PLASTIC BOTTLE RECYCLING REACHES RECORD HIGH OF OVER 2.4 BILLION POUNDS ANNUALLY The 19th annual National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report found that the results reflect a continuing increase in the pounds of bottles collected for recycling each year since the industry survey began in 1990. The recycling rate for plastic bottles rose nearly 3 percent to reach 27 percent.
http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_acc/sec_news_article.asp?CID=206&DID=10389
The Identity Theft Prevention and Identity Management Standards Panel (IDSP) has released a workshop report calling for the development of an American National Standard on identity verification as a tool to help combat terrorism and identity theft. http://www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_story.aspx?menuid=7&articleid=2351 The workshop report is freely available for download at http://webstore.ansi.org/identitytheft.
Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time was extended one month and begins for most of the United States at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and ends 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November. The new start and stop dates were set in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/boundaries/a_savingtime.html
Print maps or customize your own maps at: http://www.nationalatlas.gov/ Click on articles to find information on geography, map reading, America's changing population, geology of the nation, water quality and many more topics to come.
Is it kosher for a law enforcement agency to, pursuant to a lawfully granted search warrant, search your Gmail account without telling you? According to an opinion handed down earlier this year and currently making the rounds on legal blogs (here and here), the answer is no. WSJ Law Blog October 29, 2009
In Darby Conley’s comic strip, the Get Fuzzy characters of Bucky, the Siamese mix cat, friendly dog pal Satchel and their owner Rob Wilco had their successful launch in newspapers under the United Media Syndicate in September, 1999. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/cartoonists/93767 On October 30, 2003, Get Fuzzy cartoonist Conley was criticized for a series strip that implied Pittsburgh stank. He responded with a comical apology. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Comic strip apology to really isn't (November 18, 2003)1 In May 2005, sports anchor Bob Lobel sued Conley over a strip that supposedly implied Lobel was intoxicated while broadcasting. The Boston Globe: Lobel files libel suit in response to 'Get Fuzzy' strip (May 21, 2005)2 The suit was settled out of court. http://www.mahalo.com/get-fuzzy
Fewer periods, more dashes
In the United Kingdom, they write US and UK, in America we prefer U.S. and U.K. but will probably eventually give up the periods. A.M., a.m., P.M., and p.m. are sometimes written without periods. Also, the second letter is sometimes dropped: 8a for 8 a.m. Paragraphs may be full of dashes when commas would do just as well, and perhaps make for faster reading.
Urban renewers Catherine and Alfredo De Vido restored a rare 1830 farmhouse in the middle of New York City. The three-story clapboard house the De Vidos purchased was a rare survivor—a frame structure built near the East River when the area was turnip fields and farmland, then moved south to 85th Street just before the Civil War.
http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/november-december/urban-renewers.html
In May 1944, David Finley, director of the National Gallery of Art, went to Hampton in the Baltimore suburbs to see a portrait he hoped to acquire for the gallery. As it turned out, he was delighted with the painting—and equally impressed by Hampton itself. But there was a problem: The Ridgely family, which had called the estate home since the 1780s, could no longer afford to maintain it and was thinking about selling to a developer. The ever-persistent, ever-persuasive Finley eventually found a donor who bought the property and gave it to the Department of the Interior, which opened it to the public in 1949. By that time, the long struggle to save Hampton had shown Finley the need for a nongovernmental organization to fight for the preservation of America's historic buildings. At a meeting convened at the National Gallery, groundwork was laid for the creation of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States. Six years after his initial visit to Hampton, David Finley was named chairman of the new National Trust. http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2009/november-december/back-beginning_bp.html
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
On October 27, the Hawaii Supreme Court dismissed the last claim seeking a permanent ban on the sale of lands ceded by the former monarchy. Claims were originally filed by four members of the Native Hawaiians and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) in order to prevent the sale of 1.2 million acres of land. Three of the four Native Hawaiian defendants and OHA reached a compromise [Honolulu Advertiser report] with the state that would require approval by two-thirds of both houses of the state legislature before any of the ceded lands could be sold. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/10/hawaii-supreme-court-dismisses-final.php
PBS aired a film (on October 28 in Toledo) based on Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire” that explores four of the most important plants in human history. The film measures their success by their ability to meet our desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. Interestingly, I had checked our public library the same day and found that all copies of the book were either checked out, in transit or missing.
How Many Energy Vampires are in your House? — Oct 26, 2009: "Energy vampires are things in your house that consume electricity all of the time, even when they are turned off or not being used. TVs, VCRs, DVD players, computers/printers, stereos, microwaves, coffee machines, washers/dryers, rechargeable power tools, and many others are the everyday secret users of vampire energy. You think you have turned them off, but they are still running."
FTC Proposes New Light Bulb Labels, Seeks Public Comments
News release: "The FTC has proposed new labeling requirements for “lamps,” commonly known as light bulbs, in response to a congressional mandate. The marketplace has been changing quickly with the emergence of newer, more energy-efficient technologies—such as compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and light-emitting diode (LED) products—as traditional incandescent bulbs are phased out. The proposed labels provide consumers with clear, easily understandable information to help them choose among different bulb types. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking announced today seeks comment on new labels that emphasize lumens, not watts, as the measure of bulb brightness. This information, along with estimated energy cost information, would appear on the front of the light bulb package. The back of the package would display a “Lighting Facts” label modeled after the “Nutrition Facts” label for food packages. The Lighting Facts label would provide information about brightness, energy cost, the bulb’s expected life, color temperature (for example, whether the bulb provides “warm” or “cool” light), as well as wattage. The label also would require disclosures for bulbs containing mercury. The bulb’s output in lumens—and a mercury disclosure for bulbs that contain mercury—would also have to be placed on the bulb itself."
President Obama Announces $3.4 Billion for Smart Grid
News release: Speaking at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, President Barack Obama announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the nation’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system. The end result will promote energy-saving choices for consumers, increase efficiency, and foster the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available HERE and HERE. A map of the awards is available HERE.
Occupations of old
reeve manager or foreman of a manor
franklin landowner of free but not noble birth
summoner official who served summonses for an ecclesiastical court
http://www.ronaldecker.com/glossary.htm
Reeve, franklin and summoner appeared in The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer never completed The Canterbury Tales. He left behind sections of the story without clearly showing his intentions for an overall order. However, most of the tales appear in ten constant groups (called fragments). http://web.cn.edu/KWHEELER/documents/Bradshaw_Shift.pdf
MORE ABOUT GUERNSEY
Victor Hugo was one of the most famous people to have lived in Guernsey while he was exiled from his homeland. http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/content/articles/2004/09/20/victor_hugo_timeline_feature.shtml
Other profiles of people who lived in Guernsey http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/people/profiles/
On the trail of the potato peel pie Following the success of the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society a group of fans won the chance to visit Guernsey in October 2009. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, first published in 2008, takes a look into the lives of Guernsey people following the German Occupation during the Second World War focusing on a series of fictional letters between a Guernsey farmer and an author in the UK.
Soon after its release the book received a very positive reaction from both readers and critics, particularly in the USA and UK. This led to Visit Guernsey contacting the publishers and organising a competition for readers to get the chance to visit Guernsey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/content/articles/2009/10/05/potato_peel_pie_society_visitors_feature.shtml
Annie Barrows, niece of Mary Ann Shaffer, finished the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society for her ailing aunt. In the afterword to the book, she describes Mary Anne Shaffer as a woman of lustrous language and as one who “could no more endure a day without reading than she could grow feathers.” In 1980, Shaffer was in the Guernsey airport bookshop which had many writings on the occupation of the island by Germans during World War II. She left with an armload of books, and twenty years later began
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.
Discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513, the Dry Tortugas were named after the large population of sea turtles living in the island’s surrounding waters. “Tortugas” means turtles in Spanish, and Ponce de Leon himself caught over 100 sea turtles during his time on the island. The name “Dry” Tortugas was later given to the island to indicate to other mariners that the land mass lacked fresh water, which was an extremely important detail for seafarers to know. http://www.yankeefreedom.com/dry-tortugas.htm
The Dry Tortugas are a cluster of seven islands about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. Fort Jefferson, one of the largest coastal forts ever built, is a central feature. U.S. military attention was drawn to the keys in the early 1800's due to their strategic location in the Florida Straits. Plans were made for a massive fortress and construction began in 1846, but the fort was never completed. As the military value of Fort Jefferson waned, its pristine reefs, abundant sea life and impressive numbers of birds grew in value. In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt set aside Fort Jefferson and the surrounding waters as a national monument. The area was redesignated as Dry Tortugas National Park in 1992 to protect both the historical and natural features.
http://drytortugas.areaparks.com/
Channel Islands National Park, close to the California mainland, encompasses five remarkable islands (Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara) and their ocean environment, preserving and protecting a wealth of natural and cultural resources. The Channel Islands are home to over 2,000 terrestrial plants and animals, of which 145 are found nowhere else in the world. http://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm
Channel Islands, just off the coast of France on the edge of the English Channel, a British Crown dependency since 1066, are fiercely independent and justifiably proud of their history and traditions. This popular tourist destination is also an attractive offshore tax haven (for many companies), and as a result, the islands have a thriving financial industry. http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/channel.htm
Flags of the four Channel Islands
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/flags/countrys/europe/channel.htm
World atlas Find current time, maps, flags, rivers, hemispheres, latitudes & longitudes, distances and more at: http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/world.htm
PBS aired a film (on October 28 in Toledo) based on Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire” that explores four of the most important plants in human history. The film measures their success by their ability to meet our desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. Interestingly, I had checked our public library the same day and found that all copies of the book were either checked out, in transit or missing.
How Many Energy Vampires are in your House? — Oct 26, 2009: "Energy vampires are things in your house that consume electricity all of the time, even when they are turned off or not being used. TVs, VCRs, DVD players, computers/printers, stereos, microwaves, coffee machines, washers/dryers, rechargeable power tools, and many others are the everyday secret users of vampire energy. You think you have turned them off, but they are still running."
FTC Proposes New Light Bulb Labels, Seeks Public Comments
News release: "The FTC has proposed new labeling requirements for “lamps,” commonly known as light bulbs, in response to a congressional mandate. The marketplace has been changing quickly with the emergence of newer, more energy-efficient technologies—such as compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and light-emitting diode (LED) products—as traditional incandescent bulbs are phased out. The proposed labels provide consumers with clear, easily understandable information to help them choose among different bulb types. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking announced today seeks comment on new labels that emphasize lumens, not watts, as the measure of bulb brightness. This information, along with estimated energy cost information, would appear on the front of the light bulb package. The back of the package would display a “Lighting Facts” label modeled after the “Nutrition Facts” label for food packages. The Lighting Facts label would provide information about brightness, energy cost, the bulb’s expected life, color temperature (for example, whether the bulb provides “warm” or “cool” light), as well as wattage. The label also would require disclosures for bulbs containing mercury. The bulb’s output in lumens—and a mercury disclosure for bulbs that contain mercury—would also have to be placed on the bulb itself."
President Obama Announces $3.4 Billion for Smart Grid
News release: Speaking at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, President Barack Obama announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the nation’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system. The end result will promote energy-saving choices for consumers, increase efficiency, and foster the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available HERE and HERE. A map of the awards is available HERE.
Occupations of old
reeve manager or foreman of a manor
franklin landowner of free but not noble birth
summoner official who served summonses for an ecclesiastical court
http://www.ronaldecker.com/glossary.htm
Reeve, franklin and summoner appeared in The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer never completed The Canterbury Tales. He left behind sections of the story without clearly showing his intentions for an overall order. However, most of the tales appear in ten constant groups (called fragments). http://web.cn.edu/KWHEELER/documents/Bradshaw_Shift.pdf
MORE ABOUT GUERNSEY
Victor Hugo was one of the most famous people to have lived in Guernsey while he was exiled from his homeland. http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/content/articles/2004/09/20/victor_hugo_timeline_feature.shtml
Other profiles of people who lived in Guernsey http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/people/profiles/
On the trail of the potato peel pie Following the success of the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society a group of fans won the chance to visit Guernsey in October 2009. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, first published in 2008, takes a look into the lives of Guernsey people following the German Occupation during the Second World War focusing on a series of fictional letters between a Guernsey farmer and an author in the UK.
Soon after its release the book received a very positive reaction from both readers and critics, particularly in the USA and UK. This led to Visit Guernsey contacting the publishers and organising a competition for readers to get the chance to visit Guernsey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guernsey/content/articles/2009/10/05/potato_peel_pie_society_visitors_feature.shtml
Annie Barrows, niece of Mary Ann Shaffer, finished the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society for her ailing aunt. In the afterword to the book, she describes Mary Anne Shaffer as a woman of lustrous language and as one who “could no more endure a day without reading than she could grow feathers.” In 1980, Shaffer was in the Guernsey airport bookshop which had many writings on the occupation of the island by Germans during World War II. She left with an armload of books, and twenty years later began
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.
Discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513, the Dry Tortugas were named after the large population of sea turtles living in the island’s surrounding waters. “Tortugas” means turtles in Spanish, and Ponce de Leon himself caught over 100 sea turtles during his time on the island. The name “Dry” Tortugas was later given to the island to indicate to other mariners that the land mass lacked fresh water, which was an extremely important detail for seafarers to know. http://www.yankeefreedom.com/dry-tortugas.htm
The Dry Tortugas are a cluster of seven islands about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. Fort Jefferson, one of the largest coastal forts ever built, is a central feature. U.S. military attention was drawn to the keys in the early 1800's due to their strategic location in the Florida Straits. Plans were made for a massive fortress and construction began in 1846, but the fort was never completed. As the military value of Fort Jefferson waned, its pristine reefs, abundant sea life and impressive numbers of birds grew in value. In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt set aside Fort Jefferson and the surrounding waters as a national monument. The area was redesignated as Dry Tortugas National Park in 1992 to protect both the historical and natural features.
http://drytortugas.areaparks.com/
Channel Islands National Park, close to the California mainland, encompasses five remarkable islands (Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara) and their ocean environment, preserving and protecting a wealth of natural and cultural resources. The Channel Islands are home to over 2,000 terrestrial plants and animals, of which 145 are found nowhere else in the world. http://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm
Channel Islands, just off the coast of France on the edge of the English Channel, a British Crown dependency since 1066, are fiercely independent and justifiably proud of their history and traditions. This popular tourist destination is also an attractive offshore tax haven (for many companies), and as a result, the islands have a thriving financial industry. http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/channel.htm
Flags of the four Channel Islands
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/flags/countrys/europe/channel.htm
World atlas Find current time, maps, flags, rivers, hemispheres, latitudes & longitudes, distances and more at: http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/world.htm
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Find your officials and legislature, read local ballot measures, litigation news or learn about changes in ballot law. http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Find the 18 states where citizens can initiate constitutional amendments, the 22 states where citizens can initiate new laws/statutes, the 25 states where citizens can overturn state statutes through veto referendum—and more at:
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/States
Iceland and three other Scandinavian countries lead the world in gender equality, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Economic Forum. The forum, a nonprofit group based in Switzerland, ranked countries according to how much they had reduced gender disparities based on economic participation, education, health and political empowerment, while attempting to strip out the effects of a country’s overall wealth. Iceland, which has been rocked by a financial crisis, rose from fourth place a year ago to top the list. It was followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden. New Zealand came in fifth. Norway was ranked first last year. The United States fell four spots, to 31st, behind Lithuania and ahead of Namibia. Yemen was ranked the lowest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/business/global/28gender.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8327895.stm
From its northern Arctic islands to the majestic mountains of the Western Cordillera and the windswept tip of Newfoundland, Canada encompasses an area of almost 4 million square miles (10 million square kilometers). It is the largest country in North America but its entire population of approximately 30 million is equivalent to that of California. Most people reside close to the U.S. border and the vast expanse of remaining land forms one of the most extensive wilderness areas in the world. Geographically, Canada is divided into six distinct regions: the Atlantic provinces, the interior lowlands, the Canadian Shield, the great plains, the western mountains and the Arctic archipelago. The largest of these is the Canadian Shield covering almost 50% of Canada’s land mass. It forms a great arc around Hudson Bay and is roughly defined by the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence River, and the waterways that connect Lakes Huron, Superior, Winnipeg and Athabasca as well as the Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes. Much of the Canadian Shield is occupied by boreal forests that provide food and shelter for ducks, geese, numerous species of migratory birds and other woodland creatures. This area, possessing the world’s greatest concentration of lakes and rivers, supported the fur trade on which Canada was built. http://www.great-adventures.com/destinations/canada/history.html
Shaggy dog stories, part 3
These stories have been fairly popular since the 1930s, and reached their height in 1951. Lead-ins are deceptively leisurely; endings are unexpected, sometimes absurd. Shaggy dog stories are about dogs, other quadrupeds, fish, insects, humans.
The Shaggy Dog Story by Eric Partridge
How can you call reality shows “real” when people know they are on camera, and have a script to follow?
Forensic accounting
A science dealing with the application of accounting facts gathered through auditing methods and procedures to resolve legal problems. Forensic accounting is much different from traditional auditing. Forensic accounting is a specialty requiring the integration of investigative, accounting, and auditing skills. The forensic accountant looks at documents and financial and other data in a critical manner in order to draw conclusions and calculate values and to identify irregular patterns and/or suspicious transactions. A forensic accountant does not merely look at the numbers but rather looks behind the numbers. Find other business terms at this glossary: http://www.allbusiness.com/glossaries/forensic-accounting/4951633-1.html
Q. What do George Sand and George Eliot have in common? A. They are pen names of authors. See a list here: http://www.geocities.com/Axiom43/pennames.html
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Guernsey was occupied by the Germans during the war and when a group of people were caught out after curfew, they came up with a manufactured claim that they were a book club that ran late. So they were forced to begin one to keep the lie current. Soon they added food to their meetings too. The book was begun by an American book editor and bookseller, Mary Ann Shaffer, who found herself fascinated by Channel Island history. After she became ill, and later died, her niece, children's book author Annie Barrows, completed the novel. http://www.bookpage.com/0808bp/fiction/guernsey_literary.html
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/guernsey_literary_and_potato_peel_pie_society/
From the book “That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s all geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.” “ . . . I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.” Humor is the best way to make the unbearable bearable.
The Channel Islands are closer to France than England. People may recognize the names of the two biggest islands, Jersey and Guernsey, because of their namesake cows. The cuisine has a wonderful French flair, with a predominance of local fish and seafood, plus British traditions such as English breakfasts and cream teas. The climate is mild, with more sun than the English mainland, and local produce abounds. Prehistoric sites strewn throughout the islands, include dozens of dolmens (burial sites) and menhirs (standing stones) and massive burial mounds. Ancient fortifications sit beside majestic castles. Fortified 19th century towers line the shores of Jersey and Guernsey like stone sentinels. The Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazis during World War II and several immense fortifications remain. Of particular interest are two underground hospitals.
