General Motors Co. is prepared to wait until next week before making a decision on the future of the Saab unit as it reviews remaining bids, according to Paul Aakerlund, a Saab board member. GM told Saab last week that it would wind down the Swedish brand and simultaneously continue talks with bidders about a sale, said Aakerlund, who also heads the IF Metall union at Saab. Talks to sell Saab to Spyker Cars NV collapsed Dec. 18 and Spyker Chief Executive Officer Victor Muller blamed the failed deal partly on a “strict deadline” for an agreement by the end of this month. The Dutch carmaker submitted a new offer Dec. 20. “It’s our understanding that if there’s a bid that GM finds sufficiently interesting, then the 31st of December is not a date that’s holy,” Aakerlund said in a telephone interview. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2009-12-29/gm-likely-to-decide-on-saab-s-future-next-week-aakerlund-says.html
LLRX.com: Understanding the Limitations - and Maximizing the Value- of eBooks: The holiday season is here, and many signs suggest that thousands of people are finding themselves new owners of electronic book ("eBook") readers. Whether it's an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, a Sony Reader, or any of the less heavily advertised devices currently on the market, electronic book readers are being trumpeted as a product that has finally hit the mainstream after years on the bleeding-edge. eBook readers, in fact, do have the potential to radically reshape how books are read. Equally important, according to Conrad J. Jacoby, they are already reshaping how books are bought and owned.
It's been a tradition since 1907. But the annual New Year's Eve ball drop in New York's Times Square is getting a couple of new wrinkles this time around. The first has to do with the ball itself. T he 300 Waterford crystal triangles have been shaped into a new design. Organizers of the celebration say the crystals will be in an interlocking ribbon pattern, woven into a Celtic knot. http://www.wzzm13.com/news/watercooler/story.aspx?storyid=117016&catid=82
Census Bureau: Texas Gains the Most in Population
News release: "Texas gained more people than any other state between July 1, 2008, and July 1, 2009 (478,000), followed by California (381,000), North Carolina (134,000), Georgia (131,000) and Florida (114,000), according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates. California remained the most populous state, with a July 1, 2009, population of 37 million. Rounding out the top five states were Texas (24.8 million), New York (19.5 million), Florida (18.5 million) and Illinois (12.9 million)."
Federal Digital System Adds Public Papers of U.S. Presidents, CFR, Precedents of the House of Representatives
"GPO is pleased to announce the release of the following collections into the Federal Digital System (FDsys)":
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (1991 to 2005)
Code of Federal Regulations (2007 to 2009)
Precedents of the United States House of Representatives (as part of the GPO Federal Publications collection)
Senate Health Care Bill - The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in the Senate on December 24, 2009. [Note - 2409 pages, PDF]
News release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released enforcement results for fiscal year 2009, and has developed a new Web-based tool and interactive map that allows the public to get detailed information by location about the enforcement actions taken at approximately 4,600 facilities. The new mapping tool allows the public to view the locations of facilities that were the subject of enforcement actions on interactive maps of the U.S. and territories. The maps show facilities where civil enforcement actions were taken for environmental laws for air, water, and land pollution, and a separate map shows criminal enforcement actions."
onomatomania (on-uh-mat-uh-MAY-nee-uh) noun
an obsession with particular words or names and desire to recall or repeat them
via Latin, from Greek onoma (name) + -mania (excessive enthusiasm or craze).
acrophobia (ak-ruh-FOH-bee-uh) noun
an abnormal fear of heights.
from Greek acro- (height, tip) + -phobia (fear). Some related words are acronym (a word formed with the tips of other words), acrobat (one who walks on tiptoes), and acropolis (a city built on high ground). A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: J-Mag Guthrie (j-mag@brokersys.com)
Subject: onomatomania
an obsession with particular words or names and desire to recall or repeat them
A haiku or senryu consists of three lines of words ... the first and third lines are five syllables, and the second line is seven. It's an interesting challenge to write these forms with the second line containing only a seven-syllable word.
Over and over
Onomatomania
Over and over
From: Jamie Spencer (jspencer@stlcc.edu)
Subject: fear and trembling: astraphobia
an abnormal fear of lightning and thunder
A friend of my parents was a fan of James Joyce and visited him at his Paris apartment in the 30s. Apparently a storm was in progress and Joyce, he learned, had an intense case of astraphobia. The great writer literally shook in fear of the thunder throughout their visit.
Drugs of abuse information from National Institute on Drug Abuse
http://www.nida.nih.gov/drugpages/ also leads to articles on related topics
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
EPA Adopts Strong Standards for Large Ships to Curb Air Pollution
News release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule setting tough engine and fuel standards for large U.S.-flagged ships, a major milestone in the agency’s coordinated strategy to slash harmful marine diesel emissions. The regulation harmonizes with international standards and will lead to significant air quality improvements throughout the country."
New GAO Reports
International Space Station, Medicaid, Nursing Homes
International Space Station: Significant Challenges May Limit Onboard Research, GAO-10-9, November 25, 2009
Medicaid: Ongoing Federal Oversight of Payments to Offset Uncompensated Hospital Care Costs Is Warranted, GAO-10-69, November 20, 2009
Nursing Homes: Opportunities Exist to Facilitate the Use of the Temporary Management Sanction, GAO-10-37R, November 20, 2009
Who is that masked man?
The Lone Ranger's last name is "Reid," because his brother who was killed in an ambush by the Cavendish Gang was named Dan Reid. (This is also the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew, although we do not know what his true first name was. His mother was killed in an Indian attack and the kindly woman who raised him got the name Dan from a locket that Dan's mother had worn.) No first name was given to the Lone Ranger during the radio and television program. http://www.endeavorcomics.com/largent/ranger/faq.html
Don Diego is Zorro. The story began with The Curse of Capistrano in 1919.
http://www.zorrolegend.com/development.html
Voltaire claimed that the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask was so obvious that it wasn't even necessary to state his name. He theorised that this man was indeed a brother of Louis XIV, not a twin but an older brother, son of the queen, his mother, but not of his father Louis XIII, whose existence would have complicated the line of succession. This enigmatic figure had originally been imprisoned at Pignerol and then St Margaret's Island before being transferred to the Bastille in 1698. There is still no definitive answer as to his identity. Historically, Voltaire was the first to record the Man in the Iron Mask, in an authenticated history entitled Siècle de Louis XIV. He records that a man who was never seen, except when his face was hidden by an iron mask, was transferred to the Bastille in 1698 and died there in 1703 at about the age of 60. It is thought that the existence of this mysterious figure was only brought to the notice of the general public after the storming of the Bastille by rioting citizens in 1789. During the insurrection they discovered a strange entry in the records of the Bastille that referred to a prisoner, number 64389000, described as the 'Man in the Iron Mask'. Those citizens had obviously not been reading Voltaire, as this notable writer and philosopher, who had written about this mystery, had already been dead for 11 years. The good citizens did discover, however, that the man had been buried under the name of Marchioli. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A293230
On New Year's Eve, when merrymakers crowd the streets, a blue moon will shine over their festive heads - bringing to the holiday both a night-sky rarity and a decades-old quibble. Most plainly, a blue moon means seldom ractically never. It's shorthand for an event that happens so infrequently you might as well wait for the big white pumpkin in the sky to change color. But the meaning and roots of the phrase are tangled up in error and dispute. Pick your own explanation and raise a glass to Earth's lonely satellite. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/health_science/story/258491.html
"America's poet" is a term sometimes used for the Poet Laureate of the United States. It has also been used for Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and Johnny Mercer.
Comic strip humor
Is "hearprint" a term? (response to the word hearsay) Get Fuzzy Dec. 21, 2009
I found the yule clog. (tree lights all tangled) Crankshaft Dec. 22, 2009
Shortened words
droid from android
blub from blubber
burbs from suburbs
meds from medications /medicines
vid from video
comp from computer/compensation
app from application
blog from weblog
The trick of jump-starting the cooking of foods that take longer to cook is a good one. Use it with other vegetables that you want to roast such as chunks of squash, carrots, turnips, rutabaga and such. Just microwave a few minutes then spread out on a shallow sheet pan to finish roasting in the oven. Keep an eye out for yellow or red turnips; they are sweeter and milder than the traditional varieties and taste great mashed with a little butter and nutmeg. The Splendid Table December 23, 2009
News release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule setting tough engine and fuel standards for large U.S.-flagged ships, a major milestone in the agency’s coordinated strategy to slash harmful marine diesel emissions. The regulation harmonizes with international standards and will lead to significant air quality improvements throughout the country."
New GAO Reports
International Space Station, Medicaid, Nursing Homes
International Space Station: Significant Challenges May Limit Onboard Research, GAO-10-9, November 25, 2009
Medicaid: Ongoing Federal Oversight of Payments to Offset Uncompensated Hospital Care Costs Is Warranted, GAO-10-69, November 20, 2009
Nursing Homes: Opportunities Exist to Facilitate the Use of the Temporary Management Sanction, GAO-10-37R, November 20, 2009
Who is that masked man?
The Lone Ranger's last name is "Reid," because his brother who was killed in an ambush by the Cavendish Gang was named Dan Reid. (This is also the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew, although we do not know what his true first name was. His mother was killed in an Indian attack and the kindly woman who raised him got the name Dan from a locket that Dan's mother had worn.) No first name was given to the Lone Ranger during the radio and television program. http://www.endeavorcomics.com/largent/ranger/faq.html
Don Diego is Zorro. The story began with The Curse of Capistrano in 1919.
http://www.zorrolegend.com/development.html
Voltaire claimed that the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask was so obvious that it wasn't even necessary to state his name. He theorised that this man was indeed a brother of Louis XIV, not a twin but an older brother, son of the queen, his mother, but not of his father Louis XIII, whose existence would have complicated the line of succession. This enigmatic figure had originally been imprisoned at Pignerol and then St Margaret's Island before being transferred to the Bastille in 1698. There is still no definitive answer as to his identity. Historically, Voltaire was the first to record the Man in the Iron Mask, in an authenticated history entitled Siècle de Louis XIV. He records that a man who was never seen, except when his face was hidden by an iron mask, was transferred to the Bastille in 1698 and died there in 1703 at about the age of 60. It is thought that the existence of this mysterious figure was only brought to the notice of the general public after the storming of the Bastille by rioting citizens in 1789. During the insurrection they discovered a strange entry in the records of the Bastille that referred to a prisoner, number 64389000, described as the 'Man in the Iron Mask'. Those citizens had obviously not been reading Voltaire, as this notable writer and philosopher, who had written about this mystery, had already been dead for 11 years. The good citizens did discover, however, that the man had been buried under the name of Marchioli. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A293230
On New Year's Eve, when merrymakers crowd the streets, a blue moon will shine over their festive heads - bringing to the holiday both a night-sky rarity and a decades-old quibble. Most plainly, a blue moon means seldom ractically never. It's shorthand for an event that happens so infrequently you might as well wait for the big white pumpkin in the sky to change color. But the meaning and roots of the phrase are tangled up in error and dispute. Pick your own explanation and raise a glass to Earth's lonely satellite. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/health_science/story/258491.html
"America's poet" is a term sometimes used for the Poet Laureate of the United States. It has also been used for Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and Johnny Mercer.
Comic strip humor
Is "hearprint" a term? (response to the word hearsay) Get Fuzzy Dec. 21, 2009
I found the yule clog. (tree lights all tangled) Crankshaft Dec. 22, 2009
Shortened words
droid from android
blub from blubber
burbs from suburbs
meds from medications /medicines
vid from video
comp from computer/compensation
app from application
blog from weblog
The trick of jump-starting the cooking of foods that take longer to cook is a good one. Use it with other vegetables that you want to roast such as chunks of squash, carrots, turnips, rutabaga and such. Just microwave a few minutes then spread out on a shallow sheet pan to finish roasting in the oven. Keep an eye out for yellow or red turnips; they are sweeter and milder than the traditional varieties and taste great mashed with a little butter and nutmeg. The Splendid Table December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Occupational Outlook Handbook and Career Guide to Industries. 2010-11 Editions, Now Online News release: "The 2010-11 editions of the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Career Guide to Industries were released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Handbook and the Career Guide can be accessed online at www.bls.gov/oco and www.bls.gov/oco/cg, respectively. The print version of the Occupational Outlook Handbook is expected to be available in the spring of 2010. Considered the Government's premier source of career information, the Handbook and Career Guide profile hundreds of occupations and dozens of industries, respectively. Both publications provide comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable labor market information that has helped millions of people plan their future work lives. In addition, this information has proven invaluable to counselors, students, jobseekers, career changers, education and training officials, and researchers."
100 notable books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/100-notable-books-of-2009-gift-guide/list.html
The ten best books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/10-best-gift-guide-sub/list.html
Six-foot tall Torvald Alexander, 38, just back from a New Year's costume party, was wearing a red cape and the Norse god Thor's silver-winged helmet when he spotted the raider in his front room rifling through a desk. Mr. Alexander, who runs building firm Alexander & Summers in Edinburgh, Scotland, said the burglar threw himself out of a first floor window of his £350,000 home in the Inverleith area of the city after being caught red handed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4059789/Burglar-scared-off-by-man-dressed-as-Thor-after-New-Year-party.html The story is a year old, but good enough to relate now.
Thor movie to be released July 2010: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/thor/
Another good year-old story Puzzle fan Graham Parker has finally solved his Rubik's Cube after 26 years' worth of attempts. Friends offered to solve it for him but he "had to do it himself."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4217732/Rubiks-Cube-finally-solved-after-26-years-by-avid-fan.html
Quote
Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives.
