The Cuban Literacy Campaign (Spanish:  Campaña Nacional de Alfabetización en Cuba) was a year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the Cuban Revolution.  It began on January 1 and ended on December 22, 1961, becoming the world's most ambitious and organized literacy campaign.  Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60-76%, largely because of lack of educational access in rural areas and a lack of instructors.  As a result, the Cuban government of Fidel Castro at Che Guevara's behest dubbed 1961 the "year of education", and sent "literacy brigades" out into the countryside to construct schools, train new educators, and teach the predominantly illiterate Guajiros (peasants) to read and write.  The campaign was "a remarkable success", and by the completion of the campaign, 707,212 adults were taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96%.  In 2011, producer and director Catherine Murphy released the 33-minute documentary MAESTRA about the Cuban Literacy Campaign.  The film includes interviews with volunteers who taught during the campaign and archival footage from 1961.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Literacy_Campaign

In the century since the Nobel Foundation was established, many have speculated on the reasons why Alfred Nobel did not provide for a prize to be awarded for achievement in the field of mathematics.  Surely an eminent man of science such as Alfred Nobel could not simply have forgotten about mathematics, so he must have had a good reason for omitting it.  With no obvious reason at hand, people invented one, and as usual the invented tale had a bit of salaciousness to it:  Alfred Nobel deliberately avoided establishing a prize for mathematics out of vindictiveness because a prominent Swedish mathematician was carrying on an affair with his wife.  The "wife" theory is easily discounted, since Nobel was never married.  Some variations of the legend claim it was Nobel's fiancée or mistress who was carrying on the affair, with her partner in infidelity identified as the eminent Swedish mathematician Gosta Mittag-Leffler.  Nobel reportedly did have a mistress, a Viennese woman named Sophie Hess, but there is no evidence she ever had anything to do with Mittag-Leffler.  Another version of the legend maintains that Nobel bore animosity towards Mittag-Leffler for some other reason, and he therefore avoided establishing a mathematics prize because Mittag-Leffler would almost certainly have been one of its first recipients.  However, this version also has little factual evidence to support it.   http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.asp

March 17, 2016  It was a problem that had baffled mathematicians for centuries--until British professor Andrew Wiles set his mind to it.  "There are no whole number solutions to the equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ when n is greater than 2."  Otherwise known as "Fermat's Last Theorem," this equation was first posed by French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637, and had stumped the world's brightest minds for more than 300 years.  In the 1990s, Oxford professor Andrew Wiles finally solved the problem, and this week was awarded the hugely prestigious 2016 Abel Prize--including a $700,000 windfall.  The prize, often described as the Nobel of mathematics, was awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, with an official ceremony featuring Crown Prince Haakon of Norway to take place in May.  Sheena McKenzie  http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/16/europe/fermats-last-theorem-solved-math-abel-prize/index.html

Best fiction cat books  http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4935.Best_Fiction_Cat_Books

List of fictional cats in literature  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_cats_in_literature  Nora Cat, the Composer  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK2t-kvBcow  1:28  Ketzel Cat. the Composer  http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/a-musically-inclined-feline-mews-her-last/ 

Michelle Obama recently ordered a song, “This Is For My Girls,” from songwriter Diane Warren, who has written the Oscar-nominated Lady Gaga song “Til It Happens To You” and the Celine Dion song “Because You Loved Me.”  “Girls,” which is now available for download, features turns by singers including Kelly Clarkson, Missy Elliott, Janelle Monae, Zendaya, and many more.  The proceeds from the song will help with the Peace Corps Let Girls Learn Fund.  The Peace Corps Let Girls Learn Program was created in 2015 by the Peace Corps and Mrs. Obama and works to help young women seek secondary education.  http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2016/0316/Michelle-Obama-creates-song-to-aid-young-women-s-education-video

In French, the word gratin originally referred to the tasty crust left behind in a pan after baking, which was scraped off and eaten as a bonus for the chef.  Now, cooking something au gratin can mean preparing a dish that is cooked from scratch in the oven, like a gratin dauphino is made with potatoes and cream; or combining several cooked ingredients in casserole form, like a baked pasta dish.  A gratin is usually topped with grated sharp cheese and/or breadcrumbs.  Adding just cream will also produce a lightly browned crust if baked in high heat.  Technically, macaroni and cheese is a gratin, in that a protective crust forms while it bakes, giving it a lightly browned and crunchy topcoat, while keeping the rest of the dish moist.  Gratins are served straight from the dish; hence the term gratin dish, which refers to an (often oval-shaped) oven-safe serving pan.  That old-fashioned favorite, onion soup gratinée, is made by pouring soup into oven-safe tureens, topping them with toasted bread and grated cheese, and baking au gratin until gooey.  In French, le gratin is also an idiomatic expression meaning "the upper crust" of society.   http://www.cookthink.com/reference/926/What_is_a_gratin  See also http://www.theramblingepicure.com/what-to-eat-in-france-gratin-dauphinois/

Nominations to the Supreme Court During Presidential Election Years (1900-Present)  March 16, 2016 (IN10455) by Barry J. McMillion, Analyst in American National Government (bmcmillion@crs.loc.gov, 7-6025)  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IN10455.pdf

Peeps 2016: The 10th Anniversary Edition  https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/peeps/

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.  I wonder where the birdies is.

