I mentioned last week that West put out an ad stating that if you know your librarian on a first name basis, you may be spending too much time in the library. Years before, Lexis--West’s arch-rival in the computerized legal research field--put out a full page ad showing a library sinking into water. Electronic research is wonderful, but there are times when your best resource may be a person.
The hard truth about ice in central Virginia
Cold air damming is a frequent feature of winter weather in Central Virginia. Cold air draining down from the north is trapped in by the mountains to the west of the Richmond region, confining that air just west of the I-95 corridor. Warm air then lifts in from the south and overruns the cold air, leading to a wintry mix.
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/weatherpapers/080/index.html
Rita’s Julia story and her salmon story
I was under deadline for this column and the subject was cooking with wine. On a whim, I called Julia and, of course, she was "out" but the secretary said she'd give her the message. About a half hour later the phone rang and when I picked up the phone and said hello, the voice that said hello back was ... Julia's! She was so nice, answered every question, and then just asked about my family and me. We talked for a total of 30 minutes, 10 of which was professional and the rest was personal. And guess what? She even sent me a signed thank you note.
Perfectly grilled salmon
The 70/30 rule applies to any seafood on the grill. Have the grill hot, lightly brush both sides of the fish with oil, and start grilling skin side up with the grill closed as much as possible. (Or just put a disposable pan over the fish). Leave it alone until about 70 percent of the fish is done on the first side. You'll know it by the looks and also if it will release easily. This allows the fish to form a nice crust. Turn it and finish cooking. The rule seven to 10 minutes per inch of thickness works well, too.
http://communitypress.cincinnati.com/article/20090826/LIFE04/908260304/Mastering+the+art+of+salmon+grilling
Rita’s blog http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=blog08
Redundant adjectives:
• advance planning
• close proximity
• end product, result
• first priority
• general rule
• hot-water heater
• integral part
• major breakthrough
• new beginning
• past history
• root cause
• separate entities
• temporary reprieve
• total annihilation, destruction
See redundant nouns, prepositions, adverbs and phrases at:
http://languagerules.wordpress.com/2006/09/16/close-proximity-isnt-close-to-correct/
What is viral marketing?
The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing
A technique aiming at reproducing "word of mouth", usually on the internet or by e-mail, for humorous, political or marketing purposes
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/viral_marketing
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:Viral+marketing&ei=TVqVSsHzC42GMaPc3PkH&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
A 17-year-old Briton became the youngest person to sail round the globe single-handed on August 26, 2009 after nine months at sea. Mike Perham suffered knockdowns and damage to his yacht during the 24,000-mile (38,700-km) trip and the teenager from Hertfordshire, southern England, said he was now looking forward to a “good meal and a very good night's sleep.” http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57Q2V220090827
Christopher Bird of Cambridge University and a colleague exposed rooks to a 6-inch-tall clear plastic tube containing water, with a worm on its surface. In a series of tests, the four rooks named Cook, Fry, Connelly and Monroe were offered a tempting treat–a juicy worm floating on the surface of water in a vertical tube. To start with, the worm was out of reach. Videos of the experiments show the birds examining the tube from different angles, appearing to think the problem through. Then the researchers provide a solution in the form of a handful of pebbles. The rooks can be seen picking up the stones and dropping them into the tube to raise the water level and bring the worm within reach.
Cook and Fry succeeded straight away, while Connelly and Monroe took two attempts.
The birds appeared to estimate how many pebbles were needed from the outset. Rather than try for the worm after each stone was dropped, they waited until the time seemed right. They also selected larger stones over smaller ones, for greater effect. In other experiments, the rooks quickly understood that sawdust cannot be displaced in the same way as water. Rooks and crows both belong to the corvid family.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0807/1224252151840.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/06/crow-water-stones.html
smalto noun colored glass or enamel used in mosaic
from Italian smalto (enamel, glaze), related to smelt (to melt)
A.Word.A.Day
August 31 is the birthday of Maria Montessori, (books by this author) born on this day in Chiaravalle, Italy (1870). She was a bright student, and she wanted to study engineering, so when she was 13, against her father's wishes she entered a technical school, where all her classmates were boys. After a few years, she decided to pursue medicine, and she became the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree. It was so unheard of for a woman to go to medical school that she had to get the approval of the pope in order to study there. The Writer’s Almanac
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Beginning September 1, 2009, prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls to consumers–commonly known as robocalls–will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls, the Federal Trade Commission announced on August 27. The new requirement is part of amendments to the agency’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that were announced a year ago. After September 1, consumers who receive prerecorded telemarketing calls but have not agreed to get them should file a complaint with the Commission, either on the ftc.gov Web site or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/08/robocalls.shtm
The public playground where Google lets users try out new products or services that aren't yet ready for prime time is Google Squared. It's a demonstration of a search engine trying to provide answers instead of just sites, and at a higher level than the simple "smart answers" you see when you search for "time in Rome" or "area code 909". Rather, Google analyzes the retrieved pages, identifies common elements, and creates a table with the information it has compiled. This is a fascinating tool that helps you compile facts into tables that Google builds on the fly. Go to Google.com/squared and type in a query that will retrieve a number of similar thing --organic farms in Colorado, for example, or women CEOs.
Google Squared generates a table of facts extracted from its index, with the items you are searching for as the left-most column, along with columns for whatever related characteristics are relevant for the topic. For organic farms in Colorado, for example, the table in the search results has columns for the name of the company, an image from the farm's web site, a snippet of description about the farm, and columns for telephone number, location and "season." Note that some of these columns may have few entries in them, depending on what information Google analyzed. For women CEOs, the table includes the CEO's name, a photo, a snippet that indicates what her position is, her date of birth, and her nationality. Interestingly, you can insert your own items in a Google Squared table, and either let Google populate the rest of the row or type in whatever content you want in that row. You can also delete a row or column that isn't relevant to your search. Google Squared is never going to compete with a real human's analysis of a collection of facts, but it can be a great way to start brainstorming, as a quick way to organize the results of your search, and as a starting point for a nicely-presented deliverable for your client. Source: Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html Thanks, Julie.
Recipe story
A short time ago, I sent the link to a recipe for Welsh Rabbit (also called Welsh Rarebit).
http://cookingfortwo.about.com/od/pastabeansandgrains/r/rarebit.htm
I gave it the taste test, using Fuller’s London Porter for the dark ale. It was easy to make, and the dish came out well, not heavy at all. There was about half of the sauce remaining after we poured it on toasted English muffins, and we saved that and used it with twice baked potatoes. It would be good on noodles, too.
More than 1,200 artists from 24 countries will compete for $450,000 in an unprecedented new art competition next month in Grand Rapids, Michigan. ArtPrize, as it's known, is promoting itself as a "radically open competition" with no juries or any of the usual filters that decide what's art and what's not. The entire town seems to be mobilizing for ArtPrize, which will run Sept. 23 to Oct. 10. The 18-day event will be held at about 160 venues--including the Grand River itself, parks, bridges, businesses, and, of course, galleries--within a 3-square-mile zone. More than 1,200 artists from 24 countries will compete for $450,000 in an unprecedented new art competition next month in Grand Rapids.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009908210392
Grand Rapids is celebrating the 40th anniversary of La Grande Vitesse, a sculpture by Alexander Calder. http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/michigan/grandrapids/calder/vitesse.html
Compare La Grande Vitesse to Stegosaurus at The Toledo Museum of Art. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22toledo%20museum%22%20calder%20stegosaurus&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Downtown Grand Rapids is extremely walkable; most of the cultural sites and a great deal of shopping, dining and entertaining options can be found in the six-by-six-block square bounded by Michigan Street, Fulton Street, Division Avenue and the west bank of the Grand River. More to see there:
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, 1000 E. Beltline Ave. NE, 616-957-1580, meijergardens.org
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, 303 Pearl St., NW, 616-254-0400, fordlibrarymuseum.gov
Grand Rapids Art Museum, 101 Monroe Center, 616-831-1000, gramonline.org. GRAM is as well known for its building (the world's first LEED Gold-certified Museum, recognizing green building practices) as it is for its collection of modern art.
Farmers Market, Fulton Street near Fuller Avenue. Open four days a week, this market consists of a narrow lane, two blocks long, packed with locally grown produce, baked goods, flowers and more. It pulls in big crowds, especially Saturdays. It's several miles east of downtown but worth the drive.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-trav-grand-rapids-aug0909,0,3666736.story
Looks like I’ll be writing another Tank Away article because I’ve been thinking about going to Grand Rapids, and there’s the incentive that Toledo sculptor Calvin Babich has a piece on exhibit. Calvin's piece is showing at Design Plus Offices, an architectural design firm at 230 East Fulton Street. If you go to the ArtPrize website and search the artist list for Calvin's name, you will see his maquette and a link to the venue. There are 11 other artists at this venue. http://www.artprize.org/
Calvin Babich’s sculpture, The Puzzler, at following link, was inspired by Will Shortz and his love for puzzles. http://www.calvinbabich.com/Image.asp?ImageID=395881&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=3SNCJGQS
On August 28, 1913, the Peace Palace was opened in The Hague by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. The Palace was conceived of as a forum to host the international Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). In addition to the PCA, the Palace today hosts the International Court of Justice, the Hague Academy of International Law, and the Peace Palace Library of International Law. Learn more about the creation of the Peace Palace.
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington. Listen to King's speech, courtesy of the History Channel. The March was later credited with helping to achieve passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
The public playground where Google lets users try out new products or services that aren't yet ready for prime time is Google Squared. It's a demonstration of a search engine trying to provide answers instead of just sites, and at a higher level than the simple "smart answers" you see when you search for "time in Rome" or "area code 909". Rather, Google analyzes the retrieved pages, identifies common elements, and creates a table with the information it has compiled. This is a fascinating tool that helps you compile facts into tables that Google builds on the fly. Go to Google.com/squared and type in a query that will retrieve a number of similar thing --organic farms in Colorado, for example, or women CEOs.
Google Squared generates a table of facts extracted from its index, with the items you are searching for as the left-most column, along with columns for whatever related characteristics are relevant for the topic. For organic farms in Colorado, for example, the table in the search results has columns for the name of the company, an image from the farm's web site, a snippet of description about the farm, and columns for telephone number, location and "season." Note that some of these columns may have few entries in them, depending on what information Google analyzed. For women CEOs, the table includes the CEO's name, a photo, a snippet that indicates what her position is, her date of birth, and her nationality. Interestingly, you can insert your own items in a Google Squared table, and either let Google populate the rest of the row or type in whatever content you want in that row. You can also delete a row or column that isn't relevant to your search. Google Squared is never going to compete with a real human's analysis of a collection of facts, but it can be a great way to start brainstorming, as a quick way to organize the results of your search, and as a starting point for a nicely-presented deliverable for your client. Source: Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html Thanks, Julie.
Recipe story
A short time ago, I sent the link to a recipe for Welsh Rabbit (also called Welsh Rarebit).
http://cookingfortwo.about.com/od/pastabeansandgrains/r/rarebit.htm
I gave it the taste test, using Fuller’s London Porter for the dark ale. It was easy to make, and the dish came out well, not heavy at all. There was about half of the sauce remaining after we poured it on toasted English muffins, and we saved that and used it with twice baked potatoes. It would be good on noodles, too.
More than 1,200 artists from 24 countries will compete for $450,000 in an unprecedented new art competition next month in Grand Rapids, Michigan. ArtPrize, as it's known, is promoting itself as a "radically open competition" with no juries or any of the usual filters that decide what's art and what's not. The entire town seems to be mobilizing for ArtPrize, which will run Sept. 23 to Oct. 10. The 18-day event will be held at about 160 venues--including the Grand River itself, parks, bridges, businesses, and, of course, galleries--within a 3-square-mile zone. More than 1,200 artists from 24 countries will compete for $450,000 in an unprecedented new art competition next month in Grand Rapids.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009908210392
Grand Rapids is celebrating the 40th anniversary of La Grande Vitesse, a sculpture by Alexander Calder. http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/michigan/grandrapids/calder/vitesse.html
Compare La Grande Vitesse to Stegosaurus at The Toledo Museum of Art. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22toledo%20museum%22%20calder%20stegosaurus&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Downtown Grand Rapids is extremely walkable; most of the cultural sites and a great deal of shopping, dining and entertaining options can be found in the six-by-six-block square bounded by Michigan Street, Fulton Street, Division Avenue and the west bank of the Grand River. More to see there:
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, 1000 E. Beltline Ave. NE, 616-957-1580, meijergardens.org
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, 303 Pearl St., NW, 616-254-0400, fordlibrarymuseum.gov
Grand Rapids Art Museum, 101 Monroe Center, 616-831-1000, gramonline.org. GRAM is as well known for its building (the world's first LEED Gold-certified Museum, recognizing green building practices) as it is for its collection of modern art.
Farmers Market, Fulton Street near Fuller Avenue. Open four days a week, this market consists of a narrow lane, two blocks long, packed with locally grown produce, baked goods, flowers and more. It pulls in big crowds, especially Saturdays. It's several miles east of downtown but worth the drive.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-trav-grand-rapids-aug0909,0,3666736.story
Looks like I’ll be writing another Tank Away article because I’ve been thinking about going to Grand Rapids, and there’s the incentive that Toledo sculptor Calvin Babich has a piece on exhibit. Calvin's piece is showing at Design Plus Offices, an architectural design firm at 230 East Fulton Street. If you go to the ArtPrize website and search the artist list for Calvin's name, you will see his maquette and a link to the venue. There are 11 other artists at this venue. http://www.artprize.org/
Calvin Babich’s sculpture, The Puzzler, at following link, was inspired by Will Shortz and his love for puzzles. http://www.calvinbabich.com/Image.asp?ImageID=395881&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=3SNCJGQS
On August 28, 1913, the Peace Palace was opened in The Hague by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. The Palace was conceived of as a forum to host the international Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). In addition to the PCA, the Palace today hosts the International Court of Justice, the Hague Academy of International Law, and the Peace Palace Library of International Law. Learn more about the creation of the Peace Palace.
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington. Listen to King's speech, courtesy of the History Channel. The March was later credited with helping to achieve passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Federally designated as Women's Equality Day in 1971, Aug. 26 became one of commemoration for the passage of the U.S. Constitution's 19th Amendment, also known as the Woman Suffrage Amendment.
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/EastVolusia/evlEAST04082609.htm
History of the 19th Amendment
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/nineteentham.htm
OCLC announce agreements in Europe to extend coverage in WorldCat
August 25th, 2009 From the News Release: OCLC today announced four new agreements have been signed with European national libraries and affiliated institutions which significantly increase the coverage of records in WorldCat and the visibility of libraries in WorldCat.org within the Europe and Middle East regions. These latest agreements in Denmark, Switzerland, Slovenia and Israel show that libraries from around the globe are responding very positively to the opportunity that WorldCat offers to streamline workflows and increase visibility in WorldCat.org, a global destination web site for libraries, which surfaces to a worldwide community the collections they hold and the services they deliver. Read the rest of this entry »
Online social networks leak personal information to tracking sites, new study shows
August 24th, 2009 From the News Release:
More than a half billion people use online social networks, posting vast amounts of information about themselves to share with online friends and colleagues. A new study co-authored by a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has found that the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make that personal information available to companies that track Web users’ browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people. The study, presented recently in Barcelona at the Workshop on Online Social Networks, part of the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communications, is the first to describe a mechanism that tracking sites could use to directly link browsing habits to specific individuals.
See Also: Read the Complete Study (PDF)
Resource of the Week: Internet Archive’s NASAimages.org
by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy August 24th, 2009
This past week, Internet Archive announced that you can now download high resolution image files directly from the website. The improved download features offer a choice of high or low resolution files for still images, allowing users to select the version best suited for their needs. Many images on the site have a dimension of 3000 pixels or higher, making them suitable for printing at up to 11 x 17 inches on most printers. The website still maintains NASA’s file naming conventions for easy organization.
You can search the archive by keyword or browse various categories:
Universe
Solar System
Earth
Aeronautics
Astronauts
Be sure and check out the interactive Spaceflight Timeline at the bottom of the page. You can click through at any stop along the continuum to bring up relevant images.