John Wooden Legs - late 19th c. Cheyenne
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/JohnWoodenLegs.html
This quote has been mistakenly attributed to UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.
Mesopotamia is a region, not a country.
In the narrow sense, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, north or northwest of the bottleneck at Baghdad, in modern Iraq; it is Al-Jazirah ("The Island") of the Arabs. South of this lies Babylonia, named after the city of Babylon. However, in the broader sense, the name Mesopotamia has come to be used for the area bounded on the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and on the southwest by the edge of the Arabian Plateau and stretching from the Persian Gulf in the southeast to the spurs of the Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northwest.
http://history-world.org/mesopotamia_a_place_to_start.htm
Timeline B.C.
3500 Sumerians settle on banks of Euphrates
3000 Introduction of pictographs to keep administrative records.
1700 Hammurabi brings most of Mesopotamia under his control, and introduces law code. http://history-world.org/mesopotamia_9000.htm
Besides establishing a highly efficient agriculture, the Sumerians invented new materials including glass and became outstanding glaziers. They were also metal- workers using gold, silver, copper and bronze. But without doubt the most important invention of these competent people was the wheel.
http://ancienthistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/sumer_the_birth_of_civilisation
100 notable books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/100-notable-books-of-2009-gift-guide/list.html
The ten best books of 2009 by The New York Times Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/10-best-gift-guide-sub/list.html
Six-foot tall Torvald Alexander, 38, just back from a New Year's costume party, was wearing a red cape and the Norse god Thor's silver-winged helmet when he spotted the raider in his front room rifling through a desk. Mr. Alexander, who runs building firm Alexander & Summers in Edinburgh, Scotland, said the burglar threw himself out of a first floor window of his £350,000 home in the Inverleith area of the city after being caught red handed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4059789/Burglar-scared-off-by-man-dressed-as-Thor-after-New-Year-party.html The story is a year old, but good enough to relate now.
Thor movie to be released July 2010: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/thor/
Another good year-old story Puzzle fan Graham Parker has finally solved his Rubik's Cube after 26 years' worth of attempts. Friends offered to solve it for him but he "had to do it himself."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4217732/Rubiks-Cube-finally-solved-after-26-years-by-avid-fan.html
Quote
Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives.
John Wooden Legs - late 19th c. Cheyenne
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Wisdom/JohnWoodenLegs.html
This quote has been mistakenly attributed to UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.
Mesopotamia is a region, not a country.
In the narrow sense, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, north or northwest of the bottleneck at Baghdad, in modern Iraq; it is Al-Jazirah ("The Island") of the Arabs. South of this lies Babylonia, named after the city of Babylon. However, in the broader sense, the name Mesopotamia has come to be used for the area bounded on the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and on the southwest by the edge of the Arabian Plateau and stretching from the Persian Gulf in the southeast to the spurs of the Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northwest.
http://history-world.org/mesopotamia_a_place_to_start.htm
Timeline B.C.
3500 Sumerians settle on banks of Euphrates
3000 Introduction of pictographs to keep administrative records.
1700 Hammurabi brings most of Mesopotamia under his control, and introduces law code. http://history-world.org/mesopotamia_9000.htm
Besides establishing a highly efficient agriculture, the Sumerians invented new materials including glass and became outstanding glaziers. They were also metal- workers using gold, silver, copper and bronze. But without doubt the most important invention of these competent people was the wheel.
http://ancienthistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/sumer_the_birth_of_civilisation
Monday, December 21, 2009
Saab Story Auto enthusiasts across the country were dismayed by the news December 18 that General Motors was planning to shut down Saab, the Swedish carmaker it bought two decades ago, after a deal to sell it fell apart. Even with its modest and steadily declining sales, Saab long stood out as a powerful brand in spite of itself. “It wasn’t designed to be a fashion statement,” said Ron Pinelli, president of Autodata, which tracks industry statistics. “ It was designed to provide transportation under miserable weather conditions.” But in the process, Saab became a statement of its own. Saab had taut steering, requiring drivers to actively guide the car as it powered through ice and snow. Priced several thousand dollars above Japanese rivals, Saabs featured front-wheel drive and turbo-charged engines, and many were sold with manual transmissions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/business/19brand.html
EPA Releases First-Ever Baseline Study of U.S. Lakes
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its most comprehensive study of the nation’s lakes to date. The draft study, which rated the condition of 56 percent of the lakes in the United States as good and the remainder as fair or poor, marked the first time EPA and its partners used a nationally consistent approach to survey the ecological and water quality of lakes. A total of 1,028 lakes were randomly sampled during 2007 by states, tribes and EPA.
Beginning on Jan. 1, 2010, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:
50 cents per mile for business miles driven
16.5 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-09-54.pdf
In 2009, 275 new magazines were launched while 428 ceased publication, according to MediaFinder.com- the largest online database of U.S. and Canadian publications. Regional magazines topped the list of new launches with 21 new titles, such as Maine Magazine and B-metro Birmingham, while it also topped the list of ceased publications (34), with titles such Atlanta Life and Denver Living. http://mediafinder.com/public.cfm?page=pressReleases/275%20new%20magazines%20launch%20and%20428%20fold%20in%202009
On the morning of Dec. 8, several dozen volunteer newsies spread out across San Francisco to hawk copies of the city's brand new newspaper, the San Francisco Panorama. The 320-page doorstop, printed in full color on old-fashioned broadsheet paper, sold for $5 on the street and $16 in bookstores. With articles by Stephen King, Michael Chabon and Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Robert Porterfield, the Panorama was an homage to the increasingly threatened—some would say obsolete—institution of print journalism. The paper's entire print run sold out in less than 90 minutes. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1947391,00.html#ixzz0aA2u55QZ
The Naperville (Illinois) Public Library Board has decided to offer an “Internet Only” card to the public. The card would allow members of Prior to this decision, only Naperville Public Library card holders could have extended use of these machines. The Internet Only card will cost $50 for 12 months of service. This fee allows purchasers to use all the library's computer resources — broadband speed on the actual computers as well as access to the subscription databases — for up to three hours a day
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1945632,Library-Internet-only-card-NA121709.article
Guide to green wrapping for gifts
1. Use scrap paper. Wrap with tissue paper, newspaper comics (for kids' gifts) or travel pages (for adult ones), colorful magazine pages, road maps, take-out menus, wall calendars, phone book listings, brown grocery shopping bags. Don't hesitate to make a collage if one piece is too small.
2. Try fabric. You can wrap gifts in a light blanket or scarf. If you're crafty, make a cloth sack.
3. Use gift bags/holiday gift boxes. These can be reused.
4. Reuse wrappings. Carefully unwrap a gift and save whatever paper isn't torn. Fold it up or put in a poster tube and stash away for next year.
5. Wrap gifts in gifts. Kitchen towels, for example, can hold kitchen utensils. A new kids backpack can contain toys.
6. Recycle whatever possible. Check, though, with your local recycling program to see if they accept traditional wrapping paper.
7. Use cereal boxes. Top with a ribbon or gift tag for a festive look.
8. Or baskets. Buy used, pretty ones from your local thrift store.
9. Buy recycled paper. Numerous companies sells attractive ones with recycled content, including hemp. Among them: paporganics; savitris ; KidBean; greenpaperstudio.com; fishlipspaperdesigns.com.
10. Don't buy stuff to wrap. Treat your friends or relatives to experiences, such as afternoon tea or massages (see my earlier holiday gift guide) or do something special for them, such as cleaning their car or babysitting their kids.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2009/12/go-green-save-green-with-christmas-gift-wrapping-alternatives/1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/business/19brand.html
EPA Releases First-Ever Baseline Study of U.S. Lakes
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its most comprehensive study of the nation’s lakes to date. The draft study, which rated the condition of 56 percent of the lakes in the United States as good and the remainder as fair or poor, marked the first time EPA and its partners used a nationally consistent approach to survey the ecological and water quality of lakes. A total of 1,028 lakes were randomly sampled during 2007 by states, tribes and EPA.
Beginning on Jan. 1, 2010, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:
50 cents per mile for business miles driven
16.5 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-09-54.pdf
In 2009, 275 new magazines were launched while 428 ceased publication, according to MediaFinder.com- the largest online database of U.S. and Canadian publications. Regional magazines topped the list of new launches with 21 new titles, such as Maine Magazine and B-metro Birmingham, while it also topped the list of ceased publications (34), with titles such Atlanta Life and Denver Living. http://mediafinder.com/public.cfm?page=pressReleases/275%20new%20magazines%20launch%20and%20428%20fold%20in%202009
On the morning of Dec. 8, several dozen volunteer newsies spread out across San Francisco to hawk copies of the city's brand new newspaper, the San Francisco Panorama. The 320-page doorstop, printed in full color on old-fashioned broadsheet paper, sold for $5 on the street and $16 in bookstores. With articles by Stephen King, Michael Chabon and Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Robert Porterfield, the Panorama was an homage to the increasingly threatened—some would say obsolete—institution of print journalism. The paper's entire print run sold out in less than 90 minutes. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1947391,00.html#ixzz0aA2u55QZ
The Naperville (Illinois) Public Library Board has decided to offer an “Internet Only” card to the public. The card would allow members of Prior to this decision, only Naperville Public Library card holders could have extended use of these machines. The Internet Only card will cost $50 for 12 months of service. This fee allows purchasers to use all the library's computer resources — broadband speed on the actual computers as well as access to the subscription databases — for up to three hours a day
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1945632,Library-Internet-only-card-NA121709.article
Guide to green wrapping for gifts
1. Use scrap paper. Wrap with tissue paper, newspaper comics (for kids' gifts) or travel pages (for adult ones), colorful magazine pages, road maps, take-out menus, wall calendars, phone book listings, brown grocery shopping bags. Don't hesitate to make a collage if one piece is too small.
2. Try fabric. You can wrap gifts in a light blanket or scarf. If you're crafty, make a cloth sack.
3. Use gift bags/holiday gift boxes. These can be reused.
4. Reuse wrappings. Carefully unwrap a gift and save whatever paper isn't torn. Fold it up or put in a poster tube and stash away for next year.
5. Wrap gifts in gifts. Kitchen towels, for example, can hold kitchen utensils. A new kids backpack can contain toys.
6. Recycle whatever possible. Check, though, with your local recycling program to see if they accept traditional wrapping paper.
7. Use cereal boxes. Top with a ribbon or gift tag for a festive look.
8. Or baskets. Buy used, pretty ones from your local thrift store.
9. Buy recycled paper. Numerous companies sells attractive ones with recycled content, including hemp. Among them: paporganics; savitris ; KidBean; greenpaperstudio.com; fishlipspaperdesigns.com.
10. Don't buy stuff to wrap. Treat your friends or relatives to experiences, such as afternoon tea or massages (see my earlier holiday gift guide) or do something special for them, such as cleaning their car or babysitting their kids.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2009/12/go-green-save-green-with-christmas-gift-wrapping-alternatives/1
Friday, December 18, 2009
Geography facts
More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.
The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% the world's oxygen supply.
Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.
Canada has more lakes than any other country, making up much of the worlds fresh water. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1, so named because it was the first paved road anywhere.
Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two continents.
The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent. See more fact at:
http://nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com/2009/12/interesting-geography-facts-and-tidbits.html Thanks, Bill.
Fourscore is an adjective originating in the 13th century meaning four times twenty or eighty. Its most famous use is in the first word of ten sentences spoken by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Gettysburg_Address/
Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (pronounced /ˈzɑːmɨnhɒf/ in English; born Eliezer Levi Samenhof, December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the inventor of Esperanto, a constructed language designed for international communication.In 1910, Zamenhof was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, by four British Members of Parliament (including James O'Grady, Philip Snowden) and Professor Stanley Lane Poole.[9] (The Prize was instead awarded to the International Peace Bureau.) The minor planet (1462) Zamenhof is named in his honor. It was discovered on February 6, 1938 by Yrjö Väisälä. Also, hundreds of city streets, parks, and bridges worldwide have been named after Zamenhof[10]. In Lithuania, the best-known Zamenhof Street is in Kaunas, where he lived and owned a house for some time. There are others in France, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain (mostly in Catalonia), Italy, Israel, and Brazil. There are Zamenhof Hills in Hungary and Brazil, and a Zamenhof Island in the Danube River.[11] Zamenhof is honored as a deity by the Japanese religion Oomoto, which encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers. Also, a genus of lichen has been named Zamenhofia rosei in his honour.[12] His birthday, December 15, is celebrated annually as Zamenhof Day by users of Esperanto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof
Census Bureau Releases 2010 Statistical Abstract Depicting the State of Our Nation
Texting More Than Doubles in the Last Year: "How r u? The way we communicate is rapidly evolving, as evidenced by the fact that the number of text messages sent on cell phones has more than doubled from 48 billion in December 2007 to 110 billion in December 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010. The Statistical Abstract, aka “Uncle Sam’s Almanac,” perennially the federal government’s best-selling reference book, has been published since 1878 — before automobiles, airplanes and motion pictures had even been invented. Contained in the 129th edition are more than 1,400 tables of social, political and economic facts which collectively describe the state of our nation and the world. Included are 53 new tables, covering topics such as worldwide space launch events this decade, the use of complementary and alternative medicine, the type of work flexibility provided to employees, employment status of veterans and road fatalities by country."