All the birds are on the wing.  That’s absurd.  All the wings are on the birds.

The producers of the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” have issued a statement that confirms BC News & Public Affairs Director Jack Dunn’s contention that the dialogue attributed to him in the movie was fabricated and misrepresents what he did and said while serving as a trustee at his alma mater, Boston College High School.  Issued nationally on March 15, 2016, the statement reads:  “As is the case with most movies based on historical events, ‘Spotlight’ contains fictionalized dialogue that was attributed to Mr. Dunn for dramatic effect.  We acknowledge that Mr. Dunn was not part of the Archdiocesan cover-up.  It is clear from his efforts on behalf of the victims at BC High that he and the filmmakers share a deep, mutual concern for victims of abuse.”  As part of the settlement, Open Road Studios agreed to make donations in Dunn’s name to local charities, including the Big Brother Association of Boston, in memory of his “Little Brother” John Esposito who was killed in 1990, and to a non-profit organization Dunn selected called Resilient Kids, made in honor of one of Dunn’s BC High classmates who was victimized by Rev. James Talbot, S.J., while a student at BC High. 

http://www.bc.edu/bc-web/bcnews/campus-community/announcements/spotlight-statement-vindicates-jack-dunn.html  See also http://www.themediareport.com/2015/11/30/how-spotlight-got-it-wrong/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1444  March 21, 2016  On this date in 1685, Johann Sebastian Bach was born.   Germany adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1700 with the stipulation that all dates prior to December 31, 1699 remained valid, so JSB's birthday should still be celebrated on March 21.  On this date in 1925, Tennessee governor Austin Peay signed the Butler Act prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man's origin.  The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account.  The law was challenged later that year in a famous trial in Dayton, Tennessee called the Scopes trial.  The law remained on the books until 1967, when teacher Gary L. Scott of Jacksboro, Tennessee, dismissed for violation of the act, sued for reinstatement, citing his First Amendment right to free speech.  Although his termination was rescinded, Scott continued his fight with a class action lawsuit in the Nashville Federal District Court, seeking a permanent injunction against enforcement of that law.  Within three days of his filing suit, a bill for repeal of the Butler Act had passed both houses of the Tennessee legislature, and was signed into law May 18 by Governor Buford Ellington.  

A.Word.A.Day with  Anu Garg  If you’ve ever felt exhausted after traveling, know that it’s in the word itself.  The word ‘travel’ is ultimately the same word as ‘travail’.  Imagine the era when travel time was measured in months; there were no in-boat movies during the trip, and no Holiday Inns waiting at the destination.  That’s if you reach the destination at all.  Travel could be torture (travel/travail are from Latin trepaliare: to torture).  Yet travel can be rewarding.  It enriches us, broadening our outlook.  Words also travel, hopping across continents, across languages, enriching our vocabulary.

popinjay   (POP-in-jay)  noun  Someone who indulges in vain and empty chatter.  Via French and Spanish from Arabic babbaga (parrot).  The last syllable changed to jay because some thought the word referred to that bird instead of a parrot.  Earliest documented use:  1322.

brio  (BREE-oh)  noun  Vigor or vivacity.  From Italian brio (liveliness), from Spanish brio (spirit), from Celtic brigos (strength).  Earliest documented use:  1731.

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From:  Chris Papa   Subject:  Popinjay  W.S. Gilbert famously used this word in The Yeomen of the Guard, when main character, the lovelorn jester, Jack Point, introduces himself in Act 1 and sings a tale of how a common lady, in reality the young lady who performs with him (Elsie), may be attracted to a man of higher station, but who will ultimately be rejected.  Of course, as the opera unfolds, just the opposite happens and, in the end, Elsie will marry royalty and it is the jester who collapses in loneliness as the curtain falls.  Point:  It’s a song of a popinjay, bravely born,  Who turned up his noble nose with scorn   Elsie:  From the peacock popinjay, bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn

From:  Marley Stec  Subject:  brio  Being an equine owner, personal assistant, to three Colombian Paso Fino competition horses, we say our horses have brio.  This can be mistaken for “nervous” unless one is capable of understanding the marvelous willingness to respond and asks appropriately for what one wants.  For there is nothing that horses hate more than a rider that confuses them or doesn’t feel their quick response.  For us it means yes, spirit, but also movement and energy. They are eager and quick to respond to our direction or request, for they wish to please.  It makes the Paso Fino, with its four-beat lateral gait a mighty fine, brilliant and most congenial partner.

The A to Z Guide to Cheese Plus Pungent Pairings by Tia Keenan  Domestic cheeses now claim a place next to European stalwarts like Parmigiano Reggiano and Roquefort.  We’re witnessing the coming-of-age of a culture of cheese making—a willingness to explore who we are and what we know (and don’t)—as well as cheese eating.  See pictures and descriptions of  26 cheeses and learn how to build a cheese board at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-a-to-z-guide-to-cheeseplus-pungent-pairings-1457536832?mod=e2tw Tia Keenan is a fromager, writer and cook.  Her book “The Art of the Cheese Plate” will be published in the fall of 2016 by Rizzoli.