Source: The Internet Archive/National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Online Database: Encyclopedia of Life to Gather Every Species into a Digital Noah’s Ark August 23rd, 2009 From the Article:
The inventory has grown more quickly than anyone expected. To date, there are pages for more than 150,000 species, with contributions from 250 specialists and 1,200 “citizen scientists”. Members of the public have contributed more than 30,000 images via the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) group page on the photo-sharing website Flickr. Once the identity of the photographed species has been confirmed by an expert, the image is added to the main site. Direct to the Encyclopedia of Life Source: The Guardian
Are you on a first name basis with the librarian? If so, chances are, you’re spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. And all it takes is West®. This piece of marketing was sent out by the electronic database and news giant Reuters/Thomson/West. http://theliskid.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/apparently-the-library-wastes-time/
A Bit of a Mess in Dallas August 25, 2009
Former President George W. Bush had his heart set on an expansive Presidential Library, but his requirements have been harder to achieve than he thought. No eminent domain for the George W. Bush Presidential Center. A deal that was supposed to end a long-running lawsuit against SMU–and smooth the path for George W. Bush's presidential library–has fallen apart amid charges that both sides broke the terms of a confidential agreement. Report from the Dallas News. Last month, Southern Methodist University and two former condominium owners announced that they had settled the bitter four-year fight over who is the rightful owner of land now slated for the grounds of the Bush library.
August 26 is the birthday of the world's only academically accredited enigmatologist, Will Shortz, (books by this author) born on an Arabian horse farm in Crawfordsville, Indiana (1952). He's the current crossword editor of The New York Times, the puzzle master of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, and the author or editor of dozens of books.
Shortz sold his first puzzle to a magazine when he was 14 years old, and within a couple years, he was a regular contributor to puzzle publications. In college, he designed his own degree program in enigmatology, which he describes: "Literally, it's the study of riddles, but at Indiana I defined it as the study of puzzles." He drew himself up an undergraduate curriculum of classes in English, math, philosophy, journalism, and linguistics, and wrote a thesis on the history of American word puzzles before 1860.
The Writer’s Almanac
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/EastVolusia/evlEAST04082609.htm
History of the 19th Amendment
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/nineteentham.htm
OCLC announce agreements in Europe to extend coverage in WorldCat
August 25th, 2009 From the News Release: OCLC today announced four new agreements have been signed with European national libraries and affiliated institutions which significantly increase the coverage of records in WorldCat and the visibility of libraries in WorldCat.org within the Europe and Middle East regions. These latest agreements in Denmark, Switzerland, Slovenia and Israel show that libraries from around the globe are responding very positively to the opportunity that WorldCat offers to streamline workflows and increase visibility in WorldCat.org, a global destination web site for libraries, which surfaces to a worldwide community the collections they hold and the services they deliver. Read the rest of this entry »
Online social networks leak personal information to tracking sites, new study shows
August 24th, 2009 From the News Release:
More than a half billion people use online social networks, posting vast amounts of information about themselves to share with online friends and colleagues. A new study co-authored by a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has found that the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make that personal information available to companies that track Web users’ browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people. The study, presented recently in Barcelona at the Workshop on Online Social Networks, part of the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communications, is the first to describe a mechanism that tracking sites could use to directly link browsing habits to specific individuals.
See Also: Read the Complete Study (PDF)
Resource of the Week: Internet Archive’s NASAimages.org
by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy August 24th, 2009
This past week, Internet Archive announced that you can now download high resolution image files directly from the website. The improved download features offer a choice of high or low resolution files for still images, allowing users to select the version best suited for their needs. Many images on the site have a dimension of 3000 pixels or higher, making them suitable for printing at up to 11 x 17 inches on most printers. The website still maintains NASA’s file naming conventions for easy organization.
You can search the archive by keyword or browse various categories:
Universe
Solar System
Earth
Aeronautics
Astronauts
Be sure and check out the interactive Spaceflight Timeline at the bottom of the page. You can click through at any stop along the continuum to bring up relevant images.
Source: The Internet Archive/National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Online Database: Encyclopedia of Life to Gather Every Species into a Digital Noah’s Ark August 23rd, 2009 From the Article:
The inventory has grown more quickly than anyone expected. To date, there are pages for more than 150,000 species, with contributions from 250 specialists and 1,200 “citizen scientists”. Members of the public have contributed more than 30,000 images via the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) group page on the photo-sharing website Flickr. Once the identity of the photographed species has been confirmed by an expert, the image is added to the main site. Direct to the Encyclopedia of Life Source: The Guardian
Are you on a first name basis with the librarian? If so, chances are, you’re spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. And all it takes is West®. This piece of marketing was sent out by the electronic database and news giant Reuters/Thomson/West. http://theliskid.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/apparently-the-library-wastes-time/
A Bit of a Mess in Dallas August 25, 2009
Former President George W. Bush had his heart set on an expansive Presidential Library, but his requirements have been harder to achieve than he thought. No eminent domain for the George W. Bush Presidential Center. A deal that was supposed to end a long-running lawsuit against SMU–and smooth the path for George W. Bush's presidential library–has fallen apart amid charges that both sides broke the terms of a confidential agreement. Report from the Dallas News. Last month, Southern Methodist University and two former condominium owners announced that they had settled the bitter four-year fight over who is the rightful owner of land now slated for the grounds of the Bush library.
August 26 is the birthday of the world's only academically accredited enigmatologist, Will Shortz, (books by this author) born on an Arabian horse farm in Crawfordsville, Indiana (1952). He's the current crossword editor of The New York Times, the puzzle master of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, and the author or editor of dozens of books.
Shortz sold his first puzzle to a magazine when he was 14 years old, and within a couple years, he was a regular contributor to puzzle publications. In college, he designed his own degree program in enigmatology, which he describes: "Literally, it's the study of riddles, but at Indiana I defined it as the study of puzzles." He drew himself up an undergraduate curriculum of classes in English, math, philosophy, journalism, and linguistics, and wrote a thesis on the history of American word puzzles before 1860.
The Writer’s Almanac
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
London: New National Gallery Website
News release: The re-launched www.nationalgallery.org.uk is the first major gallery website to offer a full-screen zoom facility for its entire collection. Users can now examine every National Gallery masterpiece in outstanding detail, effortlessly sweep across digital canvases and zoom into minute details of their choosing. Also for the first time, users can now check the up-to-date locations of their favorite works of art prior to visiting. Using the Gallery’s own collection database, the new website updates the layout of the collection twice daily. Users can explore the paintings room-by-room using an interactive floorplan, allowing them to follow the narrative of the hang, as well as access new research material for specific works of art. Visitors can now access over 12,000 images, 18 hours of audio and at least 200 videos.
USDA Study Finds Rural Communities Benefit From Greater Broadband Internet Access
News release: "A new USDA economic analysis has found that rural communities with greater broadband Internet access had greater economic growth than areas with less access. The study, Broadband Internet's Value for Rural America by economists at USDA's Economic Research Service, compared counties that had broadband access relatively early-by 2000-with similarly situated counties that had little or no broadband access. Employment growth was higher and non-farm private earnings greater in counties with a longer history of broadband availability."
Iowa Great Lakes region, a chain of eight natural lakes
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/lakesidelab/greatLakes.html
Story of the big bugs http://www.big-bugs.com/
Big bugs at 100th anniversary of Lakeside Lab
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/lakesidelab/News.html
Micropsia, often associated with migraines, means seeing objects smaller than their actual size. It's also known as micropia. The opposite, where objects appear larger than their actual size, is called macropsia (also known as macropia, megalopsia, and megalopia). These distortions in perception are also called Alice in Wonderland syndrome after the little girl in Lewis Carroll's books who enters a hallucinogenic world. Diplopia means double vision. Agnosia is the loss of ability to recognize objects, people, sounds, and is usually caused by brain injury. A.Word.A.Day
Q. What autonomous archipelago within the Kingdom of Denmark lies between Norway and Iceland?
A. The Faroe Islands, settled by Vikings in the 9th century.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fo.html
The word archipelago literally means "chief sea", from Italian arcipelago, derived ultimately from Greek arkhon (arkhi-) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea"). Find various definitions at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:archipelago&ei=uLOFStCrIonE-Qackfm6CQ&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
Quotes
I call architecture frozen music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German playwright
Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) German philosopher
Music of the eye usually refers to architecture (see book below) but some people apply the phrase to dance or paintings.
The music of the eye: or, Essays on the principles of the beauty and perfection of architecture by Peter Legh - 1831 - 262 pages
Printed by Ibotson and Palmer, Savoy-Street, Strand.
books.google.com/books?id=oaAaAAAAYAAJ...
Drawings of cats
Rembrandt, Picasso and Da Vinci drew cats. English artist Louis Wain (1860-1939) drew anthropomorphic cats. http://www.cat-lovers-gifts-guide.com/cat-drawing.html
B. Kliban (1935-1990), was arguably the first to put now outrageously popular cat cartooning in the fore, the artist who opened up doors for the likes of Gary Larsen, Jim Davis, and others of feline-connected fame. Kliban studied painting and design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and later at Cooper Union in New York City. B. Kliban loved cats and usually had several living with him. His first book (called simply, Cat) was published in 1975 and Kliban became an overnight cartoon sensation. This book was followed by seven other cartoon books--in which Cat's appearance was minimal--over the next several years. Colorful Cats followed, decorating a range of merchandise from calendars and t-shirts to magnets, plush, and beach towels. http://pomegranate.stores.yahoo.net/abbklib19.html
Silent letters
Knowledge, chord, tough, foreign
Put I before E except after C, or when sounded like A as in neighbor or weigh.
NOTE: What about weird? Caffeine? Foreign?
Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, adding insult to injury.
Hickory, dickory, dock, two mice ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, and their wedding was delayed.
Hickory, dickory, dock, three mice ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, and the other two escaped without serious injury.
News release: The re-launched www.nationalgallery.org.uk is the first major gallery website to offer a full-screen zoom facility for its entire collection. Users can now examine every National Gallery masterpiece in outstanding detail, effortlessly sweep across digital canvases and zoom into minute details of their choosing. Also for the first time, users can now check the up-to-date locations of their favorite works of art prior to visiting. Using the Gallery’s own collection database, the new website updates the layout of the collection twice daily. Users can explore the paintings room-by-room using an interactive floorplan, allowing them to follow the narrative of the hang, as well as access new research material for specific works of art. Visitors can now access over 12,000 images, 18 hours of audio and at least 200 videos.
USDA Study Finds Rural Communities Benefit From Greater Broadband Internet Access
News release: "A new USDA economic analysis has found that rural communities with greater broadband Internet access had greater economic growth than areas with less access. The study, Broadband Internet's Value for Rural America by economists at USDA's Economic Research Service, compared counties that had broadband access relatively early-by 2000-with similarly situated counties that had little or no broadband access. Employment growth was higher and non-farm private earnings greater in counties with a longer history of broadband availability."
Iowa Great Lakes region, a chain of eight natural lakes
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/lakesidelab/greatLakes.html
Story of the big bugs http://www.big-bugs.com/
Big bugs at 100th anniversary of Lakeside Lab
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/lakesidelab/News.html
Micropsia, often associated with migraines, means seeing objects smaller than their actual size. It's also known as micropia. The opposite, where objects appear larger than their actual size, is called macropsia (also known as macropia, megalopsia, and megalopia). These distortions in perception are also called Alice in Wonderland syndrome after the little girl in Lewis Carroll's books who enters a hallucinogenic world. Diplopia means double vision. Agnosia is the loss of ability to recognize objects, people, sounds, and is usually caused by brain injury. A.Word.A.Day
Q. What autonomous archipelago within the Kingdom of Denmark lies between Norway and Iceland?
A. The Faroe Islands, settled by Vikings in the 9th century.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fo.html
The word archipelago literally means "chief sea", from Italian arcipelago, derived ultimately from Greek arkhon (arkhi-) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea"). Find various definitions at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:archipelago&ei=uLOFStCrIonE-Qackfm6CQ&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
Quotes
I call architecture frozen music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German playwright
Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) German philosopher
Music of the eye usually refers to architecture (see book below) but some people apply the phrase to dance or paintings.
The music of the eye: or, Essays on the principles of the beauty and perfection of architecture by Peter Legh - 1831 - 262 pages
Printed by Ibotson and Palmer, Savoy-Street, Strand.
books.google.com/books?id=oaAaAAAAYAAJ...
Drawings of cats
Rembrandt, Picasso and Da Vinci drew cats. English artist Louis Wain (1860-1939) drew anthropomorphic cats. http://www.cat-lovers-gifts-guide.com/cat-drawing.html
B. Kliban (1935-1990), was arguably the first to put now outrageously popular cat cartooning in the fore, the artist who opened up doors for the likes of Gary Larsen, Jim Davis, and others of feline-connected fame. Kliban studied painting and design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and later at Cooper Union in New York City. B. Kliban loved cats and usually had several living with him. His first book (called simply, Cat) was published in 1975 and Kliban became an overnight cartoon sensation. This book was followed by seven other cartoon books--in which Cat's appearance was minimal--over the next several years. Colorful Cats followed, decorating a range of merchandise from calendars and t-shirts to magnets, plush, and beach towels. http://pomegranate.stores.yahoo.net/abbklib19.html
Silent letters
Knowledge, chord, tough, foreign
Put I before E except after C, or when sounded like A as in neighbor or weigh.
NOTE: What about weird? Caffeine? Foreign?
Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, adding insult to injury.
Hickory, dickory, dock, two mice ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, and their wedding was delayed.
Hickory, dickory, dock, three mice ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, and the other two escaped without serious injury.
Monday, August 24, 2009
FTC Issues Final Breach Notification Rule for Electronic Health Information
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has issued a final rule requiring certain Web-based businesses to notify consumers when the security of their electronic health information is breached. Congress directed the FTC to issue the rule as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The rule applies to both vendors of personal health records–which provide online repositories that people can use to keep track of their health information–and entities that offer third-party applications for personal health records. These applications could include, for example, devices such as blood pressure cuffs or pedometers whose readings consumers can upload into their personal health records. Consumers may benefit by using these innovations, but only if they are confident that their health information is secure and confidential."
A pun is a play on words. Examples: http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/punterm.htm
The 40th edition of Gray’s Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice was published in 2008. The title of the TV show Grey’s Anatomy is a pun on the book title.
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis was one of the major Victorian-era World's Fairs. The Fair celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. It was delayed from a planned opening in 1903 to 1904 allow for full-scale participation by more states and foreign countries. The Fair opened April 30, 1904, and closed December 1, 1904. Of notable interest is that St. Louis had held an annual Saint Louis Exposition (1884) since the 1880s as agricultural, trade, and scientific exhibitions, but this event was not held in 1904 due to the World's Fair. The Fair's 1,200 acre (4.9 km²) site, designed by George Kessler [1], was located at the present-day grounds of Forest Park and on the campus of Washington University, and was the largest fair to date. There were over 1,500 buildings, connected by some 75 miles (120 km) of roads and walkways. The Palace of Fine Art, designed by architect Cass Gilbert, featured a grand interior sculpture court based on the Roman Baths of Caracalla. Standing at the top of Art Hill, it now serves as the home of the St. Louis Art Museum. The Administration Building is now Brookings Hall, the defining landmark on the campus of Washington University. Some of the mansions from the Exposition's era survive along Lindell Boulevard at the north border of Forest Park. The huge bird cage at the Saint Louis Zoological Park, dates to the fair. Festival Hall contained the largest organ in the world at the time, built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company. After the fair, it was placed into storage, and eventually purchased by John Wanamaker for his new Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia. See Wanamaker Organ for more details. The famous Bronze Eagle in the Wanamaker Store also came from the Fair. It features hundreds of hand-forged bronze feathers and was the centerpiece of one of the many German exhibits at the fair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase_Exposition
The Wanamaker Organ was originally built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company, successors to the Murray M. Harris Organ Co., for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. It was designed to be the largest organ in the world, an imitation of a full-size orchestra with particularly complete resources of full organ tone including mixtures. In addition to its console, the organ was originally equipped with an automatic player that used punched rolls of paper, according to the Los Angeles Times of 1904.[3] It was designed by renowned organ theorist and architect George Ashdown Audsley. Wild cost overruns plagued the project, with the result that Harris was ousted from his own company. With capital from stockholder Eben Smith, it was reorganized as the Los Angeles Art Organ Company, and finished at a cost of $105,000, $40,000 over budget. The Fair began (in late April, 1904) before the organ was fully installed in its temporary home, Festival Hall. It still was not entirely finished in September of that year, when Alexandre Guilmant, one of the most famous organists of the day, presented 40 very well-attended recitals on the organ. Following the Fair, the organ was intended for permanent installation by the Kansas City Convention Hall. Indeed, the original console had a prominent "K C" on its music rack. This venture failed, bankrupting the L. A. Art Organ Company after the Fair closed. There was a plan to exhibit the organ at Coney Island in New York City, but nothing came of this.
