The Shavian alphabet is named after George Bernard Shaw and was devised by Kingsley Read.  Shaw saw use of the Latin alphabet for writing English as a great waste of time, energy and paper, so in his will he stipulated that a competition should be held to create a new writing system for English and made provision for a prize of £500.  The competition took place in 1958 and Kingsley Read's system was chosen as the winner out of the 467 entries.  Shaw's will also stipulated that his play Androcles and the Lion should be printed in the winning alphabet.  Few other texts were printed and the alphabet, which became known as Shavian, was never seriously considered as an alternative for writing English.  Notable features:  There are three types of letters--tall, deep and short.  Tall letters are the equivalent of ascenders in the Latin alphabet (e.g. b, d, f, h), deep letters are the equivalent of descenders (e.g. p, g, j, y) and short letters are all the same height, like the letters a, c, e and i.  Consonant letters come in pairs, with the tall one representing an unvoiced consonant and the deep one representing a voiced consonant.  The letters for l, r, m and n are the exceptions to this pattern.  Vowel letters are all, with only one exception, short.  Some come in pairs, others don't.  There are no capital letters, although a 'namer dot' is used to mark proper names.  See Shavian alphabet at https://www.omniglot.com/writing/shavian.htm  See Alice's Adventures in Wonderland printed in the Shavian/Shaw alphabet at https://www.evertype.com/books/alice-en-Shaw.html



 . . . Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  No . . . eight days a week.  The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, a mystery by Alan Bradley published in 2009.  Set in the English countryside in 1950



Bernard Courtois, a French chemist, accidentally discovered iodine in 1811 during the Napoleonic Wars.  Courtois was helping his father manufacture saltpeter—an important component in gunpowder that was in heavy demand at the time.  Initially, he had been using wood ash as the source of potassium nitrate needed to make the saltpeter.  However, due to a wood ash shortage, he began using seaweed instead.  In order to isolate the sodium and potassium extracts from the seaweed, Courtois would burn the seaweed and wash the ash with water.  Then, sulfuric acid was added to eliminate the leftover waste.  After adding a little too much sulfuric acid one time, Courtois noticed a cloud of violet gas.  He then discovered that the vapor would condense into deep violet crystals on cold surfaces.  At the time, Courtois did not realize he had discovered iodine, but he suspected it might be a new element.  He gave some samples to other scientists to continue the research who eventually confirmed that it was indeed a new element.  It was given the name iode (from the Greek ioeidēs, meaning "violet colored") by French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.  Although Courtois wasn't the one to name it, he was still later acknowledged as the first person to isolate iodine.  In 1831 he received the Montyon Prize from the Royal Academy of Sciences for his work, but unfortunately, he never gained any financial benefit from his discovery.  Traci Pedersen  Read more and see graphics at https://www.livescience.com/37441-iodine.html



A caterwaul is a yowl, shriek, or loud cry.  While a caterwaul can be made by a person, it's more likely the wailing sound that a distressed or fighting animal makes.  To make this sound is to caterwaul—it's both a noun and verb.  Cats are, in fact, the animal best known to caterwaul, and the word is believed to come from the German katerwaulen, "cry like a cat," or possibly the Middle Dutch cater, "tomcat," and Middle English waul, "yowl."  https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/caterwaul



It's a bird!  It's a rabbit!   A video of a black animal getting a nice scratch is spreading quickly around the internet as people take sides in yet another great debate.  Daniel Quintana, a scientist at the University of Oslo in Norway, is responsible for all this--he found the video on an image-sharing website on August  18, 2019 and tweeted it, saying, "Rabbits love getting stroked on their nose."  Since then, it's blown up-- all because Quintana played on a famous optical illusion wherein a rabbit looks like a bird, and a bird looks like a rabbit.  His video alone has been viewed millions of times.  But here's the thing:  CNN has in fact verified that not only does the video show a bird, it's specifically an African White-necked Raven named Mischief.  He belongs to the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Missouri, and is 18 years old.  The video Quintana posted was taken, at some point, from Paige Davis, Curator of Bird Training at the sanctuary.  Davis told CNN that Mischief is actually already quite famous, especially for his talking.  "He has gone viral several times with millions of views," she said.  Here's that original clip.  Mischief flies, talks, paints, and much more, she explained, calling him "a very talented bird."  Leah Asmelash and Brian Ries  Link to video at https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/21/us/bird-rabbit-tweet-trnd/index.html



TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART EXHIBITS

Global Conversations:  Contemporary World Art in Dialogue  March 9, 2019-March 8, 2020, Levis Gallery  The exhibit features dozens of contemporary works of art that encompass a broad range of media and geographic regions.  Presented together, these works will offer visitors the chance to explore the many powerful ways that artists are considering the state of the world in the 21st century as they engage with today’s issues of urgency--identity, migration and the digital revolution are amongst the rich topics brought forth for exploration.  

“Everything Is Rhythm”:  Mid-Century Art & Music  April 6, 2019-Nov. 3, 2019, New Media Gallery  The exhibit features a multisensory display focused on an exploration of the relationship between art and music.

Life is a Highway:  Art and American Car Culture  June 15, 2019-Sept. 15, 2019, Canaday Gallery  Featuring more than 100 works from the Toledo Museum of Art’s own collection, as well as both private and public loans, this exhibition will chart the rise of automobility as a visual icon of American identity.

https://www.toledomuseum.org/about/news/current-and-upcoming-2019-exhibitions



August 22, 2019  If you didn’t see this Instagram privacy hoax in your social media feeds, perhaps it came to your attention after U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry published it on his account.  Perry’s post has since been deleted.  The post, which Yahoo reports also duped actors like Julia Roberts and Rob Lowe, says that Instagram has a new rule "where they can use your photos."  "Don’t forget Deadline today!!!" it goes on.  "It can be used in court cases in litigation against you.  Everything you’ve ever posted becomes public from today.  Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed . . . I do not give Instagram or any entities associated with Instagram permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past and future.  With this statement, I give notice to Instagram it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents . . . All members must post a note like this."  This post even wound up on Facebook, where it was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.  Poynter’s teen fact-checking project MediaWise debunked the post on Aug. 21, noting that the claim dates back to 2012 when Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, updated its privacy policy.  In statements to Yahoo and Time, Instagram spokesperson Stephanie Otway said "there’s no truth to this post."  In 2016, Facebook addressed a nearly identical post that used "Facebook" instead of "Instagram."  "You may have seen a post telling you to copy and paste a notice to retain control over things you share on Facebook," a member of the company’s help team wrote.  "Don’t believe it.  You own your content and can control how it is shared through your privacy settings."  Ciara O'Rourke  https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/aug/22/viral-image/dont-fall-instagram-hoax/



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul. - William Ernest Henley, poet, critic, and editor (23 Aug 1849-1903)  Read the poem Invictus with the words "how strait the gate" at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus



WORD OF THE DAY  LIMN  verb  From Middle English limnen, limyne, lymm, lymn, lymne (“to illuminate (a manuscript)”), a variant of luminen (“to illuminate (a manuscript)”), short form of enluminen (“to shed light on, illuminate; to enlighten; to make bright or clear; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript); to depict, describe; to adorn or embellish with figures of speech or poetry; to make famous, glorious, or illustrious”), from Old French enluminer (“to brighten, light up; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript)”), from Latin illūminō (“to brighten, light up; to adorn; to make conspicuous”), from il- (a variant of in- (prefix meaning ‘in, inside’)) + lūminō (“to brighten, illuminate; to reveal”) (from lūmen (“light; (poetic) brightness”) (from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright; to shine; to see”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).  (third-person singular simple present limns, present participle limning, simple past and past participle limned)  (transitive, also figuratively) To draw or paint; to delineate. quotations ▼  Synonym: depict (transitive, obsolete) To illuminate, as a manuscript; to decorate with gold or some other bright colour. quotations ▼ Synonym:  enlimn (to illuminate (a manuscript))

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/limn#English



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2143  August 23, 2019