See also Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project: Teens and Sexting, December 2009
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational employment projections to 2018
Occupational employment projections to 2018: "Professional and related occupations and service occupations are expected to create more new jobs than all other occupational groups from 2008 to 2018; in addition, growth will be faster among occupations for which postsecondary education is the most significant form of education or training, and, across all occupations, replacement needs will create many more job openings than will job growth...Total employment, a measure of all jobs in the U.S. economy, is projected to increase by 15.3 million over the 2008–18 period, representing a growth rate of 10.1 percent. Among occupational groups, strong employment growth is expected in healthcare occupations and in computer-related occupations, whereas employment in production occupations as well as farming, fishing, and forestry occupations is expected to decline."
Condemned in Illinois
While living in Bloomington, Illinois, I put out my worn garbage can. When I went to retrieve it, I found that garbage collectors had turned it over, and taped a note to the bottom that said CONDEMNED.
Peas (Petits Pois)
1 small head lettuce
2 c. fresh peas
12 pearl onions
4 parsley sprigs
4 oz. butter
1/4 c. water
1 t salt
Pinch sugar
Remove outer leaves from the head of lettuce and remove stem. Cut lettuce head into quarters. Tie quarters together with kitchen string and place in a large pot. Add the peas and peeled pearl onions. Tie parsley sprigs together with fine kitchen string and place on top. Cut up butter and sprinkle on top of vegetables. Pour in the water. Sprinkle on the salt and sugar. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes over medium-low heat. Make sure water does not completely evaporate. Remove parsley and string from lettuce before serving. http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/france/peas.html
On December 18, 1944, the US Supreme Court decided Korematsu v. United States, upholding the wartime relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. Read Executive Order 9066, issued by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, under which the internments were authorized. View photos from the Japanese American internment camps, collected by the University of Utah Library....." [more]
The Islamic calendar was created 1,414 lunar years ago (which is 1,371 years ago by the 2009 calendar's standards). And today—December 18, 2009 A.D.—is New Year's Day, 1431 A.H., in the Islamic calendar. The Writer's Almanac
More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.
The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% the world's oxygen supply.
Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.
Canada has more lakes than any other country, making up much of the worlds fresh water. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1, so named because it was the first paved road anywhere.
Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two continents.
The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent. See more fact at:
http://nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com/2009/12/interesting-geography-facts-and-tidbits.html Thanks, Bill.
Fourscore is an adjective originating in the 13th century meaning four times twenty or eighty. Its most famous use is in the first word of ten sentences spoken by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Gettysburg_Address/
Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (pronounced /ˈzɑːmɨnhɒf/ in English; born Eliezer Levi Samenhof, December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the inventor of Esperanto, a constructed language designed for international communication.In 1910, Zamenhof was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, by four British Members of Parliament (including James O'Grady, Philip Snowden) and Professor Stanley Lane Poole.[9] (The Prize was instead awarded to the International Peace Bureau.) The minor planet (1462) Zamenhof is named in his honor. It was discovered on February 6, 1938 by Yrjö Väisälä. Also, hundreds of city streets, parks, and bridges worldwide have been named after Zamenhof[10]. In Lithuania, the best-known Zamenhof Street is in Kaunas, where he lived and owned a house for some time. There are others in France, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain (mostly in Catalonia), Italy, Israel, and Brazil. There are Zamenhof Hills in Hungary and Brazil, and a Zamenhof Island in the Danube River.[11] Zamenhof is honored as a deity by the Japanese religion Oomoto, which encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers. Also, a genus of lichen has been named Zamenhofia rosei in his honour.[12] His birthday, December 15, is celebrated annually as Zamenhof Day by users of Esperanto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof
Census Bureau Releases 2010 Statistical Abstract Depicting the State of Our Nation
Texting More Than Doubles in the Last Year: "How r u? The way we communicate is rapidly evolving, as evidenced by the fact that the number of text messages sent on cell phones has more than doubled from 48 billion in December 2007 to 110 billion in December 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010. The Statistical Abstract, aka “Uncle Sam’s Almanac,” perennially the federal government’s best-selling reference book, has been published since 1878 — before automobiles, airplanes and motion pictures had even been invented. Contained in the 129th edition are more than 1,400 tables of social, political and economic facts which collectively describe the state of our nation and the world. Included are 53 new tables, covering topics such as worldwide space launch events this decade, the use of complementary and alternative medicine, the type of work flexibility provided to employees, employment status of veterans and road fatalities by country."
See also Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project: Teens and Sexting, December 2009
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational employment projections to 2018
Occupational employment projections to 2018: "Professional and related occupations and service occupations are expected to create more new jobs than all other occupational groups from 2008 to 2018; in addition, growth will be faster among occupations for which postsecondary education is the most significant form of education or training, and, across all occupations, replacement needs will create many more job openings than will job growth...Total employment, a measure of all jobs in the U.S. economy, is projected to increase by 15.3 million over the 2008–18 period, representing a growth rate of 10.1 percent. Among occupational groups, strong employment growth is expected in healthcare occupations and in computer-related occupations, whereas employment in production occupations as well as farming, fishing, and forestry occupations is expected to decline."
Condemned in Illinois
While living in Bloomington, Illinois, I put out my worn garbage can. When I went to retrieve it, I found that garbage collectors had turned it over, and taped a note to the bottom that said CONDEMNED.
Peas (Petits Pois)
1 small head lettuce
2 c. fresh peas
12 pearl onions
4 parsley sprigs
4 oz. butter
1/4 c. water
1 t salt
Pinch sugar
Remove outer leaves from the head of lettuce and remove stem. Cut lettuce head into quarters. Tie quarters together with kitchen string and place in a large pot. Add the peas and peeled pearl onions. Tie parsley sprigs together with fine kitchen string and place on top. Cut up butter and sprinkle on top of vegetables. Pour in the water. Sprinkle on the salt and sugar. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes over medium-low heat. Make sure water does not completely evaporate. Remove parsley and string from lettuce before serving. http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/france/peas.html
On December 18, 1944, the US Supreme Court decided Korematsu v. United States, upholding the wartime relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. Read Executive Order 9066, issued by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, under which the internments were authorized. View photos from the Japanese American internment camps, collected by the University of Utah Library....." [more]
The Islamic calendar was created 1,414 lunar years ago (which is 1,371 years ago by the 2009 calendar's standards). And today—December 18, 2009 A.D.—is New Year's Day, 1431 A.H., in the Islamic calendar. The Writer's Almanac
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection or deception, a new study says. The coconut-carrying behavior makes the veined octopus the newest member of the elite club of tool-using animals—and the first member without a backbone, researchers say.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091214-octopus-carries-coconuts-coconut-carrying.html
Transcript of Wide Ranging Three Hour Interview with Al Gore
Jose Antonio Vargas, Technology and Innovations editor, Huffington Post: "This is the transcript of a wide-ranging, two-part, three-hour interview with Al Gore, touching on the impact of technology and the Internet in politics, both in the U.S. and abroad; the state of the mainstream media and the left and right blogosphere; the role of the Web in spreading the facts about global warming, among others topics. The interviews were held in early and late October, first in the San Francisco offices of Current TV, then in his geothermal system-powered home in Nashville, which is certified as Gold LEED, one of the highest ratings for green design. An excerpt of the Q&A appeared in the Dec. 10, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone."
T.J. Wisner used to buy a small Christmas tree for the downstairs floor of his home in Grand Blanc, Mich. Four years ago, though, after getting the idea from an art fair, he opted for something different: a "beer tree," bottles of holiday brews stacked on a terraced mound of inverted metal buckets. While the family has a separate artificial tree upstairs, the "beer tree" has become the real Christmas tree. Each year, the Wisners decorate the structure with Christmas cards and pile gifts around it. "This is actually where we have Christmas morning," says Mr. Wisner, a 59-year-old life coach and speaker. "The day after Christmas, we blind taste the beers."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704825504574585861970052566.html
Deep Web Research 2010: Marcus P. Zillman is a an internet search expert whose extensive knowledge of how to leverage the "invisible" or "deep" web is exemplified in this guide. The Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats. Current search engines are able to locate around 200 billion pages. Marcus identifies sources to mitigate the odds on behalf of serious searchers.
The Yale Book of Quotations Most Notable Quotes 2009 by Fred Shapiro
1. "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Speaker at health care reform town hall meeting in Simpsonville, S.C., commenting on the government-created Medicare program, quoted by The Washington Post on July 28
2. "We're going to be in the Hudson." Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, responding to air traffic controllers asking on which runway he preferred to land US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15 before he landed in the Hudson River.
See article and other quotes at: http://www.thestate.com/politics/story/1074336.html
Ode to soy
Studies have long shown that adding soy to a low-fat diet may help reduce your risk of heart disease. According to The American Heart Association, 25 grams of soy protein per day is needed to show significant cholesterol-lowering effects. See more health tips and also recipes at: http://www.dole.com/nutritioninstitute//DNIPUBNEWSLETTERS/DNI_NL20040419.htm
Breakfast is your first meal of the day, whether you eat it at 9 a.m. or 4 p.m. To my mind, you can't "skip breakfast," because the word comes from "break the fast."
Breakfast around the world Culinary imports to the breakfast table in the heartland of America are often of German or Scandinavian origin, and many of these involve a sensible hashing together of various ingredients (especially meat) to use up leftovers and create a delicious meal. For example, scrapple, a Pennsylvania Dutch side dish, is made by cooking a mixture of pork scraps, cornmeal, and herbs into a mush, pressing it into a mold, then cutting the loaf into slices and frying them before serving. The good old-fashioned, pre-healthfood breakfast is alive and well in the South. Many people still start their days with grits slathered with butter or red-eye gravy (which is, essentially, bacon grease mixed with the active "red-eye" ingredient, coffee); biscuits made with lard; a thick slice of country ham, as big around as the plate it is served on (or bacon, or a few slices of spicy pork sausage); crisp, fried hash brown potatoes; and a bottomless cup of coffee. In the western states one can still find hearty frontier "grub" in the form of the Irish-influenced corned beef hash and eggs breakfast (originally the eggs would always have been fried, but now, to class the dish up a bit, they might be poached). Hearty omelets, with plenty of eggs and lots of filling, are also characteristic frontier food. And home fries, chunks of potatoes skillet-fried with onion and bell pepper, are the western equivalent of hash browns. Baked goods have proven particularly attractive to Americans in search of breakfast items. Many of these, like the waffle (relative of the French gaufre and the Dutch wafel) are snack foods or desserts in their native countries. The doughnut has its origins in the Dutch olykoek and the French beignet, both of which are little nut-shaped hunks of deep-fried yeast dough. It didn't acquire its un-nutlike but definitive doughnut shape (that is, the "torus") until the early 19th century in America, when it was decided that having a hole in the middle of the dough would increase the surface frying area and improve the texture.
Find much more information on other countries at:
http://ravenclawgirl.veoc.net/HouseElves/he_breakfast.htm
On December 17, 1798, the US Senate began its first impeachment trial. Senator William Blount of Tennessee, a land speculator, was accused of plotting with England to wrest control of Florida from Spain. The Senate ultimately dismissed the charges for lack of jurisdiction - and, perhaps incidentally, lack of Blount, who had gone to Tennessee and had refused to return to the Senate for trial. Read more on the attempted arrest of William Blount. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091214-octopus-carries-coconuts-coconut-carrying.html
Transcript of Wide Ranging Three Hour Interview with Al Gore
Jose Antonio Vargas, Technology and Innovations editor, Huffington Post: "This is the transcript of a wide-ranging, two-part, three-hour interview with Al Gore, touching on the impact of technology and the Internet in politics, both in the U.S. and abroad; the state of the mainstream media and the left and right blogosphere; the role of the Web in spreading the facts about global warming, among others topics. The interviews were held in early and late October, first in the San Francisco offices of Current TV, then in his geothermal system-powered home in Nashville, which is certified as Gold LEED, one of the highest ratings for green design. An excerpt of the Q&A appeared in the Dec. 10, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone."
T.J. Wisner used to buy a small Christmas tree for the downstairs floor of his home in Grand Blanc, Mich. Four years ago, though, after getting the idea from an art fair, he opted for something different: a "beer tree," bottles of holiday brews stacked on a terraced mound of inverted metal buckets. While the family has a separate artificial tree upstairs, the "beer tree" has become the real Christmas tree. Each year, the Wisners decorate the structure with Christmas cards and pile gifts around it. "This is actually where we have Christmas morning," says Mr. Wisner, a 59-year-old life coach and speaker. "The day after Christmas, we blind taste the beers."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704825504574585861970052566.html
Deep Web Research 2010: Marcus P. Zillman is a an internet search expert whose extensive knowledge of how to leverage the "invisible" or "deep" web is exemplified in this guide. The Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats. Current search engines are able to locate around 200 billion pages. Marcus identifies sources to mitigate the odds on behalf of serious searchers.
The Yale Book of Quotations Most Notable Quotes 2009 by Fred Shapiro
1. "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Speaker at health care reform town hall meeting in Simpsonville, S.C., commenting on the government-created Medicare program, quoted by The Washington Post on July 28
2. "We're going to be in the Hudson." Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, responding to air traffic controllers asking on which runway he preferred to land US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15 before he landed in the Hudson River.
See article and other quotes at: http://www.thestate.com/politics/story/1074336.html
Ode to soy
Studies have long shown that adding soy to a low-fat diet may help reduce your risk of heart disease. According to The American Heart Association, 25 grams of soy protein per day is needed to show significant cholesterol-lowering effects. See more health tips and also recipes at: http://www.dole.com/nutritioninstitute//DNIPUBNEWSLETTERS/DNI_NL20040419.htm
Breakfast is your first meal of the day, whether you eat it at 9 a.m. or 4 p.m. To my mind, you can't "skip breakfast," because the word comes from "break the fast."
