A half-century ago, a girl and brother ran away to New York City from their suburban Connecticut home.   And the Metropolitan Museum of Art hasn’t been the same since.  If visions of Claudia and Jamie bathing—and collecting lunch money—in the Met’s Fountain of Muses bring up fond childhood memories of your own, you’re among the legions of readers who grew up loving E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  The classic children’s book turns 50 in 2017, and the tale of the Kincaid siblings spending their days wandering about the paintings, sculptures and antiquities, and their nights sleeping in antique beds handcrafted for royalty, is as popular as ever.  The 1968 Newbery Medal winner has never been out of print.  (The same year, her debut novel Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth received the Newbery runner-up honor; Konigsburg is the only author to ever achieve the dual literary feat.)   Elaine Lobl (E.L.) was born in Manhattan in 1930, but grew up in small-town Pennsylvania. She earned a degree in chemistry from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and married industrial psychologist David Konigsburg in 1952.  Elaine became a stay-at-home mother of three, and while living in Port Chester, New York, decided to start writing.  “When we were in grade school, Mom would write in the morning.  When the three of us kids would come home for lunch, she would read what she wrote,” says Paul Konigsburg, 62. “If we laughed she kept it in.  If not, she rewrote it.”  The Konigsburgs never lived in New York City, but the metropolis always provided a cultural respite.  One institution in particular served as both babysitter and source of inspiration.  “Mom took art lessons in [the city] on Saturdays, so she would drop all three of us kids off at the Metropolitan,” says Paul.  “I was the oldest, so I was in charge, and I had three rules:  One, we had to see the mummy.  Two, we had to see the knights in armor.  And three, I didn’t care what we saw."  Konigsburg’s most famous work—she wrote 18 additional kid’s books—had multiple inspirations.  In an “Author’s Message” published in a 2001 “Mixed-Up Files” issue of the Met’s Museum Kids magazine, Konigsburg recalled seeing a single piece of popcorn on a blue silk chair behind a velvet rope at the museum and musing that someone snuck in at night for a fancy snack.  In October 1965, Konigsburg found a more specific inspiration—one that set the mystery at the heart of the book in motion.  At the time, the New York art world was obsessed with the question of whether a sculpture purchased by the Met for $225 was actually a work by Leonardo da Vinci. (It is now believed to be a da Vinci from 1475.) Konigsburg reimagined the statue as “Angel,” the could-be-a-Michelangelo that captures Claudia’s imagination and leads her to the mansion of the titular Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  As in real life, the fictional heiress purchased the statue for a few hundred bucks.  And though Frankweiler—and her exchange of the truth about the statue for an account of the kids’ adventure in the museum—isn’t based on a real person, her desire for mystery and excitement rings true for anyone in search of an adventure of their own.  Patrick Sauer  Read more and see graphics at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fifty-years-ago-two-kids-slept-over-met-museum-and-literary-classic-was-born-180963325/

Leave the Potato Out of the Potato Salad  Find recipe by John Griffin at http://savorsa.com/2017/01/leave-the-potato-out-of-the-potato-salad/  See also http://savorsa.com/2015/09/cauliflower-slaw-is-a-refreshing-texas-treat-without-sugar/ and https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-dallas-morning-news/20160330/283089888287734

Three Sentences that Cost Your Business Time, Money, and Grief, book review by Jennifer Miller  January 30, 2017  “You can’t change horses in mid-stream.”  “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  “This time is different.”  How many times have you heard these (or similar) sayings tossed out at the conference table when you’re making an important business decision?  These sentences are short-hand for cautionary tales when it comes to decision-making.  Rather than hash out the many reasons why we don’t want to change direction, instead, to save time, we trot out an aphorism that quickly sums up the logic of staying the course.  Tried-and-true adages can save us time when making decisions.  But when the sentences are merely clichés uttered without fully considering the ramifications, they can quickly become very expensive sentences.  These sentences, if not carefully examined, have the potential to cost business people a great deal of time, money and grief.  That’s the main premise of a new book by Jack Quarles, called Expensive Sentences: Debunking the Common Myths that Derail Decisions and Sabotage Success.  Quarles, who spent decades in the business world as a procurement professional, used to make his living helping companies save money.  As he worked with his internal partners, Quarles noticed that certain phrases (like “It’s too late to turn back now”) were often accepted at face value.  There wasn’t any investigation into if, in fact, these statements were true.  Often, they ended up being false, but the damage had already been done.  Over the years, Quarles started to notice themes to the many statements people made.  He started to think of these statements as “expensive” sentences that fall into one of three categories:  We are stuck in our current situation (we believe in false constraints).  Someone or something is special (and that uniqueness prevents us from making a different choice).  Something is scarce (there is not enough of something we want or need).  Read more at http://people-equation.com/three-sentences-that-cost-your-business-time-money-and-grief/