The organ languished in storage at the Handlan warehouse in St. Louis until 1909, when it was bought by John Wanamaker for his new department store at 13th and Market Streets in Center City, Philadelphia. It took thirteen freight cars to move it to its new home, and two years for installation. It was first played on June 6, 1911, at the exact moment when British King George V was crowned. It was also featured later that year when U.S. President William Howard Taft dedicated the store. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker_Organ
"Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time"
New York Times Special Issue: How changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything
"..if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater...in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution."
See also World Bank: Role of Women, key to South Asia's Development
Bipartisan Policy Center Releases Report on Improving Health Care Quality and Value
News release: "In response to increasing concerns in the health care debate regarding the long-term costs of reform, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) released a report examining various steps for reforming the health care system to one that delivers better care at lower costs. The report, entitled, Improving Quality and Value in the U.S. Health Care System, supports the bipartisan health reform recommendations released earlier this year by Senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole in their budget-neutral framework for comprehensive health reform, Crossing Our Lines: Working Together to Reform the U.S. Health System.
Related postings on health care reform
House Health Care Reform Bill Available on GPO’s Federal Digital System
"As lawmakers and Americans discuss health care reform, The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has made available H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, in electronic and printed form. The bill was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce. The authentic, electronic version is available on GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys), named by Government Computer News as one of the Government’s best Web sites. GPO authenticated the document by digital signature. This signature assures the public that the document has not been changed or altered. A digital signature, viewed through the GPO Seal of Authenticity, verifies the document’s integrity and authenticity."
August 22 is the birthday of screenwriter Julius Epstein, (books by this author) born in New York City in 1909. He and his twin brother, Philip, took an unpublished play called Everybody Comes to Rick's and turned it into a screenplay for one of the most-quoted and beloved classic movies: Casablanca. Julius Epstein said that his screenplay for Casablancacontained "a great deal of corn, more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined."
August 23 is the birthday of Edgar Lee Masters, (books by this author) born in Garnett, Kansas (1868). He grew up in small farming towns in Illinois, and he wanted to write a novel about growing up in Illinois, but he didn't know where to start. Then the editor of a poetry magazine sent him a book of poems called Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, epigrams from classical Greece, many of them about the details of daily life and ordinary people. So Masters took that idea, and he wrote Spoon River Anthology (1915), in which residents of a small Illinois town called Spoon River speak from beyond the grave and tell their life stories, more than 200 characters in all.
The Writer’s Almanac
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has issued a final rule requiring certain Web-based businesses to notify consumers when the security of their electronic health information is breached. Congress directed the FTC to issue the rule as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The rule applies to both vendors of personal health records–which provide online repositories that people can use to keep track of their health information–and entities that offer third-party applications for personal health records. These applications could include, for example, devices such as blood pressure cuffs or pedometers whose readings consumers can upload into their personal health records. Consumers may benefit by using these innovations, but only if they are confident that their health information is secure and confidential."
A pun is a play on words. Examples: http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/punterm.htm
The 40th edition of Gray’s Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice was published in 2008. The title of the TV show Grey’s Anatomy is a pun on the book title.
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis was one of the major Victorian-era World's Fairs. The Fair celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. It was delayed from a planned opening in 1903 to 1904 allow for full-scale participation by more states and foreign countries. The Fair opened April 30, 1904, and closed December 1, 1904. Of notable interest is that St. Louis had held an annual Saint Louis Exposition (1884) since the 1880s as agricultural, trade, and scientific exhibitions, but this event was not held in 1904 due to the World's Fair. The Fair's 1,200 acre (4.9 km²) site, designed by George Kessler [1], was located at the present-day grounds of Forest Park and on the campus of Washington University, and was the largest fair to date. There were over 1,500 buildings, connected by some 75 miles (120 km) of roads and walkways. The Palace of Fine Art, designed by architect Cass Gilbert, featured a grand interior sculpture court based on the Roman Baths of Caracalla. Standing at the top of Art Hill, it now serves as the home of the St. Louis Art Museum. The Administration Building is now Brookings Hall, the defining landmark on the campus of Washington University. Some of the mansions from the Exposition's era survive along Lindell Boulevard at the north border of Forest Park. The huge bird cage at the Saint Louis Zoological Park, dates to the fair. Festival Hall contained the largest organ in the world at the time, built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company. After the fair, it was placed into storage, and eventually purchased by John Wanamaker for his new Wanamaker's store in Philadelphia. See Wanamaker Organ for more details. The famous Bronze Eagle in the Wanamaker Store also came from the Fair. It features hundreds of hand-forged bronze feathers and was the centerpiece of one of the many German exhibits at the fair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase_Exposition
The Wanamaker Organ was originally built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company, successors to the Murray M. Harris Organ Co., for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. It was designed to be the largest organ in the world, an imitation of a full-size orchestra with particularly complete resources of full organ tone including mixtures. In addition to its console, the organ was originally equipped with an automatic player that used punched rolls of paper, according to the Los Angeles Times of 1904.[3] It was designed by renowned organ theorist and architect George Ashdown Audsley. Wild cost overruns plagued the project, with the result that Harris was ousted from his own company. With capital from stockholder Eben Smith, it was reorganized as the Los Angeles Art Organ Company, and finished at a cost of $105,000, $40,000 over budget. The Fair began (in late April, 1904) before the organ was fully installed in its temporary home, Festival Hall. It still was not entirely finished in September of that year, when Alexandre Guilmant, one of the most famous organists of the day, presented 40 very well-attended recitals on the organ. Following the Fair, the organ was intended for permanent installation by the Kansas City Convention Hall. Indeed, the original console had a prominent "K C" on its music rack. This venture failed, bankrupting the L. A. Art Organ Company after the Fair closed. There was a plan to exhibit the organ at Coney Island in New York City, but nothing came of this.
The organ languished in storage at the Handlan warehouse in St. Louis until 1909, when it was bought by John Wanamaker for his new department store at 13th and Market Streets in Center City, Philadelphia. It took thirteen freight cars to move it to its new home, and two years for installation. It was first played on June 6, 1911, at the exact moment when British King George V was crowned. It was also featured later that year when U.S. President William Howard Taft dedicated the store. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker_Organ
"Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time"
New York Times Special Issue: How changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything
"..if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater...in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution."
See also World Bank: Role of Women, key to South Asia's Development
Bipartisan Policy Center Releases Report on Improving Health Care Quality and Value
News release: "In response to increasing concerns in the health care debate regarding the long-term costs of reform, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) released a report examining various steps for reforming the health care system to one that delivers better care at lower costs. The report, entitled, Improving Quality and Value in the U.S. Health Care System, supports the bipartisan health reform recommendations released earlier this year by Senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole in their budget-neutral framework for comprehensive health reform, Crossing Our Lines: Working Together to Reform the U.S. Health System.
Related postings on health care reform
House Health Care Reform Bill Available on GPO’s Federal Digital System
"As lawmakers and Americans discuss health care reform, The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has made available H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, in electronic and printed form. The bill was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce. The authentic, electronic version is available on GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys), named by Government Computer News as one of the Government’s best Web sites. GPO authenticated the document by digital signature. This signature assures the public that the document has not been changed or altered. A digital signature, viewed through the GPO Seal of Authenticity, verifies the document’s integrity and authenticity."
August 22 is the birthday of screenwriter Julius Epstein, (books by this author) born in New York City in 1909. He and his twin brother, Philip, took an unpublished play called Everybody Comes to Rick's and turned it into a screenplay for one of the most-quoted and beloved classic movies: Casablanca. Julius Epstein said that his screenplay for Casablancacontained "a great deal of corn, more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined."
August 23 is the birthday of Edgar Lee Masters, (books by this author) born in Garnett, Kansas (1868). He grew up in small farming towns in Illinois, and he wanted to write a novel about growing up in Illinois, but he didn't know where to start. Then the editor of a poetry magazine sent him a book of poems called Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, epigrams from classical Greece, many of them about the details of daily life and ordinary people. So Masters took that idea, and he wrote Spoon River Anthology (1915), in which residents of a small Illinois town called Spoon River speak from beyond the grave and tell their life stories, more than 200 characters in all.
The Writer’s Almanac
Friday, August 21, 2009
Metaphor (from Latin metaphoria) is a figure of speech and or phrase that portrays one word as being or equal to a second object in some way. It compares two subjects without using 'like' or 'as'. Compared to simile, the metaphor takes us one step further than the simile. Instead of asking us to picture one thing as being like another, the metaphor asks us to picture one thing as being the other.
A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one identification to a second identification that is inconsistent with the first one. Example: "He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns," where two commonly used metaphoric grounds for highlighting the concept of "taking action" are confused to create a nonsensical image.
A dying metaphor is a derogatory term coined by George Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language. Orwell defines a dying metaphor as a metaphor that isn't dead (dead metaphors are different, as they are treated like ordinary words), but has been worn out and is used because it saves people the trouble of inventing an original phrase for themselves. In short, a cliché. Example: Achilles' heel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor
According to Gisslen's Professional Cooking, “Herbs are the leaves of certain plants that usually grow in temperate climates" and “Spices are the buds, fruits, flowers, bark, seeds, and roots of plants and trees, many of which grow in tropical climates." See examples of which is which at http://www.helium.com/items/1440821-the-difference-between-spices-and-herbs
Over 350 new species, including the world’s second smallest deer and a bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in the air, have been discovered. One of the most significant findings was not exactly “new” in the classic sense. A 100-million year-old gecko, the oldest fossil gecko species known to science, was discovered in an amber mine in the Hukawng Valley in the northern Myanmar. The WWF report The Eastern Himalayas–Where Worlds Collide details discoveries made by scientists from various organizations between 1998 and 2008 in a region reaching across Bhutan and north-east India to the far north of Myanmar as well as Nepal and southern parts of Tibet Autonomus Region (China). http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2009/WWFPresitem13240.html
A British family has set a world record for the longest solar-powered flight by paramotor, soaking up some serious rays in the process. The Cardozos took 15 days to travel 2,000km (1,242 miles) along the Mediterranean coast using machines the size of backpacks. The expedition from Monte Carlo to Morocco was led by brother Gilo, an engineer who helped explorer Bear Grylls fly a powered paraglider over Mount Everest in 2007. He ensured the batteries for the paramotors were charged up using solar panels on top of a support vehicle that followed the pilots. Three other machines that took part in the stunt–which included a spectacular flight over the shark-infested Straits of Gibraltar–ran on biofuels. The trip raised £10,000 for Ataxia UK–a charity supported by Damian and his wife, Madeleine. Three of their six children were diagnosed with the debilitating condition that attacks the nervous system. http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Family_flies_the_Med_powered_only_by_sunshine&in_article_id=718046&in_page_id=34
Report on URL Shorteners: Speed and Reliabiltiy
Royal Pingdom: URL shortener speed and reliability shootout - "The services included in this test are: Bit.ly, TinyURL, Ow.ly, Is.gd, Su.pr, Snipurl, Cli.gs, Tr.im and Twurl."
In Tampa, minimum-security Hillsborough County Jail inmates and employees sell hot sauce and plants outside the Falkenburg Road Jail. Inmates grow the plants there as part of a vocational program aimed at giving them real-world skills. The hot sauce is made of jail-grown peppers. Flavors include Original, Smoke and No Escape—the hottest of the bunch. Each bottle is $7. Allen Boatman, the jail's horticulture instructor, said inmates and staff came up with the recipe and started selling it in 2005. Since then, he estimates profits have reached about $10,000. The money is used to keep up the greenhouse and buy basic supplies, Boatman said. http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1025682.ece
Why does this e-book cost $14?! By Rick Broida
Dear e-book publishers: stop gouging us. Case in point: I just read a glowing review of Jonathan Tropper's "This is Where I Leave You." I'm sold; I want it. But something's amiss here: Amazon's hardcover price is $15.57, while the Kindle edition sells for $14.01. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10309090-58.html
On August 21, 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. More than two years later, in Italy, the thief contacted an art dealer and offered to sell him the Mona Lisa for $100,000. The art dealer met him, along with the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, explained that all he wanted was to return the Mona Lisa to Italy where it belonged. He said he would sell it as long as the men promised to hang it at the Uffizi and not let it go back to Paris. Peruggia was, of course, arrested, and the Mona Lisa was sent back to the Louvre … but not until it went on a tour across Italy. The Writer’s Almanac
A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one identification to a second identification that is inconsistent with the first one. Example: "He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns," where two commonly used metaphoric grounds for highlighting the concept of "taking action" are confused to create a nonsensical image.
A dying metaphor is a derogatory term coined by George Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language. Orwell defines a dying metaphor as a metaphor that isn't dead (dead metaphors are different, as they are treated like ordinary words), but has been worn out and is used because it saves people the trouble of inventing an original phrase for themselves. In short, a cliché. Example: Achilles' heel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor
According to Gisslen's Professional Cooking, “Herbs are the leaves of certain plants that usually grow in temperate climates" and “Spices are the buds, fruits, flowers, bark, seeds, and roots of plants and trees, many of which grow in tropical climates." See examples of which is which at http://www.helium.com/items/1440821-the-difference-between-spices-and-herbs
Over 350 new species, including the world’s second smallest deer and a bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in the air, have been discovered. One of the most significant findings was not exactly “new” in the classic sense. A 100-million year-old gecko, the oldest fossil gecko species known to science, was discovered in an amber mine in the Hukawng Valley in the northern Myanmar. The WWF report The Eastern Himalayas–Where Worlds Collide details discoveries made by scientists from various organizations between 1998 and 2008 in a region reaching across Bhutan and north-east India to the far north of Myanmar as well as Nepal and southern parts of Tibet Autonomus Region (China). http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2009/WWFPresitem13240.html
A British family has set a world record for the longest solar-powered flight by paramotor, soaking up some serious rays in the process. The Cardozos took 15 days to travel 2,000km (1,242 miles) along the Mediterranean coast using machines the size of backpacks. The expedition from Monte Carlo to Morocco was led by brother Gilo, an engineer who helped explorer Bear Grylls fly a powered paraglider over Mount Everest in 2007. He ensured the batteries for the paramotors were charged up using solar panels on top of a support vehicle that followed the pilots. Three other machines that took part in the stunt–which included a spectacular flight over the shark-infested Straits of Gibraltar–ran on biofuels. The trip raised £10,000 for Ataxia UK–a charity supported by Damian and his wife, Madeleine. Three of their six children were diagnosed with the debilitating condition that attacks the nervous system. http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Family_flies_the_Med_powered_only_by_sunshine&in_article_id=718046&in_page_id=34
Report on URL Shorteners: Speed and Reliabiltiy
Royal Pingdom: URL shortener speed and reliability shootout - "The services included in this test are: Bit.ly, TinyURL, Ow.ly, Is.gd, Su.pr, Snipurl, Cli.gs, Tr.im and Twurl."
In Tampa, minimum-security Hillsborough County Jail inmates and employees sell hot sauce and plants outside the Falkenburg Road Jail. Inmates grow the plants there as part of a vocational program aimed at giving them real-world skills. The hot sauce is made of jail-grown peppers. Flavors include Original, Smoke and No Escape—the hottest of the bunch. Each bottle is $7. Allen Boatman, the jail's horticulture instructor, said inmates and staff came up with the recipe and started selling it in 2005. Since then, he estimates profits have reached about $10,000. The money is used to keep up the greenhouse and buy basic supplies, Boatman said. http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1025682.ece
Why does this e-book cost $14?! By Rick Broida
Dear e-book publishers: stop gouging us. Case in point: I just read a glowing review of Jonathan Tropper's "This is Where I Leave You." I'm sold; I want it. But something's amiss here: Amazon's hardcover price is $15.57, while the Kindle edition sells for $14.01. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10309090-58.html
On August 21, 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. More than two years later, in Italy, the thief contacted an art dealer and offered to sell him the Mona Lisa for $100,000. The art dealer met him, along with the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, explained that all he wanted was to return the Mona Lisa to Italy where it belonged. He said he would sell it as long as the men promised to hang it at the Uffizi and not let it go back to Paris. Peruggia was, of course, arrested, and the Mona Lisa was sent back to the Louvre … but not until it went on a tour across Italy. The Writer’s Almanac
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Muse reader responds to Michigan Facts and Trivia
In 1817 the University of Michigan was the first university established by any of the states. Originally named Cathelepistemian and located in Detroit the name was changed in 1821.
Michigan State University was founded in 1855 as the nation's first land-grant university and served as the prototype for 69 land-grant institutions later established under the Morrill Act of 1862. It was the first institution of higher learning in the nation to teach scientific agriculture.
Not sure about those Michigan facts. Ohio University was around for at least a decade before 1817 and Michigan wasn't a state until 1837. The University of Minnesota claims an 1855 start date and the same status as Michigan State, although the early years of these and many other institutions were as sketchy as their latter day claims.
The Land-Grant College: What Is a Land-Grant College?
