July 16, 2016  Make way for ducklings--they're smarter than you think by Sarah Kaplan   You better watch who you're calling "bird brain."  A new study in the journal Science suggests that some birds are smarter than we realized.  The study, which was conducted by zoologists Antone Martinho III and Alex Kacelnik at Oxford University, found that newborn ducklings are capable of comprehending complex concepts such as "same" and "different"--abstractions that we typically think are beyond the capacity of most animals.  "The claim that abstract relational thinking is a unique ability of human beings can no longer be supported," University of Iowa experimental psychologist Edward Wasserman wrote in an accompanying analysis.  "Although animals may not be able to speak, studying their behavior may be a suitable substitute for assaying their thoughts, and this in turn may allow us to jettison the stale canard that thought without language is impossible."  To interpret ducklings' thoughts, Martinho and Kacelnik tossed them into an experiment the day they were born.  The experiment relied on the animals' ability to imprint--to identify such significant figures as their mothers, very soon after birth.  Once a duckling imprints, it sticks with that "mother" steadfastly, trailing her as the ones in "Make Way for Ducklings" do.  This is true even when that object is not actually a duck.  In Martinho and Kalcelnik's study, the ducklings were introduced 24 hours after hatching to a pair of small, brightly colored shapes that circled above their pens like objects on a mobile.  Some pairs had identical shapes--two spheres, for example--while others had mismatched ones.  This was the "priming period" for what the researchers termed a "same-different" test.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article90047842.html

Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.  The base is the word (or part of the word) that is to be copied.  The reduplicated element is called the reduplicant, often abbreviated as RED or sometimes just R.  In reduplication, the reduplicant is most often repeated only once.  However, in some languages, reduplication can occur more than once, resulting in a tripled form, and not a duple as in most reduplication.  Triplication is the term for this phenomenon of copying two times.  Pingelapese has both reduplication and triplication:  kɔul  'to sing', kɔukɔul  'singing' kɔukɔukɔul  'still singing'; mejr  'to sleep', mejmejr  'sleeping', mejmejmejr  'still sleeping'.   Rhyming reduplication:  hokey-pokey, razzle-dazzle, super-duper, boogie-woogie, teenie-weenie, walkie-talkie, hoity-toity, wingding, ragtag, easy-peasy.  Exact reduplications: bye-bye, choo-choo, night-night, no-no, pee-pee, poo-poo.  Couscous is not an English example for reduplication, since it is taken from a French word which has a Maghrebi origin.  Ablaut reduplications: bric-a-brac, chit-chat, criss-cross, ding-dong, jibber-jabber, kitty-cat, knick-knack, pitter-patter, splish-splash, zig-zag, flimflam.  Shm-reduplication can be used with most any word: baby-shmaby, cancer-schmancer and fancy-schmancy.  Read much more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduplication

The East Coast Greenway is a developing trail system, linking many of the major cities of the Eastern Seaboard between Canada and Key West.  Over 30 percent of the route is already on traffic-free greenways, creating safe, accessible routes for people of all ages and abilities.  http://www.greenway.org/  

What is the difference between velvet, velveteen and velour?  Velvet:  woven, cut, crushed; made from linen, mohair, silk, and wool, and sometimes cotton; luxurious  Velveteen:  woven, closely set short pile, never more than 3 mm deep; made generally from cotton, or cotton and silk; greater body, drapes less well than velvet, less sheen  Velour:  knit; made from cotton or synthetics; drapes similar to velvet  Roderick Chow  https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-velvet-velour-and-velveteen-from-a-structural-standpoint  See fabric glossary at https://www.fabric.com/SitePages/Glossary.aspx

What is the difference between foolish and foolhardy?  Foolish is a synonym of foolhardy.  As adjectives, the difference between foolish and foolhardy  is that foolish is lacking good sense or judgement; unwise while foolhardy is marked by unthinking recklessness with disregard for danger; bold but rash; hotheaded.  http://wikidiff.com/foolhardy/foolish

