British village mystified after hundreds of apples fell from the sky over their homes People in the Keresley area of the city said the fruit came raining down at about 19:00 GMT on December 12, hitting passing vehicles. Parish councillor Sandra Camwell said the apple storm lasted a few minutes and was the second occurrence of its kind in a fortnight. Weather experts said winds could have carried the apples from an orchard. Allen Hogan, the owner of Hogan's Cider in Alcester, 30 miles away, said there were no apples obviously missing from his orchards. In Keresley itself Ms Camwell said there was only a small number of fruit trees. She said she believed the apples could have fallen from a passing aircraft. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-16203214

The name Sudoku comes from Japan and consists of the Japanese characters Su (meaning 'number') and Doku (meaning 'single') but the puzzle itself originates from Switzerland and then travels to Japan by way of America. Sudoku has its deep roots in ancient number puzzles. For many centuries people have been interested in creating and solving puzzles. This was the basis of developing important mathematics. Read about Magic Squares, Chinese Puzzle and more at: http://www.sudokudragon.com/sudokuorigins.htm
Note that letters, pictures or symbols may be used instead of numerals.

new verbs defriend, unfriend
new nouns fake friend, friend collector

It’s that time of the year, again! It’s time for The Marist Poll to reveal the word or phrase considered to be the most annoying in casual conversation. And, for the third consecutive year, “whatever” receives the dubious honor. Nearly four in ten adults nationally — 38% — say “whatever” grates on their nerves the most. “Like” one in five — 20% — say that verbal filler is the most irritating while 19% despise “you know.” “Just sayin’” gets on the nerves of 11% of the population compared with 7% who report “seriously” should be banned from casual conversation. Five percent are unsure. Link to complete release and tables at: http://maristpoll.marist.edu/1216-whatever-still-most-annoying-word-you-know-like-seriously-just-sayin%e2%80%99/

In Greek, psephology means the study of elections. At its root is pseph which means pebble or ballot. In ancient times, Greek citizens were required to present a pebble to cast their votes. It’s the most rudimentary way of gauging public opinion, and while the technology may have changed, our goal at the Marist Poll is the same — to identify current trends by measuring what people think. Pundit comes from a Hindi word that traces its origin back to Sanskrit where, pandita, means learned. See Pebble and Pundits, poll results from Marist Institute for Public Opinion (MIPO) divided by topic at: http://maristpoll.marist.edu/

Dickens trivia
There are over 60 English language adaptations of "A Christmas Carol."
See also: 'Christmas Carol' is a gift worth giving at: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/23/entertainment/la-et-christmas-carol-20111223

This year there will be no Friday 30th December on the Pacific Island of Samoa. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi says the change to move the Samoan calendar 24 hours forward has been made so business links can be improved with countries like Australia. "In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week," the prime minister said. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/16353404

Three already elderly Stieg Larsson thrillers topped 2011's all-year bestsellers table, followed by Jamie's 30-Minute Meals (the Christmas No 1) and Guinness World Records, with One Day and The Help just outside the top 10. This was a year when old books saw off new ones, and paperbacks sent hardbacks packing. The same seven titles merely change places, with Larsson's trio and David Nicholls's and Kathryn Stockett's two-year-old novels all given renewed sales muscle by movie versions. Joining them are two titles representing the class of 2010 – the nearest thing to new books that the 2011 list's elite group has to offer: a novel by Dawn French (3) that was last year's bestselling debut, and Emma Donoghue's Room (4), Booker-shortlisted and a double bookclub choice. With publishing in transition from "physical books" to ebooks (Nielsen's figures are confined to the former) and no overall picture yet available of the ebook market, buying trends are hard to read. But shoppers seem increasingly reluctant to shell out for higher-price titles, other than "manuals" (such as the Guinness annual or cookbooks), where the hardback format clearly makes sense. America's Jeff Kinney dominates the children's chart, and has five of his Wimpy Kid books in the overall top 30. Lorraine Pascale, with two well-placed spin-off titles (41, 60), is the only newcomer to convincingly challenge the Jamie-Hugh-Nigella-Gordon-Heston old guard of TV cheffery. Epic fantasy writer George RR Martin arrived impressively with titles at 13 and 76. Jo Nesbø's five entries defy talk that the Scandinavian crime boom has run its course, and contribute significantly to Random House at long last overtaking Hachette as top-scoring publishing group.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/29/books-years-bestseller-charts-commentary

Top Worldwide tours in 2011
U2 wouldn’t be at the top of 2011’s box office results if it wasn’t for Bono’s 2010 back injury that resulted in the band postponing a large chunk of its 360° tour until 2011. Worldwide, U2 fans gobbled up 2,387,535 tickets in 2011 at an average price of $97.15 per. The stadium tour sold an average of 91,828 tickets per show for a final global gross of $231.9 million (All figures converted to U.S. dollars). U2’s North American journey was equally impressive, selling 1,701,486 tickets overall for a year’s gross of $156 million. Thanks, Mike http://www.pollstar.com/blogs/news/archive/2011/12/28/792619.aspx
Click http://www.pollstarpro.com/charts/2011YearEndTop25WorldwideTours.pdf for Pollstar’s Top 25 Worldwide Tours chart.

His passion for painting burned so hot, it fueled two roundtrip walks from Ohio to New York City, three stints studying in Europe, and 62 years of intense creativity and teaching. Karl Kappes, born to German immigrants in Zanesville six weeks after the first shots of the Civil War were fired, liked to quote a Chinese saying that no man is an artist until he’s painted 10,000 pictures. "I am an artist," he would then declare. We’ll never know whether his grand claim was true, but he churned out oils, watercolors, and pencil drawings until he died in 1943 at 82 in his crammed, walk-up apartment/studio at 1822 Adams St. in Toledo. Still in the studio six years later, his widow said, "How can a person be lonely when she has more than 2,000 paintings to keep her company?" Kappes’ productivity, along with an enduring appreciation for his talent, has earned him a berth among the region’s best artists. Fifty of his pieces are displayed in Karl Kappes: Ohio Painter, 1861-1943, through Jan. 28 at the Zanesville Museum of Art, 190 miles southeast of Toledo.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Art/2011/12/25/Ohio-museum-celebrates-work-of-late-Toledo-artist.html

In most jurisdictions, the state's court of last resort is called the supreme court. This name differs in some jurisdictions, however. For example, the court of last resort in New York is the New York Court of Appeals, while the trial-level court is called the Supreme Court. In Texas, the court of last resort for civil trials is the Texas Supreme Court, but the highest court for criminal appeals is the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The state of Texas is rather unusual because it employs two courts of last resort to hear appeals. West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Last+resort

Valentine Davies (1905-1961) was an American film and television writer, producer, and director. His credits included Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Chicken Every Sunday (1949), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), and The Benny Goodman Story (1955). He was nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Glenn Miller Story. Davies was born in New York City, served in the Coast Guard, and graduated from the University of Michigan. He wrote a number of Broadway plays and was president of the Screen Writers Guild and general chairman of the Academy Awards program. Davies' 1947 novel Miracle on 34th Street was adapted for the screen the same year, earning the author the Academy Award for Best Story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine_Davies Read more at: http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800034499/bio and http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0204016/

Leading is the space between lines of text. (The term is pronounced “led-ing,” after the strips of lead used to separate lines of type.) Kerning and tracking both address the spacing between letters. Kerning refers to the space between any two letters in a line. Tracking refers to the space between all of the letters in a line. Read more and see examples at:
Understanding Typography Concepts by Adobe Systems Incorporated. http://collaborgator.pbworks.com/f/indesign_typography.pdf

Top ten new restaurants in New York by Sam Sifton
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/dining/sam-siftons-top-10-new-restaurants-of-2011.html

Puritans were contemptuous of Christmas, nicknaming it "Foolstide" and banning their flock from any celebration of it throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The upper classes in ancient Rome celebrated Dec. 25 as the birthday of the sun god Mithra. The date fell right in the middle of Saturnalia, a monthlong holiday dedicated to food, drink, and revelry, and Pope Julius I is said to have chosen that day to celebrate Christ's birth as a way of co-opting the pagan rituals. Beyond that, the Puritans considered it historically inaccurate to place the Messiah's arrival on Dec. 25. Puritans in the English Parliament eliminated Christmas as a national holiday in 1645, amid widespread anti-Christmas sentiment. Settlers in New England went even further, outlawing Christmas celebrations entirely in 1659. Anyone caught shirking their work duties or feasting was forced to pay a significant penalty of five shillings. Christmas returned to England in 1660, but in New England it remained banned until the 1680s. Colonial New Englanders began to associate Christmas with royal officialdom, and refused to mark it as a holiday. It was only in the following decades that disdain for the holiday slowly ebbed away. Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" — aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" — was published in New York in 1823 to enormous success. In 1836, Alabama became the first state to declare Christmas a public holiday, and other states soon followed suit. But New England remained defiantly Scrooge-like; as late as 1850, schools and markets remained open on Christmas Day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow finally noted a "transition state about Christmas" in New England in 1856. "The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful, hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so," he wrote. Christmas Day was formally declared a federal holiday by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870.
http://theweek.com/article/index/222676/when-americans-banned-christmas

Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics in a turf war at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas, on 7 January. Palestinian police armed with batons and shields broke up the clashes. 1,700-year-old church, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, is in a bad state of repair, largely because the priests cannot agree on who should pay for its upkeep.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16347418

Dec. 29 anniversaries
1170 – Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II; he subsequently becomes a saint and martyr in the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
1813 – British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812.
1835 – The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.
1845 – According with International Boundary delimitation, U.S.A annexes the Mexican state of Texas, following the Manifest Destiny doctrine. For others, the Republic of Texas, which had been independent since the Texas Revolution of 1836, is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.
1890 – United States soldiers kill more than 200 Oglala Lakota people with four Hotchkiss guns in the Wounded Knee Massacre.
1911 – Sun Yat-sen becomes the provisional President of the Republic of China; he formally takes office on January 1, 1912.
1911 – Mongolia gains independence from the Qing dynasty.
1914 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel by James Joyce, is serialised in The Egoist.
1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.
1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology.
2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_29

manger noun
1. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Agriculture) a trough or box in a stable, barn, etc., from which horses or cattle feed
2. (Transport / Nautical Terms) Nautical a basin-like construction in the bows of a vessel for catching water draining from an anchor rode or coming in through the hawseholes
[from Old French maingeure food trough, from mangier to eat, ultimately from Latin mandūcāre to chew] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/manger

Cornelius McGillicuddy, Sr. (December 22, 1862 – February 8, 1956), better known as Connie Mack, was an American professional baseball player, manager, and team owner. The longest-serving manager in Major League Baseball history, he holds records for wins (3,731), losses (3,948), and games managed (7,755), with his victory total being almost 1,000 more than any other manager. He managed the Philadelphia Athletics for the club's first 50 seasons of play before retiring at age 87 following the 1950 season, and was at least part-owner from 1901 to 1954. He was the first manager to win the World Series three times, and is the only manager to win consecutive Series on separate occasions (1910–11, 1929–30); his five Series titles remain the third most by any manager, and his nine American League pennants rank second in league history. However, constant financial struggles forced repeated rebuilding of the roster, and Mack's teams also finished in last place 17 times. Mack was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Mack

The Asian tiger prawn, a foot-long crustacean with a voracious appetite and a proclivity for disease, has invaded the northern Gulf, threatening prized native species, from crabs and oysters to smaller brown and white shrimp. Though no one is sure what the ecological impact will be, scientists fear a tiger prawn takeover could knock nature's balance out of whack and turn a healthy, diverse marine habitat into one dominated by a single invasive species. The tiger prawns from the western Pacific - which can grow up to 13 inches long - have been spreading along the Gulf Coast since 2006, but their numbers took off this year. Shrimpers pulled one from Texas waters for the first time in June.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Giant-shrimp-raises-big-concern-as-it-invades-the-2424242.php

An exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York through February 5 traces the tangled roots of "Auld Lang Syne," using printed books and manuscripts, including Burns's letter to Mrs. Dunlop, to illuminate the genesis of Burns's poem and the melody we sing it to today. In the process it throws up questions—about the extent of Burns's authorship, and the aesthetic and political considerations behind the deliberate "intermixing" of Scots and English—that add resonance to the old song, even as they remain unanswerable. By the time Burns wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, he had become a passionate collector of his native folk songs. He was the chief contributor to two anthologies, the workmanlike "Scots Musical Museum" by James Johnson and the much more ambitious "Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice" by George Thomson, who commissioned musical settings from composers across Europe, including Haydn, Hummel and Pleyel, "the most agreeable composer living" in Thomson's view. (The manuscript draft of a setting he commissioned from the less agreeable Beethoven is also on show.) In 1793, Burns sent the text of "Auld Lang Syne" to Thomson, presenting it as "the old Song of the olden times, & which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man singing." But, as Christine Nelson, the Morgan's curator of literary and historical manuscripts, notes, Burns made no secret of the fact that he reshaped, amended and edited much of the material he sent in. "Did Burns really just write down what he heard an old man sing or did he entirely rewrite the song?" Ms. Nelson asks. Among the evidence on display are two other songs sharing the opening line "should old acquaintance be forgot." The first, cited in a songbook of 1667, "is much more in reference to a love relationship gone bad than friendship," Ms. Nelson says. Burns's fame, already considerable during his short lifetime, became a cult after his death. The Morgan's exhibit contains a memento of Keats's pilgrimage to Burns's tomb in Dumfries, Scotland; a tribute by Sir Walter Scott; and a gushing letter by Sophia Hawthorne. There's also a modest bunch of pressed wildflowers she and Nathaniel picked on Burns's Mossgiel Farm—the wild daisies, or gowans, of "Auld Lang Syne." Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204464404577115072207414162.html?mod=ITP_personaljournal_2

Follow-up to the words snackage, websterize and wordage coined by Bucky Katt in Get Fuzzy comic strip August 5, 2011 December 21, 2011: Bucky, a feline meanie, coins see-worthy and critisults.

Reader feedback to "You're better than perfect. You're good." (T. Jefferson Parker)
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. The better is the enemy of the good.
La Bégueule by Voltaire (1772)
Variant translations:
The perfect is the enemy of the good. The best is the enemy of the good.
Note: This quotation also appears in Italian (Il meglio è l'inimico del bene) in the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie article, "Dramatic Art" (1764) Thanks, Paul.
The name "Voltaire", which the author adopted in 1718, is an anagram of "AROVET LI," the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, and the initial letters of "le jeune" ("the younger"). The name also echoes in reverse order the syllables of the name of a family château in the Poitou region: "Airvault". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

Q: Why do most peninsulas on the globe point south? From the southern continents to Scandinavia, Italy, Iberia, all seem to point in a southerly direction. Is there a geological explanation of this striking fact?
Reply by Dr Ted Nield (Editor, Geoscientist) Thank you for your interesting inquiry about the apparent tendency of continents to taper, and peninsulas to point, south. It is a fascinating question, which I can see raises all kinds of different explanations, from geology to cognition, human psychology, cartographic conventions and even fractal geometry. Let us start with the southern continents and their southerly taper. The former southern supercontinent Gondwanaland, began to split up about 250 million years ago and gave rise to wedge-shaped pieces like segments of a pie. This was because the cracks in Gondwana tended to follow intersecting courses. This is not hard to understand, since when objects crack their fractures are dominated by geometry. Cracks in dinner-plates are usually radial, and cracks in a continental lithospheric plate on a globe will similarly follow great circles. Read more at: http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/pid/6197;jsessionid=1F2834CB5EA7F58740E5251BAC2AEB33 Thanks, Paul.

Ohio is the nation's largest producer of Swiss Cheese. Swiss Cheese has no holes when it is first made; the "Eyes" need 5-7 weeks of aging at room temperature to develop. Over one-third of all the milk produced in the U.S.is used to make cheese. It takes slightly more than one gallon of milk to make a pound of cheese. The average American consumes about 30 pounds of cheese each year. Cheese tastes best when served at room temperature--allow the wrapped or covered cheese to "warm up" for about an hour before serving. Cheeze can be frozen; always thaw frozen cheese in the refrigerator. Pearl Valley Cheese Co. Fresno, OH www.pearlvalleycheese.com

Most watches in advertisements are best photographed at 10:10, but not all. The brand name is "framed" by the hands. Ulysse Nardin is photographed at 8:19 so that the name is clearly seen. To preserve batteries, Timex ships many watches turned off at 10:09:36, which lends synchronicity to Timex displays in store windows. At Rolex, watches are always photographed at 10:10:31, and for models that list the day of the week and calendar day, it is always Monday the 28th. “In advertising we would never expect someone to look at a watch and say, ‘The watch is smiling,’ but it’s just a feeling you get,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, co-author, with Robin Koval, of “The Power of Nice,” which features a big smile on its cover. The watch theme, she added, is typical of “subconscious cues that are used in print ads.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/business/media/28adco.html

Questions to ask candidates for president of the U.S.
Shall we abolish the filibuster?
Shall we restrict each bill to one subject?
Shall we abolish the alternative minimum tax?
What will you do to control the immigration of Canada geese? Asian carp?

Sort out fact from fiction in statements of candidates at PolitiFact. PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters and editors from the Times fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups and rate them on our Truth-O-Meter:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. http://www.politifact.com/

cali- or calo- or calli- or callo [from Greek kalos beautiful] In taxonomic names: beautiful, beauty, white (Calliandra). http://www.macroevolution.net/biology-prefixes-ca.html#cali
Examples: California, Callisto, calligraphy, calliope, calisthentic

New Year's resolutions
Write a poem. If you like, choose a form from choices at: http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/furtherreading/page2.html
Remind yourself of sweet memories.
Learn something new every day.