Breakfast around the world Culinary imports to the breakfast table in the heartland of America are often of German or Scandinavian origin, and many of these involve a sensible hashing together of various ingredients (especially meat) to use up leftovers and create a delicious meal. For example, scrapple, a Pennsylvania Dutch side dish, is made by cooking a mixture of pork scraps, cornmeal, and herbs into a mush, pressing it into a mold, then cutting the loaf into slices and frying them before serving. The good old-fashioned, pre-healthfood breakfast is alive and well in the South. Many people still start their days with grits slathered with butter or red-eye gravy (which is, essentially, bacon grease mixed with the active "red-eye" ingredient, coffee); biscuits made with lard; a thick slice of country ham, as big around as the plate it is served on (or bacon, or a few slices of spicy pork sausage); crisp, fried hash brown potatoes; and a bottomless cup of coffee. In the western states one can still find hearty frontier "grub" in the form of the Irish-influenced corned beef hash and eggs breakfast (originally the eggs would always have been fried, but now, to class the dish up a bit, they might be poached). Hearty omelets, with plenty of eggs and lots of filling, are also characteristic frontier food. And home fries, chunks of potatoes skillet-fried with onion and bell pepper, are the western equivalent of hash browns. Baked goods have proven particularly attractive to Americans in search of breakfast items. Many of these, like the waffle (relative of the French gaufre and the Dutch wafel) are snack foods or desserts in their native countries. The doughnut has its origins in the Dutch olykoek and the French beignet, both of which are little nut-shaped hunks of deep-fried yeast dough. It didn't acquire its un-nutlike but definitive doughnut shape (that is, the "torus") until the early 19th century in America, when it was decided that having a hole in the middle of the dough would increase the surface frying area and improve the texture.
Find much more information on other countries at:
http://ravenclawgirl.veoc.net/HouseElves/he_breakfast.htm
On December 17, 1798, the US Senate began its first impeachment trial. Senator William Blount of Tennessee, a land speculator, was accused of plotting with England to wrest control of Florida from Spain. The Senate ultimately dismissed the charges for lack of jurisdiction - and, perhaps incidentally, lack of Blount, who had gone to Tennessee and had refused to return to the Senate for trial. Read more on the attempted arrest of William Blount. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
How to Learn Your Credit Score, by Andrea Coobes, WSJ
"The world of credit ratings is getting more transparent, thanks in part to a number of Web sites offering free credit scores and credit-management tools. But that doesn't mean understanding your credit ranking is any easier. It may be more complicated than ever. Those Web sites, while useful, often provide different answers to the same seemingly simple question: What's my score?"
rhopalic (ro-PAL-ik) adjective
having each successive word longer by a letter or syllable
from Latin rhopalicus, from Greek rhopalos (club, tapered cudgel)
A rhopalic verse or sentence is one that balloons--where each word is a letter or a syllable longer. The word is also used as a noun. Here's a terrific example of a rhopalic by Dmitri Borgmann:
"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications' incomprehensibleness." A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Some search-and-seizure cases taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court concern sets of facts so specific and arcane that it's hard to know what to make of them. (For instance, in Arizona v. Gant the court last term ruled that a police officer r needs a warrant before searching a car after an arrest of the car's occupant, unless at the time of the search the person is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment of the vehicle or police officers have reason to believe that the evidence for the crime the person is being arrested will be found in the vehicle. But on Monday, the court granted cert on a fact-pattern that any government employee with a BlackBerry can likely appreciate. The court agreed Monday to consider whether government employers can read text messages that their workers send and receive on workplace devices. Click here for the WSJ story. The case centers on this simple and rather compelling question: whether a police officer in Ontario, Calif., had a right to privacy for the text messages he sent and received on a pager provided by the police department. The city said Sgt. Jeff Quon used his pager to send hundreds of personal messages to his wife, his girlfriend and another officer.
WSJ Law Blog December 14, 2009
Caregiving in the U.S. 2009
National Alliance for Caregiving in Collaboration with AARP: "Caregiving is still mostly a woman's job and many women are putting their career and financial futures on hold as they juggle part-time caregiving and full-time job requirements. This is the reality reported in Caregiving in the U.S. 2009, the most comprehensive examination to date of caregiving in America. The first national profile of caregivers, Family Caregiving in the U.S. was published in 1997, and an updated version of the study, Caregiving in the U.S., was reported in 2004. The sweeping 2009 study of the legions of people caring for younger adults, older adults, and children with special needs reveals that 29 percent of the U.S. adult population, or 65.7 million people, are caregivers, including 31 percent of all households. These caregivers provide an average of 20 hours of care per week. The 2009 reports also begin to trend the findings from all three waves of the study."
A purist is what you call someone you disagree with.
A negative person is what you call someone you disagree with.
Irresponsible debate is language you disagree with.
Debate is language you agree with.
A gadfly is what you call someone you disagree with.
A whiner is what you call someone you disagree with.
"The world of credit ratings is getting more transparent, thanks in part to a number of Web sites offering free credit scores and credit-management tools. But that doesn't mean understanding your credit ranking is any easier. It may be more complicated than ever. Those Web sites, while useful, often provide different answers to the same seemingly simple question: What's my score?"
rhopalic (ro-PAL-ik) adjective
having each successive word longer by a letter or syllable
from Latin rhopalicus, from Greek rhopalos (club, tapered cudgel)
A rhopalic verse or sentence is one that balloons--where each word is a letter or a syllable longer. The word is also used as a noun. Here's a terrific example of a rhopalic by Dmitri Borgmann:
"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications' incomprehensibleness." A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Some search-and-seizure cases taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court concern sets of facts so specific and arcane that it's hard to know what to make of them. (For instance, in Arizona v. Gant the court last term ruled that a police officer r needs a warrant before searching a car after an arrest of the car's occupant, unless at the time of the search the person is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment of the vehicle or police officers have reason to believe that the evidence for the crime the person is being arrested will be found in the vehicle. But on Monday, the court granted cert on a fact-pattern that any government employee with a BlackBerry can likely appreciate. The court agreed Monday to consider whether government employers can read text messages that their workers send and receive on workplace devices. Click here for the WSJ story. The case centers on this simple and rather compelling question: whether a police officer in Ontario, Calif., had a right to privacy for the text messages he sent and received on a pager provided by the police department. The city said Sgt. Jeff Quon used his pager to send hundreds of personal messages to his wife, his girlfriend and another officer.
WSJ Law Blog December 14, 2009
Caregiving in the U.S. 2009
National Alliance for Caregiving in Collaboration with AARP: "Caregiving is still mostly a woman's job and many women are putting their career and financial futures on hold as they juggle part-time caregiving and full-time job requirements. This is the reality reported in Caregiving in the U.S. 2009, the most comprehensive examination to date of caregiving in America. The first national profile of caregivers, Family Caregiving in the U.S. was published in 1997, and an updated version of the study, Caregiving in the U.S., was reported in 2004. The sweeping 2009 study of the legions of people caring for younger adults, older adults, and children with special needs reveals that 29 percent of the U.S. adult population, or 65.7 million people, are caregivers, including 31 percent of all households. These caregivers provide an average of 20 hours of care per week. The 2009 reports also begin to trend the findings from all three waves of the study."
A purist is what you call someone you disagree with.
A negative person is what you call someone you disagree with.
Irresponsible debate is language you disagree with.
Debate is language you agree with.
A gadfly is what you call someone you disagree with.
A whiner is what you call someone you disagree with.
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Federal Reserve Board proposed rules Monday November 16 requiring more disclosure of gift card fees and more restrictions on expiration dates. While the final rules wouldn’t take effect until next August, an effort is already underway to get the rules in place in time for the holiday season. New York Senator Charles Schumer, who introduced legislation in the Senate to reform gift card rules, said in a statement that the new rules “are the right step, but it would be far better for them to take effect in time for this holiday shopping season. We will continue to push the Fed to speed up the effective date so that we end abuses by gift card issuers as soon as possible.” The Federal Reserve Board said it is following the time line outlined in the related legislation, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009. The Fed will accept comments on the proposed rules for 30 days, and then review them before issuing its final rules. http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/why-new-gift-card-rules-wont-take-effect-until-next-summer/
Robert G. Heft, the "Betsy Ross" of America's 50-star flag, died on December 12. In 1958, a history teacher assigned Heft and his classmates at Lancaster (Ohio) High School to each redesign the national banner to recognize Alaska and Hawaii, both nearing statehood. Heft, who was 16 at the time, crafted a new flag from an old 48-star flag and $2.87 worth of blue cloth and white iron-on material. His creation earned him a B-minus. Heft's teacher later changed that grade to an A after Heft's flag was sent to Washington, D.C., and selected by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Heft was one of thousands to submit a flag design with alternating rows of five and six stars. But apparently he was the only person who actually stitched together a flag and shipped it to D.C. His design became the official national flag in 1960. Born in Saginaw, Heft joined his grandparents in Lancaster after his parents separated when he was about a year old. He returned to Saginaw after retiring from Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio, where he was a professor. He also served as mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, for 20 years. http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/12/13/heft.ART0_ART_12-13-09_B7_6JFVUOQ.html?sid=101
Quote
I’m obsessed with color—never saw one I didn’t like.
Dale Chihuly (b. 1941) American artist
Final C
Words ending in C with the hard sound of K ? add K before I, Y or E; Picnic, picnicking; panic, panicky; traffic, trafficking; mimic, mimicked.
Plurals
(a) When a noun ends in Y preceded by a consonant, the plural is formed by changing Y to I and adding ES (to the singular): variety, varieties; monopoly, monopolies. (b) When a noun ends in Y preceded by a vowel, the plural is formed by adding S to the singular: holiday, holidays; journey, journeys; attorney, attorneys. (c) When a noun ends in O, the plural in most cases is formed by adding S to the singular: piano, pianos; ratio, ratios. Sometimes the plural is formed by adding ES to the singular: potato, potatoes; veto, vetoes. (d) When a noun ends in F or FE the plural in most cases is formed by adding S to the singular: sheriff, sheriffs; plaintiff, plaintiffs; staff, staffs; safe safes. Sometimes the plural is formed by changing F or FE to V and adding ES: knife, knives; shelf, shelves. (e) The plural is formed in some nouns by a vowel change instead of by the addition of a suffix: goose, geese; man, men; mouse, mice, foot, feet. (f) Some words retain their original Greek or Latin plural forms. The singular and plural forms are given here: analysis, analyses; basis, bases; Phenomenon, phenomena; parenthesis, parentheses; hypotheses, hypotheses. Certain Latin words are almost always used in the plural such as data and incunabula. (g) Some nouns are rarely if ever used in the singular: annals, athletics, clothes, nuptials, scissors. (h) In compound nouns the plural is usually added to the last member, but sometimes the first member: passerby, passersby; son-in-law, sons-in-law; coat of arms, coats of arms; court martial, courts martial.
http://www.spellingbeeofcanada.ca/pages/guide/guide_canadawide.php
"Democrat Party" has been used from time to time by opponents of the Democratic Party and sometimes by others. The earliest known use of the term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was by a London stock-market analyst, who wrote in 1890, "Whether a little farmer from South Carolina named Tillman is going to rule the Democrat Party in America – yet it is this, and not output, on which the proximate value of silver depends."[3] The term was used by Herbert Hoover in 1932, and in the late 1930s by Republicans who used it to criticize Democratic big city machines run by powerful political bosses in what they considered undemocratic fashion. Republican leader Harold Stassen later said, regarding his use in the 1940s, "I emphasized that the party controlled in large measure at that time by Hague in New Jersey, Pendergast in Missouri and Kelly-Nash in Chicago should not be called a 'Democratic Party.' It should be called the 'Democrat Party.'"[2] . The noun-as-adjective has been used by Republican leaders since the 1940s and appears in most GOP national platforms since 1948.[4] In 1947, Republican leader Senator Robert A. Taft said, "Nor can we expect any other policy from any Democrat Party or any Democrat President under present day conditions. They cannot possibly win an election solely through the support of the solid South, and yet their political strategists believe the Southern Democrat Party will not break away no matter how radical the allies imposed upon it."[5] President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his acceptance speech in 1952 and in partisan speeches to Republican groups.[6] Ruth Walker notes how Joseph McCarthy repeatedly used the phrase "the Democrat Party," and critics argue that if McCarthy used the term in the 1950s, then no one else should do so.[7] In 1996, the wording "Democratic Party" was removed throughout the Republican party platform. In August 2008, the Republican platform committee voted down a proposal to use the phrase "Democrat Party" in the 2008 platform, deciding to use the proper "Democratic Party". "We probably should use what the actual name is," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the panel's chairman. "At least in writing."[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(phrase)
Birthday Shopping Spree We had a wonderful thing just happen at Book Passage. A woman named Diana Phillips gave her partner, Diane Allevato, 63 minutes of shopping here for books for her 63rd birthday. Diane came in with lists (she prepared for weeks), her partner used a timer and off she went. I was given notice and did some decorating beforehand and had signs made welcoming her. I was allowed to help her by pulling titles and suggesting others I thought she'd like, and Elaine Petrocelli pushed the cart and also helped find some titles already selected. They also brought two friends, and after it was over we treated them to candlelight dinner in our cafe with several courses and fine wine, white tablecloth, etc. Diane ended up with 73 books Sheryl Cotleur, the buyer at Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif.
http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ar/theshelf/2009-12-04/cool_idea_of_the_day_birthday_shopping_spree.html
Library Christmas tree 2006 made of books See picture at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/donaldist/1803976340/
The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 1 has an interesting article on electronic book readers. "E-Readers: They're Hot Now, But the Story Isn't Over." By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER. LibreDigital Inc., a distributor of e-books for publishers, says the overwhelming majority of e-book buyers are women who read e-books on an ordinary computer screen, mostly between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. A growing number of readers are also perusing books on cellphones. Indeed, many e-book readers place limits on how and where consumers can use them. Only the Nook allows people to share some of their books with a friend by wirelessly transmitting them—and even then, you can share each book just once and only for 14 days. And only Sony's Readers make it easy to check out free books from Overdrive Inc., the e-book service used by many public libraries.
