Joel Beckerman spent about 18 months developing a song that boils down to a melody just four notes long. He's one of a handful of composers who specialize in sonic logos, or the audio equivalents of the Nike "swoosh" or John Deere's leaping deer. More concise than a theme song and subtler than a jingle, sonic logos are brief melodies or sound effects designed to cement a brand in the consumer's subconscious mind. Famous examples include the five-note Intel bong, McDonald's "Ba da ba ba ba" signoff and NBC's three-note chime, in use since 1929. Sonic branding is becoming increasingly popular in a highly fragmented media world, and Mr. Beckerman's New York agency Man Made Music has composed dozens of catchy tunes you've probably heard announcing high-profile properties. In addition to embellishing NBC's famous chime for multiple jobs, including works for the network's news division, his studio composed the new theme song for "CBS This Morning" and tweaked the 25-year-old melody used by HBO to introduce its movies and original series. He's currently on deadline to deliver the rock-driven music of next week's Super Bowl broadcast, building off an original composition by John Williams. The company's new sonic logo—its first—is a stair-step of bright tones. The bite-size tune has popped up in the closing seconds of the company's advertisements, including a TV spot in heavy rotation featuring a stolen tiger mascot and football tailgaters boasting about the speed of AT&T's wireless network. In various lengths and forms, the music will eventually be integrated into every product and service AT&T offers, from music at retail stores to navigation sounds on smartphones and digital video recorders.
JOHN JURGENSEN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203718504577182951405815364.html
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use. Author Robert Neuwirth suggests that there are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every seven people on the planet. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualized, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement. Read an overview and find discussion of squatting by country at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting
Luminary endorsements for GOP presidential candidates
Todd Palin on Newt Gingrich: Gingrich isn't one of those Beltway types.
Christine O'Donnell on Mitt Romney: He's been consistent since he's changed his mind.
Barry Manilow on Ron Paul: I agree with just about everything he says.
Michelle Duggar on Rick Santorum: Rick is the man for the job.
Bloomberg Businessweek January 30-February 5, 2102, p. 35
The digital revolution was supposed to do away with a lot of fusty old relics. First compact discs took their toll on the long-playing (and long-played) vinyl record; then iPods and digital downloads began doing the same to CDs. But long after the eulogies had been delivered, the vinyl LP has been revived. The LP still represents just a sliver of music sales. But last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan data, while CD sales fell by more than 5%, vinyl record sales grew more than 36%. The majority of vinyl sells in independent record stores, which have championed the format in their quixotic quest to survive. But now big-box stores such as Best Buy are carrying vinyl. Amazon—loath to let any niche escape its domination—has a "Vinyl Store" and recently introduced shipping boxes designed to coddle LP records in transit. Not just the sales of records are growing, but the equipment to play them, too. As David Bakula, who follows LPs for Nielsen, puts it: "When I walked into Target and found turntables, then I knew we've arrived." United Record Pressing, the Nashville factory where the Beatles' first U.S. singles were stamped nearly 50 years ago, is feeling the boom: "This plant often runs 24 hours," says Jay Millar, its marketing director. Then there is the sound: Those who collect LPs swear by the virtues of analog. For decades a vinyl-dedicated subset of hard-core audiophiles have resisted the digital onslaught. They've rightly derided the brittle compression of CDs and given the cold shoulder to even the more robust digital formats, such as super-audio CDs. (Don't get them started on the hopeless degradation of MP3s.) And yet that narrow niche of audiophiles with their Ferrari-dear sound systems isn't what has kept LPs alive. Even, it would seem, in the rarefied world of classical recordings. When the San Francisco Symphony packaged its acclaimed recordings of Gustav Mahler's orchestral works, the set was first made available on SACD. But now it has been released on vinyl as well. According to the symphony's general manager, John Kieser, the idea to release "The Mahler Project" on LPs started a few years ago with his then-teenage son, who collected vinyl and insisted that music sounds different in the old analog format. ERIC FELTEN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577184973290800632.html
When attorney Marc Reiner sends an email from his work account at a Manhattan law firm, recipients get a host of admonishments. The email might contain "privileged, confidential and/or proprietary information," they are told. If it landed in their inbox by error, they are strictly prohibited from "any use, distribution, copying or disclosure to another person." And in such case, "you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email." Mr. Reiner thinks the disclaimer—144 words in total—is, for the most part, bluster. Email disclaimers, those wordy notices at the end of emails from lawyers, bankers, analysts, consultants, publicists, tax advisers and even government employees, have become ubiquitous—so much so that many recipients, and even senders, are questioning their purpose. "Who reads them?" asks Bruce Nyman, a former county official from Long Island, N. Y., who has grown tired of the many disclaimers attached to messages in his inbox. He says they are like the modern-day mattress tag. "And has anyone ever been arrested for tearing them off?" Emails are becoming bogged down with unwanted information. They often now include automatic digital signatures with a sender's contact information or witty sayings, pleas to save trees and not print them, fancy logos and apologies for grammatical errors spawned by using a touch screen.
DIONNE SEARCEY and MICHAEL ROTHFELD Read much more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409004577157213839856718.html
Toronto Jan. 28 Teenaged imaginations dreamed up Lego Man’s sky-high adventure but science — not just whimsy — made the little toy’s voyage a headline-grabbing success. A 1,200-gram weather balloon, the crucial role of gravity, quiver-reducing ropes, Styrofoam’s versatility, burst altitude, a University of Wyoming website and a free software program for shutterbugs were part of the formula Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, used to launch, film and land the patriotic, flag-bearing Lego Man. The duct-taped Styrofoam capsule was released three weeks ago at a Newmarket soccer pitch by the Grade 12 students from Agincourt Collegiate Institute. It soared 24 kilometres into the stratosphere via balloon then landed 97 minutes later in dense bush near Rice Lake, south of Peterborough — a remarkably close return considering January’s winter winds were howling.
