Around 1912, Ellen Shipman (1869-1950) began her career as a garden designer in Cornish, New Hampshire, and gained a mentor in the architect Charles Platt. Platt’s assistant taught her draftsmanship, and from Platt himself she developed a taste for strong axial garden layouts and tight visual connectivity between house and garden. She held her own, however, in preferring the simple clean geometries of Colonial gardens. By 1920, she had opened an office in New York City, where she hired graduates of the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture. Her most noted gardens are Longue Vue Gardens in New Orleans, the Cummer Estate (now the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida), and Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, the latter where she was recommended by Warren H. Manning. Among her rare commercial projects are Lake Shore Boulevard, Grosse Point, Michigan and Aetna Life, Hartford, Connecticut. http://tclf.org/pioneer/ellen-shipman

The Carson Family Fund through the Toledo Community Foundation committed a significant gift to Metroparks to further the restoration of the historical Ellen Biddle Shipman garden at the Wildwood Manor House. In the latest project, the garden was extended in front of the garden, approximately in the footprint of a former swimming pool. The timing of the project seems fitting because this year marks the 75th anniversary of the garden, which was designed and built by Shipman, a pioneer in the field of landscape design. The Manor House is one of the few places you can still see an original Shipman garden. See picture at: http://www.metroparkstoledo.com/metro/item.asp?item_id=3934

See a guide to the Ellen Shipman papers, 1914-1946 held at Cornell: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/pdf_guides/RMM01259s_A.pdf

See pictures of Shipman's New England gardens at: http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/457.pdf

Search America's historic newspapers pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

When you look closely at the people crowding Hong Kong's busy shopping streets, in many cases their eyeglasses have no glass. The plastic frames, usually in black, tortoiseshell or bright colors, are empty. Some reasons: "for fashion," "It makes my eyes look bigger," and "Those black circles are so seriously bad, I try to find some way to cover it." Not everyone is crazy about the trend, which optical industry executives say originated in Japan in the 1990s, mostly died away and then resurfaced recently with a vengeance among urbanites, male and female, in China, South Korea and Taiwan. Alex Frangos http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577044020959385832.html

Stuck in a "deep freeze" for millennia, a mysterious mountain range deep under the Antarctic ice is finally coming to light. The Gamburtsev Mountains appear to be part of a rift—a series of ridges that form where Earth's tectonic plates separate—that once stretched about 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) long, a new study says. The rift may have been created about 250 million years ago, during the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. That landmass included today's East Antarctica, India, Africa, and Australia, said study co-author Fausto Ferraccioli of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England. Buried under about three miles (five kilometers) of ice, the Gamburtsev Mountains weren't even found until the mid-1900s, when Russian explorers recorded unusual gravity fluctuations emanating from beneath the ice. Subsequent studies have revealed a giant range, on par with the European Alps, with the highest peaks rising nearly 15,000 feet (4,500 meters). Richard A. Lovett http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111116-antarctica-mountains-mystery-ice-science-earth/

Nuts and Crackers In this annual holiday-themed performance, students from Fort Wayne Dance Collectives’s School for Movement Studies and Creative Process showcase what they’ve learned in the Fall semester.
Sunday, December 18 at 2 p.m. Email info@fwdc.org or call 424-6574 for more information.

"Get Up and Get Moving" Fort Wayne Dance Collective is a nonprofit organization, whose mission is to provide people of all ages and abilities a respectful environment to learn, collaborate and perform using movement, rhythm and language. See video at: http://fwdc.org/

Nov. 30 in history
1782 American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris – In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).
1803 In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.
1804 The Democratic-Republican-controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase.
1824 First ground is broken at Allenburg for the building of the original Welland Canal.
1829 First Welland Canal opens for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking.
1872 The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.
1886 The Folies Bergère stages its first revue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_30

Nov. 30 birthdays
1965 Ben Stiller
1952 Mandy Patinkin
1874 Winston Churchill
1874 Lucy Maud Montgomery
1835 Mark Twain

In the world of dance, there is a tradition that dates back the to the late 19th century – the tradition of The Nutcracker, the marvelous ballet Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was commissioned by Marius Petipa to compose for Russia’s Kirov Ballet. Based on Alexandre Dumas’ adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s book, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” which was published in the early 1800s, the ballet was choreographed by Lev Ivanov and conducted at that premiere performance on Dec. 8, 1890 by Riccardo Drigo. Marius Petipa, renowned dancer/choreographer who choreographed the composer’s Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty Ballet, wrote the libretto for The Nutcracker, to which Tchaikovsky composed the music. The Nutcracker was one of the composer’s final works. He died November 6, 1893 a year after its premiere. The Nutcracker ballet was performed in various parts of its native Russia after its debut at the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg. It took almost forty years before it made it to Europe. It first appeared in the United States performed by the Ballet Russe in 1940. It is often performed with movements transposed, and for a long time The Nutcracker Suite, eight selections from the ballet which Tchaikovsky himself selected, was mistaken for the entire 90-minute ballet. The Suite premiered a year before the complete ballet was performed.
http://www.arttimesjournal.com/dance/Dec_06_Trevens/Dec_06_Nutcracker.htm

HOBOKEN, Belgium—Dirk Denoyelle got his first Lego set when he was 7 years old. Today, he has nearly three million pieces. In between, he earned an engineering degree, learned several languages and became a stand-up comedian. Mr. Denoyelle is a proud Adult Fan of Lego, or AFOL, as aficionados call themselves. "We still see ourselves as a toy company, but the world is challenging us on that," says Tormod Askildsen, a senior director at Lego headquarters in Billund, Denmark. Lego is in contact with about 90 fan groups boasting roughly 70,000 members throughout the world, says Mr. Askildsen. Many of them are adults with strong opinions. Adults increasingly use Lego in business for graphics, modeling and education. So many professionals use Lego that the company is rethinking its Certified Professionals program, which began in 2005, to make it seem less elitist, says Lego spokesman Andrew Arnold. As of now, the 13 LCPs, who act as goodwill ambassadors, aren't paid by Lego but must adhere to its strict decency standards, such as no weapons. In return, they get to buy bricks wholesale. Daniel Michaels See pictures at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203503204577038164225658328.html

The sestina is a challenging form in which, rather than simply rhyming, the actual line-ending words are repeated in successive stanzas in a designated rotating order. A sestina consists of six 6-line stanzas, concluding with a 3-line “envoi” which incorporates all the line-ending words, some hidden inside the lines. Find links to a glossary of poetic forms and examples of sestinas at: http://poetry.about.com/od/poeticforms/g/sestina.htm

A E I O U, más sabe el burro que tú. (A E I O U, the donkey knows more than you.) Spanish jingle

Y can make a vowel sound; for instance, sympathy uses Y as a vowel twice. Rhythm uses Y and H as vowels. (The H makes a brief, indeterminate vowel sound.) Syzygy uses Y as a vowel three times. (The second Y is a brief, indeterminate vowel sound.)

A dash of high-quality oil provides an intense burst of unusual flavor to a portion of vegetables, an ordinary salad dressing or even a piece of bread, chefs say. Reddish-green and nutty-tasting, pumpkin seed oil is among the fastest growing in popularity. Like pumpkin itself, it is suitable for both sweet and savory dishes. Avocado oil imparts a light fruitiness to salad dressings; macadamia-nut oil works on salads, too, and is ideal for baking. Amber-red argan oil, an expensive Moroccan import, has a deep, almost meaty flavor suitable for hearty dishes. At Kalustyan's, a Manhattan grocer that specializes in imported spices, oils and vinegars, co-owner Aziz Osmani says his best-selling specialty oils are argan, pumpkin seed and pistachio—neon green, with an intense pistachio perfume. Most are bought by professional chefs, Mr. Osmani says, although he is seeing more interest from "people who are really foodies." J.S. Marcus
See pictures and read tips from chefs at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204358004577032440100359370.html

Remove tarnish from aluminum pots
Combine 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar with 1 quart of water or combine 2 tablespoons of white vinegar and a sliced lemon with 1 quart of water. For pots larger than 1 quart, make enough liquid to cover the tarnished portion, but preserve the ingredients ratio. Pour the mixture into the aluminum pot. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Allow the mixture to boil for 20 minutes. Rinse the pot to remove residue. Dry thoroughly with a towel.
http://www.ehow.com/how_12100337_remove-tarnish-aluminum-pots.html

Cream of tartar, more technically known as potassium hydrogen tartrate, is a fine white powder with many culinary applications. It is a byproduct of the winemaking process as the powder forms inside wine barrels during fermentation. It comes from tartaric acid, a naturally occurring substance in grapes and some other tart fruits that in the principle acid in winemaking. It helps to help control the pH of fermenting grape juice (wine) and that also acts as a preservative for the wine. Tartaric acid has been used in winemaking for centuries (when separated from grapes and purified, it is a white powder that is similar to cream of tartar) and cream of tartar has been around just as long, put to use by creative cooks in a variety of culinary applications. It is an acid and it is often used as a major component in baking powder, combined with baking soda to react when the mixture is moistened to ensure that baked goods will rise well. Although it is an acid, the cream of tartar and the baking soda will not react when dry, so the entire reaction is saved for the mixing bowl and the oven. http://bakingbites.com/2008/07/what-is-cream-of-tartar/

The Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization of science centers and museums dedicated to furthering public engagement with science among increasingly diverse audiences. ASTC encourages excellence and innovation in informal science learning by serving and linking its members worldwide and advancing their common goals. http://www.astc.org/about/index.htm

See short demonstration titled Quantum Levitation from ASTC at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA Thanks, Paul.

