Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, is working with a multimedia partner to release four “vooks,” which intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read—and viewed—online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/books/01book.html?_r=2&hp
By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year. Relations between the colonies and the mother country had been deteriorating since the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763. The war had plunged the British government deep into debt, and so Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies. Parliament believed that these acts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep the colonies in the British Empire. See history and list of 56 delegates who eventually signed the Declaration at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence#List_of_signers
Timeline of the Revolutionary War
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/revwartimeline.htm
The end of the Revolutionary War
1782
January - Loyalists begin leaving America for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The British withdraw from North Carolina.
June - British evacuate Savannah, Georgia.
August - Loyalist and Indian forces attack and defeat American settlers near Lexington, Kentucky. Raids on settlements in Pennsylvania and Kentucky by Mohawk Indian Chief Joseph Brant. The last fighting of the Revolutionary War between Americans and British occurs with a skirmish in South Carolina along the Combahee River, South Carolina.
November - The final battle of the Revolutionary War occurs as Americans retaliate against Loyalist and Indian forces by attacking a Shawnee Indian village in the Ohio territory.
December - British forces evacuate Charleston, South Carolina.
1783
February - Great Britain officially declares an end to hostilities in America.
April - 7,000 Loyalists set sail from New York for Canada, bringing a total of 100,000 Loyalists who have now fled America.
June - The Continental Army is disbanded.
September - The Treaty of Paris is signed by the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. http://www.revolutionarywarmuseum.com/1782_1783.html
From its beginnings as a royal fortress to the public institution we see today, discover the Musée du Louvre http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/alaune.jsp?bmLocale=en
Condé Nast Publications Inc., facing a steep drop-off in advertising, said it would chop four magazines from its roster—including 68-year-old Gourmet, long considered one of the magazine world's most prestigious food magazines. The publishing giant has come face to face with a stark reality caused by the steep fall-off in advertising. Ad pages at 14 of Condé Nast's 23 print publications fell by more than the industry average of 29.5% in the second quarter, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. In addition to Gourmet, Condé Nast will eliminate Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, as well as a family magazine called Cookie.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125475373996964695.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular
Stephen Mather was the first director of the National Park Service. He used his wealth and political connections to take the national park idea in important new directions. Born in California to a family with deep, patrician roots in New England, Mather graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, worked as a reporter for the New York Sun, and then served as sales manager for the Pacific Coast Borax Company, where he demonstrated his special genius for promotion. He branded the product as 20 Mule Team Borax and inventively created so much publicity that sales skyrocketed. Mather then helped start a competing borax company and soon became rich beyond belief. http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/people/nps/mather/
Antiquities act of 1906 by Robert H. McLaughlin
Signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, the Antiquities Act of 1906 (P.L. 59-209, 34 Stat. 225) became the first major federal legislation to govern archaeology in the United States. The act prohibits the removal of antiquities from federal lands without first obtaining a permit for scientific investigation. Read rest of article at:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3407400023.html
Antiquities Act of 1906 http://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/anti1906.htm
Antiquities Act as amended http://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/FHPL_AntiAct.pdf
Norway means ‘the way to the north’. It is one of the most northerly countries in the world. North of mainland Norway are the islands known as Svalbard which are part of Norway. http://www.lookatnorway.org.uk/images/pdfs/Student%20Card%201.PDF
Norway is the best place in the world to live while Niger is the least desirable, according to an annual report by the United Nations. The 182 countries were ranked according to the quality of life their citizens experienced. Criteria examined included life expectancy, literacy rates, school enrolment and country economies. However the UN human development index used data collected in 2007—before the global economic crisis. Norway's consistently high rating for desirable living standards, is, in large part, the result of the discovery of offshore oil and gas deposits in the late 1960s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8290550.stm
How to beat information overload Research clearly demonstrates that interruptions degrade accuracy, judgment, creativity, and effective management. The psychiatrist Edward Hallowell coined the term attention deficit trait to describe this phenomenon and found that it makes people perform far below their full potential. Creative thinking, essential to many engineering jobs, requires long stretches of uninterrupted time. Programmers are known for working odd hours, when they can have the quiet they need to concentrate. See five-page article at:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/it/how-to-beat-information-overload
How do you tell a story? Oral storytelling has been practiced for generations around campfires and dinner tables, in barrooms and barbershops. But there are also other ways to tell a story: there is music, there is dance, there is basket weaving and pottery. These too tell the stories of our culture, both individual and shared. The folk and traditional arts, passed down hand-to-hand, from elder to apprentice, bear our nation’s history—our story of a multitude of cultures uniquely stitched together—in songs, in dances, in crafts. Click on pictures to read the stories in NEA Arts Magazine:
http://www.arts.gov/about/NEARTS/indexNew.html
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Storytellers
If the audience isn't involved, you're lecturing, not storytelling. Modulating your voice is a must when you're telling a story; it's tough to stay focused on someone who speaks in a deadpan monotone. But modulation is only part of the performance. Like any good actor, you should change your facial expression, voice, posture and movements as you act out the different characters. More tips here: http://www.life123.com/parenting/education/storytelling/seven-habits-of-highly-effective-storytellers.shtml#STS=g0fnfuln.nbm
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has outlined a new research strategy to better understand how manufactured nanomaterials may harm human health and the environment. Nanomaterials are materials that are between approximately one and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is approximately 1/100,000 the width of a human hair. These materials are currently used in hundreds of consumer products, including sunscreen, cosmetics and sports equipment. The strategy outlines what research EPA will support over the next several years to generate information about the safe use of nanotechnology and products that contain nano-scale materials. The strategy also includes research into ways nanotechnology can be used to clean up toxic chemicals in the environment. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/6427a6b7538955c585257359003f0230/3058183a44280171852576400076bc35!OpenDocument
The DocumentCloud initiative—winner of this year’s largest grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation—has lined up some two dozen partners, everyone from Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, to the ACLU National Security Project, The National Security Archive, the Center for Investigative Reporting and many more. DocumentCloud will provide public access to news reporters’ original source materials. It will debut in a beta version by the end of this year. DocumentCloud will be software, a Web site, and a set of open standards that will make original source documents easy to find, share, read and collaborate on, anywhere on the Web. Users will be able to search for documents by date, topic, person, location, etc. and will be able to do "document dives," collaboratively examining large sets of documents. http://www.documentcloud.org/
New Rules Protect Patients' Genetic Information
News release: "Individuals’ genetic information will have greater protections through new regulations issued by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury. The interim final rule will help ensure that genetic information is not used adversely in determining health care coverage and will encourage more individuals to participate in genetic testing, which can help better identify and prevent certain illnesses."
Interim Final Rules Prohibiting Discrimination Based on Genetic Information in Health Insurance Coverage and Group Health Plans
Fact Sheet
Research Exception Form
This year's Nobel prize for medicine goes to the three US researchers who discovered how the body protects the chromosomes housing vital genetic code.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak jointly share the award.
Their work revealed how the chromosomes can be copied and has helped further our understanding on human ageing, cancer and stem cells.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8290094.stm
As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement. On October 1, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh. The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. American protesters first made widespread use of mass text messages in New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, when hundreds of people used a system called TXTmob to share information. Messages, sent as events unfolded, allowed demonstrators and others to react quickly to word of arrests, police mobilizations and roving rallies. Mass texting has since become a valued tool among protesters, particularly at large-scale demonstrations. And police and government officials appear to be increasingly aware of such methods of communication. In 2008, for instance, the New York City Law Department issued a subpoena seeking information from the graduate student who created the code for TXTmob. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/nyregion/05txt.html?bl
Congress wants to cut taxpayer costs associated with presidential libraries and archives, and a new report (PDF) by the National Archives and Records Administration released Wednesday proposed five possible alternatives. It also warned that social networking tools will complicate future presidential record-keeping. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/10/the_future_of_presidential_lib.html?hpid=news-col-blog
The students who have long cherished the small library inside Dunster House, Harvard’s oldest dormitory, have discovered a new feature there: two brass bars stretching across nearly every shelf, making the books impossible to peruse. The unannounced change astonished those who revere the musty collection and have become accustomed to indulging in its broad span of history, fiction, and other genres.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/09/30/bars_on_books_jar_harvard_students/
New park service chief sees 'convergence' Los Angeles Times - 9 hours ago
To Jon Jarvis, who takes the helm of the National Park Service this week, the parks are on the verge of rejuvenation. Ken Burns' PBS documentary is sparking new enthusiasm, and a centennial is near.
Ohio's very own national park The Plain Dealer - cleveland.com
Creating National Parks New York Times
The dog’s nose is an amazing organ. It is considered to be thousands, even up to a million times more sensitive than that of the human nose. Dogs have 220 million olfactory receptor cells in the nasal passages compared to a human’s 5 million. Dogs accurately rely on their sense of smell for almost everything. Their sense of smell is extremely important to them to deliver vital information, even more so than that of their sense of hearing or even sight, (with the exception of sighthounds.) The whole interpretation of their surroundings is summed up successfully through this unique sense. The dog’s sense of smell is connected to the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/3950539.php?