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1122894
Newt Gingrich might feel like Rocky Balboa when he takes the stage at campaign events to Survivor’s 1982 hit “Eye of the Tiger,” but it’s the co-writer of the song who is ready for a fight. Chicago-born Frankie Sullivan sued Gingrich in federal court Jan. 30, saying the Republican presidential candidate is using his “Rocky III” anthem in his campaign without permission. Sullivan, who has a home in the northwest suburbs, insisted it’s not about politics. It’s about someone who should know better using his copyright material for free.
http://www.suntimes.com/10332797-418/former-survivor-member-sues-newt-gingrich-for-using-eye-of-tiger.html
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Nebula Science Fiction was the first Scottish science fiction magazine. It was published from 1952 to 1959, and was edited by Peter Hamilton, a young Scot who was able to take advantage of spare capacity at his parents' printing company, Crownpoint, to launch the magazine. Because Hamilton could only print Nebula when Crownpoint had no other work, the schedule was initially erratic. In 1955 he moved the printing to a Dublin-based firm, and the schedule became a little more regular, with a steady monthly run beginning in 1958 that lasted into the following year. Nebula's circulation was international, with only a quarter of the sales in the United Kingdom (UK); this led to disaster when both South Africa and Australia imposed import controls on foreign periodicals at the end of the 1950s. Excise duties imposed in the UK added to Hamilton's financial burdens, and he was rapidly forced to close the magazine down. The last issue was dated June 1959. The magazine was popular with writers, partly because Hamilton went to great lengths to encourage new writers, and partly because he paid better rates per word than much of his competition. Initially he could not compete with the American market, but he offered a bonus for the most popular story in the issue, and was eventually able to match the leading American magazines. He published the first stories of several well-known writers, including Robert Silverberg, Brian Aldiss, and Bob Shaw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Science_Fiction
Andrew Borakove didn't know it seven years ago when he started an Internet gong store, but gongs are economic indicators. When the economy was going gangbusters, salesmen were piling into gongs. Sales people seem to like making customers bang gongs to ease the pain of buying something they might not be able to afford. "But as soon as the recession hit, bam! It stopped," says Mr. Borakove. Gong sales shifted over to the meditation market. He was walking on the beach, in 2005, when the idea hit him: He would start an Internet business. It would be based someplace cheap and noncoastal. It would be called "Gongs Unlimited." "More people need gongs than you'd think," he said. Before the crash of '08, some of his biggest customers were car dealers. "Big Bob" Ladendorf of Victory Motors in Royal Oak, Mich., bought two. "Everybody that buys a car, they have to bang the gong," he says. Subprime borrowers banged, too. "I supplied Countrywide Financial," said Mr. Borakove. After the crash, Mr. Borakove said, "suddenly I was selling to a whole lot of yoga teachers." Among them is Mehtab Benton, 61, a Texan with a yoga operation in Austin. "Hard times are good times in the yoga business, and that's good for gongs," he says. Mr. Benton, author of the book, "Gong Yoga," says he once tried learning the clarinet, but "it took too much time. A gong, you play right away
BARRY NEWMAN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181151324644504.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_10_1
HOMONYMS
dis•crete adjective
1. apart or detached from others; separate; distinct
2. consisting of or characterized by distinct or individual parts; discontinuous.
3. Mathematics a. (of a topology or topological space) having the property that every subset is an open set. b. defined only for an isolated set of points
c. using only arithmetic and algebra; not involving calculus
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrete
dis•creet adjective
1. judicious in one's conduct or speech, especially with regard to respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature; prudent; circumspect.
2. showing prudence and circumspection; decorous
3. modestly unobtrusive; unostentatious
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discreet
Google is getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies and replacing them with one. The new policy covers multiple products and features. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012. Find links to Google privacy, terms of service and FAQ at: https://www.google.com/policies/#utm_source=googlehp&utm_medium=hpp&utm_campaign=en-us-hpp_pp
Memidex is an online dictionary and thesaurus. See an example using the words bush league and wilderness: http://www.memidex.com/bush+wilderness
"POTUS” is an acronym for “President Of The United States.” The shorter “POT” stood for “President of the” in the book The Phillips Telegraphic Code (1879) by Walter Polk Phillips. “POTUS” has been cited in print since at least 1895. Similar acronyms include “SCOTUS” (Supreme Court Of The United States), “FLOTUS” (First Lady Of The United States), “VPOTUS” (Vice President Of The United States) and “COTUS” (Constitution Of The United States). http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/potus_president_of_the_united_states/
SOTU means State of the Union address.
