August 28, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and the inspirational "I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Fifty years ago, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington DC for a political rally which became a key moment in the struggle for civil rights in the United States.  Dr. King inspired millions across the world with the delivery of his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Note that there will be two commemorative marches, one on Saturday, August 24 and one on Wednesday, August 28.  Rachel Cooper 

Find a guide to events, exhibits and attractions at: 

http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/50th-Anniversary-Of-The-March-On-Washington.htm

Find interviews with participants and never-before-published pictures from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at: 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/an-oral-history-of-the-march-on-washington/

Official Program for the March on Washington (1963) 

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=96

On August 28, 1963, Mahalia Jackson took to the podium before an audience of 250,000 to give the last musical performance before Dr. King's speech.  Dr. King himself requested that she sing the gospel classic "I've Been 'Buked, and I've Been Scorned."  The story that has been told since that day has Mahalia Jackson intervening at a critical junction when she decided King's speech needed a course-correction.  Recalling a theme she had heard him use in earlier speeches, Jackson said out loud to Martin Luther King, Jr., from behind the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, "Tell them about the dream, Martin."  And at that moment, as can be seen in films of the speech, Dr. King leaves his prepared notes behind to improvise the entire next section of his speech—the historic section that famously begins "And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream...."  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mahalia-jackson-the-queen-of-gospel-puts-her-stamp-on-the-march-on-washington

flagship:  A ship that carries a fleet or squadron commander and bears the commander's flag. 2. The chief one of a related group

flagstone:  A flat slab of stone used as a paving material. 2. An evenly layered sedimentary rock that can be split into paving stones.  www.thefreedictionary.com

2011 Language Mapper   Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007-2011 American Community Survey, Table B16001  “The U.S. Census Bureau released an interactive, online map pinpointing the wide array of languages spoken in homes across the nation, along with a detailed report on rates of English proficiency and the growing number of speakers of other languages.  The 2011 Language Mapper shows where people speaking specific languages other than English live, with dots representing how many people speak each of 15 different languages.  The languages available in the interactive map include Spanish, French, French Creole, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Polish, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Arabic.  After selecting one of these languages from the menu, users will see a national population density map, with each dot representing about 100 people who speak the language at home placed where these speakers are concentrated.  The map also allows users to zoom in to a smaller geographic area, where each dot represents 10 people.  https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/language_map.html

 

YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.  Prior to PayPal, Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.  It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.  On July 23 and November 28, 2007, CNN and YouTube produced televised presidential debates in which Democratic and Republican US presidential hopefuls fielded questions submitted through YouTube.  In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows".  The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney.  In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service, which is currently available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK.  The service offers over 6,000 films.  In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League.  In May 2010, it was reported that YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day, which it described as "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined".  In November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface.  In 2012, YouTube said that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S.  The site has eight hundred million unique users a month.  On December 21, 2012, Gangnam Style became the first, and so far the only, YouTube video to surpass one billion views.  On March 21, 2013, the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube 

U.S. states 31-40, California through South Dakota

31	California  The name California comes from a mythical Spanish island ruled by a queen called Califia that was featured in a Spanish romance ("Las Sergas de Esplandian") written by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo in 1510.  The Spanish explorers originally thought that California was an island.	September 9, 1850
32	Minnesota  Minnesota is from a Dakota Sioux Indian word that means "cloudy water" or "sky water" and refers to local rivers.	May 11, 1858
33	Oregon  The origin of the name Oregon is unknown.  It may have come from the French word Ouragan (which means Hurricane) and was a former name of the Columbia River.	February 14, 1859
34	Kansas  Kansas was named for Konza (also called Kansa or Kaw) Indians who lived in the area.	January 29, 1861
35	West Virginia  West Virginia was named for Queen Elizabeth I of England (she was known as the Virgin Queen). Sir Walter Raleigh may have suggested this name around 1584.	June 20, 1863
36	Nevada  Nevada is from the Spanish word meaning "snowcapped."	October 31, 1864
37	Nebraska  The name Nebraska is from an Oto Indian word that means "flat water" (referring to the Platte River, which means "flat river" in French)	March 1, 1867
38	Colorado  The word Colorado is Spanish for the "color red," and refers to the muddy Colorado River	August 1, 1876
39	North Dakota   Dakota was what the Sioux Indians called themselves.	November 2, 1889
40	South Dakota  Dakota was what the Sioux Indians called themselves.	November 2, 1889