A land-grant college or university is an institution that has been designated by its state legislature or Congress to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. The original mission of these institutions, as set forth in the first Morrill Act, was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts as well as classical studies so that members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education. A key component of the land-grant system is the agricultural experiment station program created by the Hatch Act of 1887. To disseminate information gleaned from the experiment stations' research, the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created a Cooperative Extension Service associated with each U.S. land-grant institution.
The Land-Grant College: Where Is It?
There is now at least one land-grant institution in every state and territory of the United States, as well as the District of Columbia. Certain Southern states have two land-grant institutions as a result of the Second Morrill Act, and some western and plains states have several of the 1994 land-grant tribal colleges.
The Land-Grant College: Who Created It?
Justin Smith Morrill, a representative and later a senator from Vermont, sponsored the land-grant legislation that bears his name and is generally credited as having secured its passage. Prior to Morrill's support for land-grant legislation, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a Yale-educated farmer, newspaper editor, and college professor, made education for the working class his cause in the mid-nineteenth century. His "Plan for a State University for the Industrial Classes" advanced ideas that are now fundamental to the land-grant system, such as experimental research in agriculture.
The Land-Grant College: When Was It Created?
Morrill first introduced a land-grant bill in Congress in 1857, which after much struggle was passed in 1859 only to be vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1861 Morrill introduced another land-grant bill that increased to 30,000 acres the grant for each senator and representative and added a requirement that recipient institutions teach military tactics. The newly felt need for trained military officers to fight in the Civil War, along with the absence of Southern legislators who had opposed the earlier bill, helped the Morrill Act through Congress in just six months. President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law on July 2, 1862. http://www.wvu.edu/~exten/about/land.htm
The College of William & Mary's website states, "The College of William and Mary was the first college to become a university (1779)." ]
Educational historian Frederick Rudolph once said Cornell University was "the first American university"
Harvard University, founded in 1636, claims itself to be "the oldest institution of higher education in the United States". The claim of being "the first university" has been made on its behalf by others.
The Johns Hopkins University says, "The Johns Hopkins University was the first research university in the United States." Johns Hopkins claim is based on its adherence to the German university model that stresses research as the primary function of a university.
The University of Pennsylvania makes claim on their website of being "America's First University". The university has published a book about being the first university in America, and their website contains numerous instances of the phrase "America's First University."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_university_in_the_United_States
Report: Despite the Recession, Many High Potential Employees Jump Ship
News release: "High potential employees aren’t afraid to strike out for greater opportunities despite the continuing recession, according to a study of how the best and brightest of high potential talent have weathered the global recession over the past 18 months. The report released by Catalyst, Opportunity or Setback? High Potential Women and Men During Economic Crisis, offers a surprising overview of the current workplace and recommends that even during international economic instability, employee retention must remain a foremost concern for businesses."
The UBS settlement, reached between the U.S. and Switzerland, will allow the U.S. to get the names of 4,450 UBS account-holders. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for the FT story; here for the agreement itself. While some were saying the deal blew a hole in Swiss banking laws, Swiss justice minister and Law Blog all-name team member Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the agreement fully complies with Swiss law and doesn't violate banking secrecy, which she emphasized isn't meant to protect criminal behavior. WSJ Law Blog August 19, 2009
Switzerland’s government said Thursday that it was in the process of selling its stake in the giant bank U.B.S., a transaction that it expects will generate about one billion Swiss francs, or $938 million, in profit for taxpayers. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/business/global/21iht-ubs.html?hpw
A 28-year-old American, believed by prosecutors to be one of the nation's cybercrime kingpins, was indicted Monday along with two Russian accomplices on charges that they carried out the largest hacking and identity-theft caper in U.S. history. Federal prosecutors alleged the three masterminded a global scheme to steal data from more than 130 million credit and debit cards by hacking into the computer systems of five major companies, including Hannaford Bros. supermarkets, 7-Eleven and Heartland Payment Systems Inc., a credit-card processing company. The indictment in federal district court in New Jersey marks the latest and largest in at least five years of crime that has brought its alleged orchestrator, Albert Gonzalez of Miami, in and out of federal grasp. Detained in 2003, Mr. Gonzalez was briefly an informant to the Secret Service before he allegedly returned to commit even bolder crimes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125053669921337753.html
Earlier this month, we covered the story of the “Socialist Joker” Obama poster, which was spotted around Los Angeles and as far afield as Chicago. By early August, the image had gone viral, enraging progressives and earning plaudits from conservatives. Now, thanks to some gumshoeing by the folks over at the Los Angeles Times, the creator of the portrait has been unmasked. 20-year-old college student Firas Alkhateeb said he created the images using a tutorial on how to “jokerize” any portrait with Adobe PhotoShop.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/18/creator-of-socialist-joker-obama-poster-unmasked/
August 19 is the birthday of a writer who passed away just last month, Frank McCourt, (books by this author) born on this day in Brooklyn (1930). His parents were Irish immigrants, and when Frank was four years old, the family moved back to Ireland. McCourt had a difficult childhood, living in extreme poverty with an alcoholic father who was often absent. Three of his six brothers and sisters died from malnutrition and disease. When Frank McCourt was 19, he managed to make it back to America, where he worked at a hotel and at a hat factory. He was drafted into the Army and fought in Germany. Afterward, the Army let him go to college on the GI bill, even though he didn't have a high school education. And from there, he became a teacher. He taught English in the New York public schools for 30 years, and he frequently told his students stories about his childhood. The Writer’s Almanac
In 1817 the University of Michigan was the first university established by any of the states. Originally named Cathelepistemian and located in Detroit the name was changed in 1821.
Michigan State University was founded in 1855 as the nation's first land-grant university and served as the prototype for 69 land-grant institutions later established under the Morrill Act of 1862. It was the first institution of higher learning in the nation to teach scientific agriculture.
Not sure about those Michigan facts. Ohio University was around for at least a decade before 1817 and Michigan wasn't a state until 1837. The University of Minnesota claims an 1855 start date and the same status as Michigan State, although the early years of these and many other institutions were as sketchy as their latter day claims.
The Land-Grant College: What Is a Land-Grant College?
A land-grant college or university is an institution that has been designated by its state legislature or Congress to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. The original mission of these institutions, as set forth in the first Morrill Act, was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts as well as classical studies so that members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education. A key component of the land-grant system is the agricultural experiment station program created by the Hatch Act of 1887. To disseminate information gleaned from the experiment stations' research, the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created a Cooperative Extension Service associated with each U.S. land-grant institution.
The Land-Grant College: Where Is It?
There is now at least one land-grant institution in every state and territory of the United States, as well as the District of Columbia. Certain Southern states have two land-grant institutions as a result of the Second Morrill Act, and some western and plains states have several of the 1994 land-grant tribal colleges.
The Land-Grant College: Who Created It?
Justin Smith Morrill, a representative and later a senator from Vermont, sponsored the land-grant legislation that bears his name and is generally credited as having secured its passage. Prior to Morrill's support for land-grant legislation, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a Yale-educated farmer, newspaper editor, and college professor, made education for the working class his cause in the mid-nineteenth century. His "Plan for a State University for the Industrial Classes" advanced ideas that are now fundamental to the land-grant system, such as experimental research in agriculture.
The Land-Grant College: When Was It Created?
Morrill first introduced a land-grant bill in Congress in 1857, which after much struggle was passed in 1859 only to be vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1861 Morrill introduced another land-grant bill that increased to 30,000 acres the grant for each senator and representative and added a requirement that recipient institutions teach military tactics. The newly felt need for trained military officers to fight in the Civil War, along with the absence of Southern legislators who had opposed the earlier bill, helped the Morrill Act through Congress in just six months. President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law on July 2, 1862. http://www.wvu.edu/~exten/about/land.htm
The College of William & Mary's website states, "The College of William and Mary was the first college to become a university (1779)." ]
Educational historian Frederick Rudolph once said Cornell University was "the first American university"
Harvard University, founded in 1636, claims itself to be "the oldest institution of higher education in the United States". The claim of being "the first university" has been made on its behalf by others.
The Johns Hopkins University says, "The Johns Hopkins University was the first research university in the United States." Johns Hopkins claim is based on its adherence to the German university model that stresses research as the primary function of a university.
The University of Pennsylvania makes claim on their website of being "America's First University". The university has published a book about being the first university in America, and their website contains numerous instances of the phrase "America's First University."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_university_in_the_United_States
Report: Despite the Recession, Many High Potential Employees Jump Ship
News release: "High potential employees aren’t afraid to strike out for greater opportunities despite the continuing recession, according to a study of how the best and brightest of high potential talent have weathered the global recession over the past 18 months. The report released by Catalyst, Opportunity or Setback? High Potential Women and Men During Economic Crisis, offers a surprising overview of the current workplace and recommends that even during international economic instability, employee retention must remain a foremost concern for businesses."
The UBS settlement, reached between the U.S. and Switzerland, will allow the U.S. to get the names of 4,450 UBS account-holders. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for the FT story; here for the agreement itself. While some were saying the deal blew a hole in Swiss banking laws, Swiss justice minister and Law Blog all-name team member Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the agreement fully complies with Swiss law and doesn't violate banking secrecy, which she emphasized isn't meant to protect criminal behavior. WSJ Law Blog August 19, 2009
Switzerland’s government said Thursday that it was in the process of selling its stake in the giant bank U.B.S., a transaction that it expects will generate about one billion Swiss francs, or $938 million, in profit for taxpayers. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/business/global/21iht-ubs.html?hpw
A 28-year-old American, believed by prosecutors to be one of the nation's cybercrime kingpins, was indicted Monday along with two Russian accomplices on charges that they carried out the largest hacking and identity-theft caper in U.S. history. Federal prosecutors alleged the three masterminded a global scheme to steal data from more than 130 million credit and debit cards by hacking into the computer systems of five major companies, including Hannaford Bros. supermarkets, 7-Eleven and Heartland Payment Systems Inc., a credit-card processing company. The indictment in federal district court in New Jersey marks the latest and largest in at least five years of crime that has brought its alleged orchestrator, Albert Gonzalez of Miami, in and out of federal grasp. Detained in 2003, Mr. Gonzalez was briefly an informant to the Secret Service before he allegedly returned to commit even bolder crimes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125053669921337753.html
Earlier this month, we covered the story of the “Socialist Joker” Obama poster, which was spotted around Los Angeles and as far afield as Chicago. By early August, the image had gone viral, enraging progressives and earning plaudits from conservatives. Now, thanks to some gumshoeing by the folks over at the Los Angeles Times, the creator of the portrait has been unmasked. 20-year-old college student Firas Alkhateeb said he created the images using a tutorial on how to “jokerize” any portrait with Adobe PhotoShop.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/18/creator-of-socialist-joker-obama-poster-unmasked/
August 19 is the birthday of a writer who passed away just last month, Frank McCourt, (books by this author) born on this day in Brooklyn (1930). His parents were Irish immigrants, and when Frank was four years old, the family moved back to Ireland. McCourt had a difficult childhood, living in extreme poverty with an alcoholic father who was often absent. Three of his six brothers and sisters died from malnutrition and disease. When Frank McCourt was 19, he managed to make it back to America, where he worked at a hotel and at a hat factory. He was drafted into the Army and fought in Germany. Afterward, the Army let him go to college on the GI bill, even though he didn't have a high school education. And from there, he became a teacher. He taught English in the New York public schools for 30 years, and he frequently told his students stories about his childhood. The Writer’s Almanac
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
In the Congo
“Mrs. Clinton, we’ve all heard about the Chinese contracts in this country,” a student said. “The interference is from the World Bank against this contract. What does Mr. Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton?” Later, her aides released the transcript of the question, as it had been translated to English from French, and further inspection of the audio recording of the event indicated that the translation was fine; the student had indeed said “Mr. Clinton.” After the event, the student apologized to Mrs. Clinton, saying he had indeed meant to ask what Mr. Obama thought. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/africa/13clinton.html?hp
Although Congress grants itself a couple of months off each year, it guarantees ordinary Americans no vacation whatever. The European Union mandates at least four weeks off with pay, a fact cited in support of the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, a modest attempt to guarantee many U.S. workers at least a one-week vacation. Its sponsor, Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida, says he believes that a wise vacation policy can increase productivity, stimulate the economy and improve employee health. http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/too-much-vacation-for-congress/?apage=2
The library books nobody wants to borrow
A website revealing the worst books on library shelves has become a surprise hit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/12/library-books
Famous and infamous tales of the construction of Fallingwater, Part 3
http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/0814/0814d_fallingwater.cfm
Thanks, Paul.
America’s Fastest-Growing Companies: Lists & Rankings, Online Database: 2009 Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 Released August 13th, 2009
From the Inc. 500 (28th Annual) News Release/Summary (.doc) Inc. magazine today announced its 28th annual Inc. 500, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Topping this year’s list is Northern Capital Insurance, a Miami-based firm that is helping to revolutionize Florida’s ailing insurance industry. The company boasted $95 million in revenue in 2008 and an impressive three-year growth rate of 19,812 percent. The 2009 Inc. 500, reported aggregate revenue of $18.4 billion—up significantly from last year’s $13.7 billion—and a median three-year growth rate of 880.5 percent. The largest company on the list, flat-panel-TV maker Vizio, broke the $2 billion revenue mark. Complete results of the Inc. 500, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found on Inc.com.
Here’s the News Release/Summary for the 2009 Inc. 5000 (3rd Annual) (.doc)
The Enoch Pratt Free Library system has reported that 1.7 million visitors walked through its doors in fiscal 2009. That’s a 32 percent increase compared with the prior year. The public library system’s fiscal year runs July-to-July. The system operates 22 neighborhood library branches, including the central location downtown, in Baltimore.
In addition, the library saw a 19 percent increase in program attendance for adults, teens and children; and a 2.4 percent increase in the number of books checked out in 2009.
The system’s Web site also experienced a 9 percent bounce in number of visits.
Michigan Facts and Trivia
In 1817 the University of Michigan was the first university established by any of the states. Originally named Cathelepistemian and located in Detroit the name was changed in 1821. The university moved to Ann Arbor in 1841.
Sault Ste. Marie was founded by Father Jacques Marquette in 1668. It is the third oldest remaining settlement in the United States.
The Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit manufactured the first air-conditioned car in 1939.
Michigan State University was founded in 1855 as the nation's first land-grant university and served as the prototype for 69 land-grant institutions later established under the Morrill Act of 1862. It was the first institution of higher learning in the nation to teach scientific agriculture.
The Mackinac Bridge is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan, it spans 5 miles over the Straits of Mackinac, which is where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. The Mighty Mac took 3 years to complete and was opened to traffic in 1957. http://www.50states.com/facts/michigan.htm
Find 50 facts about each of the 50 states:
http://www.50states.com/facts/
On August 18, 1227 Genghis Khan died, leaving behind an empire that stretched from the east coast of China across to Russia and down to the Aral Sea. The empire continued to grow after his death, and by 1280, it covered 12 million square miles, about two-thirds of the "known world" at the time. He was brutal, but once he had established control, he left people with a surprising amount of freedom—he made sure they had access to food; he established governments, often with local officials; he allowed women to speak in public and express opinions; and he allowed religious freedom, never trying to convert people. And although he himself was illiterate, he helped establish the first written Mongolian language.
On August 18, 1587 the first child was born of English parents in what is now America: Virginia Dare. She was born on Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, just a few days after settlers from England had arrived to establish the Roanoke Colony, the first English colony in the New World. By1590, the colonists had vanished. No one ever discovered what happened to little Virginia Dare and the rest of the colonists—they never reappeared. To this day, Roanoke Colony is referred to as "The Lost Colony."
On August 18, 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. Seventy-two years earlier, at the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott had called for the rights of women, and begun the cause of women's suffrage. The Writer’s Almanac
“Mrs. Clinton, we’ve all heard about the Chinese contracts in this country,” a student said. “The interference is from the World Bank against this contract. What does Mr. Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton?” Later, her aides released the transcript of the question, as it had been translated to English from French, and further inspection of the audio recording of the event indicated that the translation was fine; the student had indeed said “Mr. Clinton.” After the event, the student apologized to Mrs. Clinton, saying he had indeed meant to ask what Mr. Obama thought. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/africa/13clinton.html?hp
Although Congress grants itself a couple of months off each year, it guarantees ordinary Americans no vacation whatever. The European Union mandates at least four weeks off with pay, a fact cited in support of the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, a modest attempt to guarantee many U.S. workers at least a one-week vacation. Its sponsor, Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida, says he believes that a wise vacation policy can increase productivity, stimulate the economy and improve employee health. http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/too-much-vacation-for-congress/?apage=2
The library books nobody wants to borrow
A website revealing the worst books on library shelves has become a surprise hit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/12/library-books
Famous and infamous tales of the construction of Fallingwater, Part 3
http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/0814/0814d_fallingwater.cfm
Thanks, Paul.