OAKLAND (Reuters) Riot police fought running skirmishes with anti-Wall street protesters in Oakland on Jan. 28, firing tear gas and bean bag projectiles and arresting more than 200 people in clashes that injured three officers and at least one demonstrator. The scuffles erupted in the afternoon as Occupy activists sought to take over a shuttered downtown convention center, sparking cat-and-mouse battles that lasted well into the night in a city that has seen tensions between police and protesters boil over repeatedly. "Occupy Oakland has got to stop using Oakland as its playground," Mayor Jean Quan, who has come under criticism for the city's handling the Occupy movement, told a late evening press conference. "Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland," she said. City Council President Larry Reid said a group of protesters broke into City Hall, damaging exhibits and burning a U.S. flag. Elsewhere, the National Park Service said on Jan 27 it would bar Occupy protesters in the nation's capital, one of the few big cities where Occupy encampments survive, from camping in two parks where they have been living since October. That order, which takes effect Jan. 30, was seen as a blow to one of the highest-profile chapters of the movement. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/sns-rt-us-oakland-proteststre80s005-20120128,0,522990.story
Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian skit from Jan. 28 A Prairie Home Companion
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2012/01/28/scripts/ruth.shtml
Researchers have "cloaked" a three-dimensional object, making it invisible from all angles, for the first time. However, the demonstration works only for waves in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It uses a shell of what are known as plasmonic materials; they present a "photo negative" of the object being cloaked, effectively cancelling it out. The idea, outlined in the January 2012 issue of New Journal of Physics
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/14/1/013054, could find first application in high-resolution microscopes. Most of the high-profile invisibility cloaking efforts have focused on the engineering of "metamaterials" - modifying materials to have properties that cannot be found in nature. The modifications allow metamaterials to guide and channel light in unusual ways - specifically, to make the light rays arrive as if they had not passed over or been reflected by a cloaked object. Previous efforts that have made 3-D objects disappear have relied upon a "carpet cloak" idea, in which the object to be cloaked is overlaid with a "carpet" of metamaterial that bends light so as to make the object invisible. Now, Andrea Alu and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have pulled off the trick in "free space", making an 18cm-long cylinder invisible to incoming microwave light. JASON PALMER http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16726609
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Science_Fiction
Andrew Borakove didn't know it seven years ago when he started an Internet gong store, but gongs are economic indicators. When the economy was going gangbusters, salesmen were piling into gongs. Sales people seem to like making customers bang gongs to ease the pain of buying something they might not be able to afford. "But as soon as the recession hit, bam! It stopped," says Mr. Borakove. Gong sales shifted over to the meditation market. He was walking on the beach, in 2005, when the idea hit him: He would start an Internet business. It would be based someplace cheap and noncoastal. It would be called "Gongs Unlimited." "More people need gongs than you'd think," he said. Before the crash of '08, some of his biggest customers were car dealers. "Big Bob" Ladendorf of Victory Motors in Royal Oak, Mich., bought two. "Everybody that buys a car, they have to bang the gong," he says. Subprime borrowers banged, too. "I supplied Countrywide Financial," said Mr. Borakove. After the crash, Mr. Borakove said, "suddenly I was selling to a whole lot of yoga teachers." Among them is Mehtab Benton, 61, a Texan with a yoga operation in Austin. "Hard times are good times in the yoga business, and that's good for gongs," he says. Mr. Benton, author of the book, "Gong Yoga," says he once tried learning the clarinet, but "it took too much time. A gong, you play right away
BARRY NEWMAN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181151324644504.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_10_1
HOMONYMS
dis•crete adjective
1. apart or detached from others; separate; distinct
2. consisting of or characterized by distinct or individual parts; discontinuous.
3. Mathematics a. (of a topology or topological space) having the property that every subset is an open set. b. defined only for an isolated set of points
c. using only arithmetic and algebra; not involving calculus
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrete
dis•creet adjective
1. judicious in one's conduct or speech, especially with regard to respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature; prudent; circumspect.
2. showing prudence and circumspection; decorous
3. modestly unobtrusive; unostentatious
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discreet
Google is getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies and replacing them with one. The new policy covers multiple products and features. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012. Find links to Google privacy, terms of service and FAQ at: https://www.google.com/policies/#utm_source=googlehp&utm_medium=hpp&utm_campaign=en-us-hpp_pp
Memidex is an online dictionary and thesaurus. See an example using the words bush league and wilderness: http://www.memidex.com/bush+wilderness
"POTUS” is an acronym for “President Of The United States.” The shorter “POT” stood for “President of the” in the book The Phillips Telegraphic Code (1879) by Walter Polk Phillips. “POTUS” has been cited in print since at least 1895. Similar acronyms include “SCOTUS” (Supreme Court Of The United States), “FLOTUS” (First Lady Of The United States), “VPOTUS” (Vice President Of The United States) and “COTUS” (Constitution Of The United States). http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/potus_president_of_the_united_states/
SOTU means State of the Union address.
OAKLAND (Reuters) Riot police fought running skirmishes with anti-Wall street protesters in Oakland on Jan. 28, firing tear gas and bean bag projectiles and arresting more than 200 people in clashes that injured three officers and at least one demonstrator. The scuffles erupted in the afternoon as Occupy activists sought to take over a shuttered downtown convention center, sparking cat-and-mouse battles that lasted well into the night in a city that has seen tensions between police and protesters boil over repeatedly. "Occupy Oakland has got to stop using Oakland as its playground," Mayor Jean Quan, who has come under criticism for the city's handling the Occupy movement, told a late evening press conference. "Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland," she said. City Council President Larry Reid said a group of protesters broke into City Hall, damaging exhibits and burning a U.S. flag. Elsewhere, the National Park Service said on Jan 27 it would bar Occupy protesters in the nation's capital, one of the few big cities where Occupy encampments survive, from camping in two parks where they have been living since October. That order, which takes effect Jan. 30, was seen as a blow to one of the highest-profile chapters of the movement. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/sns-rt-us-oakland-proteststre80s005-20120128,0,522990.story
Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian skit from Jan. 28 A Prairie Home Companion
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2012/01/28/scripts/ruth.shtml
Researchers have "cloaked" a three-dimensional object, making it invisible from all angles, for the first time. However, the demonstration works only for waves in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It uses a shell of what are known as plasmonic materials; they present a "photo negative" of the object being cloaked, effectively cancelling it out. The idea, outlined in the January 2012 issue of New Journal of Physics