Because social networks online are much more clearly defined than offline connections, they have been a boon to researchers. And studies are finding that despite dire predictions from naysayers who warned that spending too much time online would be damaging to real-life relationships, the opposite appears to be true. The findings, trickling in from early research, suggest health and psychological benefits for those who "friend" and are "friended." But as with all new media, critics say it's much too soon to know about all the possible long-term effects online social networking might have—from growing obesity and musculoskeletal problems to loss of privacy and overwhelming commercialism.
Whether they're face-to-face or virtual, social networks influence human behavior and shape everything from finances to the way people vote, say Christakis and co-author James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California-San Diego. The authors suggest that the world is governed by what they call "three degrees of influence"—that is, your friend's friend's friend, most likely someone you don't even know—who indirectly influences your actions and emotions. Among those concerned about the Internet's effect on relationships are Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, and author of the 2005 book Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. Although he maintains a Facebook page that he says he checks for about 20 minutes a week, "because you have to know the nature of the beast," Bugeja says his concerns have only increased. "Most of the studies that have been done have been biased from the start," he says. And now, his unease is focused more on the social networking sites themselves, saying it's time to "step back from the hype about social networks" and look at the question from a computer science perspective. "They are essentially data mining what you are putting on that page," he says. "The application is not programmed to bring you a friend. The application is programmed to make money, and they make money by data mining and by selling virtual ads."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2009-09-27-social-networking_N.htm
On October 4, 1830, the country of Belgium was born, when the region was separated from The Netherlands.
Learn more about the founding of Belgium.
On October 4, 1974, the trial of Watergate conspirators HR Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Mitchell, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson began, Judge John Sirica presiding. Review transcripts of the Watergate tapes played at the outset of their trial.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
The DocumentCloud initiative—winner of this year’s largest grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation—has lined up some two dozen partners, everyone from Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, to the ACLU National Security Project, The National Security Archive, the Center for Investigative Reporting and many more. DocumentCloud will provide public access to news reporters’ original source materials. It will debut in a beta version by the end of this year. DocumentCloud will be software, a Web site, and a set of open standards that will make original source documents easy to find, share, read and collaborate on, anywhere on the Web. Users will be able to search for documents by date, topic, person, location, etc. and will be able to do "document dives," collaboratively examining large sets of documents. http://www.documentcloud.org/
New Rules Protect Patients' Genetic Information
News release: "Individuals’ genetic information will have greater protections through new regulations issued by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury. The interim final rule will help ensure that genetic information is not used adversely in determining health care coverage and will encourage more individuals to participate in genetic testing, which can help better identify and prevent certain illnesses."
Interim Final Rules Prohibiting Discrimination Based on Genetic Information in Health Insurance Coverage and Group Health Plans
Fact Sheet
Research Exception Form
This year's Nobel prize for medicine goes to the three US researchers who discovered how the body protects the chromosomes housing vital genetic code.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak jointly share the award.
Their work revealed how the chromosomes can be copied and has helped further our understanding on human ageing, cancer and stem cells.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8290094.stm
As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement. On October 1, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh. The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. American protesters first made widespread use of mass text messages in New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, when hundreds of people used a system called TXTmob to share information. Messages, sent as events unfolded, allowed demonstrators and others to react quickly to word of arrests, police mobilizations and roving rallies. Mass texting has since become a valued tool among protesters, particularly at large-scale demonstrations. And police and government officials appear to be increasingly aware of such methods of communication. In 2008, for instance, the New York City Law Department issued a subpoena seeking information from the graduate student who created the code for TXTmob. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/nyregion/05txt.html?bl
Congress wants to cut taxpayer costs associated with presidential libraries and archives, and a new report (PDF) by the National Archives and Records Administration released Wednesday proposed five possible alternatives. It also warned that social networking tools will complicate future presidential record-keeping. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/10/the_future_of_presidential_lib.html?hpid=news-col-blog
The students who have long cherished the small library inside Dunster House, Harvard’s oldest dormitory, have discovered a new feature there: two brass bars stretching across nearly every shelf, making the books impossible to peruse. The unannounced change astonished those who revere the musty collection and have become accustomed to indulging in its broad span of history, fiction, and other genres.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/09/30/bars_on_books_jar_harvard_students/
New park service chief sees 'convergence' Los Angeles Times - 9 hours ago
To Jon Jarvis, who takes the helm of the National Park Service this week, the parks are on the verge of rejuvenation. Ken Burns' PBS documentary is sparking new enthusiasm, and a centennial is near.
Ohio's very own national park The Plain Dealer - cleveland.com
Creating National Parks New York Times
The dog’s nose is an amazing organ. It is considered to be thousands, even up to a million times more sensitive than that of the human nose. Dogs have 220 million olfactory receptor cells in the nasal passages compared to a human’s 5 million. Dogs accurately rely on their sense of smell for almost everything. Their sense of smell is extremely important to them to deliver vital information, even more so than that of their sense of hearing or even sight, (with the exception of sighthounds.) The whole interpretation of their surroundings is summed up successfully through this unique sense. The dog’s sense of smell is connected to the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/3950539.php?
Because social networks online are much more clearly defined than offline connections, they have been a boon to researchers. And studies are finding that despite dire predictions from naysayers who warned that spending too much time online would be damaging to real-life relationships, the opposite appears to be true. The findings, trickling in from early research, suggest health and psychological benefits for those who "friend" and are "friended." But as with all new media, critics say it's much too soon to know about all the possible long-term effects online social networking might have—from growing obesity and musculoskeletal problems to loss of privacy and overwhelming commercialism.
Whether they're face-to-face or virtual, social networks influence human behavior and shape everything from finances to the way people vote, say Christakis and co-author James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California-San Diego. The authors suggest that the world is governed by what they call "three degrees of influence"—that is, your friend's friend's friend, most likely someone you don't even know—who indirectly influences your actions and emotions. Among those concerned about the Internet's effect on relationships are Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, and author of the 2005 book Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. Although he maintains a Facebook page that he says he checks for about 20 minutes a week, "because you have to know the nature of the beast," Bugeja says his concerns have only increased. "Most of the studies that have been done have been biased from the start," he says. And now, his unease is focused more on the social networking sites themselves, saying it's time to "step back from the hype about social networks" and look at the question from a computer science perspective. "They are essentially data mining what you are putting on that page," he says. "The application is not programmed to bring you a friend. The application is programmed to make money, and they make money by data mining and by selling virtual ads."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2009-09-27-social-networking_N.htm
On October 4, 1830, the country of Belgium was born, when the region was separated from The Netherlands.
Learn more about the founding of Belgium.
On October 4, 1974, the trial of Watergate conspirators HR Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Mitchell, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson began, Judge John Sirica presiding. Review transcripts of the Watergate tapes played at the outset of their trial.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Friday, October 2, 2009
A TANK AWAY FROM TOLEDO, CHICAGO OR COLUMBUS
Grand Rapids “western Michigan’s cultural epicenter” September 27-30, 2009
Song, dance, performance and art meet as 1262 artists from 15 countries compete for $450,000 in ArtPrize running from September 23 to October 10 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There are 159 venues including the Grand River itself, parks, bridges, businesses, and galleries within a 3-square-mile zone. An Art Tram transports people around the zone. We arrived on a balmy Sunday and joined throngs of excited people. Three downtown hotels provided 20% off coupons for breakfast, lunch or dinner at their restaurants. During our holiday, we ate at Bistro Bella Vita (as we watched the circus haul away their things), The 1913 Room at Pantlind Hotel (now part of Amway Grand Plaza Hotel), Schnitz Deli and Bull’s Head Tavern.
We saw Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park meijergardens.org
Great Lakes water garden (the Great Lakes, if spread out over the continental United States, would be almost ten feet deep)
The American Horse, 24-foot sculpture inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s model that was destroyed in 1499 when French troops invaded Milan. http://www.mlive.com/cadenceadvance/index.ssf/2009/09/dedication_features_sculptor_n.html
Grand Rapids Arch made of Scottish sandstone http://theworldinlight.com/thumbnails/frederik-meijer-gardens.html
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum fordlibrarymuseum.gov
Under Ford’s tenure, the United States signed the Helsinki Accord, withdrew from Vietnam after a 30-year presence, and observed the bicentennial. President Ford had the Michigan fight song played rather than “Hail to the Chief” and referred to the White House as a residence rather than an executive mansion.
Grand Rapids Art Museum gramonline.org.
Grand Rapids Public Museum http://www.grmuseum.org/ and
Grand Rapids Public Library http://www.grpl.org/
Coming: Celebration of the Book Saturday, October 17, 2009 http://www.grpl.org/cotb/
expediency (ek-SPEE-dee-uhn-see) noun
1. consideration of what is advantageous or easy or immediate over what is right
2. the quality of being suited for a purpose
From Latin expedire (to make ready, to set the feet free), from ex- (out of) + ped- (foot). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ped- (foot) which gave us peccadillo (alluding to a stumble or fall), pedal, impeccable, podium, octopus, and impeach.
mortmain (MOHRT-mayn) noun
1. the perpetual ownership of property by institutions such as churches
2. te often stifling influence of the past on the present and the living
From Anglo-Norman mortmayn, feminine of morte (dead) + main (hand), from Latin mortua manus (dead hand). Ultimately from the Indo-European root man- (hand) that's also the source of manage, maintain, maneuver, manufacture, manuscript, and command.
