"Judging the Booker prize has made me wonder how worthwhile it take second, and third, literary looks" by Stuart Kelly   I had an awkward moment during this year's deliberations over the ManBooker prize.  We had just trudged through 151 novels (I actually read a few more than that – 183 in all to be precise – but that's a tale for a different time) and we began the process of re-reading the longlist.  As I re-cracked a spine, like some kind of literary Bane, it struck me that I don't re-read that often.  I re-read classics most:  Scott and Dickens, Eliot and Woolf, Melville and Zola most often.  I've read Ulysses more times than I can remember (but sometimes just sections), and Perec's Life:  A User's Manual certainly more than thrice.  But contemporary novels?  It was an embarrassing blank.  I've certainly read Midnight's Children more than once, and I've read Golding's Rites Of Passage and Byatt's Possession twice.  Occasionally, with a cold, I've re-read The Mouse And His Child by Russell Hoban.  I've dipped back into many books, from Finnegans Wake to The Recognitions by William Gaddis to Christine Brooke-Rose's Textermination.  But actually re-reading?  Less than a handful of modern novels.  The Man Booker judges are always in a strange situation, provided they do the work as assigned.  We will have read the winner more frequently and more stringently than the so-called average reader.  I should, for the record, say that no reader is average.  Each has a unique engagement with a text, and every one of those responses is valid, if not right.  But let's face it, not many of the slightly fictitious reading public are going to read any Man Booker winner three times.  When we came to re-re-read the shortlist, certain things became evident.  A crime novel would have to be more than just a crime novel to survive the second "re".  It might be impressive first time round, and the second time one could be impressed by the precision with which the solution had been placed and patterned.  Third time?  A comic novel will struggle too:  is there any joke that's funny the third time you hear or read it?  I lovedSteve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole, and have recommended it to many people, but haven't actually re-read it (even though bits of it, in memory alone, make me laugh).  http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/31/re-reading-rereading-man-booker

The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. Eleanor Catton was announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries on Tuesday 15 October.  Find this year's nominees and judges at http://www.themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize-2013

Parodies  Derek Flint is a fictional world adventurer and master spy featured in a series of movies and comic books.  Flint is a parody of James Bond and Doc Savage.  Derek Flint is an agent for ZOWIE.  ZOWIE stands for the Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage.  In 1965, 20th Century Fox presented its own version of a master spy to take on United Artist's popular James Bond franchise.  The first three James Bond movies had already made considerable money for that studio so Fox decided to try for itself.  Their hero was wholly a celluloid creation, however, not a transfer from a book series.  Derek Flint was the creation of Hal Fimberg, whose writing credentials, though sparse, did go back quite a few years.  Whether it was in keeping with a growing trend to try to 'out-Bond Bond' or, more likely, to spoof the very macho Double-0 agent, Flint was the best at whatever he did and he did a lot.  The abilities and achievements of Derek Flint include a black belt in Judo, Olympic medals in at least 5 different events, degrees from 17 different universities, creation of highly prized paintings, and the ability to speak fluently in 45 various languages and dialects.  Flint was parodied in Eurospy films where Raimondo Vianello played "Derek Flit" in Il vostro super agente Flit (1966) and Italian comic book artist Franco Bonvicini played "Derek Flit" in Franco and Ciccio's Come rubammo la bomba atomica (1967)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Flint 

The Librarian films with Noel Wyle as librarian/explorer Flynn Carsen were parodies on the adventure genre, especially Indiana Jones with Harrison Ford.  "In the fictional world of The Librarian, a series of made-for-TV movies from TNT, there exists a secret society of Librarians who are the guardians of a wide range of magical and mythical relics.”   See The World of the Librarian franchise at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_The_Librarian_franchise

An individual’s genotype is the genetic code they carry in their cells that provides information for a particular trait.  Their phenotype is the visible, expressed trait, such as hair color.  The phenotype depends upon the genotype but can also be influenced by environmental factors.  http://www.diffen.com/difference/Genotype_vs_Phenotype  See also Genotype versus Phenotype including pictures at  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIA1Genotypevsphenotype.shtml and Genotype and Phenotype at http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/BioInfo/SD.Geno.HP.html