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/statehood.shtml

baby elephant sculptures

Thirty baby elephant sculptures--one decorated like a Ferrari, another covered in hearts--will make you smile, but their mission in coming to Dana Point, Calif. is serious:  to raise awareness about the endangered Asian elephant.  The sculptures -- actual size of a baby, 4 feet high and 6 feet long -- go on display Aug. 24 and 25, 2013 at Doheny State Beach before they scatter to different parts of the seaside town, reminders of animals half a world away that need our help.  The exhibition ends Nov. 17.  The sculptures will be auctioned off at the end of the show, with proceeds going to the Asian Elephant Foundation.  Mary Forgione  See Elephant Parade at:  http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-trb-california-dana-point-elephant-statues-20130809,0,6569544.photogallery

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Ponzi scheme  (PON-zee skeem)  noun  An investment swindle in which high profits are promised from fictitious sources and early investors are paid off with funds raised from later ones.  After Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), a speculator who organized such a scheme during 1919-1920.  He was neither the first nor the last person to float this or a similar scheme, just someone who did it on a massive scale.  Earliest documented use:  1920.
Potemkin village  (po-TEM-kin VIL-ij)  noun
An impressive showy facade designed to mask undesirable facts.   
After Prince Grigory Potemkin, who erected cardboard villages to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Ukraine and Crimea in 1787.  Earliest documented use:  1904.
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From:  Bill Duncan  Subject:  Ponzi scheme  The house that Ponzi built with his ill-gotten gains still stands in Lexington, MA.  I would guess that its current value is around $2 million, maybe more.  It is just a short walk from the Lexington Green where the American Revolution began.
From:  Carlton Johnson  Subject:  Ponzi scheme  Here is a quotation by Charles Ponzi:  "Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price.  Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims!  It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."
From:  Claudine Voelcker  Subject:  Potemkin village  I thought of this term -- as I'm sure many readers did -- some time ago when I read how Northern Ireland masked recession by putting up fake storefronts for G8 visitors.
From:  Erlinda E. Panlilio  Subject:  Potemkin village  In the Philippines, former first lady Imelda Marcos was known for creating Potemkin villages by concealing the dross of the city's slums behind white walls so that visiting VIPs would not see the rot, sludge, and disorder of her "City of Man".
From:  George Grumbach  Subject:  Potemkin Villages  According to Robert Massie's biography of Catherine (Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman), the Potemkin villages were NOT fake, and it slandered Potemkin so allege.  In chapter 67, "Crimean Journey and 'Potemkin Villages'", Massie argues that those who accused Potemkin were not present, whereas three sophisticated foreign visitors, the Austrian emperor, the French ambassador, and the Austrian field marshall, who were there, did not suggest that the villages were fakes.  

What happens when an entire state floods?  A century ago, hurricane force winds, blizzards, and tornadoes preceded the days of the Great Flood of March 1913.  And then, when the rains came - pouring down two to three months worth of rain from March 23rd through March 27th - every river in the State of Ohio overflowed its banks.  In a flood whose impact would be bigger than current landmark weather events such as Katrina and Sandy - the impact on life in Ohio and 14 other states was overwhelming.  The Flood of 1913 also would bring an end to the Ohio & Erie Canal.  Learn more at:  http://www.ohioanderiecanalway.com/Main/Pages/The_Great_Flood_of_1913_106.aspx