Notes: Imagine a B-movie scene of a dead hand stretching out of a grave and you have the picture of the word mortmain. The idea behind mortmain is of a dead hand reaching beyond to hold a property in perpetuity. By extension, the word describes the past dictating the present in an oppressive manner. Unlike the passing of an asset to a child on the death of a parent, institutions such as churches hold property forever. Over time, through donations, etc., they can acquire a large amount of real estate which cannot be distributed or revert to the crown. Also, in such cases there is a loss of revenue from inheritance tax. The English King Edward I passed the Statutes of Mortmain in 1279 and again in 1290 to limit such holding of property in perpetuity without royal authorization. A.Word.A.Day
The novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is based on historical accounts of two cattlemen from Texas, who set out on a cattle drive to Montana. Augustus McCrae patterned after Oliver Loving and Woodrow F. Call after Charles Goodnight. The movie Lonesome Dove also is based on these men lives. Charles Goodnight would be the patron saint of all cowboys as he developed the cattle industry as it stands today. After the Civil War, Goodnight joined up with Oliver Loving to move cattle from Fort Belknap, Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in what became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. It was during this time, that Charles would invent the chuck wagon when he rebuilt an army surplus Studebaker wagon for more practical use on a long cattle drive. In 1871, Goodnight joined up with John Chisum and extended the trail from New Mexico to Colorado, and eventually to Wyoming. In 1876, Goodnight founded what was to become the JA Ranch in Palo Duro Canyon. Partnering with John Adair, the ranch would wind up encompassing nearly a million acres, where they maintained a herd of about 100,000 head of cattle, as well as preserving a herd of bison, which continues to survive today. Foreseeing the end of the open range, Goodnight ended his association with Adair and the JA Ranch in 1889 and bought his own ranch at what would become the village of Goodnight, exas . Here, he was reportedly the first Panhandle rancher to build fences of barbed wire. Throughout the following years, Goodnight dabbled in a number of other endeavors, establishing the Goodnight College in Armstrong County, Texas , as well as working as a newspaperman and banker. http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM5KPM
We are tempted to think that our present generation is superior to others. We judge past practices as barbaric, and congratulate ourselves on being civilized. We consider ourselves sophisticated rather than primitive, and fail to see that we share with past generations the same mixture of cruelty, kindness, wisdom and foolishness.
Thomas H. Troeger The American Organist magazine October 2009 (paraphrased excerpts)
Theories of the etymology of sincere
The most logical attributes the genesis of the word to the Latin sincerus, meaning "pure" or "clean"; but, many etymologists state that sincere is a compounding of sine cera, which means "without wax". According to this "folk etymology", in the time of the ancient Romans, devious dealers in marble and pottery would conceal defects in their products by filling the cracks and holes with wax. This sneaky trick (rubbing wax into the cracks of marble works) came to the attention of the Roman Senate, which passed a law stating that all marble purchased by the government must be sine cera, "without wax". From this law and this root, comes our modern word sincere, which means "without deceit". The present belief is that the Latin sincerus, which became sincere in English, came from sine, "without", and some lost word that was akin to caries, "decay". http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/3846
See picture of The Art Tatum Memorial Celebration Column by Californian Cork Marcheschi near the north entrance of the Lucas County Arena near Madison Avenue in Toledo, and see descriptions of all three major art works: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090928/SPORTS10/309289995/-1/RSS03
On October 2, 1997, European Union delegates signed the Amsterdam Treaty, which broadened the scope of the international organization. It amended previous EU treaties to expand the power of the EU Parliament, start the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and prepare for the influx of post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe.
Learn more about the Amsterdam Treaty. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
October 2 is the birthday of Wallace Stevens, (books by this author) born in Reading, Pennsylvania (1879). He wanted to be a journalist, but after a couple years of writing for a New York paper, he decided that he would fulfill his father's desires and go to law school. After graduating, he took a job with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, where he was in charge of inspecting surety claims. He would remain at the job for the rest of his life. Each day, he walked the two miles between his office and upper-middle class home, where he lived with his wife and daughter, and during these walks to and from work, he composed poetry. He would only let people walk with him if they didn't talk. He claimed that "poetry and surety claims aren't as unlikely a combination as they may seem. There's nothing perfunctory about them for each case is different." His first collection of poems, Harmonium, was published when he was 43 years old. The Writer’s Almanac
On October 2, Google has decorated its home page with a sketch of Mahatma Gandhi, who was born 140 years ago. His face is being used in place of the initial letter "G" of the website's onscreen name, making him one of a small number of people who have been given such prominence on the site's search page. Gandhi's birthday, October 2, is marked as a national holiday in India. Born in 1869, Gandhi insisted that non-violent civil disobedience was the best way to achieve change, and led nationwide campaigns in India—then under British rule—to achieve independence.
Previous people featured in Google's doodle include Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius, Luciano Pavarotti, Dr Seuss, Andy Warhol, Claude Money, Louis Braille, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh—and, posthumously, Michael Jackson. The doodles are overseen by Dennis Hwang, who joined the company in 2000 and has gradually been using the logo to remind people of particular dates or events.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/02/gandhi-google-doodle-logo
Grand Rapids “western Michigan’s cultural epicenter” September 27-30, 2009
Song, dance, performance and art meet as 1262 artists from 15 countries compete for $450,000 in ArtPrize running from September 23 to October 10 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There are 159 venues including the Grand River itself, parks, bridges, businesses, and galleries within a 3-square-mile zone. An Art Tram transports people around the zone. We arrived on a balmy Sunday and joined throngs of excited people. Three downtown hotels provided 20% off coupons for breakfast, lunch or dinner at their restaurants. During our holiday, we ate at Bistro Bella Vita (as we watched the circus haul away their things), The 1913 Room at Pantlind Hotel (now part of Amway Grand Plaza Hotel), Schnitz Deli and Bull’s Head Tavern.
We saw Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park meijergardens.org
Great Lakes water garden (the Great Lakes, if spread out over the continental United States, would be almost ten feet deep)
The American Horse, 24-foot sculpture inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s model that was destroyed in 1499 when French troops invaded Milan. http://www.mlive.com/cadenceadvance/index.ssf/2009/09/dedication_features_sculptor_n.html
Grand Rapids Arch made of Scottish sandstone http://theworldinlight.com/thumbnails/frederik-meijer-gardens.html
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum fordlibrarymuseum.gov
Under Ford’s tenure, the United States signed the Helsinki Accord, withdrew from Vietnam after a 30-year presence, and observed the bicentennial. President Ford had the Michigan fight song played rather than “Hail to the Chief” and referred to the White House as a residence rather than an executive mansion.
Grand Rapids Art Museum gramonline.org.
Grand Rapids Public Museum http://www.grmuseum.org/ and
Grand Rapids Public Library http://www.grpl.org/
Coming: Celebration of the Book Saturday, October 17, 2009 http://www.grpl.org/cotb/
expediency (ek-SPEE-dee-uhn-see) noun
1. consideration of what is advantageous or easy or immediate over what is right
2. the quality of being suited for a purpose
From Latin expedire (to make ready, to set the feet free), from ex- (out of) + ped- (foot). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ped- (foot) which gave us peccadillo (alluding to a stumble or fall), pedal, impeccable, podium, octopus, and impeach.
mortmain (MOHRT-mayn) noun
1. the perpetual ownership of property by institutions such as churches
2. te often stifling influence of the past on the present and the living
From Anglo-Norman mortmayn, feminine of morte (dead) + main (hand), from Latin mortua manus (dead hand). Ultimately from the Indo-European root man- (hand) that's also the source of manage, maintain, maneuver, manufacture, manuscript, and command.