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0311/the_uk_channel_islands.shtml
Living abroad, jobs, study and travel information:
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/index.shtml
Multiple professional reviews of recently released books
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/site_map/
Feedback from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Thea E. Smith (thea.e.smith gmail.com)
Subject: otiose
Def: 1. Superfluous 2. Futile 3. Indolent
The word otiose reminds me of a game my parents played, wherein they'd try to think of words that contained silent—or otiose (as in "lacking use or effect")—letters. E.g., subtle, gnu, knife, and many more-interesting ones that I can't think of right now
From: Paula D. (via Wordsmith Talk, bulletin board)
Subject: Mendicant as a type of chocolate confection
Regarding the word mendicant, meaning beggar and also referring to four Catholic monastic orders. Mendicant (French: Mendiant) is also the name of a small disk or bar of chocolate which has been sprinkled with dried fruit or nuts. In France, chocolate mendicants are part of the 13 desserts of Noel. From the site Chocolate & Zucchini:
"Among these are the four 'mendiants' (beggars), symbolizing four mendicant monastic orders and the color of their robes: raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustins, dried figs for the Franciscans, and almonds for the Carmelites."
On October 28, 1919, the Volstead Act was passed, ushering in Prohibition.
On October 28, 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Find the 18 states where citizens can initiate constitutional amendments, the 22 states where citizens can initiate new laws/statutes, the 25 states where citizens can overturn state statutes through veto referendum—and more at:
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/States
Iceland and three other Scandinavian countries lead the world in gender equality, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Economic Forum. The forum, a nonprofit group based in Switzerland, ranked countries according to how much they had reduced gender disparities based on economic participation, education, health and political empowerment, while attempting to strip out the effects of a country’s overall wealth. Iceland, which has been rocked by a financial crisis, rose from fourth place a year ago to top the list. It was followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden. New Zealand came in fifth. Norway was ranked first last year. The United States fell four spots, to 31st, behind Lithuania and ahead of Namibia. Yemen was ranked the lowest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/business/global/28gender.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8327895.stm
From its northern Arctic islands to the majestic mountains of the Western Cordillera and the windswept tip of Newfoundland, Canada encompasses an area of almost 4 million square miles (10 million square kilometers). It is the largest country in North America but its entire population of approximately 30 million is equivalent to that of California. Most people reside close to the U.S. border and the vast expanse of remaining land forms one of the most extensive wilderness areas in the world. Geographically, Canada is divided into six distinct regions: the Atlantic provinces, the interior lowlands, the Canadian Shield, the great plains, the western mountains and the Arctic archipelago. The largest of these is the Canadian Shield covering almost 50% of Canada’s land mass. It forms a great arc around Hudson Bay and is roughly defined by the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence River, and the waterways that connect Lakes Huron, Superior, Winnipeg and Athabasca as well as the Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes. Much of the Canadian Shield is occupied by boreal forests that provide food and shelter for ducks, geese, numerous species of migratory birds and other woodland creatures. This area, possessing the world’s greatest concentration of lakes and rivers, supported the fur trade on which Canada was built. http://www.great-adventures.com/destinations/canada/history.html
Shaggy dog stories, part 3
These stories have been fairly popular since the 1930s, and reached their height in 1951. Lead-ins are deceptively leisurely; endings are unexpected, sometimes absurd. Shaggy dog stories are about dogs, other quadrupeds, fish, insects, humans.
The Shaggy Dog Story by Eric Partridge
How can you call reality shows “real” when people know they are on camera, and have a script to follow?
Forensic accounting
A science dealing with the application of accounting facts gathered through auditing methods and procedures to resolve legal problems. Forensic accounting is much different from traditional auditing. Forensic accounting is a specialty requiring the integration of investigative, accounting, and auditing skills. The forensic accountant looks at documents and financial and other data in a critical manner in order to draw conclusions and calculate values and to identify irregular patterns and/or suspicious transactions. A forensic accountant does not merely look at the numbers but rather looks behind the numbers. Find other business terms at this glossary: http://www.allbusiness.com/glossaries/forensic-accounting/4951633-1.html
Q. What do George Sand and George Eliot have in common? A. They are pen names of authors. See a list here: http://www.geocities.com/Axiom43/pennames.html
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Guernsey was occupied by the Germans during the war and when a group of people were caught out after curfew, they came up with a manufactured claim that they were a book club that ran late. So they were forced to begin one to keep the lie current. Soon they added food to their meetings too. The book was begun by an American book editor and bookseller, Mary Ann Shaffer, who found herself fascinated by Channel Island history. After she became ill, and later died, her niece, children's book author Annie Barrows, completed the novel. http://www.bookpage.com/0808bp/fiction/guernsey_literary.html
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/guernsey_literary_and_potato_peel_pie_society/
From the book “That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s all geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.” “ . . . I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.” Humor is the best way to make the unbearable bearable.
The Channel Islands are closer to France than England. People may recognize the names of the two biggest islands, Jersey and Guernsey, because of their namesake cows. The cuisine has a wonderful French flair, with a predominance of local fish and seafood, plus British traditions such as English breakfasts and cream teas. The climate is mild, with more sun than the English mainland, and local produce abounds. Prehistoric sites strewn throughout the islands, include dozens of dolmens (burial sites) and menhirs (standing stones) and massive burial mounds. Ancient fortifications sit beside majestic castles. Fortified 19th century towers line the shores of Jersey and Guernsey like stone sentinels. The Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazis during World War II and several immense fortifications remain. Of particular interest are two underground hospitals.
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0311/the_uk_channel_islands.shtml
Living abroad, jobs, study and travel information:
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/index.shtml
Multiple professional reviews of recently released books
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/site_map/
Feedback from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Thea E. Smith (thea.e.smith gmail.com)
Subject: otiose
Def: 1. Superfluous 2. Futile 3. Indolent
The word otiose reminds me of a game my parents played, wherein they'd try to think of words that contained silent—or otiose (as in "lacking use or effect")—letters. E.g., subtle, gnu, knife, and many more-interesting ones that I can't think of right now
From: Paula D. (via Wordsmith Talk, bulletin board)
Subject: Mendicant as a type of chocolate confection
Regarding the word mendicant, meaning beggar and also referring to four Catholic monastic orders. Mendicant (French: Mendiant) is also the name of a small disk or bar of chocolate which has been sprinkled with dried fruit or nuts. In France, chocolate mendicants are part of the 13 desserts of Noel. From the site Chocolate & Zucchini:
"Among these are the four 'mendiants' (beggars), symbolizing four mendicant monastic orders and the color of their robes: raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustins, dried figs for the Franciscans, and almonds for the Carmelites."
On October 28, 1919, the Volstead Act was passed, ushering in Prohibition.
On October 28, 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
In speaker technology, the opposite of a tweeter is a woofer, which pumps low-end frequencies while the tweeter amplifies higher-range sounds. On the Web, a tweeter is one who frequents Twitter, using the micro-blogging service to blast 140-character-or-less messages called tweets. So Twitter's opposite is, naturally, Woofer, a new micro-, err, macro-blogging service that requires a minimum of 1,400 characters. http://www.switched.com/2009/08/27/woofer-twitters-1-400-character-opposite/
Spelled the same but pronounced differently
Cairo (KYE-roh) city in Egypt
Cairo (CARE-oh or KAY-row) a populated place that is also a census designated place with the same name (Class U5) in New York
Pulaski (pew-LAS-key) town and county in Virginia
Pulaski (puh-LAS-kee) village in New York
Census class code definitions
http://newyork.hometownlocator.com/cities/class-codes.cfm
New Jersey and Oregon are the only U.S. states that currently ban self-service gas stations. The purpose of these laws was to protect consumers and gas station owners from costly, and possibly deadly, accidents. Better education and improved technology, however, have made pumping gas much safer and easier for consumers over the last 50 years. Since the 1970s, self-service gas stations have grown in popularity. The New Jersey law was enacted in 1949 and the Oregon law in 1951. Each statute has stood up to several challenges in those two states. http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/bans-gas-pumping.html
Alliteration (words start with same sound) is a favorite device of authors:
Billy Bathgate, Billy Budd, Gordon Gekko, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luther, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
Bookreporter.com: “where readers and writers click.” reviews, contests, bestsellers, bibliographies, newsletter, features http://www.bookreporter.com/index.asp
During the last five years, parents hoping to give their kids a competitive edge in the great race to become the brightest (and ostensibly the most elite) did something many child psychologists considered a bit daft: they plopped their kids down in front of a television screen. Now comes the wake-up call as potentially millions of parents who paid as much as $19.99 per "Baby Einstein" DVD didn't get the results they hoped for.
As a Harvard Medical School study indicated, such videos don't promote brain development. Nothing yet, experts say, can replace person-to-baby interaction, leaving the Baby Einstein Co., a subsidiary of Disney, once more backpedaling. More than two years ago, the word "educational" was dropped from the "Baby Einstein" videos, and now, facing a possible lawsuit from the nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in Boston, Mass., Baby Einstein Co. will be doling out refunds to the parents of kids who didn't become geniuses. Actually, it won't be that easy to get a refund. Parents will have to show they had confidence in the product, but were dissatisfied with it. And parents can only return up to four DVDs. The campaign for children had complained to the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 that the DVDs made false and deceptive claims about the education value of the series. The FTC decided not to act against the company after it promised to “take appropriate steps to ensure that any future advertising claims of educational and/or developmental benefit for children are adequately substantiated.” In the wake of that action, the campaign noted: "Gone are claims such as the description of Baby Wordsworth as a 'rich and interactive learning experience that … fosters the development of your toddler’s speech and language skills,' or that Numbers Nursery will 'help develop your baby’s understanding of what numbers mean.'” http://dscriber.com/home/553-my-baby-wasnt-an-einstein-after-all-can-i-get-a-refund.html
Joss Whedon, who directed the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", will direct an episode of the TV comedy “Glee.” http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/20/joss.whedon.glee/
http://www.fox.com/glee/
Fame is the most precious American currency of all. Mitch Albom (paraphrase)
http://mitchalbom.com/journalism/article/5881#
More positive uses of currency in a phrase:
currency of kindness
currency of information
I have never seen trees with such intense reds and yellows as this year in Toledo. It reminds me that a colleague took a bus trip to New England one fall, and said that the trees in Ohio were more beautiful than what he had seen on his travels.
Sea blobs (dead and living organic matter, called a mucilage) are on the rise.
Enormous sheets of such "mucus" occur naturally throughout the Mediterranean, especially in the Adriatic. But in recent years, as sea temperatures have risen, these sea congregations are exploding in number and size—sometimes stretching over hundreds of kilometers, generally near coastlines. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/ocean-mucus-sea-pictures/index.html
In 2006, Hormel attempted to register spam as a trademark when used to refer to "services to avoid or suppress unsolicited e-mails" and the "creation and maintenance of computer software; technical consultancy, particularly in combination with network services; (and) providing of expertise, engineering services and technical consulting services (related to junk e-mail)." Hormel argued in an appeal to the Office of Harmonisation for the Internal Market (OHIM), the EU trademark body, that the general public would not immediately recognize the use of the word spam as pertaining to junk e-mail but would instead associate it with "a kind of spicy ham" food product.
http://news.cnet.com/Spam-maker-sees-trademark-bid-canned/2100-1030_3-6123095.html
Readers, I pledge that I will not forward any mass e-mail messages to you.
On October 27, 1787, the first of the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison under the pen-name "PUBLIUS" to promote the ratification of the new US Constitution, was published in a New York newspaper. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Spelled the same but pronounced differently
Cairo (KYE-roh) city in Egypt
Cairo (CARE-oh or KAY-row) a populated place that is also a census designated place with the same name (Class U5) in New York
Pulaski (pew-LAS-key) town and county in Virginia
Pulaski (puh-LAS-kee) village in New York
Census class code definitions
http://newyork.hometownlocator.com/cities/class-codes.cfm
New Jersey and Oregon are the only U.S. states that currently ban self-service gas stations. The purpose of these laws was to protect consumers and gas station owners from costly, and possibly deadly, accidents. Better education and improved technology, however, have made pumping gas much safer and easier for consumers over the last 50 years. Since the 1970s, self-service gas stations have grown in popularity. The New Jersey law was enacted in 1949 and the Oregon law in 1951. Each statute has stood up to several challenges in those two states. http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/bans-gas-pumping.html
Alliteration (words start with same sound) is a favorite device of authors:
Billy Bathgate, Billy Budd, Gordon Gekko, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luther, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
Bookreporter.com: “where readers and writers click.” reviews, contests, bestsellers, bibliographies, newsletter, features http://www.bookreporter.com/index.asp
During the last five years, parents hoping to give their kids a competitive edge in the great race to become the brightest (and ostensibly the most elite) did something many child psychologists considered a bit daft: they plopped their kids down in front of a television screen. Now comes the wake-up call as potentially millions of parents who paid as much as $19.99 per "Baby Einstein" DVD didn't get the results they hoped for.
As a Harvard Medical School study indicated, such videos don't promote brain development. Nothing yet, experts say, can replace person-to-baby interaction, leaving the Baby Einstein Co., a subsidiary of Disney, once more backpedaling. More than two years ago, the word "educational" was dropped from the "Baby Einstein" videos, and now, facing a possible lawsuit from the nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in Boston, Mass., Baby Einstein Co. will be doling out refunds to the parents of kids who didn't become geniuses. Actually, it won't be that easy to get a refund. Parents will have to show they had confidence in the product, but were dissatisfied with it. And parents can only return up to four DVDs. The campaign for children had complained to the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 that the DVDs made false and deceptive claims about the education value of the series. The FTC decided not to act against the company after it promised to “take appropriate steps to ensure that any future advertising claims of educational and/or developmental benefit for children are adequately substantiated.” In the wake of that action, the campaign noted: "Gone are claims such as the description of Baby Wordsworth as a 'rich and interactive learning experience that … fosters the development of your toddler’s speech and language skills,' or that Numbers Nursery will 'help develop your baby’s understanding of what numbers mean.'” http://dscriber.com/home/553-my-baby-wasnt-an-einstein-after-all-can-i-get-a-refund.html
Joss Whedon, who directed the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", will direct an episode of the TV comedy “Glee.” http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/20/joss.whedon.glee/
http://www.fox.com/glee/
Fame is the most precious American currency of all. Mitch Albom (paraphrase)
http://mitchalbom.com/journalism/article/5881#
More positive uses of currency in a phrase:
currency of kindness
currency of information
I have never seen trees with such intense reds and yellows as this year in Toledo. It reminds me that a colleague took a bus trip to New England one fall, and said that the trees in Ohio were more beautiful than what he had seen on his travels.
Sea blobs (dead and living organic matter, called a mucilage) are on the rise.
Enormous sheets of such "mucus" occur naturally throughout the Mediterranean, especially in the Adriatic. But in recent years, as sea temperatures have risen, these sea congregations are exploding in number and size—sometimes stretching over hundreds of kilometers, generally near coastlines. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/ocean-mucus-sea-pictures/index.html
In 2006, Hormel attempted to register spam as a trademark when used to refer to "services to avoid or suppress unsolicited e-mails" and the "creation and maintenance of computer software; technical consultancy, particularly in combination with network services; (and) providing of expertise, engineering services and technical consulting services (related to junk e-mail)." Hormel argued in an appeal to the Office of Harmonisation for the Internal Market (OHIM), the EU trademark body, that the general public would not immediately recognize the use of the word spam as pertaining to junk e-mail but would instead associate it with "a kind of spicy ham" food product.
http://news.cnet.com/Spam-maker-sees-trademark-bid-canned/2100-1030_3-6123095.html
Readers, I pledge that I will not forward any mass e-mail messages to you.
On October 27, 1787, the first of the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison under the pen-name "PUBLIUS" to promote the ratification of the new US Constitution, was published in a New York newspaper. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Monday, October 26, 2009
Feedback from reader on the Middle Ages
“ . . . the Middle Ages or Medieval times spanned roughly the era from 900 or 1000 to 1500. In more recent history reading, I have discovered that some historians now question when the Middle Ages actually ended or was supplanted by the Renaissance. It seems that this differs for various parts of Europe and depends on which cultural and political measure one uses for the advent of the Renaissance and Modern era.”
Sometime after the fall of Rome, we come to the Dark Ages. Most of Europe was decentralized, rural, parochial. Life was reduced to the “laws of nature:” The powerful ruled, while the powerless looked only to survive. There was no sense of history or progress. Superstition and fatalism prevailed. Belief in the imminent end of the world was common every century. Universities developed out of monastery and cathedral schools—really what we would call elementary schools, but attended by adolescents and taught by monks and priests. The first was in Bologna, established in 1088. In these schools and universities, students began with the trivium: grammar, rhetoric and logic.
Beyond that, they would study the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. All together, these subjects make up the seven liberal arts. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/middleages.html
BookServer is an open system to find, buy, or borrow e- books
Internet Archive BookServer: "The widespread success of digital reading devices has proven that the world is ready to read books on screens. As the audience for digital books grows, we can evolve from an environment of single devices connected to single sources into a distributed system where readers can find books from sources across the Web to read on whatever device they have. Publishers are creating digital versions of their popular books, and the library community is creating digital archives of their printed collections. BookServer is an open system to find, buy, or borrow these books, just like we use an open system to find Web sites. The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices. BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books."
HHS OIG: Medicare Part D Plan Sponsor Electronic Prescribing Initiatives
Medicare Part D Plan Sponsor Electronic Prescribing Initiatives (OEI-05-08-00322), Otober 16, 2009
"E-prescribing occurs when a prescriber uses a computer or an electronic hand-held device, such as a personal digital assistant, to write and send a prescription directly to a dispenser. Before a prescriber sends a prescription to a dispenser, he or she can request electronic data regarding patient eligibility, formulary and benefits, and medication history from the patient’s health insurance plan."
What is Indian summer?