IOWA CITY – A 7,000-year-old archaeological site in Des Moines is so well-preserved and complete that it will provide researchers with exciting insight into the types of tools the people in the village used, the types of animals they kept and ate and the types of seeds they planted, University of Iowa archaeologists said August 18 after the find was announced. The site, nicknamed “the Palace” because of its size and preservation, yielded the remains of two humans, a woman and an infant, that are the oldest human bones to be found in the state. “It’s always fun to find the oldest of something … but the real significance lies in how well-preserved it is,” State Archaeologist John Doershuk said. “This site is important because it was intensively occupied and very quickly river floods sealed the deposits and very quickly preserved items that otherwise could have been lost. It’s all about preservation context, and that’s what this site really has in abundance that other sites don’t.” Because so many items were found together at the site – UI archaeologists gathered more than 6,000 artifacts – it helps researchers put into context the information they learn about how the villagers lived, what they ate and how they were developing as a people, Doershuk said. “It’s all the archaeological questions that anthropologists wish they could answer in more detail but often can’t,” he said. Construction work was ongoing at the site, the future home of a new wastewater treatment facility north of the Des Moines River in southeast Des Moines, when workers moving dirt noted charcoal and burned earth stains, Doershuk said. The Office of the State Archaeologist, based at the UI, was called to the site in December 2010 to monitor the work and investigate interesting findings. The site is owned by the Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority, made up of 16 metro area municipalities, counties and sewer districts. Anytime a project has federal permitting or federal funding, like this one does, it triggers certain requirements, including archaeological studies, Doershuk said. The UI archaeologists worked through May to collect as much information and as many artifacts as possible before construction work had to return to that portion of the site. They found the remnants of four oval-shaped deposits, possibly houses, as large as 800 square feet with hearths.
http://thegazette.com/2011/08/18/ui-archaeologists-find-7000-year-old-site-in-des-moines/

America has a new poet laureate as of August 10, when the Library of Congress named Philip Levine in the one-year position. He succeeds W.S. Merwin in the post. Born in Detroit in 1928, Levine has used his poetry to examine blue-collar life, often embroidering everyday events with a sense of myth. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington called Levine "one of America's great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling 'The Simple Truth'—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/10/139348573/philip-levine-named-as-americas-new-poet-laureate

See Philip Levine biography, awards and other resources at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Levine_(poet)

earmark noun identification mark on the ear of a domestic animal, a distinctive characteristic or attribute
a distinguishing quality, a distinctive nature, character, or type
earmark verb give or assign a resource to a particular person or cause
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/earmark

Almost 13 years ago, Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., directed $375,000 in federal funding "to improve State Road 31" in Columbus, Ind., a city at the edge of his district. The McIntosh "earmark" seemed routine at the time, like almost 2,000 other congressional pet projects that lawmakers inserted into the 1998 highway bill. But there was a problem: "There is no State Road 31 that travels through Columbus, only U.S. 31," says Will Wingfield, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation. The error hurt all of Indiana and has wrapped the earmark in red tape to this day. The money not only remains unspent, but because Congress counts money earmarked for highway projects against a state's share of federal gas tax revenue, the amount of the earmark reduced what Indiana would have received in federal funding — almost dollar for dollar. See a table showing lost money by states at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-01-04-earmarks_N.htm

When the recession squeezed Miami's budget in recent years, officials reached into funds raised for road repairs and other projects to plug the shortfall. In Miami, the Securities and Exchange Commission is wrapping up an investigation into whether the city used funds intended for roads and other purposes to fill budget gaps elsewhere, according to people close to the probe. Bondholders are suing, saying the moves obscured the city's true finances. The city's former budget director is also suing, claiming he was fired for cooperating with the SEC and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Modoc County, Calif., officials were ordered last year by the state controller to repay more than $13 million they moved, including state and federal tax dollars earmarked for schools, roads, welfare programs and other projects. The county, as late as 2008, channeled some of those restricted funds into its main hospital. When Ecorse, Mich., ran into a financial crunch in 2008 and 2009, the city used more than $2 million intended for schools and other areas to fill budget shortfalls, according to a state audit. Portland, Ore., over the past five years used money raised for water and sewers to pay for other purposes, including remodeling a building for the nonprofit foundation that runs the city's Rose Festival, according to a March report by the city auditor.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203503204577035931801712666.html

Q: I read there's a place in Ohio with 18 covered bridges.
A: It's Ashtabula County, which also claims the nation's longest and shortest covered bridges. The longest, at 613 feet, was dedicated three years ago. The shortest, just 18 feet, replaced an old bridge in Geneva in August. A bus passing through looks like a hot dog in a bun. Associated Press
Q: Does the Constitution prohibit members of certain religious denominations from becoming president?
A: It says "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office of public Trust under the United States." U.S. Archives http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Nov/JU/ar_JU_111411.asp?d=111411,2011,Nov,14&c=c_13

Find calendars, holidays, moon phases and more at: http://www.calendar-365.com/

Congressional Cemetery - for presidents and residents alike
In 1807 the first burial ground in the new federal city was founded. Because of its close proximity to the seat of government members of Congress, military and government officials were interred, along with a number of ordinary citizens. The Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery maintains and operates the 35+ acres, 14,000 headstones, and burial place of over 55,000 people whose stories are part of our American History.
http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/
Frequently asked questions: http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/faq
Histories of Congressional Cemetery: http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/histories-congressional-cemetery
Find well-known people such as J. Edgar Hoover and John Philip Sousa in the Interment Index: http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/interment-index-0

Beginning September 1, 2009, prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls to consumers – commonly known as robocalls – will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls, the Federal Trade Commission announced today. “American consumers have made it crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year,” said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. “Starting September 1, this bombardment of prerecorded pitches, senseless solicitations, and malicious marketing will be illegal. If consumers think they’re being harassed by robocallers, they need to let us know, and we will go after them.” The new requirement is part of amendments to the agency’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that were announced a year ago. After September 1, sellers and telemarketers who transmit prerecorded messages to consumers who have not agreed in writing to accept such messages will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call. The rule amendments going into effect on September 1 do not prohibit calls that deliver purely “informational” recorded messages – those that notify recipients, for example, that their flight has been cancelled, an appliance they ordered will be delivered at a certain time, or that their child’s school opening is delayed. Such calls are not covered by the TSR, as long as they do not attempt to interest consumers in the sale of any goods or services. For the same reason, the rule amendments also do not apply to calls concerning collection of debts where the calls do not seek to promote the sale of any goods or services. In addition, calls not covered by the TSR – including those from politicians, banks, telephone carriers, and most charitable organizations – are not covered by the new prohibition. The new prohibition on prerecorded messages does not apply to certain healthcare messages. The new rule prohibits telemarketing robocalls to consumers whether or not they previously have done business with the seller. Under a previous rule that took effect on December 1, 2008, telemarketing robocall messages by businesses covered by the TSR must tell consumers how to opt-out of further calls at the start of the message, and provide an automated opt-out mechanism that is voice or keypress-activated. Prerecorded messages left on answering machines must also provide a toll-free number that connects to the automated opt-out mechanism. After September 1, consumers who receive prerecorded telemarketing calls but have not agreed to get them should file a complaint with the Commission, either on the donotcall.gov Web site or by calling 1-888-382-1222.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/08/robocalls.shtm

Rachel/Michelle/Heather of Cardholder Services robocalls cannot be prevented "because credit card companies aren't covered by these new regulations." http://www.startribune.com/blogs/56621147.html

Robocalls are made by all political parties in the United States, including but not limited to both the Republican and Democratic parties as well as unaffiliated campaigns, 527 organizations, unions, and individual citizens. Political robocalls are exempt from the United States National Do Not Call Registry. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations prohibit telemarketers from using automated dialers to call cell phone numbers. However, political groups are excluded from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) definition of telemarketer, thus robocalls from or on behalf of political organizations are permitted under the FTC rules however they are prohibited by FCC rules that prohibit all robocalls (including charity and political calls) when made to cell phones and certain other numbers, without express consent or an emergency purpose. The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) regulates automated calls. While political calls are exempt from FTC regulations, all calls, irrespective of whether they are political in nature, must do two things to be considered legal. The federal law requires all telephone calls using pre-recorded messages to identify who is initiating the calls and include a telephone number or address whereby the initiator can be reached. The TCPA prohibits all prerecorded calls to cell phones, except those made with express consent or emergency purposes. Some states (23 according to DMNews) have laws that regulate or prohibit political robocalls. Indiana and North Dakota prohibit automated political calls. In New Hampshire, political robocalls are allowed—except when the recipient is in the National Do Not Call Registry. Many states require the disclosure of who paid for the call, often requiring such notice be recorded in the candidate's own voice. The patch-work of state laws regulating political robocalls has created problems for national campaigns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocall

Before computers, photo manipulation was achieved by retouching with ink, paint, double-exposure, piecing photos or negatives together in the darkroom, or scratching Polaroids. Airbrushes were also used, whence the term "airbrushing" for manipulation. The first recorded case of photo manipulation was in the early 1860s, when a photo of Abraham Lincoln was altered using the body from a portrait of John C. Calhoun and the head of Lincoln from a famous seated portrait by Mathew Brady – the same portrait which was the basis for the original Lincoln Five-dollar bill. The 1980s saw the advent of digital retouching with Quantel computers running Paintbox, and Scitex imaging workstations being used professionally. Silicon Graphics computers running Barco Creator became available in the late 1980s which, alongside other contemporary packages, were effectively replaced in the market by Adobe Photoshop. Photo manipulation is as old as photography itself; contrary to the idea of a photo having inherent verisimilitude. Photo manipulation has been regularly used to deceive or persuade viewers, or for improved story-telling and self-expression. Oftentimes even subtle and discreet changes can have profound impacts on how we interpret or judge a photograph which is why learning when manipulation has occurred is important. Joseph Stalin made use of photo retouching for propaganda purposes. On May 5, 1920 his predecessor Vladimir Lenin held a speech for Soviet troops that Leon Trotsky attended. Stalin had Trotsky retouched out of a photograph showing Trotsky in attendance. Nikolai Yezhov, an NKVD leader photographed alongside Stalin in at least one photograph, was edited out of the photograph after his execution in 1940. A notable case of a controversial photo manipulation was a 1982 National Geographic cover in which editors photographically moved two Egyptian pyramids closer together so that they would fit on a vertical cover. This case triggered a debate about the appropriateness of photo manipulation in journalism; the argument against editing was that the magazine depicted something that did not exist, and presented it as fact. There were several cases since the National Geographic case of questionable photo manipulation, including editing a photo of Cher on the cover of Redbook to change her smile and her dress. Another example occurred in early 2005, when Martha Stewart's release from prison was featured on the cover of Newsweek; her face was placed on a slimmer woman's body to suggest that she had lost weight while in prison. Another famous instance of controversy over photo manipulation, this time concerning race, arose in the summer of 1994. After O.J. Simpson was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife and her friend, multiple publications carried his mugshot. Notably, TIME Magazine published an edition featuring an altered mugshot credited to Matt Mahurin, removing the photograph's color saturation (perhaps inadvertently making Simpson's skin darker), burning the corners, and reducing the size of the prisoner ID number. This appeared on newsstands right next to an unaltered picture by Newsweek. A further noted example is the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy (2006), when the photographer in question retouched war images using the clone tool to increase the size of a smoke plume and to duplicate flares. There is a growing body of writings devoted to the ethical use of digital editing in photojournalism. In the United States, for example, the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) have set out a Code of Ethics promoting the accuracy of published images, advising that photographers "do not manipulate images [...] that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects." Infringements of the Code are taken very seriously, especially regarding digital alteration of published photographs, as evidenced by a case in which Pulitzer prize-nominated photographer Allan Detrich resigned his post following the revelation that a number of his photographs had been manipulated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_manipulation

When Michael Crichton died at age 66 in November 2008, he left behind a pregnant wife, an unpublished novel and the beginnings of another book. His son, John Michael Crichton Jr., was born four months later. His 16th novel, Pirate Latitudes, was published in November 2009. On November 28, Micro (Harper, $28.99), a techno-thriller that Crichton worked on during cancer treatments, will be released. It was completed by Richard Preston. Preston, 57, a former veterinarian, is best known for The Hot Zone, a 1994 non-fiction best seller about the ebola virus, and The Cobra Event, a 1998 novel about the terrorist release of a fictional virus. Preston never met Crichton but recalls being thrilled as a teen by Crichton's first best seller, The Andromeda Strain, about a deadly alien microorganism. It was published in 1969, the year Crichton graduated from medical school. Preston says, "The Hot Zone was a non-fiction answer to The Andromeda Strain." http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2011-11-21/micro-michael-crichton-richard-preston/51340362/1

John F. Kennedy quotes
"If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live." Address at Harvard University, June 14, 1956
"The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose...and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization." Statement prepared for Creative America, 1963 (Inscribed at the Kennedy Center for the performing Arts)
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx

Famous authors who died on November 22, 1963 are Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. Find list of well-known people who died on November 22 of various years at: http://www.brainyhistory.com/daysdeath/death_november_22.html

Find obituaries listed by November, by the years 2007-2011, and from archives at: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/obituaries/index.html

Despite rising online book sales and digital downloads and the Great Recession, bookstores in the Nashville area were profitable—right up until they closed. Even Davis-Kidd, locally owned until the Joseph-Beth Booksellers chain purchased it in 1997, had been solvent, undone not by the collapse of the local market but by the bankruptcy of the parent company. (The local Barnes & Noble, at the Opry Mills mall, was closed after a 2010 flood.) Nashville lost its bookstores not because people there had abandoned physical books and retailers. For the most part, it lost them remotely, at the corporate level. Nashville’s story is not unique. When Borders declared bankruptcy in February, more than 200 of its 400 outlets were still “highly profitable,” says its final chief executive officer, Mike Edwards. There’s no question that the book industry is in flux, with digital sales last year making up about $900 million of the $28 billion-a-year market and increasing fast. But a sizable portion of the book business is still taking place in actual stores. The one thing Borders did have going for it was its huge selection, yet even that wasn’t worth as much as the company thought. An average Borders superstore stocked around 140,000 titles at immense cost, but if a customer craves selection, no store can compete with the long tail of the Internet. Maybe more crucially for Borders, the assortment of titles that provided the key to its identity didn’t give it a competitive edge over Barnes & Noble. From 1999 onward, though, Borders was headed by six different CEOs, none of whom stayed long enough to make the company work. In 2008, Borders launched 14 “concept stores,” as part of what it called “a new shopping experience.” Customers were expected to travel to these massive stores to use download stations for books and music, which just isn’t how e-commerce works. In Nashville, retailers are springing up to fill the bookstore void. In November, Vanderbilt moved its university bookstore into the 27,000 square feet formerly occupied by Borders. Just a mile away, BookMan BookWoman, a used bookstore, has started stocking new titles, mostly New York Times bestsellers or books by local authors. Novelist and local resident Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder, will open a bookstore in Nashville in November. Called Parnassus, after the Greek mountain that is the mythological home of poetry and learning, Patchett’s store will be a 10th the size of the average Borders. “I want to do it brilliantly at 2,500 square feet,” she says, “not struggle in something the size of Macy’s.” Like many others in Nashville, she was waiting for someone to do something about the city’s bookstore drought.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-end-of-borders-and-the-future-of-books-11102011.html

Favignana is a wonderful Mediterranean island full of colours and traditions. It is the biggest one of the Egladi islands (the other ones are Levanzo, Marettimo, Formica and Maraone) being characterized by a level land where there is just a hill called S.Caterina and many natural marvels. Its sea is very clear, uncontaminated and full of fish while its coast is essentially rocky but also very accessible. All around this island you can find many beaches made up by thin sand that can be white or pink. Here the climate is mild characterized by a long summertime that starts in May and finishes in October. During the first part of May there is the traditional tuna fishing. This island takes its name from “Favonio” that is a hot wind coming from the west and its shape recalls which one of a butterfly. Its chalky soil has always allowed the tufa stones mining: this material, in fact, has been used to build many houses in Sicily and in North Africa.
http://www.goingthroughitaly.com/1223/favignana-the-butterfly-shaped-island/

Limestone refers to sedimentary rocks that contain a minimum of 50 percent of calcium carbonate in their composition. Minor components include clay, iron, feldspar, and quartz. Limestone is formed by the deposition of calcium carbonate suspended in the water or by the accumulation of shells and other fossilized materials. Limestone rock types include chalk, coquina, travertine, tufa, as well as oolitic and lithographic limestone.
http://www.ehow.com/info_8212230_limestone-rock-types.html

Ever growing use of software and wireless technology in modern cars exposes users to unknown risks to personal safety while driving, according to security technology company McAfee. In a new report on emerging risks in automotive system security, McAfee said that researchers have already demonstrated potential attacks on running cars such as opening doors and starting car engines by using text messages. The risk of losing control and privacy increases if hackers gain access to the cars physically, but malicious hacking could target drivers remotely as well, said the report. The report said that "researchers have showed that an attack can be mounted to track a vehicle and compromise passengers' privacy by tracking the RFID tags using powerful long-distance readers at around 40 meters." The report, 'Caution: Malware Ahead', published in conjunction with Wind River and ESCRYPT, examines the security of electrical systems that have become commonplace in today's cars. Modern cars have become ever more reliant on wireless systems such as Bluetooth and software to function. McAfee said that software is embedded in several car parts now including airbags, power seats, anti-lock braking systems, electronic stability controls, autonomous cruise controls, communication systems and in-vehicle communication.
http://security.cbronline.com/news/modern-cars-vulnerable-to-remote-malicious-attacks-mcafee-090911

Caution: Malware Ahead Read the 12-page report at:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-caution-malware-ahead.pdf

Thanksgiving recipes http://thanksgiving.food.com/
Number to Know 3: Number of places in the United States named after the holiday's traditional main course. Turkey, Texas, was the most populous in 2009, with 445 residents, followed by Turkey Creek, La., (362) and Turkey, N.C. (272). There are also nine townships around the country named Turkey, three in Kansas. – Census.gov
This Day in History Nov. 22, 1963: In Dallas, President John F. Kennedy is killed and Texas Gov. John B. Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald.
http://www.eldoradotimes.com/newsnow/x1760399995/Morning-Minutes-Nov-22