Eric Arthur Blair (1903 –1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism. Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote fiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945)—they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. Several of his neologisms, along with the term "Orwellian"—now a byword for any totalitarian or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society—have entered the vernacular. In an autobiographical piece that Orwell sent to the editors of Twentieth Century Authors in 1940, he wrote: "The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills." Elsewhere, Orwell strongly praised the works of Jack London, especially his book The Road. Orwell's investigation of poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier strongly resembles that of Jack London's The People of the Abyss, in which the American journalist disguises himself as an out-of-work sailor in order to investigate the lives of the poor in London. In his essay "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946) Orwell wrote: "If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them." Other writers admired by Orwell included: Ralph Waldo Emerson, G. K. Chesterton, George Gissing, Graham Greene, Herman Melville, Henry Miller, Tobias Smollett, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and Yevgeny Zamyatin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

Doublespeak is language which pretends to communicate but doesn't. It is language which makes the bad seem good, the negative seem positive, the unpleasant seem unattractive, or at least tolerable. It is language which avoids, shifts or denies responsibility; language which is at variance with its real or purported meaning. It is language which conceals or prevents thought. A neologism based on the compounds Newspeak and Doublethink in George Orwell's novel 1984 (1949) http://grammar.about.com/od/d/g/doublespeakterm.htm

Is it downsizing or rightsizing? Outsourcing or rightsourcing? Are these doublespeak?

The Froebel star carries the name of the German educationist Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852), founder of the Kindergarten concept. He encouraged the use of paper folding in pre–primary education with the aim of conveying simple mathematical concepts to children. It is, however, likely that Froebel did not invent this item and that it had already been within the realm of general knowledge for a long time. Descriptions of how to fold a Froebel star date back to at least the 19th century. In Germany the name Fröbelstern has been the common name for this paper decoration since the 1960s. It is used as ornament on Christmas trees and wreaths, and to make garlands and mobiles. The three-dimensional Froebel star is assembled from four identical paper strips with a width-to-length proportion of between 1:25 and 1:30. The weaving and folding procedure is rather complex and can be accomplished in about forty steps. The product is a paper star with eight flat prongs and eight cone-shaped tips. The assembly instructions can be aborted midway, producing a two-dimensional eight–pronged star without cones. See pictures and read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froebel_star

"I'll Be Home for Christmas" is a Christmas song recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby who scored a top ten hit with the song. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" has since gone onto to become a Christmas standard. The song is sung from the point of view of an overseas soldier during WWII, writing a letter to his family. The song was written by the American lyricist Kim Gannon, and the Jewish-American composer Walter Kent. Buck Ram, who previously wrote a poem and song with the same title, was credited as a co-writer of the song following a lawsuit. See a list of recordings at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'll_Be_Home_for_Christmas

STRANGE HAPPENINGS
Christmas Eve--directing a choir while seeing a flashing electronic sign through clear glass
Christmas--serving tomolives thinking they were olives when they were actually olive-shaped pickled green tomatoes;
hearing Frosty the Snowman sung as a slow dirge on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion

Information grenades: spoilers (giving away surprise endings), disinformation and misinformation spreading like wildfire through social media

U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. It marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, who at that time considered the U.S. one of its staunchest foes. The visit has become a metaphor for an unexpected or uncharacteristic action by a politician. One of the main reasons Richard Nixon became the 1952 Vice-president candidate on the Eisenhower ticket was his strong anti-communism stance. Despite this, in 1972 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit mainland China while in office. Ulysses S. Grant visited China on a world tour after leaving office. Herbert Hoover lived in China briefly in 1899 before becoming President and could speak fluent Mandarin. Dwight Eisenhower made a state visit to Taiwan in 1960, during the period when the United States recognized the government there as the sole government of China. Max Frankel of The New York Times received the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the event. The visit inspired John Adams' 1987 opera Nixon in China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Nixon_visit_to_China

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8•4H2O. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue. In recent times, turquoise, like most other opaque gems, has been devalued by the introduction of treatments, imitations, and synthetics onto the market. The substance has been known by many names, but the word turquoise, which dates to the 16th century, is derived from an Old French word for "Turkish", because the mineral was first brought to Europe from Turkey, from the mines in historical Khorasan Province of Persia. Pliny referred to the mineral as callais, the Iranians named it "pirouzeh" and the Aztecs knew it as chalchihuitl. Turquoise was among the first gems to be mined, and while many historic sites have been depleted, some are still worked to this day. These are all small-scale, often seasonal operations, owing to the limited scope and remoteness of the deposits. Most are worked by hand with little or no mechanization. However, turquoise is often recovered as a byproduct of large-scale copper mining operations, especially in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise

Amber is fossilized tree resin (not sap), which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams. See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber

Follow-up to Christmas truce in World War I During the Civil War, musical duels between the two sides were common, as they heard each other as the music traveled across the countryside. The night before the Battle of Stones River, bands from both sides dueled with separate songs, until both sides started playing Home! Sweet Home!, at which time soldiers on both sides started singing together as one. A similar situation occurred in Fredericksburg, Virginia in the winter of 1862–3. On a cold afternoon a Union band started playing Northern patriotic tunes; a Southern band responded by playing Southern patriotic tunes. This back and forth continued into the night, until at the end both sides played Home! Sweet Home! simultaneously, to the cheers of both sides' forces. In a third instance, in the spring of 1863, the opposing armies were on the opposite sides of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, when the different sides played their patriotic tunes, and at taps one side played Home! Sweet Home!, and the other joined in, creating "cheers" from both sides that echoed throughout the hilly countryside. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_American_Civil_War
Read about music during the Civil War in Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels, winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Joshua Lionel Cowen/Cohen (1877-1965) was an inventive guy and had always been very interested in trains. In 1901, he fitted a small motor under a model of a railroad flatcar, powered by a battery on 30 inches of track and the Lionel electric train was born. The first Lionel train was designed to attract window-shopping New Yorkers using the power of animated display. Since its humble beginning Lionel has sold more than 50 million train sets and today produces more than 300 miles of track each year. Youthful inventor Joshua Lionel Cowen wasn't the first to manufacture toy trains and he did not lack for competition. Carlisle & Finch Co., of Cincinnati, OH, first made electric trains in 1896 and German toy manufacturers such as Bing and Marklin were producing electric and steam-powered toy trains. The first electric train was exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The Ives Co., of Bridgeport, CT, had manufactured wind-up trains as early as 1874. Cowen beat them because he produced a reliable product, with an expanding line of accessories, while being an audacious promoter, selling his toys as educational because he knew parents needed a rationalization for their purchase. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/lionel.htm

The Task: A Poem, in Six Books (1785) is a poem in 6000 lines of blank verse by William Cowper, usually seen as his supreme achievement. Its six books are called "The Sofa", "The Timepiece", "The Garden", "The Winter Evening", "The Winter Morning Walk" and "The Winter Walk at Noon". Beginning with a mock-Miltonic passage on the origins of the sofa, it develops into a discursive meditation on the blessings of nature, the retired life and religious faith, with attacks on slavery, blood sports, fashionable frivolity, lukewarm clergy and French despotism among other things. Cowper's subjects are those that occur to him naturally in the course of his reflections rather than being suggested by poetic convention, and the diction throughout is, for an 18th century poem, unusually conversational and unartificial. Quotes:
Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour. Book 2, line 606
The cups, That cheer but not inebriate. Book 4, line 37
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Task_(poem)
Note that the temperance movement used cups that cheer in slogans such as: "Tea--the Drink That Cheers and Not Inebriates."
Read all about tea at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

The modern-day ampersand is believed to be a descendant of an earlier Latin logogram—a combination of the cursive letters e and t (et meaning and)—that was part of a shorthand system invented by Marcus Tullius Tiro, secretary and former slave of the Roman writer Cicero. The heyday of the ampersand was in the United Kingdom in the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, when it was commonly used in business documents and, perhaps most notably, in the titles of companies—partnerships in particular, such as Fortnum & Mason and Marks & Spencer. It’s still used in many names of firms and publications, including that of this magazine, Poets & Writers, now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary under the banner of a pair of nouns festively joined by an ampersand on every cover. In the twentieth century, the ampersand was rediscovered and exploited, variously, by several generations of American poets, especially those eager to declare their position outside the academic mainstream. Kevin Nance
See images of ampersands by Leo Reynolds at: http://www.pw.org/content/poets_ampersands

Dead or alive? Check whether a famous person is still alive or if they have passed away. Find birthdays too at: http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/pages-nf/main Thanks, Pete.