The e-book market is also caught up in a format war, with different companies limiting their devices to certain kinds of e-books, with file types such as .azw and mobipocket on the Kindle and .epub and Adobe Digital Editions on Sony. As a result, there's no guarantee an e-book bought from one online store will work on devices sold by a competitor.
The Oyez Project is a Web site devoted to the U.S. Supreme Court: http://www.oyez.org/
Abandoning some of the best known names in trade publishing, the Nielsen Company said that it would shut down Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, and sell a stable of other publications, including Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, to a newly formed media company. Nielsen’s plans to sell had been reported for months, but the news that E&P and Kirkus would close at the end of the year was a surprise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/media/11nielsen.html
Robert G. Heft, the "Betsy Ross" of America's 50-star flag, died on December 12. In 1958, a history teacher assigned Heft and his classmates at Lancaster (Ohio) High School to each redesign the national banner to recognize Alaska and Hawaii, both nearing statehood. Heft, who was 16 at the time, crafted a new flag from an old 48-star flag and $2.87 worth of blue cloth and white iron-on material. His creation earned him a B-minus. Heft's teacher later changed that grade to an A after Heft's flag was sent to Washington, D.C., and selected by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Heft was one of thousands to submit a flag design with alternating rows of five and six stars. But apparently he was the only person who actually stitched together a flag and shipped it to D.C. His design became the official national flag in 1960. Born in Saginaw, Heft joined his grandparents in Lancaster after his parents separated when he was about a year old. He returned to Saginaw after retiring from Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio, where he was a professor. He also served as mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, for 20 years. http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/12/13/heft.ART0_ART_12-13-09_B7_6JFVUOQ.html?sid=101
Quote
I’m obsessed with color—never saw one I didn’t like.
Dale Chihuly (b. 1941) American artist
Final C
Words ending in C with the hard sound of K ? add K before I, Y or E; Picnic, picnicking; panic, panicky; traffic, trafficking; mimic, mimicked.
Plurals
(a) When a noun ends in Y preceded by a consonant, the plural is formed by changing Y to I and adding ES (to the singular): variety, varieties; monopoly, monopolies. (b) When a noun ends in Y preceded by a vowel, the plural is formed by adding S to the singular: holiday, holidays; journey, journeys; attorney, attorneys. (c) When a noun ends in O, the plural in most cases is formed by adding S to the singular: piano, pianos; ratio, ratios. Sometimes the plural is formed by adding ES to the singular: potato, potatoes; veto, vetoes. (d) When a noun ends in F or FE the plural in most cases is formed by adding S to the singular: sheriff, sheriffs; plaintiff, plaintiffs; staff, staffs; safe safes. Sometimes the plural is formed by changing F or FE to V and adding ES: knife, knives; shelf, shelves. (e) The plural is formed in some nouns by a vowel change instead of by the addition of a suffix: goose, geese; man, men; mouse, mice, foot, feet. (f) Some words retain their original Greek or Latin plural forms. The singular and plural forms are given here: analysis, analyses; basis, bases; Phenomenon, phenomena; parenthesis, parentheses; hypotheses, hypotheses. Certain Latin words are almost always used in the plural such as data and incunabula. (g) Some nouns are rarely if ever used in the singular: annals, athletics, clothes, nuptials, scissors. (h) In compound nouns the plural is usually added to the last member, but sometimes the first member: passerby, passersby; son-in-law, sons-in-law; coat of arms, coats of arms; court martial, courts martial.
http://www.spellingbeeofcanada.ca/pages/guide/guide_canadawide.php
"Democrat Party" has been used from time to time by opponents of the Democratic Party and sometimes by others. The earliest known use of the term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was by a London stock-market analyst, who wrote in 1890, "Whether a little farmer from South Carolina named Tillman is going to rule the Democrat Party in America – yet it is this, and not output, on which the proximate value of silver depends."[3] The term was used by Herbert Hoover in 1932, and in the late 1930s by Republicans who used it to criticize Democratic big city machines run by powerful political bosses in what they considered undemocratic fashion. Republican leader Harold Stassen later said, regarding his use in the 1940s, "I emphasized that the party controlled in large measure at that time by Hague in New Jersey, Pendergast in Missouri and Kelly-Nash in Chicago should not be called a 'Democratic Party.' It should be called the 'Democrat Party.'"[2] . The noun-as-adjective has been used by Republican leaders since the 1940s and appears in most GOP national platforms since 1948.[4] In 1947, Republican leader Senator Robert A. Taft said, "Nor can we expect any other policy from any Democrat Party or any Democrat President under present day conditions. They cannot possibly win an election solely through the support of the solid South, and yet their political strategists believe the Southern Democrat Party will not break away no matter how radical the allies imposed upon it."[5] President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his acceptance speech in 1952 and in partisan speeches to Republican groups.[6] Ruth Walker notes how Joseph McCarthy repeatedly used the phrase "the Democrat Party," and critics argue that if McCarthy used the term in the 1950s, then no one else should do so.[7] In 1996, the wording "Democratic Party" was removed throughout the Republican party platform. In August 2008, the Republican platform committee voted down a proposal to use the phrase "Democrat Party" in the 2008 platform, deciding to use the proper "Democratic Party". "We probably should use what the actual name is," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the panel's chairman. "At least in writing."[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(phrase)
Birthday Shopping Spree We had a wonderful thing just happen at Book Passage. A woman named Diana Phillips gave her partner, Diane Allevato, 63 minutes of shopping here for books for her 63rd birthday. Diane came in with lists (she prepared for weeks), her partner used a timer and off she went. I was given notice and did some decorating beforehand and had signs made welcoming her. I was allowed to help her by pulling titles and suggesting others I thought she'd like, and Elaine Petrocelli pushed the cart and also helped find some titles already selected. They also brought two friends, and after it was over we treated them to candlelight dinner in our cafe with several courses and fine wine, white tablecloth, etc. Diane ended up with 73 books Sheryl Cotleur, the buyer at Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif.
http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ar/theshelf/2009-12-04/cool_idea_of_the_day_birthday_shopping_spree.html
Library Christmas tree 2006 made of books See picture at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/donaldist/1803976340/
The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 1 has an interesting article on electronic book readers. "E-Readers: They're Hot Now, But the Story Isn't Over." By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER. LibreDigital Inc., a distributor of e-books for publishers, says the overwhelming majority of e-book buyers are women who read e-books on an ordinary computer screen, mostly between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m. A growing number of readers are also perusing books on cellphones. Indeed, many e-book readers place limits on how and where consumers can use them. Only the Nook allows people to share some of their books with a friend by wirelessly transmitting them—and even then, you can share each book just once and only for 14 days. And only Sony's Readers make it easy to check out free books from Overdrive Inc., the e-book service used by many public libraries.
The e-book market is also caught up in a format war, with different companies limiting their devices to certain kinds of e-books, with file types such as .azw and mobipocket on the Kindle and .epub and Adobe Digital Editions on Sony. As a result, there's no guarantee an e-book bought from one online store will work on devices sold by a competitor.
The Oyez Project is a Web site devoted to the U.S. Supreme Court: http://www.oyez.org/
Abandoning some of the best known names in trade publishing, the Nielsen Company said that it would shut down Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, and sell a stable of other publications, including Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, to a newly formed media company. Nielsen’s plans to sell had been reported for months, but the news that E&P and Kirkus would close at the end of the year was a surprise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/media/11nielsen.html
Friday, December 11, 2009
Ocean Conservancy's aquaculture director George Leonard calls tuna ranching "the least sustainable form of aquaculture on the planet," for an array of reasons. Catching young bluefin to fatten them up for sale doesn't help sustain wild tuna, they say; it just kills off the next generation. Moreover, because anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds of forage fish is needed to produce a single pound of bluefin tuna, the practice ends up depleting wild stocks beyond tuna. Kindai bluefin represent what a handful of researchers say is a third way. Scientists at Japan's Kinki University and Australia's Clean Seas Tuna Ltd., a commercial operation, have produced the Kindai from hatched eggs rather than captured juveniles. Clean Seas, which is consulting with Kinki, has yet to start marketing its fish, but it reported in March 2009 that its separate brood stock of bluefin from the Southern Ocean have started spawning. Many environmentalists have encouraged the efforts, saying they may represent the best chance of staving off the tuna's extinction. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031000677.html
Should human genes ever be the subject of patent protection? That's the provocative question asked Thursday by Nathan Koppel in the WSJ's weekly Law Journal column. The Patent and Trademark Office doesn't grant patents over actual genes in the human body, but does award patents for genetic sequences that have been identified by researchers. Patents also extend to genetic tests and to correlations that scientists have drawn between genetic sequences and medical conditions, such as hearing loss, Alzheimer's disease and cancer. But should such gene sequences be patentable? Many doctors, patients and academics say no, that they're the products of nature and should never give rise to property rights. Gene patents, they say, create monopolies, allowing patent holders to block alternative tests and research that might ultimately yield better, and cheaper, medical care. WSJ Law Blog December 10, 2009
Scientists accidentally created a new blue pigment by doping white and black compounds with manganese. The new blue may end up in a variety of paints and inks, perhaps replacing some old standby pigments that can be toxic or unstable.
Scientists led by Mas Subramanian of Oregon State University in Corvallis were studying manganese oxides because of the compounds’ interesting magnetic and electronic properties. When a tray of samples came out of the furnace where they had been baking at about 1,200 degrees Celsius, the powders emerged a startling blue.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49963/title/Metal_gives_pigment_the_blues
Emilia-Romagna is a kind of lost region for foreigners, known, if at all, for its gemlike cities—Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna. It is heart of Italian agriculture because of Po valley dirt—the soil that grows the grass that feeds the cows who give the milk to make Parmesan cheese—the soil that grows Trebbiano grapes that is boiled down to balsamico di Modena. Half of all pasta shapes come from Emilia-Romagna.
http://www.internationalcookingschool.com/conde_nast_traveler_sept_2009.pdf
Would you like to buy an adobe castle in Taos? Featured in New Mexico Magazine's 2007 Homes issue and on Discovery Channel's 'World's Greenest Homes' show, this lavishly appointed architectural original is a green showplace. 2.6Kw of solar and wind power connected to the grid with an intertie system provide electricity. Heat and hot water come from six solar hot water panels with propane back up. Castle is oriented and designed to capture the maximum winter passive solar heat and is protected from the north by a massive earthen berm. There is a separate grey water system and 5100 gallon rainwater catchment system. http://www.greenhomesforsale.com/listing.php?id=18121
Most parodied paintings
AMERICAN GOTHIC (Grant Wood, 1930). Chicago Art Institute.
MONA LISA (Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1505). Louvre, Paris.
THE SCREAM (Edvard Munch, 1893). Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.
http://www.cassavafilms.com/list9_2001/list9_051701.html
Dow Jones reports that Thomson Reuters will lay off 240 employees from one of that division’s sub-sectors. According to Dow Jones, the cuts will come from Thomson Reuters’ legal division, which includes the Westlaw database and other information and services for legal professionals. The division employs 13,000 people, meaning layoffs of this size will decrease the staff by less than two percent. Access the Complete Article
Source: FishbowlNY
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh have created a joint digital archive of Andrew Carnegie materials on the Web at http://diva.library.cmu.edu/carnegie/. Integrating five physical collections in one searchable full text resource, the site demonstrates a larger vision, which is to facilitate and host a digital repository of Andrew Carnegie materials held by institutions worldwide. The inaugural Andrew Carnegie Collection online was funded by Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants from 2007 to 2009.
Should human genes ever be the subject of patent protection? That's the provocative question asked Thursday by Nathan Koppel in the WSJ's weekly Law Journal column. The Patent and Trademark Office doesn't grant patents over actual genes in the human body, but does award patents for genetic sequences that have been identified by researchers. Patents also extend to genetic tests and to correlations that scientists have drawn between genetic sequences and medical conditions, such as hearing loss, Alzheimer's disease and cancer. But should such gene sequences be patentable? Many doctors, patients and academics say no, that they're the products of nature and should never give rise to property rights. Gene patents, they say, create monopolies, allowing patent holders to block alternative tests and research that might ultimately yield better, and cheaper, medical care. WSJ Law Blog December 10, 2009
Scientists accidentally created a new blue pigment by doping white and black compounds with manganese. The new blue may end up in a variety of paints and inks, perhaps replacing some old standby pigments that can be toxic or unstable.