The term "Indian Summer" is generally associated with a period of considerably above normal temperatures, accompanied by dry and hazy conditions ushered in on a south or southwesterly breeze. Several references make note of the fact that a true Indian Summer can not occur until there has been a killing frost or freeze. Since frost and freezing temperatures generally work their way south through the fall, this would give credence to the possibility of several Indian Summers occurring in a fall, especially across the northern areas where frost or freezes usually come early. Evidently, some writers have made reference to it as native only to New England, while others have stated it happens over most of the United States, even along the Pacific coast. Probably the most common or accepted view on location for an Indian Summer would be from the Mid-Atlantic states north into New England, and than west across the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes, Midwest and Great Plains States. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/indian-summer.htm
European scientists announced on October 18 that they’ve discovered 32 brand spanking new planets. Don’t bother looking out your window, it’s not like you’re going to see them or anything. They’re outside of our solar system. Because they are outside of our solar system, they are classified as “exoplanets.” The exoplanets were discovered by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) team on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 meter telescope in Chile http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/19/wow-32-new-planets-discovered-these-giant-exoplanets-dwarf-the-earth/
Civility is shown by debating teams in high school and college using measured words, and making specific points about what they are for.
Incivility is shown by those people who rant, shout insults at their opponents, and state in general terms what they are against.
To your health Search for drug information, diseases and conditions at:
http://pdrhealth.com/home/home.aspx
Shaggy dog stories, part 2—Influences on the shaggy dog story are epigrams, limericks, clerihew, tall stories, whoppers. They lead to unexpected, sudden (and sometimes unrelated) endings.
An epigram was originally, an inscription on a monument; the term is now used of tersely expressed witty sayings in general, but particularly of any short poem which has a sharp turn of thought or point, be it witty, amusing, dramatic, or satiric. The eighteenth century was particularly rich in epigrams, which generally take the shape of a couplet or a quatrain. Also is the name of a student newspaper at the University of Bristol, and is the name of a programming language.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:epigram&ei=KZfdSqucEJON8Aad4aFn&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title&ved=0CAwQkAE
Limerick is:
port city in southwestern Ireland
a humorous verse form of 5 anapestic lines with a rhyme scheme aabba
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
An anapaest or anapest, also called antidactylus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one (as in a-na-paest); in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapestic
A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew
Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009, by Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith - Oct 21, 2009 "Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service. Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users—those under age 44."
Pew study: Nearly 1 in 5 Net users is tweeting - Twitter’s growth partially due to those on the go who use mobile Internet
Current Economic Conditions - Federal Reserve District Beige Book, October 21, 2009 - Full Report and Districts
"Reports from the 12 Federal Reserve Districts indicated either stabilization or modest improvements in many sectors since the last report, albeit often from depressed levels. Leading the more positive sector reports among Districts were residential real estate and manufacturing, both of which continued a pattern of improvement that emerged over the summer. Reports on consumer spending and nonfinancial services were mixed. Commercial real estate was reported to be one of the weakest sectors, although reports of weakness or moderate decline were frequently noted in other sectors. Reports of gains in economic activity generally outnumber declines, but virtually every reference to improvement was qualified as either small or scattered. For example, Dallas cited slight improvements residential real estate and staffing firms, while New York noted gains only in a few sectors (predominantly manufacturing and retail). Retail and manufacturing conditions were mixed in Boston, but some signs of improvement were reported. New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and San Francisco cited small pickups in manufacturing activity. In the Kansas City District, an uptick was noted in technology firms, while services firms posted revenue gains in Richmond. However, conditions were referred to as stable or flat for business services and tourism firms in Minneapolis and agriculture in St. Louis and Kansas City."
Google, the powerhouse of Silicon Valley, and AT&T, champion for the old-line phone industry, are marshaling political allies, lobbyists and—in AT&T's case—labor unions for a fight over proposed "net neutrality" rules that could affect tens of billions of dollars in investments needed to upgrade the U.S. broadband network, which lags in speed and affordability compared with some countries. On October 22, the Federal Communications Commission made good on its promise to push new rules that would require Internet providers such as AT&T to deliver Web traffic without delay. Broadly, that means cable and phone companies couldn't block or slow access to services from Google, Netflix or others that are a drain on their networks or could compete with their businesses. But as the details of the new rules are hammered out in coming months, AT&T and Google are ramping up efforts to ensure the FCC doesn't impose rules that could hurt their profits or expansion plans. Google's success at getting the FCC to embrace its vision of the Internet hasn't been matched at other agencies. Last month, the Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to reject a settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and Publishers over its book search service. A Federal Trade Commission investigation prompted Google CEO Eric Schmidt to leave Apple Inc.'s board and Genentech Inc. CEO Arthur Levinson to leave Google's board. Meanwhile, both Congress and the FTC have expressed concerns about current online advertising and privacy practices of Internet companies including Google. Consumer groups have also weighed in, along with advocacy groups such as the Future of Privacy Forum, which is funded by AT&T. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489323364051390.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular
In honor of Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system, Burger King has served up a seven-patty burger. This mighty monolith of meat, more than five inches tall, will only be available for seven days—and only in Japan. The Windows 7 burger favors the early birds. Each day, the first 30 customers get the Whopper for 777 Yen (about $8.50). Stragglers must pay closer to $17. But if you feast upon one for breakfast, you’d best avoid food for the rest of the day. The Whopper packs in about 2,100 calories—more than you should eat in an entire day, according to the FDA.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/23/only-in-japan-the-burger-king-wi
ndows-7-whopper/
October 24 is the birthday of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft, the Netherlands (1632), who was working as a draper when he happened to use a magnifying lens to count the number of threads in a piece of cloth, and the experience got him interested in lenses. He began to spend all his spare time learning how to grind out lenses and use them in combination with each other to look at smaller and smaller things. Over his lifetime, he ground more than 400 lenses and built many microscopes, using techniques that he kept secret. He developed the first microscope that could show things too small for the human eye to see, and he became the first person ever to observe bacteria. He was also the first person to see red blood cells, and the first person to explain how insects breed, because he could see their tiny eggs.
October 26 is the birthday of medical doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer born in North Adams, Massachusetts (1959) and the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tracy Kidder's (books by this author) recent book: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (2003). He specializes in infectious diseases, and sets up hospitals and community health centers to provide free health care to the world's poor. The Writer’s Almanac
“ . . . the Middle Ages or Medieval times spanned roughly the era from 900 or 1000 to 1500. In more recent history reading, I have discovered that some historians now question when the Middle Ages actually ended or was supplanted by the Renaissance. It seems that this differs for various parts of Europe and depends on which cultural and political measure one uses for the advent of the Renaissance and Modern era.”
Sometime after the fall of Rome, we come to the Dark Ages. Most of Europe was decentralized, rural, parochial. Life was reduced to the “laws of nature:” The powerful ruled, while the powerless looked only to survive. There was no sense of history or progress. Superstition and fatalism prevailed. Belief in the imminent end of the world was common every century. Universities developed out of monastery and cathedral schools—really what we would call elementary schools, but attended by adolescents and taught by monks and priests. The first was in Bologna, established in 1088. In these schools and universities, students began with the trivium: grammar, rhetoric and logic.
Beyond that, they would study the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. All together, these subjects make up the seven liberal arts. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/middleages.html
BookServer is an open system to find, buy, or borrow e- books
Internet Archive BookServer: "The widespread success of digital reading devices has proven that the world is ready to read books on screens. As the audience for digital books grows, we can evolve from an environment of single devices connected to single sources into a distributed system where readers can find books from sources across the Web to read on whatever device they have. Publishers are creating digital versions of their popular books, and the library community is creating digital archives of their printed collections. BookServer is an open system to find, buy, or borrow these books, just like we use an open system to find Web sites. The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices. BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books."
HHS OIG: Medicare Part D Plan Sponsor Electronic Prescribing Initiatives
Medicare Part D Plan Sponsor Electronic Prescribing Initiatives (OEI-05-08-00322), Otober 16, 2009
"E-prescribing occurs when a prescriber uses a computer or an electronic hand-held device, such as a personal digital assistant, to write and send a prescription directly to a dispenser. Before a prescriber sends a prescription to a dispenser, he or she can request electronic data regarding patient eligibility, formulary and benefits, and medication history from the patient’s health insurance plan."
What is Indian summer?
The term "Indian Summer" is generally associated with a period of considerably above normal temperatures, accompanied by dry and hazy conditions ushered in on a south or southwesterly breeze. Several references make note of the fact that a true Indian Summer can not occur until there has been a killing frost or freeze. Since frost and freezing temperatures generally work their way south through the fall, this would give credence to the possibility of several Indian Summers occurring in a fall, especially across the northern areas where frost or freezes usually come early. Evidently, some writers have made reference to it as native only to New England, while others have stated it happens over most of the United States, even along the Pacific coast. Probably the most common or accepted view on location for an Indian Summer would be from the Mid-Atlantic states north into New England, and than west across the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes, Midwest and Great Plains States. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/indian-summer.htm
European scientists announced on October 18 that they’ve discovered 32 brand spanking new planets. Don’t bother looking out your window, it’s not like you’re going to see them or anything. They’re outside of our solar system. Because they are outside of our solar system, they are classified as “exoplanets.” The exoplanets were discovered by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) team on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 meter telescope in Chile http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/19/wow-32-new-planets-discovered-these-giant-exoplanets-dwarf-the-earth/
Civility is shown by debating teams in high school and college using measured words, and making specific points about what they are for.
Incivility is shown by those people who rant, shout insults at their opponents, and state in general terms what they are against.
To your health Search for drug information, diseases and conditions at:
http://pdrhealth.com/home/home.aspx
Shaggy dog stories, part 2—Influences on the shaggy dog story are epigrams, limericks, clerihew, tall stories, whoppers. They lead to unexpected, sudden (and sometimes unrelated) endings.
An epigram was originally, an inscription on a monument; the term is now used of tersely expressed witty sayings in general, but particularly of any short poem which has a sharp turn of thought or point, be it witty, amusing, dramatic, or satiric. The eighteenth century was particularly rich in epigrams, which generally take the shape of a couplet or a quatrain. Also is the name of a student newspaper at the University of Bristol, and is the name of a programming language.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:epigram&ei=KZfdSqucEJON8Aad4aFn&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title&ved=0CAwQkAE
Limerick is:
port city in southwestern Ireland
a humorous verse form of 5 anapestic lines with a rhyme scheme aabba
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
An anapaest or anapest, also called antidactylus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one (as in a-na-paest); in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapestic
A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew
Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009, by Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith - Oct 21, 2009 "Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service. Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users—those under age 44."
Pew study: Nearly 1 in 5 Net users is tweeting - Twitter’s growth partially due to those on the go who use mobile Internet
Current Economic Conditions - Federal Reserve District Beige Book, October 21, 2009 - Full Report and Districts
"Reports from the 12 Federal Reserve Districts indicated either stabilization or modest improvements in many sectors since the last report, albeit often from depressed levels. Leading the more positive sector reports among Districts were residential real estate and manufacturing, both of which continued a pattern of improvement that emerged over the summer. Reports on consumer spending and nonfinancial services were mixed. Commercial real estate was reported to be one of the weakest sectors, although reports of weakness or moderate decline were frequently noted in other sectors. Reports of gains in economic activity generally outnumber declines, but virtually every reference to improvement was qualified as either small or scattered. For example, Dallas cited slight improvements residential real estate and staffing firms, while New York noted gains only in a few sectors (predominantly manufacturing and retail). Retail and manufacturing conditions were mixed in Boston, but some signs of improvement were reported. New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and San Francisco cited small pickups in manufacturing activity. In the Kansas City District, an uptick was noted in technology firms, while services firms posted revenue gains in Richmond. However, conditions were referred to as stable or flat for business services and tourism firms in Minneapolis and agriculture in St. Louis and Kansas City."
Google, the powerhouse of Silicon Valley, and AT&T, champion for the old-line phone industry, are marshaling political allies, lobbyists and—in AT&T's case—labor unions for a fight over proposed "net neutrality" rules that could affect tens of billions of dollars in investments needed to upgrade the U.S. broadband network, which lags in speed and affordability compared with some countries. On October 22, the Federal Communications Commission made good on its promise to push new rules that would require Internet providers such as AT&T to deliver Web traffic without delay. Broadly, that means cable and phone companies couldn't block or slow access to services from Google, Netflix or others that are a drain on their networks or could compete with their businesses. But as the details of the new rules are hammered out in coming months, AT&T and Google are ramping up efforts to ensure the FCC doesn't impose rules that could hurt their profits or expansion plans. Google's success at getting the FCC to embrace its vision of the Internet hasn't been matched at other agencies. Last month, the Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to reject a settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and Publishers over its book search service. A Federal Trade Commission investigation prompted Google CEO Eric Schmidt to leave Apple Inc.'s board and Genentech Inc. CEO Arthur Levinson to leave Google's board. Meanwhile, both Congress and the FTC have expressed concerns about current online advertising and privacy practices of Internet companies including Google. Consumer groups have also weighed in, along with advocacy groups such as the Future of Privacy Forum, which is funded by AT&T. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489323364051390.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular
In honor of Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system, Burger King has served up a seven-patty burger. This mighty monolith of meat, more than five inches tall, will only be available for seven days—and only in Japan. The Windows 7 burger favors the early birds. Each day, the first 30 customers get the Whopper for 777 Yen (about $8.50). Stragglers must pay closer to $17. But if you feast upon one for breakfast, you’d best avoid food for the rest of the day. The Whopper packs in about 2,100 calories—more than you should eat in an entire day, according to the FDA.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/23/only-in-japan-the-burger-king-wi
ndows-7-whopper/
October 24 is the birthday of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft, the Netherlands (1632), who was working as a draper when he happened to use a magnifying lens to count the number of threads in a piece of cloth, and the experience got him interested in lenses. He began to spend all his spare time learning how to grind out lenses and use them in combination with each other to look at smaller and smaller things. Over his lifetime, he ground more than 400 lenses and built many microscopes, using techniques that he kept secret. He developed the first microscope that could show things too small for the human eye to see, and he became the first person ever to observe bacteria. He was also the first person to see red blood cells, and the first person to explain how insects breed, because he could see their tiny eggs.
October 26 is the birthday of medical doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer born in North Adams, Massachusetts (1959) and the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tracy Kidder's (books by this author) recent book: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (2003). He specializes in infectious diseases, and sets up hospitals and community health centers to provide free health care to the world's poor. The Writer’s Almanac
Friday, October 23, 2009
The search engine wars took a dramatic turn October 21, with Google and Microsoft both announcing real-time search deals with Twitter. Additionally, Microsoft struck a deal with Facebook to index status updates on its Bing search engine, and Google introduced Social Search, which integrates your friends' social networking information directly into search results. http://www.pcworld.com/article/174138/social_search_from_google_and_bing_my_8_big_concerns.html
Tax Foundation: Updated State and Local Option Sales Tax
Updated State and Local Option Sales Tax, by Kail Padgitt, Fiscal Fact No. 196
"Sales taxes are paradoxically transparent and non-transparent. A taxpayer can easily see how high the tax is by looking at the receipt for any purchase. It's hard to imagine a more transparent tax. However, due to the wide variety of local option sales taxes among municipalities, a taxpayer can be puzzled by the many different tax rates his receipts show in various parts of the state. Making use of newly available data sources, we are now able to update information on average local sales taxes more regularly. Table 1 and the accompanying map show current state sales taxes, average local sales taxes, and the combined rate and state rank."
The Middle Ages of European history (adjectivial form medieval or mediæval) is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. It is commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, http://wapedia.mobi/en/Middle_Ages
Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.
Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels." Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996
The English term is an 18th century coinage, from the Latin feminine gerund of propagare "to propagate", originally in Congregatio de Propaganda Fide "Congregation for Propagating the Faith," a committee of cardinals established 1622 by Gregory XV. In its turn, the word propagare is related to the word propages, "a slip, a cutting of a vine"[1] and refers to the gardener's practice to disseminate plants by planting shoots. [2]
The term is not pejorative in origin, the political sense dates to World War I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
Meadow Brook Hall is often described as an American castle. It is the former residence of Oakland University founders Matilda Dodge Wilson, widow of automobile pioneer John Dodge, and her second husband, lumber broker Alfred G. Wilson. Meadow Brook Hall was completed in 1929 at a cost of nearly $4 million. The housewarming party, attended by 850 people, was held Nov. 19, 1929, just three weeks after the stock market crash that started the Great Depression. The exterior combines various textures and patterns using American materials of brick, sandstone, wood timbers and a roof of clay shingle tile. The house also features 39 uniquely designed brick chimneys that distinguish the picturesque roofline. Interiors of the house are elaborately detailed with carved wood and stone, handmade hardware and ceramic art tile, ornately molded and carved plaster ceilings, stained glass window insets, crystal and art glass lighting fixtures, and gold-plated bathroom fittings. And while the interiors reflect various historic styles, the house is equipped with every modern amenity available in the late 1920s. It was fully electric with a central heating system, two elevators, four kitchens and a full size home theatre. In 1957, the Wilsons donated their residence, its collections, the estate's 1,500 acres and $2 million to found what would become Oakland University. Meadow Brook Hall was opened to the public in 1971, four years after Matilda’s death. http://www.oakland.edu/?id=3089&sid=87
Wayside in Sudbury Longfellow's Wayside Inn near Sudbury, Mass., a leafy village about 20 miles west of Boston, is the genuine article. It's said to be America's oldest operating inn, but "operating" is the key word. Aside from a 36-year hiatus at the end of the 19th century, the Wayside has offered "food and lodging for man and beast" since 1716, when David and Hebzibah Howe opened their two-room house to weary travelers on the old Boston Post Road. The inn, just off what is now Massachusetts Highway 20, occupies a stately red-frame building by a rush-fringed pond, brook and meadow full of purple clover. Innkeeper David Howe died in 1759, and his son Ezekiel had taken over several years earlier. Ezekiel Howe enlarged the hostelry, then known as Howe's Tavern. Four generations of the family ran the inn until Lyman Howe died in 1861, and it became a sort of boarding house. It received a famous visitor the next year: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in mourning for his wife, Frances, who had died in a fire. The old place captured his imagination, inspiring his 1863 book, "Tales of a Wayside Inn," which includes "The Landlord's Tale." Its opening lines are etched in American memory:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
After that, Howe's Tavern became Longfellow's Wayside Inn. In 1923, when a later innkeeper was forced to sell, Henry Ford toured the property and fell in love with it. "I'll take it all," he said, according to "As Ancient Is This Hostelry: The Story of the Wayside Inn," by Curtis F. Garfield and Alison R. Ridley.
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-wayside19-2009jul19
Wayside in Concord By the time Nathaniel Hawthorne bought The Wayside in 1852, his masterpieces had been published; The Scarlet Letter in 1850, and The House of the Seven Gables in 1851; his short story collections; Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846 and Twice-Told Tales, 1837. Yet, as a pioneer of American Literature, Hawthorne's writing did not bring him great wealth, and The Wayside was the only home he ever had. http://www.nps.gov/archive/mima/wayside/Hawth.htm
Keeper—a book I would read again
My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
“There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry—
architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.”