"Everything surprises us, if we lack knowledge of it."  "How much more sonorous was the voice of gold than those of virtue and reason!"  The Mosaic Crimes, Dante Alighieri Mystery #2 by Giulio Leoni

Giulio Leoni (born 1951) is a professor of Italian literature and history.  He lives in Rome with his family.  Also known as J.P. Rylan, author of the fantasy series of Anharra.  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/147152.Giulio_Leoni

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials.  The earliest known examples of mosaics made of different materials were found at a temple building in Ubaid, Mesopotamia, and are dated to the second half of 3nd millennium BCE.  They consist of pieces of colored stones, shells and ivory. Excavations at Susa and Choqa Zanbil show evidence of the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BCE.  Mosaics of the 4th century BCE are found in the Macedonian palace-city of Aegae and they enriched the floors of Hellenistic villas, and Roman dwellings from Britain to Dura-Europos.  Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across north Africa, in places such as Carthage, and can still be seen in the extensive collection in Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia.  The most famous mosaics of the Roman world were created in Africa and in Syria, the two richest provinces of the Roman Empire.  Many Roman mosaics are found in Tunisian museums, most of which date from the second to the seventh century CE.  http://www.ancient.eu/Mosaic/

The Congressional Directory is the official directory of the U.S. Congress, prepared by the Joint Committee on Printing, and includes:

short biographies of each member of the Senate and House, listed by state or district, committee memberships, terms of service, administrative assistants and/or secretaries, and room and telephone numbers for Members of Congress, and lists of officials of the courts, military establishments, and other federal departments and agencies, including D.C. government officials, governors of states and territories, foreign diplomats, and members of the press, radio, and television galleries.  Link to the 2015-2016 Official Congressional Directory,  114th Congress at  https://www.govinfo.gov/features/featured-content/CDIR-114

Adversity makes strange bedfellows  The underlying idea of this saying is that an adverse situation brings together those whose interests wouldn't normally be aligned.  For example, the main Allied powers during World War II were Britain, Russia, and the United States.  However, even though those nations were allied in their efforts to defeat their common enemy, the fact that they had so few things in common politically eventually led to the Cold War.  The first use of the saying was somewhat more literal when it appeared in Act II Scene II of The Tempest (Shakespeare 1611):  Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabouts:  misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.  In this scene Trinculo is talking about physically sharing a bed with someone else in order to find shelter from a severe storm, but by the time Charles Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers in 1837, the meaning was obviously more figurative:  Illustrative ... of the old proverb, that adversity brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows. The saying also has a couple of variants, such as 'politics makes strange bedfellows', first used in P. Hone's Diary entry from 9 July 1839.  In 1982, The Times used the headline 'Poverty makes strange bedfellows', showing that the saying has come to be modified in various ways.  http://fandom-grammar.livejournal.com/138973.html

Only once in American history has a major political party granted its prize to someone whose principal qualification was to have served as a corporate chief executive.  That was in 1940, when Wendell Willkie was the Republican candidate against President Franklin Roosevelt, who was seeking a third term.  “I’m in business and proud of it,” the 48-year-old Willkie told a Nebraska crowd that spring. “Nobody can make me soft-pedal any fact in my business career.  After all, business is our way of life, our achievement, our glory.”  Soon Willkie was leading in national polls.  Arriving in the convention city of Philadelphia, he boasted that he had been personally covering his travel and telephone expenses and said that if nominated, “I will be under obligation to nobody except the people.”  He won the nomination on the sixth ballot, vaulting over Taft and Dewey.  Willkie, who resided in an apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York, sought to make himself more voter-friendly by returning to his birthplace, Elwood, Indiana, for his formal acceptance speech.  He also patched things up—at least for the campaign’s duration—with his wife, Edith, from whom he had grown distant.  Of her smiling public appearances with her newly nominated husband, Mrs. Willkie reputedly noted in private that “politics makes strange bedfellows.”  Michael Beschloss  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/upshot/before-trump-or-fiorina-there-was-wendell-willkie.html

What do you do--you've just finished the last forkful of your favorite spaghetti alle cozze (spaghetti with mussels) and now you're dying to relish that last little bit of sauce still left on your plate?  You've exhausted all efforts to scoop it up with your cutlery, and you've completely ruled out the possibility of sneaking the plate up to your mouth for a quick swipe, unnoticed.  So now what?  You assure yourself, it's not just gluttony--it's truly a pity to waste such a ben di Dio (loose translation: gift of God).  You look at that plate--still warm and irresistible--and you know that your relationship with it is not over!   Some well-meaning waiter might look at that plate and think the time has come for you to move on, but he doesn't see it the way you do.  If you're Italian--the answer is obvious:  bread!  Bread is the solution and there is a method.  There's even a word for it:  scarpetta.  Scarpetta means "little shoe" in Italian.  Fare la scarpetta means when you find yourself in the situation described above, you simply take a piece of bread from the basket--which part of the bread you choose is important and strategic--and propel it into the sauce.  At this very moment, that piece of bread transforms into a tiny shoe--and the sauce is the soft ground in which your little shoe is sinking. 