Scientists led by Mas Subramanian of Oregon State University in Corvallis were studying manganese oxides because of the compounds’ interesting magnetic and electronic properties. When a tray of samples came out of the furnace where they had been baking at about 1,200 degrees Celsius, the powders emerged a startling blue.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49963/title/Metal_gives_pigment_the_blues
Emilia-Romagna is a kind of lost region for foreigners, known, if at all, for its gemlike cities—Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna. It is heart of Italian agriculture because of Po valley dirt—the soil that grows the grass that feeds the cows who give the milk to make Parmesan cheese—the soil that grows Trebbiano grapes that is boiled down to balsamico di Modena. Half of all pasta shapes come from Emilia-Romagna.
http://www.internationalcookingschool.com/conde_nast_traveler_sept_2009.pdf
Would you like to buy an adobe castle in Taos? Featured in New Mexico Magazine's 2007 Homes issue and on Discovery Channel's 'World's Greenest Homes' show, this lavishly appointed architectural original is a green showplace. 2.6Kw of solar and wind power connected to the grid with an intertie system provide electricity. Heat and hot water come from six solar hot water panels with propane back up. Castle is oriented and designed to capture the maximum winter passive solar heat and is protected from the north by a massive earthen berm. There is a separate grey water system and 5100 gallon rainwater catchment system. http://www.greenhomesforsale.com/listing.php?id=18121
Most parodied paintings
AMERICAN GOTHIC (Grant Wood, 1930). Chicago Art Institute.
MONA LISA (Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-1505). Louvre, Paris.
THE SCREAM (Edvard Munch, 1893). Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.
http://www.cassavafilms.com/list9_2001/list9_051701.html
Dow Jones reports that Thomson Reuters will lay off 240 employees from one of that division’s sub-sectors. According to Dow Jones, the cuts will come from Thomson Reuters’ legal division, which includes the Westlaw database and other information and services for legal professionals. The division employs 13,000 people, meaning layoffs of this size will decrease the staff by less than two percent. Access the Complete Article
Source: FishbowlNY
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh have created a joint digital archive of Andrew Carnegie materials on the Web at http://diva.library.cmu.edu/carnegie/. Integrating five physical collections in one searchable full text resource, the site demonstrates a larger vision, which is to facilitate and host a digital repository of Andrew Carnegie materials held by institutions worldwide. The inaugural Andrew Carnegie Collection online was funded by Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants from 2007 to 2009.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Its inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window[1] and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house."[2] The painting shows a farmer standing beside a woman whose identity remains ambiguous; she may either be his spinster daughter, as explained by the artist's sister, or the farmer's wife. The figures were modeled by the artist's dentist and sister. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gothic
What are other much-parodied paintings?
Answer is forthcoming.
Eldon, Iowa is the site of the small Carpenter Gothic style house that has come to be known as the American Gothic House, It was incorporated in 1872; the elevation is 610 feet; the land area is 1.13 square miles—and the population density is 862 people per square mile.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Eldon-Iowa.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldon,_Iowa
I have a new PC and new e-mail. Even with the help of two technicians, I could not bring my contacts into the new system. Please bear with me as I re-build a subscriber list. If you cannot go to Web links, then paste them in.
Reactions to stories on scrapple and kimchi from readers:
Try goette from Cincinnati. Scrapple with pin oats.
Sure enjoyed the link to the "scrapple story." People are still debating the issue today!
When we lived in Federal Way, WA, from 1991-1993, our next-door neighbor was a young Korean woman married to an older American man. She always had kimchi in their refrigerator and would open and close the door as fast as possible lest the smell escape into the house! Her husband didn't particularly like kimchi. I didn't particularly like the smell!
Literary terms site suggested by reader Thanks, Beth.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/
chef-d'oeuvre (shay-DOO-vruh) noun
a masterpiece
From French chef-d'oeuvre (masterpiece), from chef (chief) + oeuvre (work)
savoir-faire (SAV-wahr-fayr) noun
the ability to say or do the right thing in any situation; tact
From French savoir-faire (know-how), from savoir (to know) + faire (to do)
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Google Launches Their Own Dictionary
As many of you know, for years Google has hyperlinked search terms (right below the blue bar, at the top-right side of the page) and linked them to a dictionary at Answers.com. Now the link goes to Google’s own dictionary. You can also get to any definition by going to the Google Dictionary interface. The dictionary (note the drop down box) is available in more than 20 languages and makes it very easy to translate from the non-english dictionary to English. It’s important to mention that there are two types of definitions. Some words have both, others just one. There are dictionary definitions and synonyms (the source(s) are unknown) and “web definitions When we tested the service. Google results pages only allowed one word to be defined. In some cases, no words were defined. Here’s a search for baseketball game. No hyperlinked definitions but the word airplane does provide a definition. When running a Google web search, you can use the syntax define: {search term} and find a web definition above the first result.
So what we need to know:
1) Who supplies the Google Dictionary?
2) Why do some words have definitions on a results page while multiple words do not?
www.resourceshelf.com December 4, 2009
Changes are here for Google Finance pages.
From a Google Blog post:
1) Streaming real-time quotes eliminates the 15- and 20-minute delays often associated with pricing data. Streaming the quotes keeps information on the page up to date, without having to reload. Example.
2) You can view news on the Google Finance homepage, or the dedicated news page. Updated news items will appear automatically in the News section. will be streamed from 8am-5:30pm ET, 90 minutes before and after U.S. trading hours.
3) + As you navigate throughout Google Finance, your recent quotes are streamed live in the left-navigation bar, so you don’t need to keep checking the same tickers.
+ On company pages, all stock prices, index and sector comparisons as well as the interactive chart are streamed during market hours.
+ The new interactive Related companies page lets customize a table that compares companies along the dimensions you specify.
www.resourceshelf.com December 4, 2009
A Year's Reading, reader's favorites from 2009 at:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2009/12/14/091214crbn_brieflynoted
Recently, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist concluded that the human brain has shrunk a full 10 percent over the last 5,000 years. The Week magazine had a contest asking for more proof that our brains are getting smaller. First prize: “Two words: Reality TV.” Frank Letchworth, Knoxville, TN (and others)
See other contest entries at:
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/103463/The_Week_contest_Small_Brain___Dec_4_2009
What are other much-parodied paintings?
Answer is forthcoming.
Eldon, Iowa is the site of the small Carpenter Gothic style house that has come to be known as the American Gothic House, It was incorporated in 1872; the elevation is 610 feet; the land area is 1.13 square miles—and the population density is 862 people per square mile.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Eldon-Iowa.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldon,_Iowa
I have a new PC and new e-mail. Even with the help of two technicians, I could not bring my contacts into the new system. Please bear with me as I re-build a subscriber list. If you cannot go to Web links, then paste them in.
Reactions to stories on scrapple and kimchi from readers:
Try goette from Cincinnati. Scrapple with pin oats.
Sure enjoyed the link to the "scrapple story." People are still debating the issue today!
When we lived in Federal Way, WA, from 1991-1993, our next-door neighbor was a young Korean woman married to an older American man. She always had kimchi in their refrigerator and would open and close the door as fast as possible lest the smell escape into the house! Her husband didn't particularly like kimchi. I didn't particularly like the smell!
Literary terms site suggested by reader Thanks, Beth.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/
chef-d'oeuvre (shay-DOO-vruh) noun
a masterpiece
From French chef-d'oeuvre (masterpiece), from chef (chief) + oeuvre (work)
savoir-faire (SAV-wahr-fayr) noun
the ability to say or do the right thing in any situation; tact
From French savoir-faire (know-how), from savoir (to know) + faire (to do)
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Google Launches Their Own Dictionary
As many of you know, for years Google has hyperlinked search terms (right below the blue bar, at the top-right side of the page) and linked them to a dictionary at Answers.com. Now the link goes to Google’s own dictionary. You can also get to any definition by going to the Google Dictionary interface. The dictionary (note the drop down box) is available in more than 20 languages and makes it very easy to translate from the non-english dictionary to English. It’s important to mention that there are two types of definitions. Some words have both, others just one. There are dictionary definitions and synonyms (the source(s) are unknown) and “web definitions When we tested the service. Google results pages only allowed one word to be defined. In some cases, no words were defined. Here’s a search for baseketball game. No hyperlinked definitions but the word airplane does provide a definition. When running a Google web search, you can use the syntax define: {search term} and find a web definition above the first result.
So what we need to know:
1) Who supplies the Google Dictionary?
2) Why do some words have definitions on a results page while multiple words do not?
www.resourceshelf.com December 4, 2009
Changes are here for Google Finance pages.
From a Google Blog post:
1) Streaming real-time quotes eliminates the 15- and 20-minute delays often associated with pricing data. Streaming the quotes keeps information on the page up to date, without having to reload. Example.
2) You can view news on the Google Finance homepage, or the dedicated news page. Updated news items will appear automatically in the News section. will be streamed from 8am-5:30pm ET, 90 minutes before and after U.S. trading hours.
3) + As you navigate throughout Google Finance, your recent quotes are streamed live in the left-navigation bar, so you don’t need to keep checking the same tickers.
+ On company pages, all stock prices, index and sector comparisons as well as the interactive chart are streamed during market hours.
+ The new interactive Related companies page lets customize a table that compares companies along the dimensions you specify.
www.resourceshelf.com December 4, 2009
A Year's Reading, reader's favorites from 2009 at:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2009/12/14/091214crbn_brieflynoted
Recently, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist concluded that the human brain has shrunk a full 10 percent over the last 5,000 years. The Week magazine had a contest asking for more proof that our brains are getting smaller. First prize: “Two words: Reality TV.” Frank Letchworth, Knoxville, TN (and others)
See other contest entries at:
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/103463/The_Week_contest_Small_Brain___Dec_4_2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Publishers Can Now Opt Out of Google News Search Indexing
Google News Blog: "There are more than 25,000 publishers from around the world in Google News today. [With] the new Google News web crawler publishers [can]...keep their content out of Google News and still remain in Google Search...if a publisher wants to opt out of Google News, they don't even have to contact us—they can put instructions just for user-agent Googlebot-News in the same robots.txt file they have today. In addition, once this change is fully in place, it will allow publishers to do more than just allow/disallow access to Google News. They'll also be able to apply the full range of REP directives just to Google News. Want to block images from Google News, but not from Web Search? Go ahead. Want to include snippets in Google News, but not in Web Search? Feel free...All this will soon be possible with the same standard protocol that is Robots Exclusion Protocol (or REP)."
Federal Reserve Beige Book, December 2, 2009
Full Report - Beige Book, December 2, 2009 - Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal Reserve District, and link to reports by Districts.
"Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicate that economic conditions have generally improved modestly since the last report. Eight Districts indicated some pickup in activity or improvement in conditions, while the remaining four--Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, and Atlanta--reported that conditions were little changed and/or mixed. Consumer spending was reported to have picked up moderately since the last report, for both general merchandise and vehicles; a number of Districts noted relatively robust sales of used autos. Most Districts indicated that non-auto retailers were holding lean inventories going into the holiday season. Tourism activity varied across Districts. Manufacturing conditions were said to be, on balance, steady to moderately improving across most of the country, while conditions in the nonfinancial service sector generally strengthened somewhat, though with some variation across Districts and across industries. Residential real estate conditions were somewhat improved from very low levels, on balance, led by the lower end of the market."
In October, Columbia University Press published Andrew Smith's latest book, Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine.
Here are a few of the 30 food firsts:
Oliver Evans invents a fully automated grain mill in Delaware in 1784. Flour becomes the world's first processed food.
Cyrus McCormick, a Virginia farmer and inventor, patents the mechanical reaper, a horse-drawn device that harvests five times what a large crew can bring in by hand, in 1834. The reaper marks the first step toward the industrialization of agriculture in America.
Inventor and entrepreneur Gail Borden begins canning condensed milk in 1852. During the Civil War, the Union army issues a contract for Borden's product—the first ever for a canned food. Commercial canning is born.
Quaker Oats debuts its famous label in 1891, marking the advent of modern food branding.
In 1895 the first mass-produced packaged snack food arrives when Frederick and Louis Rueckheim, brothers from Chicago, start selling boxes of molasses-covered peanuts and popcorn, which they call Cracker Jack. Prizes don't show up in the boxes until 1912.
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is published in 1906. The exposé of working conditions in the Chicago stockyards fails to strengthen workers' rights, but it does spur legislators to pass food-safety laws and prompts the eventual founding of the FDA.
The first full-service supermarket in the U.S., King Kullen, opens in Queens, New York, in 1930.
See all 30 at: http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/30-Food-Firsts
The biggest star explosion yet seen may be the best known example of a rare type of star death that leaves no "body" behind, astronomers say. The unusual blast, dubbed SN 2007bi, appears to be a textbook example of a pair-instability supernova, a theoretical type of explosion proposed for very massive stars—those more than 140 times the mass of the sun. Although most supernovae leave behind black holes or dense stellar corpses called neutron stars, pair-instability explosions would be so intense that the whole star would be obliterated. Pair-instability supernovae have been hard to spot, however, because stars more than a hundred times the sun's mass are extremely rare.
"Anything that takes that long to rise and is that bright has to have a lot of mass," said study co-author Peter Nugent, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California. When these megastars exploded, the ancient, powerful outbursts scattered debris that might have sown the seeds for future stars. A pair-instability supernova "may be a one-in-a-trillion type of event," Nugent said, "but they may actually be very important" in understanding the evolution of the universe. Findings detailed in the December 3 issue of the journal Nature. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091202-biggest-star-explosion-supernova.html
Kimchi is a well fermented spicy cabbage side dish served at every Korean meal. Whole chinese cabbages are stuffed with a mix of garlic, green onions, ginger and red pepper powder and fermented over a period of weeks. Kimchi has long been known for its health benefits and in 2007 was named by US Health Magazine as one of the top ten healthy foods in the world. It is also known to have anti-cancer properties due to its ingredients. To learn more about the healthy benefits of eating kimchi and Korean cuisine order your free copy of the ‘Wonderful World of Korean Food’.