America’s Fastest-Growing Companies: Lists & Rankings, Online Database: 2009 Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 Released August 13th, 2009
From the Inc. 500 (28th Annual) News Release/Summary (.doc) Inc. magazine today announced its 28th annual Inc. 500, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Topping this year’s list is Northern Capital Insurance, a Miami-based firm that is helping to revolutionize Florida’s ailing insurance industry. The company boasted $95 million in revenue in 2008 and an impressive three-year growth rate of 19,812 percent. The 2009 Inc. 500, reported aggregate revenue of $18.4 billion—up significantly from last year’s $13.7 billion—and a median three-year growth rate of 880.5 percent. The largest company on the list, flat-panel-TV maker Vizio, broke the $2 billion revenue mark. Complete results of the Inc. 500, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found on Inc.com.
Here’s the News Release/Summary for the 2009 Inc. 5000 (3rd Annual) (.doc)
The Enoch Pratt Free Library system has reported that 1.7 million visitors walked through its doors in fiscal 2009. That’s a 32 percent increase compared with the prior year. The public library system’s fiscal year runs July-to-July. The system operates 22 neighborhood library branches, including the central location downtown, in Baltimore.
In addition, the library saw a 19 percent increase in program attendance for adults, teens and children; and a 2.4 percent increase in the number of books checked out in 2009.
The system’s Web site also experienced a 9 percent bounce in number of visits.
Michigan Facts and Trivia
In 1817 the University of Michigan was the first university established by any of the states. Originally named Cathelepistemian and located in Detroit the name was changed in 1821. The university moved to Ann Arbor in 1841.
Sault Ste. Marie was founded by Father Jacques Marquette in 1668. It is the third oldest remaining settlement in the United States.
The Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit manufactured the first air-conditioned car in 1939.
Michigan State University was founded in 1855 as the nation's first land-grant university and served as the prototype for 69 land-grant institutions later established under the Morrill Act of 1862. It was the first institution of higher learning in the nation to teach scientific agriculture.
The Mackinac Bridge is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan, it spans 5 miles over the Straits of Mackinac, which is where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. The Mighty Mac took 3 years to complete and was opened to traffic in 1957. http://www.50states.com/facts/michigan.htm
Find 50 facts about each of the 50 states:
http://www.50states.com/facts/
On August 18, 1227 Genghis Khan died, leaving behind an empire that stretched from the east coast of China across to Russia and down to the Aral Sea. The empire continued to grow after his death, and by 1280, it covered 12 million square miles, about two-thirds of the "known world" at the time. He was brutal, but once he had established control, he left people with a surprising amount of freedom—he made sure they had access to food; he established governments, often with local officials; he allowed women to speak in public and express opinions; and he allowed religious freedom, never trying to convert people. And although he himself was illiterate, he helped establish the first written Mongolian language.
On August 18, 1587 the first child was born of English parents in what is now America: Virginia Dare. She was born on Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, just a few days after settlers from England had arrived to establish the Roanoke Colony, the first English colony in the New World. By1590, the colonists had vanished. No one ever discovered what happened to little Virginia Dare and the rest of the colonists—they never reappeared. To this day, Roanoke Colony is referred to as "The Lost Colony."
On August 18, 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. Seventy-two years earlier, at the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott had called for the rights of women, and begun the cause of women's suffrage. The Writer’s Almanac
Monday, August 17, 2009
2009 World Population Data Sheet Source: Population Reference Bureau
Global population numbers are on track to reach 7 billion in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Virtually all of the growth is in developing countries. And the growth of the world’s youth population (ages 15 to 24) is shifting into the poorest of those countries. The projection for population growth in developing countries assumes that fertility in those countries will fall to the same low levels as in today’s developed countries, around two children per woman. That is quite an assumption. Currently, the highest fertility rate is in Niger, 7.4 children per woman. The lowest rate is in Taiwan, 1.0 children per woman. The 2009 World Population Data Sheet provides up-to-date demographic, health, and environment data for all the countries and major regions of the world.
Hearst Newspapers Investigative Report: Dead by Mistake: "Experts estimate that a staggering 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year. In addition, a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study concluded that 99,000 patients a year succumb to hospital-acquired infections. Almost all of those deaths, experts say, also are preventable. These numbers are not absolutes. There is no definitive study—which is part of the problem—but all of the available research indicates that the death toll from preventable medical injuries approaches 200,000 per year in the United States."
How Much Stimulus Funding is Going to Your County? by Michael Grabell, Jennifer LaFleur, Dan Nguyen, and Jeff Larson: "Want to know what’s going on with the stimulus in your area? ProPublica has compiled nearly all the contracts, grants and loans that the government has reported awarding so far in the stimulus program. Type in your county or click on your state to find projects in your area."
Lots of positive reaction to Ohio oddities and trivia. My husband, Jack, found the book Oddball Ohio in Stately Raven Bookstore in Findlay. http://www.statelyravenbookstore.com/
OHIO CHEER
One bun, two buns, three buns, four.
Five buns, six buns, many more.
Where’s Toledo?
Crowd responds: Where the buns are.
Where’s Waldo?
Crowd responds: Where fried bologna sandwiches are.
Where’s North Canton?
Crowd responds: Where the chocolate lovers are.
http://www.tonypackos.com/history.php
http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Review/4793-4773/gr-tavern
http://www.visitakron-summit.org/Attractions.aspx?VendorID=134&PageId=5&VID=3&VendorName=Harry%20London%20Candies,%20Inc.
Reading One Book Changed His Whole Life August 12, 2009
And now he owns one of the few bookstores, independent or otherwise, in an inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood. Hakim Hopkins, who grew up in West Philadelphia and Atlantic City, was 15 and in juvenile detention when his mother gave him a copy of Native Son. “That book just took me out," Hopkins, 37, remembers. “I didn't know that a book could be that good. became a book lover, and a thinker." Today, Hopkins runs the Black & Nobel bookstore at Broad and Erie that in the year since it expanded to that spot has become a neighborhood hub. Hopkins says that although business is drying up for other independent bookstores, Black & Nobel's mix of services is adding to its bustle.
Story at Philly.com.
One Country (New Zealand), One Story (a Kiwi Tale) August 12, 2009
Cross-legged and hushed, 146 children waited for South Taranaki Mayor Ross Dunlop to sit in his throne-like chair and read to them. The pupils from Hawera and Mokoia Primary schools and other guests had gathered at Hawera Library to hear the mayor read to them as part of New Zealand's Biggest Storytime at Hawera Library. At 10.30am yesterday special guests in libraries across the country simultaneously read Itiiti's Gift, written by Kiwi author Melanie Drewery. Librarian Kaye Lally told the eager listeners they were taking part in something really special. “There are lots of children listening to the same story all over New Zealand." Source: New Zealand Library Week from Stuff NZ.
August 15 is the birthday of food writer Julia Child, (books by this author) born Julia McWilliams in Pasadena, California (1912). She said, "Life itself is the proper binge." The Writer’s Almanac
Global population numbers are on track to reach 7 billion in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Virtually all of the growth is in developing countries. And the growth of the world’s youth population (ages 15 to 24) is shifting into the poorest of those countries. The projection for population growth in developing countries assumes that fertility in those countries will fall to the same low levels as in today’s developed countries, around two children per woman. That is quite an assumption. Currently, the highest fertility rate is in Niger, 7.4 children per woman. The lowest rate is in Taiwan, 1.0 children per woman. The 2009 World Population Data Sheet provides up-to-date demographic, health, and environment data for all the countries and major regions of the world.
Hearst Newspapers Investigative Report: Dead by Mistake: "Experts estimate that a staggering 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year. In addition, a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study concluded that 99,000 patients a year succumb to hospital-acquired infections. Almost all of those deaths, experts say, also are preventable. These numbers are not absolutes. There is no definitive study—which is part of the problem—but all of the available research indicates that the death toll from preventable medical injuries approaches 200,000 per year in the United States."
How Much Stimulus Funding is Going to Your County? by Michael Grabell, Jennifer LaFleur, Dan Nguyen, and Jeff Larson: "Want to know what’s going on with the stimulus in your area? ProPublica has compiled nearly all the contracts, grants and loans that the government has reported awarding so far in the stimulus program. Type in your county or click on your state to find projects in your area."
Lots of positive reaction to Ohio oddities and trivia. My husband, Jack, found the book Oddball Ohio in Stately Raven Bookstore in Findlay. http://www.statelyravenbookstore.com/
OHIO CHEER
One bun, two buns, three buns, four.
Five buns, six buns, many more.
Where’s Toledo?
Crowd responds: Where the buns are.
Where’s Waldo?
Crowd responds: Where fried bologna sandwiches are.
Where’s North Canton?
Crowd responds: Where the chocolate lovers are.
http://www.tonypackos.com/history.php
http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurant/Review/4793-4773/gr-tavern
http://www.visitakron-summit.org/Attractions.aspx?VendorID=134&PageId=5&VID=3&VendorName=Harry%20London%20Candies,%20Inc.
Reading One Book Changed His Whole Life August 12, 2009
And now he owns one of the few bookstores, independent or otherwise, in an inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood. Hakim Hopkins, who grew up in West Philadelphia and Atlantic City, was 15 and in juvenile detention when his mother gave him a copy of Native Son. “That book just took me out," Hopkins, 37, remembers. “I didn't know that a book could be that good. became a book lover, and a thinker." Today, Hopkins runs the Black & Nobel bookstore at Broad and Erie that in the year since it expanded to that spot has become a neighborhood hub. Hopkins says that although business is drying up for other independent bookstores, Black & Nobel's mix of services is adding to its bustle.
Story at Philly.com.
One Country (New Zealand), One Story (a Kiwi Tale) August 12, 2009
Cross-legged and hushed, 146 children waited for South Taranaki Mayor Ross Dunlop to sit in his throne-like chair and read to them. The pupils from Hawera and Mokoia Primary schools and other guests had gathered at Hawera Library to hear the mayor read to them as part of New Zealand's Biggest Storytime at Hawera Library. At 10.30am yesterday special guests in libraries across the country simultaneously read Itiiti's Gift, written by Kiwi author Melanie Drewery. Librarian Kaye Lally told the eager listeners they were taking part in something really special. “There are lots of children listening to the same story all over New Zealand." Source: New Zealand Library Week from Stuff NZ.
August 15 is the birthday of food writer Julia Child, (books by this author) born Julia McWilliams in Pasadena, California (1912). She said, "Life itself is the proper binge." The Writer’s Almanac
Friday, August 14, 2009
U.S. and Switzerland Reach Settlement Over Secret Bank Accounts
News release: "The out-of-court settlement sought in the US civil proceedings against UBS has been reached. The details of the arrangement were worked out between Switzerland and the USA over the last few days. The judge was informed during a telephone conference on Wednesday. The settlement now has to be signed by both states."
I recommend the movie Julie & Julia. Before seeing it, I bought Julia Child’s memoir My Life in France. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/books/review/28riding.html
I have The French Chef Cookbook and make the marinated flank steak recipe that I first saw her demonstrate on television. When Julia visited restaurants, she electrified the diners, and she would pay her respects to the kitchen staff while there.
Julia was the oldest of three siblings, each so tall that their mother boasted that she had "given birth to 18 feet of children." A self-confessed ham, she became a darling of audiences and comedians almost from the moment she made her debut on WGBH in Boston in 1963 at the age of 50. On "Saturday Night Live," Dan Aykroyd played her boozily bleeding to death while shrieking, "Save the liver." Jean Stapleton even portrayed her in a musical with sung recipes called "Bon Appétit!" in 1989.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/13/dining/13CND-CHILD.html
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday scored a victory in its enforcement of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it a misdemeanor criminal act to kill a protected bird species regardless of whether the killing was intentional. A plea agreement filed Wednesday in federal court in Denver between ExxonMobil and the Justice Department could ruffle a few feathers in the corporate world, as “the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company” agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and community service payments for killing 85 birds, including waterfowl, hawks and owls, at its facilities in five states including Colorado and Texas, over the past five years, according to this DOJ press release. Here's the plea agreement.
The birds died after exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities. The company said it will implement an environmental compliance plan over the next three years to prevent bird deaths and has already spent $2.5 million to that effect. Among the solutions it will use are “bird balls” that cover open wastewater ponds at oil and gas facilities
Bank of America Corp. today said it is dropping a rule that forces customers into arbitration if they have a dispute about their credit-card or certain other consumer-related accounts. The WSJ's Robin Sidel says in her story the move, which comes amid a shakeout in the use of mandatory arbitration by big U.S. banks, means consumers will now be permitted to file lawsuits against Bank of America to resolve such disputes. Last month, two major organizations that preside over mandatory arbitrations said that they were pulling back from the business of using the process for collection matters.
WSJ Law Blog August 13, 2009
Short words
ort (ort) noun
A scrap of food left after a meal.
of Germanic origin, ultimately from the Indo-European roots ud- (out) and ed- (to eat)
fug (fug) noun
stale, humid, and stuffy atmosphere, as in a crowded, poorly ventilated room
of uncertain origin, perhaps from fogo (stench)
bap (bap) noun
a soft, round bread roll
of unknown origin
cwm (koom) noun
a steep bowl-shaped mountain basin, carved by glaciers, also known as cirque.
From Welsh cwm (valley) The letter w works as a vowel in the Welsh language and it has given another such word (without a standard vowel aeiou, or y) to English: crwth (krooth) meaning crowd. A.Word.A.Day
Wonders/oddities/trivia from Oddball Ohio:
Down by the Old Mill Stream written about Blanchard River
Manufactures all Airstream trailer and motor homes on the market today
Mile-thick glacier scraped across limestone and left 400-foot long 10 to 15 foot-deep gouges on Kelleys Island
By law, you cannot own a map in Lima that does not have Lima on it
Allen County Museum displays the jail cell and sheriff’s office from a John Dillinger breakout, and a Noah’s Ark mechanical theater with a performance of the flood from the book of Genesis
A 5,200-pound granite orb that revolves, but no one understands how
Port Clinton drops a 20-foot long fiberglass fish on New Year’s Eve
Tony Packo’s displays over 1000 replicas of buns, autographed by famous people, including five from U.S. presidents
National Inventors Hall of Fame is located in Akron
Only Main Street in America with two dead ends in Alliance
Chocolate Hall of Fame is located in North Canton
Toy and Hobby Museum in Orrville has over 10,000 pencils and more than 4,500 toy trucks
House in Cleveland used for exterior shots in the film A Christmas Story
Waldo restaurant serves a half-ton of bologna each week in their fried bologna sandwiches
Find Oddball titles from Chicago Review Press:
http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/catalog.cfm
Submit a proposal for a nonfiction book to Chicago Review Press: http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/about.cfm
News release: "The out-of-court settlement sought in the US civil proceedings against UBS has been reached. The details of the arrangement were worked out between Switzerland and the USA over the last few days. The judge was informed during a telephone conference on Wednesday. The settlement now has to be signed by both states."
I recommend the movie Julie & Julia. Before seeing it, I bought Julia Child’s memoir My Life in France. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/books/review/28riding.html
I have The French Chef Cookbook and make the marinated flank steak recipe that I first saw her demonstrate on television. When Julia visited restaurants, she electrified the diners, and she would pay her respects to the kitchen staff while there.
Julia was the oldest of three siblings, each so tall that their mother boasted that she had "given birth to 18 feet of children." A self-confessed ham, she became a darling of audiences and comedians almost from the moment she made her debut on WGBH in Boston in 1963 at the age of 50. On "Saturday Night Live," Dan Aykroyd played her boozily bleeding to death while shrieking, "Save the liver." Jean Stapleton even portrayed her in a musical with sung recipes called "Bon Appétit!" in 1989.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/13/dining/13CND-CHILD.html
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday scored a victory in its enforcement of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which makes it a misdemeanor criminal act to kill a protected bird species regardless of whether the killing was intentional. A plea agreement filed Wednesday in federal court in Denver between ExxonMobil and the Justice Department could ruffle a few feathers in the corporate world, as “the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company” agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and community service payments for killing 85 birds, including waterfowl, hawks and owls, at its facilities in five states including Colorado and Texas, over the past five years, according to this DOJ press release. Here's the plea agreement.