Books of the Year 2011 The Atlantic’s literary editor picks the five best of the crop.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/books-of-the-year-2011/8712/

Twelve Months of Reading with articles from authors, and people in the business world
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204466004577102800650505034.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_2

Quote For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. Little Gidding II.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) American born English editor, playwright, poet and critic

Little Gidding II by T.S. Eliot http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/gidding1.html

The maker of a fake driver's license app that was yanked from Apple's App Store this week has fired back, saying the free app was "specifically and deliberately designed ... to prevent the creation of counterfeit identification." Apple pulled DriversEd.com's two-year-old "Driver License" app from its iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch online app outlets at the urging of U.S. Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who in 2010 helped organize the Senate's Global Internet Freedom Caucus to promote online freedom in countries like Iran and China. Casey and the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License told Apple that they were concerned that the app, which contains templates for driver's licenses for all 50 states, could be used produce a "high quality digital image of the completed template," which could then be sent to an email account. "From the email attachment, the image can then be printed and laminated, creating a high quality counterfeit driver's license difficult to discern from one that's genuine," the coalition said in a letter sent to Apple. But DriversEd.com founder and chief operating officer Gary Tsifrin said such concerns were unfounded. "By design, it would take more effort and expertise to modify the product of the DriversEd.com Driver License app than to construct a counterfeit from scratch," Tsifrin said. Rather than high-quality license replicas, he added, the app produces images at just 72 dpi, not suitable for printing. DriversEd.com said it used design elements in the app that "deliberately do not correspond to government-issued IDs." The licenses created "incorporate obvious layout differences, font and color discrepancies, and the words 'MOCK by DriversEd.com' in proximity to the word 'license,' while containing "none of the security features of a modern government-issued ID," the company said.
DriversEd.com created the Driver License app to help market its core business, a free, full-featured driving test preparation suite, which is currently available in the App Store and in Google's Android Market
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397565,00.asp

Many automobile owners are spending more than they need on motor oil, believing that it should be changed every 3,000 miles even though almost no manufacturer requires such an aggressive oil-change schedule. The long-held notion that the oil should be changed every 3,000 miles is so prevalent that California officials have launched a campaign to stop drivers from wasting millions of gallons of oil annually because they have their vehicles serviced too often. "Our survey data found that nearly half of California drivers are still changing their oil at 3,000 miles or even sooner," said Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery, which has launched the Check Your Number campaign to encourage drivers to go with the manufacturer's recommendations. Improvement in oils, friction proofing and car engines have lengthened the oil-change interval, typically 7,500 miles to 10,000 miles for most vehicles. Changing motor oil according to manufacturer specifications would reduce motor-oil demand in California by about 10 million gallons a year, the agency said. The state has created a website, checkyournumber.org, where drivers can look up the suggested motor-oil change interval number for their vehicles. "The 3,000-mile oil change just says that the marketing campaign by quick-lube companies has been effective," said Steve Mazor, manager of the Auto Club of Southern California's Automotive Research Center. It made sense years ago, when "we had cast-iron block engines with cast-iron pistons that would expand when they got hot and older lubricants," Mazor said. Jerry Hirsch http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-autos-oil-change-20111215,0,4554184.story

Aides to Representative Rick Larsen, Democrat of Washington, broadcast via Twitter how cool it was to be sitting in the seat of power at midday while drinking Jack Daniels and watching Nirvana videos on the taxpayers’ dime. For good measure, these Aides Gone Wild sent out a couple of bad mots about their “idiot boss.” Within an hour of hearing about the indiscretions, which had continued for months on personal, not Congressional, Twitter accounts, the boss fired all three young people. Facebook, Twitter, cell phone text messages and palm-size appliances yet to sprout from Apple’s labs allow all of us to be banal in real time. From one (I’ll protect him here, even if he won’t do the same thing for himself by going silent for a day), a man known for daring urban design ideas, came these recent insights on his Twitter account:
Stuck in traffic. OMG, this light is long!
Just had the best burrito of my life!
Saw my first deliveryman on a Segway — how cool is that?
Not very, actually. Where did this compulsion for light confession come from?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/please-stop-sharing/

CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University. See an example and read about applications and guidelines at: http://www.captcha.net/

Thieves at South Gate High School in Southern California pried open a door and torn the band room apart while hunting for a specific instrument. "All they took were tubas," music teacher Ruben Gonzalez Jr. said. Losses included an upright concert tuba and a silver sousaphone — or marching-band tuba — worth a combined $13,000. Several weeks earlier, band members at Centennial High School in Compton experienced a similar shock when they found that eight sousaphones were missing. And on Dec. 6, burglars broke into Huntington Park High School and spirited away the school's last tuba, according to band instructor Fernando Almader. A silver Jupiter tuba had been stolen earlier in the school year. Those are just the latest in what police and music instructors are describing as a rash of unsolved tuba thefts at high schools in southeast Los Angeles County. The thefts, according to band leaders, were probably spurred by Southern California's banda music craze, as well as the high prices the brass instruments fetch on the black market. A high-quality tuba can cost well more than $5,000, but even an old, dented tuba can sell for as much as $2,000, music teachers say. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tuba-thefts-20111212,0,5110587.story

Christmas truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas of 1914, during the First World War. Through the week leading up to Christmas, parties of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides – as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units – independently ventured into "No man's land", where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. Troops from both sides had also been so friendly as to play games of football with one another. The truce is seen as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most violent events of modern history. It was not ubiquitous, however; in some regions of the front, fighting continued throughout the day, whilst in others, little more than an arrangement to recover bodies was made. The following year, a few units again arranged ceasefires with their opponents over Christmas, but to nothing like the widespread extent seen in 1914; this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from the high commands of both sides prohibiting such fraternisation. The truces were not unique to the Christmas period, and reflected a growing mood of "live and let live", where infantry units in close proximity to each other would stop overtly aggressive behaviour, and often engage in small-scale fraternisation, engaging in conversation or bartering for cigarettes. In some sectors, there would be occasional ceasefires to go between the lines and recover wounded or dead soldiers, whilst in others, there would be a tacit agreement not to shoot while men rested, exercised, or worked in full view of the enemy. However, the Christmas truces were particularly significant due to the number of men involved and the level of their participation – even in very peaceful sectors, dozens of men openly congregating in daylight was remarkable. Find information on books, film, music, television and description of a monument. A Christmas truce memorial was unveiled in Frelinghien, France, on 11 November 2008. Also on that day, at the spot where, on Christmas Day 1914, their regimental ancestors came out from their trenches to play football, men from the 1st Battalion, The Royal Welch Fusiliers played a football match with the German Panzergrenadier Battalion 371. The Germans won, 2–1) at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

Let your ear be your guide to the King James Bible
The extraordinary global career of this book, of which more copies have been made than of any other book in the language, began in March 1603. After a long reign as Queen of England, Elizabeth I finally died. This was the moment her cousin and heir, the Scottish King James VI, had been waiting for. Scotland was one of the poorest kingdoms in Europe, with a weak and feeble crown. ngland by comparison was civilized, fertile, and rich. When James heard that he was at last going to inherit the throne of England, it was said that he was like "a poor man … now arrived at the Land of Promise." In the course of the 16th century, England had undergone something of a yo-yo Reformation, veering from one reign to the next between Protestant and anti-Protestant regimes, never quite settling into either camp. The result was that England had two competing versions of the Holy Scriptures. The Geneva Bible, published in 1560 by a small team of Scots and English Calvinists in Geneva, drew on the pioneering translation by William Tyndale, martyred for his heresy in 1536. It was loved by Puritans but was anti-royal in its many marginal notes, repeatedly suggesting that whenever a king dared to rule, he was behaving like a tyrant. Ground rules were established by 1604: no contentious notes in the margins; no language inaccessible to common people; a true and accurate text, driven by an unforgivingly exacting level of scholarship. To bring this about, the King gathered an enormous translation committee: some 54 scholars, divided into all shades of opinion, from Puritan to the highest of High Churchmen. Six subcommittees were then each asked to translate a different section of the Bible. Each member of the six subcommittees, on his own, translated an entire section of the Bible. He then brought that translation to a meeting of his subcommittee, where the different versions produced by each translator were compared and one was settled on. That version was then submitted to a general revising committee for the whole Bible, which met in Stationers' Hall in London. Here the revising scholars had the suggested versions read aloud—no text visible—while holding on their laps copies of previous translations in English and other languages. The ear and the mind were the only editorial tools.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/king-james-bible/nicolson-text

Africa is a continent comprising 62 political territories, representing the largest of the great southward projections from the main mass of Earth's surface. Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea and from much of Asia by the Red Sea, Africa is joined to Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez. For geopolitical purposes, the Sinai Peninsula – east of the Suez Canal – is often considered part of Africa, although geographically it belongs in Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Africa

Who first proposed making health insurance compulsory?
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank did. In the late 1980s the Heritage Foundation suggested that every American be required to buy health insurance, a requirement known as the individual mandate. Many Republicans took up that idea in the early 1990s, after President Clinton introduced a plan that would have forced companies to cover employees. "I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — having health insurance and being required to have health insurance," said Newt Gingrich, then House minority whip, in 1993. When the Clinton plan collapsed in 1994, talk of the individual mandate died with it. During his 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama ran a TV ad criticizing rival candidate Hillary Clinton's support for a mandate, saying she would force everyone "to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it." But after President Obama and the Democratic Congress began to construct his health-care plan, advisers warned that free riders would undermine the objectives of extending insurance coverage to anyone who wanted it. For health reform to work, young, healthy people had to be pushed into the pool, to spread cost and risk. So the president allowed his 2010 Affordable Care Act to incorporate a provision that, by 2014, all Americans must have health coverage or face a tax penalty.
http://theweek.com/article/index/222477/the-individual-mandate-health-cares-inherent-controversy

English-only movement, also known as Official English movement, refers to a political movement for the use only of the English language in official government operations through the establishing of English as the only official language in the United States. Find about earlier English-only movements and a table of the current laws in each state at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

If it ever comes to pass that only English may be spoken, will we be allowed to say Colorado, Florida, Montana, fiesta, siesta, rodeo? Valet, ballet? Kindergarten, Oktoberfest? Spaghetti, lasagne?