From Chef Max Bugnard:
Scrambled eggs Add salt and pepper to eggs, and blend gently. Smear bottom and sides of frying pan with butter and gently put in eggs. Keep heat low. After eggs thicken (about three minutes) stir rapidly with fork, sliding the pan on and off the burner. “Keep them loose.” Add cream or butter to stop the cooking, turn eggs onto a plate and sprinkle with a bit of parsley.
Roast veal Add salt and pepper, wrap in thin salt pork blanket, add thinly sliced carrots and onions, and put a tablespoon of butter on top. Baste while roasting.
Comparing Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance:
There is an example of all three of these terms in one line of the poem, “The Raven,” written by Edgar Allan Poe:
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
This line clearly contains all three, and can show the difference between assonance, consonance and alliteration.
Assonance is the repetition of the ur sound in "purple" and "curtain."
Consonance is the repetition of the s sound within "uncertain" and "rustling."
Alliteration is the repetition of the s sound at the start of "silked" and "sad." http://ezinearticles.com/?Alliteration,-Assonance-and-Consonance&id=675686
Figures of speech
anadiplosis: repetition of a word at the end of a clause at the beginning of another
anaphora: repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses
anastrophe: inversion of the usual word order
See many more at:
http://cms.cerritos.edu/browse/browse.asp?WID=20040008&DID=20060201
San Francisco is seven miles long by seven miles wide. http://www.timeout.com/san-francisco/features/328/san-francisco-area-guide
Manhattan island: length = 13 miles, width = mostly around 2.0 - 2.3 miles
http://www.roberts-1.com/sk8hv/r/from_nyc/index.htm
Another fact-checking Web site: http://www.factcheck.org/
Tax Foundation: Updated State and Local Option Sales Tax
Updated State and Local Option Sales Tax, by Kail Padgitt, Fiscal Fact No. 196
"Sales taxes are paradoxically transparent and non-transparent. A taxpayer can easily see how high the tax is by looking at the receipt for any purchase. It's hard to imagine a more transparent tax. However, due to the wide variety of local option sales taxes among municipalities, a taxpayer can be puzzled by the many different tax rates his receipts show in various parts of the state. Making use of newly available data sources, we are now able to update information on average local sales taxes more regularly. Table 1 and the accompanying map show current state sales taxes, average local sales taxes, and the combined rate and state rank."
The Middle Ages of European history (adjectivial form medieval or mediæval) is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. It is commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, http://wapedia.mobi/en/Middle_Ages
Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.
Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels." Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996
The English term is an 18th century coinage, from the Latin feminine gerund of propagare "to propagate", originally in Congregatio de Propaganda Fide "Congregation for Propagating the Faith," a committee of cardinals established 1622 by Gregory XV. In its turn, the word propagare is related to the word propages, "a slip, a cutting of a vine"[1] and refers to the gardener's practice to disseminate plants by planting shoots. [2]
The term is not pejorative in origin, the political sense dates to World War I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
Meadow Brook Hall is often described as an American castle. It is the former residence of Oakland University founders Matilda Dodge Wilson, widow of automobile pioneer John Dodge, and her second husband, lumber broker Alfred G. Wilson. Meadow Brook Hall was completed in 1929 at a cost of nearly $4 million. The housewarming party, attended by 850 people, was held Nov. 19, 1929, just three weeks after the stock market crash that started the Great Depression. The exterior combines various textures and patterns using American materials of brick, sandstone, wood timbers and a roof of clay shingle tile. The house also features 39 uniquely designed brick chimneys that distinguish the picturesque roofline. Interiors of the house are elaborately detailed with carved wood and stone, handmade hardware and ceramic art tile, ornately molded and carved plaster ceilings, stained glass window insets, crystal and art glass lighting fixtures, and gold-plated bathroom fittings. And while the interiors reflect various historic styles, the house is equipped with every modern amenity available in the late 1920s. It was fully electric with a central heating system, two elevators, four kitchens and a full size home theatre. In 1957, the Wilsons donated their residence, its collections, the estate's 1,500 acres and $2 million to found what would become Oakland University. Meadow Brook Hall was opened to the public in 1971, four years after Matilda’s death. http://www.oakland.edu/?id=3089&sid=87
Wayside in Sudbury Longfellow's Wayside Inn near Sudbury, Mass., a leafy village about 20 miles west of Boston, is the genuine article. It's said to be America's oldest operating inn, but "operating" is the key word. Aside from a 36-year hiatus at the end of the 19th century, the Wayside has offered "food and lodging for man and beast" since 1716, when David and Hebzibah Howe opened their two-room house to weary travelers on the old Boston Post Road. The inn, just off what is now Massachusetts Highway 20, occupies a stately red-frame building by a rush-fringed pond, brook and meadow full of purple clover. Innkeeper David Howe died in 1759, and his son Ezekiel had taken over several years earlier. Ezekiel Howe enlarged the hostelry, then known as Howe's Tavern. Four generations of the family ran the inn until Lyman Howe died in 1861, and it became a sort of boarding house. It received a famous visitor the next year: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in mourning for his wife, Frances, who had died in a fire. The old place captured his imagination, inspiring his 1863 book, "Tales of a Wayside Inn," which includes "The Landlord's Tale." Its opening lines are etched in American memory:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
After that, Howe's Tavern became Longfellow's Wayside Inn. In 1923, when a later innkeeper was forced to sell, Henry Ford toured the property and fell in love with it. "I'll take it all," he said, according to "As Ancient Is This Hostelry: The Story of the Wayside Inn," by Curtis F. Garfield and Alison R. Ridley.
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-wayside19-2009jul19
Wayside in Concord By the time Nathaniel Hawthorne bought The Wayside in 1852, his masterpieces had been published; The Scarlet Letter in 1850, and The House of the Seven Gables in 1851; his short story collections; Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846 and Twice-Told Tales, 1837. Yet, as a pioneer of American Literature, Hawthorne's writing did not bring him great wealth, and The Wayside was the only home he ever had. http://www.nps.gov/archive/mima/wayside/Hawth.htm
Keeper—a book I would read again
My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
“There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry—
architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.”
From Chef Max Bugnard:
Scrambled eggs Add salt and pepper to eggs, and blend gently. Smear bottom and sides of frying pan with butter and gently put in eggs. Keep heat low. After eggs thicken (about three minutes) stir rapidly with fork, sliding the pan on and off the burner. “Keep them loose.” Add cream or butter to stop the cooking, turn eggs onto a plate and sprinkle with a bit of parsley.
Roast veal Add salt and pepper, wrap in thin salt pork blanket, add thinly sliced carrots and onions, and put a tablespoon of butter on top. Baste while roasting.
Comparing Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance:
There is an example of all three of these terms in one line of the poem, “The Raven,” written by Edgar Allan Poe:
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
This line clearly contains all three, and can show the difference between assonance, consonance and alliteration.
Assonance is the repetition of the ur sound in "purple" and "curtain."
Consonance is the repetition of the s sound within "uncertain" and "rustling."
Alliteration is the repetition of the s sound at the start of "silked" and "sad." http://ezinearticles.com/?Alliteration,-Assonance-and-Consonance&id=675686
Figures of speech
anadiplosis: repetition of a word at the end of a clause at the beginning of another
anaphora: repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses
anastrophe: inversion of the usual word order
See many more at:
http://cms.cerritos.edu/browse/browse.asp?WID=20040008&DID=20060201
San Francisco is seven miles long by seven miles wide. http://www.timeout.com/san-francisco/features/328/san-francisco-area-guide
Manhattan island: length = 13 miles, width = mostly around 2.0 - 2.3 miles
http://www.roberts-1.com/sk8hv/r/from_nyc/index.htm
Another fact-checking Web site: http://www.factcheck.org/
Thursday, October 22, 2009
As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees. The manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. See at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/gmanual/index.html
Small spaces, big ideas by Joann Petaschnick Nine ideas for designing small spaces, including light, reflections, proportion, scale and planning with cutouts.
http://www.gmtoday.com/content/m_west/2009/April/mwest_0409_p60.asp
Welcome to All About Birds, with information on 585 species, bird of the week, bird sound of the week, and opportunities to read a blog and ask questions.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1189
Down a winding road, through a tunnel of trees, sunlight escapes through the foliage to light the way to Lake Macbride, the home of the Macbride Raptor Project. At this peaceful lake, Iowa’s birds of prey have been living and rehabilitating since 1985. Patients of the Raptor Project are sick or injured birds of prey, also known as raptors, said Jodeane Cancilla, the project’s coordinator. “The majority of bird injuries are the result of human activities, whether intentional or unintentional,” she said. One resident of the center, Spirit, is a full-grown bald eagle. After damaging her wing in 1989, Spirit was given a home at Macbride. A few other permanent residents include Wannago, a great horned owl that lost her left eye, Aquila, a golden eagle with back and hip injuries, and Aura, a turkey vulture raised by humans. If raptors do fully recover, they are released back into the wild near the location they were found, Cancilla said. The center is a collaboration between University of Iowa Recreational Services and Kirkwood Community College. The Macbride Nature Recreation Area consists of 480 acres of land and is maintained by approximately 55 volunteers. http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/09/04/Sports/12676.html
Nontroversy is a contraction of non and controversy, and exists when people try to make something seem controversial. It can also be a controversy that has been exploited to the point that it is no longer newsworthy, thus losing complete credibility.
A new worm called Koobface has passed malware and spyware to PCs through social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo and Twitter to steal sensitive data from hard drives. Computers infected with Koobface also infects other PCs.
Malware research firm Trend Micro described Koobface as composed of as many as 26 separate functional pieces, each of which is designed to use you and your computer in different malicious ways. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016746433?New%20Worm%20Infects%20PCs%20Thru%20Social%20Networking%20Sites
Q. What is an electric pig? A. a garbage disposal
http://www.answers.com/topic/electric-pig
Q. What is Norsk? A. Norsk or Norwegian is a North Germanic language with around 5 million speakers in mainly in Norway. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/norwegian.htm
Judith Jones read the French edition of what would become Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, in a pile of submissions slated for rejection. Her enthusiasm persuaded Doubleday to publish the book in the United States.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YsJsGSN_R9kC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=frank+diary+doubleday+rejected&source=bl&ots=HbAlXH8vyY&sig=JvW0pjlvv9QGlSXXP3UWKE0dNdk&hl=en&ei=LbPYSsDRJY6OMcCVzN4H&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CB8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=frank%20diary%20doubleday%20rejected&f=false
Judith Jones brought Julia Child's ground-breaking 1961 book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking to the American public after the manuscript had been rejected by other publishers. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/julia-judith/article1231084/ Considerations: amount of meat for a French dish is smaller than American, because French assume it will be part of a three-course meal. So recipes had to be refigured. Certain ingredients were not easily available (duck confit) and substitutes were offered. French and American flours are different consistencies, and French use baker’s ovens for their bread. Proofreading was a “perfect horrible” job, and Julia Child found errors such as ¼ cup instead of ¼ teaspoon and errors of omission (forgot to say cover the pot) while going through fifteen pounds of galleys for Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Judith Jones picked the title, and publisher Alfred Knopf said: “I’ll eat my hat if anyone buys a book with that title!”
Check the accuracy of political statements:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
Check the accuracy of political statements and rumors on many other subjects:
http://www.snopes.com/
Welcome to the Art of the Prank, produced and edited by Joey Skaggs. You will find insights, information, news and discussions about pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking around the world. http://artoftheprank.com/
New on LLRX: Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Updated and Revised October 2009: Sabrina I. Pacifici's completely revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. This guide is a "best of list" of web, database and email alert products, services and tools, as well as links to content specific sources produced by government, academic, NGOs, the media and various publishers.
New on LLRX: Legal Implications of Cloud Computing - Part Two (Privacy and the Cloud): As a follow-up to last month's article that provided an overview of cloud computing in the context of significant legal issues, this article by Tanya Forsheit reviews the issues of privacy and cross-border data transfers.
Electric Power Monthly (10/15/2009): "Net generation in the United States dropped by 7.6 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. This was the 12th consecutive month that net generation was down compared to the same calendar month in the prior year. The Commerce Department reported that real gross domestic product decreased 0.7 percent from the first quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2009. Continuing to reflect this decline, industrial production in July 2009, as reported by the Federal Reserve, was 13.1 percent lower than it had been in July 2008, the 13th consecutive month that same-month industrial production was lower than it had been in the previous year. The decline in net generation is also consistent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) population-weighted Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index (REDTI) for July 2009, which was “approximately 13.3 percent below average consumption.” NOAA attributes the low value to temperatures that were cooler-than-average in the northeast."
On October 21, 1876, the West Publishing Company, founded by John B. West, published its first law reporter, The Syllabi, which promised to provide Minnesota lawyers with legal intelligence that was "prompt, interesting, full, and at all times thoroughly reliable."
On October 21, 1977, the European Patent Institute (EPI) was established by the European Patent Organisation pursuant to the European Patent Convention. The EPI serves as a non-governmental professional organization for patent lawyers in Europe.
On October 22, 1685, the Edict of Nantes, which permitted religious freedom in France, was revoked by King Louis XIV, prompting thousands of French Protestants— Huguenots—to flee the country.
On October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba. After six days of negotiations, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Small spaces, big ideas by Joann Petaschnick Nine ideas for designing small spaces, including light, reflections, proportion, scale and planning with cutouts.
http://www.gmtoday.com/content/m_west/2009/April/mwest_0409_p60.asp
Welcome to All About Birds, with information on 585 species, bird of the week, bird sound of the week, and opportunities to read a blog and ask questions.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1189
Down a winding road, through a tunnel of trees, sunlight escapes through the foliage to light the way to Lake Macbride, the home of the Macbride Raptor Project. At this peaceful lake, Iowa’s birds of prey have been living and rehabilitating since 1985. Patients of the Raptor Project are sick or injured birds of prey, also known as raptors, said Jodeane Cancilla, the project’s coordinator. “The majority of bird injuries are the result of human activities, whether intentional or unintentional,” she said. One resident of the center, Spirit, is a full-grown bald eagle. After damaging her wing in 1989, Spirit was given a home at Macbride. A few other permanent residents include Wannago, a great horned owl that lost her left eye, Aquila, a golden eagle with back and hip injuries, and Aura, a turkey vulture raised by humans. If raptors do fully recover, they are released back into the wild near the location they were found, Cancilla said. The center is a collaboration between University of Iowa Recreational Services and Kirkwood Community College. The Macbride Nature Recreation Area consists of 480 acres of land and is maintained by approximately 55 volunteers. http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/09/04/Sports/12676.html
Nontroversy is a contraction of non and controversy, and exists when people try to make something seem controversial. It can also be a controversy that has been exploited to the point that it is no longer newsworthy, thus losing complete credibility.
A new worm called Koobface has passed malware and spyware to PCs through social networking sites Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo and Twitter to steal sensitive data from hard drives. Computers infected with Koobface also infects other PCs.
Malware research firm Trend Micro described Koobface as composed of as many as 26 separate functional pieces, each of which is designed to use you and your computer in different malicious ways. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016746433?New%20Worm%20Infects%20PCs%20Thru%20Social%20Networking%20Sites
Q. What is an electric pig? A. a garbage disposal
http://www.answers.com/topic/electric-pig
Q. What is Norsk? A. Norsk or Norwegian is a North Germanic language with around 5 million speakers in mainly in Norway. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/norwegian.htm
Judith Jones read the French edition of what would become Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, in a pile of submissions slated for rejection. Her enthusiasm persuaded Doubleday to publish the book in the United States.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YsJsGSN_R9kC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=frank+diary+doubleday+rejected&source=bl&ots=HbAlXH8vyY&sig=JvW0pjlvv9QGlSXXP3UWKE0dNdk&hl=en&ei=LbPYSsDRJY6OMcCVzN4H&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CB8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=frank%20diary%20doubleday%20rejected&f=false
Judith Jones brought Julia Child's ground-breaking 1961 book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking to the American public after the manuscript had been rejected by other publishers. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/julia-judith/article1231084/ Considerations: amount of meat for a French dish is smaller than American, because French assume it will be part of a three-course meal. So recipes had to be refigured. Certain ingredients were not easily available (duck confit) and substitutes were offered. French and American flours are different consistencies, and French use baker’s ovens for their bread. Proofreading was a “perfect horrible” job, and Julia Child found errors such as ¼ cup instead of ¼ teaspoon and errors of omission (forgot to say cover the pot) while going through fifteen pounds of galleys for Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Judith Jones picked the title, and publisher Alfred Knopf said: “I’ll eat my hat if anyone buys a book with that title!”
Check the accuracy of political statements:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
Check the accuracy of political statements and rumors on many other subjects:
http://www.snopes.com/
Welcome to the Art of the Prank, produced and edited by Joey Skaggs. You will find insights, information, news and discussions about pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking around the world. http://artoftheprank.com/
New on LLRX: Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Updated and Revised October 2009: Sabrina I. Pacifici's completely revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. This guide is a "best of list" of web, database and email alert products, services and tools, as well as links to content specific sources produced by government, academic, NGOs, the media and various publishers.
New on LLRX: Legal Implications of Cloud Computing - Part Two (Privacy and the Cloud): As a follow-up to last month's article that provided an overview of cloud computing in the context of significant legal issues, this article by Tanya Forsheit reviews the issues of privacy and cross-border data transfers.
Electric Power Monthly (10/15/2009): "Net generation in the United States dropped by 7.6 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. This was the 12th consecutive month that net generation was down compared to the same calendar month in the prior year. The Commerce Department reported that real gross domestic product decreased 0.7 percent from the first quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2009. Continuing to reflect this decline, industrial production in July 2009, as reported by the Federal Reserve, was 13.1 percent lower than it had been in July 2008, the 13th consecutive month that same-month industrial production was lower than it had been in the previous year. The decline in net generation is also consistent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) population-weighted Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index (REDTI) for July 2009, which was “approximately 13.3 percent below average consumption.” NOAA attributes the low value to temperatures that were cooler-than-average in the northeast."
On October 21, 1876, the West Publishing Company, founded by John B. West, published its first law reporter, The Syllabi, which promised to provide Minnesota lawyers with legal intelligence that was "prompt, interesting, full, and at all times thoroughly reliable."
On October 21, 1977, the European Patent Institute (EPI) was established by the European Patent Organisation pursuant to the European Patent Convention. The EPI serves as a non-governmental professional organization for patent lawyers in Europe.
On October 22, 1685, the Edict of Nantes, which permitted religious freedom in France, was revoked by King Louis XIV, prompting thousands of French Protestants— Huguenots—to flee the country.