In Chile's dry, hot, desert-like Atacama Region, a group of Smithsonian researchers are digging up whales. The fossil site, near the port city of Caldera in northern Chile, was discovered in late 2010 by a construction company expanding the Pan-American Highway. In a road cut, the workers discovered complete skeletons of baleen whales, says paleobiologist Nick Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The company agreed to grant the site a brief reprieve, allowing Pyenson to coordinate a short-term excavation of the fossils. Since October, Pyenson and a team of researchers have made two trips to the site's late Miocene marine rocks, which contain a rich diversity of marine vertebrates. They are striving to learn how the site was formed and how the marine mammals died—a field known as taphonomy. The team has found more than 20 complete whale skeletons, and about 80 individual specimens, as well as other types of marine mammals.
Carolyn Gramling http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/researchers-rush-to-recover-whale.html

Learning to Live Without a Statistical Abstract: Thinking about Future Access to Government Information by James T. Shaw Twenty-four years ago, in 1987, I made a presentation called “Basic Ready Reference: Documents that a Reference Librarian Cannot Live Without” at a meeting of the Iowa Library Association Government Documents Round Table. My top recommendation was the Statistical Abstract of the United States, that annual compendium of data so familiar and indispensable to American librarians everywhere. Twelve years ago, in 1999, I made a similar presentation at the NLA/NEMA Annual Conference, and again the Statistical Abstract took its place as the preeminent resource. The title of my presentation [at the Nebraska Library Association annual conference, October 2011] “Learning to Live Without a Statistical Abstract,” signals that our gathering this morning is something of a memorial. The Statistical Abstract, born in 1878 and published annually thereafter, may well be dead, a victim of cuts to the U.S. Census Bureau contained in the House of Representatives’ 2012 Appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, and Science. For librarians and researchers, the Statistical Abstract provides not only immediate access to data, it also provides valuable leads via the source notes. The Statistical Abstract includes both public and private sources. In the case of private sources, it gives you a glimpse of data that may reside behind a pay wall. The cryptic “unpublished data” gives a clue to when it is time to contact an agency directly. The 2011 Statistical Abstract includes 1,407 tables, which address an impressive range of topics related to government, the economy, business, politics, and social concerns. If it has been awhile since you have browsed through a Statistical Abstract, or if it is a resource new to you, then I think it would be well worth your time to become reacquainted or acquainted with it. http://www.llrx.com/features/futureaccessgovtinfo.htm

David Handler (aka 1/2 of Russell Andrews w/Peter Gethers) Handler started his career as a New York journalist and writes two series: one about a film critic and the other about a celebrity ghostwriter and, for all of you dog lovers, his neurotic Basset Hound. http://www.cozy-mystery.com/Author_H.html

Russell Andrews is a pseudonym used by book editor Peter Gethers and mystery author David Handler. http://authors.omnimystery.com/andrews-russell.html

Norton, The Loveable Cat Who Travelled the World by Peter Gethers
Peter Gethers hates cats. That is until he meets Norton, a very cute, very friendly Scottish Fold kitten. Soon Peter and Norton are inseparable, travelling together on trains and boats, in planes and cars all over the world! Eating at restaurants, making new friends and meeting famous movie stars - read all about these and Norton's other real-life adventures in this wonderful true story.
http://nayusreadingcorner.blogspot.com/2011/05/norton-loveable-cat-who-travelled-world.html

catawampus (kat-uh-WOM-puhs) adjective
1. Askew; crooked.
2. Diagonally positioned: catercornered.
From cater (diagonally), from French word quatre (four). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwetwer- (four), which also gave us four, square, cadre, quadrant, quarantine (literally, period of forty days). Earliest documented use: 1840. The word is also spelled as cattywampus.
syzygy (SIZ-uh-jee) noun
1. An alignment of three objects, for example, sun, moon, and earth during an eclipse.
2. A pair of related things.
From Latin syzygia, from Greek syzygia (union, pair). Ultimately from the Indo-European root yeug- (to join), which is also the ancestor of junction, yoke, yoga, adjust, juxtapose, rejoinder, jugular, and junta. Earliest documented use: 1656.
yob (yob) noun
A rude, rowdy youth.
Coined by reversing the spelling of the word boy. Earliest documented use: 1859.
There are not a lot of words in the English language that are coined from the backward spelling of another word. Another example is mho, the unit of electrical conductance, coined by reversing ohm, the unit of resistance. Fiction writers sometimes come up with names for their characters by spelling another name or word backwards.
spendthrift (SPEND-thrift) noun
A person who spends money wastefully.
adjective: Wasteful with money.
A spendthrift is, literally, one who spends his wealth, from Middle English thrift (prosperity), from Old Norse thrifast (to thrive), from thrifa (to grasp). Earliest documented use: 1601. Spendthrift is the longest word whose phonetic and normal spellings are the same. Two colorful synonyms of this word are dingthrift and scattergood. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Erewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as the word Nowhere backwards, even though the letters "h" and "w" are transposed, therefore Erewhon is anagram of nowhere. The first few chapters of the novel, dealing with the discovery of Erewhon, are in fact based on Butler's own experiences in New Zealand where, as a young man, he worked as a sheep farmer for about four years (1860–1864) and explored parts of the interior of the South Island. One of the country's largest sheep stations, located near where Butler lived, is named "Erewhon" in his honour. In the preface to the first edition of his book, Butler specified: The author wishes it to be understood that Erewhon is pronounced as a word of three syllables, all short — thus, E-re-whon. Nevertheless, the word is occasionally pronounced with two syllables as 'air - one'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon

After a local farmer left a bowl of eggs on Joe Hutto’s front porch, his life was forever changed. Hutto, possessing a broad background in the natural sciences and an interest in imprinting young animals, incubated the eggs and waited for them to hatch. As the chicks emerged from their shells, they locked eyes with an unusual but dedicated mother. Deep in the wilds of Florida’s Flatlands, Hutto spent each day living as a turkey mother, taking on the full-time job of raising sixteen turkey chicks. Hutto dutifully cared for his family around the clock, roosting with them, taking them foraging, and immersing himself in their world. In the process, they revealed their charming curiosity and surprising intellect. There was little he could teach them that they did not already know, but he showed them the lay of the land and protected them from the dangers of the forest as best he could. In return, they taught him how to see the world through their eyes. Based on his true story, My Life as a Turkey chronicles Hutto’s remarkable and moving experience of raising a group of wild turkey hatchlings to adulthood. This program premiered on Nature at PBS on November 16.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/my-life-as-a-turkey/full-episode/7378/

President Abraham Lincoln first declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863, placing it on the last Thursday in November. But November sometimes has five Thursdays and big retailers during the Great Depression complained those Christmas shopping seasons were too short. So, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 set Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday. Of course, others were unhappy, including calendar makers, whose products were printed years in advance. Finally, Congress settled it by law on Dec. 26, 1941, by making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November. -- U.S. Census Bureau, various sources.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Nov/JU/ar_JU_112111.asp?d=112111,2011,Nov,21&c=c_13

U.S. sales of the Jeep Wrangler have set monthly records in each of the last five months, and the 14,500 dealer orders placed in the first 10 days of November already have surpassed the number of vehicles built there in three of the last four months. The plant also is nearing what union officials identify as its production capacity. "To me, this is going to be one of the biggest months we've ever had that we can remember," said Mr. Henneman. A Chrysler spokesman declined to assign a production capacity number for the plants, but Mr. Henneman said the Wrangler plant's two shifts of workers are producing about 630 vehicles a day. They would struggle to build more, he said. The success of the vehicle that dates to World War II and of a relatively new four-door version grabbing public attention was bolstered this fall with a new, more fuel-efficient engine.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Automotive/2011/11/20/Chrysler-races-to-meet-demand-for-iconic-SUV.html
All Jeep Wranglers sold worldwide are built at the Toledo Assembly complex.

The Nov. 21, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, with contributions by Calvin Trillin, Lauren Collins, Jane Kramer, Paul Theroux, Louis Erdrich and others, features food. In a cartoon, a chicken sits next to a roadside stand with a bowl of eggs. The stand has a sign that says, "Fresh-Squeezed Eggs." See the cartoon at:
http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/A-chicken-sits-next-to-a-roadside-stand-with-a-bowl-of-eggs-The-stand-has-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8575607_.htm

MakeUseOf features Web sites, computer tips and downloads that aim to make you more productive. Learn about new sites you may not know, find alternatives to popular software programs and get all kinds of “how to” tips for Windows, Mac and Linux users. You may subscribe to daily updates at: http://www.makeuseof.com/

Novelist Jasper Fforde was born in London on 11 January 1961. His father was John Standish Fforde, the 24th Chief Cashier for the Bank of England (whose signature appeared on sterling banknotes during his time in office). He is the cousin, by her marriage, of the author Katie Fforde, the grandson of Austro-Hungarian (later, Polish) political adviser Joseph Retinger, and a great-grandson of journalist E. D. Morel. Fforde published his first novel, The Eyre Affair, in 2001. His published books include a series of novels starring the literary detective Thursday Next: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels and One of our Thursdays Is Missing. The Eyre Affair had received 76 publisher rejections before its eventual acceptance for publication. Fforde won the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction in 2004 for The Well of Lost Plots. The Big Over Easy (2005), set in the same alternative universe as the Next novels, is a reworking of his first written novel, which initially failed to find a publisher. Its original title was Who Killed Humpty Dumpty?, and later had the working title of Nursery Crime, which is the title now used to refer to this series of books. These books describe the investigations of DCI Jack Spratt. The follow-up to The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear, was published in July 2006 and focuses on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Fforde's books are noted for their profusion of literary allusions and word play, tightly scripted plots, and playfulness with the conventions of traditional genres. His works usually contain various elements of metafiction, parody, and fantasy. None of his books has a chapter 13 except in the table of contents where there is a title of the chapter and a page number. In many of the books the page number is, in fact, the page right before the first page of chapter 14. However, in some the page number is just a page somewhere in chapter 12. Shades of Grey, the first novel in a new series, was published December 2009 in the US and January 2010 in the UK.
See his bibliography at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Fforde

The Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the current trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which commenced in November 2001. Its objective is to lower trade barriers around the world, which will help facilitate the increase of global trade. As of 2008, talks have stalled over a divide on major issues, such as agriculture, industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers, services, and trade remedies. The most significant differences are between developed nations led by the European Union (EU), the United States (USA), and Japan and the major developing countries led and represented mainly by Brazil, China, India, South Korea, and South Africa. There is also considerable contention against and between the EU and the USA over their maintenance of agricultural subsidies—seen to operate effectively as trade barriers. The Doha Round began with a ministerial-level meeting in Doha, Qatar in 2001. Subsequent ministerial meetings took place in Cancún, Mexico (2003), and Hong Kong (2005). Related negotiations took place in Geneva, Switzerland (2004, 2006, 2008); Paris, France (2005); and Potsdam, Germany (2007). The most recent round of negotiations, 23–29 July 2008, broke down after failing to reach a compromise on agricultural import rules. After the breakdown, major negotiations were not expected to resume until 2009. Nevertheless, intense negotiations, mostly between the USA, China, and India, were held in the end of 2008 in order to agree on negotiation modalities. However, these negotiations did not result in any progress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Development_Round

2010 DePuy Hip Replacement Recall was instituted when DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., a division of Johnson and Johnson, recalled its ASR XL Acetabular metal-on-metal hip replacement system on August 24, 2010. This recall came after data from a recent study indicated that the five year failure rate of this product is approximately 13%, or 1 in 8 patients. The defective and dangerous replacement hips have already been implanted in patients. The recall means that patients who have already undergone one surgical procedure to replace a hip may have to undergo a “revision.” The DePuy ASR XL Acetabular System first became available in 2005 in the United States. Johnson & Johnson was given special clearance from the FDA in 2005 to market the ASR devices without first performing clinical trials—tests to determine the safety of the products. But since 2008, the FDA has received approximately 400 complaints from patients who received ASR hip replacements. The first lawsuit in the United States against DePuy Orthopaedics was filed on June 15, 2010. The lawsuit claims that the DePuy ASR hip replacement was defectively designed, that DePuy knew that there were problems with the implant early on but didn't do anything to let patients or their surgeons know about the possible problems. The United States Judicial Panel on MultiDistrict Litigation filed a ruling on December 7, 2010 that determined the fate of the thousands of lawsuits regarding DePuy Hip Recalls in the United States. Its ruling stated that all cases filed across the country, "are transferred to the Northern District of Ohio and, with the consent of that court, assigned to the Honorable David A. Katz for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_DePuy_Hip_Recall

DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., ASR Hip Implant Products Liability Litigation, Multidistrict Litigation Cases, MDL 2197 Find attorneys and orders at U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Toledo
http://www.ohnd.uscourts.gov/home/clerk-s-office-and-court-records/multidistrict-litigation-cases/mdl-2197/

Found in Translation by Stephen Mitchell
I have spent the last three years translating Homer's "Iliad," a project I began because none of the English translations on my bookshelf interested my ear enough to get past Book 1. Translating is a specialized kind of work, but in the most general sense, it is the art of listening. It has lessons for anyone who cares about the sound of their writing. With Homer, the first thing that I do is my homework, looking up the Greek words I don't know and studying the commentaries. I'm left with a bramble of possibilities handwritten on the right-hand page of my notebook and a blank page on the left. I begin to listen for the rhythm (a music that I hear before the words themselves come into focus in my ear), and line by line, sometimes after a minute, sometimes after 10—magically, it seems—the words begin to configure themselves, my hearing creates what I want to hear, the pen starts to write, and I am a fascinated witness. The rest of the work, over the next few days or weeks, is a process of refining, of testing every word, every sound, against my sense of what Homer's music should sound like in English, an English that is rapid, direct and noble, as his Greek is. Sometimes it takes five or six drafts until my ear is satisfied, sometimes 30 or 40. Before you finish a piece of your own writing, you might try reading it out loud or silently, paying attention just to the sound of the words. If you come to a phrase that doesn't sound quite right, let your ear, rather than your thinking, revise the line. You may be surprised by what you didn't know you knew. —Mr. Mitchell is a writer and translator whose many books include "Tao Te Ching," "The Book of Job" and "Gilgamesh." His translation of Homer's "Iliad" was published in October. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190704577024470798695892.html

Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for fiction on November 16 for “Salvage the Bones.” In the nonfiction category, Stephen Greenblatt won for “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.” The award for poetry went to Nikky Finney for her fourth collection, “Head Off & Split.” The prize for young people’s literature went to Thanhha Lai for “Inside Out and Back Again.” Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books, which has independent stores in South Florida,Westhampton Beach, N.Y., and the Cayman Islands, won the 2011 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Mr. Kaplan, who is also the gregarious co-founder of the Miami Book Fair International, has been hailed as one of the most innovative independent booksellers in the country. The award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters went to the poet John Ashbery, a native of Rochester, N.Y., who has published more than 20 books of poetry and has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Read much more at: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/celebratory-night-for-the-book-world/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Last spring, Julie Johnstone, a librarian at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, was wandering through a reading room when she saw, sitting alone on a random table, a little tree. It was made of twisted paper and was mounted on a book. Gorgeously crafted, it came with a gold-leafed eggshell broken in two, each half filled with little strips of paper with phrases on them. When reassembled properly, the strips became a poem about birds, "A Trace of Wings" by Edwin Morgan. Then, it happened again. This time, a coffin, topped by a large gramophone showed up suddenly at The National Library of Scotland. The scene was carved from a book, a mystery novel by Ian Rankin, one of Britain's bestselling crime writers. It seemed like a visual pun, because the book's title was Exit Music. Just as the news cycle was about to hit boil, The Edinburgh Evening News announced it had cracked the case. It turns out, they said, their own former music librarian, a Mr. Garry Gale, had figured it out. Mr. Gale said when he saw the sculptures he realized they looked exactly like a paper sculpture he had bought a year or so earlier from a certain artist that he didn't name, but the styles were so unerringly similar it had to be the same artist who was dropping these little gifts on major cultural centers in Edinburgh. Instead of having Mr. Gale immediately identify the perpetrator, the Evening News decided to take a poll: Do you really want to know, it asked its readers, who made these gorgeous teacups and dragons and magnifying glasses, or would you rather honor the artist, and let him/her remain anonymous? The readers wrote in. And according to Central Station, a Scottish website, "the general view is that We Don't Want To Know." Presumably a significant number of respondents said they would rather not learn the identity of the sculptor and it would be best if those who know just not tell. Read the rest of the story with accompanying pictures at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/10/28/141795907/who-left-a-tree-then-a-coffin-in-the-library?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20111106



Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Helen Hileman Subject: chintzy, but proud
Def: 1. Decorated with chintz. 2. Cheap; gaudy; inferior. 3. Stingy.
I am 79 years old but I can vividly remember wearing the chintz feedsack skirts made from the feedsack material our animal feed came in. They may have been chintzy to some, but we loved our new clothes and we whirled around so our gathered skirts would whirl too.
From: Simon Jarvis Subject: Chintzy
There is a lovely example of chintz fabric on some furniture in Queen Victoria's bedroom in Osborne House -- her beloved holiday home -- on the Isle of Wight, UK. Looking carefully, you can see that both her and Prince Albert's profiles are cleverly printed onto the fabric as plant tendrils. Definitely not cheap, gaudy or inferior!
From: Bernice Colman Subject: Chintzy
It is curious that a word describing a fabric that was one of the most labor intensive to produce should come to mean the opposite. Chintz was also one of the biggest players in the European industrial revolution. Its import caused a panic and prompted all sorts of sumptuary laws. True it was less costly than woven silks or wools from India but it caused a great stir. Nothing chintzy about it.

Sumptuary laws (from Latin sumptuariae leges) are laws that attempt to regulate habits of consumption. Black's Law Dictionary defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc." Traditionally, they were laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. In most times and places, they were ineffectual. Throughout history, societies have used sumptuary laws for a variety of purposes. They attempted to regulate the balance of trade by limiting the market for expensive imported goods. They were also an easy way to identify social rank and privilege and often were used for social discrimination. As early as 1860, Anthony Trollope, writing about his experiences in Maine under the state's prohibition law, stated, "This law (prohibition), like all sumptuary laws, must fail." In 1918, William Howard Taft decried prohibition in the United States as a bad sumptuary law, stating that one of his reasons for opposing prohibition was his belief that "sumptuary laws are matters for parochial adjustment." Taft later repeated this concern. The Supreme Court of Indiana also discussed alcohol prohibition as a sumptuary law in its 1855 decision Herman v. State. During state conventions on the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933, numerous delegates throughout the United States decried prohibition as having been an improper sumptuary law that never should have been included in the Constitution of the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law

Since Biblical times, gardens have been horizontal, with flowers and plants sprouting out of the ground. Patrick Blanc has turned that whole notion on its side, literally. Mr. Blanc is the inventor of the vertical garden, also known as the living (or green) wall. Mr. Blanc, 58, is a botanist with France's National Center for Scientific Research, the country's giant science and technology agency. He also has a private practice designing gardens. Among the more than 250 he has installed around the world, his most famous are at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the Caixa Forum Museum in Madrid and the French embassy in New Delhi. A celebrity among horticulturalists, he's even got a new kind of begonia named after him, Begonia blancii, after discovering it two years ago while trekking through a rainforest in the Philippines. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577010012002153138.html