http://www.delallo.com/articles/scarpetta-si-scarpetta-no

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1443  March 18, 2016  On this date in 1990, in the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.  On this date in 2010, BearManor Media released a restored edition of Frankenstein, a 1910 film made by Edison Studios.  This 16-minute short film with an unbilled cast was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  Quote of the Day  Shelved rows of books warm and brighten the starkest room, and scattered single volumes reveal mental processes in progress--books in the act of consumption, abandoned but readily resumable, tomorrow or next year. - John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009)   

A Russian scientist has created what he claims is the world’s smallest book, and is preparing to submit it to Guinness World Records for verification.  Microminiaturist Vladimir Aniskin, who works at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Science, spent five years developing the technology to create the book, which measures 70 by 90 micrometres, or 0.07mm by 0.09mm.  It then took him a month to create, by hand, two versions.  The first, Levsha, is named after Nikolai Leskov’s 19th-century story The Steel Flea, in which a craftsman from Tula beats the English by managing to nail flea shoes on the clockwork flea they have created.  Aniskin’s Levsha contains the names of other microminiaturists who can also, in his words “shoe the flea”.  His second book, Alphabet, contains the Russian alphabet.  The text is printed using the lithographic process onto sheets of film just three or four microns thick.  Aniskin said that the most difficult part of the process was binding the pages together so they can be turned.  He used tungsten wires with a diameter of five microns as the “springs” for the pages, placing the finished books into half a poppyseed, displayed on gold plates.  The pages, which have text on both sides, can be turned using a sharpened metal needle.  Alison Flood  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/02/miniature-milestone-as-russian-claims-new-record-for-worlds-tiniest-book-vladimir-aniskin

King Midas is remembered for having acted as judge on the occasion of the musical contest between Apollo, playing the lyre, and Marsyas, playing the flute.  Some say that Tmolus, father of Omphale (the mistress of Heracles ₁), gave the victory to Apollo, but that Midas held the opinion that it should rather have been given to Marsyas.  It was then that Apollo addressed Midas and informed him:  "You will have ears to match the mind you have in judging" (Apollo to Midas. Hyginus, Fabulae 191)  And as soon as the god have uttered those words, the ears of an ass appeared to adorn the head of the king of Phrygia.  Others assert, however, that this contest was between Apollo's lyre and Pan's reeds, and that it was the mountain god Tmolus who decided in favor of Apollo.  All approved Tmolus' judgement, but Midas called it unjust, and then Apollo punished him in that he would wear the ears of an ass.  Midas, who after suffering such a disgrace was quite concerned about concealing his condition, started to wear a purple turban to cover his new ears.  But the slave who trimmed his hair discovered his master's new anatomy; and since he was eager to tell it out, but all the same he did not dare to reveal the embarrassing secret, he dug a hole in the ground and into it he whispered about his master's ears.   Then he filled up the hole again, covering the evidence of his voice.  But whispering reeds grew up in the spot, and when they came to their full size, they betrayed to the wind the truth about Midas' ears, making it known to the whole world.  Yet Conon gives what he deemed to be a more sober explanation on the issue of the ears.  For he says that the rumour came about because Midas held his rule by having many people reporting to him, which kept his kingdom undisturbed by conspiracies, allowing him to reach old age.  And he adds that the "long ears" that denoted the many spies were gradually changed by rumour into "the ears of an ass."  Read about the golden touch at http://www.maicar.com/GML/Midas.html

Ballotpedia is sponsored by the Lucy Burns Institute, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.  The mission of the Lucy Burns Institute is to empower its audience to engage in democracy by delivering exceptionally high quality information.  The Lucy Burns Institute is funded entirely by private contributions, and does not receive government funding.  Ballotpedia covers local, state and federal politics.  Content includes neutral, accurate, and verifiable information on government officials and the offices they hold, political issues and public policy, elections, candidates, and the influencers of politics.  Ballotpedia currently has over 220,000 encyclopedic articles.  https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia:About

America's Story From America's Library is a Web site is brought to you from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the largest library in the world and the nation's library.  Here, you can discover what Abraham Lincoln had in his pockets on the night he was assassinated.  (You will be surprised.)  Or you can read about other "Amazing Americans" such as Buffalo Bill Cody and his "Wild West" show; the heroism of Harriet Tubman, who helped many slaves escape bondage; the music of jazz great Duke Ellington; or the inventions of Thomas Edison. (You will even be able to see his first motion picture!)  If you think break-dancing is a new invention, then visit "Join America at Play," where you'll see a film of an early break-dancer from 1898!  Ever hear of a "cloth sandwich"?  You'll know what I'm talking about when you read the stories in this section.   "Jump Back in Time" and find the settlers who landed on Plymouth Rock.  Or jump to a more recent age and read about be-bop, a type of music invented long before hip-hop.  Do you know what happened on the day you were born?  You can find out here.  http://www.americaslibrary.gov/about/welcome.html

Michigan Pasty (Meat Hand Pie)  When Cornish miners migrated to Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the 1800's, they brought with them their beloved national dish:  the pasty.  The Finnish miners that followed adopted these meat pies as their own (easily transportable for long subterranean days!), and the pasty became such a large part of the regional culture that there's an annual pasty festival in early July. Find recipe with beef, rutabaga, carrots, onions and potatoes steamed within the crimped, D-shaped dough pocket that's slit to allow just enough steam to escape at http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/michigan-pasty-meat-hand-pie.html