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/14/1/013054, could find first application in high-resolution microscopes. Most of the high-profile invisibility cloaking efforts have focused on the engineering of "metamaterials" - modifying materials to have properties that cannot be found in nature. The modifications allow metamaterials to guide and channel light in unusual ways - specifically, to make the light rays arrive as if they had not passed over or been reflected by a cloaked object. Previous efforts that have made 3-D objects disappear have relied upon a "carpet cloak" idea, in which the object to be cloaked is overlaid with a "carpet" of metamaterial that bends light so as to make the object invisible. Now, Andrea Alu and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have pulled off the trick in "free space", making an 18cm-long cylinder invisible to incoming microwave light. JASON PALMER http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16726609
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Located at the heart of a ferocious, River of Wind and the Roaring Forties, the capital of New Zealand is famous throughout the world, as The Windy City. Local experts predict Wellington’s wind mean speed is a brisk, 22 km/h (12 knots), with at least 22 days of the year visited by gale-force (up to 74km/h; 40 knots) winds, and a further 173 days featuring gusts greater than 60 km/h (32 knots). It’s not just the frequency of the wind in Wellington that sees locals and tourists clawing at the lampposts, it’s the sheer ferocity. The regular gusts that pound Wellington, usually peak at over 140 km/h (76 knots), which is comparable to a major hurricane, or to really make things clear — the absolute highest available category for wind speed. It’s little surprise that one of Wellington’s most cherished landmarks is an ode to the famous winds: Brooklyn wind-turbine has been a local icon since its construction in 1993. It continues to produce electricity for 80 local homes from its location on Pol Hill, where it can be seen for miles around. http://www.wheninwellington.com/worlds-windiest-city/
The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City". There are three main possibilities to explain the city's nickname: the weather, as Chicago is near Lake Michigan; the World's Fair; and the rivalry with Cincinnati. The earliest known reference to Chicago as the "Windy City" is from an 1858 Chicago Tribune article. The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_name_%22Windy_City%22
Dried beans/shellouts
Equivalents: For most beans: 1 pound dried beans = 2 cups dried = 4 - 5 cups cooked beans
Beans are low in fat and loaded with nutrients, and we'd probably eat more of them if they weren't also loaded with flatulence-producing enzymes. There are ways to enjoy beans without having to forego social appointments, however. One is to change the water from time to time while you're soaking or cooking the beans. Pouring off the water helps gets rid of the indigestible complex sugars that create gas in your intestine. It also helps to cook the beans thoroughly, until they can be easily mashed with a fork. Most bean aficionados prefer dried beans, but canned beans are also available. These don't need to be cooked, but they tend to be saltier and less flavorful than reconstituted dried beans. See dozens of images and descriptions at: http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before. Although the butterfly effect may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position. The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes. See images and read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Many phrases that have been adopted into everyday use originate from seafaring--in particular from the days of sail. Virtually all of these are metaphorical and the original nautical meanings are now forgotten. That association of travel and metaphor is significant in that the word metaphor derives from ancient Greek for 'to carry' or 'to travel'. The influence of other languages and other cultures is evident in many of the long list of English phrases that have nautical origins. See over three dozen phrases including Broad in the beam, By and large,
Chock-a-block, Close quarters, Copper-bottomed, and Cut and run at: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nautical-phrases.html
Quote
Mysteries are wonderful things. It would be boring to have all the answers.
White Shark by Peter Benchley
In the Croatian part of the Adriatic Sea, there are 718 islands, 389 islets and 78 reefs, making the Croatian archipelago the largest in the Adriatic Sea and the second largest in the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek archipelago being the largest. Of the 718 islands, only 48 are inhabited in the sense that at least one person resides on that island. Some sources indicate that Croatia has 67 inhabited islands, which is the number of islands that have a settlement on them, but 19 of these islands have lost all of their permanent population as a result of the population decline occurring throughout the Croatian islands due to insufficient economic activity. The islands of Croatia have been populated at least since the time of Ancient Greece. The main industries on the islands are agriculture, fishing and tourism. The islands' agriculture is primarily devoted to viticulture and olive growing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inhabited_islands_of_Croatia
The Joy of Books (There's nothing quite like a real book). Stop motion animation with music. See a 1:51 video where books come to life when the owner locks up for the night at: http://thecuriousbrain.com/?p=27929
The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City". There are three main possibilities to explain the city's nickname: the weather, as Chicago is near Lake Michigan; the World's Fair; and the rivalry with Cincinnati. The earliest known reference to Chicago as the "Windy City" is from an 1858 Chicago Tribune article. The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_name_%22Windy_City%22
Dried beans/shellouts
Equivalents: For most beans: 1 pound dried beans = 2 cups dried = 4 - 5 cups cooked beans
Beans are low in fat and loaded with nutrients, and we'd probably eat more of them if they weren't also loaded with flatulence-producing enzymes. There are ways to enjoy beans without having to forego social appointments, however. One is to change the water from time to time while you're soaking or cooking the beans. Pouring off the water helps gets rid of the indigestible complex sugars that create gas in your intestine. It also helps to cook the beans thoroughly, until they can be easily mashed with a fork. Most bean aficionados prefer dried beans, but canned beans are also available. These don't need to be cooked, but they tend to be saltier and less flavorful than reconstituted dried beans. See dozens of images and descriptions at: http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before. Although the butterfly effect may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position. The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes. See images and read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Many phrases that have been adopted into everyday use originate from seafaring--in particular from the days of sail. Virtually all of these are metaphorical and the original nautical meanings are now forgotten. That association of travel and metaphor is significant in that the word metaphor derives from ancient Greek for 'to carry' or 'to travel'. The influence of other languages and other cultures is evident in many of the long list of English phrases that have nautical origins. See over three dozen phrases including Broad in the beam, By and large,
Chock-a-block, Close quarters, Copper-bottomed, and Cut and run at: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nautical-phrases.html
Quote
Mysteries are wonderful things. It would be boring to have all the answers.
