The cooperative pulling paradigm is an experimental design in which two or more animals pull rewards towards themselves via an apparatus that they cannot successfully operate alone.  Researchers (ethologists, comparative psychologists, and evolutionary psychologists) use cooperative pulling experiments to try to understand how cooperation works and how and when it may have evolved.  The type of apparatus used in cooperative pulling experiments can vary.  Researcher Meredith Crawford, who invented the experimental paradigm in 1937, used a mechanism consisting of two ropes attached to a rolling platform that was too heavy to be pulled by a single chimpanzee.  The standard apparatus is one in which a single string or rope is threaded through loops on a movable platform.  If only one participant pulls the string, it comes loose and the platform can no longer be retrieved.  Only by pulling together in coordination can the participants be successful; success by chance is highly unlikely.  Some researchers have designed apparatus that involve handles instead of ropes.  Read much more and see many graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_pulling_paradigm

“Don’t mess with Texas” is a phrase that inspires Texans of all regions and all alma maters and incites mass derision from the rest of the country.  Although this mark of Texas swagger is used to elicit Texas pride in a myriad of situations, it was, and continues to be, a relatively trashy call to arms.  Literally.  The slogan was developed by the Texas Department of Transportation for an anti-littering campaign.  “It’s not just a prideful remark, trying to pick a fight,” says Jeff Austin III, commissioner on the Texas Transportation Commission.  “It’s don’t litter in Texas, don’t mess up Texas.  We want to keep it a beautiful state.  Texas is our home.”  In the late 1980s, the Texas Department of Transportation had a mess on its hands.  It was spending $20 million annually on trash pick-up, and that number was increasing by about 17 percent year over year.  So the department put out a request for a marketing campaign to address the rubbish.  Tim McClure and his colleagues at Austin-based advertising agency GSD&M were just a few weeks away from the deadline, without a clever concept to pitch.   On an early morning walk, McClure noted the trash in his own neighborhood and thought, “This is a mess,”—just  like his mother used to say about his childhood bedroom.  That’s when it hit him that his team was going about this the wrong way.  Texans don’t talk about “litter” in their daily lives but they do say “mess,” and just like that “Don’t mess with Texas” was born.  Within a month of convincing the department to invest in “Don’t mess with Texas,” McClure and his team were stashing bumper stickers spouting the slogan in truck stops and fast food restaurants, places frequented by their target demographic.  But this paraphernalia wasn’t labeled as from the TxDOT and had no clear indication about its true meaning, an intentional ploy by McClure.  The campaign officially launched on New Years Day, 1986, during the television broadcast of the 50th annual Cotton Bowl.  That year’s game, held as always in Dallas, saw Texas A&M trounce Auburn and its Heisman Trophy-winning running back, Bo Jackson.  Viewers saw a commercial starring Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan strumming a guitar in front of a large Texas flag at the Austin City Limits studio.  A narrator’s voice drifts over the music reminding the audience of the expense and illegality of littering.  The spot ends with Vaughan’s unwavering command, “Don’t mess with Texas.”  It wasn’t until 2002 that the Texas Department of Transportation trademarked the phrase to receive royalties from its use.  They’ve engaged in a few lawsuits since, as in 2012 when author Christie Craig titled her racy romance novel Don’t Mess with Texas.  Reasonably, the Texas government wasn’t keen on associating its precious slogan with the story of the late-night shenanigans between a woman suspected of murdering her philandering boyfriend and a private investigator out to prove her innocence.  The state won the case and Craig renamed her book Only in Texas.  Katie Nodjimbadem  Read much more at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/trashy-beginnings-dont-mess-texas-180962490/

10 Surprising Foods You Can Freeze  The list--with instructions--includes bread, butter, milk and eggs.  https://www.stilltasty.com/articles/view/33

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal:  it is the courage to continue that counts.”   “I am fond of pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.”  “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”  “If you cannot read all your books--fondle them--peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are.  Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.”  “Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.”  Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874-1965), politician, army officer, and writer, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. 

CAUSA RELLENA  This versatile Peruvian potato dish makes a great light meal or a fine addition to a buffet spread.  Causa can be layered with any number of fillings—chicken salad and tuna salad are favorites.  Served cold, the dish is often topped with extravagant garnishes and sauces for a colorful presentation.  Causa takes its name from the old Incan Quechua word kausaq, which means "giver of life," another name for the potato.  Rellena is the Spanish word for "stuffed" or "filled."  Find recipe at https://www.whats4eats.com/vegetables/causa-rellena-recipe

Perk means lively, pert, though perky is the form most often used for this definition.  Perk may also be used as an abbreviation of the verb percolate.  When preceding the word up as in perk up, it becomes a verb meaning to become cheerful or energized.  Related terms are perks up, perked up, perking up.  Perk is derived from the Old French word perquer which means to perch.  Perq is an abbreviation of perquisite, which means a benefit, tip or bonus of employment.  Though occasionally found in print and in newspaper stories, perq is not found in most dictionaries.  The accepted spelling for the abbreviation of perquisite is perk, usually rendered as the plural, perks.  http://grammarist.com/usage/perk-vs-perq/

How readable is your writing?  Use our free readability checker and find out.  Just copy and paste your writing into the box and click the ‘check my readability’ button.  We’ll check your writing against the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease score, the Gunning Fog score and the SMOG index (‘Simple Measure of Gobbledygook’).  http://www.thewriter.com/what-we-think/readability-checker/

OLLIE  Co-living provides fully-furnished shared microstudios and shared suites with hotel-style services and community engagement.  Ollie co-founders Andrew and Chris Bledsoe share an unbreakable bond.  Before they were business partners, they were each other’s first roommates, spending their days building Lego masterpieces from the comfort of their Star Wars bed tents.  By high school, Andrew had asserted his independence and commandeered the home office as his own room, while Chris headed off to college.  And, just five years later they were reunited--this time in The Big Apple, where they were briefly roommates once again, though Andrew quickly traded Chris’ couch for a 1-bedroom apartment in the Financial District.  With the help of a pressurized wall system, he reconfigured the unit to accommodate two additional rooms and advertised on Craigslist.  The responses poured in--nearly 90 replies in two days.  http://www.ollie.co/our-story  The name Ollie is a play on “all-inclusive living."  Ollie locations are in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Jersey City and Los Angeles.

As rents continue to soar in America’s most desirable cities, companies like New York-based Ollie are angling to transform the real estate market with an updated version of an old model of co-living spaces.  Once all the rage (from the 1920s through the 1960s), co-living is back again.  A slew of entrants from early-stage startups like Common, HubHaus, Pure House and Roam Co-living to better financed entrants like WeLive (from the multi-billion-dollar shared-office company, WeWork) and PMGx, are building businesses (and apartment buildings) to capitalize on the highly competitive and increasingly expensive problem of living for the city.  Ollie has its own spin on things.  The company has designed its apartments to maximize limited space with high-concept design furniture and offers all of its tenants free Wi-Fi, premium television and fancy soaps in the bathrooms.  Linen and maid service are included as well, making the company’s properties seem more like extended-stay hotels than rentals or shares.  Jonathan Shieber  Read more and see pictures at https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/bringing-luxury-perks-to-co-living-life-ollie-raises-cash-to-expand/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1935  August 15, 2018  Word of the Day  cooling glasses  noun  (India) Sunglasses.  Today is India’s Independence Day.  Wiktionary