 

Rodents are mammals of the order Rodentia, characterised by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws that must be kept short by gnawing.  About 40% of mammal species are rodents, and they are found in vast numbers on all continents other than Antarctica.  Common rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, and hamsters.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodent 

The Mustelidae (from Latin mustela, weasel), are a family of carnivorous mammals, including the otters, badgers, weasels, martens and wolverines.  Mustelids are diverse and the largest family in the order Carnivora.  The internal classification still seems to be rather unsettled, with rival proposals containing between two and eight subfamilies.  Mustelids vary greatly in size and behaviour.  The least weasel is not much larger than a mouse, while the giant otter can measure up to 2.4 m (7.9 ft) in length and sea otters can exceed 45 kg (99 lb) in weight.  The wolverine can crush bones as thick as the femur of a moose to get at the marrow, and has been seen attempting to drive bears away from their kills.  The sea otter uses rocks to break open shellfish to eat. The marten is largely arboreal, while the badger digs extensive networks of tunnels, called setts.  Some mustelids have been domesticated: the ferret and the tayra are kept as pets (although the tayra requires a Dangerous Wild Animals licence in the UK), or as working animals for hunting or vermin control.  Others have been important in the fur trade—the mink is often raised for its fur.  As well as being one of the most species-rich families in the order Carnivora, the family Mustelidae is one of the oldest.  Mustelid-like forms first appeared about 40 million years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of rodents.  The direct ancestors of the modern mustelids first appeared about 15 million years ago.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustelidae 

The best laid schemes of mice and men means the most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.  From Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse, 1786.  It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest.  The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse: 

 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone] In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy.

 

The poem is of course the source for the title of John Steinbeck's 1937 novel - Of Mice and Men.   http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-best-laid-schemes-of-mice-and-men.html

Numerous works have referred to or parodied aspects of the Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, perhaps most notably the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, which often had one character asking another, à la Lon Chaney's characterization of Lennie, "which way did he go, George; which way did he go?"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men

Top 25 Films of 1939  "Considered the greatest year in motion pictures and it's hard to argue."    http://www.imdb.com/list/dcgWab8PEAU/  The best movies of 1939 (85 most notable)  Of Mice and Men is 17th  on the list http://www.films101.com/y1939r.htm

 

 

Art Deco or Deco, is an influential visual arts design style which first appeared in France after World War I, flourishing internationally in the 1930s and 1940s before its popularity waned after World War II.  It is an eclectic style that combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials.  The first use of the term Art Deco has been attributed to architect Le Corbusier, who penned a series of articles in his journal L'Esprit nouveau under the headline 1925 Expo:  Arts Déco.  He was referring to the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts).  The term came into more general use in 1966, when a French exhibition celebrating the 1925 event was held under the title Les Années 25:  Art Déco/Bauhaus/Stijl/Esprit Nouveau.   Here the phrase was used to distinguish French decorative crafts of the Belle Epoque from those of later periods.  The term Art Deco has since been applied to a wide variety of works produced during the Interwar period (L'Entre Deux Guerres), and even to those of the Bauhaus in Germany.  However Art Deco originated in France.  It has been argued that the term should be applied to French works and those produced in countries directly influenced by France.  See many pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco 

The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern and Industrial Decorative Arts), held in Paris in 1925 was a vast state-sponsored fair that dazzled more than 16 million visitors during its seven-month run.  The works exhibited—everything from architecture and interior design to jewelry and perfumes—were principally intended to promote and proclaim French supremacy in the production of luxury goods.  The primary requirement for inclusion (more than twenty countries were invited to participate) was that all works had to be thoroughly modern, no copying of historical styles of the past would be permitted.  Nonetheless, much of what was exhibited was firmly rooted in the traditions of the past.  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/frdc/hd_frdc.htm