White Shark by Peter Benchley
In the Croatian part of the Adriatic Sea, there are 718 islands, 389 islets and 78 reefs, making the Croatian archipelago the largest in the Adriatic Sea and the second largest in the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek archipelago being the largest. Of the 718 islands, only 48 are inhabited in the sense that at least one person resides on that island. Some sources indicate that Croatia has 67 inhabited islands, which is the number of islands that have a settlement on them, but 19 of these islands have lost all of their permanent population as a result of the population decline occurring throughout the Croatian islands due to insufficient economic activity. The islands of Croatia have been populated at least since the time of Ancient Greece. The main industries on the islands are agriculture, fishing and tourism. The islands' agriculture is primarily devoted to viticulture and olive growing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inhabited_islands_of_Croatia
The Joy of Books (There's nothing quite like a real book). Stop motion animation with music. See a 1:51 video where books come to life when the owner locks up for the night at: http://thecuriousbrain.com/?p=27929
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
argosy (AHR-GUH-see) noun
1. A large ship, or a fleet of ships, especially one carrying valuable cargo.
2. A rich source or supply.
Shortening of Italian nave Ragusea (ship of Ragusa), after Ragusa, a maritime city on the Adriatic sea, modern day Dubrovnik, Croatia. Earliest documented use: 1577.
paladin (PAL-uh-din) noun
1. A strong supporter of a cause.
2. A heroic champion.
From French paladin, from Italian paladino, from palatinus ([officer] of the palace). After Palatine, the name of the centermost of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. Roman emperors had their palaces on this hill. Other words such as palace and palatine derive from the same source. The 12 peers in Charlemagne's court were also called paladins. Earliest documented use: 1592.
damascene (DAM-uh-seen, dam-uh-SEEN)
verb tr.: To inlay a metal object with gold or silver patterns; to gild.
noun: A native or inhabitant of Damascus.
adjective:
1. Relating to Damascus or the Damascenes.
2. Having a wavy pattern as on Damascus steel.
3. Sudden and significant.
After Damascus, the capital of Syria. Earliest documented use: around 1386.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th US President, served (1953-1961) lived (1890-1969), retired to a farm near Gettysburg, PA, now run by the National Parks Service, where he raised cattle, welcomed distinguished visitors and became an expert on the Battle of Gettysburg. The Eisenhower National Historic Site comprises the Eisenhower's home, farm, & their mementos. See photos plus two of Eisenhower's paintings at: http://travelphotobase.com/s/PAGDDE.HTM
Find two more Eisenhower paintings at: http://www.whha.org/whha_publications/publications_documents/whitehousehistory_21.pdf
The Eisenhower College Collection ISBN: 0840212895 / 0-8402-1289-5, Nash Publishing, 1972 contains 50 plates including one of George Washington and two of Abraham Lincoln.
When it comes to corporate colors, brown belongs to United Parcel Service Inc., Owens Corning protects its own shade of pink, and Tiffany & Co. has domain over robin's-egg blue. On Jan. 24, the famed French shoemaker Christian Louboutin SA stepped into the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to make the case that it should effectively own the exclusive right to use red—it calls the shade "China Red"—to coat the bottoms of its popular, pricey high-heeled shoes. Mr. Lewin and his client were in court hoping to reverse a lower-court ruling that appeared to suggest Louboutin shouldn't be allowed to hold a trademark for its signature red-soled shoes, sported in recent years by red-carpet A-list celebrities nationwide, from actresses Scarlett Johansson and Halle Berry to singers Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera. Last August, Manhattan Federal Judge Victor Marrero denied Louboutin's request to stop another iconic French fashion house, Yves Saint Laurent, from selling a line of shoes whose tops, as well as bottoms, are red. Louboutin was granted a trademark registration to use the red for its shoe soles in 2008. But in his opinion denying Louboutin's injunction, Judge Marrero strongly suggested that the registration was granted in error. He acknowledged that trademarks can be given for the colors on products, chiefly when a single color is used only to identify or advertise a brand, like the pink used for Owens Corning's insulation. Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert in law and fashion who has been following the case, said that she hoped the appellate court would correct Judge Marrero, who, in her opinion, "colored well outside the lines" in his ruling. "There are broader issues raised by this case, and they're that fashion designs really have no protection," she said. "The industry has been trying for 100 years, but intellectual property law still stops right at fashion's door." ASHBY JONES http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203718504577181360914355808.html
January 25 Dunkin' Brands Inc. and Target Corp.'s in-store cafes among other chains have made the switch from white to brown napkins. Next week, Cascades Tissue Group is trying what marketers long considered the unthinkable: brown toilet paper. It is pitching beige rolls, dubbing the product "Moka." Brown paper products are becoming an obvious way for consumers to show that they care about the environment. They assume the products are made with recycled materials or didn't involve whitening chemicals. Now, however, white paper can be made from 100% recycled fibers and whitened without the chemical chlorine, traditionally the primary complaint against it. Still, Cascades says dropping the extra step of bleaching reduces the environmental impact of Moka toilet paper by about 25% compared to their white recycled paper because of energy savings and other benefits. At least one company adds brown pigments to non-chlorine bleached diapers to drive home the environmental message. The diapers need "visual differentiation," says Louis Chapdelaine, product director of fibers at Seventh Generation Inc., a Burlington, Vt.- based company that specializes in eco-friendly household cleaning products and paper. It's important "not so much that it's brown, it's that it's not white," he says. All diapers, if left undyed, would be the color of raw plastic or semi-translucent, he says. SARAH NASSAUER http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203718504577180852718515394.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Life%26Culture
1. A large ship, or a fleet of ships, especially one carrying valuable cargo.
2. A rich source or supply.
Shortening of Italian nave Ragusea (ship of Ragusa), after Ragusa, a maritime city on the Adriatic sea, modern day Dubrovnik, Croatia. Earliest documented use: 1577.
paladin (PAL-uh-din) noun
1. A strong supporter of a cause.
2. A heroic champion.
From French paladin, from Italian paladino, from palatinus ([officer] of the palace). After Palatine, the name of the centermost of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. Roman emperors had their palaces on this hill. Other words such as palace and palatine derive from the same source. The 12 peers in Charlemagne's court were also called paladins. Earliest documented use: 1592.