Origin of state names: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0854966.html

Steeped in history and romance and almost in a class by itself, the pomegranate, Punica granatum L., belongs to the family Punicaceae which includes only one genus and two species, the other one, little-known, being P. protopunica Balf. peculiar to the island of Socotra. The pomegranate tree is native from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and has been cultivated since ancient times throughout the Mediterranean region of Asia, Africa and Europe. For enjoying out-of-hand or at the table, the fruit is deeply scored several times vertically and then broken apart; then the clusters of juice sacs can be lifted out of the rind and eaten. Italians and other pomegranate fanciers consider this not a laborious handicap but a social, family or group activity, prolonging the pleasure of dining. In the home kitchen, the juice can be easily extracted by reaming the halved fruits on an ordinary orange-juice squeezer.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/pomegranate.html
How to De-Seed a Pomegranate (Every pomegranate has 840 seeds.)
http://www.coconutandlime.com/2006/11/how-to-de-seed-pomegranate.html

One of the earliest of the 'health food fadists', Dr. James H. Salisbury, a 19th century English/American physician (1823-1905), wrote 'The Relation of Alimentation and Disease'. Make the cakes from half an inch to an inch thick. Broil slowly and moderately well over a fire free from blaze and smoke. When cooked, put it on a hot plate and season to taste with butter, pepper, salt; also use either Worcestershire or Halford sauce, mustard, horseradish or lemon juice on the meat if desired." Find his complete recipe for Salisbury steak at: http://www.foodreference.com/html/artsalisburystk.html
(In case you haven’t heard of Halford sauce, it was “Halford Leicestershire Table Sauce,” advertised in the 1880s thusly: “The Most Perfect Relish of the Day. An absolute Remedy for Dyspepsia. Invaluable to all Good Cooks. A Nutritious Combination for Children. Invaluable for Soups, Hashes, Cold Meats, and Entrées.”) http://www.metnews.com/articles/2004/reminiscing020504.htm

James Salisbury is one of many famous people interred in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. Some others are:
James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States
Lucretia Garfield, former First Lady of the United States
Marcus A. Hanna, U.S. Senator and Republican Party boss
John Hay, former United States Secretary of State and aide to President Abraham Lincoln (Hay's monument was created by sculptor James Earle Fraser)
Edwin Converse Higbee, founder of Higbee's, the first department store in Cleveland
Adella Prentiss Hughes, founder of the Cleveland Orchestra
Effie Hinckley Ober Kline, founder of the Boston Ideal Opera Company, second wife of Virgil P. Kline.
Virgil P. Kline, Abolitionist publisher and anti-trust attorney, later house counsel to John D. Rockefeller.
Garrett Morgan, inventor of the gas mask and the three-colored traffic light
Eliot Ness, detective, investigator and Cleveland safety director best known member of The Untouchables
(Ness's ashes and those of his wife Elizabeth and son Robert were scattered over a pond in the cemetery.)
Harvey Pekar, comic book writer, known for his groundbreaking series American Splendor. Ashes scattered here.
John D. Rockefeller, billionaire oil tycoon and philanthropist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_View_Cemetery

Quote
You're better than perfect. You're good.
Black Water, #3 in the Merci Rayborn series by T. Jefferson Parker

Ajiri black tea "Through the sale of Ajiri Tea, we hope to create a sustainable cycle of community employment and education." Ajiri means "to employ" in Swahili, the national language of Kenya. The leaves have a lovely sweet cocoa scent. The liquor tastes of whole wheat toast, and dark chocolate. It is a strong brew that is very basic, perfect for the morning and would hold up well to milk and sugar. It's an easy tea to over-steep, so be very careful! A teaspoon for each cup is more than enough, and watch that you don't steep for more than 3 minutes. This tea was named a 2011 North American Tea Champion for CTC Black Tea at the World Tea Expo.
http://teahappiness.blogspot.com/2011/03/ajiri-tea.html
Find retailers by state or buy online: http://www.ajiritea.com/WheretoBuy.html

69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian as Roman emperor, the last in the Year of Four Emperors.
1620 – Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1826 – American settlers in Nacogdoches, Mexican Texas, declare their independence, starting the Fredonian Rebellion.
1872 – Challenger expedition: HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sails from Portsmouth.
1879 – World première of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen.
1913 – Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.
1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theater.
1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_21

Americans are generous. In 2010, they gave $290.89 billion, according to the Giving USA Foundation—and that's from all sources, including individuals, corporations, foundations and bequests. But how much do you really know about the nonprofit world—about the finances, the institutions and the people who dominate it? Take a quiz from The Wall street Journal and find out. John M. Leger
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577044012134154658.html

Confusion on the Web: Seen this month: "we'll please your pallet" Pick the correct word from the list below:
The noun palate refers to the roof of the mouth or the sense of taste. The noun palette refers to an artist's paint board or a range of colors. The noun pallet is a straw-filled mattress or a hard bed. http://grammar.about.com/od/alightersideofwriting/a/PalatePalettePalletGlossary.htm

Oversharing on the Web: too much trivial information, strong reactions without checking facts

Poached Scrambled Eggs adapted from Daniel Patterson
Beat the eggs, cook quickly in a whirlpool of boiling water, drain immediately. Find recipe and directions at: http://events.nytimes.com/recipes/12047/2006/01/08/Poached-Scrambled-Eggs/recipe.html
More on Daniel Patterson, his "eccentric eggs," and an adaptation of NY Times recipe at: http://www.doriegreenspan.com/2007/03/eccentric-eggs-from-daniel-patterson.html

Most historians agree that Gabriel Mouton, the vicar of St. Paul's Church in Lyons, France, is the “founding father” of the metric system. He proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. Mouton based it on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the Earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). He also proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length (about 25 cm). A pendulum beating with this length would have been fairly easy to produce, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. Over the years, his work was revised, improved, and extended by a number of French scientists. The political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the French Revolutionary National Assembly was the Bishop of Autun, better known as Talleyrand. Under his auspices, the French Academy appointed several committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures for France. One of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth's meridian (i.e., one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the North Pole). Although the metric system was not accepted with enthusiasm at first, adoption by other nations occurred steadily after France made its use compulsory in 1840. The standardized structure and decimal features of the metric system made it well suited for scientific and engineering work. Consequently, it is not surprising that the rapid spread of the system coincided with an age of rapid technological development. In the United States, by Act of Congress in 1866, it became “lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealings or court proceedings.” (Note that there has never been a law explicitly making it legal to use the inch-pound system nor defining those units' values. In fact, it wasn't until the Mendenhall Order, in 1893, that the units of the inch-pound system were finally officially defined — in terms of metric measurements.)
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/origin.html

Pinto may refer to:
Conspiracy of the Pintos, a rebellion against Portuguese rule in Goa, India in 1787
Ford Pinto (1971–1980), a subcompact car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company for the North American market
Ford Pinto engine, unofficial nickname for a 4 cylinder internal combustion engine built by the Ford Motor Company in Europe
Gallo Pinto, a dish traditional to Nicaragua and Costa Rica consisting primarily of beans and rice
Pinto bean, a type of mottled bean
Pinto horse, a horse coat color that consists of large patches of white and another color Find as names and places at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinto

Thomson Reuters, the company created when Thomson, a Canadian purveyor of professional information for lawyers, accountants and others, bought Reuters in 2008, and Bloomberg are the big fish in the professional-publishing pond, at least eight times larger than their nearest competitor. Bloomberg, besides expanding its terminals business, which has over 300,000 customers (at about $20,000 a pop), is pushing into government-related news and data. In 2010 it launched Bloomberg Government, which competes with Congressional Quarterly, a sister company of The Economist. In September it made its biggest purchase ever, spending $990m on BNA, a legal- and tax-information firm. http://www.economist.com/node/21541413

Nicolas Sarkozy born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa; 28 January 1955) is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier. Sarkozy is a Frenchman of mixed national and ethnic ancestry and is the first president of France to be a mixed heritage. He is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál, in some sources Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál István Ernő), a Hungarian aristocrat, and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah who is of Greek Jewish and French Catholic origin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy

Rules for writing fiction Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This article is based on Elmore Leonard's ten writing rules. Find rules from Margaret Atwood, P.D. James and others. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one Link to second part of article with rules by Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx and others.