EPONYMS from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

pecksniffian  (pek-SNIF-ee-uhn)  adjective  Pretending to have high moral principles; sanctimonious, hypocritical.  After Seth Pecksniff, a character in Charles Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit.

smellfungus  (smel-FUNG-uhs)  noun  A habitual faultfinder or complainer.  After Smelfungus, a hypercritical character in Laurence Sterne's 1768 novel, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.

milquetoast  (MILK-tohst)  noun  A timid, unassertive person.  After Caspar Milquetoast, a comic strip character by H.T. Webster (1885-1952).  A synonym of the word is milksop.

bumbledom  (BUHM-buhl-duhm)  noun  Behavior characteristic of a pompous and self-important petty official.  After Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist.  Bumble was a fussy, self-important beadle (a minor parish officer) of the workhouse where Oliver Twist was born.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day  From:  Gregory M. Harris  Subject:  Smellfungus  Smellfungus appears also to be a tosspot word, that is, one where the verb precedes the object, like breakfast, scarecrow, killjoy, and of course, tosspot. 

Edward Dart was one of the most prolific Chicago architects of the 1950s through the 1970s until he died suddenly at age 53.  Best known for his church designs, and at one time referred to as Chicago’s leading church designer, Dart designed modernist homes and other structures, primarily in the Chicago area.  His incorporation of a building to its site, the natural materials he selected for his structures and the spaces he created truly made Dart a unique mid-century architect.   Despite this broad body of work, though, Dart remains largely unknown outside of the Chicago architecture community.  Edward Dupaquier Dart was born on May 28, 1922 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Following high school, Edward Dart attended the University of Virginia and eventually Yale School of Architecture.  At Yale, he encountered visiting professors such as Pietro Belluschi, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen and Paul Schweikher.  These architects introduced Dart to the modern architecture of the 1940s and ultimately influenced the development of his design philosophy.  Read more and see pictures at http://chicagomodern.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/an-intro-to-edward-dart/  See also Discovering Dart at http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2013/winter/discovering-dart.html  and Edward Dart:  Re-Discovering a Modernist Architect at http://blog.preservationnation.org/2013/01/01/edward-dart-re-discovering-a-modernist-architect/ 

Spoof commercial:  fake commercial/fauxcommercial

Infomercial:  paid programming

Parody commercial:  fake infomercial

Masquerade commercial:  imitates a talk show, a news program or documentary--but is actually an advertisement

Instructor Greg Hatch, and the students of ART 1200  Documents, have created an unique installation in the Ohio University Libraries.  Students were asked to create bookmarks for a book of their choice in the collections of Alden Library that reflected their personal interests and course of study.  The goal of the bookmark is to increase the likelihood of the book being selected and investigated by patrons, thus increasing knowledge of their favored subject and becoming a advocate for it.  http://www.library.ohiou.edu/2013/10/books-check-them-out-an-art-1200-project-in-the-library/

Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford who examined the dangers of multitasking, has died at 55.   Nass, a sociologist who was among the first academics to sound alarms about the dangers of chronic multitasking and the decline in the kind of face-to-face interactions that he so unabashedly enjoyed with students and colleagues, died Nov. 2, 2013 at Stanford Sierra Camp near South Lake Tahoe.  After several years of studies, Nass and other Stanford researchers came to some disturbing conclusions.  They found that the heaviest multitaskers — those who invariably said they could focus like laser beams whenever they wanted — were terrible at various cognitive chores like organizing information, switching between tasks and discerning significance.  "They're suckers for irrelevancy," he said.  "Everything distracts them."  More worrisome to Nass was his finding that people who regularly jumped into four or more information streams had a tougher time concentrating on just one thing even when they weren't multitasking.  By his estimate, "the top 25%" of Stanford's students were in that category.  In a 2011 lecture at the university, Nass said writing samples from freshman multitaskers showed a tendency toward shorter sentences and disconnected paragraphs.  "We see less complex ideas," he said.  "They're living and writing in a staccato world."  Over the years, "most academics, including myself, kept seeing it as an aberration," he told PBS' "Frontline" in 2009.  "You'd see someone multitasking and go, 'Ha ha ha, those wacky college kids — OK, they'll grow out of it.'  And then you start looking around and go, 'Wait a minute, they're growing into it, not out of it.'  Little kids are growing up with it.  Older people are being stuck with it."  "We could essentially be undermining the thinking ability of our society," he said.  "We could essentially be dumbing down the world."  Nass' research struck a chord with parents worried about their media-hungry children and workers swamped in emails they were expected to answer immediately.  He also did widely publicized work on the computerized voices and digital screens that can either drive motorists crazy or make them a little safer.  "He was on the leading edge of a dialogue society is going to have on when technology is appropriate and when it's too much," said David Strayer, a University of Utah neuroscientist and an expert on distracted driving.  "His work will only gain in prominence because society is becoming that much more technological."  Steve Chawkins  http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-clifford-nass-20131107,0,3189434.story#axzz2jyCIMxeP