Finland is the world’s most literate nation, according to new research.  Home to Tove Jansson, the author of the much-loved Moomin books, and a widely praised education system, Finland topped a table of world literacy in a new study conducted by John Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.  The research looked at literacy achievement tests and also at what it called “literate behaviour characteristics”--everything from numbers of libraries and newspapers to years of schooling and computer availability in the countries.    Rather than measuring a country’s ability to read, the World’s Most Literate Nations says it ranks nations on their “literate behaviours and their supporting resources”. I t set out to look at data from 200 countries, drawing from sources ranging from Unesco to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but only 61 made the final cut, “due to lack of relevant statistics”.  Population was also considered, to give per capita ratios.  The Nordic countries dominated the top of the charts, with Finland in first place and Norway in second, and Iceland, Denmark and Sweden rounding out the top five.  Switzerland followed in sixth, with the US in seventh, Canada in 11th, France in 12th and the UK in 17th place.  Botswana was last, in 61st place, behind Indonesia in 60th and Thailand in 59th.  Miller said that “the factors we examined present a complex and nuanced portrait of a nation’s cultural vitality”, and that “what the rankings strongly suggest … is that these kinds of literate behaviours are critical to the success of individuals and nations in the knowledge-based economics that define our global future”.  Alison Flood   http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/11/finland-ranked-worlds-most-literate-nation

Like many countries, the U.S. provides a means of entry for wealthy people who will pump money into its economy.  This is known as the employment fifth preference—or “EB-5”—immigrant visa, which allows people to obtain permanent residence immediately upon entry to the United States.  However, applicants for a U.S. green card based on investment must not only invest between $500,000 and $1 million in a U.S. business, they must take an active role in that business (though they don’t need to control it).  Green cards for investors are limited in number, to 10,000 per year, and green cards for investors from any one country are limited as well.  If more than 10,000 people apply in a year, or a large amount of people from your country apply that year, you might be placed on a waiting list based on your “priority date” (the day you filed the first portion of your application).  Most people don’t have to worry about being put on a waiting list:  Until recently, the 10,000 limit had never been reached.  In the last several years, however, demand for EB-5 visas from China has created a waiting list for Chinese investors.  People from other countries currently (as of 2015) do not have to wait.  Richard Link  http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/eb-5-investor-who-qualifies.html  See also March 15, 2016 article by Ron Nixon at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/us/politics/program-that-lets-foreigners-write-a-check-and-get-a-visa-draws-scrutiny.html

President Obama will announce his choice for a seat on the Supreme Court on March 16, 2016 at 8 a.m. Pacific time.  “As president, it is both my constitutional duty to nominate a justice and one of the most important decisions that I -- or any president -- will make,” Obama wrote.  “I’m confident you’ll share my conviction that this American is not only eminently qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, but deserves a fair hearing, and an up-or-down vote," he added, nodding to the fierce fight with senators that lies ahead.  In recent days, the president had narrowed his field of potential choices to three: Sri Srinivasan and Merrick Garland, judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Paul Watford, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.  Michael A. Memoli  http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-supreme-court-nominee-20160316-story.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1442  March 16, 2016   On this date in 1870, the first version of the overture fantasy Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky received its première performance.  On this date in 1995, Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery.  The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified in 1865.  Word of the Day  Scotch mist noun (Britain) A cold and penetrating mist, verging on rain. (Britain, dialect, chiefly Lancashire and Yorkshire, idiomatic)  Something that is hard to find or does not exist.  A drink of Scotch whisky served with ice and lemon peel. (botany)  The perennial flowering plant Galium sylvaticum.

Supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is co-writing a new book to be released in January 2017.  The book, entitled My Own Words, will comprise of a “selection of writings and speeches by Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the supreme court, on being Jewish, on law and lawyers in opera and on the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US constitution”.  My Own Words will be a collaborative effort between Ginsburg and her authorized biographers, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W Williams.  Ginsburg will write an introduction to the book and Hartnett and Williams will write introductions to each of the chapters with quotes from the hundreds of interviews they have conducted with Ginsburg for a forthcoming biography of the justice.  Hartnett and Williams will also assist Ginsburg in selecting the writings to be included in the book.  In 2015, the book Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, based on a fan site, proved a popular hit.  Mahita Gajanan  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/10/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-justice-new-book-my-own-words

More than 2,000 Cabinet positions exist today in the federal government.  All Cabinet members in the United States must go through Senate confirmation and be approved by the Senate before they can be officially appointed to their position.  More than 98 percent of Cabinet nominations are approved by the Senate.  http://www.ehow.com/facts_7251040_process-appointing-cabinet-members-us_.html