15 Incredible Vertical Gardens Around the World
http://twistedsifter.com/2011/10/incredible-vertical-gardens-patrick-blanc/

Used restaurant grease has become a hot item for thieves, who siphon it from barrels behind restaurants to sell on the booming biofuels market. Restaurants and grease recyclers have been forced to move barrels inside, lock them up, or install surveillance cameras, according to Tom Cook, president of the National Renderers Association in Alexandria, Va. "It's become the new copper," a commodity that also attracts thieves, Cook tells NPR's food blog, The Salt. Yellow grease, the proper name for cooking oil that's had the food and trash filtered out of it, is selling for about 40 cents a pound, almost five times what it was a decade ago. That means a gallon of yellow grease today sells for more than $3 a gallon — on par with a gallon of milk. Used restaurant grease has long been used in animal feed, but it's also now in demand as a fuel for vehicles. Thieves sell it to a renderer or recycler because the stuff needs to be processed before it can be used as fuel or feed. After the grease has been processed, brokers buy it from renderers and sell it on the commodities market, where it can eventually end up in the transportation sector. New standards published earlier this year by the Environmental Protection Agency expanded requirements for use of renewable fuels in the transportation industry. So when crude oil prices rise, yellow grease prices rise, too. Still, grease rustling isn't a brand new: NPR's Bryant Park Project reported on the problem in 2008. And the 1998 season of "The Simpsons" opened with the episode "The Lard of the Dance", with Homer and Bart hatching a scheme to steal grease from the school cafeteria. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/03/141986455/restaurant-grease-as-good-as-gold-to-biofuel-thieves?sc=tw&cc=share

Find list of NPR blogs at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/

The online social networking and messaging service Twitter (also referred to as a micro-blogging tool) was launched on July 15, 2006. By 2011, it was reported to have around 200 million global users. And as of June 2011, 13% of online Americans reported using Twitter, according to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, up from sharply from 8% in November 2010. The confines of the tool, not unlike text messaging (SMS or Short Message Service), are its most distinguishing feature. Individual “tweets” are limited to 140 characters, truncating what any one individual, organization, institution or brand can communicate in a single post. Anyone can search and find Twitter feeds that might interest them either by searching by name, by topic or by “hashtags,” a designated topic code that users can assign to a topic or event. Users can also choose to “follow” a Twitter feed, which means they receive all of the posts from that outlet or individual. In the news context, this allows users to curate their own news. If a user “retweets” the post (essentially placing someone else’s post in their own Twitter feed), the ultimate reach of the original post can potentially multiply many times over. Read the 25-page report, How Mainstream Media Outlets Use Twitter, at: http://www.journalism.org/sites/journalism.org/files/How%20Mainstream%20Media%20Outlets%20Use%20Twitter.pdf

Viral Spiral: FAQ from FactCheck.org
Just because you read it on somebody’s blog or in an email from a friend or relative doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s probably not, as we advised in our special report “Is this chain e-mail true?” back on March 18, 2008. On this page we feature a list of the false or misleading viral rumors we’re asked about most often, and a brief summary of the facts. Click on the links to read the full articles. There is a lot more detail in each answer. http://factcheck.org/hot-topics/ Click on home at top left to go to the page where claims made by or about politicians are examined.

Communicating well with the written word
Do have print large enough with enough blank space around it so that the eye is drawn to the message.
Don't plant a tree in front of a sign that blocks it (as a nearby flower shop has done).
Don't put a street sign with dark green background and slim white bars in front of evergreens so that the print blends into the greenery (as the street sign by our house is--used to be medium green background with broad white bars that could be read from a distance).

Hidden advertising messages
It used to be that if you bought a product "people would love you."
Today if you buy a product or service your life will be changed and you "will love yourself."

Male bowerbirds weave intricate display areas (or bowers) out of twigs. They decorate their bowers with charcoal, saliva and colourful objects. Because of this, bowerbirds are often thought of as the most advanced of all birds. A bower is not a nest. It is an attractive 'avenue', used by male bowerbirds to entice a female. When they are not feeding, the males spend much of their time perched in the bower, calling to potential mates and warning off potential rivals. Bowerbirds are very closely related to birds of paradise, and species of bowerbird are found in many parts of Australia and New Guinea. They are mainly forest birds, living in a particular local area throughout their live. See more information plus picture of bowerbird in a bower decorated with mainly blue items at: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/animals/Bowerbirds.htm

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 16 CFR Part 255
Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising
Read regulations at: http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf
Recent articles on celebrity endorsements via Twitter prompted me to find the federal regulations.

Advertising Industry in the Digital Age by Suzanne M. Kirchhoff
Congressional Research Service February 1, 2011
In the 111th Congress, members introduced legislation to limit the tax deductibility of advertising for pharmaceutical marketing and circulated proposals to give consumers more ability to block technology that tracks individuals’
activities online so that marketers may tailor advertising accordingly. House and Senate committees held hearings on privacy issues; advertising and marketing directed at children; and the state of the newspaper industry, which is in financial distress as advertising moves to the Internet and away from the print product. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on potentially deceptive advertising practices, including false testimonial advertising, blogging, and other areas. Congress passed and President Obama signed legislation to regulate the volume of commercials on television (P.L. 111-311). On the regulatory front, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released guidelines calling on bloggers to disclose paid product reviews, and in December 2010 recommended a Do Not Track function to allow consumers to prevent advertising and other firms from collecting data about individuals’ online activities. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is examining pharmaceutical marketing in social networks and could propose guidance for online marketing early in 2011. In December 2010, the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force released a paper on commercial privacy issues. Much of this activity is in response to the rapid growth of advertising on the Internet. Online ad spending has jumped more than 400% during the past decade, to more than $20 billion. The online market is dominated by a small number of firms, with the top 10 digital ad firms garnering more than 70% of all online ad revenues, a level that has remained relatively constant in recent
years. “Search” advertising—where companies sell ads as part of consumer-initiated information queries on web browsers—accounted for nearly half of digital ad revenues in 2009, with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo getting most of the online search traffic. http://womma.org/diresta/2-10-11.pdf

March 30, 2011 The FDA has once again postponed the release of its first draft guidance for social media. The federal agency was supposed to release the guidelines in late December, but stated at the time that it would delay the release of the first draft guidance until the first quarter of 2011. Now that's been put on hold. http://www.mmm-online.com/fda-again-delays-promised-social-media-guidance/article/199595/

June 8, 2011 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration missed its last two self-imposed deadlines to issue guidance on using social media to promote drugs, leaving pharmaceutical companies at risk of unwittingly running afoul of marketing laws. Drugmakers that set up Facebook fan pages, "tweet" company announcements on Twitter, and post videos on YouTube can reach millions of consumers with their message. But without guidance from the FDA on how to do that, they can also attract unwanted attention from the regulator, according to lawyers who track social media trends. Drugmakers also risk losing customers when their audience can't tell the difference between legitimate companies and illegal online pharmacies. The FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications said after hearings on social media in November 2009 that it would issue guidance by the end of last year. http://www.cwsl.edu/content/news/060811_Bryan%20Liang_FDA%20Social%20Media_Los%20Angeles%20Daily%20Journal.pdf

The caduceus (from Greek κηρύκειον kērukeion "herald's staff" ) is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman iconography it was often depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars and thieves. As a symbolic object it represents Hermes (or the Roman Mercury), and by extension trades, occupations or undertakings associated with the god. In later Antiquity the caduceus provided the basis for the astrological symbol representing the planet Mercury. Thus, through its use in astrology and alchemy, it has come to denote the elemental metal of the same name. By extension of its association with Mercury/Hermes, the caduceus is also a recognized symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which balanced exchange and reciprocity are recognized as ideals. This association is ancient, and consistent from the Classical period to modern times. The caduceus is also used as a symbol representing printing, again by extension of the attributes of Mercury (in this case associated with writing and eloquence). The caduceus is sometimes mistakenly used as a symbol of medicine and/or medical practice, especially in North America, because of widespread confusion with the traditional medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius, which has only a single snake and no wings. The Homeric hymn to Hermes relates how Hermes offered his lyre fashioned from a tortoise shell as compensation for the cattle he stole from his half brother Apollo. Apollo in return gave Hermes the caduceus as a gesture of friendship. The association with the serpent thus connects Hermes to Apollo, as later the serpent was associated with Asclepius, the "son of Apollo". The association of Apollo with the serpent is a continuation of the older Indo-European dragon-slayer motif. Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (1913) pointed out that the serpent as an attribute of both Hermes and Asclepius is a variant of the "pre-historic semi-chthonic serpent hero known at Delphi as Python", who in classical mythology is slain by Apollo. A simplified variant of the caduceus is to be found in dictionaries, indicating a “commercial term” entirely in keeping with the association of Hermes with commerce. In this form the staff is often depicted with two winglets attached and the snakes are omitted (or reduced to a small ring in the middle). The Customs Service of the former German Democratic Republic employed the caduceus, bringing its implied associations with thresholds, translators, and commerce, in the service medals they issued their staff. The rod of Asclepius is the dominant symbol for healthcare professionals and associations in the United States. One survey found that 62% of healthcare professionals used the rod of Asclepius, while 76% of commercial healthcare organizations used the caduceus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus

Symbols of ancient Rome http://www.ancient-symbols.com/roman_symbols.html
Find links on left leading to Chinese, Egyptian, Grecian, Japanese, Mayan, Native American and Celtic symbols.

blue blindness, blue-yellow blindness popular names for imperfect perception of blue and yellow tints; see tritanopia and tetartanopia .
color blindness 1. popular name for color vision deficiency. 2. see monochromatic vision.
complete color blindness monochromatic vision.
day blindness hemeralopia.
flight blindness amaurosis fugax due to high centrifugal forces encountered in aviation.
green blindness imperfect perception of green tints; see deuteranopia and protanopia.
legal blindness that defined by law, usually, maximal visual acuity in the better eye after correction of 20/200 with a total diameter of the visual field in that eye of 20 degrees.
letter blindness alexia characterized by inability to recognize individual letters.
music blindness musical alexia.
night blindness failure or imperfection of vision at night or in dim light.
object blindness, psychic blindness visual agnosia.
red blindness popular name for protanopia.
red-green blindness popular name for any imperfect perception of red and green tints, including all the most common types of color vision deficiency. See deuteranomaly, deuteranopia, protanomaly, and protanopia.
snow blindness dimness of vision, usually temporary, due to glare of sun upon snow.
text blindness alexia.
total color blindness monochromatic vision.
word blindness alexia.
Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007 by Saunders, an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved. http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/word+blindness

Glen Whitney left his job as an algorithms specialist and manager at Renaissance Technologies LLC, a quantitative hedge fund started by Jim Simons, and created the nonprofit Museum of Mathematics. This year, he found a 19,000-square-foot space on East 26th Street in Manhattan and plans to open the doors in 2012. “I started this museum because I wanted people to have a chance to see the beauty, excitement and wonder of mathematics,” said Whitney, 42, speaking in the empty space under construction. When it opens, MoMath won’t display slide rules or other relics initially. It will offer math experiences for visitors of all ages: logic puzzles and games like Rubik’s Cube and a hyper hyperboloid, a sculpture made of lines of red thread that create the illusion of being in a curved cage of strings. One planned exhibit features a square-wheeled tricycle that can ride on a special path as smoothly as one with round wheels. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-01/harvard-grad-starts-math-museum-helped-by-google-hedge-funder.html

Eddie Miller, 23, is the founder of Heritage Lawn Mowing, a company that rents out sheep — yes, sheep — as a landscaping aid. For a small fee, Mr. Miller, whose official job title is “shepherd,” brings his ovine squad to the yards of area homeowners, where the sheep spend anywhere from three hours to several days grazing on grass, weeds and dandelions. The results, he said, are a win-win: the sheep eat free, saving him hundreds of dollars a month in food costs, and his clients get a freshly cut lawn, with none of the carbon emissions of a conventional gas-powered mower. (There are, of course, other emissions, which Mr. Miller said make for “all-natural fertilizer.”) Mr. Miller, a 2010 graduate of Boston University, started his business last year, when several post-college grant applications fell through and no other job opportunities presented themselves. He moved back home to Ohio and acquired two Jacob sheep, a small, sturdy breed that dates to biblical times. Recently, he added two more to his flock, which he keeps in a pen in the backyard when not in service. Customers pay $1 per sheep per day, but Mr. Miller also accepts barter payments, which have so far included karate lessons, jugs of maple syrup and the use of one homeowner’s truck. He has done around 20 homes so far, and has so many requests he can’t keep up with them. Read more about urban farming and agricultural start-ups at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/garden/sheep-lawn-mowers-and-other-go-getters.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Scribble specialists The Postal Service has money troubles. It's closing post offices, axing staff. One-day delivery may end. Saturday delivery may end. Email is the prime culprit: 104 billion first-class letters were mailed in 2001, 78 billion in 2010. Still, the service is obliged to complete its appointed rounds. If the handwriting is atrocious, no matter. Postal inspectors don't police penmanship. Which is why Postal clerk Gary Oliver can look at an envelope hand-addressed to "GALLERY303FIFTHAVESUITE1603NYNY" and see in it: "Job security." The National Postal Museum's curator, Nancy Pope, calls his scribble-disentangling responsibility "the last vestige of human intelligence versus machine intelligence in the sorting race." The race—to modernity—began with a hand-cranked canceller in 1875, then a device known as the "hamper-dumper." After World War II, thought was given to sending mail by missile. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield said at the time he would try anything, "Yes, even ballpoint pens." But machines could barely read print in 1965. By the '80s, they were able to detect handwriting—and then give up. "Peek-and-poke" clerks in postal plants were still sliding envelopes into pigeonholes when, in 1994, the Postal Service hired Siemens and Lockheed Martin to teach machines to read scribbling. In late afternoon, when volume peaks at the Salt Lake center, a blinking panel showed 67,000 letters awaiting attention—from San Juan, Paducah, Los Angeles, Kokomo. A clerk wearing a headset had hit a patch of pen-pal letters from pupils in Memphis. She was decrypting them at a rate of 800 per hour, down from the desired 1,100. "We ought to teach kids how to address letters," said Bruce Rhoades, a manager looking over her shoulder. His boss, Karen Heath, stood watching beside him and sighed, "A lost art." If a clerk broods over an envelope for 30 seconds, it gets snatched away for another clerk. Scribble-reading isn't everyone's gift: Up to 20% of new hires quit within five weeks. Barry Newman http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577012122145910692.html

Is a Patent a Monopoly? —Antitrust Considerations by Arnold B. Silverman
The term “monopoly” is often misused in the context of patent law, but has a better-defined meaning in antitrust laws. Under patent law, a patent does not give one a monopoly in the sense of having the absolute right to practice the protected invention. It gives one the right to keep others from making, using, offering for sale, selling, and importing the claimed invention, and thereby provides a meaningful exclusionary right. To the extent that one is engaged in conduct permitted by patent laws, one is immunized from antitrust laws. To determine what conduct is included within this shield, one must look to statutes and court rulings. Read more at:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-0404.html

A different view on monopoly Antitrust law frowns on monopolies. Patent law grants them to inventors. The tensions between the two bodies of law, long apparent to scholars, are coming to a head in technology's hottest area: handheld devices. Any smartphone, e-reader or tablet touches on hundreds or thousands of patents, and technology companies have unleashed a blizzard of patent-infringement lawsuits, seeking to derail rival devices or win big licensing fees. The free-for-all raises a basic legal question: In an industry susceptible to monopolies, are companies abusing patent rights to stifle competition? Court documents filed last week by retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. offer a rare public glimpse into the fierce lobbying some companies are doing to get the government to act against competitors. They show that the bookseller, which is defending itself in a patent suit brought by Microsoft, had asked the Justice Department to open an antitrust probe into whether the software giant was trying "to use patents to drive open source software out of the market." Read full article by Thomas Catan at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203503204577036003036334374.html

beware intransitive verb: to be on one's guard
transitive verb
1: to take care of
2: to be wary of
Middle English been war, from been to be + war careful — more at BE, WARE
First Known Use: 14th century http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beware

Be wary of opening e-mails with:
no subject line
no message--just a Web site
someone "wants you to do" something or someone "needs your help"'
someone wants personal information or money
scams like Dr. Philip Moor wants to have business partnership with you
forwarded mass messages that may have picked up viruses while being transmitted
Please note that unwanted e-mails are increasing because individual's address lists can be captured and used.

Kudzu, the “plant that ate the South” has met a pest that eats it and is just as voracious. Trouble is, the so-called “kudzu bug” is also fond of another East Asian transplant that is big money for American farmers: soybeans. “When this insect is feeding on kudzu, it’s beneficial,” Clemson University entomologist Jeremy Greene says in a field swarming with the pea-sized critters. “When it’s feeding on soybeans, it’s a pest.” Like kudzu, introduced from Japan in the late 19th century as a fodder and a way to stem erosion on worn-out farmlands, this bug is native to the Far East. Megacopta cribrari, this member of the stinkbug family, was first identified near Atlanta in 2009. It has spread to most of Georgia, the Carolinas and several counties in Alabama. It shows no signs of stopping. Kudzu and soybeans are both legumes. The bug, also known as the bean plataspid, breeds and feeds in the kudzu patches until soybean planting time, then crosses over to continue the moveable feast, says Tracie Jenkins, a plant geneticist at the University of Georgia. http://www.ajc.com/news/kudzu-bug-threat-to-1204401.html

"Disappearing kudzu is a cultural problem," says John Shelton Reed, a sociologist and essayist on Southern life. "But disappearing soybeans is an economic problem." Kudzu is celebrated in James Dickey's poetry, a long-running comic strip by the late Doug Marlette and on the cover of R.E.M.'s "Murmur" album. "In Georgia, the legend says that you must close your windows at night to keep it out of the house," Mr. Dickey writes in "Kudzu." "The glass is tinged with green, even so." Kudzu covers trees and fields from southern Virginia as far west as Arkansas and south to the Florida Panhandle. Researchers have spent 50 years looking for ways to control it. The plant was brought over by the Japanese for an 1876 botanical exhibit but wasn't widely cultivated until the Great Depression, when New Deal-era federal workers planted the vine for erosion control. It quickly enveloped the rural South, growing as much as a foot a day in the steamy summer. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203791904576611721227144948.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Kudzu, a green vine that can grow as fast as a foot a day, is growing in 22 Ohio counties. It was in 15 counties last year, and eight in 2009. See picture of the bounding vine at:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/11/07/voracious-vineslinks-acrossohio.html