Most communities located along rivers in the state experienced flooding, even those that had not had problems in the past.  In Dayton, flood levies broke, leading to water rising up to twenty feet in the downtown.  In addition, fires broke out across the city as gas lines ruptured, and the fire department was unable to access the fires.  John Patterson, the owner of National Cash Register, was a prominent figure during the flood. He organized relief efforts in the community, even going as far as opening his own factories to act as emergency shelters for those who had been driven from their homes.  When the flood was over, Ohioans began to assess the damage.  At least 428 people died during the Flood of 1913, and more than twenty thousand homes were totally destroyed.  Property damage was extensive, as many other homes were seriously damaged.  Factories, railroads, and other structures also faced major losses.  After the flood waters receded, Patterson and other Dayton residents were determined to prevent a future disaster of this magnitude.  They hired hydrological engineer Arthur Morgan to come up with an extensive plan to protect Dayton from floods.  Morgan recommended the construction of a series of earthen dams on the Great Miami River, as well as modifications to the river channel in Dayton.  Governor James M. Cox supported the plan, helping to gain passage of the Vonderheide Act, which is also known as the Ohio Conservancy Law, in 1914.  The law gave the state the authority to establish watershed districts and to raise funds for improvements through taxes.  Although the Vonderheide Act was challenged in both the state and United States supreme courts in Orr v. Allen (1915 and 1919), the law was upheld.   In 1915, the Miami Conservancy District was created in response to the Vonderheide Act.  It became the first major watershed district in the nation.  http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/1913_Ohio_Statewide_Flood?rec=497 

"At least one" is a mathematical term meaning one or more.  It is commonly used in situations where existence can be established but it is not known how to determine the total number of solutions.  One of the three jokes known to Christopher, the protagonist in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, concerns the preciseness with which mathematicians apply the term "at least one."  As told by Christopher (Haddon 2003, p. 143), the joke runs as follows.  "There are three men on a train.  One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician.  And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).  And the economist says, 'Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.'  And the logician says, 'No.  There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.'  And the mathematician says, 'No.  There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.'  And this is funny because economists are not real scientists and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best."  http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AtLeastOne.html 

Mark Haddon (born 1962) is a British novelist and poet, best known for his 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.  He was educated at Uppingham School and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied English.  In 2003, Haddon won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and in 2004, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best First Book for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a book which is written from the perspective of a boy with Aspergers syndrome.  Haddon's knowledge of Aspergers syndrome, a type of autism, comes from his work with autistic people as a young man.  In an interview at Powells.com, Haddon claimed that this was the first book that he wrote intentionally for an adult audience; he was surprised when his publisher suggested marketing it to both adult and child audiences.  His second adult-novel, A Spot of Bother, was published in September 2006.  Mark Haddon is also known for his series of Agent Z books, one of which, Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars, was made into a 1996 Children's BBC sitcom.  He also wrote the screenplay for the BBC television adaptation of Raymond Briggs's story Fungus the Bogeyman, screened on BBC1 in 2004.  He also wrote the 2007 BBC television drama Coming Down the Mountain.  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1050.Mark_Haddon 

A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887, introducing the world to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.  Though Doyle himself was NOT fond of the character, something about the Holmes stories latched onto popular culture with a death grip.  The Universal Sherlock Holmes(1995) by Ronald B. DeWaal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. http://ineffable-hufflepuff.tumblr.com/post/43110663216/the-appeal-of-the-holmes-mythos-and-what-elementary 

The many incarnations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson exist as adaptations of characters in novels, video games, TV, movies, plays, Internet, music and comics.

curious incident of the dog in the night

April 28, 2013  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time dominated the UK's most prestigious theatre awards, equalling the record by picking up seven Oliviers, including best actor for its star, Luke Treadaway.  The 28-year-old, who gives an astonishing performance as 15-year-old maths genius Christopher Boone, beat off heavyweight competition in the shape of Rupert Everett, James McAvoy, Mark Rylance and Rafe Spall to pick up the prize at the Royal Opera House ceremony.  The awards, now in their 37th year, also saw Helen Mirren win her first Olivier, for her performance as the Queen in The Audience.  The musical honours were shared by Top Hat and Sweeney Todd, which won three apiece. 