A Plagiarism Scandal Is Unfolding In The Crossword World by Oliver Roeder   A group of eagle-eyed puzzlers, using digital tools, has uncovered a pattern of copying in the professional crossword-puzzle world that has led to accusations of plagiarism and false identity.  Since 1999, Timothy Parker, editor of one of the nation’s most widely syndicated crosswords, has edited more than 60 individual puzzles that copy elements from New York Times puzzles, often with pseudonyms for bylines, a new database has helped reveal.  The puzzles in question repeated themes, answers, grids and clues from Times puzzles published years earlier.  Hundreds more of the puzzles edited by Parker are nearly verbatim copies of previous puzzles that Parker also edited.  Most of those have been republished under fake author names.  Nearly all this replication was found in two crosswords series edited by Parker:  the USA Today Crossword and the syndicated Universal Crossword.  (The copyright to both puzzles is held by Universal Uclick, which grew out of the former Universal Press Syndicate and calls itself “the leading distributor of daily puzzle and word games.”)  http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding-in-the-crossword-world/

The Constellations  Ever since people first wandered the Earth, great significance has been given to the celestial objects seen in the sky.  Throughout human history and across many different cultures, names and mythical stories have been attributed to the star patterns in the night sky, thus giving birth to what we know as constellations.  The ancient Greeks were the first to describe over half of the 88 constellations recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) today.  Forty eight of the constellations we know were recorded in the seventh and eighth books of Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest, although the exact origin of these constellations still remains uncertain.  Ptolemy’s descriptions are probably strongly influenced by the work of Eudoxus of Knidos in around 350 BC.  Between the 16th and 17th century AD, European astronomers and celestial cartographers added new constellations to the 48 previously described by Ptolemy; these new constellations were mainly “new discoveries” made by the Europeans who first explored the southern hemisphere.  Those who made particular contributions to the “new” constellations include the Polish-born, German astronomer Johannes Hevelius; three Dutch cartographers, Frederick de Houtman, Pieter Dirksz Keyser and Gerard Mercator; the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille; the Flemish mapmaker Petrus Plancius and the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.  Find names and charts at

 http://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/ 

More than 50 major players in the U.S. publishing industry are petitioning the White House and Congress to end the Cuba trade embargo as it pertains to books and educational materials. 

Calling the book embargo "counter to American ideals of free expression," the petition—endorsed by publishing companies, authors and agents—says "books are catalysts for greater cross-cultural understanding, economic development, free expression, and positive social change."  Publishers Weekly, which plans to run the petition on the cover of the magazine's March 14 edition, posted it on its website.  It says that last month about 40 American publishing industry representatives met with their counterparts in Havana to "build bridges of understanding and explore opportunities for greater cultural and economic collaboration."  The petition also notes that Cuba's adult literacy rate of nearly 100 percent is among the highest in the world.  It says there are plenty of commercial opportunities for American and Cuban publishers that could benefit "readers and writers everywhere."  The petition comes as the U.S. continues to work to normalize relations with the island nation and just ahead of President Obama's historic visit to Cuba on March 21-22.  He will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.   http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/10/469987895/publishing-heavyweights-petition-white-house-congress-to-end-cuba-book-embargo

Answers to State trivia questions  Three states have four letters in their names:  Iowa, Ohio and Utah.  Three states have thirteen letters in their names:  Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina.  Eight state names begin with the letter M:  Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri and Montana.   Eight state names begin with the letter N:  Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and North Dakota. 

Birds feature prominently in Shakespeare's plays and poetry.  But one of the bard's birds has become a major nuisance in the US.  Choughs, wrens, cormorants, owls, nightingales, larks and some 60 other species all have their place in the playwright's canon.  Such references have inspired bird lovers for centuries.  So much so that in 1890, a German immigrant named Eugene Schieffelin decided it would be a great idea to introduce as many of Shakespeare's birds as possible to North America.  One cold winter's day he released 60 starlings into New York's Central Park in the hope they would start breeding.  Unfortunately, they did.  The US is now home to an estimated 200 million European starlings.  Thickset and pugnacious, starlings are the bruisers of the avian world.  And they are now such a nuisance they are one of the few bird species unprotected by law.  "Starlings are lean and mean.  In the industry they're often called feathered bullets," says Michael Begier, National Coordinator for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Airports Wildlife Hazards Program.  "They're a particular problem at airports because they flock in very large numbers, and compared to other birds their bodies are very dense.  They are about 27% more dense than a herring gull which is a much larger bird."  When a flock of starlings strikes a plane the effects can be devastating.  In 1960 they caused the most deadly bird strike in US aviation history.  The birds flew into the engines of a plane as it took off from Boston's Logan Airport, and it crashed into the harbour, killing 62 people on board.  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27055030  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Acclimatization_Society

The assassination of Julius Caesar on March 15, 44BC is one of the most notorious events in history.  You may be familiar with a version of events in William Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar.  Find 10 things  about one of the world's most famous political murders in an article by   Martin Chilton at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/julius-caesars-assassination-10-facts-about-the-ides-of-march-mu/

In the mists of time, the early Romans began each month at the new moon.  They called that day the Kalends (Kalendae).  Two weeks later came the full moon, which they named the Ides (Idus).  Midway between the two was the half-moon, which they referred to as the Nones (Nonae).  For some inexplicable reason, they then chose to refer to every other day in the month in terms of its relationship to the next one of these coming up.  So they would say, “five days before the Kalends of March,” or “three days before the Nones of June”.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/12193529/The-Ides-of-March-The-assassination-of-Julius-Caesar-and-how-it-changed-the-world.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1441  March 15, 2016  On this date in 1839, Paul Heyse, German author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate, was born.  On this date in 1993, Alyssa Reid, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist, was born.