What is the difference between stork and crane?  There are 19 species of storks, while cranes include 15 species.  Storks are carnivores, but cranes are more adaptive with omnivorous feeding habits.  Storks build up large platform nests on the trees and rock ledges, but cranes build their nests on shallow waters.  Female stork lays three to six eggs in one breeding season, while female crane lays only two eggs in one season.  Storks prefer more dry areas, whereas cranes like to inhabit wet lands.  Storks are mute, but cranes are highly vocal.  Most of the storks are migratory and travel long distances, while cranes could be either migratory or non-migratory.  http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-stork-and-vs-crane/

April 23, 2017  Linguistic experts believe Icelandic language spoken by 400,000 may be at risk.  The language is being undermined by widespread use of English for tourism.  Experts also say many new computer devices are designed to recognize English but they do not understand Icelandic.  The people of the rugged North Atlantic island settled by Norsemen some 1,100 years ago have a unique dialect of Old Norse that has adapted to life at the edge of the Arctic.  Icelandic ranks among the weakest and least-supported language in terms of digital technology--along with Irish Gaelic, Latvian, Maltese and Lithuanian--according to a report by the Multilingual Europe Technology Alliance assessing 30 European languages.  See pictures including a law book penned on calf skin in 1363 at a museum in Iceland at http://clubdespins.com/experts-say-this-is-the-end-of-the-icelandic-language/

The US Supreme Court ruled on May 22, 2017 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/16-341_8n59.pdf on how to interpret the patent venue laws, and the controversial business of "patent trolling" may never be the same.  In a unanimous decision, the justices held that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles all patent appeals, has been using the wrong standard to decide where a patent lawsuit can be brought.  The 10-page Supreme Court ruling in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods enforces a more strict standard for where cases can be filed.  It overturns a looser rule that the Federal Circuit has used since 1990.  The ruling may well signal the demise of the Eastern District of Texas as a favorite venue for patent lawsuits, especially those brought by "patent trolls," which have no business outside of licensing and litigating patents.  The TC Heartland case will affect the entire tech sector, but the parties here are battling over patents on "liquid water enhancers" used in flavored drink mixes.  TC Heartland, an Indiana-based food company, got sued by Kraft Foods in Delaware, then sought to move the case back to its home turf.  Neither the district court judge nor the Federal Circuit would allow such a transfer.  Congress last re-codified the patent venue law in 1948, and it updated the general venue laws at the same time.  In that year, the general venue law was liberalized to allow a lawsuit to be filed where a defendant corporation "resides or is doing business."  Several years later, the US Supreme Court considered whether a more liberalized venue rule should apply to patent cases.  In a 1956 decision called Transmirra Products v. Fourco Glass, the high court held that, in patent cases, the stricter rule, 28 U.S. Code § 1400, is the "sole and exclusive provision controlling venue" for patent infringement cases.  Such lawsuits can only be filed "where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business."  Joe Mullin  Read more at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/supreme-court-makes-it-much-harder-for-patent-trolls-to-sue-in-east-texas/

A Google artificial intelligence program defeated a Chinese grand master at the ancient board game Go on May 23, 2017, a major feather in the cap for the firm's AI ambitions as it looks to woo Beijing to gain re-entry into the country.  In the first of three planned games in the eastern water town of Wuzhen, the AlphaGo program held off China's world number one Ke Jie in front of Chinese officials and Google parent Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) chief executive Eric Schmidt.  The victory over the world's top player--which many thought would take decades to achieve--underlines the potential of artificial intelligence to take on humans at complex tasks.  Wooing Beijing may be less simple.  The game streamed live on Google-owned YouTube, while executives from the DeepMind unit that developed the program sent out updates live on Twitter (TWTR.N).  Both are blocked by China, as is Google search.  Google pulled its search engine from China seven years ago after it  refused to self-censor internet searches, a requirement of Beijing.  Since then it has been inaccessible behind the country's nationwide firewall.  Cate Cadell  Read more and see picture at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-intelligence-go-idUSKBN18J0PE

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1714  May 26, 2017  On this date in 1805, Napoléon Bonaparte assumed the title of King of Italy and was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan Cathedral, the gothic cathedral in Milan.  On this date in 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed by the U.S. Congress; it was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.