In Cape Town, South Africa, the defining weather feature is the cloud deck that develops atop of Table Mountain, which overlooks the city.  This cloud deck is known as the "table cloth" and forms whenever there is a moist wind from the south off the surrounding water.  This wind, sometimes called the Cape Doctor because it sweeps away the city's smog, forces the air up the mountain where it cools, condenses and forms the table cloth cloud deck.  See pictures at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2009/08/cape_towns_table_cloth.html 

In Seattle, the "mountains are out" if they are not visible from the city due to weather.

Why I Live in this Rainy Place by Libby Wagner (extract)

Because today the Cascades spread out to the East, and the Olympics, the West,
snow-capped and promising, perfectly outlined in the morning sky.

Because this is the only place I know where people say, “the mountains are out today!” as if they dissolve behind the fog and mist, making a round-trip journey to another locale.

Because if it’s true, that we have more than 300 days of gray, then those 65 are perfect
in their possibility, their expansive hope and optimism.  http://libbywagner.com/rainyplace/ 

What is barley by Jolinda Hackett  Whole grain barley is a healthy high-fiber, high-protein whole grain boasting numerous health benefits.  When cooked, barley has a chewy texture and nutty flavor, similar to brown rice.  Although soup is the most popular way to eat barley, you can use it like any other grain such as couscous or rice.  Serve a curry or stir-fry over barley instead of rice or make a barley pilaf.  Find cooking instructions and links to recipes at http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glossary/g/barley.htm 

Grendel is a 1971 parallel novel by American author John Gardner.  It is a retelling of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf from the perspective of the antagonist, Grendel.  The novel deals with finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth, and the nature of good and evil.  Grendel has become one of Gardner's best known and reviewed works.  Ten years after publication, the novel was adapted into the 1981 animated movie Grendel Grendel Grendel.   The basic plot derives from Beowulf, a heroic poem of unknown authorship written in Old English and preserved in a manuscript dating from around AD 1000.  The poem deals with the heroic exploits of the Geat warrior Beowulf, who battles three antagonists:  Grendel, Grendel's mother, and, later in life, an unnamed dragon.  Gardner's retelling, however, presents the story from the existentialist view of Grendel, exploring the history of the characters before Beowulf arrives.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel_(novel) 

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction .  De Morgan was born in Madurai, Madras Presidency, India.  His father was Colonel Augustus De Morgan, who held various appointments in the service of the East India Company.  His mother descended from James Dodson, who computed a table of anti-logarithms, that is, the numbers corresponding to exact logarithms.  The family moved to England when Augustus was seven months old.  As his father and grandfather had both been born in India, De Morgan used to say that he was neither English, nor Scottish, nor Irish, but a Briton "unattached", using the technical term applied to an undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge who is not a member of any one of the Colleges.  Beyond his great mathematical legacy, the headquarters of the London Mathematical Society is called De Morgan House and the student society of the Mathematics Department of University College London is called the August De Morgan Society.  The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_De_Morgan  See also http://www.demorgan.com/demorgan.htm and http://www.tutorialspoint.com/computer_logical_organization/demorgan_theroems.htm