Job-killing legal technologies?  They only look that way by D. Casey Flaherty   It is stunning how quickly technological advances become a ‘natural’ part of our landscape.  In the mid 1990s, Richard Susskind was being labeled “dangerous” and “possibly insane.”  His heresy?   Susskind suggested that email would become the principal means of communication between lawyers and clients.  His detractors asserted that he understood neither security nor confidentiality and was bringing the profession into ill repute.  Most legal technologies look like job-killers until the facts prove otherwise.  Westlaw digitized legal research.  In theory, digital access to case law should have made lawyers much more efficient.  More efficiency means less work means less demand for lawyer labor.  Yet, Westlaw and other digital repositories substantially expanded the research universe.  As a result, there were more lawyers doing more research than ever before.  Legal librarians, too, should have been made obsolete by Westlaw and, subsequently, Google.  That is, if you take the blinkered view that a librarian’s primary responsibility is maintaining physical books.  But, if you actually understand that librarians are professional locators and managers of information, then the explosion in information that has accompanied the transition to a digital world makes them more valuable, not less. 

http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/job_killing_legal_technologies?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=navigation&utm_campaign=navbar  Thank you, Muse reader!

Pvt. Robert N. Jabo, of the 8th New Hampshire infantry, was dying of tuberculosis in Washington’s Harewood Hospital and needed to write to his family.  The Civil War had been over for months.  Most soldiers had gone home.  And Jabo’s wife and six children were no doubt wondering where he was.  But he was sick and illiterate.  So a cheerful, bearded man who regularly visited hospitalized soldiers offered to write a letter for him.  “My dear wife,” it began, “you must excuse me for not having written. . . . have not been very well.”  The letter explained that it was penned by “a friend who is now sitting by my side.”  And in a postscript, the friend identified himself: “Walt Whitman.”  Archive specialist Jackie Budell's project on Civil War pension documents recently unearthed a letter written by Walt Whitman on behalf of an illiterate dying soldier to the soldier’s wife.  The rare Whitman “soldier letter,” one of only three known to exist, was discovered last month by a National Archives volunteer who is part of a team preparing Civil War widows’ pension files to be digitized and placed online.  Whitman, the American poet, journalist and essayist, was known for making the rounds of the local hospitals, where he would dispense snacks and money.  He would also sit with wounded and dying soldiers and write letters for them.  “I do a good deal of this, of course, writing all kinds, including love letters,” Whitman wrote in a dispatch for the New York Times in 1864.  “Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written home to parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives . . . for a long, long time,” he wrote.  “I always encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them,” he wrote .  A century and a half later, few of those letters have surfaced.  On the afternoon of Feb. 3, 2016, volunteer Catherine Cusack Wilson found one.  Wilson, a librarian in Falls Church, was sorting through pension files in the preparation room at the archives building in downtown Washington when she pulled the Jabo file from its large brown envelope.  Her task was to look through the papers to make sure nothing had been wrongly filed and check to see whether any document was damaged and needed conservation.  Michael E. Ruane  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/rare-walt-whitman-letter-written-for-a-dying-soldier-found-in-national-archives/2016/03/09/6b172142-e228-11e5-8d98-4b3d9215ade1_story.html

Q.  I have always associated multiplication with addition (more), and division with subtraction (less), so I don’t understand current phrases such as “three times less” and “twice as small.”  Can you explain? - Jack Clark  A.  In arithmetic, the term “times” means “instances of,” in the way “two times three” means “two instances of three,” or six.  A person who says “three times less” probably means “one-third as much,” and one who says “twice as small” likely means “half as small.”  In short, they have it backward! - Marilyn vos Savant 

http://parade.com/458076/marilynvossavant/why-are-mathematical-phrases-so-confusing/

BURNT is the story of Chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) who had it all and lost it.  A two-star Michelin Chef, whose ability to create explosions of taste is undermined by his bad habits and rock-star attitude.  Dishes and recipes created by Marcus Wareing, the internationally acclaimed and multi-award winning, Michelin starred British Chef and Chef Consultant for Burnt.  Download recipes at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8SlglBF4EknOGFaeFM2ZnFqZ1U/view  Movie-inspired recipe from Castello Cheese--Sweeney's Simply Satisfying Cacio E Pepe:   http://www.brandpointcontent.com/printsite/food-recipes-and-entertaining/unlock-your-inner-chef-with-dinner-inspired-by-the-movie-burnt-,20933

Although they did not fix their schedules to the clock in the modern sense, ancient civilizations adjusted daily schedules to the sun more flexibly than modern Daylight Saving Time (DST) does, often dividing daylight into twelve hours regardless of day length, so that each daylight hour was longer during summer.  For example, Roman water clocks had different scales for different months of the year:  at Rome's latitude the third hour from sunrise, hora tertia, started by modern standards at 09:02 solar time and lasted 44 minutes at the winter solstice, but at the summer solstice it started at 06:58 and lasted 75 minutes.  After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season.  Unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some Mount Athos monasteries and all Jewish ceremonies.  During his time as an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the old English proverb, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight.  This 1784 satire proposed taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise.  Despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose DST; 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules.  However, this soon changed as rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin's day.  Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift-work job gave him leisure time to collect insects, and led him to value after-hours daylight.  In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch, he followed up in an 1898 paper.  Many publications credit DST's proposal to the prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett, who independently conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer's day.  An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk.  His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later.  The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Robert Pearce, who introduced the first Daylight Saving Bill to the House of Commons on 12 February 1908.  A select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearce's bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915.  William Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912.  Starting on 30 April 1916, Germany and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime.  Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit.  Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