Notes: Imagine a B-movie scene of a dead hand stretching out of a grave and you have the picture of the word mortmain. The idea behind mortmain is of a dead hand reaching beyond to hold a property in perpetuity. By extension, the word describes the past dictating the present in an oppressive manner. Unlike the passing of an asset to a child on the death of a parent, institutions such as churches hold property forever. Over time, through donations, etc., they can acquire a large amount of real estate which cannot be distributed or revert to the crown. Also, in such cases there is a loss of revenue from inheritance tax. The English King Edward I passed the Statutes of Mortmain in 1279 and again in 1290 to limit such holding of property in perpetuity without royal authorization. A.Word.A.Day
The novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is based on historical accounts of two cattlemen from Texas, who set out on a cattle drive to Montana. Augustus McCrae patterned after Oliver Loving and Woodrow F. Call after Charles Goodnight. The movie Lonesome Dove also is based on these men lives. Charles Goodnight would be the patron saint of all cowboys as he developed the cattle industry as it stands today. After the Civil War, Goodnight joined up with Oliver Loving to move cattle from Fort Belknap, Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in what became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. It was during this time, that Charles would invent the chuck wagon when he rebuilt an army surplus Studebaker wagon for more practical use on a long cattle drive. In 1871, Goodnight joined up with John Chisum and extended the trail from New Mexico to Colorado, and eventually to Wyoming. In 1876, Goodnight founded what was to become the JA Ranch in Palo Duro Canyon. Partnering with John Adair, the ranch would wind up encompassing nearly a million acres, where they maintained a herd of about 100,000 head of cattle, as well as preserving a herd of bison, which continues to survive today. Foreseeing the end of the open range, Goodnight ended his association with Adair and the JA Ranch in 1889 and bought his own ranch at what would become the village of Goodnight, exas . Here, he was reportedly the first Panhandle rancher to build fences of barbed wire. Throughout the following years, Goodnight dabbled in a number of other endeavors, establishing the Goodnight College in Armstrong County, Texas , as well as working as a newspaperman and banker. http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM5KPM
We are tempted to think that our present generation is superior to others. We judge past practices as barbaric, and congratulate ourselves on being civilized. We consider ourselves sophisticated rather than primitive, and fail to see that we share with past generations the same mixture of cruelty, kindness, wisdom and foolishness.
Thomas H. Troeger The American Organist magazine October 2009 (paraphrased excerpts)
Theories of the etymology of sincere
The most logical attributes the genesis of the word to the Latin sincerus, meaning "pure" or "clean"; but, many etymologists state that sincere is a compounding of sine cera, which means "without wax". According to this "folk etymology", in the time of the ancient Romans, devious dealers in marble and pottery would conceal defects in their products by filling the cracks and holes with wax. This sneaky trick (rubbing wax into the cracks of marble works) came to the attention of the Roman Senate, which passed a law stating that all marble purchased by the government must be sine cera, "without wax". From this law and this root, comes our modern word sincere, which means "without deceit". The present belief is that the Latin sincerus, which became sincere in English, came from sine, "without", and some lost word that was akin to caries, "decay". http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/3846
See picture of The Art Tatum Memorial Celebration Column by Californian Cork Marcheschi near the north entrance of the Lucas County Arena near Madison Avenue in Toledo, and see descriptions of all three major art works: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090928/SPORTS10/309289995/-1/RSS03
On October 2, 1997, European Union delegates signed the Amsterdam Treaty, which broadened the scope of the international organization. It amended previous EU treaties to expand the power of the EU Parliament, start the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and prepare for the influx of post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe.
Learn more about the Amsterdam Treaty. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
October 2 is the birthday of Wallace Stevens, (books by this author) born in Reading, Pennsylvania (1879). He wanted to be a journalist, but after a couple years of writing for a New York paper, he decided that he would fulfill his father's desires and go to law school. After graduating, he took a job with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, where he was in charge of inspecting surety claims. He would remain at the job for the rest of his life. Each day, he walked the two miles between his office and upper-middle class home, where he lived with his wife and daughter, and during these walks to and from work, he composed poetry. He would only let people walk with him if they didn't talk. He claimed that "poetry and surety claims aren't as unlikely a combination as they may seem. There's nothing perfunctory about them for each case is different." His first collection of poems, Harmonium, was published when he was 43 years old. The Writer’s Almanac
On October 2, Google has decorated its home page with a sketch of Mahatma Gandhi, who was born 140 years ago. His face is being used in place of the initial letter "G" of the website's onscreen name, making him one of a small number of people who have been given such prominence on the site's search page. Gandhi's birthday, October 2, is marked as a national holiday in India. Born in 1869, Gandhi insisted that non-violent civil disobedience was the best way to achieve change, and led nationwide campaigns in India—then under British rule—to achieve independence.
Previous people featured in Google's doodle include Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius, Luciano Pavarotti, Dr Seuss, Andy Warhol, Claude Money, Louis Braille, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh—and, posthumously, Michael Jackson. The doodles are overseen by Dennis Hwang, who joined the company in 2000 and has gradually been using the logo to remind people of particular dates or events.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/02/gandhi-google-doodle-logo
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Witticisms of ex-jockey and prolific author Dick Francis
Spare no thrift (rather than expenses)
Original virtue (rather than sin)
Kick a man when he’s up (rather than down)
Once they were neologisms:
maximize A Treatise on the Calculus of Variations by Lewis Buffett Carll (1890)
minimize Lawyers' Reports Annotated by Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company (1918)
negativity Calcutta Review by University of Calcutta (1844)
positivity System of Positive Polity by Auguste Comte (1876)
http://www.lexic.us/
The sauté is the key to fast suppers. Technically, "sauté" comes from a French verb which means to jump or rise up. Culinarily, it is something like pan frying, except you cook foods in a modest amount of hot fat in a wide shallow pan. The goal is cooking food through without added moisture. Let cooked meats sit at room temperature 10 minutes. Juices settle, the meat finishes cooking and when you cut into your dinner it is succulent. Weeknight Kitchen from The Splendid Table [newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org]
Recent contest on Multitasking at The Week magazine
Results: After hearing about the two Australian girls who fell into a storm drain and updated their Facebook status rather than dialing 911, we asked you to predict the next really dumb Facebook message. You texted:
FIRST PRIZE: Wondering why this idiot policeman is pulling me over.
SECOND PRIZE: Car stalled on tracks. Loud whistle sound drowning out my iPod. Grrrrrrr.
THIRD PRIZE: My bungee cord just bro
See honorable mentions at: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/100670/The_Week_contest_Dumb_Update__Sept_25_2009
adjoin
1. v. t. To join or unite to; to lie contiguous to; to be in contact with; to attach; to append.
2. v. i. To lie or be next, or in contact; to be contiguous; as, the houses adjoin.
http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/adjoin
adjunct
1. a. Conjoined; attending; consequent.
2. n. Something joined or added to another thing, but not essentially a part of it.
http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/adjunct
The Newton scale is a temperature scale devised by Isaac Newton around 1700. Applying his mind to the problem of heat, he elaborated a first qualitative temperature scale, comprising about twenty reference points ranging from "cold air in winter" to "glowing coals in the kitchen fire". This approach was rather crude and problematic, so Newton quickly became dissatisfied with it. He knew that most substances expand when heated, so he took a container of linseed oil and measured its change of volume against his reference points. He found that the volume of linseed oil grew by 7.25% when heated from the temperature of melting snow to that of boiling water. After a while, he defined the "zeroth degree of heat" as melting snow and "33 degrees of heat" as boiling water. His scale is thus a precursor of the Celsius scale, being defined by the same temperature references. Indeed it is likely that Celsius knew about the Newton scale when he invented his. Newton called his instrument a “thermometer”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_scale
palindrome noun the same forward or backwards
letters: kayak
numerals: 2002
symbols: #*#
music: (temporal palindrome) successive notes, then at a certain point, played backward
Search crab canon on www.youtube.com to find examples.
The cultural prehistory of eastern North America and the Middle Atlantic region can be divided into six periods: Paleoindian and Early Archaic (11,000 to 6500 B.C.), Middle Archaic (6500 to 2500 B.C.), Late Archaic (2500 to 1000 B.C.), Early Woodland (1000 to 500 B.C.), Middle Woodland (500 B.C. to A.D. 900), and Late Woodland (A.D. 900 to 1600). Inspired by ancient Rome, the classical architecture of Washington symbolized the order, balance, substantiality and rationality promulgated by the founders of the new republic. L’Enfant’s plan, which organized the major public buildings separately from one another but on axial lines, was the foundation for the reiteration of political order through architecture. George Washington hoped to encourage (and force) individuals to support these ideals of symbolic architectural development through aesthetic uniformity and fire suppression (Hoaglund 1989:58-59). A 1791 act required that new buildings were to be of stone or brick, no less than 35 feet high and no higher than 40 feet, for the sake of uniformity. By 1796, these zoning laws were relaxed to stimulate growth that was lagging behind the government’s expectations. Frame buildings were allowed, but not within 24 feet of a brick structure, ostensibly for fire containment (Hoaglund 1989:65; Watterston 1847:171). Privies and sheds were exempted from that restriction (Hoaglund 1989:65). James Monroe officially repealed the zoning laws for the year 1819, again with the purpose of stimulating growth (Elliott 1822:81-85). Washington, lacking an industry other than its burgeoning bureaucracy, developed a service industry to perpetuate the local economy. Housing was essential to this economy, and consequently boarding and rooming houses, and the rental of houses built on speculation by those who could afford to, became central to the city’s economic success. http://www.si.edu/ahhp/patent/2.0Results.htm
The pigpen cipher (sometimes called the masonic cipher or Freemason's cipher) is a simple substitution cipher exchanging letters for symbols based on a grid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher
Wingdings
Wingdings 2
Wingdings3
X MARKS THE SPOT
How to make a secret code http://www.ehow.com/how_2257604_make-secret-code.html
How to make a cipher wheel http://www.ehow.com/how_2304020_make-cipher-wheel.html
Spare no thrift (rather than expenses)
Original virtue (rather than sin)
Kick a man when he’s up (rather than down)
Once they were neologisms:
maximize A Treatise on the Calculus of Variations by Lewis Buffett Carll (1890)
minimize Lawyers' Reports Annotated by Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company (1918)
negativity Calcutta Review by University of Calcutta (1844)
positivity System of Positive Polity by Auguste Comte (1876)
http://www.lexic.us/
The sauté is the key to fast suppers. Technically, "sauté" comes from a French verb which means to jump or rise up. Culinarily, it is something like pan frying, except you cook foods in a modest amount of hot fat in a wide shallow pan. The goal is cooking food through without added moisture. Let cooked meats sit at room temperature 10 minutes. Juices settle, the meat finishes cooking and when you cut into your dinner it is succulent. Weeknight Kitchen from The Splendid Table [newsletter@americanpublicmedia.org]
Recent contest on Multitasking at The Week magazine
Results: After hearing about the two Australian girls who fell into a storm drain and updated their Facebook status rather than dialing 911, we asked you to predict the next really dumb Facebook message. You texted:
FIRST PRIZE: Wondering why this idiot policeman is pulling me over.