Clement Raphael Freud (1924-2009) was an English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef.   He was born Clemens Raphael Freud in Berlin, the son of Ernst L. Freud (an architect) and Lucie née Brasch.  He was the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the brother of artist Lucian Freud.  His family fled to Britain from Nazi Germany, and his first name was anglicised to Clement.   During the Second World War Freud joined the Royal Ulster Rifles and served in the ranks.  He worked at the Nuremberg Trials and in 1947 was commissioned as an officer.  He married June Flewett (the inspiration for Lucy Pevensie in C. S. Lewis's children's series The Chronicles of Narnia)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Freud 

The Texan said "Put my foot down on the gas pedal, and by lunchtime I still won't have reached the edge of my property.  The Scot just nods and says, Aye, well, I used to have a car like that myself.  Paraphrase from The Monarch of the Glen by Neil Gaiman 

The Monarch of the Glen is an oil-on-canvas painting from 1851 by the English painter Sir Edwin Landseer, which was commissioned as part of a series of three panels to hang in the Palace of Westminster in London, England.  It was one of the most popular paintings throughout the 19th century, and reproductions in steel engraving sold very widely, and the painting itself was finally bought by companies to use in advertising.  The painting was purchased in 1916 by Pears soap company and featured in their advertising.  It was sold on to John Dewar & Sons distillery and became their trademark before similarly being used by Glenfiddich.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monarch_of_the_Glen_(painting) 

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, RA (1802–1873) was an English painter, well known for his paintings of animals—particularly horses, dogs and stags.  The best known of Landseer's works, however, are sculptures.  In 1858 the government commissioned Landseer to make four bronze lions for the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, following the rejection of a set in stone by Thomas Milnes.  The sculptures were installed in 1867.  Landseer's death on 1 October 1873 was widely marked in England:  shops and houses lowered their blinds, flags flew at half mast, his bronze lions at the base of Nelson's column were hung with wreaths, and large crowds lined the streets to watch his funeral cortege pass.  At his death, Landseer left behind three unfinished paintings:  Finding the Otter, Nell Gwynne and The Dead Buck, all on easels in his studio . It was his dying wish that his friend John Everett Millais should complete the paintings, and this he did.  Landseer was rumoured to be able to paint with both hands at the same time, for example, paint a horse's head with the right and its tail with the left, simultaneously.  He was also known to be able to paint extremely quickly—when the mood struck him.  He could also procrastinate, sometimes for years, over certain commissions.  The architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was named after him—Lutyens' father was a friend of Landseer.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Edwin_Landseer 

From a muse reader  Was listening to the audio version of "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond in which the author mentioned the Phaistos Disc . . . 

The Phaistos Disc (also spelled Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC).  It is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols.  Its purpose and meaning, and even its original geographical place of manufacture, remain disputed, making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology.  This unique object is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion.  The disc was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, and features 241 tokens, comprising 45 unique signs, which were apparently made by pressing hieroglyphic "seals" into a disc of soft clay, in a clockwise sequence spiraling toward the disc's center.  The Phaistos Disc captured the imagination of amateur and professional archeologists, and many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs.  While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography.   Although the Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists, a few scholars believe that the disc is a forgery or a hoax.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc

LAS VEGAS   The dry piece of scrubby desert was named sometime in the 1800’s by the Spanish, who used the spot as a watering post along the Old Spanish Trail that connected Los Angeles with Santa Fe.  The name translates as The Meadows.  They came for the water, hidden underground in a series of artesian wells.  http://lasvegas.about.com/od/historylandmarks/ss/Odd-And-Interesting-Historical-Facts-About-Las-Vegas_2.htm