The birds died after exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities. The company said it will implement an environmental compliance plan over the next three years to prevent bird deaths and has already spent $2.5 million to that effect. Among the solutions it will use are “bird balls” that cover open wastewater ponds at oil and gas facilities
Bank of America Corp. today said it is dropping a rule that forces customers into arbitration if they have a dispute about their credit-card or certain other consumer-related accounts. The WSJ's Robin Sidel says in her story the move, which comes amid a shakeout in the use of mandatory arbitration by big U.S. banks, means consumers will now be permitted to file lawsuits against Bank of America to resolve such disputes. Last month, two major organizations that preside over mandatory arbitrations said that they were pulling back from the business of using the process for collection matters.
WSJ Law Blog August 13, 2009
Short words
ort (ort) noun
A scrap of food left after a meal.
of Germanic origin, ultimately from the Indo-European roots ud- (out) and ed- (to eat)
fug (fug) noun
stale, humid, and stuffy atmosphere, as in a crowded, poorly ventilated room
of uncertain origin, perhaps from fogo (stench)
bap (bap) noun
a soft, round bread roll
of unknown origin
cwm (koom) noun
a steep bowl-shaped mountain basin, carved by glaciers, also known as cirque.
From Welsh cwm (valley) The letter w works as a vowel in the Welsh language and it has given another such word (without a standard vowel aeiou, or y) to English: crwth (krooth) meaning crowd. A.Word.A.Day
Wonders/oddities/trivia from Oddball Ohio:
Down by the Old Mill Stream written about Blanchard River
Manufactures all Airstream trailer and motor homes on the market today
Mile-thick glacier scraped across limestone and left 400-foot long 10 to 15 foot-deep gouges on Kelleys Island
By law, you cannot own a map in Lima that does not have Lima on it
Allen County Museum displays the jail cell and sheriff’s office from a John Dillinger breakout, and a Noah’s Ark mechanical theater with a performance of the flood from the book of Genesis
A 5,200-pound granite orb that revolves, but no one understands how
Port Clinton drops a 20-foot long fiberglass fish on New Year’s Eve
Tony Packo’s displays over 1000 replicas of buns, autographed by famous people, including five from U.S. presidents
National Inventors Hall of Fame is located in Akron
Only Main Street in America with two dead ends in Alliance
Chocolate Hall of Fame is located in North Canton
Toy and Hobby Museum in Orrville has over 10,000 pencils and more than 4,500 toy trucks
House in Cleveland used for exterior shots in the film A Christmas Story
Waldo restaurant serves a half-ton of bologna each week in their fried bologna sandwiches
Find Oddball titles from Chicago Review Press:
http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/catalog.cfm
Submit a proposal for a nonfiction book to Chicago Review Press: http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/about.cfm
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Media Cloud: A new tool to track how news gets covered
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School: "Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data. The system is still in early development, but we invite you to explore our current data and suggest research ideas. This is an open-source project, and we will be releasing all of the code soon...Eventually users will be able to compare the top 10 news events covered by Fox News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the BBC, for example, or chart the terms that appear most frequently in The New York Times, compared with leading blogs, or create a world map showing which countries receive the most media attention, or follow the path of a particular report to see if it dominates the news or dies out."
Maps, area codes, phone numbers, zip codes, home sales, climate averages, SIC codes, place names, broadcast stations (Thanks, Barb)
http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/index.htm
Sample search in place names for Northampton
http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/PlaceNames.asp?inData=northampton
New York Times: Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security - "The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say."
John Hanson and John Hancock are among the eight Presidents of Congress (serving one year each from 1781-1789) while the United States operated under the Articles of Confederation. See more at The History Guy:
http://www.historyguy.com/americanrevolution/presidents_of_congress_under_articles_of_confederation.htm
Bulwer-Lytton (where www means wretched writers welcome) 2009 Fiction Contest Winners An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night." http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Courtesy of Toledo reader
If Microsoft doesn't tweak its Word word processing system soon, the company will be banned from selling it. Yes, that's right. The word processing system that so many of us have come to so use, for better or worse, could theoretically be ripped from the shelves by October. The situation is the result of a ruling made by Eastern District of Texas judge Leonard Davis on Tuesday. Judge Davis held that Microsoft infringed U.S. Patent 5,787,449, held by Michel Vulpe, the founder of a Canadian company called i4i. Judge Davis also assessed Microsoft some $290 million in fines. Click here for a story from PC Magazine; here for a piece from the Houston Chronicle (which links to the Seattle PI); here for Judge Davis's order. WSJ Law Blog August 12, 2009
Oddball Ohio Chicago Review Press, 2004
Firsts in Ohio:
Traffic light
Automated traffic light
Banana split
Wendy’s
American Christmas tree
Manure spreader
Concrete streets
Commercial popcorn popper
Public building in the world to be wired for electricity
All-American Soap Box Derby
Patent for chewing gum called “red rubber”
Hot dog bun
Co-ed college in the country
Modern vacuum cleaner
Cash register
Bar code scanner
Largest:
Geode in the world
Rocking chair in the world
Freestanding cellblock in the world, now used in films such as Air Force One and The Shawshank Redemption
Cuckoo clock
Basket-shaped building
Crystal ball
TO BE CONTINUED
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School: "Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data. The system is still in early development, but we invite you to explore our current data and suggest research ideas. This is an open-source project, and we will be releasing all of the code soon...Eventually users will be able to compare the top 10 news events covered by Fox News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the BBC, for example, or chart the terms that appear most frequently in The New York Times, compared with leading blogs, or create a world map showing which countries receive the most media attention, or follow the path of a particular report to see if it dominates the news or dies out."
Maps, area codes, phone numbers, zip codes, home sales, climate averages, SIC codes, place names, broadcast stations (Thanks, Barb)
http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/index.htm
Sample search in place names for Northampton
http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/PlaceNames.asp?inData=northampton
New York Times: Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security - "The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say."
John Hanson and John Hancock are among the eight Presidents of Congress (serving one year each from 1781-1789) while the United States operated under the Articles of Confederation. See more at The History Guy:
http://www.historyguy.com/americanrevolution/presidents_of_congress_under_articles_of_confederation.htm
Bulwer-Lytton (where www means wretched writers welcome) 2009 Fiction Contest Winners An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night." http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Courtesy of Toledo reader
If Microsoft doesn't tweak its Word word processing system soon, the company will be banned from selling it. Yes, that's right. The word processing system that so many of us have come to so use, for better or worse, could theoretically be ripped from the shelves by October. The situation is the result of a ruling made by Eastern District of Texas judge Leonard Davis on Tuesday. Judge Davis held that Microsoft infringed U.S. Patent 5,787,449, held by Michel Vulpe, the founder of a Canadian company called i4i. Judge Davis also assessed Microsoft some $290 million in fines. Click here for a story from PC Magazine; here for a piece from the Houston Chronicle (which links to the Seattle PI); here for Judge Davis's order. WSJ Law Blog August 12, 2009
Oddball Ohio Chicago Review Press, 2004
Firsts in Ohio:
Traffic light
Automated traffic light
Banana split
Wendy’s
American Christmas tree
Manure spreader
Concrete streets
Commercial popcorn popper
Public building in the world to be wired for electricity
All-American Soap Box Derby
Patent for chewing gum called “red rubber”
Hot dog bun
Co-ed college in the country
Modern vacuum cleaner
Cash register
Bar code scanner
Largest:
Geode in the world
Rocking chair in the world
Freestanding cellblock in the world, now used in films such as Air Force One and The Shawshank Redemption
Cuckoo clock
Basket-shaped building
Crystal ball
TO BE CONTINUED
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Personal Prescription and Medical Data Widely Sold and Distributed
New York Times, And You Thought a Prescription Was Private : "...in fact, prescriptions, and all the information on them — including not only the name and dosage of the drug and the name and address of the doctor, but also the patient’s address and Social Security number — are a commodity bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients’ knowledge or permission...
See also CDT's Health Privacy Project which states that the organization "will take on key policy questions, including: the proper role of notice and consent, the right of patients to access their own health records in electronic formats, identification and authentication, secondary uses, and enforcement mechanisms. It will address both the traditional exchange of records among providers and payers, as well as new consumer access services and Personal Health Records."
New online database detailing land and property values in the U.S.
News release: "Filling a major gap in the availability of residential property data, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the Wisconsin School of Business announced a new online database detailing land and property values in the United States. Located in the Resources and Tools section of www.lincolninst.edu, Land and Property Values in the U.S. provides separate price indices for land and structures, in addition to the more common price indices for property -- land and structures combined. Information on the values and rents of residential properties in the U.S. cover three dimensions:
• Rent-Price Ratio: The ratio of rents to prices for the stock of all owner-occupied housing
• Aggregate U.S. Land Prices: Values and price indexes for all land, structures, and housing in residential use
• Metro Area Land Prices: Values and price indexes for land, structures, and housing for single-family owner-occupied housing units in 46 major U.S. metropolitan areas."
Dina Gottlebova Babbitt (1928-2009)
While a prisoner in Auschwitz in 1944, Dina Gottlebova, then 19, was ordered by the war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele to paint portraits of Gypsies upon whom he was conducting experiments. Because they needed her to paint, the Nazis spared Dina's life. She later immigrated to the United States, where she worked in Hollywood's animation industry, drawing such beloved cartoon characters as Wily E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Tweety Bird. In the 1970s, seven of the Gypsy portraits resurfaced and were acquired by the Polish government-sponsored Auschwitz State Museum, but the museum refused to return any of the paintings to Dina.
The Adams-Medoff comic strip about Mrs. Babbitt (with additional art by Joe Kubert and a foreword by longtime Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee), titled "The Last Outrage," was published recently by Marvel Comics and=2 0turned into a motion comic by the Walt Disney Company, which included in its re-release of the DVDs of "Anne Frank," "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," and "A Beautiful Life." In recent years, the Wyman Institute, together with comic art publisher J. David Spurlock of Vanguard Productions, organized a series of petitions to the Auschwitz Museum in support of Mrs. Babbitt, including one by 450 comic book artists and writers from around the world; one by 50 prominent attorneys emphasizing Mrs. Babbitt's legal right to the paintings; and one by prominent museum officials, curators, and painters. http://www.impactwire.com/mbarticle.asp?id=417
Featured author: Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy,[1] (born July 20, 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island), is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who has authored ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He has also written plays and screenplays. Literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner and sometimes to Herman Melville.
In college, McCarthy won the Ingram-Merrill award in 1959 and 1960.
The Orchard Keeper was awarded the Faulkner prize for a first novel.[3]
He won a Traveling Fellowship award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1969, McCarthy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing.
In 1981, McCarthy was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.[2]
In 1992, McCarthy was awarded the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses.
In 2007, McCarthy was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "The Road."
In 2007, McCarthy was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, one of Britain's oldest literary honors.
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/Biography.htm
Words Cormac McCarthy uses in his novels:
http://www.johnsepich.com/words_cormac_mccarthy_uses_in_his_novels.pdf
The Cormac McCarthy Journal
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/journal/Default.htm
On August 11, 1596 William Shakespeare (books by this author) and Anne Hathaway buried their only son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 of unknown causes. Hamnet was named after Shakespeare's close friend, a baker, Hamlet Sadler. ("Hamnet" and "Hamlet" were virtually interchangeable names.) Hamnet had a twin sister Judith, named after the baker Hamlet's wife, Judith.
James Joyce (books by this author) was fascinated with Shakespeare, and in Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sits in the National Library and envisions a scene in which the living Shakespeare performs a role in a play that he has written.
"The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied HAMLET all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words …:
HAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT, bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever."
Edith Wharton (books by this author) died on August 11, 1937 at the age of 75, at her 18th-century house in Île-de-France, on the outskirts of Paris. The Writer’s Almanac
New York Times, And You Thought a Prescription Was Private : "...in fact, prescriptions, and all the information on them — including not only the name and dosage of the drug and the name and address of the doctor, but also the patient’s address and Social Security number — are a commodity bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients’ knowledge or permission...
See also CDT's Health Privacy Project which states that the organization "will take on key policy questions, including: the proper role of notice and consent, the right of patients to access their own health records in electronic formats, identification and authentication, secondary uses, and enforcement mechanisms. It will address both the traditional exchange of records among providers and payers, as well as new consumer access services and Personal Health Records."
New online database detailing land and property values in the U.S.
News release: "Filling a major gap in the availability of residential property data, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the Wisconsin School of Business announced a new online database detailing land and property values in the United States. Located in the Resources and Tools section of www.lincolninst.edu, Land and Property Values in the U.S. provides separate price indices for land and structures, in addition to the more common price indices for property -- land and structures combined. Information on the values and rents of residential properties in the U.S. cover three dimensions:
• Rent-Price Ratio: The ratio of rents to prices for the stock of all owner-occupied housing
• Aggregate U.S. Land Prices: Values and price indexes for all land, structures, and housing in residential use
• Metro Area Land Prices: Values and price indexes for land, structures, and housing for single-family owner-occupied housing units in 46 major U.S. metropolitan areas."
Dina Gottlebova Babbitt (1928-2009)
While a prisoner in Auschwitz in 1944, Dina Gottlebova, then 19, was ordered by the war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele to paint portraits of Gypsies upon whom he was conducting experiments. Because they needed her to paint, the Nazis spared Dina's life. She later immigrated to the United States, where she worked in Hollywood's animation industry, drawing such beloved cartoon characters as Wily E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Tweety Bird. In the 1970s, seven of the Gypsy portraits resurfaced and were acquired by the Polish government-sponsored Auschwitz State Museum, but the museum refused to return any of the paintings to Dina.
The Adams-Medoff comic strip about Mrs. Babbitt (with additional art by Joe Kubert and a foreword by longtime Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee), titled "The Last Outrage," was published recently by Marvel Comics and=2 0turned into a motion comic by the Walt Disney Company, which included in its re-release of the DVDs of "Anne Frank," "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," and "A Beautiful Life." In recent years, the Wyman Institute, together with comic art publisher J. David Spurlock of Vanguard Productions, organized a series of petitions to the Auschwitz Museum in support of Mrs. Babbitt, including one by 450 comic book artists and writers from around the world; one by 50 prominent attorneys emphasizing Mrs. Babbitt's legal right to the paintings; and one by prominent museum officials, curators, and painters. http://www.impactwire.com/mbarticle.asp?id=417
Featured author: Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy,[1] (born July 20, 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island), is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who has authored ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He has also written plays and screenplays. Literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner and sometimes to Herman Melville.
In college, McCarthy won the Ingram-Merrill award in 1959 and 1960.
The Orchard Keeper was awarded the Faulkner prize for a first novel.[3]
He won a Traveling Fellowship award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1969, McCarthy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing.
In 1981, McCarthy was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.[2]
In 1992, McCarthy was awarded the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses.
In 2007, McCarthy was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "The Road."
In 2007, McCarthy was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, one of Britain's oldest literary honors.
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/Biography.htm
Words Cormac McCarthy uses in his novels:
http://www.johnsepich.com/words_cormac_mccarthy_uses_in_his_novels.pdf
The Cormac McCarthy Journal
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/journal/Default.htm
On August 11, 1596 William Shakespeare (books by this author) and Anne Hathaway buried their only son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 of unknown causes. Hamnet was named after Shakespeare's close friend, a baker, Hamlet Sadler. ("Hamnet" and "Hamlet" were virtually interchangeable names.) Hamnet had a twin sister Judith, named after the baker Hamlet's wife, Judith.
James Joyce (books by this author) was fascinated with Shakespeare, and in Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sits in the National Library and envisions a scene in which the living Shakespeare performs a role in a play that he has written.
"The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied HAMLET all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words …:
HAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT, bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever."
Edith Wharton (books by this author) died on August 11, 1937 at the age of 75, at her 18th-century house in Île-de-France, on the outskirts of Paris. The Writer’s Almanac
Monday, August 10, 2009
A close colleague of the pilot of the doomed tourist helicopter says it can be dicey in the skies over the Hudson River--and Saturday's disaster that killed nine was "inevitable." "We were borderline surprised that it took so long for a crash like this to happen," said Ben Lane, 34, who frantically radioed his pilot pal Jeremy Clarke that a plane was bearing down on him. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said the lack of controls is a "serious safety and security risk to New Yorkers." "The FAA ... must take a longlook at toughening up flight restrictions," said Schumer. Mayor Bloomberg said any change in regulations would be up to the feds, and he added that the choppers are important to visitors and corporations. "Helicopters are very important to the city and used all the time," the mayor said. "Tourists seem to love it, and for commerce." http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/08/10/2009-08-10_air_disaster_was_inevitable_.html?page=0
Lexicus is an online web dictionary and thesaurus with eight to ten word definitions and sample word usage. See at http://www.lexic.us/
Ban on Texting While Driving Expands to 17 States
Follow up to July 28, 2009 posting New Data On Cell Phone Use and Driving Distraction, news that Illinois became the 17th state to ban text messaging while driving.