SECOND PRIZE: Car stalled on tracks. Loud whistle sound drowning out my iPod. Grrrrrrr.
THIRD PRIZE: My bungee cord just bro
See honorable mentions at: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/100670/The_Week_contest_Dumb_Update__Sept_25_2009
adjoin
1. v. t. To join or unite to; to lie contiguous to; to be in contact with; to attach; to append.
2. v. i. To lie or be next, or in contact; to be contiguous; as, the houses adjoin.
http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/adjoin
adjunct
1. a. Conjoined; attending; consequent.
2. n. Something joined or added to another thing, but not essentially a part of it.
http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/adjunct
The Newton scale is a temperature scale devised by Isaac Newton around 1700. Applying his mind to the problem of heat, he elaborated a first qualitative temperature scale, comprising about twenty reference points ranging from "cold air in winter" to "glowing coals in the kitchen fire". This approach was rather crude and problematic, so Newton quickly became dissatisfied with it. He knew that most substances expand when heated, so he took a container of linseed oil and measured its change of volume against his reference points. He found that the volume of linseed oil grew by 7.25% when heated from the temperature of melting snow to that of boiling water. After a while, he defined the "zeroth degree of heat" as melting snow and "33 degrees of heat" as boiling water. His scale is thus a precursor of the Celsius scale, being defined by the same temperature references. Indeed it is likely that Celsius knew about the Newton scale when he invented his. Newton called his instrument a “thermometer”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_scale
palindrome noun the same forward or backwards
letters: kayak
numerals: 2002
symbols: #*#
music: (temporal palindrome) successive notes, then at a certain point, played backward
Search crab canon on www.youtube.com to find examples.
The cultural prehistory of eastern North America and the Middle Atlantic region can be divided into six periods: Paleoindian and Early Archaic (11,000 to 6500 B.C.), Middle Archaic (6500 to 2500 B.C.), Late Archaic (2500 to 1000 B.C.), Early Woodland (1000 to 500 B.C.), Middle Woodland (500 B.C. to A.D. 900), and Late Woodland (A.D. 900 to 1600). Inspired by ancient Rome, the classical architecture of Washington symbolized the order, balance, substantiality and rationality promulgated by the founders of the new republic. L’Enfant’s plan, which organized the major public buildings separately from one another but on axial lines, was the foundation for the reiteration of political order through architecture. George Washington hoped to encourage (and force) individuals to support these ideals of symbolic architectural development through aesthetic uniformity and fire suppression (Hoaglund 1989:58-59). A 1791 act required that new buildings were to be of stone or brick, no less than 35 feet high and no higher than 40 feet, for the sake of uniformity. By 1796, these zoning laws were relaxed to stimulate growth that was lagging behind the government’s expectations. Frame buildings were allowed, but not within 24 feet of a brick structure, ostensibly for fire containment (Hoaglund 1989:65; Watterston 1847:171). Privies and sheds were exempted from that restriction (Hoaglund 1989:65). James Monroe officially repealed the zoning laws for the year 1819, again with the purpose of stimulating growth (Elliott 1822:81-85). Washington, lacking an industry other than its burgeoning bureaucracy, developed a service industry to perpetuate the local economy. Housing was essential to this economy, and consequently boarding and rooming houses, and the rental of houses built on speculation by those who could afford to, became central to the city’s economic success. http://www.si.edu/ahhp/patent/2.0Results.htm
The pigpen cipher (sometimes called the masonic cipher or Freemason's cipher) is a simple substitution cipher exchanging letters for symbols based on a grid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher
Wingdings
Wingdings 2
Wingdings3
X MARKS THE SPOT
How to make a secret code http://www.ehow.com/how_2257604_make-secret-code.html
How to make a cipher wheel http://www.ehow.com/how_2304020_make-cipher-wheel.html
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Another Toledo muse reader helps us with creating the useful dash.
As to your discussion of the dash--there is a setting that makes this work on MS Word. It is under Tools-->AutoCorrect Options-->Auto Format as You Type--> then click the box for "hyphens with dash"
Recent CRS Reports on Qui Tam
Qui Tam: The False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes, August 6, 2009 - "Qui tam enlists the public in the recovery of civil penalties and forfeitures. It rewards with a portion of the recovered proceeds those who sue in the government’s name. A creature of antiquity, once common, today qui tam lives on in federal law only in the False Claims Act and in two minor examples found in patent and Indian protection laws."
Qui Tam: An Abbreviated Look at the False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes, August 6, 2009.
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also known as futhark (or fuþark, derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc (due to sound changes undergone in Old English by the same six letters). Runology is the study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology forms a specialized branch of Germanic linguistics. The earliest runic inscriptions date from around 150 AD, and the alphabet was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet along with Christianization by around 700 AD in central Europe and by around 1100 AD in Scandinavia; however, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes in Scandinavia, longest in rural Sweden until the early twentieth century (used mainly for decoration as runes in Dalarna and on Runic calendars). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_alphabet
Fotopedia - the first collaborative photo encyclopedia
"Fotopedia is breathing new life into photos by building a photo encyclopedia that lets photographers and photo enthusiasts collaborate and enrich images to be useful for the whole world wide web."
Washington D.C. area landmarks in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, part two
Kryptos is a sculpture by James Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Kryptos
Scottish Rite Masonic Temple also known as House of the Temple
Designed by architect John Russell Pope and built in 1915, this building was modeled after the Tomb of Mausolus in Turkey, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/84516/500/6/
http://dcpages.com/gallery/House-of-the-Temple/ (pages 6 and 9 show pictures of library)
The Statue of Freedom was placed on top of the Capitol Dome in 1863. The Statue of Freedom is a female figure, who holds a sheathed sword in her right hand and a laurel wreath of victory and the shield of the United States with thirteen stripes in her left hand.
The statue has a helmet adorned with stars and an eagle's head. She stands on a cast-iron globe encircled with the national motto, E Pluribus Unum. The bronze statue stands 19 feet 6 inches tall and weighs about 15,000 pounds.
http://www.visitingdc.com/capitol/statue-of-freedom.htm
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial, modeled after the Pantheon of Rome--the circular, colonnaded structure in the classic style was introduced to this country by Thomas Jefferson. Architect John Russell Pope used Jefferson's own architectural tastes in the design of the Memorial. http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/travel/wash/dc73.htm
The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk in height standing 555 feet 5⅛ inches (169.294 m). There are other monumental columns (which are neither all stone nor true obelisks) which are taller. The Washington Monument is the third tallest monumental column in the world after the San Jacinto Monument in Texas and the Juche Tower in North Korea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument
Washington National Cathedral, whose official name is the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, is a cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The high altar, The Jerusalem Altar, is made from stones quarried at Solomon's Quarry near Jerusalem, reputedly where the stones for Solomon's Temple were quarried. In the floor directly in front of that altar are set ten stones from the Chapel of Moses on Mount Sinai, representing the Ten Commandments as a foundation for the Jerusalem Altar. There are many other works of art including over two hundred stained glass windows, the most familiar of which may be the Space Window, honoring man's landing on the Moon, which includes a fragment of lunar rock at its center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral
Sardinia is Italy's second largest island and the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It's also a geographical and political region of Italy, famed for its beautiful beaches and fascinating history. http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/sardinia.htm
In D. H. Lawrence’s book “Sea and Sardinia” he is quoted as saying that “Sardinia is left outside of time and history”. Sardinia’s history is very ancient. Proof has been found of human life dating back to 250,000 BC. The most common artifact on the island was left by the Nuragic civilization. Over 7000 stone, tower like structures remain yet with no written record it is a mystery as to their significance. There are many hypotheses yet one thing is agreed upon; this civilization was astronomically and mathematically advanced. It is nothing short of a miracle that these towers still stand, 3500 years later. http://news.adventure.travel/sardinia-italy%E2%80%99s-most-untouched-island/
Nuragic Culture (XVII Cent. B.C. - IX Cent. B.C.)