Ohio is looking for a few good shepherds. A growing demand for domestic lamb, sheep and wool is fueling an urgent call by the American Sheep Industry Association and the Ohio Sheep Improvement Association for more Ohioans to get into the sheep-herding business, and for existing producers to expand their flocks. The cause is the confluence of the decline in sheep imports from Australia and New Zealand caused by drought and the increase in the number of Americans, particularly immigrants, who consume lamb as a primary protein. Contributing factors include requirements by the U.S. military to purchase only domestic wool for military uniforms, and a move by Kroger and Walmart to sell more domestic lamb in their stores, said Peter Orwick, executive director of the American Sheep Industry Association. Lamb and wool prices are at record highs, and the market for ewes is strong. But there is concern among growers nationwide that the U.S. sheep flock is not large enough to keep up with the demand, he said. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2011/10/27/calling-all-shepherds.html

Every play during an NFL game is filmed from multiple angles in high definition. There are cameras hovering over the field, cameras lashed to the goalposts and cameras pointed at the coaches, who have to cover their mouths to call plays. But for all the footage available, and despite the $4 billion or so the NFL makes every year by selling its broadcast rights, there's some footage the league keeps hidden. For decades, NFL TV broadcasts have relied most heavily on one view: the shot from a sideline camera that follows the progress of the ball. Anyone who wants to analyze the game, however, prefers to see the pulled-back camera angle known as the "All 22." While this shot makes the players look like stick figures, it allows students of the game to see things that are invisible to TV watchers: like what routes the receivers ran, how the defense aligned itself and who made blocks past the line of scrimmage. By distributing this footage only to NFL teams, and rationing it out carefully to its TV partners and on its web site, the NFL has created a paradox. The most-watched sport in the U.S. is also arguably the least understood. "I don't think you can get a full understanding without watching the entirety of the game," says former head coach Bill Parcells. The zoomed-in footage on TV broadcasts, he says, only shows a "fragment" of what happens on the field. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203716204577015903150731054.html

All Hail the Wale
Corduroy's devotees have been celebrating since Nov. 1 due to that date's resemblance — 1/1/11 — to corduroy. Foods that look like the wales in the fabric -- celery and Ruffles potato chips — have been eaten with gusto by members of the secret social Corduroy Appreciation Club while red velvet cake (due to its reference to velvet) has been shunned. See a picture of The wales of Queens artist Jean Barberis, who won the Corduroy Appreciation Club's Best Wearer of Corduroy competition on 11/11/09 and 11/11/10 at:
http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2011/nov/11/all-hail-wale-corduroy-11-11-11/

"The Corduroy Appreciation Club is a social club which wishes to cultivate good fellowship by the advancement of Corduroy awareness, understanding, celebration and commemoration of the fabric and all related items. Club events are held on dates which resemble Corduroy." http://corduroyclub.com/

Blog for Bibliophiles "Paper Cuts Joins With ArtsBeat" ArtsBeat is now the source for The New York Times’s blog dispatches from the world of letters, with contributions from the Sunday Book Review, the culture department and more. Recent posts: Nov. 2, Limericks from Salman Rushdie, Nov. 3, The 2011 Best Illustrated Children’s Books by Pamela Paul http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/category/books/

Honey has been used by humans for centuries, for sweetening foods to making alcoholic beverages and curing ailments. Pharaohs were buried with it, Greeks and Romans revered it for its culinary and medicinal properties. And today it as still as useful in the medicine cabinet, as the kitchen, to treat colds, hayfever and potentially hospital superbugs. But has honey ever been used to bring people together and raise awareness about the plight of the bees whose industriousness transforms nectar from flowers into the "food of the gods"? That is the aim of the Honey Club, which launched on November 10 in London's King's Cross. A collaboration between international brand consultants, Wolff Ollins, and charity, Global Generation, the club will draw its members from local businesses. In return for a membership fee, companies will be able to send employees to bee-themed events as well as receive a few jars of honey from the rooftop hives on Wolff Ollins' office. Surplus honey – and the two hives next to its roof top vegetable garden could produce 80lbs in the summer – will be sold locally and the money reinvested in the social enterprise. See picture of urban rooftop garden at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/nov/11/bees-business-corporate-beehive?newsfeed=true

Nov. 14 birthday Monet, Claude (b. Nov. 14, 1840, Paris, Fr.--d. Dec. 5, 1926, Giverny) French painter, initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate of theImpressioniststyle. He is regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion to the ideals of the movement was unwavering throughout his long career, and it is fitting that one of his pictures--Impression: Sunrise (Musée Marmottan, Paris; 1872)--gave the group his name.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/

The verb occupy dates back to the 14th century, its origins in Latin occupare meaning 'seize'. Interestingly, during the 16th and 17th century it was used as a euphemism for 'have sexual relations with', causing it to fall out of general usage until the late 18th century. The word occupy has achieved something approaching cult status in the online world in recent weeks, with plenty of evidence of the concept being seized upon to humorous effect – such as Occupy the Bar, a 'movement' with the slogan 'What do we want? An ice cold Guinness! When do we want it? Now!'. Its use has snowballed to such an extent that the American Dialect Society is now considering whether it should join the ranks of previous winners app and tweet as a candidate for its 'Word of the Year'. Read an extensive article on occupy as a buzzword, and find links to a buzzword archive at: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/occupy.html

One of the many cartoons on occupy is the November 7 Non Sequitur comic strip with this caption: "The Occupy a Barstool Movement." Six customers are holding up six different placards.

"Occupationalist is an impartial and real-time view of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Covering history as it unfolds. No filters. No delays." http://occupationalist.org/

A fake story published by The Onion "America's finest new source" is causing some real confusion for a California town and the institute that the humor paper satirized. The Onion published a brief, one paragraph story on October 26 study supposedly released by the California Parenting Institute finding that every style of parenting produces disturbed, miserable adults. "I'm totally aware that it's satire," Robin Bowen, CPI's executive director, told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. "But it's spreading through the Internet and people's blogs and where it's coming from is getting left off and it's looking like a news story." Late last month, Capitol police in Washington were forced to investigate faux reports from The Onion's Twitter feed proclaiming breaking news of a hostage situation inside the Capitol building. The stunt was part of a satirical standoff that the Onion Twitter feed was treating as a real-time crisis--writing that Washington police were confronting a rogue group of congressmen who had taken a group of children hostage and demanding $12 trillion in cash to fund federal spending. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/fake-onion-story-causes-real-confusion-california-town-145806545.html

Ireland has decided to close its embassies to the Vatican and Iran as well as its representative office in Timor Leste. Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said that the decision followed a review of overseas missions carried out by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which gave "particular attention to the economic return from bilateral missions". Mr Gilmore said that the Government was obliged to implement cuts to meet targets set out in the EU/IMF rescue programme. He said the closure of the three embassies would save around €1.25m a year. Mr Gilmore said that the Government would continue to review Ireland's network of diplomatic and consular missions "to ensure that it reflects our present day needs and yields value for money". http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1103/embassies.html

Quotes
You always want it until you have it, then you don't want it anymore.
He was one of those rare men who could strut standing still . . .
The Garden of Eden by Eve Adams, pseudonym for Steven Coonts

Stephen Coonts (b. 1946) is the author of thirteen New York Times bestselling books which have been translated and republished around the world. Find his books by series, novels, short stories and non-fiction at: http://www.elliottbooks.com/Bibliographies/Coonts,%20Stephen.html
Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Coonts

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed legislation November 9 clearing the way for the University of North Dakota to retire its controversial Fighting Sioux nickname. The measure, which reverses a law passed last winter forbidding the school to drop the decades-old nickname, effectively ends a six-year standoff with the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA has tried to keep schools that use logos and nicknames it considers "hostile and abusive" from participating in postseason play. Under a 2007 deal with the NCAA, North Dakota could retain the nickname if it won approval from the state's two Sioux tribes. Members of the Spirit Lake Sioux agreed, but leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux balked, preventing the matter from being put to a referendum. In April 2010, the state board of education ordered the school to change the nickname. Then in March, the governor, a Republican, signed a bill forbidding the move. This past summer, Mr. Dalrymple led a coalition of legislators to a meeting with the NCAA to make one final appeal to keep the nickname and Fighting Sioux logo, which appears in some 2,400 places at the privately owned Ralph Engelstad Arena, where the school's hockey team plays. The NCAA didn't budge.
Keeping the logo was taking a growing toll on the university's athletic program, with some major hockey programs, like the University of Minnesota's and the University of Wisconsin's, refusing to play against the school, said State Rep. Stacey Dahl, a Republican whose Grand Forks district includes the school's campus. A provision in the repeal bill passed Wednesday forbids the school to choose a new nickname or logo for three years. Some lawmakers expressed hope that might leave an opening to retain the nickname if a lawsuit recently brought against the NCAA by members of the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe is successful. Joe Barrett http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577028320279217872.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

List of waterfalls with a single drop of at least 500 feet in height.
http://www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com/tallest-waterfalls/single-drop/
Browse the world waterfall database: http://www.worldwaterfalldatabase.com/map/

Nov. 11 Web Site of the Day www.military.com/veterans-day
Number to Know 15.8 million: Number of veterans who voted in the 2008 presidential election. Seventy-one percent of veterans cast a ballot, compared with 63 percent of non-veterans, according to Census.gov.
This Day in History Nov. 11, 1918: World War I ends: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside of Compiègne in France. The war officially stops at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. http://www.tauntongazette.com/newsnow/x319046846/Morning-Minutes-Nov-11