was made by eleven-year-old English schoolgirl Venetia Burney.  Lowell's greatest contribution to planetary studies came during the last decade of his life, which he devoted to the search for Planet X, a hypothetical planet beyond Neptune.  Lowell believed that the planets Uranus and Neptune were displaced from their predicted positions by the gravity of the unseen Planet X.  Lowell started a search program in 1906 using a camera 5 inches (13 cm) in aperture.  The small field of view of the 42-inch (110 cm) reflecting telescope rendered the instrument impractical for searching.  From 1914 to 1916, a 9-inch (23 cm) telescope on loan from Sproul Observatory was used to search for Planet X.  Although Lowell did not discover Pluto, Lowell Observatory did photograph Pluto in March and April 1915.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell  

See also http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/15/how-a-precocious-11-year-old-girl-gave-pluto-its-name/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1326  July 17, 2015  On this date in 1717, King George I of Great Britain sailed down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music was premiered.  On this date in 1955, Disneyland was dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.