Nuragic culture began approx. in 1600 B.C. The population was divided in tribes, which probably often came into conflict, and was ruled by "king-shepherds". The most characteristic monuments of this period are nuraghi, truncated-conic buildings made of rocks, with a defensive purpose; sometimes the single towers were connected to each other by walls, forming complexes. The towers were high up to 18-20 m, and were
rich in passageways, stairs and inner wells. http://flat358.com/aboutus_eng.htm
The world's heaviest baby was born in 1879 in Ohio and weighed 23.8 pounds (10.8 kg), but the baby died 11 hours later, according to Guinness World Records. The heaviest baby to survive was a boy born in 1955 in Aversa, Italy. He weighed 22.6 pounds (10.2 kg). A baby in Indonesia made his way into the world in September 2009 at 19.2 pounds (8.7 kg)—about three times the weight of an average newborn. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/25/indonesia.baby/
On September 26, 1789, John Jay was commissioned as the first Chief Justice of the United States following his confirmation by the Senate. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
September 26 is the birthday of Jane Smiley, (books by this author) born in Los Angeles (1949). She's best known for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991), which begins, "At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute."
September 26 is the birthday of composer George Gershwin, born in Brooklyn, New York (1898). He made his name as a composer with the piece Rhapsody in Blue (1924), when he was just 26 years old. The Writer’s Almanac
As to your discussion of the dash--there is a setting that makes this work on MS Word. It is under Tools-->AutoCorrect Options-->Auto Format as You Type--> then click the box for "hyphens with dash"
Recent CRS Reports on Qui Tam
Qui Tam: The False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes, August 6, 2009 - "Qui tam enlists the public in the recovery of civil penalties and forfeitures. It rewards with a portion of the recovered proceeds those who sue in the government’s name. A creature of antiquity, once common, today qui tam lives on in federal law only in the False Claims Act and in two minor examples found in patent and Indian protection laws."
Qui Tam: An Abbreviated Look at the False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes, August 6, 2009.
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also known as futhark (or fuþark, derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc (due to sound changes undergone in Old English by the same six letters). Runology is the study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology forms a specialized branch of Germanic linguistics. The earliest runic inscriptions date from around 150 AD, and the alphabet was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet along with Christianization by around 700 AD in central Europe and by around 1100 AD in Scandinavia; however, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes in Scandinavia, longest in rural Sweden until the early twentieth century (used mainly for decoration as runes in Dalarna and on Runic calendars). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_alphabet
Fotopedia - the first collaborative photo encyclopedia
"Fotopedia is breathing new life into photos by building a photo encyclopedia that lets photographers and photo enthusiasts collaborate and enrich images to be useful for the whole world wide web."
Washington D.C. area landmarks in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, part two
Kryptos is a sculpture by James Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Kryptos
Scottish Rite Masonic Temple also known as House of the Temple
Designed by architect John Russell Pope and built in 1915, this building was modeled after the Tomb of Mausolus in Turkey, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/84516/500/6/
http://dcpages.com/gallery/House-of-the-Temple/ (pages 6 and 9 show pictures of library)
The Statue of Freedom was placed on top of the Capitol Dome in 1863. The Statue of Freedom is a female figure, who holds a sheathed sword in her right hand and a laurel wreath of victory and the shield of the United States with thirteen stripes in her left hand.
The statue has a helmet adorned with stars and an eagle's head. She stands on a cast-iron globe encircled with the national motto, E Pluribus Unum. The bronze statue stands 19 feet 6 inches tall and weighs about 15,000 pounds.
http://www.visitingdc.com/capitol/statue-of-freedom.htm
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial, modeled after the Pantheon of Rome--the circular, colonnaded structure in the classic style was introduced to this country by Thomas Jefferson. Architect John Russell Pope used Jefferson's own architectural tastes in the design of the Memorial. http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/travel/wash/dc73.htm
The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk in height standing 555 feet 5⅛ inches (169.294 m). There are other monumental columns (which are neither all stone nor true obelisks) which are taller. The Washington Monument is the third tallest monumental column in the world after the San Jacinto Monument in Texas and the Juche Tower in North Korea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument
Washington National Cathedral, whose official name is the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, is a cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The high altar, The Jerusalem Altar, is made from stones quarried at Solomon's Quarry near Jerusalem, reputedly where the stones for Solomon's Temple were quarried. In the floor directly in front of that altar are set ten stones from the Chapel of Moses on Mount Sinai, representing the Ten Commandments as a foundation for the Jerusalem Altar. There are many other works of art including over two hundred stained glass windows, the most familiar of which may be the Space Window, honoring man's landing on the Moon, which includes a fragment of lunar rock at its center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral
Sardinia is Italy's second largest island and the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It's also a geographical and political region of Italy, famed for its beautiful beaches and fascinating history. http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/sardinia.htm
In D. H. Lawrence’s book “Sea and Sardinia” he is quoted as saying that “Sardinia is left outside of time and history”. Sardinia’s history is very ancient. Proof has been found of human life dating back to 250,000 BC. The most common artifact on the island was left by the Nuragic civilization. Over 7000 stone, tower like structures remain yet with no written record it is a mystery as to their significance. There are many hypotheses yet one thing is agreed upon; this civilization was astronomically and mathematically advanced. It is nothing short of a miracle that these towers still stand, 3500 years later. http://news.adventure.travel/sardinia-italy%E2%80%99s-most-untouched-island/
Nuragic Culture (XVII Cent. B.C. - IX Cent. B.C.)
Nuragic culture began approx. in 1600 B.C. The population was divided in tribes, which probably often came into conflict, and was ruled by "king-shepherds". The most characteristic monuments of this period are nuraghi, truncated-conic buildings made of rocks, with a defensive purpose; sometimes the single towers were connected to each other by walls, forming complexes. The towers were high up to 18-20 m, and were
rich in passageways, stairs and inner wells. http://flat358.com/aboutus_eng.htm
The world's heaviest baby was born in 1879 in Ohio and weighed 23.8 pounds (10.8 kg), but the baby died 11 hours later, according to Guinness World Records. The heaviest baby to survive was a boy born in 1955 in Aversa, Italy. He weighed 22.6 pounds (10.2 kg). A baby in Indonesia made his way into the world in September 2009 at 19.2 pounds (8.7 kg)—about three times the weight of an average newborn. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/25/indonesia.baby/
On September 26, 1789, John Jay was commissioned as the first Chief Justice of the United States following his confirmation by the Senate. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
September 26 is the birthday of Jane Smiley, (books by this author) born in Los Angeles (1949). She's best known for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991), which begins, "At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute."
September 26 is the birthday of composer George Gershwin, born in Brooklyn, New York (1898). He made his name as a composer with the piece Rhapsody in Blue (1924), when he was just 26 years old. The Writer’s Almanac
Friday, September 25, 2009
Toledo muse reader shows faster way to make a consistent dash than using symbol chart. Thanks, Sue.
You can do a long dash another way. Just type (2) hyphens and hit enter and then go back up to the line and you have a long dash and continue typing.
You Say Soda, I Say Pop!
Soda pop. It's at every party and restaurant. It's a frequent staple of many Americans' meals. Yet soda has frequently been linked to an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and osteoporosis. There are 16 teaspoons of sugar in every 20 oz. bottle of soda! Take a moment to think about what soda may be doing—or not doing—for you. Here are some alternatives:
• Sparkling water with or without flavor
• Flavored, unsweetened teas
• Bottled water
• Fresh squeezed lemon or lime in plain or sparkling water
• Juice spritzers made by adding sparkling water to 100% juice
Healthyroads.com
Washington D.C. area landmarks in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
The Capitol was originally designed by William Thornton. And was subsequently modified by Stephen Hallet, Benjamin Latrobe and then Charles Bulfinch. The current dome and the House and Senate wings were designed by Thomas U. Walter and August Schoenborn and were completed under the supervision of Edward Clark. The building is marked by its central dome above a rotunda and two wings, one for each chamber of Congress: the north wing is the Senate chamber and the south wing is the House of Representatives chamber. Above these chambers are galleries where people can watch the Senate and House of Representatives. It is an example of the Neoclassical architecture style.