The present day bedtime story of the young girl who disrupts the home life of an anthropomorphic bear family dates in print back to 19th century Great Britain.  In 1831 a woman named Eleanor Mure printed a small, homemade booklet written in verse and called “The Story of the Three Bears Metrically Related with Illustrations.”  Mure had created the work as a present for her nephew.  Its subtitle, “The Celebrated Nursery Tale” implies that it was probably based on an earlier oral story.  Six years after Mure‘s work, British poet laureate Robert Southey wrote the “Story of the Three Bears” which appeared in his work, The Doctor.  Although his tale was extremely similar to the Mure work, it is unlikely that Southey knew of it.  Instead, he claimed that he had first heard the story from his uncle who, according to some folklorists, may have been aware of either Mure, the old oral version, or an old English folk tale called Scrapefoot , a story in which the protagonist is a fox.  In both stories, the main character is not a young girl, but a nameless, homeless and ill-tempered old woman who intentionally breaks into the bears’ home looking for food and shelter.  Later children story books have transformed the original tales.  In 1849 the British writer Joseph Cundall retold the story in his Treasury of Pleasure Books for Young Children.  Claiming that there were too many stories that featured old women, Cundall changed the Mure-Southey character to a young girl that he named “Silver Hair.”  A decade later, in Aunt Mavor's Nursery Tales, she was renamed “Silver-Locks.”  By the time that the young intruder appeared in Aunt Friendly's Nursery Book (1868), she had become “Golden Hair.”  In 1904, in Old Nursery Stories and Rhymes, she became known as "Goldilocks."  http://suite101.com/a/the-original-goldilocks-and-the-three-bears-a91839

That Ring Any Bells?  Recalling a memory; causing a person to remember something or someone.  There are numerous bell sounds we hear throughout our lives that all share the same purpose:  they serve as helpful reminders to us.  For example, school bells ring to remind students that class is about to start.  Alarm clocks ring to alert people that it's time to wake up and get ready for the day.  Police cars, while they use sirens today, used to have bells on their cars that they'd ring to remind pedestrians to get out of the way.  The sounds of a bell, then, are commonly used call to our minds important memories or thoughts.  Can the origins of this phrase be credited to a single bell?  Likely not.  It would be more logical to have formed from the collective purpose bells serve in general, which is acting as reminder.  Thus, when someone is able to recall something, it's as if a bell has sounded off in their heads that helped them remember.  An early recording of this phrase in the context we use it in today is found in the San Antonio Light newspaper, November 1937:  "Mariorie Weaver's name may not ring any bells in the movie-going public's consciousness now but wait until you see her in 'Second Honeymoon.'"

http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/That-Ring-Any-Bells.html 

An Interview with Sculptor Lisa Snellings by Carl V. Anderson on November 5, 2008 in Interviews  I became an astute observer very early on.  Once I learned to read, everything changed. My dad took me to the library every Saturday morning.  I’ll always be grateful for that.  I read for countless hours lying on a metal porch bench (I still have the bench) and had a book with me everywhere I went.  Read the rest of the inverview and see fantasy sculptures including Poppets at http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/an-interview-with-lisa-snellings 

The Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA) provides high-resolution images of manuscripts of Dickinson’s poetry, along with transcriptions and annotations from selected historical and scholarly editions.  This first release focuses on gathering images of those poems included in The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by R. W. Franklin (Cambridge:  Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998).  These manuscripts vary from “scraps” written on envelope flaps and pieces of wrapping paper; to drafts; to finished poems sent to friends or copied into the manuscript books called “fascicles.”  This site is not a new edition of Dickinson’s poems.  It is, as its name says, an archive that seeks to make available in one virtual place those resources that seem central to the study of Dickinson’s work: images of her manuscripts; a selection of editions of those manuscripts; and selected print and electronic resources that serve as a starting point for the study of Dickinson’s manuscripts.  It should be viewed as a resource from which scholarship can be produced, rather than a work of scholarship itself.  The long-term goal of this Archive is to provide a single site for access to images of all surviving Dickinson autograph manuscripts.  Future priorities include: images of Dickinson letters; additional modern and historical editions of both poems and letters; additional metadata about the manuscripts; and additional tools for manipulation of the content of the site.  http://www.edickinson.org/about 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

mien  (meen)  noun   Appearance, bearing, or demeanor.   Probably a shortened form of demean (to conduct oneself in a specified manner), influenced by French mine (appearance).  Earliest documented use:  1522. 