December 19 events
1606 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who found, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.
1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis.
1843 – Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol goes on sale.
1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.
1946 – Start of the First Indochina War.
1975 – John Paul Stevens is appointed a justice of The United States Supreme Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_19
December 20 events
1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.
1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
1989 – United States invasion of Panama: The United States sends troops into Panama to overthrow government of Manuel Noriega. This is also the first combat use of purpose-designed stealth aircraft.
1996 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X.
1999 – Macau is handed over to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.
2005 – US District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of "intelligent design" in his ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
2007 – Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_20

AN UNPUBLISHED Charlotte Bronte manuscript has sold for a record 690,850 pounds ($1.09 million) at auction. The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2, was written when Charlotte was 14 and is set in Glass Town, the earliest fictional world created by the Bronte siblings. Sotheby's had estimated it would sell for between 200,000 and 300,000 pounds at the English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations sale overnight. But the manuscript sold for more than double the top estimate, setting new auction records for a manuscript by Charlotte Bronte and for a literary work by any of the Bronte sisters. The book contains more than 4000 words on 19 pages, each measuring about 35mm by 61mm. It is dated August 1830 - 17 years before Bronte wrote Jane Eyre - and is said to have never before been seen by scholars. See picture at: http://www.news.com.au/news/bronte-book-fetches-more-than-1m/story-fn7djq9o-1226223521780

In a major surprise on the politically charged new health care law, the Obama administration said December 16 that it would not define a single uniform set of “essential health benefits” that must be provided by insurers for tens of millions of Americans. Instead, it will allow each state to specify the benefits within broad categories. The move would allow significant variations in benefits from state to state, much like the current differences in state Medicaid programs and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/health/policy/health-care-law-to-allow-states-to-pick-benefits.html

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on December 13 adopted a Report and Order that implements the 2010 Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (the CALM Act), in which Congress gave the Commission, for the first time, authority to address the problem of excessive commercial loudness. The rules require that commercials have the same average volume as the programs they accompany. The rules also establish simple, practical ways for stations and MVPDs to demonstrate their compliance with the rules. As the CALM Act requires, the rules will become effective one year after the date of their adoption, or December 13, 2012. For further information, contact Lyle Elder (202-418-2120; lyle.elder@fcc.gov). http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-restricting-loud-commercials

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them. It is also used in scholarly and historical musical contexts to refer to dramas of the 18th and 19th centuries in which orchestral music or song was used to accompany the action. The term originated from the early 19th-century French word mélodrame, which is derived from Greek melos, music, and French drame, drama (from Late Latin drāma, which in turn derives from Greek drān, to do, perform). An alternative English spelling, now obsolete, is "melodrame". Beginning in the 18th century, melodrama was a technique of combining spoken recitation with short pieces of accompanying music. In such works, music and spoken dialog typically alternated, although the music was sometimes also used to accompany pantomime. The earliest known examples are scenes in J. E. Eberlin's Latin school play Sigismundus (1753). The first full melodrama was Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Pygmalion, the text of which was written in 1762 but was first staged in Lyon in 1770. The overture and an Andante were composed by Rousseau, but the bulk of the music was composed by Horace Coignet. A different musical setting of Rousseau's Pygmalion by Anton Schweitzer was performed in Weimar in 1772, and Goethe wrote of it approvingly in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Pygmalion is a monodrama, written for one actor. Some 30 other monodramas were produced in Germany in the fourth quarter of the 18th century. When two actors are involved the term duodrama may be used. Georg Benda was particularly successful with his duodramas Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) and Medea (1778). The sensational success of Benda's melodramas led Mozart to use two long melodramatic monologues in his opera Zaide (1780). Other later, and better-known examples of the melodramatic style in operas are the grave-digging scene in Beethoven's Fidelio (1805) and the incantation scene in Weber's Der Freischütz (1821). See other examples, including Perils of Pauline and Sweeney Todd at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama

The Roots of Dickens's Christmas Books and Plays in Early Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and Pantomime
"One cannot properly appreciate the psychological realism as well as the theatrical qualities of the Christmas Books of Charles Dickens until one places these five novellas and their dramatic progeny in the context of the Hungry Forties and early Victorian drama. The central message of these seasonal productions, that the hope of the world lies in the reformation of the individual human heart and in the social reintegration of the deviate, is consistent with both the drama and the problems of the period prior to the repeal of the Corn Laws and the expiration of Chartism. Then, too, this was the age of the minor playhouses and new periodicals, innovations that indicate a cultural broadening and a new awareness of the importance of entertainment, information, and moral guidance for the middle and working classes." From the appearance of the initial serial numbers of Pickwick onward, Dickens had found himself plagiarized by dramatic adapters, and powerless to strike back since British copyright law did not protect novelists or guarantee them any financial compensation for use of their work on stage. Logically, if Dickens, in need of ready money, could not beat the pirates in court, he could derive some profit from allying himself with one of their number. Robertson Davies in the sixth volume of The Revels History of Drama in English tersely notes the essential principles of Edward Stirling and the other adapters who tackled A Christmas Carol in January, 1844: where in the original "dramatic incident was strong it was exaggerated; eccentric characters, where they existed, were made occasions for shows of professional skill" (241). With the various adaptations of the five Christmas Books, however, there were the additional characteristics of spectacular stage effects, traditional Pantomime characters, and the inclusion of as much dialogue as possible from the original novellas. In particular, the dramatist sought ingenious ways of retaining the "original" and humorous observations of the Dickensian Christmas Book narrator, even if doing so materially altered the nature of some of the story's characters. Find much more on melodrama at: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva56.html

New York City police clashed with protesters and arrested 49, some in religious garb, after they broke into a private park in Manhattan December 17. Occupy Wall Street protesters, who were evicted from their Lower Manhattan encampment last month, were marking the movement’s three-month anniversary by attempting to claim a second New York City park. They ripped holes in a fence around the park and used ladders to climb over it. Paul Browne, a spokesman for NYPD, confirmed the arrests in an e-mail. Protesters had gathered for speeches, live music and performances in Duarte Square Park in New York’s TriBeCa neighborhood. Part of the half-block parcel is city-owned public land, while the other portion belongs to Trinity Wall Street, a nonprofit religious organization and one of the city’s largest real estate holders. One of the first to enter the park by ladder was Episcopal Bishop George Packard, dressed in purple cassock with collar, who’s been a public supporter of OWS, said Dan Shockley, a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild who was at the scene. Ben Meyers, a staffer at the National Lawyers Guild office, confirmed that Packard was among those arrested. Duarte Square’s eastern edge is public parkland while an adjacent larger, fenced-in area is owned by Trinity. Occupiers haven’t been granted permission to enter the space by either Trinity or the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, to which the area is currently licensed for an art installation that’s closed for the season, said Lloyd Kaplan, a spokesman for Trinity. In a Dec. 9 statement, Reverend James H. Cooper said Trinity has “probably done as much or more for the protesters than any other institution in the area.” It’s provided Occupy members with meeting rooms, pastoral services and spaces to rest, charge mobile phones and computers, and use bathrooms, he said.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-18/nyc-police-arrest-49-protesters-in-duarte-square-park.html

The notebooks in which Sir Isaac Newton worked out the theories on which much classical science is based have been put online by Cambridge University. More than 4,000 pages have been scanned, including his annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, containing Newton's laws of motion and gravity. Newton wrote mainly in Latin and Greek, the scientific language of his time, and was reluctant to publish. The university plans to put almost all of its Newton collection online. The papers mark the launch of the Cambridge Digital Library project to digitise its collections. As well as Principia and Newton's college notebooks, the Newton Papers section of the online library contains his "Waste Book". The large notebook was inherited from his stepfather, and scholars believe it helped Newton to make significant breakthroughs in the field of calculus. A further 8,000 pages of Newton's works are to be added over the next few months. Other works which will become part of the digital library include the university's Charles Darwin collection. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-16141723

In September, the journal Science ran an article by eight prominent scientists titled "The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling." They argue that "There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students' academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism." The lead author on the piece was professor Diane Halpern of Claremont McKenna College, past president of the American Psychological Association. The Science authors, prominent psychologists or neuroscientists, find the performance of the news media sorely lacking. "Novelty-based enthusiasm, sample bias, and anecdotes account for much of the glowing characterization of SS education in the media," they write. "Factoids" promoted by advocates keep appearing in news stories around the world, even though good science has disproved or critiqued them. In the past few years, the news media have promoted a series of myths that, as it turns out, have little evidence behind them. As more misinformation is reported, the false narrative of great differences grows stronger.
Find myths and facts at: http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=5212 Thanks, Julie.