CNN: "Illinois will join a growing list of states looking to curb accidents linked to texting. Oregon and New Hampshire banned texting drivers in July, and Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia already have laws in place. Four U.S. senators announced their plan to push for a federal ban on July 29. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the Obama administration will convene a summit to discuss how it can end accidents caused by distracted drivers.
A sign at Naidre's, a small neighborhood coffee shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., begins warmly: "Dear customers, we are absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day..." But, it continues, "...people gotta eat, and to eat they gotta sit." At Naidre's in Park Slope and its second location in nearby Carroll Gardens, Wi-Fi is free. But since the spring of 2008, no laptops have been allowed between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. weekends, unless the customer is eating and typing at the same time. Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables--nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours--and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950421033208823.html
Rolling Stone first approached artist Shepard Fairey about creating an original image of Barack Obama just after the 2008 election, for use with the magazine’s inauguration coverage. He declined the assignment because he already had another high-profile magazine cover in the works. When the publication came calling about creating an Obama image to mark his six-month anniversary as president, however, he was more than happy to oblige. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/08/06/shepard-fairey-takes-on-obama-again/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod=
Wentworth Place, where John Keats lived for 17 months, and produced such works as “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” and whose brilliance still inspires thousands to journey to this nook of London, has been restored.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204886304574308681606221044.html
Winners of annual word contests in Washington Post—you will find 16 alternative meanings for common words, for instance Coffee (noun) the person upon whom one coughs--and 14 altered by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and with a new definition, for instance Hipatitis (noun) terminal coolness
http://theyrodeon.blogspot.com/2009/01/neologism-contest.html
Food is certainly a central theme of the Wisconsin State Fair. Cream puffs and foods on a stick lead the way. The fair’s Web site lists 38 different foods you’ll find on a stick, and Harris said 11 of the items are new this year. “People love foods on a stick,” Harris said. “There’s your basic cotton candy and your berries on a stick but we have more unusual items.” Among those are chocolate-covered bacon on a stick, chilled cookie dough on a stick, Reuben on a stick, deep fried crab cakes on a stick and deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick.
http://greenbayhub.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090806/GPG05/90806057
See all food on a stick at the fair: http://www.wistatefair.com/09_web/food/food_stick.html
Barbequed beaver served at Indiana State Fair
Jim Mahoney, who prepares the barbecued beaver, spends late December through March trapping beavers. Following one simple rule--whatever he kills, he eats--Mahoney usually catches 15 to 20 a year and prepares five or six for the cookout. He seasons the meat, puts it in big roasters and cooks it for five to six hours until the meat begins to fall off the bone. He then chills it, shreds the meat and cooks it again, adding the barbecue sauce to neutralize some of the "wild game taste." "Most people don't know this, but it has been a food source of our country since the beginning," Mahoney said.
http://www.indystar.com/article/20090809/NEWS15/908090375/
Lexicus is an online web dictionary and thesaurus with eight to ten word definitions and sample word usage. See at http://www.lexic.us/
Ban on Texting While Driving Expands to 17 States
Follow up to July 28, 2009 posting New Data On Cell Phone Use and Driving Distraction, news that Illinois became the 17th state to ban text messaging while driving.
CNN: "Illinois will join a growing list of states looking to curb accidents linked to texting. Oregon and New Hampshire banned texting drivers in July, and Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia already have laws in place. Four U.S. senators announced their plan to push for a federal ban on July 29. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the Obama administration will convene a summit to discuss how it can end accidents caused by distracted drivers.
A sign at Naidre's, a small neighborhood coffee shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., begins warmly: "Dear customers, we are absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day..." But, it continues, "...people gotta eat, and to eat they gotta sit." At Naidre's in Park Slope and its second location in nearby Carroll Gardens, Wi-Fi is free. But since the spring of 2008, no laptops have been allowed between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. weekends, unless the customer is eating and typing at the same time. Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables--nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours--and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950421033208823.html
Rolling Stone first approached artist Shepard Fairey about creating an original image of Barack Obama just after the 2008 election, for use with the magazine’s inauguration coverage. He declined the assignment because he already had another high-profile magazine cover in the works. When the publication came calling about creating an Obama image to mark his six-month anniversary as president, however, he was more than happy to oblige. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/08/06/shepard-fairey-takes-on-obama-again/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod=
Wentworth Place, where John Keats lived for 17 months, and produced such works as “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” and whose brilliance still inspires thousands to journey to this nook of London, has been restored.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204886304574308681606221044.html
Winners of annual word contests in Washington Post—you will find 16 alternative meanings for common words, for instance Coffee (noun) the person upon whom one coughs--and 14 altered by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and with a new definition, for instance Hipatitis (noun) terminal coolness
http://theyrodeon.blogspot.com/2009/01/neologism-contest.html
Food is certainly a central theme of the Wisconsin State Fair. Cream puffs and foods on a stick lead the way. The fair’s Web site lists 38 different foods you’ll find on a stick, and Harris said 11 of the items are new this year. “People love foods on a stick,” Harris said. “There’s your basic cotton candy and your berries on a stick but we have more unusual items.” Among those are chocolate-covered bacon on a stick, chilled cookie dough on a stick, Reuben on a stick, deep fried crab cakes on a stick and deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick.
http://greenbayhub.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090806/GPG05/90806057
See all food on a stick at the fair: http://www.wistatefair.com/09_web/food/food_stick.html
Barbequed beaver served at Indiana State Fair
Jim Mahoney, who prepares the barbecued beaver, spends late December through March trapping beavers. Following one simple rule--whatever he kills, he eats--Mahoney usually catches 15 to 20 a year and prepares five or six for the cookout. He seasons the meat, puts it in big roasters and cooks it for five to six hours until the meat begins to fall off the bone. He then chills it, shreds the meat and cooks it again, adding the barbecue sauce to neutralize some of the "wild game taste." "Most people don't know this, but it has been a food source of our country since the beginning," Mahoney said.
http://www.indystar.com/article/20090809/NEWS15/908090375/
Friday, August 7, 2009
Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday afternoon as the nation's 111th Supreme Court justice and the first Hispanic on the court, a historic moment for the nation's fastest-growing minority group. On a 68 to 31 vote, the Senate confirmed Sotomayor, 55, after roughly 18 hours of official debate spread across three days this week, a show of support that included nine Republican 'aye' votes and 59 from the Democratic side of the aisle. All 31 votes against Sotomayor came from Republicans. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/08/06/ST2009080602601.html
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/08/senate-confirms-sotomayor-for-supreme.php
UI makes WSJ
"It makes me angry to think that someone who didn't put in the hours or work as hard as me has my spot," said John Suo, who earned a 4.0 grade-point average at Naperville Central High School outside Chicago but was rejected by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's business school.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124951741117909487.html
An historical map in downtown Naperville, Illinois in front of the Nichols Library was dedicated on June 22, 1986 on the corner of Webster Street and Jackson Avenue. The bronze map is imbedded in the brick paver sidewalk, and was created by sculptors Gregg Le Fevre and Matthew Schneider of Boston, as a result of a gift to the Library by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Moser.” The map is made up of 36 bronze squares, weighing almost 100 pounds each. The map is a past-present-future-topographical map of Naperville.
Naperville Sun, June 20, 1986 and June 25, 1986
Nichols Library
Naperville Public Library
Naperville's Neighborhood of Knowledge
How to find a county: http://www.naco.org/Template.cfm?Section=Find_a_County
I used it to find the county for Pulaski, Virginia, then wondered if that county was in the Shenandoah Valley, finding the list of nine counties here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XNme2mvk8RQC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22new+river%22+%22shenandoah+valley%22&source=bl&ots=dcT71rRbFH&sig=_S9NQ591tjrl7zUZ7si4WRIYTfw&hl=en&ei=HcN6Sqq9OIGANsTtneIC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=%22new%20river%22%20%22shenandoah%20valley%22&f=false
According to a report in The Sofia Echo, archaeologists Nikolai Ovcharov and Hitko Vachev have excavated on August 2 what has been described as the grave of a Bulgarian princess, buried in the courtyard of the St. Peter and Pavel church in Veliko Tarnovo.
The two archaeologists have concluded that the grave dates back to the 14th century or earlier, sometime after the reign of Tsar Ivan Assen II. The princess was found wearing “luxurious clothes trimmed with golden ribbon; excellently crafted jewelry; a golden ring, earrings, silver and golden pins were also found around the buried body”.
Archaeologists have discovered over 100 artifacts since excavation work commenced two months ago at the St. Peter and Pavel as well as St. Ivan Rilski churches in Veliko Turnovo. http://www.newkerala.com/nkfullnews-1-85860.html
Rumors spreading for 34 years—FCC receives millions of inquiries
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/enf/forms/rm-2493.html
A 1975 rumor updated with new names: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/petition-number-2493.shtml
Individuals spread rumors for a variety of reasons: because they find a story humorous, because they believe the rumor is true and want to be a Good Samaritan. To some extent, the definition of what constitutes a rumor can be as nebulous as
the substance of the rumor itself. Folklorists and sociologists are conflicted on the distinction between contemporary legend and rumor. Under a common-sense division, narratives that are directed against specific individuals or institutions are more appropriately analyzed as rumors. Internet rumors circulate by two primary methods: via forwarded e-mails passed along from person to person or on web sites or electronic bulletin boards accessed by individuals seeking information on a specific topic. Forwarded e-mails are easily identifiable as rumors and can be evaluated as such by recipients. The use of web sites or electronic bulletin boards to spread rumors is more problematic, because these methods of transmission closely resemble legitimate information sources. http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/255/Daly,_Karen.rtf
Consumer tips: avoiding scams and crams
http://www.ripoffreport.com/consumer_resources.asp
Mutt and Jeff (mut uhn jef) noun
A pair of people having dramatically different characteristics, such as height
After Mutt and Jeff, comic strip characters of the same name, created by cartoonist Harry "Bud" Fisher (1885-1954). The strip originated in 1907 and its principal characters were tall Mutt and short Jeff. Both were lovable losers. The strip was wildly popular and inspired the idiomatic usage to refer to a pair of comically mismatched people. The term also applies to a pair of interrogators one of whom appears threatening while the other presents a sympathetic persona. The word is also used as a Cockney rhyming slang for 'deaf'. A.Word.A.Day
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/08/senate-confirms-sotomayor-for-supreme.php
UI makes WSJ
"It makes me angry to think that someone who didn't put in the hours or work as hard as me has my spot," said John Suo, who earned a 4.0 grade-point average at Naperville Central High School outside Chicago but was rejected by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's business school.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124951741117909487.html
An historical map in downtown Naperville, Illinois in front of the Nichols Library was dedicated on June 22, 1986 on the corner of Webster Street and Jackson Avenue. The bronze map is imbedded in the brick paver sidewalk, and was created by sculptors Gregg Le Fevre and Matthew Schneider of Boston, as a result of a gift to the Library by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Moser.” The map is made up of 36 bronze squares, weighing almost 100 pounds each. The map is a past-present-future-topographical map of Naperville.
Naperville Sun, June 20, 1986 and June 25, 1986
Nichols Library
Naperville Public Library
Naperville's Neighborhood of Knowledge
How to find a county: http://www.naco.org/Template.cfm?Section=Find_a_County
I used it to find the county for Pulaski, Virginia, then wondered if that county was in the Shenandoah Valley, finding the list of nine counties here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XNme2mvk8RQC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22new+river%22+%22shenandoah+valley%22&source=bl&ots=dcT71rRbFH&sig=_S9NQ591tjrl7zUZ7si4WRIYTfw&hl=en&ei=HcN6Sqq9OIGANsTtneIC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=%22new%20river%22%20%22shenandoah%20valley%22&f=false
According to a report in The Sofia Echo, archaeologists Nikolai Ovcharov and Hitko Vachev have excavated on August 2 what has been described as the grave of a Bulgarian princess, buried in the courtyard of the St. Peter and Pavel church in Veliko Tarnovo.
The two archaeologists have concluded that the grave dates back to the 14th century or earlier, sometime after the reign of Tsar Ivan Assen II. The princess was found wearing “luxurious clothes trimmed with golden ribbon; excellently crafted jewelry; a golden ring, earrings, silver and golden pins were also found around the buried body”.
Archaeologists have discovered over 100 artifacts since excavation work commenced two months ago at the St. Peter and Pavel as well as St. Ivan Rilski churches in Veliko Turnovo. http://www.newkerala.com/nkfullnews-1-85860.html
Rumors spreading for 34 years—FCC receives millions of inquiries
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/enf/forms/rm-2493.html
A 1975 rumor updated with new names: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/petition-number-2493.shtml
Individuals spread rumors for a variety of reasons: because they find a story humorous, because they believe the rumor is true and want to be a Good Samaritan. To some extent, the definition of what constitutes a rumor can be as nebulous as
the substance of the rumor itself. Folklorists and sociologists are conflicted on the distinction between contemporary legend and rumor. Under a common-sense division, narratives that are directed against specific individuals or institutions are more appropriately analyzed as rumors. Internet rumors circulate by two primary methods: via forwarded e-mails passed along from person to person or on web sites or electronic bulletin boards accessed by individuals seeking information on a specific topic. Forwarded e-mails are easily identifiable as rumors and can be evaluated as such by recipients. The use of web sites or electronic bulletin boards to spread rumors is more problematic, because these methods of transmission closely resemble legitimate information sources. http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/255/Daly,_Karen.rtf
Consumer tips: avoiding scams and crams
http://www.ripoffreport.com/consumer_resources.asp
Mutt and Jeff (mut uhn jef) noun
A pair of people having dramatically different characteristics, such as height
After Mutt and Jeff, comic strip characters of the same name, created by cartoonist Harry "Bud" Fisher (1885-1954). The strip originated in 1907 and its principal characters were tall Mutt and short Jeff. Both were lovable losers. The strip was wildly popular and inspired the idiomatic usage to refer to a pair of comically mismatched people. The term also applies to a pair of interrogators one of whom appears threatening while the other presents a sympathetic persona. The word is also used as a Cockney rhyming slang for 'deaf'. A.Word.A.Day
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Google quadruples number of articles included in News Archive Search
Google News Blog: "We've recently updated our index, quadrupling the number of articles included in News Archive Search. We now include articles from several new publications, including the Halifax Gazette, Sydney Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Village Voice. Working with our partners, we've also added new international publications such as the Manila Standard, The Nation from Thailand, and many others...You can explore this historical treasure trove by searching on News Archive Search or by using the timeline feature after searching on Google News."
List of post offices that may be closed:
http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/Technology/Station%20and%20branch%20list.pdf
Of the 32,741 post offices in America, the Postal Service is reviewing about 3,200, or nearly 10 percent. Not all the offices on the list may close--and others may be added.
An unknown artist posted several posters in Los Angeles "mashing up" an image of Obama and Heath Ledger's Joker character from "The Dark Knight." The Obama- Joker poster, with the word "socialism" in bold, dark letters printed under the image of his face, has caused a stir on the Web and was linked prominently on the Drudge Report. The original Obama image used for the poster appeared on the cover of the Oct. 23, 2006, edition of Time magazine. The poster bears the dateline and address to Time's
Web site, www.time.com above the image. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/President44/story?id=8239870&page=1
The Air Force closely monitored blogs and social networking sites, including counting the number of messages posted every minute on Twitter, to gauge the swift and angry
public reaction to the flyover of Air Force One during a photo shoot in New York City in April, according to internal e-mails the Defense Department released on July 31.
The Air Force notified the New York City Police Department and other public safety agencies in the New York-New Jersey area about the flyover, but asked them not to publicly disseminate the information. As a result, when Air Force One and two F-16 fighters started circling New York Harbor on April 27 for the photo shoot, many residents became fearful that they were in for a repeat of the airline attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The flyover led to evacuation of office buildings in both New York and New Jersey. http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090803_7235.php
How big is the Internet? Microsoft's Bing team puts the amount of web pages at "over one trillion". And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses. There are more addresses than there are people on Earth. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion. See graphic display of the world’s Internet users at: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25857420-5018992,00.html
Clare Abshire gets herself in a passionate love affair with Chicago librarian Henry DeTamble, who has a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel. Yes, The Time Traveler’s Wife is now a movie slated to open August 14. http://www.bscreview.com/2009/08/rachel-mcadams-eric-bana-4-clips-from-the-time-travelers-wife/
Movie coming out August 7: Julie & Julia. Movie still showing and worthwhile: Up.