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/apr/28/curious-incident-olivier-awards 

Elementary, my dear Watson:  The supposed explanation that Sherlock Holmes gave to his assistant, Dr. Watson, when explaining deductions he had made.  In fact the line doesn't appear in the Conan Doyle books, only later in Sherlock Holmes' films.  He does come rather close at a few of points.  Holmes says "Elementary" in 'The Crooked Man', and "It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you" in 'The Cardboard Box'.  He also says "Exactly, my dear Watson, in three different stories.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/elementary-my-dear-watson.html 

Ten Most Famous Quotations from Sherlock Holmes Stories

Quotation	Story	Stock Score
1. "Excellent! I cried. "Elementary," said he.	CROO	100
2. You know my methods, Watson.	CROO	92+
3. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever...	SIGN	92
4. The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present...	COPP	84
4. London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers...	STUD	84
6. To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.	SCAN	82
7. It is the unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars.	SIGN	76
8. The fair sex is your department.	SECO	74
9. ...the curious incident of the dog in the night-time...	SILV	68
10. They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!	HOUN	66

Link to more information on the ten quotes at: 
http://www.bestofsherlock.com/top-10-sherlock-quotes.htm 

The Andy Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh was "yarn-bombed" the weekend of August 10, 2013 by volunteers who had permission to cover the span with knitted blankets in the name of art.  Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, Inc.  http://fiberartspgh.org/guild/  used machine-knitted blankets to cover the bridge's towering superstructure, while individual blankets knitted by more than 1,200 volunteers cover the bridge's walkways.  The group plans to leave the blankets in place for several weeks, then wash them so they can go to homeless shelters, nursing homes and animal shelters. Link to photo slideshows (Knit the Bridge and The Many Bridges of Pittsburgh) at:  http://www.wtae.com/news/local/allegheny/group-wants-to-cover-andy-warhol-bridge-with-knitting/-/10927008/20539456/-/qxyotw/-/index.html 

August 14, 2013  DAKAR, Senegal—Makhtar Fall sat behind his anchorman's desk in a two-button blazer, clutched a stack of cue cards and then cleared his throat to report the evening news.  The nightly news is beginning to rhyme in Senegal, a hip-hop-crazy country where half of the population isn't yet 18.  Mr. Fall and his co-anchor Cheikh Sene, both aging rap stars, have found second careers dropping the week's developments into verse.  "Bienvenue, we've got news for you!" he rapped in French.  A menacing electro-beat blared in the background as Mr. Fall chopped his hands through the air the way rappers do. "We've got some good news, some bad news, but we've got some news for you!"  Messrs. Fall and Sene's show only lasts five minutes.  First, Mr. Fall, 39 years old, rocks a flow in French.  Then Mr. Sene, 40, delivers the same news in Wolof, the Senegalese language.  Topics are wonky:  world affairs, public health, politics, weather.  Sometimes, they drop a few lines in English.  Asked where he learned the language, Mr. Fall said he picked up a bit from listening to Nas, a rapper from Queens, New York—one of his biggest influences.  Drew Hinshaw  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324809004578638360721172962.html?mod=djemITP_h 

August 12, 2013  AS A MASTER of the thought experiment, he had the ability to think both outside the box and inside the paradox.  Erwin Schrödinger, the famed Austrian physicist, shared the Nobel Prize in 1933 for his eponymous equation on quantum wave mechanics.  But because no scientist this side of Pavlov is so closely and popularly associated with a domestic pet, Google celebrates the anniversary of Schrodinger’s birth with a feline Doodle.  Few thought experiments have weaved their way into mainstream culture with quite the feral fascination as “Schrödinger’s cat,” which challenged the conventional “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics by posing the paradox:  Can a cat placed in a steel box (alongside poison and a radioactive source) then be observed to be simultaneously alive and dead — and does the act of observation collapse this “superposition” into one of two states?   Everyone from science-fiction authors to screenwriters, musicians to webcomic creators have toyed — like a feline to a ball of theoretical yarn — with this elegant paradox that won even Einstein’s praise.  While discussing his new best-selling novel (”The Ocean at the End of the Lane”) with Comic Riffs this summer, for instance, Neil Gaiman noted that the book’s kitten can seem to exist within two realms simultaneously; the writer cited the weird and beautiful wonder of Schrödinger’s cat.  (Also, in Gaiman’s “American Gods,” one character memorably says: “If they don’t ever open the box to feed it, it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead.”)  And one of our favorite comic lines comes courtesy of the space strip “Brewster Rockit,” in which “This Rockit Science Moment is brought to you by the makers of Shrödinger’s cat-litter box.  If you don’t observe it, then you don’t have to change it.”  Michael Cavna  See Google Doodle and other images at:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/erwin-schrodinger-googles-cat-doodle-honors-physicist-and-his-legacys-many-lives/2013/08/12/06897984-02fe-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_blog.html