Type ingredients you have and find recipes using them at: http://www.supercook.com/

Maple syrup is a syrup usually made from the xylem sap of sugar maple, red maple, or black maple trees, although it can also be made from other maple species such as the bigleaf maple. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in the spring. Maple trees can be tapped by boring holes into their trunks and collecting the exuded sap. The sap is processed by heating to evaporate some of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup. Maple syrup was first collected and used by indigenous people of North America. The practice was adopted by European settlers, who gradually improved production methods. Technological improvements in the 1970s further refined syrup processing. Quebec, Canada is by far the largest producer, making about three-quarters of the world's output; Canada exports more than C$145 million (approximately US$141 million) worth of maple syrup per year. Vermont is the largest producer in the United States, generating about 5.5% of the global supply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup

Thanks to Joseph Farrell, Glenn Close gets shot at the end of "Fatal Attraction." Mr. Farrell, who died Wednesday at age 76, was chief executive of National Research Group, long the film industry's dominant market-research group. When NRG told studios what test audiences thought of their movies, the film bosses listened—and often made changes. In the case of "Fatal Attraction," a 1987 thriller featuring Ms. Close as a stalker, the film originally concluded with Ms. Close's character committing suicide. But Mr. Farrell's surveys showed audiences wanted her punished. The ending was reshot, and the film went on to gross more than $300 million at the box office. Another film changed based on NRG research was "The Bodyguard," which was reworked to include more action scenes featuring Kevin Costner after research showed young men were less receptive to it than young women. The film grossed more than $400 million. Hollywood has used pre-screenings to gauge audience response since the silent-film era, but Mr. Farrell drew on his earlier career with the Lou Harris polling organization to develop a systematic approach to focus groups, telephone surveys and interviews at screenings. Audience reaction was tracked to advertising, trailers, titles and plots. An accomplished painter and sculptor, he also designed furniture under the name Giuseppe Farbino.
Stephen Miller http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577086782750362996.html

This summer, Darcie Chan's debut novel became an unexpected hit. It has sold more than 400,000 copies and landed on the best-seller lists alongside brand-name authors like Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Kathryn Stockett. It's been a success by any measure, save one. Ms. Chan still hasn't found a publisher. Five years ago, Ms. Chan's novel, "The Mill River Recluse," which tells the story of a wealthy Vermont widow who bestows her fortune on town residents who barely knew her, would have languished in a drawer. A dozen publishers and more than 100 literary agents rejected it. "Nobody was willing to take a chance," says Ms. Chan, a 37-year-old lawyer who drafts environmental legislation for the U.S. Senate. "It was too much of a publishing risk." This past May, Ms. Chan decided to digitally publish it herself, hoping to gain a few readers and some feedback. She bought some ads on Web sites targeting e-book readers, paid for a review from Kirkus Reviews, and strategically priced her book at 99 cents to encourage readers to try it. She's now attracting bids from foreign imprints, movie studios and audio-book publishers, without selling a single copy in print. Self-publishing has long been derided as a last resort for authors who lack the talent or savvy to hack it in the publishing business. But it has gained a patina of legitimacy as a growing number of self-published authors land on best-seller lists. Last year, 133,036 self-published titles were released, up from 51,237 in 2006, according to Bowker, a company that tracks publishing trends. Alexandra Alter Read much more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html

tit for tat A blow or some other retaliation in return for an injury from another
Origin It's tempting to assume that this little phrase is another way of saying 'this for that' and, in a way, it is. 'Tit' and 'tat' are both the names of small blows which originated as 'tip' and 'tap'. These are recorded by Charles, Duke of Orleans in a book of poems that he wrote while captive in England after the battle of Agincourt and first published circa 1466: "Strokis grete, not tippe nor tapp." The widespread unconcern about spelling and pronunciation in the Middle Ages led to 'tip', 'tap', 'tit' and 'tat' all to be variant spellings. John Heywood appears to be the first to have used 'tit for tat', in the parable The Spider and the Flie, 1556: "That is tit for tat in this altricacion [altercation]."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tit-for-tat.html

Edward G. Robinson’s professional accomplishments include roles in 100 motion pictures, scores of plays and exactly one writing credit, for “Kibitzer.” He helped steer that play to critical and commercial success when it ran on Broadway for 120 performances in early 1929. Ten spirited cast members with the Actors Company Theater, a company in Manhattan that seeks to rediscover lost and forgotten plays, have been shaking “Kibitzer” out of its mothballs with a series of readings. The audience at Dec. 5's final performance seemed to appreciate its theme of thwarted ambition. Find the plot and more at: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/kibitzer-a-forgotten-play-doctored-by-edward-g-robinson-gets-a-reading/

Results released 12/14/11 by the National Center for Health Statistics demonstrate that the extension of dependent coverage up to age 26 has increased the number of young adults with health insurance, by even more than prior analyses had suggested. This policy, enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act, took effect for insurance plan renewals beginning on September 23, 2010, and was designed to address the fact that young adults have traditionally been the age group least likely to have health insurance. These new estimates show that from September 2010 to June 2011, the percentage of adults 19 to 25 with insurance coverage increased from 64% to 73%, which translates into 2.5 million additional young adults with coverage. This shows a marked continuation of the coverage gains from the Affordable Care Act; estimates based on data from earlier in the year showed that this provision of the Act had led to the extension of coverage to one million young adults. http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2011/YoungAdultsACA/ib.shtml

December 16 events
1431 – Henry VI of England is crowned King of France at Notre Dame in Paris.
1773 – American Revolution: Boston Tea Party – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
1811 – The first two in a series of four severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri. These four so-called mega-quakes are believed to be an ongoing cataclysmic danger that could reprise the 1811-12 series of 2,000 quakes that affected the lands of what would be eight of today's heartland states of the United States.
1907 – The Great White Fleet begins its circumnavigation of the world
1972 – Vijay Diwas: (Victory Day) is commemorated every 16 December in India as it marks its military victory over Pakistan in 1971 during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.
1978 – Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first post-Depression era city to default on its loans, owing $14,000,000 to local banks.
1998 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Operation Desert Fox – The United States and United Kingdom bomb targets in Iraq.
2003 – President George W. Bush signs the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 into law. The law establishes the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the Federal Trade Commission to enforce its provisions.
December 16 births
1770 – Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer and pianist (d. 1827)[1]
1775 – Jane Austen, English writer (d. 1817)
1899 – Sir Noel Coward, English playwright, actor and composer (d. 1973)
1900 – V. S. Pritchett, English author and critic (d. 1997)
1901 – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist (d. 1978) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_16

When architect Wilfred Armster walked through a two-acre meadow on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, Michigan to ponder a project, a dream house for a couple who loved modern architecture, he said he was struck with a sudden vision of the waist-high grass being left untouched. "And that was it," he said. The result: a long, slim bar of a building that bridges two low mounds in the field, suspended over the ground at certain points by more than 8 feet. The ends of the 230-foot long by 20-foot wide building are dug into the ground and anchored by hidden basements; massive steel H-beams support its floating length. While the long, western wall of the dark grey home has large windows overlooking the meadow, the street-side is solid cement-board save for two long, narrow glass slits. When lit, the pattern of light through the windows looks like a Mondrian painting, said owner Barbara Wilson, a lighting designer. With a shape like that on the outside, the 3,400-square-foot home has to be unusual inside. A white hallway runs its length, with three bedrooms and living spaces off the hallway. Ms. Wilson and her husband, electrical engineer Joe McElroy, 53, had the spruce-clad ceilings lowered more than a foot, to a little over 8 feet, to create a sense of coziness. Bedrooms and baths are scaled down, to encourage use of the living areas. Some of the furniture is from Ikea, which also was the source of the royal-blue kitchen. "We spent all the money on the architecture—not on fancy fixtures," Ms. Wilson said. Finished in 2007 for under $500,000, the house won a top 2011 design award from the New England chapters of the American Institute of Architects and one in 2009 from the Connecticut chapter (Mr. Armster is based in Connecticut). Juliet Chung Read more and see photos at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577080750737852644.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Ohio's new license plate and driver's license will showcase how ”Ohioans feel about Ohio." The deadline for submitting your recommendation is January 8, 2012. Pick a slogan, phrase or fact already proposed or make up your own at: https://ext.dps.state.oh.us/BMVOnlineServices.Public/NewPlateSloganVote.aspx

The "Rangers Victory Song" was written in 1940 by J. Fred Coots in tribute to the team that finished the 1939-40 season as Stanley Cup champions. He officially dedicated the song to "Lester Patrick and the New York Rangers." In addition to being a native New Yorker and avid Rangers fan, Coots was a nationally-known songwriter who authored more than 700 songs. His most famous works included "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "Love Letters in the Sand." A member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Coots died in 1985 at the age of 87, but his love for the Rangers has lived on for decades in the song played after every Blueshirts win at Madison Square Garden. See lyrics at: http://rangers.nhl.com/club/page.htm?id=53535