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/North_America/United_States_of_America/Washington_DC/Things_To_Do-Washington_DC-US_Capitol_Building-BR-1.html
Franklin School was designed by prominent Washington architect Adolph Cluss and completed in 1869.
http://www.dcpreservation.org/endangered/2005/franklin.html
Freedom Plaza, originally known as Western Plaza, is an open plaza in Northwest Washington, D.C., located at the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, adjacent to Pershing Park. Designed in 1980, the plaza is mostly composed of stone, inlaid with a depiction of parts of Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's plan for the City of Washington.[1] The plaza was renamed in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked on his "I Have a Dream" speech in the nearby Willard Hotel. In 1988, a time capsule containing a Bible, a robe, and other relics of King's was planted at the site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Plaza
George Washington sculpture To commemorate the centennial of Washington's birth in 1832, Congress commissioned Horatio Greenough to create a statue to be displayed in the Capitol Rotunda. As soon as the marble statue arrived in the capital city in 1841, however, it attracted controversy and criticism. Greenough had modeled his figure of Washington on a classical Greek statue of Zeus, but many Americans found the sight of a half-naked Washington offensive, even comical. After the statue was relocated to the east lawn of the Capitol in 1843, some joked that Washington was desperately reaching for his clothes, on exhibit at the Patent Office several blocks to the north. In 1908 Greenough's statue finally came in from the cold: Congress transferred it to the Smithsonian. It remained at the Castle until 1964, when it was moved to the new Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History). http://www.smithsonianlegacies.si.edu/objectdescription.cfm?ID=66
To be continued
Librarians and booksellers are two of my favorite people. Anyone who loves books so much as to dedicate his life to them can't be all that bad. Unfortunately there are some who feel threatened by certain books and call for them to be banned or destroyed. People have a right to be offended by any book. All they have to do is not buy or borrow it. The problem begins when they try to impose their views on others by trying to ban it. As an antidote to banning, the last week of September is observed in the U.S. as Banned Books Week. To celebrate it, we are going to feature words relating to censorship and mutilation of books. Even though people after whom some of these words are coined have long gone, censorship is still alive. But there's hope. I leave you with this thoughtful letter from a librarian to a patron.
comstockery (KOM-stok-uh-ree, KUM-) noun
overzealous censorship of material considered obscene
After Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. He crusaded against anything he considered immoral. Nothing escaped his wrath--even anatomy textbooks for medical students and the draping of mannequins in public view in shop windows were obscene to him. He lobbied for laws against mailing any material that could be perceived as promoting immorality. He was appointed postal inspector and he seized books, postcards, and other materials by the boatload. He boasted that he had arrested more than 3,000 people and driven more than 15 to suicide. George Bernard Shaw coined the word comstockery after him when he attacked the American production of Shaw's play "Mrs. Warren's Profession".
bowdlerize (BOAD-luh-ryz) verb tr,
to remove or change parts (of a book, play, movie, etc.) considered objectionable.
After Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), a British doctor, who edited the Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's works. Bowdler believed the original wasn't suitable for the delicate sensibilities of women and children. He also edited other books, such as Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Old Testament in a similar manner.
grangerize (GRAYN-juh-ryz) verb tr.
1. to mutilate a book by clipping pictures out of it
2. to illustrate a book by adding pictures cut from other books
After James Granger (1723-1776), an English clergyman whose Biographical History of England had blank leaves for illustrations, to be filled with pictures, clippings, etc. by the reader. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Buried treasure—continued
Experts say a hoard of buried treasure discovered in a farming field in central England
is "war booty" and probably belonged to a pagan king. The bright treasure is believed to have been buried in the Dark Ages, some time in the seventh or eighth century.
Archaeologist Kevin Leahy says the stash contains 1,500 pieces of gold and silver and most of the objects used to be weapons. "It's mostly sword fittings, which is quite incredible. There are also strips of gold decorated with garnets, which as yet we haven't been able to identify, strange little gold snakes," he said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/25/2697131.htm
On September 25, 1555, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed the Peace of Augsburg, allowing princes within the Empire to choose whether their lands would be Catholic or Protestant. People living in a given principality were then permitted to move to a different region within the Empire if their faith differed from the one chosen by the prince their home state.
On September 25, 1789, the United States Congress sent twelve proposed constitutional amendments to the state legislatures for ratification. Ten of these were adopted in 1791 and became known as the Bill of Rights. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
You can do a long dash another way. Just type (2) hyphens and hit enter and then go back up to the line and you have a long dash and continue typing.
You Say Soda, I Say Pop!
Soda pop. It's at every party and restaurant. It's a frequent staple of many Americans' meals. Yet soda has frequently been linked to an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and osteoporosis. There are 16 teaspoons of sugar in every 20 oz. bottle of soda! Take a moment to think about what soda may be doing—or not doing—for you. Here are some alternatives:
• Sparkling water with or without flavor
• Flavored, unsweetened teas
• Bottled water
• Fresh squeezed lemon or lime in plain or sparkling water
• Juice spritzers made by adding sparkling water to 100% juice
Healthyroads.com
Washington D.C. area landmarks in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
The Capitol was originally designed by William Thornton. And was subsequently modified by Stephen Hallet, Benjamin Latrobe and then Charles Bulfinch. The current dome and the House and Senate wings were designed by Thomas U. Walter and August Schoenborn and were completed under the supervision of Edward Clark. The building is marked by its central dome above a rotunda and two wings, one for each chamber of Congress: the north wing is the Senate chamber and the south wing is the House of Representatives chamber. Above these chambers are galleries where people can watch the Senate and House of Representatives. It is an example of the Neoclassical architecture style.
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/North_America/United_States_of_America/Washington_DC/Things_To_Do-Washington_DC-US_Capitol_Building-BR-1.html
Franklin School was designed by prominent Washington architect Adolph Cluss and completed in 1869.
http://www.dcpreservation.org/endangered/2005/franklin.html
Freedom Plaza, originally known as Western Plaza, is an open plaza in Northwest Washington, D.C., located at the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, adjacent to Pershing Park. Designed in 1980, the plaza is mostly composed of stone, inlaid with a depiction of parts of Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's plan for the City of Washington.[1] The plaza was renamed in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked on his "I Have a Dream" speech in the nearby Willard Hotel. In 1988, a time capsule containing a Bible, a robe, and other relics of King's was planted at the site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Plaza
George Washington sculpture To commemorate the centennial of Washington's birth in 1832, Congress commissioned Horatio Greenough to create a statue to be displayed in the Capitol Rotunda. As soon as the marble statue arrived in the capital city in 1841, however, it attracted controversy and criticism. Greenough had modeled his figure of Washington on a classical Greek statue of Zeus, but many Americans found the sight of a half-naked Washington offensive, even comical. After the statue was relocated to the east lawn of the Capitol in 1843, some joked that Washington was desperately reaching for his clothes, on exhibit at the Patent Office several blocks to the north. In 1908 Greenough's statue finally came in from the cold: Congress transferred it to the Smithsonian. It remained at the Castle until 1964, when it was moved to the new Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History). http://www.smithsonianlegacies.si.edu/objectdescription.cfm?ID=66
To be continued
Librarians and booksellers are two of my favorite people. Anyone who loves books so much as to dedicate his life to them can't be all that bad. Unfortunately there are some who feel threatened by certain books and call for them to be banned or destroyed. People have a right to be offended by any book. All they have to do is not buy or borrow it. The problem begins when they try to impose their views on others by trying to ban it. As an antidote to banning, the last week of September is observed in the U.S. as Banned Books Week. To celebrate it, we are going to feature words relating to censorship and mutilation of books. Even though people after whom some of these words are coined have long gone, censorship is still alive. But there's hope. I leave you with this thoughtful letter from a librarian to a patron.
comstockery (KOM-stok-uh-ree, KUM-) noun
overzealous censorship of material considered obscene
After Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. He crusaded against anything he considered immoral. Nothing escaped his wrath--even anatomy textbooks for medical students and the draping of mannequins in public view in shop windows were obscene to him. He lobbied for laws against mailing any material that could be perceived as promoting immorality. He was appointed postal inspector and he seized books, postcards, and other materials by the boatload. He boasted that he had arrested more than 3,000 people and driven more than 15 to suicide. George Bernard Shaw coined the word comstockery after him when he attacked the American production of Shaw's play "Mrs. Warren's Profession".
bowdlerize (BOAD-luh-ryz) verb tr,
to remove or change parts (of a book, play, movie, etc.) considered objectionable.
After Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), a British doctor, who edited the Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's works. Bowdler believed the original wasn't suitable for the delicate sensibilities of women and children. He also edited other books, such as Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Old Testament in a similar manner.
grangerize (GRAYN-juh-ryz) verb tr.
1. to mutilate a book by clipping pictures out of it
2. to illustrate a book by adding pictures cut from other books
After James Granger (1723-1776), an English clergyman whose Biographical History of England had blank leaves for illustrations, to be filled with pictures, clippings, etc. by the reader. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Buried treasure—continued
Experts say a hoard of buried treasure discovered in a farming field in central England
is "war booty" and probably belonged to a pagan king. The bright treasure is believed to have been buried in the Dark Ages, some time in the seventh or eighth century.
Archaeologist Kevin Leahy says the stash contains 1,500 pieces of gold and silver and most of the objects used to be weapons. "It's mostly sword fittings, which is quite incredible. There are also strips of gold decorated with garnets, which as yet we haven't been able to identify, strange little gold snakes," he said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/25/2697131.htm
On September 25, 1555, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed the Peace of Augsburg, allowing princes within the Empire to choose whether their lands would be Catholic or Protestant. People living in a given principality were then permitted to move to a different region within the Empire if their faith differed from the one chosen by the prince their home state.
On September 25, 1789, the United States Congress sent twelve proposed constitutional amendments to the state legislatures for ratification. Ten of these were adopted in 1791 and became known as the Bill of Rights. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Thursday, September 24, 2009
A Toledo muse reader has reminded me that I wrote of MapsCompare at http://geshout.com/mapscompare/all.php and she has learned to use one its map features found separately at http://www.bing.com/. A couple of times, she has found maps at bing.com more accurate than Google. Bing has more than maps, including images, news and travel information. Thanks, Julie.