Nov. 3, 2013  Cornell University is preparing to forfeit to Iraq a vast collection of ancient cuneiform tablets in what is expected to be one of the largest returns of antiquities by an American university.  The 10,000 inscribed clay blocks date from the 4th millenium BC and offer scholars an unmatched record of daily life in ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.  New York antiquities collector Jonathan Rosen and his family began donating and lending the tablets to Cornell in 2000.  Many scholars have objected to the arrangement, suspecting the tablets were looted in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, which unleashed a wave of plundering in the archaeologically rich expanse of southern Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  Among the tablets is the private archive of a 21st century BC Sumerian princess in the city of Garsana that has made scholars rethink the role of women in the ancient kingdom of Ur.  The administrative records show Simat-Ishtaran ruled the estate after her husband died.  Jason Felch  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-iraq-tablets-cornell-university-20131103,0,7036026.story#axzz2jbqIEHpf 

Everyone is a suspect in Murder for Two, a musical murder mystery with a twist:  one actor investigates the crime, the other plays all of the suspects and they both play the piano.  A 90-minute whodunit.  "They put the laughter in manslaughter."  Opening night Nov. 6, 2013 at New World Stages  http://www.murderfortwomusical.com/ 

Dodger Stages Theater (New World Stages)  340 W 50th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. 

A collaboration of architect Beyer Blinder Belle, interior/set designer Klara Zieglerova, and theatre consultant Sachs Morgan Studio transformed Dodger Stages from a six-theatre multiplex cinema to a five-theatre off-Broadway complex.  A lighted double-height display wall draws focus in the lobby.  The wall is metal frame covered with translucent RP and scrim and colored with lighting washes top and bottom.  Large fluorescent numbers “1” thru “5” dominate the wall and directing ticket holders to their show.  

Lighting:  Roger Morgan and Steve Rust, Sachs Morgan Studio
Interior Design:  Klara Zieglerova
Architect:  Erik Chu, Beyer Blinder Belle, Architects and Planners

See this and other midtown venues with award-winning lighting designs at http://www.iesnyc.org/nightseeing/midtown.aspx

Earls Court is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England  It is an inner-London district centred on Earl's Court Road and surrounding streets, located 3.1 miles (5 km) west south-west of Charing Cross.  Earls Court was once a rural area, covered with green fields and market gardens.  The Saxon Thegn Edwin held the lordship of the area prior to the Norman Conquest.  For over 500 years the land, part of the ancient manor of Kensington, was under the lordship of the Vere family, the Earls of Oxford and descendants of Aubrey de Vere I, who held the manor of Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, in Domesday Book in 1086.   The earls held their manorial court where Old Manor Yard is now, just by the London Underground station.  Earls Court Farm is visible on Greenwood's map of London dated 1827.   Some of the well-known people who have lived there are Howard Carter (1874–1939), English archaeologist, Egyptologist and primary discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, lived at 19 Collingham Gardens; Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), English composer, conductor, violist and pianist; Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), English filmmaker and producer; Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997), the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales; Freddie Mercury (1946–91), flamboyant lead singer with the world-renowned rock group Queen; and Stewart Granger (1913–1993), Hollywood actor.  Earls Court was the setting for the 1941 novel 'Hangover Square:  A Tale of Darkest Earl's Court' by novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earls_Court 

Mind your Ps and Qs  Be on your best behaviour; be careful of your language.   Ps and Qs are just the plurals of the letters P and Q.  There is some disagreement amongst grammarians about how to spell Ps and Qs - either upper-case or lower-case and either with or without an apostrophe.  You may see the phrase as 'mind your p's and q's' or 'mind your Ps and Qs' or 'mind your P's and Q's' or (less often) as 'mind your ps and qs'.  Doubts also exist as to the original meaning. Francis Grose, in his 1785 edition of The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, defines it like this:  "To mind one's P's and Q's; to be attentive to the main chance."  The date of the coinage of 'mind your Ps and Qs' is uncertain. There is a citation from Thomas Dekker's play, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, 1602, which appears to be the earliest use of the expression:

 

Afinius:  ...here's your cloak; I think it rains too.
Horace:  Hide my shoulders in't.
Afinius:  'Troth, so thou'dst need; for now thou art in thy Pee and Kue: thou hast such a villanous broad back...