On October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba. After six days of negotiations, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Fifth installment by Jim Atkins, FAIA, on Fallingwater, the nation’s most famous house, including a few lessons on the structural properties of reinforced concrete, both initially and over time under the cyclical duress of sagging, cracking, and weathering—properties much better understood today than in 1935. Thanks, Paul.
http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/1016/1016d_fallingwater.cfm
res gestae (REEZ JES-tee, RAYS GES-ty) noun
facts incidental to a case, admissible as evidence in a lawsuit—for example, exclamations uttered by a robber during a holdup From Latin, literally, things done.
novation (noh-VAY-shuhn) noun
the replacing of an obligation, a contract, or a party to an agreement with a new one
From novare (to make new), from novus (new). Ultimately from the Indo-European root newo- (new) that is also the source of new, neo-, novice, novel, novelty, innovate, renovate, misoneism (fear of change), and novercal (stepmotherly).
Feedback
From: Rita Spillane (ritaspillane@gmail.com)
Subject: curtilage
Def: an area of land encompassing a dwelling and its surrounding yard
One of the words this week, curtilage, is one of my all-time favorites! I am a prosecuting attorney in California. I recall in law school (circa 1977) listening to my professor in Real Property (Jerome Curtis RIP) teach us this word. According to him, in the European Middle Ages the curtilage was an area defined as that portion of property that was within a bow shot (arrow) from the center of a manor estate. Isn't that a great visual image? Imagine an individual shooting an arrow from the center of the manor courtyard and then circumscribing that area. That area would be considered "within the curtilage". This would be an important fact in determining what crime was or was not committed within that space. For example, a theft within that proscribed area may be charged as a burglary; outside that area a mere theft. The penalties would be different.
From: J. Jarvis (jay.jarvis@gmail.com)
Subject: Res gestae
Def: facts incidental to a case, admissible as evidence in a lawsuit
Thank you for your inclusion of this oft-misused phrase. As a judge still suffering from schoolboy Latin, I misuse it frequently myself. As said by the late California Justice Robert Gardner (known as the "surfing judge" and revered for his pithy and sardonic appellate opinions): "Older practitioners will remember the popularity of the phrase 'res gestae.' ... However, the new Evidence Code, modern writers and modern courts have abandoned the use of this rather ill-defined phrase. Res gestae has now gone the way of the great auk, the passenger pigeon, and high button shoes. It was, in its time, a handy gadget. When an attorney could think of no other reason for the introduction of hearsay, he would simply utter the magic words 'res gestae' and, often as not, get the testimony in." (People v. Orduno (1978) 80 Cal. App. 3d 738, 744, fn.1.)
From: Bruce Schoenberg (bruce@schoenberg.net)
Subject: Barratry
Def: the practice of stirring up of groundless lawsuits
Closely allied to barratry are the offenses of champerty (the purchasing of causes of action by a disinterested third party for the purpose of prosecuting litigation) and "maintenance" (the advancement of legal expenses by an attorney to fund a client's litigation). The prohibitions against champerty and maintenance have weakened in this day of contingent fee litigation and litigation financing companies, but the practices are still illegal or unethical in many states. The third definition of barratry—sale of ecclesiastical offices— is also known as "simony".
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Altered photographs are common
In August, 2009 a Microsoft Corp. ad that had been edited to change a man's race from black to white was shown in Poland. This summer officials in Toronto had to defend their own decision to deceive its audience when it was learned that they had superimposed the face of a black man over that of a white man to make a recreation brochure look more inclusive. In 2000, the University of Wisconsin admitted that it had doctored the cover of a brochure to make the school look more diverse. Into an image of mostly white students cheering at a football game, it digitally inserted the face of a black student, Diallo Shabazz. Jet magazine quoted Shabazz as saying that he had never attended a football game at the university. Time magazine darkened the color of O.J. Simpson's skin on the cover of its June 1994 issue. A picture on the cover of an August 1989 TV Guide combined the head of Oprah Winfrey and the body of actress Ann-Margret, taken from a 1979 photograph. Martha Stewart's head was placed on top of the body of a slimmer model who had been photographed separately in a studio. In 2005, Newsweek magazine placed the image on the cover of its magazine. In August 2006, the Associated Press had to pull a photo when an editor added an extra set of hands on an Alaskan oil pipeline worker. The photo captured a BP employee scanning a section of pipeline that had leaked 200,000 gallons of oil earlier that year. An editing error apparently gave the worker four hands instead of two. These stories and more at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/11-photo-editing-flubs-digitally-altered-photo-disasters/Story?id=8780937&page=1
Filippa Hamilton, a 5-foot-10-inch, 120-pound model was fired by Ralph Lauren after eight years with the fashion designer. The 23-year-old Swedish-French model, who had been working for Lauren since she was 15, said she had no intention of going public with her complaint, but changed her mind when a Photoshopped image of her in a mall in Japan (with her head showing larger than her hips) on the Internet site BoingBoing.com. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/33307721/ns/today-today_fashion_and_beauty/
Artist Shepard Fairey has admitted to legal wrongdoing in his ongoing battle with the Associated Press. Fairey said in a statement issued October 16 that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his "Hope" poster of then-Sen. Barack Obama. "Throughout the case, there has been a question as to which Mannie Garcia photo I used as a reference to design the HOPE image," Fairey said. "The AP claimed it was one photo, and I claimed it was another." New filings to the court, he said, "state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used...and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images." In February, the AP claimed that Fairey violated copyright laws when he used one of their images as the basis for the poster. In response, the artist filed a lawsuit against the AP, claiming that he was protected under fair use. Fairey also claimed that he used a different photo as the inspiration for his poster. After Fairey's admission, a spokesman for the Associated Press issued a statement saying that Fairey "sued the AP under false pretenses by lying about which AP photograph he used." Fairey said that his lawyers have taken the steps to amend his court pleadings to reflect the fact that "the AP is correct about which photo I used as a reference and that I was mistaken."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/shepard-fairey-admits-to-wrongdoing-in-associated-press-lawsuit.html
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on February 17, 1844 in Chatham, New Jersey. When he was about nine years old, his father, Sylvester Ward, moved the family to Niles, Michigan, where Aaron attended public schools. In 1865, Ward located in Chicago, worked for Case and, a lamp house. He traveled for them, and sold goods on commission for a short time. Chicago was the center of the wholesale dry-goods trade, and in the 1860s Ward joined the leading dry-goods house, Field Palmer & Leiter, forerunner of Marshall Field & Co. He worked for Field for two years and then joined the wholesale dry-goods business of Wills, Greg & Co. In August 1872, with two fellow employees and a total capital of $1,600, he formed Montgomery Ward & Company. He rented a small shipping room on North Clark Street and published the world's first general merchandise mail-order catalog with 163 products listed. Ward's catalog soon was copied by other enterprising merchants, most notably Richard Warren Sears, who mailed his first general catalog in 1896. Others entered the field, and by 1971 catalog sales of major U.S. firms exceeded more than $250 million in postal revenue. Ward fought for the poor people's access to Chicago's lakefront. In 1906 he campaigned to preserve Grant Park as a public park. Grant Park has been protected since 1836 by "forever open, clear and free" legislation that has been affirmed by four previous Illinois Supreme Court rulings.[3][4] Ward twice sued the city of Chicago to force it to remove buildings and structures from Grant Park and to keep it from building new ones.[5] As a result, the city has what are termed the Montgomery Ward height restrictions on buildings and structures in Grant Park. However, Crown Fountain and the 139-foot (42 m) Pritzker Pavilion were exempt from the height restriction because they were classified as works of art and not buildings or structures. Montgomery Ward died in 1913, at the age of 69. His wife bequeathed a large portion of the estate to Northwestern University and other educational institutions. Despite the collapse of its catalog and department stores in 2001, Montgomery Ward & Co. still adheres to the once unheard philosophy of "satisfaction guaranteed" as an online retailer. The Montgomery Ward catalog's place in history was assured when the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles in New York, exhibited it in 1946 alongside Webster's dictionary as one of the hundred books with the most influence on life and culture of the American people. Forbes magazine readers and editors ranked Aaron Montgomery Ward as the 16th most influential businessman of all time.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Montgomery_Ward
It’s the brand that just won’t quit. Montgomery Ward, founded in 1872 as the first retail mail-order catalog, will re-emerge a second time this month (from September 2008 article) as a retail e-commerce site operated by its new parent, The Swiss Colony Inc. The relaunch by Swiss Colony, which acquired the venerable brand last month from Chicago-based Direct Marketing Services Inc. at an undisclosed price in a foreclosure sale, will mark the second time Montgomery Ward has re-surfaced this decade. In 2001, Direct Marketing acquired the rights to the retail brand after the original Montgomery Ward company ceased operations, then relaunched the brand in 2004 as a retail e-commerce site. http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27600
http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/1016/1016d_fallingwater.cfm
res gestae (REEZ JES-tee, RAYS GES-ty) noun
facts incidental to a case, admissible as evidence in a lawsuit—for example, exclamations uttered by a robber during a holdup From Latin, literally, things done.
novation (noh-VAY-shuhn) noun
the replacing of an obligation, a contract, or a party to an agreement with a new one
From novare (to make new), from novus (new). Ultimately from the Indo-European root newo- (new) that is also the source of new, neo-, novice, novel, novelty, innovate, renovate, misoneism (fear of change), and novercal (stepmotherly).
Feedback
From: Rita Spillane (ritaspillane@gmail.com)
Subject: curtilage
Def: an area of land encompassing a dwelling and its surrounding yard
One of the words this week, curtilage, is one of my all-time favorites! I am a prosecuting attorney in California. I recall in law school (circa 1977) listening to my professor in Real Property (Jerome Curtis RIP) teach us this word. According to him, in the European Middle Ages the curtilage was an area defined as that portion of property that was within a bow shot (arrow) from the center of a manor estate. Isn't that a great visual image? Imagine an individual shooting an arrow from the center of the manor courtyard and then circumscribing that area. That area would be considered "within the curtilage". This would be an important fact in determining what crime was or was not committed within that space. For example, a theft within that proscribed area may be charged as a burglary; outside that area a mere theft. The penalties would be different.
From: J. Jarvis (jay.jarvis@gmail.com)
Subject: Res gestae
Def: facts incidental to a case, admissible as evidence in a lawsuit
Thank you for your inclusion of this oft-misused phrase. As a judge still suffering from schoolboy Latin, I misuse it frequently myself. As said by the late California Justice Robert Gardner (known as the "surfing judge" and revered for his pithy and sardonic appellate opinions): "Older practitioners will remember the popularity of the phrase 'res gestae.' ... However, the new Evidence Code, modern writers and modern courts have abandoned the use of this rather ill-defined phrase. Res gestae has now gone the way of the great auk, the passenger pigeon, and high button shoes. It was, in its time, a handy gadget. When an attorney could think of no other reason for the introduction of hearsay, he would simply utter the magic words 'res gestae' and, often as not, get the testimony in." (People v. Orduno (1978) 80 Cal. App. 3d 738, 744, fn.1.)
From: Bruce Schoenberg (bruce@schoenberg.net)
Subject: Barratry
Def: the practice of stirring up of groundless lawsuits
Closely allied to barratry are the offenses of champerty (the purchasing of causes of action by a disinterested third party for the purpose of prosecuting litigation) and "maintenance" (the advancement of legal expenses by an attorney to fund a client's litigation). The prohibitions against champerty and maintenance have weakened in this day of contingent fee litigation and litigation financing companies, but the practices are still illegal or unethical in many states. The third definition of barratry—sale of ecclesiastical offices— is also known as "simony".
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Altered photographs are common
In August, 2009 a Microsoft Corp. ad that had been edited to change a man's race from black to white was shown in Poland. This summer officials in Toronto had to defend their own decision to deceive its audience when it was learned that they had superimposed the face of a black man over that of a white man to make a recreation brochure look more inclusive. In 2000, the University of Wisconsin admitted that it had doctored the cover of a brochure to make the school look more diverse. Into an image of mostly white students cheering at a football game, it digitally inserted the face of a black student, Diallo Shabazz. Jet magazine quoted Shabazz as saying that he had never attended a football game at the university. Time magazine darkened the color of O.J. Simpson's skin on the cover of its June 1994 issue. A picture on the cover of an August 1989 TV Guide combined the head of Oprah Winfrey and the body of actress Ann-Margret, taken from a 1979 photograph. Martha Stewart's head was placed on top of the body of a slimmer model who had been photographed separately in a studio. In 2005, Newsweek magazine placed the image on the cover of its magazine. In August 2006, the Associated Press had to pull a photo when an editor added an extra set of hands on an Alaskan oil pipeline worker. The photo captured a BP employee scanning a section of pipeline that had leaked 200,000 gallons of oil earlier that year. An editing error apparently gave the worker four hands instead of two. These stories and more at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/11-photo-editing-flubs-digitally-altered-photo-disasters/Story?id=8780937&page=1
Filippa Hamilton, a 5-foot-10-inch, 120-pound model was fired by Ralph Lauren after eight years with the fashion designer. The 23-year-old Swedish-French model, who had been working for Lauren since she was 15, said she had no intention of going public with her complaint, but changed her mind when a Photoshopped image of her in a mall in Japan (with her head showing larger than her hips) on the Internet site BoingBoing.com. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/33307721/ns/today-today_fashion_and_beauty/
Artist Shepard Fairey has admitted to legal wrongdoing in his ongoing battle with the Associated Press. Fairey said in a statement issued October 16 that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his "Hope" poster of then-Sen. Barack Obama. "Throughout the case, there has been a question as to which Mannie Garcia photo I used as a reference to design the HOPE image," Fairey said. "The AP claimed it was one photo, and I claimed it was another." New filings to the court, he said, "state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used...and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images." In February, the AP claimed that Fairey violated copyright laws when he used one of their images as the basis for the poster. In response, the artist filed a lawsuit against the AP, claiming that he was protected under fair use. Fairey also claimed that he used a different photo as the inspiration for his poster. After Fairey's admission, a spokesman for the Associated Press issued a statement saying that Fairey "sued the AP under false pretenses by lying about which AP photograph he used." Fairey said that his lawyers have taken the steps to amend his court pleadings to reflect the fact that "the AP is correct about which photo I used as a reference and that I was mistaken."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/shepard-fairey-admits-to-wrongdoing-in-associated-press-lawsuit.html
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on February 17, 1844 in Chatham, New Jersey. When he was about nine years old, his father, Sylvester Ward, moved the family to Niles, Michigan, where Aaron attended public schools. In 1865, Ward located in Chicago, worked for Case and, a lamp house. He traveled for them, and sold goods on commission for a short time. Chicago was the center of the wholesale dry-goods trade, and in the 1860s Ward joined the leading dry-goods house, Field Palmer & Leiter, forerunner of Marshall Field & Co. He worked for Field for two years and then joined the wholesale dry-goods business of Wills, Greg & Co. In August 1872, with two fellow employees and a total capital of $1,600, he formed Montgomery Ward & Company. He rented a small shipping room on North Clark Street and published the world's first general merchandise mail-order catalog with 163 products listed. Ward's catalog soon was copied by other enterprising merchants, most notably Richard Warren Sears, who mailed his first general catalog in 1896. Others entered the field, and by 1971 catalog sales of major U.S. firms exceeded more than $250 million in postal revenue. Ward fought for the poor people's access to Chicago's lakefront. In 1906 he campaigned to preserve Grant Park as a public park. Grant Park has been protected since 1836 by "forever open, clear and free" legislation that has been affirmed by four previous Illinois Supreme Court rulings.[3][4] Ward twice sued the city of Chicago to force it to remove buildings and structures from Grant Park and to keep it from building new ones.[5] As a result, the city has what are termed the Montgomery Ward height restrictions on buildings and structures in Grant Park. However, Crown Fountain and the 139-foot (42 m) Pritzker Pavilion were exempt from the height restriction because they were classified as works of art and not buildings or structures. Montgomery Ward died in 1913, at the age of 69. His wife bequeathed a large portion of the estate to Northwestern University and other educational institutions. Despite the collapse of its catalog and department stores in 2001, Montgomery Ward & Co. still adheres to the once unheard philosophy of "satisfaction guaranteed" as an online retailer. The Montgomery Ward catalog's place in history was assured when the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles in New York, exhibited it in 1946 alongside Webster's dictionary as one of the hundred books with the most influence on life and culture of the American people. Forbes magazine readers and editors ranked Aaron Montgomery Ward as the 16th most influential businessman of all time.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Montgomery_Ward
It’s the brand that just won’t quit. Montgomery Ward, founded in 1872 as the first retail mail-order catalog, will re-emerge a second time this month (from September 2008 article) as a retail e-commerce site operated by its new parent, The Swiss Colony Inc. The relaunch by Swiss Colony, which acquired the venerable brand last month from Chicago-based Direct Marketing Services Inc. at an undisclosed price in a foreclosure sale, will mark the second time Montgomery Ward has re-surfaced this decade. In 2001, Direct Marketing acquired the rights to the retail brand after the original Montgomery Ward company ceased operations, then relaunched the brand in 2004 as a retail e-commerce site. http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27600
Monday, October 19, 2009
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Real Earnings, September 2009
News release: Real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from August to September, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. This decline stemmed from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), up by 0.2 percent, outpacing 0.1 percent growth in average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers. Real average weekly earnings fell 0.4 percent over the month, as a result of the decrease in real average hourly earnings and a 0.3 percent decrease in the average work week. Since reaching a recent high point in December 2008, real average weekly earnings have fallen by 1.9 percent.
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index, September 2009
News release: On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.2 percent in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. The increase was less than the 0.4 percent rise in August. The index has decreased 1.3 percent over the last 12 months on a not seasonally adjusted basis. The seasonally adjusted increase in the all items index was broad based, although tempered by a decline in the food index. The all items less food and energy index increased 0.2 percent in September after increasing 0.1 percent in each of the previous two months. Contributing to this increase were advances in the indexes for lodging away from home, medical care, new vehicles, used cars and trucks, and public transportation. The increase occurred despite declines in the indexes for rent and owners’ equivalent rent, the first decreases in those indexes since 1992. The energy index also increased in September, as increases in the indexes for gasoline, fuel oil and electricity more than offset a decline in the index for natural gas.
Fritters (printed by popular demand)
½ c. flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten
1/8 cup milk
1 tsp. vegetable oil
Mix dry ingredients and add wet ingredients. Drop spoonfuls in hot fat and fry about 3 minutes, turning once. Makes 10 small fritters.
Optional: Add 1 cup diced fruit or vegetables to dry ingredients.