The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is an American lobbying group representing the interests of many businesses and trade associations. It is not an agency of the United States government. The Chamber is staffed with policy specialists, lobbyists and lawyers. Politically, the Chamber is generally considered to be a conservative organization. It usually supports Republican political candidates, though it has occasionally supported conservative Democrats. The Chamber spends more money than any other lobbying organization on a yearly basis. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's own history of itself describes it as originating from an April 22, 1912 meeting of delegates. The Chamber was created by President Taft as a counterbalance to the labor movement of the time. The Chamber generally tries to maintain amicable relationships with both parties. For instance, the Chamber supported both Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and Bill Clinton's NAFTA efforts. In 1993 the Chamber lost several members over its support for Clinton's healthcare reform efforts. The Chamber had chosen to support healthcare reform at that time due to the spiraling healthcare costs experienced by its members. However, House Republicans retaliated by urging boycotts of the organization. The Chamber operated its own cable television station, Biz-Net until 1997 in order to promote its policies. The Chamber shifted somewhat more to the right when Tom Donahue became head of the organization in 1997. By the time health care reform became a major issue again in 2010, the organization opposed such efforts. More than 90 years later, the Chamber claims a direct membership of 300,000 businesses, and 3 million through its various affiliates such as state and local chambers. Some of the Chamber’s members and donors are Goldman Sachs, Chevron, Texaco, and Aegon. The US Chamber is different from local and state chambers of commerce located in many cities, towns and states nationwide. The US Chamber focuses on national issues on the federal government level. Local and state chambers of commerce are independently started and operated organizations. Local chambers focus on local issues, and state chambers on state issues. The Washington, DC headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce occupies land that was formerly the home of Daniel Webster. The Chamber has emerged as the largest lobbying organization in America. It spent $91.7 million on lobbying in 2008, and $144.5 million in 2009, up from $18.7 million in 2000. The Chamber's lobbying expenditures in 2009 were five times as high as the next highest spender: Exxon Mobil, at $27.4 million. The Chamber had more than 150 lobbyists from 25 different firms working on its behalf in 2009. The major issues that it advocated on were in the categories of torts, government issues, finance, banking and taxes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chamber_of_Commerce

Two donkeys rescued from Greece live on an 11,000-acre estate called Angmering Park in England, owned by Anne Herries, the daughter of a late Duke of Norfolk. The donkeys wander green rolling fields during the day and dine on fresh hay and ginger snaps. They enjoy frequent tooth and hoof cleaning. At night, they sleep in a heated stable with a view of the English Channel. Donkeys have worked in Greece since the start of recorded history. They still carry food and firewood. Some haul tourists up steep steps in such vacations spots as Santorini. Animal-rights groups say the animals are now being abandoned at a growing pace by Greek owners who can't afford them. The market for work donkeys has plummeted along with demand for Greek debt. The Donkey Sanctuary, based in England's southwest region of Devon, funds a Greek rescue facility that costs €45,000 a year, or about $60,000. Another U.K.-based charity, Greek Animal Rescue, raises about €150,000 per year, with a portion earmarked for a donkey sanctuary on the island of Kos. Some rescued donkeys work a bit to break up the day. At the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon, donkeys give rides to emotionally-troubled children as therapy. Others make house calls to comfort the elderly. Sara Schaefer Muñoz
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204397704577072590201172360.html

The Wikipedia reference desk works like a library reference desk. Users leave questions on the reference desk and Wikipedia volunteers work to help you find the information you need. Before asking a question, please try using the search boxes to search Wikipedia as a whole or the Reference Desk archives. You can often find the answer you're looking for more quickly with a search than by waiting for a response. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk

December 15
1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.
1917 – World War I: An armistice is reached between the new Bolshevik government and the Central Powers.
1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.
1945 – Occupation of Japan: General Douglas MacArthur orders that Shinto be abolished as the state religion of Japan.
1946 – US-backed Iranian troops evict the leadership of the breakaway Republic of Mahabad, putting an end to the Iran crisis of 1946.
1954 – The Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands is signed.
1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People's Republic of China and cut off all relations with Taiwan
2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_15

Response to NY Times article and editorial on teaching law
Stanley Fish of Yale Law School says that one can make the case that the practice of law is more than a technical/strategic exercise in which doctrines, precedents, rules and tests are marshaled in the service of a client’s cause. The marshaling takes place within an enterprise that is purposive. That is, law is more than an aggregation of discrete tactics and procedures; it is an enterprise informed by a vision of how the state can and cannot employ the legalized violence of which it is the sole proprietor. That vision will come into view in the wake of a set of inquiries. What obligations do citizens owe one another? How far can the state go in enforcing those obligations? What restrictions on what the state can do to (and for) its citizens should be in place? How do legal cultures differ with respect to these issues?
Read much more at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/teaching-law/

The Mark Twain legacy CD, titled Mark Twain: Words & Music, combines spoken word and Americana music to tell the life story of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. It was created to commemorate 2010 – The Year of Mark Twain– and was produced by Grammy award-winning producer/musician/singer/songwriter Carl Jackson who also wrote some original music for the project and recorded one of his compositions (Safe Water). It was hoped that the CD would have been ready by Nov. 30, 2010 (the 175th birthday of Sam Clemens), but to accommodate the busy schedules of the generous artists who stepped forward to help with this project, production ran a little longer than anticipated (as did the paperwork). The double-CD, which is carried on Jimmy Buffett's label, Mailboat Records, became available for purchase on September 21, 2011. http://www.marktwainmuseum.org/index.php/community-projects/mark-twain-cd
Buffett has made a career of writing and singing about life on the water and is a huge Twain fan. He not only agreed to participate, but also made the decision to release the final project on his own label, Mailboat Records. He even came on board as the voice of Huck Finn, Twain's most beloved character. The final project resulted in Mark Twain: Words & Music, a double-CD with a 40-page booklet of liner notes was written and produced to benefit the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum and tells Twain's life from comet to comet in spoken word and song. The CD includes a mixture of narration, Twain's dialogue, and Huck's voice along with a combination of old music and new songs written specifically for this project. Entertainers include best-selling author and rock star Jimmy Buffett; nine-time Grammy winner Sheryl Crow; multiple Academy Award-winning film director and star Clint Eastwood; best-selling author and radio host Garrison Keillor; and a Who's Who of Country and Bluegrass music legends including Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Carl Jackson, Ricky Skaggs, Emmylou Harris, Joe Diffie and more. Dr. Cindy Lovell , Executive Director of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, originally conceived the idea.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-twain-words-music-benefit-131000315.html

Jacob Soll is a historian whose meticulously researched studies of early modern Europe are shedding new light on the origins of the modern state. Drawing on intellectual, political, cultural, and institutional history, Soll explores the development of political thought and criticism in relation to governance from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in Western Europe. Soll's first book, Publishing "The Prince" (2005), examines the role of commentaries, editions, and translations of Machiavelli produced by the previously little-studied figure Amelot de La Houssaye (1634-1706), who became the most influential writer on secular politics during the reign of Louis XIV. Grounded in extensive analysis of archival, manuscript, and early printed sources, Soll shows how Amelot and his publishers arranged prefaces, columns, and footnotes in a manner that transformed established works, imbuing books previously considered as supporting royal power with an alternate, even revolutionary, political message . In The Information Master (2009), he investigates the formation of a state-information gathering and classifying network by Louis XIV's chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), revealing that Colbert's passion for information was both a means of control and a medium for his own political advancement: his systematic and encyclopedic information collection served to strengthen and uphold Louis XIV's absolute rule. http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.7731011/k.1A2A/Jacob_Soll.htm
In September, Rutgers history professor Jacob Soll received word that he had been selected as a 2011 MacArthur Fellow. The honor, which recognizes creative accomplishments in varied fields, is known as the "genius grant" and comes with a $500,000 financial award to be used over five years. Soll's scholarship focuses on the birth of information systems in modern Europe mixing the history of science, finance, libraries and politics. http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2011/09/28/a-conversation-with-2011-macarthur-fellow-jacob-soll/
"Libraries are the vital organs of democracies. Online libraries are great, but open-stack shelves are absolutely necessary arteries of knowledge." Jacob Soll Iowa Alumni Magazine December 2011

Quotes
. . . before Lillian knew that words had a meaning beyond the music of their inflections, her mother had read aloud to her.
Perhaps, Lillian thought, smells were for her what printed words were for others, something alive that grew and changed.
. . . one of the essential lessons in cooking is how extraordinary the simplest foods can be when they are prepared with care and the freshest ingredients.
Life is beautiful. Some people just remind you of that more than others.
It's not always easy to slow our lives down. But just in case we need a little help, we have a natural opportunity, three times a day, to relearn the lesson.
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister, a first novel about a cooking class in a restaurant where food is thought of as a gift of love, and fragrant cooking smells are described beautifully. Each chapter has a small picture of a food that is important to the person featured in the chapter.
Bauermeister has also written Joy for Beginners. She is co-author of two non-fiction books – 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader's Guide and Let's Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

Build your own surveys, spreadsheets and other documents. Find ideas at: https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=1209600&continue=https://docs.google.com/&followup=https://docs.google.com/<mpl=homepage

Haiku is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities: The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colours the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related. Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae), in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively. Any one of the three phrases may end with the kireji. Although haiku are often stated to have 17 syllables, this is incorrect as syllables and on are not the same. Modern Japanese gendai (現代) haiku are increasingly unlikely to follow the tradition of 17 on or to take nature as their subject, but the use of juxtaposition continues to be honoured in both traditional haiku and gendai. In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line while haiku in English often appear in three lines to parallel the three phrases of Japanese haiku. Previously called hokku, haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century. In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the then norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku. Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximates the duration of 17 Japanese on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

December 14
557 A large earthquake severely damaged the city of Constantinople.
1782 In Avignon, France, the Montgolfier brothers conducted their first test of their hot air balloon.
1911 The first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four others arrived at the pole, five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Source: Wikipedia