damascene (DAM-uh-seen, dam-uh-SEEN)
verb tr.: To inlay a metal object with gold or silver patterns; to gild.
noun: A native or inhabitant of Damascus.
adjective:
1. Relating to Damascus or the Damascenes.
2. Having a wavy pattern as on Damascus steel.
3. Sudden and significant.
After Damascus, the capital of Syria. Earliest documented use: around 1386.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th US President, served (1953-1961) lived (1890-1969), retired to a farm near Gettysburg, PA, now run by the National Parks Service, where he raised cattle, welcomed distinguished visitors and became an expert on the Battle of Gettysburg. The Eisenhower National Historic Site comprises the Eisenhower's home, farm, & their mementos. See photos plus two of Eisenhower's paintings at: http://travelphotobase.com/s/PAGDDE.HTM
Find two more Eisenhower paintings at: http://www.whha.org/whha_publications/publications_documents/whitehousehistory_21.pdf
The Eisenhower College Collection ISBN: 0840212895 / 0-8402-1289-5, Nash Publishing, 1972 contains 50 plates including one of George Washington and two of Abraham Lincoln.
When it comes to corporate colors, brown belongs to United Parcel Service Inc., Owens Corning protects its own shade of pink, and Tiffany & Co. has domain over robin's-egg blue. On Jan. 24, the famed French shoemaker Christian Louboutin SA stepped into the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to make the case that it should effectively own the exclusive right to use red—it calls the shade "China Red"—to coat the bottoms of its popular, pricey high-heeled shoes. Mr. Lewin and his client were in court hoping to reverse a lower-court ruling that appeared to suggest Louboutin shouldn't be allowed to hold a trademark for its signature red-soled shoes, sported in recent years by red-carpet A-list celebrities nationwide, from actresses Scarlett Johansson and Halle Berry to singers Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera. Last August, Manhattan Federal Judge Victor Marrero denied Louboutin's request to stop another iconic French fashion house, Yves Saint Laurent, from selling a line of shoes whose tops, as well as bottoms, are red. Louboutin was granted a trademark registration to use the red for its shoe soles in 2008. But in his opinion denying Louboutin's injunction, Judge Marrero strongly suggested that the registration was granted in error. He acknowledged that trademarks can be given for the colors on products, chiefly when a single color is used only to identify or advertise a brand, like the pink used for Owens Corning's insulation. Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert in law and fashion who has been following the case, said that she hoped the appellate court would correct Judge Marrero, who, in her opinion, "colored well outside the lines" in his ruling. "There are broader issues raised by this case, and they're that fashion designs really have no protection," she said. "The industry has been trying for 100 years, but intellectual property law still stops right at fashion's door." ASHBY JONES http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203718504577181360914355808.html
January 25 Dunkin' Brands Inc. and Target Corp.'s in-store cafes among other chains have made the switch from white to brown napkins. Next week, Cascades Tissue Group is trying what marketers long considered the unthinkable: brown toilet paper. It is pitching beige rolls, dubbing the product "Moka." Brown paper products are becoming an obvious way for consumers to show that they care about the environment. They assume the products are made with recycled materials or didn't involve whitening chemicals. Now, however, white paper can be made from 100% recycled fibers and whitened without the chemical chlorine, traditionally the primary complaint against it. Still, Cascades says dropping the extra step of bleaching reduces the environmental impact of Moka toilet paper by about 25% compared to their white recycled paper because of energy savings and other benefits. At least one company adds brown pigments to non-chlorine bleached diapers to drive home the environmental message. The diapers need "visual differentiation," says Louis Chapdelaine, product director of fibers at Seventh Generation Inc., a Burlington, Vt.- based company that specializes in eco-friendly household cleaning products and paper. It's important "not so much that it's brown, it's that it's not white," he says. All diapers, if left undyed, would be the color of raw plastic or semi-translucent, he says. SARAH NASSAUER http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203718504577180852718515394.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Life%26Culture
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
January 22 Tod Machover, an intriguing futurologist as well as an inventive composer, runs the departments in hyper-instruments (acoustical instruments given spiffy electronic features) and opera of the future at MIT's ultra-high-tech Media Lab. Last week, he was at UC Santa Barbara to speak on "Music, Mind and Health: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Well-being through Active Sound," one of four lectures he's given recently at the university's Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. Music, Machover said, touches on just about every aspect of cognition. There are theories that music exists to exercise the mind and to help coordinate its separate functions. The practical applications of music for healing are irresistible. Cutting-edge music therapy can help Parkinson's patients walk, enables the autistic to rehearse their emotions and provides opportunities for stroke victims to regain speech and motor movement. Music is usually the last thing Alzheimer's sufferers recognize. It is our final way to communicate with them, and now it seems music can play a significant role in forestalling Alzheimer's. In an inspiring feedback loop, Machover and his MIT minions, which include some of the nation's most forward-looking graduate students, are applying their musical gadgets to therapy. The process of making remarkable restorative advances is changing how they think about and make music. It all began with Hyperscore, a program Machover developed to enable children to compose by drawing and painting on a monitor. A sophisticated computer program translates their artwork into a musical score. Machover's team took Hyperscore to Tewksbury Hospital outside of Boston, which serves patients with severe physical and mental disabilities, including the homeless. The residents, many of whom were physically unable to communicate or were otherwise uncommunicative, discovered their inner composer. Through Hyperscore they found they could express themselves in a way that bypassed language. MARK SWED