Email: visitkorea@knto.org.au
http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/OO/OO_EN_13_4_2.jsp?cid=753912
http://globalfoodie.com/2009/10/korea-kimchi-gimchi-koreas-national-dish/
How U.S. News rankings have changed law schools
A recent National Law Journal article, takes a look at a recent study put out by two sociology professors who reportedly interviewed more than 200 law school administrators, faculty members and prospective law students. The report, “Fear of Falling: The Effect of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on U.S. Law Schools,” was authored by Northwestern's Wendy Espeland and Iowa's Michael Sausder. It was recently released by the Law School Admission Council, which partially funded the research. WSJ Law Blog December 3, 2009
Fjord
A deep, steep-walled, U-shaped valley formed by glaciation, which has been flooded by seawater. Typically, waterfalls in this formation drop from hanging valleys. Fjords are commonly found in New Zealand, Canada, southern Argentina and Norway.
http://www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com/glossary.php
Fjell is a municipality in the county of Hordaland, Norway. The parish of Fjæld was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). It consists of several islands west of Bergen, the major ones being Litle-Sotra, Sotra (the northern part) Bjorøy and Turøy. The name is identical with the modern Norwegian word fjell or "mountain". The oldest form of the name was Undir Fjalli which means "under/below the mountain". Before 1918, the name was written Fjeld. http://wapedia.mobi/en/Fjell
The Way We Ate: The Great Scrapple Correspondence of 1872
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/the-way-we-ate-the-great-scrapple-correspondence-of-1872/?scp=1&sq=scrapple&st=cse Scrapple is slices of ground pork, sage and cornmeal fried crispy brown. I’ve made it once from a recipe in The American Heritage Cookbook. Yes, we enjoyed it and will make it again.
Google News Blog: "There are more than 25,000 publishers from around the world in Google News today. [With] the new Google News web crawler publishers [can]...keep their content out of Google News and still remain in Google Search...if a publisher wants to opt out of Google News, they don't even have to contact us—they can put instructions just for user-agent Googlebot-News in the same robots.txt file they have today. In addition, once this change is fully in place, it will allow publishers to do more than just allow/disallow access to Google News. They'll also be able to apply the full range of REP directives just to Google News. Want to block images from Google News, but not from Web Search? Go ahead. Want to include snippets in Google News, but not in Web Search? Feel free...All this will soon be possible with the same standard protocol that is Robots Exclusion Protocol (or REP)."
Federal Reserve Beige Book, December 2, 2009
Full Report - Beige Book, December 2, 2009 - Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal Reserve District, and link to reports by Districts.
"Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicate that economic conditions have generally improved modestly since the last report. Eight Districts indicated some pickup in activity or improvement in conditions, while the remaining four--Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, and Atlanta--reported that conditions were little changed and/or mixed. Consumer spending was reported to have picked up moderately since the last report, for both general merchandise and vehicles; a number of Districts noted relatively robust sales of used autos. Most Districts indicated that non-auto retailers were holding lean inventories going into the holiday season. Tourism activity varied across Districts. Manufacturing conditions were said to be, on balance, steady to moderately improving across most of the country, while conditions in the nonfinancial service sector generally strengthened somewhat, though with some variation across Districts and across industries. Residential real estate conditions were somewhat improved from very low levels, on balance, led by the lower end of the market."
In October, Columbia University Press published Andrew Smith's latest book, Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine.
Here are a few of the 30 food firsts:
Oliver Evans invents a fully automated grain mill in Delaware in 1784. Flour becomes the world's first processed food.
Cyrus McCormick, a Virginia farmer and inventor, patents the mechanical reaper, a horse-drawn device that harvests five times what a large crew can bring in by hand, in 1834. The reaper marks the first step toward the industrialization of agriculture in America.
Inventor and entrepreneur Gail Borden begins canning condensed milk in 1852. During the Civil War, the Union army issues a contract for Borden's product—the first ever for a canned food. Commercial canning is born.
Quaker Oats debuts its famous label in 1891, marking the advent of modern food branding.
In 1895 the first mass-produced packaged snack food arrives when Frederick and Louis Rueckheim, brothers from Chicago, start selling boxes of molasses-covered peanuts and popcorn, which they call Cracker Jack. Prizes don't show up in the boxes until 1912.
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is published in 1906. The exposé of working conditions in the Chicago stockyards fails to strengthen workers' rights, but it does spur legislators to pass food-safety laws and prompts the eventual founding of the FDA.
The first full-service supermarket in the U.S., King Kullen, opens in Queens, New York, in 1930.
See all 30 at: http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/30-Food-Firsts
The biggest star explosion yet seen may be the best known example of a rare type of star death that leaves no "body" behind, astronomers say. The unusual blast, dubbed SN 2007bi, appears to be a textbook example of a pair-instability supernova, a theoretical type of explosion proposed for very massive stars—those more than 140 times the mass of the sun. Although most supernovae leave behind black holes or dense stellar corpses called neutron stars, pair-instability explosions would be so intense that the whole star would be obliterated. Pair-instability supernovae have been hard to spot, however, because stars more than a hundred times the sun's mass are extremely rare.
"Anything that takes that long to rise and is that bright has to have a lot of mass," said study co-author Peter Nugent, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California. When these megastars exploded, the ancient, powerful outbursts scattered debris that might have sown the seeds for future stars. A pair-instability supernova "may be a one-in-a-trillion type of event," Nugent said, "but they may actually be very important" in understanding the evolution of the universe. Findings detailed in the December 3 issue of the journal Nature. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091202-biggest-star-explosion-supernova.html
Kimchi is a well fermented spicy cabbage side dish served at every Korean meal. Whole chinese cabbages are stuffed with a mix of garlic, green onions, ginger and red pepper powder and fermented over a period of weeks. Kimchi has long been known for its health benefits and in 2007 was named by US Health Magazine as one of the top ten healthy foods in the world. It is also known to have anti-cancer properties due to its ingredients. To learn more about the healthy benefits of eating kimchi and Korean cuisine order your free copy of the ‘Wonderful World of Korean Food’.
Email: visitkorea@knto.org.au
http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/OO/OO_EN_13_4_2.jsp?cid=753912
http://globalfoodie.com/2009/10/korea-kimchi-gimchi-koreas-national-dish/
How U.S. News rankings have changed law schools
A recent National Law Journal article, takes a look at a recent study put out by two sociology professors who reportedly interviewed more than 200 law school administrators, faculty members and prospective law students. The report, “Fear of Falling: The Effect of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on U.S. Law Schools,” was authored by Northwestern's Wendy Espeland and Iowa's Michael Sausder. It was recently released by the Law School Admission Council, which partially funded the research. WSJ Law Blog December 3, 2009
Fjord
A deep, steep-walled, U-shaped valley formed by glaciation, which has been flooded by seawater. Typically, waterfalls in this formation drop from hanging valleys. Fjords are commonly found in New Zealand, Canada, southern Argentina and Norway.
http://www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com/glossary.php
Fjell is a municipality in the county of Hordaland, Norway. The parish of Fjæld was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). It consists of several islands west of Bergen, the major ones being Litle-Sotra, Sotra (the northern part) Bjorøy and Turøy. The name is identical with the modern Norwegian word fjell or "mountain". The oldest form of the name was Undir Fjalli which means "under/below the mountain". Before 1918, the name was written Fjeld. http://wapedia.mobi/en/Fjell
The Way We Ate: The Great Scrapple Correspondence of 1872
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/the-way-we-ate-the-great-scrapple-correspondence-of-1872/?scp=1&sq=scrapple&st=cse Scrapple is slices of ground pork, sage and cornmeal fried crispy brown. I’ve made it once from a recipe in The American Heritage Cookbook. Yes, we enjoyed it and will make it again.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
“At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without compulsory health insurance,” the Yale economist Irving Fisher said in a speech in December of 1916. Fisher delivered an address titled “The Need for Health Insurance,” at a joint session of the American Association for Labor Legislation, the American Economic Association (he was president of both), the American Sociological Society, and the American Statistical Association. “Germany showed the way in 1883,” Fisher told his audience. “Her wonderful industrial progress since that time, her comparative freedom from poverty . . . and the physical preparedness of her soldiery, are presumably due, in considerable measure, to health insurance.” You can probably already see where this is heading. The United States declared war with Germany in April, 1917. Health care was dead. Critics said that it was “made in Germany” and likely to result in the “Prussianization of America.” In California, where the legislature had passed a constitutional amendment providing for universal health insurance, it was put on the ballot for ratification: a federation of insurance companies took out an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle warning that it “would spell social ruin to the United States.” Every voter in the state received in the mail a pamphlet with a picture of the Kaiser and the words “Born in Germany. Do you want it in California?” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/12/07/091207taco_talk_lepore
If some version of tort reform ultimately gets tucked into a passed health-care bill, it won't be because the trial lawyers didn't get out the message—at least in one of the more widely trafficked corridors in our nation's capital. The American Association for Justice, formerly known as the American Trial Lawyers Association, has bought up all the advertising space in Washington, D.C.'s Metro station at Union Station for the entire month of December. The point, according to this story in Politico: “to remind Senate staffers that 98,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors.”
WSJ Law Blog December 2, 2009
U.S. Debt Clock
"The Purpose of U.S.DebtClock.org is to inform the public of the financial condition of the United States of America. The numbers are laid out so as to give a complete real-time snap-shot of the country's balance sheet...All the debt clocks are updated continuously..." This is an independent site using government data.
The Trend to Alternate Law Firm Fee Arrangements Continues
"In September The American Lawyer and the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) jointly surveyed 587 ACC members who have the title "chief legal officer" or "general counsel." In that group, 149 head departments at companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more. Here are the survey results (Note: Click on the images at the end of the posting for a larger view)."
Meet the 24 recipients of the MacArthur Fellows Awards
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5410503/k.11CB/Meet_the_2009_Fellows.htm The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations. There are no restrictions on becoming a Fellow, except that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the United States. Questions can be e-mailed to 4answers@macfound.org.
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4536879/k.9B87/About_the_Program.htm
Fort Miamis
British soldiers constructed Fort Miamis in 1794. British authorities feared that Anthony Wayne and his army planned to march against Fort Detroit, a major stronghold. Located fifty-five miles to the south of Detroit, Fort Miamis provided an additional obstacle to Wayne. Fort Miamis also afforded the British additional means to solidify Native American support against the white Americans moving into the Ohio Country. Following England's defeat in the American Revolution, the British promised in the Treaty of Paris (1783) to remove all of their soldiers from American soil. Although they had agreed to do this in the treaty, the British subsequently refused until the Americans honored their pledges in the treaty as well. Important among these was the promise to repay debts Americans owed to England.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=713
The Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-164, 113 Stat. 1792-1794) establishes as an affiliated National Park System (NPS) area, the Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site (Site) in the State of Ohio. See full text of act: http://www.glin.gov/view.action?glinID=70146
Fort Miamis was occupied by General Anthony Wayne’s legion from 1796 to 1798 and later was the site of a battle in the War of 1812. Toledo Metroparks completed buying the property with local, state and federal funds in the fall of 2001. http://www.fallentimbersbattlefield.com/today.asp
Over the years, Fort Miamis has been owned by the city of Maumee, the state of Ohio, and Metroparks. In spring of 2009, it became part of Metroparks again. Part of the fort remains privately owned today. Metroparks Magazine, Fall/Winter 2009-2010
Deer-resistant plants
There are a few things that might help when choosing plants that they tend to avoid. Deer never eat ornamental grasses. They also don’t usually eat herbs or plants that have a strong fragrance such as sage, lemon balm, monarda (bee balm), Russian sage (Perovskia), etc. They don’t generally like plants with thorns or “prickles” either, roses being the exception. Some of the prickly flowers and shrubs they avoid are cleome, barberry, and purple coneflower. One last thing, please do not feed the deer. You aren’t doing yourself, your neighbors or the deer a favor. I won’t belabor the point, but by feeding deer you are bringing many diseases and parasites into your yard, which can then transfer to your pets or your children. http://www.northerngardening.com/deerplants.htm
http://www.npsot.org/plant_lists/deer_resistant.html
In the mid-1990s, there were rumors of a lost bordeaux grape variety that had just been "discovered" in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. The tale of carmenère's journey from southwestern France to South America is worthy of a mystery novel. The story begins in the mid-19th century, by which time Bordeaux winemakers had more or less settled on six kinds of grapes that could be blended together to make red bordeaux: cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec, petit verdot, and carmenère. The grape that gave them the most trouble was carmenère, which came to wine-ready ripeness weeks after the other bordeaux varieties. It was, for a time, considered worth the hassle for the depth of color and interesting herbal note carmenère brought to the bordeaux blend—that is, when the grapes were fully ripened. When they weren't, they were known to contribute an excess of a quality commonly identified as "green," meaning astringent and vegetal, reminiscent of green peppers. Then, the final straw: in the 1880s, after many of the vines in France were wiped out by a blight of phylloxera lice, French wineries began grafting vulnerable European vines onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstock—a process that the stressed-out carmenère vines didn't take to well. That was the coup de grâce for carmenère in Bordeaux. Look at any wine textbook today, and it will tell you that red bordeaux is a blend of five grape varieties, not six. http://www.saveur.com/article/Wine-and-Drink/Late-Bloomer
By coincidence, the same day I read this story we had a Chilean carmenère with dinner.