William Lashner is the New York Times bestselling creator of Victor Carl, who has been called by Booklist one of the mystery novel’s “most compelling, most morally ambiguous characters.”  The Victor Carl novels, which have been translated into more than a dozen foreign languages and have been sold all across the globe.  Writing under the pseudonym of Tyler Knox, Lashner is also the author of KOCKROACH, described as “roaringly entertaining” by Publishers Weekly and “an energetic tour de force” by USA Today.  As Tyler Knox, he has written a number of book reviews for the Washington Post Book World.  Lashner was a criminal prosecutor with the Department of Justice in Washington D.C. before quitting the law to write full time.  A graduate of the New York University School of Law, as well as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he lives with his wife and three children outside Philadelphia.  Find listing of Lashner's books at http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/william-lashner

granny trolley = shopping trolley  jelly baby = soft sugar jelly shaped as a plump baby  (words seen in Bad Intentions, an Inspector Sejer Mystery by Karin Fossum)

Karin Fossum (born 1954) is a Norwegian author of crime fiction, often referred to as the "Norwegian queen of crime".  Find bibliography and list of awards at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karin_Fossum

How to sauté  and what is the difference between sautéing and stir-frying  http://www.wikihow.com/Saut%C3%A9

The Fringes of the Fleet is a booklet written in 1916 by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).  The booklet contains essays and poems about nautical subjects in World War I.  It is also the title of a song-cycle written in 1917 with music by the English composer Edward Elgar and lyrics from poems in Kipling's booklet.  In 1916 Kipling was commissioned by The Daily Telegraph to write a series of six articles on his view of life in less well-known aspects of the defence of the nation on its seas.  These were given the general title "The Fringes of the Fleet", and had three sub-titles "The Auxiliaries", "Submarines" and "Patrols", and published between 20 November and 2 December.  Each was prefaced by a short poem which did not have a title itself.  Immediately afterwards the poems and essays were re-published in a booklet called "The Fringes of the Fleet".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fringes_of_the_Fleet

July 18, 2016  New Yorkers are brash champions of their bagels.   Montrealers politely insist theirs are best.  But there may be a bagel that is better than both in a place that isn’t used to bragging about itself:  Cleveland.  The bagel comes from the kitchen of the Cleveland Bagel Co., which is barely a kitchen at all.  It is the backroom of a local pasta shop.  That is where 300 dozen bagels are rolled every week by a former warehouse employee and a software executive without any hint of experience.  Cleveland Bagel’s bagel is boiled in water and malt syrup, which gives it a crunchy skin, and then it is baked in a convection oven.  The result is a doughy chew that leaves your jaw sore until lunch.  “It’s an old-world-style bagel,” said Geoff Hardman, one of the Cleveland Bagel owners.  “It’s a Cleveland-style bagel,” said Dan Herbst, his partner.  “You won’t find a bagel like ours anywhere else.”  The original idea behind their company was to make Cleveland the best in the world at something.  But there has been an unexpected development since they launched their attack on the bagel establishment:  Their typically fatalistic city has begun feeling itself like never before. Cleveland hosts the Republican National Convention this week and is still celebrating the Cavaliers’ win of their first NBA championship last month.  Ben Cohen  http://www.wsj.com/articles/cleveland-invents-a-new-bagel-hits-new-york-with-schmear-campaign-1468861268

Donald Trump's wife Melania addressed the Republican National Convention to rousing applause on July 18, 2016.  The Slovenian-born former model painted the billionaire businessman as a talented, compassionate and unrelenting leader who would unify rather than divide the country if elected as president.  Social media commenters were quick to note the striking similarities between her words and those of Michelle Obama's from the 2008 Democratic National Convention.  The two speeches, ironically on the importance of hard work, use the same phrasing "work hard for what you want in life," "your word is your bond" and "we want our children in this nation. . . to know the limits of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."  Natalie Evans  See excerpts from the 2008 and 2016 speeches at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/melania-trump-plagiarise-michelle-obamas-8446088

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1499  July 19, 2016  On this date in 1759, Marianna Auenbrugger, Austrian pianist and composer, was born.  On this date in 1848, a two-day Women's Rights Convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York.