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/22/entertainment/la-ca-tod-machover-notebook-20120122
Frederica Sagor Maas, one of the last surviving screenwriters, if not the last, with credits dating back to Hollywood's silent era, died Jan. 5 in La Mesa, Calif. She was 111. Maas contributed to the screenplays of 15 films from 1925-28. She was an uncredited contributor to the Greta Garbo-John Gilbert classic "Flesh and the Devil" and to the Clara Bow starrer "It," but perhaps most significantly, she earlier co-adapted "The Plastic Age," a 1925 hit film that proved a huge career break for Bow. She married Fox-based producer Ernest Maas in 1927, after which they teamed on scripts. In 1941 she wrote "Miss Pilgrim's Progress," a sober treatment of women in the workplace that sold for a song and eventually became Fox's 1947 picture "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," a lighthearted musical comedy vehicle for Betty Grable. Maas felt repeatedly misused by the film industry and detailed her unhappy experiences in the 1999 memoir "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood," published when she was 99.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118048297?refcatid=25&printerfriendly=true
Freerice is a website where users play various educational, multiple-choice games in order to fight world hunger. For every question the user answers correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated. The categories include English vocabulary (the game the site began with), multiplication tables, pre-algebra, chemical symbols (basic or intermediate), English grammar, basic foreign language vocabulary for English speakers (French, German, Italian, and Spanish), geography (flags of the world, world capitals and country identification), the identification of famous artwork, and literature (popular books). As you answer questions, your total score is displayed as a mound of rice and the amount. The website went live on October 7, 2007 with 830 grains of rice donated on its first day. The second word in its name was originally capitalized as "FreeRice." For a brief while, the amount of rice donated per correct answer was increased to 20 grains, though this was reduced to 10 grains of rice per answer within a few months. In March 2009 the FreeRice website was donated to the UN World Food Programme. In exchange for advertisements on the website, various sponsors donate the money necessary to pay for the rice and other costs to run Freerice. The donations are distributed by the United Nations's World Food Programme (WFP), starting with Bangladesh. Freerice's partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In its first ten months of operation, Freerice donated over 42 billion grains of rice. Since its inception, as of October 15, 2010, Freerice players had earned sufficient rice to feed over 4.32 million people for one day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freerice
Pick a category and play multiple-choice games at: http://freerice.com/category
Daniel Ek always thought he’d be a musician. He grew up in Rågsved, a cluster of three-story row houses on a hill 20 miles south of Stockholm. He drummed with knitting needles on a lampshade at two. He cried when Kurt Cobain died. When he was five, his mother and stepfather bought him a Commodore Vic 20, which was soon replaced by a Commodore 64. If you were born after the Baby Boom and mess with computers, the C 64 carries the fetish value of a first-press of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One C 64 now sits in the Spotify office in Stockholm, awaiting assembly. By the time Ek was 10, in 1993, his stepfather had retrained as an electrical engineer, and the two strung a local network at home with coaxial cable. When he was 14 he taught himself HTML, began undercutting design firms to build websites for local companies, hired his friends to code for him, then hired them to do his homework, too. He sold his Web hosting business in 2002 and started new companies until he ran out of money. In 2005, Index Ventures, a venture capitalist, approached him with a Finnish website run by a woman who drew paper dolls. She was unemployed and had attracted so many viewers that she couldn’t pay her bandwidth bills. He came on as CTO, hired engineers from his failed ventures, took the site to 10 million users, and left. Now called Stardoll, it attracts an audience of 100 million girls who assemble virtual outfits. In 2006, he became CEO of uTorrent, now the most popular client for Bittorrent, the standard protocol for sharing files. UTorrent and Bittorrent are perfectly legal; the files shared through them aren’t always. Ludvig Strigeus, who created uTorrent, served as chief architect of the Spotify beta. Around the same time, Ek shared an idea with Martin Lorenzton, who had bought one of Ek’s companies for €1 million. Ek’s idea: Anyone should be able, legally, to listen instantly to any song at any time. Lorenzton suggested that the two start a company. According to the filing obtained by ComputerSweden, the two men together retain a controlling interest in Spotify. Ek reached out to a contact in the music industry and asked what he would need to do to make his idea legal. Spotify is slick, intuitive, and fast; it can, for a verifiable fact, instantly serve Graceland to a phone resting in your shirt pocket on a highway in North Carolina at 1 a.m. In Europe, if you want to listen longer than 10 hours per month, avoid ads, or move offline with a music player, you pay a subscription fee that comes to about $15 a month. According to the company, 1.5 million Europeans already do.
Read detailed article at : http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/daniel-eks-spotify-musics-last-best-hope-07142011.html
Q: Which airports have the highest fares?
A: In order: Memphis, Cincinnati, Washington/Dulles, Huntsville (Ala.) and Houston/Bush.
The lowest? Atlantic City, N.J. -- U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Q: Why, when you flip a coin over after looking at the heads side, is the picture on the tails side upside down?
A: All U.S. coins are produced with a "coin turn." That is, the obverse side, or "heads," is upside down to the reverse side, or "tails."