philadelphia please touch museum

The Philadelphia Please Touch Museum originally opened at the Academy of Natural Sciences on October 2, 1976, in a 2,200-square-foot space, and moved to another location on nearby Cherry Street two years later.  In 1983, the museum moved to 21st Street near the Franklin Institute.  On February 14, 2005, the museum received an 80-year lease for Memorial Hall (in Fairmount Park), the last major building left from the 1876 Centennial Exposition.  This came after plans to relocate the museum to a location at Penn's Landing fell through.  One of the features is the The Walking Piano by local kinetic artist Remo Saraceni, made famous in the film Big.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Touch_Museum 

Famous people from Ohio  Neil Alden Armstrong astronaut, George Bellows painter, lithographer, Ambrose Bierce journalist, Erma Bombeck columnist, humorist, Bill Boyd / Hopalong Cassidy actor, William Jennings Bryan U.S. presidential candidate, Milton Caniff cartoonist, Hart Crane poet, George Armstrong Custer army officer, Dorothy Dandridge actress, Doris Day singer, actress, Clarence Seward Darrow lawyer, Ruby Dee actress, Hugh Downs TV broadcaster, Thomas Alva Edison inventor, Clark Gable actor, James Abram Garfield U.S. president, Cass Gilbert architect, Lillian Gish actress, John Herschel Glenn astronaut, senator, Ulysses Simpson Grant U.S. president, Zane Grey author, Warren Gamaliel Harding U.S. president, Rutherford Hayes U.S. president, Benjamin Harrison U.S. president, Robert Henri painter, William Dean Howells author, critic, Charles F. Kettering inventor, Maya Lin artist, sculptor, Dean Martin singer, actor, William McKinley U.S. president, Toni Morrison author, Paul Newman actor, Jack Nicklaus golfer, Annie Oakley markswoman, Tyrone Power actor, Judith Resnik astronaut, Eddie Rickenbacker aviator, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. historian, William Tecumseh Sherman army general, Steven Spielberg director, screenwriter, William H. Taft U.S. president, Tecumseh Shawnee Indian chief, James Thurber author, cartoonist, Orville Wright inventor, Cy Young baseball player  See more names at:  http://forums.footballguys.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=321964

Not on the above list:  Clarinetist Ted Lewis was born in Circleville, Ohio in 1890 and was playing leading bands in Ohio as early as 1910.  http://www.redhotjazz.com/tedlewis.html

Take a 1:25 tour of the Ted Lewis Museum at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QltlgE13E-Y 

A red herring is a detail or remark inserted into a discussion, either intentionally or unintentionally, that sidetracks the discussion.  The red herring is invariably irrelevant and is often emotionally charged.  The participants in the discussion go after the red herring and forget what they were initially talking about; in fact, they may never get back to their original topic."
(Robert J. Gula, Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language. Axios, 2007) http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/redherrterm.htm 

A red letter day (or red-letter day):  In earlier times a church festival or saint's day; more recently, any special day.  This comes from the practise of marking the dates of church festivals on calendars in red.  The first explicit reference to the term in print that we have comes from America.  This is a simple use of the term "Red letter day" in the diary of Sarah Knight - The journals of Madam Knight, and Rev. Mr. Buckingham ... written in 1704 & 1710, which was published in American Speech in 1940.  The practice is much earlier than that though.  William Caxton, referred to it in The boke of Eneydos, translated and printed in 1490:  "We wryte yet in oure kalenders the hyghe festes wyth rede lettres of coloure of purpre."  The term came into wider use in 1549 when the first Book of Common Prayer included a calendar with holy days marked in red ink; for example, Annunciation (Lady Day), 25th March, was designated in the book as a red-letter day. 