Peering through thick fog, hundreds stood on the banks of the Mississippi River on October 13 and cheered as the latest piece of naval history cut through the haze and belched its horn. The onlookers waved flags at the New York, a freshly built 684-foot Navy warship slowly making its way to New York City, where it will be commissioned in early November and renamed the USS New York. The $1.2 billion ship, which is designed to launch cargo, troop transport ships and helicopters for warfare missions, is named for the city that suffered the first attacks of 9/11. Its bow stem was built with 7½ tons of scrap metal excavated from the World Trade Center ruins. The New York was built by Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding in Avondale, La., 10 miles upriver from New Orleans. http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-10-13-ship_N.htm
It's not quite a Grammy, but a piano-playing cat who became an Internet sensation has earned herself serious purr-aise. Nora, a 5-year-old gray tabby with a penchant for tickling the ivories, had been named Cat of the Year by the ASPCA. Adopted from a shelter by a piano teacher, Nora's prowess for pounding out tunes with her paws drew millions of viewers on YouTube. http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/pets/2009/10/16/2009-10-16_nora.html
Prominent users of Twitter and Facebook won't be exempt from controversial new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that keep tabs on blogger freebies and giveaways, according to Richard Cleland, associate director for the FTC's advertising division. The agency absolutely plans to keep tabs on social networks as well as blogs in accordance with revised regulations that could see violators fined up to $11,000, he said. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10368064-36.html
Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, Guides concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, effective date December 1, 2009.
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf
European Union fact sheet
The Czech Republic and Slovakia are neighbouring countries in central Europe. Both states share borders with Austria and Poland. The Czech Republic also has a border with Germany, while Slovakia borders Hungary and Ukraine. The two countries were unified until 1993 as Czechoslovakia. Since they separated, both have undergone major economic and social reforms in their attempts to achieve EU membership. This became a reality in 2004 when both countries joined the club. During the Cold War, Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule and was an ally of the USSR through the Warsaw Pact. Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the people of Czechoslovakia overthrew their Communist government in what was dubbed the 'Velvet Revolution'. Although Czechoslovakia remained a single country, the tensions between the majority Czech and minority Slovak populations made this situation unsustainable. On 1 January 1993, the two countries separated in a peaceful 'Velvet divorce'.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/eufacts/FSMS/MS11.htm
Selections from Best Free Reference Websites, eleventh annual list
Source: Reference & User Services Quarterly v. 49, #1, Fall 2009
BBC News—Country Profiles
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm
BookFinder indexes more than 150 million books for sale from the catalogs of sellers in 50 countries. http://www.bookfinder.com/
Lexicool has online bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. http://www.lexicool.com/
OnlineConversion “can convert just about anything to anything else.”
http://www.onlineconversion.com/
PDRHealth draws on Physicians’ Desk Reference
http://pdrhealth.com/home/home.aspx
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) houses 200 free writing resources, including grammar, style, ESL, technical writing and research.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Traffic.com provides real-time traffic information, road conditions, and drive time estimates. http://www.traffic.com/
World Health Organization lists articles, news, travel precautions and vaccination requirements. http://www.who.int/en/
Silent letters
deign, answer, honor, pneumonia
On October 19, 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York in the wake of Parliament's passage of the controversial Stamp Act imposing a tax for the upkeep of British troops in North America, approved a Declaration of Rights enumerating the rights and grievances of the American colonies. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
The London Beer Flood occurred on October 17, 1814. At 6:00 on a Monday evening, a torrent of beer came rushing through the streets of the St. Giles district of London. It started at the Horse Shoe Brewery at Tottenham Court and Oxford Street, where there were huge vats of porter perched on top of the roof. They contained beer, which had been fermenting right there for months. The wooden vats were enormous — some as tall as 22 feet—and were structurally supported by large iron hoops, dozens of them. They sat on the roof of the Meux Brewing Company, each of them containing hundreds of thousands of liters of beer. The largest vat had started to strain under the weight and pressure of all that porter, and on this day, around 6:00 p.m., one of the iron hoops gave way and all the porter in the 22-foot-tall vat came gushing out. There were about 600,000 liters of beer in there, and when the vat burst and all that beer came exploding out, there was a chain reaction and the surrounding vats on the roof also burst. More than a million liters of beer toppled the brewery's brick wall (it was 25 feet tall) and began flooding the streets of St. Giles. The Writer’s Almanac
News release: Real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from August to September, seasonally adjusted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. This decline stemmed from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), up by 0.2 percent, outpacing 0.1 percent growth in average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers. Real average weekly earnings fell 0.4 percent over the month, as a result of the decrease in real average hourly earnings and a 0.3 percent decrease in the average work week. Since reaching a recent high point in December 2008, real average weekly earnings have fallen by 1.9 percent.
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index, September 2009
News release: On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.2 percent in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. The increase was less than the 0.4 percent rise in August. The index has decreased 1.3 percent over the last 12 months on a not seasonally adjusted basis. The seasonally adjusted increase in the all items index was broad based, although tempered by a decline in the food index. The all items less food and energy index increased 0.2 percent in September after increasing 0.1 percent in each of the previous two months. Contributing to this increase were advances in the indexes for lodging away from home, medical care, new vehicles, used cars and trucks, and public transportation. The increase occurred despite declines in the indexes for rent and owners’ equivalent rent, the first decreases in those indexes since 1992. The energy index also increased in September, as increases in the indexes for gasoline, fuel oil and electricity more than offset a decline in the index for natural gas.
Fritters (printed by popular demand)
½ c. flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten
1/8 cup milk
1 tsp. vegetable oil
Mix dry ingredients and add wet ingredients. Drop spoonfuls in hot fat and fry about 3 minutes, turning once. Makes 10 small fritters.
Optional: Add 1 cup diced fruit or vegetables to dry ingredients.
Peering through thick fog, hundreds stood on the banks of the Mississippi River on October 13 and cheered as the latest piece of naval history cut through the haze and belched its horn. The onlookers waved flags at the New York, a freshly built 684-foot Navy warship slowly making its way to New York City, where it will be commissioned in early November and renamed the USS New York. The $1.2 billion ship, which is designed to launch cargo, troop transport ships and helicopters for warfare missions, is named for the city that suffered the first attacks of 9/11. Its bow stem was built with 7½ tons of scrap metal excavated from the World Trade Center ruins. The New York was built by Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding in Avondale, La., 10 miles upriver from New Orleans. http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-10-13-ship_N.htm
It's not quite a Grammy, but a piano-playing cat who became an Internet sensation has earned herself serious purr-aise. Nora, a 5-year-old gray tabby with a penchant for tickling the ivories, had been named Cat of the Year by the ASPCA. Adopted from a shelter by a piano teacher, Nora's prowess for pounding out tunes with her paws drew millions of viewers on YouTube. http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/pets/2009/10/16/2009-10-16_nora.html
Prominent users of Twitter and Facebook won't be exempt from controversial new Federal Trade Commission guidelines that keep tabs on blogger freebies and giveaways, according to Richard Cleland, associate director for the FTC's advertising division. The agency absolutely plans to keep tabs on social networks as well as blogs in accordance with revised regulations that could see violators fined up to $11,000, he said. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10368064-36.html
Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, Guides concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising, effective date December 1, 2009.
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf
European Union fact sheet
The Czech Republic and Slovakia are neighbouring countries in central Europe. Both states share borders with Austria and Poland. The Czech Republic also has a border with Germany, while Slovakia borders Hungary and Ukraine. The two countries were unified until 1993 as Czechoslovakia. Since they separated, both have undergone major economic and social reforms in their attempts to achieve EU membership. This became a reality in 2004 when both countries joined the club. During the Cold War, Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule and was an ally of the USSR through the Warsaw Pact. Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the people of Czechoslovakia overthrew their Communist government in what was dubbed the 'Velvet Revolution'. Although Czechoslovakia remained a single country, the tensions between the majority Czech and minority Slovak populations made this situation unsustainable. On 1 January 1993, the two countries separated in a peaceful 'Velvet divorce'.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/eufacts/FSMS/MS11.htm
Selections from Best Free Reference Websites, eleventh annual list
Source: Reference & User Services Quarterly v. 49, #1, Fall 2009
BBC News—Country Profiles
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm
BookFinder indexes more than 150 million books for sale from the catalogs of sellers in 50 countries. http://www.bookfinder.com/
Lexicool has online bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. http://www.lexicool.com/
OnlineConversion “can convert just about anything to anything else.”
http://www.onlineconversion.com/
PDRHealth draws on Physicians’ Desk Reference
http://pdrhealth.com/home/home.aspx
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) houses 200 free writing resources, including grammar, style, ESL, technical writing and research.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Traffic.com provides real-time traffic information, road conditions, and drive time estimates. http://www.traffic.com/
World Health Organization lists articles, news, travel precautions and vaccination requirements. http://www.who.int/en/
Silent letters
deign, answer, honor, pneumonia
On October 19, 1765, the Stamp Act Congress, meeting in New York in the wake of Parliament's passage of the controversial Stamp Act imposing a tax for the upkeep of British troops in North America, approved a Declaration of Rights enumerating the rights and grievances of the American colonies. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
The London Beer Flood occurred on October 17, 1814. At 6:00 on a Monday evening, a torrent of beer came rushing through the streets of the St. Giles district of London. It started at the Horse Shoe Brewery at Tottenham Court and Oxford Street, where there were huge vats of porter perched on top of the roof. They contained beer, which had been fermenting right there for months. The wooden vats were enormous — some as tall as 22 feet—and were structurally supported by large iron hoops, dozens of them. They sat on the roof of the Meux Brewing Company, each of them containing hundreds of thousands of liters of beer. The largest vat had started to strain under the weight and pressure of all that porter, and on this day, around 6:00 p.m., one of the iron hoops gave way and all the porter in the 22-foot-tall vat came gushing out. There were about 600,000 liters of beer in there, and when the vat burst and all that beer came exploding out, there was a chain reaction and the surrounding vats on the roof also burst. More than a million liters of beer toppled the brewery's brick wall (it was 25 feet tall) and began flooding the streets of St. Giles. The Writer’s Almanac
Friday, October 16, 2009
National Clean Diesel Program: grants and funding
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/diesel/grantfund.htm
Norfolk Island—located in the heart of the South Pacific between Australia and New Zealand and spanning just 34 sq km (13 square miles)
Captain James Cook discovered Norfolk Island in 1774.
The Island was a British penal colony from 1788 to 1855. In 1856, the prisoners were removed.
In 1856, Norfolk Island was resettled by Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers—and their Tahitian companions.
More than 1/3 of the island is subtropical rainforest preserved within National Parks and reserves.
Norfolk Island is home to the earth’s largest tree ferns.
June 8, Bounty Day commemorates the most infamous naval mutiny in modern history—the HMS Bounty—and the arrival of the Pitcairn Islanders in 1856.
35% of the Island’s current inhabitants are direct descendents from the Bounty mutineers.
English is the primary language spoken on Norfolk Island, but locals still speak Norfolk—a delightful mix of 18th Century English and Polynesian.
http://www.norfolkislandspecialists.com.au/
A bee, as used in quilting bee or spelling bee, is an old word to describe a gathering of friends and neighbors to accomplish a task or to hold a competition. The tasks were often major jobs, such as clearing a field of timber or raising a barn, that would be difficult to carry out alone. It was often both a social and utilitarian event. Jobs like corn husking or sewing, could be done as a group to allow socialization during an otherwise tedious chore. This use of the word bee is common in literature describing colonial North America. The earliest known printed example of the term was the use of spinning bee in 1769, but most printed occurrences of the word didn’t occur until the 19th century. Some types of bees (with the date that they first appeared in print) include:
spinning bee (1769)
husking bee (or cornhusking) (1816)
apple bee (1827)
logging bee (1836)
spelling bee (1825) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_(gathering)
It's always risky to mix sports metaphors, but it's hard to resist the notion that the basketball-themed "More Than a Game" is a knockout of a sports documentary. Destined against its will to be known as "the LeBron James movie," it is all that, and a good deal more. James, of course, is one of the NBA's most impressive players, someone so gifted that he was drafted in 2003 by the Cleveland Cavaliers right out of high school. Given that this film is coming out around the same time as his autobiography, "Shooting Stars," it may sound like part of a calculated media blitz, but the film's origins are considerably more complex. "More Than a Game" has been in the works for quite some time, before most people outside of his home state of Ohio knew about James. Director Kristopher Belman, also from Ohio, was a 21-year-old graduate student at Loyola Marymount University when he heard about James and his teammates at Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and gradually wangled his way into being able to film the team at home and on the road during its junior and senior years. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-game2-2009oct02,0,1938605.story
The movie stars LeBron James, Dru Joyce, Romeo Travis, Sian Cotton and Willie McGee as the “fab five” who grew up friends and teammates in Akron, Ohio. I recommend this heart-warming film.
Banana trivia A cluster of bananas is known as a hand and the 10 or 20 bananas found in the hand are called fingers. A banana plant is the largest plant that does not have a wood stem. They are considered a giant herb in the family along with orchids, palms, and lilies. Bananas replenish necessary nutrients burned during physical exercise such as glycogen, body fluids, and carbohydrates. They are also a great source for dietary fiber, Vitamin C, and potassium. Bananas have not cholesterol, fat, or sodium. Over 28 pounds of bananas are eaten by the average American every year.
http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/trivia78.html
Bananas are the most popular fruit in the world. Members of the genus Musa (part of the family Musaceae), they are considered to be derived from the wild species Musa acuminata (AA) and Musa balbisiana (BB). It is believed that there are almost 1000 varieties of bananas in the world, subdivided in 50 groups. The most commonly known banana is the Cavendish variety, which is the one produced for export markets. The origin of bananas is placed in Southeast Asia, in the jungles of Malaysia, Indonesia or Philippines, where so many varieties of wild bananas still grow at present. Bananas have later travelled with human population. The first Europeans to know about bananas were the armies of Alexander the Great, while they were campaigning in India in 327 BC. In the Middle Ages, the banana was thought to be the forbidden fruit of paradise by both Moslems and Christians. The Arabs brought them to Africa. Africans are credited to have given the present name, since the word banana would be derived from the Arab finger. The Portuguese brought them to the Canary Islands. Bananas changed during all these trips, gradually losing its seeds, filling out with flesh and diversifying. When Spaniards and Portuguese explorers went to the New World, the banana travelled with them. In 1516, when Friar Tomas de Berlanga sailed to Santo Domingo, he brought banana roots with him. From there, bananas spread to the Caribbean and Latin American countries. http://www.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/banana/characteristics.htm
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/diesel/grantfund.htm
Norfolk Island—located in the heart of the South Pacific between Australia and New Zealand and spanning just 34 sq km (13 square miles)
Captain James Cook discovered Norfolk Island in 1774.
The Island was a British penal colony from 1788 to 1855. In 1856, the prisoners were removed.
In 1856, Norfolk Island was resettled by Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers—and their Tahitian companions.
More than 1/3 of the island is subtropical rainforest preserved within National Parks and reserves.
Norfolk Island is home to the earth’s largest tree ferns.
June 8, Bounty Day commemorates the most infamous naval mutiny in modern history—the HMS Bounty—and the arrival of the Pitcairn Islanders in 1856.
35% of the Island’s current inhabitants are direct descendents from the Bounty mutineers.
English is the primary language spoken on Norfolk Island, but locals still speak Norfolk—a delightful mix of 18th Century English and Polynesian.
http://www.norfolkislandspecialists.com.au/
A bee, as used in quilting bee or spelling bee, is an old word to describe a gathering of friends and neighbors to accomplish a task or to hold a competition. The tasks were often major jobs, such as clearing a field of timber or raising a barn, that would be difficult to carry out alone. It was often both a social and utilitarian event. Jobs like corn husking or sewing, could be done as a group to allow socialization during an otherwise tedious chore. This use of the word bee is common in literature describing colonial North America. The earliest known printed example of the term was the use of spinning bee in 1769, but most printed occurrences of the word didn’t occur until the 19th century. Some types of bees (with the date that they first appeared in print) include:
spinning bee (1769)
husking bee (or cornhusking) (1816)
apple bee (1827)
logging bee (1836)
spelling bee (1825) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_(gathering)
It's always risky to mix sports metaphors, but it's hard to resist the notion that the basketball-themed "More Than a Game" is a knockout of a sports documentary. Destined against its will to be known as "the LeBron James movie," it is all that, and a good deal more. James, of course, is one of the NBA's most impressive players, someone so gifted that he was drafted in 2003 by the Cleveland Cavaliers right out of high school. Given that this film is coming out around the same time as his autobiography, "Shooting Stars," it may sound like part of a calculated media blitz, but the film's origins are considerably more complex. "More Than a Game" has been in the works for quite some time, before most people outside of his home state of Ohio knew about James. Director Kristopher Belman, also from Ohio, was a 21-year-old graduate student at Loyola Marymount University when he heard about James and his teammates at Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and gradually wangled his way into being able to film the team at home and on the road during its junior and senior years. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-game2-2009oct02,0,1938605.story
The movie stars LeBron James, Dru Joyce, Romeo Travis, Sian Cotton and Willie McGee as the “fab five” who grew up friends and teammates in Akron, Ohio. I recommend this heart-warming film.
Banana trivia A cluster of bananas is known as a hand and the 10 or 20 bananas found in the hand are called fingers. A banana plant is the largest plant that does not have a wood stem. They are considered a giant herb in the family along with orchids, palms, and lilies. Bananas replenish necessary nutrients burned during physical exercise such as glycogen, body fluids, and carbohydrates. They are also a great source for dietary fiber, Vitamin C, and potassium. Bananas have not cholesterol, fat, or sodium. Over 28 pounds of bananas are eaten by the average American every year.
http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/trivia78.html
Bananas are the most popular fruit in the world. Members of the genus Musa (part of the family Musaceae), they are considered to be derived from the wild species Musa acuminata (AA) and Musa balbisiana (BB). It is believed that there are almost 1000 varieties of bananas in the world, subdivided in 50 groups. The most commonly known banana is the Cavendish variety, which is the one produced for export markets. The origin of bananas is placed in Southeast Asia, in the jungles of Malaysia, Indonesia or Philippines, where so many varieties of wild bananas still grow at present. Bananas have later travelled with human population. The first Europeans to know about bananas were the armies of Alexander the Great, while they were campaigning in India in 327 BC. In the Middle Ages, the banana was thought to be the forbidden fruit of paradise by both Moslems and Christians. The Arabs brought them to Africa. Africans are credited to have given the present name, since the word banana would be derived from the Arab finger. The Portuguese brought them to the Canary Islands. Bananas changed during all these trips, gradually losing its seeds, filling out with flesh and diversifying. When Spaniards and Portuguese explorers went to the New World, the banana travelled with them. In 1516, when Friar Tomas de Berlanga sailed to Santo Domingo, he brought banana roots with him. From there, bananas spread to the Caribbean and Latin American countries. http://www.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/banana/characteristics.htm
Thursday, October 15, 2009
"FoodSafety.gov is the gateway to food safety information provided by government agencies. According to the Key Findings of the Food Safety Working Group -- “The federal government will enhance www.foodsafety.gov to better communicate information to the public and include an improved individual alert system allowing consumers to receive food safety information, such as notification of recalls. Agencies will also use social media to expand public communications.”