William Willett's pamphlet  Sloane Square, London, July, 1907  THE WASTE OF DAYLIGHT  Everyone appreciates the long light evenings.  Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early mornings, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used.  Nevertheless, standard time remains so fixed, that for nearly half the year the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon, having already passed its western limit, when we reach home after the work of the day is over.  Under the most favourable circumstances, there then remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.  Now, if some of the hours of wasted sunlight could be withdrawn from the beginning and added to the end of the day, how many advantages would be gained by all, and in particular by those who spend in the open air, when light permits them to do so, whatever time they have at their command after the duties of the day have been discharged.  By a simple expedient these advantages can be secured.  If we will reduce the length of four Sundays by 20 minutes, a loss of which practically no one would be conscious, we shall have 8o minutes more daylight after 6 p.m. every day during May, June, July and August, and an avenge of 45 minutes more every day during April and September.  I therefore venture to propose that at 2 a.m. on each of four Sunday mornings in April, standard time shall advance 20 minutes; and on each of four Sundays in September, shall recede 20 minutes, or in other words that for eight Sundays of 24 hours each, we shall substitute four, each 20 minutes less than 24 hours, and four each 20 minutes more than 24 hours.  Read more at http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/willett.html  Source:  Essay reprinted in British Time by Donald de Carle.  Crosby Lockwood & Son, Ltd. London. 1946.  Pages 152-157.

On March 12, 2016 in South Korea, a Google artificial-intelligence program dubbed AlphaGo beat world champion Lee Sedol in Go, an ancient and complex board game in which strategy and tactics collide with intuition and cunning.  "When I look back on the three matches, even if I were to go back and redo the first match, I think I would not be able to win because I misjudged AlphaGo," Lee said at a postgame press conference, following his third straight defeat.  Against the odds, Lee came back and beat Google's computer the following day, but it wasn't enough to tip the scales of the contest.  The Google DeepMind Challenge, which has taken place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, has drawn tens of thousands of online spectators who have followed the matches live on YouTube.  Streams of the software versus wetware competition have received more than 3 million views since the contest started. Though Lee has officially lost the best-of-five contest, he will play one more match to establish a final score in the face-off, which ends March 15, 2016.  The public interest wasn't piqued solely by the popular game, which is played widely in Japan, China and Korea.  Oren Etzioni, the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, says teaching computers to read and then answer questions about that content is still a work in progress. For example, when Etzioni had computers read eighth-grade science texts, they could answer only about 60 percent of the questions on a test.   Understanding a single sentence can be a lot more complicated than playing Go," Etzioni says.  Computers, he says, have yet to demonstrate that they "can solve fuzzier problems where things are more nuanced."  Go, which originated in China thousands of years ago, is played on a 19x19 grid with black and white stones.  The board's size means the number of possible moves is greater than the number of atoms in the universe, according to Google, making it a more difficult programming challenge than chess.  Artificial intelligence expert David Levy says Go's complexity makes Google's win a bigger victory than IBM's 1997 triumph over world chess champion Gary Kasparov.  Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, was also impressed by AlphaGo's feat.  "Go is the most important game in my life," Bushnell said.  "It's the only game that truly balances the left and right sides of the brain.  The fact that it has now yielded to computer technology is massively important."  "For all its difficulty, Go is still an artificial problem with very simple rules," says Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington.  "Building a home robot, for example, is something of a different order of magnitude altogether -- the robot needs common sense, physical dexterity, etc, which are all still sorely lacking in AI."  Max Taves  http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-alphago-isnt-taking-over-the-world-yet/

March 14, 2016 is Pi Day, a national celebration of the mathematical concept, which is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and equals 3.14...  Last year, 3-14-15, was the only day this century that matched pi, commonly approximated as 3.14159.  As is the case every year, schools and museums across the country have planned events to celebrate the concept, which has fascinated humans for centuries.  Look for pi-related deals and freebies, too.  In 1897, Indiana state legislators tried passing a Pi Bill that legally defined pi as 3.2.  Edward J. Goodwin, a physician, convinced a well-known mathematical monthly newspaper that he had solved what mathematicians had tried to do for generations: squaring the circle.  Simply put, squaring the circle is the impossible task of finding the area of a circle by finding the area of a square around it.  Goodwin claimed that pi was 3.2 instead of a continuous number.  The bill never became a law thanks to Professor C. A. Waldo who convinced the Indiana Senate that Goodwin’s discovery was not possible.  http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/Pi-Day-2016-314-Things-to-Know-Freebies-371966492.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1440  March 14, 2016  On this date in 1794, Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin.  On this date in 1885, The Mikado, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, received its first public performance in London.  Quote of the Day  Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.  Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (14 March 1879-1955)  See also http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html