On December 3, 1931, the UK Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, under which the British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland gained complete legislative independence; the statute received royal assent and came into force on December 11.
On December 3, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt called for the dissolution of business trusts in his first State of the Union address. Roosevelt would go on to dissolve 44 trusts during his administration, earning the nickname "Trust Buster".
Learn more about the history of U.S. antitrust law. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
If some version of tort reform ultimately gets tucked into a passed health-care bill, it won't be because the trial lawyers didn't get out the message—at least in one of the more widely trafficked corridors in our nation's capital. The American Association for Justice, formerly known as the American Trial Lawyers Association, has bought up all the advertising space in Washington, D.C.'s Metro station at Union Station for the entire month of December. The point, according to this story in Politico: “to remind Senate staffers that 98,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors.”
WSJ Law Blog December 2, 2009
U.S. Debt Clock
"The Purpose of U.S.DebtClock.org is to inform the public of the financial condition of the United States of America. The numbers are laid out so as to give a complete real-time snap-shot of the country's balance sheet...All the debt clocks are updated continuously..." This is an independent site using government data.
The Trend to Alternate Law Firm Fee Arrangements Continues
"In September The American Lawyer and the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) jointly surveyed 587 ACC members who have the title "chief legal officer" or "general counsel." In that group, 149 head departments at companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more. Here are the survey results (Note: Click on the images at the end of the posting for a larger view)."
Meet the 24 recipients of the MacArthur Fellows Awards
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5410503/k.11CB/Meet_the_2009_Fellows.htm The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations. There are no restrictions on becoming a Fellow, except that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the United States. Questions can be e-mailed to 4answers@macfound.org.
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4536879/k.9B87/About_the_Program.htm
Fort Miamis
British soldiers constructed Fort Miamis in 1794. British authorities feared that Anthony Wayne and his army planned to march against Fort Detroit, a major stronghold. Located fifty-five miles to the south of Detroit, Fort Miamis provided an additional obstacle to Wayne. Fort Miamis also afforded the British additional means to solidify Native American support against the white Americans moving into the Ohio Country. Following England's defeat in the American Revolution, the British promised in the Treaty of Paris (1783) to remove all of their soldiers from American soil. Although they had agreed to do this in the treaty, the British subsequently refused until the Americans honored their pledges in the treaty as well. Important among these was the promise to repay debts Americans owed to England.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=713
The Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-164, 113 Stat. 1792-1794) establishes as an affiliated National Park System (NPS) area, the Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site (Site) in the State of Ohio. See full text of act: http://www.glin.gov/view.action?glinID=70146
Fort Miamis was occupied by General Anthony Wayne’s legion from 1796 to 1798 and later was the site of a battle in the War of 1812. Toledo Metroparks completed buying the property with local, state and federal funds in the fall of 2001. http://www.fallentimbersbattlefield.com/today.asp
Over the years, Fort Miamis has been owned by the city of Maumee, the state of Ohio, and Metroparks. In spring of 2009, it became part of Metroparks again. Part of the fort remains privately owned today. Metroparks Magazine, Fall/Winter 2009-2010
Deer-resistant plants
There are a few things that might help when choosing plants that they tend to avoid. Deer never eat ornamental grasses. They also don’t usually eat herbs or plants that have a strong fragrance such as sage, lemon balm, monarda (bee balm), Russian sage (Perovskia), etc. They don’t generally like plants with thorns or “prickles” either, roses being the exception. Some of the prickly flowers and shrubs they avoid are cleome, barberry, and purple coneflower. One last thing, please do not feed the deer. You aren’t doing yourself, your neighbors or the deer a favor. I won’t belabor the point, but by feeding deer you are bringing many diseases and parasites into your yard, which can then transfer to your pets or your children. http://www.northerngardening.com/deerplants.htm
http://www.npsot.org/plant_lists/deer_resistant.html
In the mid-1990s, there were rumors of a lost bordeaux grape variety that had just been "discovered" in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. The tale of carmenère's journey from southwestern France to South America is worthy of a mystery novel. The story begins in the mid-19th century, by which time Bordeaux winemakers had more or less settled on six kinds of grapes that could be blended together to make red bordeaux: cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec, petit verdot, and carmenère. The grape that gave them the most trouble was carmenère, which came to wine-ready ripeness weeks after the other bordeaux varieties. It was, for a time, considered worth the hassle for the depth of color and interesting herbal note carmenère brought to the bordeaux blend—that is, when the grapes were fully ripened. When they weren't, they were known to contribute an excess of a quality commonly identified as "green," meaning astringent and vegetal, reminiscent of green peppers. Then, the final straw: in the 1880s, after many of the vines in France were wiped out by a blight of phylloxera lice, French wineries began grafting vulnerable European vines onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstock—a process that the stressed-out carmenère vines didn't take to well. That was the coup de grâce for carmenère in Bordeaux. Look at any wine textbook today, and it will tell you that red bordeaux is a blend of five grape varieties, not six. http://www.saveur.com/article/Wine-and-Drink/Late-Bloomer
By coincidence, the same day I read this story we had a Chilean carmenère with dinner.
On December 3, 1931, the UK Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, under which the British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland gained complete legislative independence; the statute received royal assent and came into force on December 11.
On December 3, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt called for the dissolution of business trusts in his first State of the Union address. Roosevelt would go on to dissolve 44 trusts during his administration, earning the nickname "Trust Buster".
Learn more about the history of U.S. antitrust law. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
World Health Organization: New HIV infections reduced by 17% over the past 8 years News release: "According to new data in the 2009 AIDS epidemic update, new HIV infections have been reduced by 17% over the past eight years. Since 2001, when the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed, the number of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 15% lower, which is about 400 000 fewer infections in 2008. In East Asia HIV incidence has declined by nearly 25% and in South and South East Asia by 10% in the same time period. In Eastern Europe, after a dramatic increase in new infections among injecting drug users, the epidemic has leveled off considerably. However, in some countries there are signs that HIV incidence is rising again."
Employment Law Guide: Laws, Regulations, and Technical Assistance Services
News release: "The U.S. Department of Labor has announced the availability of an updated version of its popular Employment Law Guide [September 2009], an online publication that describes the major employment laws administered by the department. The Guide helps the public—workers and employers—understand many of the laws affecting the workplace. For instance, it helps small businesses develop wage, benefit, safety and health, and nondiscrimination policies. It also benefits employees and employee representatives who need information about worker rights and responsibilities under federal employment laws."
A common misconception is that in the past when an immigrant to the US arrived on Ellis Island, the clerk at the registration office often changed a name, from Kwiatkovski to Kay, for example. While stories of renaming at the port of entry are mostly myths, many names were later anglicized, such as Pedersen becoming Peterson. Something similar happens with the language. What do the words puny, petty, mayday have in common? Each is a French word that has been adopted into English with a phonetic respelling, from puisné, petit, and m'aidez (literally, Help me). A.Word.A.Day
I just bought a small wireless reading device with access to 100,000 books. Response: I have a small wireless device with access to a million books—a library card.
Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip (paraphrase) November 30, 2009
As a teenager, Jean Nouvel wanted to be an artist, and his unconventional buildings suggest the flamboyance of a painter. Taking cues from the environment, Nouvel places an emphasis on light and shadow. Color and transparency are important parts of the design. Upon awarding Jean Nouvel the Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2008, the judges noted that his works demonstrate "persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation." See list of his buildings in France, Spain and the United States at: http://architecture.about.com/od/architectsaz/p/nouvel.htm
Before dreaming up a design, Mr. Nouvel said, he does copious research on the project and its surroundings. “The story, the climate, the desires of the client, the rules, the culture of the place,” he said. “The references of the buildings around, what the people in the city love.” Read story and see picture of his Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/arts/design/31prit.html
Moon Phases, December 2009 (times are in Universal Time)
Full Moon – December 2, 07:30
Last Quarter – December 9, 00:13
New Moon – December 16, 12:02
First Quarter – December 24, 17:36
Full Moon – December 31, 19:13 (blue moon)
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-moon/moon-phases-2009/
The times of various events, particularly astronomical and weather phenomena, are often given in "Universal Time" (abbreviated UT) which is sometimes referred to, now colloquially, as "Greenwich Mean Time" (abbreviated GMT). The two terms are often used loosely to refer to time kept on the Greenwich meridian (longitude zero), five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Times given in UT are almost always given in terms of a 24-hour clock. Thus, 14:42 (often written simply 1442) is 2:42 p.m., and 21:17 (2117) is 9:17 p.m. Sometimes a Z is appended to a time to indicate UT, as in 0935Z.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/UT
In March 1999, Sky and Telescope magazine published an article about Blue Moons by Philip Hiscock, who has studied the folklore and history of the expression. In that article, Hiscock traced the many meanings of the expression over the centuries, but noted that the "two Full moons in a single month" meaning couldn't be explained satisfactorily. In the May 1999 issue of Sky and Telescope, there appeared a follow-up article which proved that Sky and Telescope had in fact created the current meaning by mistake in an article published in March 1946. The author of the 1946 article had misinterpreted a page of the 1937 Maine Farmers' Almanac. By studying copies of the Maine Farmers' Almanac dating as far back as 1819, the authors of the May 1999 article showed that the compilers of the Almanac used the term to label the third Full Moon in a season which has four.
We have calculated the dates of this type of Blue Moon for the 20th and 21st centuries
and put them in a list for you to browse it inadvertently created in an article 53 years before! So which definition is "correct"? The authors of the May 1999 article admit
with two decades of popular usage behind it, the second-full-Moon-in-a-month (mis)interpretation is like a genie that can't be forced back into its bottle.
http://www.obliquity.com/astro/blue-st.html
Employment Law Guide: Laws, Regulations, and Technical Assistance Services
News release: "The U.S. Department of Labor has announced the availability of an updated version of its popular Employment Law Guide [September 2009], an online publication that describes the major employment laws administered by the department. The Guide helps the public—workers and employers—understand many of the laws affecting the workplace. For instance, it helps small businesses develop wage, benefit, safety and health, and nondiscrimination policies. It also benefits employees and employee representatives who need information about worker rights and responsibilities under federal employment laws."
A common misconception is that in the past when an immigrant to the US arrived on Ellis Island, the clerk at the registration office often changed a name, from Kwiatkovski to Kay, for example. While stories of renaming at the port of entry are mostly myths, many names were later anglicized, such as Pedersen becoming Peterson. Something similar happens with the language. What do the words puny, petty, mayday have in common? Each is a French word that has been adopted into English with a phonetic respelling, from puisné, petit, and m'aidez (literally, Help me). A.Word.A.Day
I just bought a small wireless reading device with access to 100,000 books. Response: I have a small wireless device with access to a million books—a library card.
Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip (paraphrase) November 30, 2009
As a teenager, Jean Nouvel wanted to be an artist, and his unconventional buildings suggest the flamboyance of a painter. Taking cues from the environment, Nouvel places an emphasis on light and shadow. Color and transparency are important parts of the design. Upon awarding Jean Nouvel the Pritzker Architecture Prize for 2008, the judges noted that his works demonstrate "persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, an insatiable urge for creative experimentation." See list of his buildings in France, Spain and the United States at: http://architecture.about.com/od/architectsaz/p/nouvel.htm
Before dreaming up a design, Mr. Nouvel said, he does copious research on the project and its surroundings. “The story, the climate, the desires of the client, the rules, the culture of the place,” he said. “The references of the buildings around, what the people in the city love.” Read story and see picture of his Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/arts/design/31prit.html
Moon Phases, December 2009 (times are in Universal Time)
Full Moon – December 2, 07:30
Last Quarter – December 9, 00:13
New Moon – December 16, 12:02
First Quarter – December 24, 17:36
Full Moon – December 31, 19:13 (blue moon)
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-moon/moon-phases-2009/
The times of various events, particularly astronomical and weather phenomena, are often given in "Universal Time" (abbreviated UT) which is sometimes referred to, now colloquially, as "Greenwich Mean Time" (abbreviated GMT). The two terms are often used loosely to refer to time kept on the Greenwich meridian (longitude zero), five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Times given in UT are almost always given in terms of a 24-hour clock. Thus, 14:42 (often written simply 1442) is 2:42 p.m., and 21:17 (2117) is 9:17 p.m. Sometimes a Z is appended to a time to indicate UT, as in 0935Z.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/UT
In March 1999, Sky and Telescope magazine published an article about Blue Moons by Philip Hiscock, who has studied the folklore and history of the expression. In that article, Hiscock traced the many meanings of the expression over the centuries, but noted that the "two Full moons in a single month" meaning couldn't be explained satisfactorily. In the May 1999 issue of Sky and Telescope, there appeared a follow-up article which proved that Sky and Telescope had in fact created the current meaning by mistake in an article published in March 1946. The author of the 1946 article had misinterpreted a page of the 1937 Maine Farmers' Almanac. By studying copies of the Maine Farmers' Almanac dating as far back as 1819, the authors of the May 1999 article showed that the compilers of the Almanac used the term to label the third Full Moon in a season which has four.
We have calculated the dates of this type of Blue Moon for the 20th and 21st centuries
and put them in a list for you to browse it inadvertently created in an article 53 years before! So which definition is "correct"? The authors of the May 1999 article admit
with two decades of popular usage behind it, the second-full-Moon-in-a-month (mis)interpretation is like a genie that can't be forced back into its bottle.
http://www.obliquity.com/astro/blue-st.html
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