Find five possible origins of the phrase at http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/mind-your-ps-and-qs.html 

Q:  Who was "Nanook of the North"?  A:  It wasn't a person, but a 1922 documentary, "Nanook of the North:  A Story Of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic."  Robert Flaherty's 79-minute silent classic follows Inuit hunter Allakariallak (Nanook) and his family for a year in the harsh Hudson Bay region of Canada.  The Criterion Collection.
Q:  Why is this season called "fall" and "autumn"?  A:  It used to have just one name, "harvest."  As Europeans moved into cities in the 1600s, they referred to it as "fall of the leaf," or "fall."  Etymologists don't know the origin of the word "autumn."  Chaucer used it in the 1300s and Shakespeare often used it, as in "A Midsummer's Night Dream" in 1595:  "The spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter."   dictionary.com.   http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2013/Oct/JU/ar_JU_102813.asp?d=102813,2013,Oct,28&c=c_13

“[D]on't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for.  Use your library).  Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy.  What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone.  And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read... ”   “Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them.  And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!”   “Libraries are our friends.”  “I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”  “We owe it to each other to tell stories.”  “Writing's a lot like cooking.  Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.”  Quotes by Neil Gaiman  Source:  goodreads.com/quotes 

Inspired by the 10 rules for writing Elmore Leonard wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian decided to reach out and as a few other writers to share their expertise.  Here is what Neil Gaiman had to say:

1.  Write.

2.  Put one word after another.  Find the right word, put it down.

3.  Finish what you’re writing.  Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4.  Put it aside.  Read it pretending you’ve never read it before.  Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5.  Remember:  when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right.  When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6.  Fix it.  Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing.  Perfection is like chasing the horizon.  Keep moving.
7.  Laugh at your own jokes.
8.  The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like.  (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing.  But it’s definitely true for writing.)  So write your story as it needs to be written.  Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules.  Not ones that matter.  Writing is one of those things that some people do because they have something they’d like to say, and other people do because they have something they absolutely must say.  Some days are just putting words on paper and building that habit, building those muscles.  Other days, the days where you leave everything else aside and scale the castle walls with your bare hands to get a better shot at that dragon and bring it to the ground—those are the good writing days.  “Writing is flying in dreams.  When you remember.  When you can.  When it works.  It’s that easy.”

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/02/neil-gaimans-8-rules-for-writing/ 

Two email providers forced to close their services in the wake of theEdward Snowden revelations on mass surveillance have proposed a new open standard for secure email that would be harder for security services and others to eavesdrop upon.  The encrypted email service Lavabit, and Silent Circle, a firm also encrypting phone calls and texts, are the founding members of the Darkmail Alliance, a service that aims to prevent government agencies from listening in on the metadata of emails.  The metadata is the information bundled up with the content of an email such as that showing the sender, the recipient and date the message was sent.  Conventional email can never be made fully secure because the standard requires some metadata to be sent unencrypted.  Alex Hern  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/darkmail-encryption-inbox-silent-circle-lavabit 

Once observed mainly by people of Mexican heritage, Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, a venerable and quirky holiday that honors the departed with a blend of Aztec and Christian elements, is getting new life in the U.S. among a mainstream audience.  From museums to dolls to an animated Walt Disney Co.DIS inYour ValueYour Change Short position movie, los muertos and their annual day are on the rise in popular culture, a development that gratifies new fans, but irks some traditionalists.  According to Muertos tradition, on Nov. 1 and 2, the heavens open and the souls of the dead return to earth.  Their living relatives build altars with offerings of food, drink and even sports memorabilia to entice them to come down, dine and celebrate.  Miriam Jordan  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303843104579167982472259344