See puns on titles of children’s books at: http://www.parentdish.com/2009/08/03/childrens-books-that-will-never-exist/
“The Associated Press--which thinks you owe it a license fee if you quote more than four words from one of its articles--doesn't even care if the words actually came from its article. They'll charge you anyway, even if you're quoting from the public domain. I picked a random AP article and went to their "reuse options" site. Then, when they asked what I wanted to quote, I punched in Thomas Jefferson's famous argument against copyright. Their license fee: $12 for an educational 26-word quote.” http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/02/associated-press-wil-1.html
On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. On August 5, the bomb was loaded onto a specially designed B-29 bomber. It contained 2.2 pounds of uranium. The bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. It exploded 1,900 feet above the ground. Capt. Robert Lewis watched the explosion from his cockpit and wrote in his journal, "My God, what have we done?" About 80,000 people died instantly, and 60,000 more would die from their injuries in the coming months. The Writer’s Almanac
Google News Blog: "We've recently updated our index, quadrupling the number of articles included in News Archive Search. We now include articles from several new publications, including the Halifax Gazette, Sydney Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Village Voice. Working with our partners, we've also added new international publications such as the Manila Standard, The Nation from Thailand, and many others...You can explore this historical treasure trove by searching on News Archive Search or by using the timeline feature after searching on Google News."
List of post offices that may be closed:
http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/Technology/Station%20and%20branch%20list.pdf
Of the 32,741 post offices in America, the Postal Service is reviewing about 3,200, or nearly 10 percent. Not all the offices on the list may close--and others may be added.
An unknown artist posted several posters in Los Angeles "mashing up" an image of Obama and Heath Ledger's Joker character from "The Dark Knight." The Obama- Joker poster, with the word "socialism" in bold, dark letters printed under the image of his face, has caused a stir on the Web and was linked prominently on the Drudge Report. The original Obama image used for the poster appeared on the cover of the Oct. 23, 2006, edition of Time magazine. The poster bears the dateline and address to Time's
Web site, www.time.com above the image. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/President44/story?id=8239870&page=1
The Air Force closely monitored blogs and social networking sites, including counting the number of messages posted every minute on Twitter, to gauge the swift and angry
public reaction to the flyover of Air Force One during a photo shoot in New York City in April, according to internal e-mails the Defense Department released on July 31.
The Air Force notified the New York City Police Department and other public safety agencies in the New York-New Jersey area about the flyover, but asked them not to publicly disseminate the information. As a result, when Air Force One and two F-16 fighters started circling New York Harbor on April 27 for the photo shoot, many residents became fearful that they were in for a repeat of the airline attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The flyover led to evacuation of office buildings in both New York and New Jersey. http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090803_7235.php
How big is the Internet? Microsoft's Bing team puts the amount of web pages at "over one trillion". And Google has already indexed more than one trillion discrete web addresses. There are more addresses than there are people on Earth. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion. See graphic display of the world’s Internet users at: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25857420-5018992,00.html
Clare Abshire gets herself in a passionate love affair with Chicago librarian Henry DeTamble, who has a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel. Yes, The Time Traveler’s Wife is now a movie slated to open August 14. http://www.bscreview.com/2009/08/rachel-mcadams-eric-bana-4-clips-from-the-time-travelers-wife/
Movie coming out August 7: Julie & Julia. Movie still showing and worthwhile: Up.
See puns on titles of children’s books at: http://www.parentdish.com/2009/08/03/childrens-books-that-will-never-exist/
“The Associated Press--which thinks you owe it a license fee if you quote more than four words from one of its articles--doesn't even care if the words actually came from its article. They'll charge you anyway, even if you're quoting from the public domain. I picked a random AP article and went to their "reuse options" site. Then, when they asked what I wanted to quote, I punched in Thomas Jefferson's famous argument against copyright. Their license fee: $12 for an educational 26-word quote.” http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/02/associated-press-wil-1.html
On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. On August 5, the bomb was loaded onto a specially designed B-29 bomber. It contained 2.2 pounds of uranium. The bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. It exploded 1,900 feet above the ground. Capt. Robert Lewis watched the explosion from his cockpit and wrote in his journal, "My God, what have we done?" About 80,000 people died instantly, and 60,000 more would die from their injuries in the coming months. The Writer’s Almanac
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
On August 3, 1882, Congress passed the first federal law regulating immigration. Under the statute, state-run boards under contract to the US Secretary of the Treasury were to inspect immigrants according to rules that were uniform in all ports. Boards were prohibited from admitting any immigrant found to be a "convict, lunatic, idiot or any person unable to take care of him or herself without becoming a public charge." http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/2006/08/us-congress-passed-first-law.php
Beware the snare of shared misinformation
Have you ever played a game whispering a sentence from person to person at a party? The last person in the line has a very different story than the first, and it makes you laugh. Nobody’s laughing about misinformation transmitted electronically around the world today. People report over and over information that is:
• untrue or unsubstantiated
• taken out of context
• missing words or has words added
• missing emphasis or has emphasis added
• filled with conjecture, innuendo, supposition, hyperbole
• outdated and already disproved
• commentary or opinion but not clearly identified as such
Who me? I’m not addicted.
So when I started to add up my daily screen time, I did so with confidence, and—Uncle Stevie admits it—a sense of superiority. That feeling soon melted away. For me, it breaks down like this: 3.5 hours a day writing in front of my desktop Mac; one hour a day writing and answering e-mails; one hour a day visiting my favorite websites; two hours a day watching TV. I'm below the Nielsen average, but still—seven and a half hours per day of computer-related activity? Find out who Uncle Stevie is at: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20293300,00.html
According to the 16th-century art-stargazer Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo’s first painting was a smallish, slightly customized painted copy of a German print. The image of the hermit-saint, St. Anthony, locked in a midair tangle of straining, pulsating figures, created a template that Michelangelo would repeat in sculpture and painting for the rest of his life. Michelangelo makes adventurous use of color. The recent cleaning done by the Met conservator Michael Gallagher removed layers of darkening varnish. And in both the individual colors and combinations revealed, Keith Christiansen, curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discerns a forecast of the palette that would later be used on the Sistine ceiling. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/arts/design/19michelangelo.html
Displayed through September 7, 2009, European Paintings Galleries, 2nd floor
The painting was acquired recently by the Kimbell Art Museum, where it will return this fall for display as part of its permanent collection.
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId=%7B9D3C7B4F-B278-4162-8EB1-911A90475DF4%7D
Announcement of purchase by Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas
https://www.kimbellart.org/News/News-Article.aspx?nid=119
Featured author: Tobias Wolff, professor at Stanford University, best known for short stories and memoirs. Wolff's work has found a wider audience through its adaptation to film. This Boy's Life became a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Ellen Barkin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Wolff
Tobias Wolff's older brother is the author and University of California, Irvine professor Geoffrey Wolff. A decade before Wolff wrote This Boy's Life, Geoffrey wrote a memoir of his own about the boys' biological father, entitled The Duke of Deception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Wolff
Tuennes and Schael: bronze statues we saw in Cologne, Germany See at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tuennes_und_Schael_Denkmal_Koeln2007.jpg
Tuennes--the name is derived from Antonius--is the red-head, dressed in the traditional garb of a cabbage farmer. His huge red nose gives away the fact that he isn´t averse to a drink--or several. He is of a gentle nature and a simple, naive mindset, but not stupid. It´s said to bring good luck to touch Tuennes´ nose.
Schael´s real name is unknown. His nickname means "cross-eyed", but also "not quite respectable". While he is dressed like a gentleman, he has a somewhat sleazy air about him. He is a small-time crook, always trying to outwit others, but he´s not as clever as he thinks himself to be. Tuennes and Schael are reflections of the industrial and rural sides of 19th century Cologne and are popular characters in jokes and anecdotes.
http://www.ningyonomori.de/17.html
Beware the snare of shared misinformation
Have you ever played a game whispering a sentence from person to person at a party? The last person in the line has a very different story than the first, and it makes you laugh. Nobody’s laughing about misinformation transmitted electronically around the world today. People report over and over information that is:
• untrue or unsubstantiated
• taken out of context
• missing words or has words added
• missing emphasis or has emphasis added
• filled with conjecture, innuendo, supposition, hyperbole
• outdated and already disproved
• commentary or opinion but not clearly identified as such
Who me? I’m not addicted.
So when I started to add up my daily screen time, I did so with confidence, and—Uncle Stevie admits it—a sense of superiority. That feeling soon melted away. For me, it breaks down like this: 3.5 hours a day writing in front of my desktop Mac; one hour a day writing and answering e-mails; one hour a day visiting my favorite websites; two hours a day watching TV. I'm below the Nielsen average, but still—seven and a half hours per day of computer-related activity? Find out who Uncle Stevie is at: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20293300,00.html
According to the 16th-century art-stargazer Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo’s first painting was a smallish, slightly customized painted copy of a German print. The image of the hermit-saint, St. Anthony, locked in a midair tangle of straining, pulsating figures, created a template that Michelangelo would repeat in sculpture and painting for the rest of his life. Michelangelo makes adventurous use of color. The recent cleaning done by the Met conservator Michael Gallagher removed layers of darkening varnish. And in both the individual colors and combinations revealed, Keith Christiansen, curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discerns a forecast of the palette that would later be used on the Sistine ceiling. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/arts/design/19michelangelo.html
Displayed through September 7, 2009, European Paintings Galleries, 2nd floor
The painting was acquired recently by the Kimbell Art Museum, where it will return this fall for display as part of its permanent collection.
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId=%7B9D3C7B4F-B278-4162-8EB1-911A90475DF4%7D
Announcement of purchase by Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas
https://www.kimbellart.org/News/News-Article.aspx?nid=119
Featured author: Tobias Wolff, professor at Stanford University, best known for short stories and memoirs. Wolff's work has found a wider audience through its adaptation to film. This Boy's Life became a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Ellen Barkin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Wolff
Tobias Wolff's older brother is the author and University of California, Irvine professor Geoffrey Wolff. A decade before Wolff wrote This Boy's Life, Geoffrey wrote a memoir of his own about the boys' biological father, entitled The Duke of Deception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Wolff
Tuennes and Schael: bronze statues we saw in Cologne, Germany See at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tuennes_und_Schael_Denkmal_Koeln2007.jpg
Tuennes--the name is derived from Antonius--is the red-head, dressed in the traditional garb of a cabbage farmer. His huge red nose gives away the fact that he isn´t averse to a drink--or several. He is of a gentle nature and a simple, naive mindset, but not stupid. It´s said to bring good luck to touch Tuennes´ nose.
Schael´s real name is unknown. His nickname means "cross-eyed", but also "not quite respectable". While he is dressed like a gentleman, he has a somewhat sleazy air about him. He is a small-time crook, always trying to outwit others, but he´s not as clever as he thinks himself to be. Tuennes and Schael are reflections of the industrial and rural sides of 19th century Cologne and are popular characters in jokes and anecdotes.
http://www.ningyonomori.de/17.html
Monday, August 3, 2009
In a major break in a massive tax-evasion investigation, UBS AG and the governments of Switzerland and the U.S. have reached a settlement that could force UBS to turn over identities of thousands of account holders, a Justice Department attorney told a U.S. District Court judge Friday morning. Click here for the WSJ story. WSJ Law Blog July 31, 2009
FTC: Who is Responsible for a Deceased Relative's Debts?
News release: "If your relative leaves unpaid debts when he or she dies, do you have to pay? According to the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, surviving relatives usually have no legal obligation to pay the debts of a family member who has died. Generally, that person’s estate is responsible for paying his or her debts. But if there isn’t enough in the estate to cover the debts, they typically go unpaid. After a relative dies, debt collectors may contact family members and ask them to pay their loved ones’ debts. The rights of surviving relatives are covered by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which the FTC enforces."
The FTC has developed a new consumer alert about this issue titled Paying the Debts of a Deceased Relative: Who Is Responsible?
Tax Foundation - Facts & Figures Handbook: How Does Your State Compare?
Facts & Figures Handbook: How Does Your State Compare? (2009 mid-year update)
Mark Robyn: "How do taxes in your state compare nationally? This convenient pocket-size booklet compares the 50 states on 37 different measures of taxing and spending, including individual and corporate income tax rates, business tax climates, excise taxes, tax burdens and state spending. The 2009 version of this booklet was originally published in February; this is a mid-year update reflecting recent rate changes in some states."
cacophony noun
harsh discordance of sound; dissonance
a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds
music: frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand
1650–60; < NL cacophonia < Gk kakophōnía. See CACO-, -PHONY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cacophony
cacography noun
bad handwriting; poor penmanship
incorrect spelling
1570–80; CACO- + -GRAPHY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cacography
calligraphy noun
fancy penmanship, esp. highly decorative handwriting, as with a great many flourishes
Fine Arts: line or a group of lines either derived from or resembling letter forms and characterized by qualities usually associated with cursive writing, esp. that produced with a brush or pen
1605–15; < Gk kalligraphía beautiful writing. See CALLI-, -GRAPHY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/calligraphy
In 1875, Christopher Sholes with assistance from Amos Densmore rearranged the typewriter keyboard so that the commonest letters were not so close together and the type bars would come from opposite directions. Thus they would not clash together and jam the machine. The new arrangement was the "QWERTY" arrangement that typists use today. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/qwerty.htm
Quotes
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.
There is no such thing as a wrong note as long as you're singing.
Pete Seeger (b. 1919) American folk musician, activist
Caribou and reindeer are slightly different according to:
http://www.uaf.edu/news/featured/04/reindeer/difference.html
Caribou and reindeer are the same according to: http://www.ultimateungulate.com/Artiodactyla/Rangifer_tarandus.html
Alphonse and Gaston (AL-fons uhn GAS-tuhn) noun
Two people who treat each other with excessive deference, often to their detriment
After the title characters in a cartoon strip by cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper (1857-1937). Alphonse and Gaston are extremely polite to each other, to the extent that their "After you, Alphonse", "You first, my dear Gaston!" routine often gets them into trouble, such as when they can't evade a trolley which mows them down while each insists on letting the other go first. A.Word.A.Day
FTC: Who is Responsible for a Deceased Relative's Debts?
News release: "If your relative leaves unpaid debts when he or she dies, do you have to pay? According to the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, surviving relatives usually have no legal obligation to pay the debts of a family member who has died. Generally, that person’s estate is responsible for paying his or her debts. But if there isn’t enough in the estate to cover the debts, they typically go unpaid. After a relative dies, debt collectors may contact family members and ask them to pay their loved ones’ debts. The rights of surviving relatives are covered by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which the FTC enforces."
The FTC has developed a new consumer alert about this issue titled Paying the Debts of a Deceased Relative: Who Is Responsible?
Tax Foundation - Facts & Figures Handbook: How Does Your State Compare?
Facts & Figures Handbook: How Does Your State Compare? (2009 mid-year update)
Mark Robyn: "How do taxes in your state compare nationally? This convenient pocket-size booklet compares the 50 states on 37 different measures of taxing and spending, including individual and corporate income tax rates, business tax climates, excise taxes, tax burdens and state spending. The 2009 version of this booklet was originally published in February; this is a mid-year update reflecting recent rate changes in some states."
cacophony noun
harsh discordance of sound; dissonance
a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds
music: frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand
1650–60; < NL cacophonia < Gk kakophōnía. See CACO-, -PHONY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cacophony
cacography noun
bad handwriting; poor penmanship
incorrect spelling
1570–80; CACO- + -GRAPHY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cacography
calligraphy noun
fancy penmanship, esp. highly decorative handwriting, as with a great many flourishes
Fine Arts: line or a group of lines either derived from or resembling letter forms and characterized by qualities usually associated with cursive writing, esp. that produced with a brush or pen
1605–15; < Gk kalligraphía beautiful writing. See CALLI-, -GRAPHY
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/calligraphy
In 1875, Christopher Sholes with assistance from Amos Densmore rearranged the typewriter keyboard so that the commonest letters were not so close together and the type bars would come from opposite directions. Thus they would not clash together and jam the machine. The new arrangement was the "QWERTY" arrangement that typists use today. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/qwerty.htm
Quotes
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.
There is no such thing as a wrong note as long as you're singing.
Pete Seeger (b. 1919) American folk musician, activist
Caribou and reindeer are slightly different according to:
http://www.uaf.edu/news/featured/04/reindeer/difference.html
Caribou and reindeer are the same according to: http://www.ultimateungulate.com/Artiodactyla/Rangifer_tarandus.html
Alphonse and Gaston (AL-fons uhn GAS-tuhn) noun
Two people who treat each other with excessive deference, often to their detriment
After the title characters in a cartoon strip by cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper (1857-1937). Alphonse and Gaston are extremely polite to each other, to the extent that their "After you, Alphonse", "You first, my dear Gaston!" routine often gets them into trouble, such as when they can't evade a trolley which mows them down while each insists on letting the other go first. A.Word.A.Day
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