See also: State Departments of Public Health - Click a state to go to its health department Web site. Related postings on food safety
Report: Ten Riskiest Foods Regulated by the FDA: "The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which authored the report,[says there is no] need one pass up tomatoes, sprouts, and berries, even though those foods are also on the list. But the nonprofit watchdog group says the presence of so many healthy foods on such a list is exactly why the United States Senate should follow the House and pass legislation that reforms our fossilized food safety laws."
Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill Passed by Senate Committee
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the USA PATRIOT Act Extension Act of 2009 [October 9, 2009].
Google and Bing Side By Side Search Comparison
"Can't choose default search engine? Want to compare Bing & Google results? Just put your query in the search box and press Enter. You'll see results from both engines side by side.
An ell (from Proto-Indo-European *el- "elbow, forearm"), is a unit of measurement, approximating the length of a man's arm. Several national forms existed, with different lengths, including the Scottish ell (approximately 37 inches or 94 centimetres), the Flemish ell (approx. 27 in or 69 cm) and the Polish ell (approx. 31 in or 79 cm). In England, the ell was usually 45 inches (1.143 m exactly for the international inch). See other units of length, such as shaftment, span, hand, nail, palm and digit at:
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/ell
An ell is also an extension at the end and at right angles to the main building.
http://www.wordswarm.net/dictionary/ell.html
English language roots: prefixes, suffixes and syllables
PrefixSuffix.com has improved its chart-based site, adding features such as a root word search engine which gives you access to over 2,000 root words. http://www.prefixsuffix.com/
A new Leonardo da Vinci portrait may have been discovered after a fingerprint found on it seemed similar to another discovered on his work. The print is "highly comparable" to a print on da Vinci's St Jerome in the Vatican, which was painted early in the artist's career when he was thought not to use assistants. Infrared analysis showed "significant" stylistic parallels with da Vinci's Portrait of a Woman in Profile, which hangs in Windsor Castle. It also said the analysis revealed that the drawing and hatching were made by a left-handed artist, as da Vinci is known to have been. Drawn in ink and chalks, the young woman's costume and hairstyle reflect Milanese fashion of the late 15th Century, while carbon analysis of the artwork is consistent with such a dating. Da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, believes the teenager, shown in profile, could be Bianca Sforza, daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (1452-1508) and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis. He suggested this "by a process of elimination". The portrait, which measures 13ins by 9ins, was sold at Christie's in New York in 1998, in an Old Master Drawings sale as a Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress. It was catalogued as "German, early 19th century", with an estimate of $12,000 to 16,000, and went under the hammer for $19,000 (£12,039). It was later sold for a similar sum to a Canadian-born connoisseur, Peter Silverman, in 2007. Mr Silverman believed that there was more to the portrait and began to look into the matter following a discussion last year with Dr Nicholas Turner, formerly Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. The artwork is due to go on display in an exhibition in Sweden next year.
http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8304021.stm
Benito Mussolini was recruited by MI5 during the First World War, long before he turned Italy into a police state. At that time he was working as a journalist for a left-wing Italian newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, and the UK wanted an agent of influence. By 1917, with millions of its men committed to the war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Italy was wavering in its commitment to the Allies. Britain paid the future Il Duce 100 pounds a week—equal to about $6,000 today—to write favorable opinion pieces about Italy remaining in the war. The secret deal was engineered by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5’s man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy. The fact that Mussolini was working for the British has been known to historians for decades—Hoare revealed the arrangement in his memoirs more than 50 years ago. But only now has the comparatively large sum that the future dictator was paid for turning his hand to pro-British propaganda been revealed.
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/10/14/italys-mussolini-earned-6000-a-week-as-wwi-agent-for-britain/
Portmanteau words, also called blended words or simply portmanteaux, are words that are formed by splicing or merging two other words together. The term portmanteau words comes from Chapter Six of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, in which the character Humpty Dumpty, in explaining the meaning of the word slithy in the poem "Jabberwocky", says: “Well, slithy means 'lithe and slimy.' Lithe is the same as 'active.' You see it's like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word." This is a double joke: first, a portmanteau is a suitcase, in which one would “pack” things, like the multiple meanings within portmanteau words; second, portmanteau is itself a compound word, similar to portmanteau words, in that it is from the French words for "carry" – porter – and "cloak" – manteau.
Examples:
motor + hotel = motel
gigantic + enormous = ginormous
camera + recorder = camcorder
breath + analyzer = breathalyzer
tangerine + pomelo = tangelo
breakfast + lunch = brunch
medical + care = Medicare
South (of) + Houston (Street) = SoHo (area of New York City)
Triangle + Below + Canal (Street) = TriBeCa (area of New York City)
smoke + fog = smog
talk + marathon = talkathon
Channel + Tunnel = Chunnel
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-portmanteau-words.htm
On October 15, 1582, the Gregorian Calendar was implemented, following a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII. Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Italy were the only nations to adopt the calendar on this day, but it spread over the succeeding centuries to become the international standard today. Learn more about the history of the Gregorian calendar and view its dates of adoption throughout the world.
On October 15, 1914, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act to clarify and supplement the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The Clayton Act outlawed trusts formed by two companies with interlinking boards of directors, price-fixing with businesses offering competing products, making agreements with other businesses to control the supply of a product, and abusing power to gain or maintain a monopoly.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
On October 15, 1764 Edward Gibbon (books by this author) thought up the idea of writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His six-volume work, published between the years 1776 and 1788, covered more than a thousand years of Roman history, from 180 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople. Gibbon became known as "the first modern historian." He tried to write objectively, and in departure from his predecessors, he relied heavily on primary source documents rather than on secondary sources such as official Church histories. He made extensive—and eccentric—use of footnotes.
The Writer’s Almanac
See also: State Departments of Public Health - Click a state to go to its health department Web site. Related postings on food safety
Report: Ten Riskiest Foods Regulated by the FDA: "The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which authored the report,[says there is no] need one pass up tomatoes, sprouts, and berries, even though those foods are also on the list. But the nonprofit watchdog group says the presence of so many healthy foods on such a list is exactly why the United States Senate should follow the House and pass legislation that reforms our fossilized food safety laws."
Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill Passed by Senate Committee
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the USA PATRIOT Act Extension Act of 2009 [October 9, 2009].
Google and Bing Side By Side Search Comparison
"Can't choose default search engine? Want to compare Bing & Google results? Just put your query in the search box and press Enter. You'll see results from both engines side by side.
An ell (from Proto-Indo-European *el- "elbow, forearm"), is a unit of measurement, approximating the length of a man's arm. Several national forms existed, with different lengths, including the Scottish ell (approximately 37 inches or 94 centimetres), the Flemish ell (approx. 27 in or 69 cm) and the Polish ell (approx. 31 in or 79 cm). In England, the ell was usually 45 inches (1.143 m exactly for the international inch). See other units of length, such as shaftment, span, hand, nail, palm and digit at:
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/ell
An ell is also an extension at the end and at right angles to the main building.
http://www.wordswarm.net/dictionary/ell.html
English language roots: prefixes, suffixes and syllables
PrefixSuffix.com has improved its chart-based site, adding features such as a root word search engine which gives you access to over 2,000 root words. http://www.prefixsuffix.com/
A new Leonardo da Vinci portrait may have been discovered after a fingerprint found on it seemed similar to another discovered on his work. The print is "highly comparable" to a print on da Vinci's St Jerome in the Vatican, which was painted early in the artist's career when he was thought not to use assistants. Infrared analysis showed "significant" stylistic parallels with da Vinci's Portrait of a Woman in Profile, which hangs in Windsor Castle. It also said the analysis revealed that the drawing and hatching were made by a left-handed artist, as da Vinci is known to have been. Drawn in ink and chalks, the young woman's costume and hairstyle reflect Milanese fashion of the late 15th Century, while carbon analysis of the artwork is consistent with such a dating. Da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, believes the teenager, shown in profile, could be Bianca Sforza, daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (1452-1508) and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis. He suggested this "by a process of elimination". The portrait, which measures 13ins by 9ins, was sold at Christie's in New York in 1998, in an Old Master Drawings sale as a Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress. It was catalogued as "German, early 19th century", with an estimate of $12,000 to 16,000, and went under the hammer for $19,000 (£12,039). It was later sold for a similar sum to a Canadian-born connoisseur, Peter Silverman, in 2007. Mr Silverman believed that there was more to the portrait and began to look into the matter following a discussion last year with Dr Nicholas Turner, formerly Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. The artwork is due to go on display in an exhibition in Sweden next year.
http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8304021.stm
Benito Mussolini was recruited by MI5 during the First World War, long before he turned Italy into a police state. At that time he was working as a journalist for a left-wing Italian newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, and the UK wanted an agent of influence. By 1917, with millions of its men committed to the war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Italy was wavering in its commitment to the Allies. Britain paid the future Il Duce 100 pounds a week—equal to about $6,000 today—to write favorable opinion pieces about Italy remaining in the war. The secret deal was engineered by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5’s man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy. The fact that Mussolini was working for the British has been known to historians for decades—Hoare revealed the arrangement in his memoirs more than 50 years ago. But only now has the comparatively large sum that the future dictator was paid for turning his hand to pro-British propaganda been revealed.
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/10/14/italys-mussolini-earned-6000-a-week-as-wwi-agent-for-britain/
Portmanteau words, also called blended words or simply portmanteaux, are words that are formed by splicing or merging two other words together. The term portmanteau words comes from Chapter Six of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, in which the character Humpty Dumpty, in explaining the meaning of the word slithy in the poem "Jabberwocky", says: “Well, slithy means 'lithe and slimy.' Lithe is the same as 'active.' You see it's like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word." This is a double joke: first, a portmanteau is a suitcase, in which one would “pack” things, like the multiple meanings within portmanteau words; second, portmanteau is itself a compound word, similar to portmanteau words, in that it is from the French words for "carry" – porter – and "cloak" – manteau.
Examples:
motor + hotel = motel
gigantic + enormous = ginormous
camera + recorder = camcorder
breath + analyzer = breathalyzer
tangerine + pomelo = tangelo
breakfast + lunch = brunch
medical + care = Medicare
South (of) + Houston (Street) = SoHo (area of New York City)
Triangle + Below + Canal (Street) = TriBeCa (area of New York City)
smoke + fog = smog
talk + marathon = talkathon
Channel + Tunnel = Chunnel
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-portmanteau-words.htm
On October 15, 1582, the Gregorian Calendar was implemented, following a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII. Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Italy were the only nations to adopt the calendar on this day, but it spread over the succeeding centuries to become the international standard today. Learn more about the history of the Gregorian calendar and view its dates of adoption throughout the world.
On October 15, 1914, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act to clarify and supplement the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The Clayton Act outlawed trusts formed by two companies with interlinking boards of directors, price-fixing with businesses offering competing products, making agreements with other businesses to control the supply of a product, and abusing power to gain or maintain a monopoly.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
On October 15, 1764 Edward Gibbon (books by this author) thought up the idea of writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His six-volume work, published between the years 1776 and 1788, covered more than a thousand years of Roman history, from 180 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople. Gibbon became known as "the first modern historian." He tried to write objectively, and in departure from his predecessors, he relied heavily on primary source documents rather than on secondary sources such as official Church histories. He made extensive—and eccentric—use of footnotes.
The Writer’s Almanac
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Archaeologists, astronomers and modern-day Mayas shrug off the popular frenzy over the date of 2012, predicting it will bring nothing more than a meteor shower of new-age "consciousness," pseudo-science and alarmist television specials. The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy. Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012. "It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113714011
Humans have always been intrigued by the beauty and wonder of the night sky and the almost infinite possibilities of space. Indeed, astronomy is both the closest and the most distant science from common experience. Every curious person who gazes at the night sky becomes an astronomer, and yet the things we see in outer space are wholly outside our earthbound experience. That is why astronomy is both the oldest and the youngest science of them all. Ask an astronomer your questions at: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/
Woodhenge in Ohio
During a remote-sensing survey of the Fort Ancient Earthworks in 2005, Jarrod Burks of Ohio Valley Archaeological Consultants discovered a circular pattern in the soil that stretched nearly 200 feet in diameter. Fort Ancient is a massive earthwork in Warren County that was built more than 2,000 years ago by the Hopewell culture. Robert Riordan, an anthropology professor at Wright State University, directed excavations there in 2006. Dubbed the "Moorehead Circle" by Riordan in honor of pioneering archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead, the area was a "woodhenge," defined by a double ring of posts. The outer ring consisted of large posts about 9 inches in diameter set about 30 inches apart in slip trenches filled with rock. The inner ring had similar-size posts set about 15 feet inside the outer ring. Riordan estimates that the outer ring would have held more than 200 posts, each 10 to 15 feet tall. Inner posts likely were shorter. http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/science/stories/2007/05/01/sci_lepper01.ART_ART_05-01-07_B5_J06GK9I.html
A henge is the term given to a large prehistoric earthwork, usually but not always circular, whether of stones, wood, or earth. This word, interestingly, is a backformation from Stonehenge. http://archaeology.about.com/od/hterms/g/henge.htm
More backformations
singular noun pea from the older English plural pease
verb burgle from the older English noun burglar
verb diagnose from the older English noun diagnosis http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/backformterm.htm
Backformation is common. It has provided many unnecessary verbs. For example, the verb orientate was formed from the noun orientation that had been created from the original verb to orient. That verb orient had an interesting background, entering Middle English from Old French, which got it from Latin. The noun orient became a verb, meaning “to adjust or align toward the east,” which then broadened to mean to adjust in any direction or situation. Typically, the verb orient added -ation when it then became a new noun, orientation. And, again typically, the original verb was ignored and a new verb, to orientate was created from the noun. http://www.isba.org/association/july07bn/Language.htm
What caused President Warren Harding’s death in 1923?
Rumors about the cause of death began to circulate almost immediately. Foremost among them was a poison theory, in which some speculated that Harding took his own life in despair over troubles within the administration; others suggested that Mrs. Harding poisoned her husband to end his unfaithfulness. Another theory pointed to unhappy cronies who feared that the president might make good on his promise to clean up his administration. Recent scholarship has effectively scuttled such speculation.* The opening of Harding’s physician’s records indicates that the president had long suffered from high blood pressure and that a heart attack was the cause of death.
*See particularly Robert H. Ferrell, The Strange Deaths of President Harding (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996). from high blood pressure and that a heart attack was the cause of death. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1374.html
Same word, different pronunciations
progress PRAH-gress noun
progress pro-GRESS verb
attribute AT-tri-byoot noun
attribute at-TRI-byoot verb
Newark NEW-urk city in New Jersey
Newark NEW-ARK city in Delaware
Quote: "I think survival is at stake for all of us all the time. … Every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, generously given, adds to our chances of survival." Philip Booth (b. 1925) American poet http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/175
A 1,658-pound pumpkin and its keeper, a tree-trimmer from Des Moines, Iowa, will reign over the 39th annual Half Moon Bay (California) Art & Pumpkin Festival October 17 and 18. Don Young's 5-foot-4 orange behemoth won Monday's weigh-off among 60 competitors and eclipsed the festival's year-old record of 1,528 pounds, said spokesman Tim Beeman. Young, who drove his pickup truck 2,000 miles with the pumpkin on board for the event, won a first prize of $9,948, or $6 a pound.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/13/BA551A4NTG.DTL
umber (UM-buhr) noun
a natural brown earth, used as a pigment; a reddish-brown color
Via French from Latin umbra (shade, shadow), which also gave us the words umbrella, umbrage, adumbrate, and somber. Umbria, a region of ancient Italy, has also been suggested as an origin for this term. The color burnt umber is made by roasting umber.
vis major (VIS MAY-juhr) noun
an unavoidable disruptive event (such as an earthquake) that none of the parties is responsible for, which may exempt them from the obligations of a contract
natural instances of vis major are also called acts of God
From Latin vis major, literally, greater force. Also see force majeure.
Feedback
From: Joyce Greene (jgreene cs.hmc.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--mortmain
Def: 1. the perpetual ownership of property by institution
2. the stifling influence of the past on the present and the living
As an attorney, I was aware of the mortmain statutes and was taught that their purpose was to prevent overreaching by the clergy upon those on their deathbed. The thought being that if a penitent, dying man turned over his property to the church, he would be granted leniency upon death—a small price to pay for a better afterlife. However, such agreements thwarted the heirs of their rightful inheritance and lands, throwing the heirs into poverty with no means to sustain themselves. To prevent such heavy-handed abuse, the statutes were enacted so that the heirs could attack and nullify such transfers made within a certain period before death. I just thought you would be interested in knowing the other reason for these statutes, although I am sure the king was not pleased with so much land (and tax base) going to the church (a purpose I had not considered).
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
On October 13, 1884, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was declared universal time by the International Meridian Conference, a gathering of 25 nations from around the globe. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Humans have always been intrigued by the beauty and wonder of the night sky and the almost infinite possibilities of space. Indeed, astronomy is both the closest and the most distant science from common experience. Every curious person who gazes at the night sky becomes an astronomer, and yet the things we see in outer space are wholly outside our earthbound experience. That is why astronomy is both the oldest and the youngest science of them all. Ask an astronomer your questions at: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/
Woodhenge in Ohio
During a remote-sensing survey of the Fort Ancient Earthworks in 2005, Jarrod Burks of Ohio Valley Archaeological Consultants discovered a circular pattern in the soil that stretched nearly 200 feet in diameter. Fort Ancient is a massive earthwork in Warren County that was built more than 2,000 years ago by the Hopewell culture. Robert Riordan, an anthropology professor at Wright State University, directed excavations there in 2006. Dubbed the "Moorehead Circle" by Riordan in honor of pioneering archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead, the area was a "woodhenge," defined by a double ring of posts. The outer ring consisted of large posts about 9 inches in diameter set about 30 inches apart in slip trenches filled with rock. The inner ring had similar-size posts set about 15 feet inside the outer ring. Riordan estimates that the outer ring would have held more than 200 posts, each 10 to 15 feet tall. Inner posts likely were shorter. http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/science/stories/2007/05/01/sci_lepper01.ART_ART_05-01-07_B5_J06GK9I.html
A henge is the term given to a large prehistoric earthwork, usually but not always circular, whether of stones, wood, or earth. This word, interestingly, is a backformation from Stonehenge. http://archaeology.about.com/od/hterms/g/henge.htm
More backformations
singular noun pea from the older English plural pease
verb burgle from the older English noun burglar
verb diagnose from the older English noun diagnosis http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/backformterm.htm
Backformation is common. It has provided many unnecessary verbs. For example, the verb orientate was formed from the noun orientation that had been created from the original verb to orient. That verb orient had an interesting background, entering Middle English from Old French, which got it from Latin. The noun orient became a verb, meaning “to adjust or align toward the east,” which then broadened to mean to adjust in any direction or situation. Typically, the verb orient added -ation when it then became a new noun, orientation. And, again typically, the original verb was ignored and a new verb, to orientate was created from the noun. http://www.isba.org/association/july07bn/Language.htm
What caused President Warren Harding’s death in 1923?