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/red-letter-day.html 

Gateway to Paradise on the South Island near Queenstown  Glenorchy is home to some of New Zealand’s finest scenery, paradise itself and the famous Routeburn Track; one of the top 10 classic hikes in the world.  Enjoy some of the best fly fishing in New Zealand, jetboat the Dart River and walk, mountain bike, fish and kayak in this outstanding natural environment.  See pictures and link to more information at:   http://www.glenorchy-nz.com/ 

The long-dead Jorge Luis Borges is a minor Internet star.  The Argentine short story writer, who died in 1986, left behind an unlikely legacy on YouTube and other sites: audio recordings and videos of his lectures, many recorded in Buenos Aires during a famous series of talks in 1977.  “People imagine the blind imprisoned in a world of black,” he says in his lecture on blindness  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vaom4uQ14w0   This, Borges says, is a common misconception.  He quotes a line from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:  "Looking on the darkness which the blind do see.”  The Bard is wrong, Borges says, “if we understand darkness as blackness.”  He says, “For me, a person who was used to sleeping in darkness, one of the things that bothered me most was sleeping in that world of fog, of greenish and bluish fog … which is the world of the blind.” 

The New York Review of Books has a wonderful excerpt  http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/jul/28/lecture-johnson-and-boswell/   this week from "Professor Borges," a talk entitled “A lecture on Johnson and Boswell.”  The lecture tells the story of the lexicographer Samuel Johnson (author of one the first great English dictionaries) and James Boswell, his biographer.  “Boswell gives himself the role of the ridiculous one, and he maintains it throughout the entire book,” Borges says.  “Yet, we feel a sincere friendship between the two... It is natural, as I have said, that this would be so; for Johnson was a famous man and alone, and of course he liked to feel by his side the friendship of a much younger man, who so obviously admired him.”  The second book published by New Directions is “Borges at Eighty: Conversations,” a collection of interviews from his 1980 trip to the United States.  “The man we see in these eleven interviews is a person made of books, a librarian who often remarked that his idea of paradise was an endless library — a sort of eternal busman’s holiday,” Mark O’Connell writes in The New Yorker  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/two-new-books-about-borges.html    “He speaks of himself as a reader first and a writer only secondarily.”   Hector Tobar  http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-jorge-luis-borges-blindess-and-books-20130731,0,3033494.story 

Why do you have to rain on my tirade?  Hi and Lois comic strip  August 10, 2013 

A meteor shower is a spike in the number of meteors or "shooting stars" that streak through the night sky.  Most meteor showers are spawned by comets.  As a comet orbits the Sun it sheds an icy, dusty debris stream along its orbit.  If Earth travels through this stream, we will see a meteor shower.  Although the meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, if you trace their paths, the meteors in each shower appear to "rain" into the sky from the same region.  Meteor showers are named for the constellation that coincides with this region in the sky, a spot known as the radiant.  The Perseid meteor shower, August 11 and 12 this year,  is so named because meteors appear to fall from a point in the constellation Perseus.  "Shooting stars" and "falling stars" are both names that describe meteors -- streaks of light across the night sky caused by small bits of interplanetary rock and debris called meteoroids vaporizing high in Earth's upper atmosphere.  Traveling at tens of thousands of miles an hour, meteoroids quickly ignite from the searing friction with the atmosphere, 30 to 80 miles above the ground.  Almost all are destroyed in this process; the rare few that survive and hit the ground are known as meteorites.  When a meteor appears, it seems to "shoot" quickly across the sky, and its small size and intense brightness might make you think it is a star.  See list of 2013 meteor showers at:  http://stardate.org/nightsky/meteors