Census Bureau Releases 2008 American Community Survey Data
News release: "The U.S. Census Bureau has released the latest American Community Survey (ACS) data, providing a statistical portrait of the characteristics of the nation’s population in 2008. / Detailed tables / ACS Media Toolkit / 2008 ACS Questionnaire. According to the new snapshot, one-in-four people in Texas (24.1 percent) lacked health insurance in 2008, the highest rate in the nation. At the other end of the spectrum, fewer than one-in-20 Massachusetts residents (4.1 percent) lacked coverage."
"Five states—Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana and Michigan—saw real median household income fall between 2007 and 2008. Just one state had a decline between 2006 and 2007.
The total foreign-born population represented 12.5 percent of the population in 2008; it was 12.6 percent in 2007.
The percentage of women 15 and over who have never married was 28.1 percent in 2008, up from 27.6 percent in 2007 and 27.3 percent in 2006.
California homeowners with mortgages ($2,384) had the median housing costs in the nation ew Jersey had the second highest median housing cost ($2,360). Hawaii ($2,265) and the District of Columbia ($2,218) followed, but were not significantly different from each other. Rounding out the top six were Connecticut ($2,108) and Massachusetts ($2,105), which also were not significantly different from each other."
A peninsula is a piece of land that is nearly surrounded by water but connected to mainland via an isthmus. Word origin: Latin paenīnsula : paene, almost + īnsula, island. A peninsula can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, or spit.[1]
Delmarva Peninsula, encompassing parts of Maryland and Virginia, and all of Delaware
Florida is a well-known example of a large peninsula, with its land area divided between the larger Florida peninsula and the smaller Florida panhandle on the north and west. It has several smaller peninsulas within it. Much of Tampa lies on a peninsula jutting out into Tampa Bay.
Long Island, was once a peninsula connected to North America during the Ice Ages.
Michigan is very distinguishable for its mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula of Michigan which includes:
Dyke Peninsula
Fountain Point
Leelanau Peninsula
Old Mission Peninsula
The Thumb
Woodtick Peninsula
The northern half of Michigan is called the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and contains:
Abbaye Peninsula
Garden Peninsula
Keweenaw Peninsula
Stonington Peninsula
New Jersey Peninsula - This state can be viewed as a peninsula surrounded by the Delaware River, Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peninsulas#United_States
A hyphen connects, and a dash separates. The word hyphen is not used very much anymore, but you probably see them everyday, for instance slk-law.com or buckeye-express.com.
A Hyphen is Not a Dash by Tina Blue
When you need a dash, for whatever reason, you need a dash--not a hyphen. There are two kinds of dashes: the n-dash and the m-dash. The n-dash is called that because it is the same width as the letter "n". The m-dash is longer--the width of the letter "m". We use the n-dash for numerical ranges, as in "6-10 years." When we need a dash as a form of parenthetical punctuation in a sentence--as I have been using it rather freely already in this article--we use the m-dash. The problem is, most of us can't produce a dash on our typewriters or keyboards. Microsoft Word and other word processing programs will sometimes recognize two successive hyphens--typed with no space between them--as an m-dash and translate the double hyphen into a respectable dash. But at other times--and for no reason that I can fathom--it fails to make the translation and I end up with a double hyphen rather than a true dash. http://grammartips.homestead.com/dash.html
Note: On my keyboard, I use the key between 0 and = to produce a hyphen (-).
To produce a dash, I click on Insert on the tool bar, Symbol, General Punctuation, select an em dash (—), and, putting my cursor in the desired spot, click insert.
A harvest of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of one expert, has poured out of a Staffordshire field—the largest hoard of gold from the period ever found. The weapons and helmet decorations, coins and Christian crosses amount to more than 1500 pieces, with hundreds still embedded in blocks of soil. It adds up to 5kg of gold—three times the amount found in the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939—and 2.5kg of silver, and may be the swag from a spectacularly successful raiding party of warlike Mercians, some time around AD700. The first scraps of gold were found in July in a farm field by Terry Herbert, an amateur metal detector who lives alone in a council flat on disability benefit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/24/anglo-saxon-treasure-hoard-gold-staffordshire-metal-detector
Quote
And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/taming_shrew/taming_shrew.1.2.html
On September 24, 1664, the Netherlands surrendered New Amsterdam to Great Britain, which changed the city's name to New York.
On September 24, 1789, Congress instituted a three-tiered federal judicial structure topped by a Supreme Court with the passage of "An Act to establish the Judicial Courts of the United States", later known as the Judiciary Act of 1789.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Census Bureau Releases 2008 American Community Survey Data
News release: "The U.S. Census Bureau has released the latest American Community Survey (ACS) data, providing a statistical portrait of the characteristics of the nation’s population in 2008. / Detailed tables / ACS Media Toolkit / 2008 ACS Questionnaire. According to the new snapshot, one-in-four people in Texas (24.1 percent) lacked health insurance in 2008, the highest rate in the nation. At the other end of the spectrum, fewer than one-in-20 Massachusetts residents (4.1 percent) lacked coverage."
"Five states—Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana and Michigan—saw real median household income fall between 2007 and 2008. Just one state had a decline between 2006 and 2007.
The total foreign-born population represented 12.5 percent of the population in 2008; it was 12.6 percent in 2007.
The percentage of women 15 and over who have never married was 28.1 percent in 2008, up from 27.6 percent in 2007 and 27.3 percent in 2006.
California homeowners with mortgages ($2,384) had the median housing costs in the nation ew Jersey had the second highest median housing cost ($2,360). Hawaii ($2,265) and the District of Columbia ($2,218) followed, but were not significantly different from each other. Rounding out the top six were Connecticut ($2,108) and Massachusetts ($2,105), which also were not significantly different from each other."
A peninsula is a piece of land that is nearly surrounded by water but connected to mainland via an isthmus. Word origin: Latin paenīnsula : paene, almost + īnsula, island. A peninsula can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, or spit.[1]
Delmarva Peninsula, encompassing parts of Maryland and Virginia, and all of Delaware
Florida is a well-known example of a large peninsula, with its land area divided between the larger Florida peninsula and the smaller Florida panhandle on the north and west. It has several smaller peninsulas within it. Much of Tampa lies on a peninsula jutting out into Tampa Bay.
Long Island, was once a peninsula connected to North America during the Ice Ages.
Michigan is very distinguishable for its mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula of Michigan which includes:
Dyke Peninsula
Fountain Point
Leelanau Peninsula
Old Mission Peninsula
The Thumb
Woodtick Peninsula
The northern half of Michigan is called the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and contains:
Abbaye Peninsula
Garden Peninsula
Keweenaw Peninsula
Stonington Peninsula
New Jersey Peninsula - This state can be viewed as a peninsula surrounded by the Delaware River, Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peninsulas#United_States
A hyphen connects, and a dash separates. The word hyphen is not used very much anymore, but you probably see them everyday, for instance slk-law.com or buckeye-express.com.
A Hyphen is Not a Dash by Tina Blue
When you need a dash, for whatever reason, you need a dash--not a hyphen. There are two kinds of dashes: the n-dash and the m-dash. The n-dash is called that because it is the same width as the letter "n". The m-dash is longer--the width of the letter "m". We use the n-dash for numerical ranges, as in "6-10 years." When we need a dash as a form of parenthetical punctuation in a sentence--as I have been using it rather freely already in this article--we use the m-dash. The problem is, most of us can't produce a dash on our typewriters or keyboards. Microsoft Word and other word processing programs will sometimes recognize two successive hyphens--typed with no space between them--as an m-dash and translate the double hyphen into a respectable dash. But at other times--and for no reason that I can fathom--it fails to make the translation and I end up with a double hyphen rather than a true dash. http://grammartips.homestead.com/dash.html
Note: On my keyboard, I use the key between 0 and = to produce a hyphen (-).
To produce a dash, I click on Insert on the tool bar, Symbol, General Punctuation, select an em dash (—), and, putting my cursor in the desired spot, click insert.
A harvest of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of one expert, has poured out of a Staffordshire field—the largest hoard of gold from the period ever found. The weapons and helmet decorations, coins and Christian crosses amount to more than 1500 pieces, with hundreds still embedded in blocks of soil. It adds up to 5kg of gold—three times the amount found in the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939—and 2.5kg of silver, and may be the swag from a spectacularly successful raiding party of warlike Mercians, some time around AD700. The first scraps of gold were found in July in a farm field by Terry Herbert, an amateur metal detector who lives alone in a council flat on disability benefit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/24/anglo-saxon-treasure-hoard-gold-staffordshire-metal-detector
Quote
And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/taming_shrew/taming_shrew.1.2.html
On September 24, 1664, the Netherlands surrendered New Amsterdam to Great Britain, which changed the city's name to New York.
On September 24, 1789, Congress instituted a three-tiered federal judicial structure topped by a Supreme Court with the passage of "An Act to establish the Judicial Courts of the United States", later known as the Judiciary Act of 1789.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
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