Rumors about the cause of death began to circulate almost immediately. Foremost among them was a poison theory, in which some speculated that Harding took his own life in despair over troubles within the administration; others suggested that Mrs. Harding poisoned her husband to end his unfaithfulness. Another theory pointed to unhappy cronies who feared that the president might make good on his promise to clean up his administration. Recent scholarship has effectively scuttled such speculation.* The opening of Harding’s physician’s records indicates that the president had long suffered from high blood pressure and that a heart attack was the cause of death.
*See particularly Robert H. Ferrell, The Strange Deaths of President Harding (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996). from high blood pressure and that a heart attack was the cause of death. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1374.html
Same word, different pronunciations
progress PRAH-gress noun
progress pro-GRESS verb
attribute AT-tri-byoot noun
attribute at-TRI-byoot verb
Newark NEW-urk city in New Jersey
Newark NEW-ARK city in Delaware
Quote: "I think survival is at stake for all of us all the time. … Every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, generously given, adds to our chances of survival." Philip Booth (b. 1925) American poet http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/175
A 1,658-pound pumpkin and its keeper, a tree-trimmer from Des Moines, Iowa, will reign over the 39th annual Half Moon Bay (California) Art & Pumpkin Festival October 17 and 18. Don Young's 5-foot-4 orange behemoth won Monday's weigh-off among 60 competitors and eclipsed the festival's year-old record of 1,528 pounds, said spokesman Tim Beeman. Young, who drove his pickup truck 2,000 miles with the pumpkin on board for the event, won a first prize of $9,948, or $6 a pound.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/13/BA551A4NTG.DTL
umber (UM-buhr) noun
a natural brown earth, used as a pigment; a reddish-brown color
Via French from Latin umbra (shade, shadow), which also gave us the words umbrella, umbrage, adumbrate, and somber. Umbria, a region of ancient Italy, has also been suggested as an origin for this term. The color burnt umber is made by roasting umber.
vis major (VIS MAY-juhr) noun
an unavoidable disruptive event (such as an earthquake) that none of the parties is responsible for, which may exempt them from the obligations of a contract
natural instances of vis major are also called acts of God
From Latin vis major, literally, greater force. Also see force majeure.
Feedback
From: Joyce Greene (jgreene cs.hmc.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--mortmain
Def: 1. the perpetual ownership of property by institution
2. the stifling influence of the past on the present and the living
As an attorney, I was aware of the mortmain statutes and was taught that their purpose was to prevent overreaching by the clergy upon those on their deathbed. The thought being that if a penitent, dying man turned over his property to the church, he would be granted leniency upon death—a small price to pay for a better afterlife. However, such agreements thwarted the heirs of their rightful inheritance and lands, throwing the heirs into poverty with no means to sustain themselves. To prevent such heavy-handed abuse, the statutes were enacted so that the heirs could attack and nullify such transfers made within a certain period before death. I just thought you would be interested in knowing the other reason for these statutes, although I am sure the king was not pleased with so much land (and tax base) going to the church (a purpose I had not considered).
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
On October 13, 1884, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was declared universal time by the International Meridian Conference, a gathering of 25 nations from around the globe. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Monday, October 12, 2009
McDonald’s in France, part 2
Denis Hennequin, a forty-nine-year-old Parisian, joined McDonald's in 1984, straight out of law school. At the time, McDonald's was relaunching itself in France; an effort in the 1970s to establish a presence there had failed because of the company's dissatisfaction with its French franchisee. After stints as an assistant store manager, a training and recruiting consultant, and the Paris regional director, Hennequin was named president and managing director of McDonald's France in 1996. http://www.slate.com/id/2221246/pagenum/2
The coffee shop on rue Linois on the Left Bank is one of 200 "McCafés" McDonald's is opening in Europe this year. By yearend, McDonald's (MCD) hopes to have some 1,100 of the cafés across Europe. The cafés are located inside existing restaurants but with a separate counter. Next year, the company plans 200 more, with an eye toward becoming "the No. 1 coffee seller in Europe," says Jerome Tafani, the company's chief financial officer for the region. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_40/b4149070703260.htm?campaign_id=rss_null
Franchise Chat Read current franchise news arranged by country.
http://www.franchise-chat.com/
A Toledo attorney has a dish named after him in a restaurant. Pete Silverman's Salad Combo—a mix of pasta and Greek salads and fattoush that he suggested years ago is on the menu at Manos Greek Restaurant at 17th and Adams. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091011/ART16/910109979
Speed bumps that automatically disappear if a driver is travelling at a safe speed were tested in the UK in 2001. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1178-smart-speed-bumps-reward-safe-drivers.html In 2009, one Mexican state government embraces a "smart" speed bump that could make driving smoother, without sacrificing safety.
The device, being developed by Mexico-based Decano Industries, automatically lowers into the ground when drivers go the speed limit or slower. Drive too fast, and the bump stays up. The technology is relatively basic: The speed bump is formed by two steel plates that form a triangle sticking out of the pavement. When a car tire touches the plate, a patented device under the triangle measures the force of the impact. If the tire's impact is gentle enough.—that is, if the vehicle is traveling slowly—both plates immediately collapse into the ground under the weight of the car. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-10-05-speedbumps_N.htm
NBC has been sued by the Font Bureau Inc., a typographic design firm, which alleges that the network infringed the firm's fonts in marketing material used to promote such NBC shows as Saturday Night Live, The Jay Leno Show, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The Boston-based Font Bureau is asking for "no less than $2 million" in damages, according to Cityfile, which broke news of the suit here. And here's a link to the suit, which was filed in Brooklyn earlier this week.
WSJ Law Blog October 9, 2009
West Virginia drivers lead the U.S. in collisions with deer for the third straight year as a larger population of the animals meets increasing traffic in once-rural areas, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. said. One in every 39 drivers in West Virginia is likely to hit a deer in the next 12 months, State Farm said. The probability was 1 in 45 in last year’s study . Michigan ranked second, with odds of 1 in 78, according to State Farm claims data and motor vehicle registration counts from the Federal Highway Administration. http://www.bloomberg.com.au/apps/news?pid=20601203&sid=aU8_kkFhvznk
At 9½ ft. wide, 75½ Bedford St is the narrowest house in the New York City. On the inside, it measures 8 ft. 7 in. wide; at its narrowest, it’s 2 ft. wide. From the facade to the rear garden the house is a cozy 30 ft. deep. This picturesque three-story red-brick structure owns a history a lot wider than its walls, though. It was built in 1873 during a small pox epidemic, for Horatio Homez, trustee of the Hettie Hendricks-Gomez Estate, on what was a former carriage entranceway, with stables to the rear, between 75 and 77 Bedford Street. However, the assessed value of the plot of land did not change, suggesting that it’s possible the house had built prior to that, but never recorded.
According to the plaque on the front of the building, Millay lived there from 1923-1924 and wrote “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Elizabeth Barnett, literary executor of the Millay Society contests this, saying she wrote the poem while still living in Europe. Writer Ann McGovern (who lived herein the late 1980s) asserted in a newspaper interview that Millay wrote part of “The King’s Henchmen” there. In the 1930s, the cartoonist William Steig, his wife and her sister, anthropologist Margaret Mead, lived in the house. Actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant also had a brief run in the building. http://wikimapia.org/8279070/75-1-2-Bedford-St-Greenwich-Village-9-1-2-ft-wide-house-Former-Home-of-John-Barrymore-and-Cary-Grant Note: This house is now for sale.
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is located in the centre of the country, historically part of the Inner Carniola[2], and is a mid-sized city of some 280,000 inhabitants. Ljubljana is regarded as the cultural, scientific, economic, political and administrative centre of Slovenia, independent since 1991. Throughout its history, it has been influenced by its geographic position at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic culture. Ljubljana has numerous art galleries and museums. In 2004, there were 15 museums, 41 art galleries, 11 theatres and four professional orchestras.[20] There is for example an architecture museum, a railway museum, a sports museum, a museum of modern art, a brewery museum, the Slovenian Museum of Natural History and the Slovene Ethnographic Museum.[48] The Ljubljana Zoo covers 19.6 hectares (48 acres) and has 152 animal species. An antique flea market takes place every Sunday in the old city.[48] In 2006, the museums received 264,470 visitors, the galleries 403,890 and the theatres 396,440.[20] Each year over 10,000 cultural events take place in the city; among these are ten international festivals of theatre, music and art generally.[13] Numerous music festivals are held there, chiefly in European classical music and jazz, for instance the Ljubljana Summer Festival (Ljubljanski poletni festival). In the centre of the various Slovenian wine regions, Ljubljana is known for being a "city of wine and vine". Grapevines were already being planted on the slopes leading up to the Castle Hill by the Roman inhabitants of Emona. [13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana
On October 10, 1881 Charles Darwin (books by this author) published what he considered to be his most important book: The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. At the time, most people thought of earthworms as pests, but Darwin demonstrated that they were beneficial, important for soil fertility and consequently for agriculture. He wrote, "Although the conclusion may appear at first startling, it will be difficult to deny the probability, that every particle of earth forming the bed from which the turf in old pasture land springs, has passed through the intestines of worms."
It was on October 12 that the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus reached the New World. On this day in 1492, one of the sailors on the Pinta sighted land, an island in the Bahamas, after 10 weeks of sailing from Palos, Spain, with the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña. Columbus thought he had reached East Asia. When he sighted Cuba, he thought it was China, and when the expedition landed on Hispaniola, he thought it might be Japan. He called his plan the "Enterprise of the Indies." He pitched it first to King John II of Portugal, who rejected it, and then to the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. They also turned him down, twice, before they conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492 and had some treasure to spare. Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World during his lifetime, and over the next century his discovery made Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
October 12 is the birthday of Paul Engle, (books by this author) born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1908) into a farming family. A poet, novelist, and editor, his books include Worn Earth (1932), American Child: Sonnets for My Daughter (1956), Poems in Praise (1959), and Embrace: Selected Love Poems (1969). But he's best known for his work with the Iowa Writers' Workshop. For a quarter of a century he directed the M.F.A. program—the first of its kind—transforming it from an obscure experiment into a prestigious graduate level creative writing degree program. The Poetry Foundation notes: "Engle had the distinction of having trained more poets than perhaps any other man in history. In one anthology published in 1957, one-third of the American poets were former Engle students." Graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop have won over a dozen Pulitzer Prizes. The Writer’s Almanac
Denis Hennequin, a forty-nine-year-old Parisian, joined McDonald's in 1984, straight out of law school. At the time, McDonald's was relaunching itself in France; an effort in the 1970s to establish a presence there had failed because of the company's dissatisfaction with its French franchisee. After stints as an assistant store manager, a training and recruiting consultant, and the Paris regional director, Hennequin was named president and managing director of McDonald's France in 1996. http://www.slate.com/id/2221246/pagenum/2
The coffee shop on rue Linois on the Left Bank is one of 200 "McCafés" McDonald's is opening in Europe this year. By yearend, McDonald's (MCD) hopes to have some 1,100 of the cafés across Europe. The cafés are located inside existing restaurants but with a separate counter. Next year, the company plans 200 more, with an eye toward becoming "the No. 1 coffee seller in Europe," says Jerome Tafani, the company's chief financial officer for the region. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_40/b4149070703260.htm?campaign_id=rss_null
Franchise Chat Read current franchise news arranged by country.
http://www.franchise-chat.com/
A Toledo attorney has a dish named after him in a restaurant. Pete Silverman's Salad Combo—a mix of pasta and Greek salads and fattoush that he suggested years ago is on the menu at Manos Greek Restaurant at 17th and Adams. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091011/ART16/910109979
Speed bumps that automatically disappear if a driver is travelling at a safe speed were tested in the UK in 2001. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1178-smart-speed-bumps-reward-safe-drivers.html In 2009, one Mexican state government embraces a "smart" speed bump that could make driving smoother, without sacrificing safety.
The device, being developed by Mexico-based Decano Industries, automatically lowers into the ground when drivers go the speed limit or slower. Drive too fast, and the bump stays up. The technology is relatively basic: The speed bump is formed by two steel plates that form a triangle sticking out of the pavement. When a car tire touches the plate, a patented device under the triangle measures the force of the impact. If the tire's impact is gentle enough.—that is, if the vehicle is traveling slowly—both plates immediately collapse into the ground under the weight of the car. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-10-05-speedbumps_N.htm
NBC has been sued by the Font Bureau Inc., a typographic design firm, which alleges that the network infringed the firm's fonts in marketing material used to promote such NBC shows as Saturday Night Live, The Jay Leno Show, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The Boston-based Font Bureau is asking for "no less than $2 million" in damages, according to Cityfile, which broke news of the suit here. And here's a link to the suit, which was filed in Brooklyn earlier this week.
WSJ Law Blog October 9, 2009
West Virginia drivers lead the U.S. in collisions with deer for the third straight year as a larger population of the animals meets increasing traffic in once-rural areas, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. said. One in every 39 drivers in West Virginia is likely to hit a deer in the next 12 months, State Farm said. The probability was 1 in 45 in last year’s study . Michigan ranked second, with odds of 1 in 78, according to State Farm claims data and motor vehicle registration counts from the Federal Highway Administration. http://www.bloomberg.com.au/apps/news?pid=20601203&sid=aU8_kkFhvznk
At 9½ ft. wide, 75½ Bedford St is the narrowest house in the New York City. On the inside, it measures 8 ft. 7 in. wide; at its narrowest, it’s 2 ft. wide. From the facade to the rear garden the house is a cozy 30 ft. deep. This picturesque three-story red-brick structure owns a history a lot wider than its walls, though. It was built in 1873 during a small pox epidemic, for Horatio Homez, trustee of the Hettie Hendricks-Gomez Estate, on what was a former carriage entranceway, with stables to the rear, between 75 and 77 Bedford Street. However, the assessed value of the plot of land did not change, suggesting that it’s possible the house had built prior to that, but never recorded.
According to the plaque on the front of the building, Millay lived there from 1923-1924 and wrote “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Elizabeth Barnett, literary executor of the Millay Society contests this, saying she wrote the poem while still living in Europe. Writer Ann McGovern (who lived herein the late 1980s) asserted in a newspaper interview that Millay wrote part of “The King’s Henchmen” there. In the 1930s, the cartoonist William Steig, his wife and her sister, anthropologist Margaret Mead, lived in the house. Actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant also had a brief run in the building. http://wikimapia.org/8279070/75-1-2-Bedford-St-Greenwich-Village-9-1-2-ft-wide-house-Former-Home-of-John-Barrymore-and-Cary-Grant Note: This house is now for sale.
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is located in the centre of the country, historically part of the Inner Carniola[2], and is a mid-sized city of some 280,000 inhabitants. Ljubljana is regarded as the cultural, scientific, economic, political and administrative centre of Slovenia, independent since 1991. Throughout its history, it has been influenced by its geographic position at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic culture. Ljubljana has numerous art galleries and museums. In 2004, there were 15 museums, 41 art galleries, 11 theatres and four professional orchestras.[20] There is for example an architecture museum, a railway museum, a sports museum, a museum of modern art, a brewery museum, the Slovenian Museum of Natural History and the Slovene Ethnographic Museum.[48] The Ljubljana Zoo covers 19.6 hectares (48 acres) and has 152 animal species. An antique flea market takes place every Sunday in the old city.[48] In 2006, the museums received 264,470 visitors, the galleries 403,890 and the theatres 396,440.[20] Each year over 10,000 cultural events take place in the city; among these are ten international festivals of theatre, music and art generally.[13] Numerous music festivals are held there, chiefly in European classical music and jazz, for instance the Ljubljana Summer Festival (Ljubljanski poletni festival). In the centre of the various Slovenian wine regions, Ljubljana is known for being a "city of wine and vine". Grapevines were already being planted on the slopes leading up to the Castle Hill by the Roman inhabitants of Emona. [13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana
On October 10, 1881 Charles Darwin (books by this author) published what he considered to be his most important book: The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. At the time, most people thought of earthworms as pests, but Darwin demonstrated that they were beneficial, important for soil fertility and consequently for agriculture. He wrote, "Although the conclusion may appear at first startling, it will be difficult to deny the probability, that every particle of earth forming the bed from which the turf in old pasture land springs, has passed through the intestines of worms."
It was on October 12 that the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus reached the New World. On this day in 1492, one of the sailors on the Pinta sighted land, an island in the Bahamas, after 10 weeks of sailing from Palos, Spain, with the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña. Columbus thought he had reached East Asia. When he sighted Cuba, he thought it was China, and when the expedition landed on Hispaniola, he thought it might be Japan. He called his plan the "Enterprise of the Indies." He pitched it first to King John II of Portugal, who rejected it, and then to the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. They also turned him down, twice, before they conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492 and had some treasure to spare. Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World during his lifetime, and over the next century his discovery made Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
October 12 is the birthday of Paul Engle, (books by this author) born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1908) into a farming family. A poet, novelist, and editor, his books include Worn Earth (1932), American Child: Sonnets for My Daughter (1956), Poems in Praise (1959), and Embrace: Selected Love Poems (1969). But he's best known for his work with the Iowa Writers' Workshop. For a quarter of a century he directed the M.F.A. program—the first of its kind—transforming it from an obscure experiment into a prestigious graduate level creative writing degree program. The Poetry Foundation notes: "Engle had the distinction of having trained more poets than perhaps any other man in history. In one anthology published in 1957, one-third of the American poets were former Engle students." Graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop have won over a dozen Pulitzer Prizes. The Writer’s Almanac
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