Quotes from Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931)   Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.  Spoken statement (c. 1903); published in Harper's Monthly (September 1932).  Variants:  None of my inventions came by accident.  I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.  Statement in a press conference (1929), as quoted in Uncommon Friends:  Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James D. Newton, p. 24.  Variant forms without early citation:  "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.  Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."  "Genius:  one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."  Find more quotes at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

electric (adj.)  1640s, first used in English by physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), apparently coined as Modern Latin electricus (literally "resembling amber") by English physicist William Gilbert (1540-1603) in treatise "De Magnete" (1600), from Latin electrum "amber," from Greek elektron "amber".  Originally the word described substances which, like amber, attract other substances when rubbed.  Meaning "charged with electricity" is from 1670s; the physical force so called because it first was generated by rubbing amber.  Electric light is from 1767.  Electric toothbrush first recorded 1936; electric blanket in 1930.  Electric typewriter is from 1958.  Electric guitar is from 1938; electric organ coined as the name of a hypothetical future instrument in 1885.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=electric

torpedo (n.)  1520s, "electric ray" (flat fish that produces an electric charge to stun prey or for defense), from Latin torpedo "electric ray," originally "numbness, sluggishness" (the fish so called from the effect of being jolted by the ray's electric discharges), from torpere "be numb"  The sense of "explosive device used to blow up enemy ships" is first recorded 1776, as a floating mine; the self-propelled version is from c. 1900.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=torpedo

A negawatt is a negative megawatt:  a megawatt of power saved by increasing efficiency or reducing consumption.  Physicist Amory Lovins coined the term and introduced it in a speech in 1989.  Negawatt started life as a typo:  Lovins saw megawatt spelled with an 'n' in a document he was reading and was struck by the potential of that typo as a useful concept.   http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/negawatt

The­ three most basic units in electricity are voltage (V), current (I, uppercase "i") and resistance (r).  Voltage is measured in volts, current is measured in amps and resistance is measured in ohms.  A neat analogy to help understand these terms is a system of plumbing pipes.  The voltage is equivalent to the water pressure, the current is equivalent to the flow rate, and the resistance is like the pipe size.   Electrical power is measured in watts.  In an electrical system power (P) is equal to the voltage multiplied by the current.  The water analogy still applies.  Take a hose and point it at a waterwheel like the ones that were used to turn grinding stones in watermills.  You can increase the power generated by the waterwheel in two ways.  If you increase the pressure of the water coming out of the hose, it hits the waterwheel with a lot more force and the wheel turns faster, generating more power.  If you increase the flow rate, the waterwheel turns faster because of the weight of the extra water hitting it.  http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/question501.htm

Fannie Hurst (1885-1968) was an American novelist.  Hurst was also active in the "single tax" (Georgist) and women's suffrage movements.  Although her novels are not popular today, she had considerable success with Stardust (1919), Lummox (1923), A President is Born (1927), Back Street (1931), and Imitation of Life (1933).  Hurst is now best known for film adaptations of her works, particularly the 1934 film Imitation of Life and its 1959 remake, starring Lana Turner and John Gavin.  The 1946 Joan Crawford film drama, Humoresque, also is based on a story by Hurst.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Hurst

NAME CHANGES  Actress Claudette Colbert (born Emilie Chauchoin 1903)  Singer, songwriter and guitarist Ritchie Valens (born Richard Steven Valenzuela 1941)  Operatic soprano Nellie Melba (born Helen Porter Mitchell 1861)  Actress  Helen Mirren, (born Ilynea Lydia Mironoff  1945)  Actor  Vin Diesel ( born Mark Sinclair 1967)  Actor Martin Sheen  (born Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez 1940)

Airbnb is a website for people to list, find, and rent lodging.  It has over 1,500,000 listings in 34,000 cities and 190 countries.  Founded in August 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company is privately owned and operated by Airbnb, Inc. 

Shortly after moving to San Francisco in October 2007, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia created the initial concept for AirBed & Breakfast during the Industrial Design Conference held by Industrial Designers Society of America.  The original site offered short-term living quarters, breakfast, and a unique business networking opportunity for attendees who were unable to book a hotel in the saturated market.  At the time, roommates Chesky and Gebbia could not afford the rent for their loft in San Francisco.  They made their living room into a bed and breakfast, accommodating three guests on air mattresses and providing homemade breakfast.  In February 2008, technical architect Nathan Blecharczyk joined as the third co-founder of AirBed & Breakfast.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbnb

According to a website comparing Canadian, British and American spelling, advertise uses an s, not a z, in all three countries.  http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/cgi-bin/database.cgi?action=view_category&database=spelling&category=A

THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI  31 U.S. states are part of the Mississippi River basin.  60% of Americans use the basin's water, either directly or by eating food grown in the watershed.  More than 60% of North American migratory birds follow the Mississippi River flyway.  Nature Conservancy  February/March 2016

If the English language was easy to pronounce, the word English would be pronounced ENG-lish instead of ING-lish.

The Death of Justice Scalia:  Procedural Issues Arising on an Eight-Member Supreme Court by Andrew Nolan, Legislative Attorney February 25, 2016  Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov R44400   On February 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly passed away at the age of 79, vacating a seat on the Supreme Court that he had held for nearly 30 years.  While the Supreme Court consists of nine Justices, it does not need nine Justices to decide a case.  Instead, Congress has established quorum requirements for the Court, providing that any six Justices “shall constitute a quorum.”  Read ten-page document at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44400.pdf

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1436  March 4, 2016  On this date in 1909, President William Taft used what became known as a Saxbe fix, a mechanism to avoid the restriction of the U.S. Constitution's Ineligibility Clause, to appoint Philander C. Knox as U.S. Secretary of State.  On this date in 1917, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.