The U.S. Mint doesn't know the reason for this custom. It still produces coins this way as tradition and not to satisfy any legal requirement. -- U.S. Mint.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Jan/JU/ar_JU_012312.asp?d=012312,2012,Jan,23&c=c_13
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/22/entertainment/la-ca-tod-machover-notebook-20120122
Frederica Sagor Maas, one of the last surviving screenwriters, if not the last, with credits dating back to Hollywood's silent era, died Jan. 5 in La Mesa, Calif. She was 111. Maas contributed to the screenplays of 15 films from 1925-28. She was an uncredited contributor to the Greta Garbo-John Gilbert classic "Flesh and the Devil" and to the Clara Bow starrer "It," but perhaps most significantly, she earlier co-adapted "The Plastic Age," a 1925 hit film that proved a huge career break for Bow. She married Fox-based producer Ernest Maas in 1927, after which they teamed on scripts. In 1941 she wrote "Miss Pilgrim's Progress," a sober treatment of women in the workplace that sold for a song and eventually became Fox's 1947 picture "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," a lighthearted musical comedy vehicle for Betty Grable. Maas felt repeatedly misused by the film industry and detailed her unhappy experiences in the 1999 memoir "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood," published when she was 99.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118048297?refcatid=25&printerfriendly=true
Freerice is a website where users play various educational, multiple-choice games in order to fight world hunger. For every question the user answers correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated. The categories include English vocabulary (the game the site began with), multiplication tables, pre-algebra, chemical symbols (basic or intermediate), English grammar, basic foreign language vocabulary for English speakers (French, German, Italian, and Spanish), geography (flags of the world, world capitals and country identification), the identification of famous artwork, and literature (popular books). As you answer questions, your total score is displayed as a mound of rice and the amount. The website went live on October 7, 2007 with 830 grains of rice donated on its first day. The second word in its name was originally capitalized as "FreeRice." For a brief while, the amount of rice donated per correct answer was increased to 20 grains, though this was reduced to 10 grains of rice per answer within a few months. In March 2009 the FreeRice website was donated to the UN World Food Programme. In exchange for advertisements on the website, various sponsors donate the money necessary to pay for the rice and other costs to run Freerice. The donations are distributed by the United Nations's World Food Programme (WFP), starting with Bangladesh. Freerice's partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. In its first ten months of operation, Freerice donated over 42 billion grains of rice. Since its inception, as of October 15, 2010, Freerice players had earned sufficient rice to feed over 4.32 million people for one day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freerice
Pick a category and play multiple-choice games at: http://freerice.com/category
Daniel Ek always thought he’d be a musician. He grew up in Rågsved, a cluster of three-story row houses on a hill 20 miles south of Stockholm. He drummed with knitting needles on a lampshade at two. He cried when Kurt Cobain died. When he was five, his mother and stepfather bought him a Commodore Vic 20, which was soon replaced by a Commodore 64. If you were born after the Baby Boom and mess with computers, the C 64 carries the fetish value of a first-press of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One C 64 now sits in the Spotify office in Stockholm, awaiting assembly. By the time Ek was 10, in 1993, his stepfather had retrained as an electrical engineer, and the two strung a local network at home with coaxial cable. When he was 14 he taught himself HTML, began undercutting design firms to build websites for local companies, hired his friends to code for him, then hired them to do his homework, too. He sold his Web hosting business in 2002 and started new companies until he ran out of money. In 2005, Index Ventures, a venture capitalist, approached him with a Finnish website run by a woman who drew paper dolls. She was unemployed and had attracted so many viewers that she couldn’t pay her bandwidth bills. He came on as CTO, hired engineers from his failed ventures, took the site to 10 million users, and left. Now called Stardoll, it attracts an audience of 100 million girls who assemble virtual outfits. In 2006, he became CEO of uTorrent, now the most popular client for Bittorrent, the standard protocol for sharing files. UTorrent and Bittorrent are perfectly legal; the files shared through them aren’t always. Ludvig Strigeus, who created uTorrent, served as chief architect of the Spotify beta. Around the same time, Ek shared an idea with Martin Lorenzton, who had bought one of Ek’s companies for €1 million. Ek’s idea: Anyone should be able, legally, to listen instantly to any song at any time. Lorenzton suggested that the two start a company. According to the filing obtained by ComputerSweden, the two men together retain a controlling interest in Spotify. Ek reached out to a contact in the music industry and asked what he would need to do to make his idea legal. Spotify is slick, intuitive, and fast; it can, for a verifiable fact, instantly serve Graceland to a phone resting in your shirt pocket on a highway in North Carolina at 1 a.m. In Europe, if you want to listen longer than 10 hours per month, avoid ads, or move offline with a music player, you pay a subscription fee that comes to about $15 a month. According to the company, 1.5 million Europeans already do.
Read detailed article at : http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/daniel-eks-spotify-musics-last-best-hope-07142011.html
Q: Which airports have the highest fares?
A: In order: Memphis, Cincinnati, Washington/Dulles, Huntsville (Ala.) and Houston/Bush.
The lowest? Atlantic City, N.J. -- U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Q: Why, when you flip a coin over after looking at the heads side, is the picture on the tails side upside down?
A: All U.S. coins are produced with a "coin turn." That is, the obverse side, or "heads," is upside down to the reverse side, or "tails."
The U.S. Mint doesn't know the reason for this custom. It still produces coins this way as tradition and not to satisfy any legal requirement. -- U.S. Mint.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Jan/JU/ar_JU_012312.asp?d=012312,2012,Jan,23&c=c_13
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Martin Luther King quote originally was: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” Paraphrased to fit the north face of the new King monument, the inscription says: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has given the National Park Service 30 days to meet with the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, the King family and others to determine a more accurate quote for the landmark, an official at the Interior Department said, reports CNN. http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/morning_call/2012/01/king-memorial-quote-panned-by-angelou.html
Known as "ancient grains," thanks to the advanced age of the species (a cool 5,000 years old in some cases) and because they've managed to evade the industrial grooming of modern crops like wheat and corn, these old-school strains have retained their unique personalities. Some are plump and creamy; others lean and laced with smoke. They're perfect for shoring up unfilling salads and brothy soups, stuffing small birds and pork loins or standing in for rice in risottos. And because preparing these grains is no more demanding than boiling pasta or steaming rice, they're easier to cook at home than you might think.
QUINOA A magic bullet for both gluten-free and vegetarian diets, this quick-cooking complete protein absorbs other flavors well. Though technically a seed, quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) performs like a cereal with its soft and fluffy texture.
KAMUT The word kamut is actually a trademarked name for an oversized strain of organically grown wheat that's 99% free of any genetically modified organisms—or even modern interlopers. Its grains are sturdy, golden and twice as large as most wheats.
TEFF Teff is said to be the teeniest grain on earth: 150 times smaller than a single wheat berry. When ground into a flour, it's used to make the Ethiopian staple injera, a spongy fermented flatbread. Cooked whole, teff makes a nutty hot cereal and will melt into stews as a flavorful, gluten-free thickening agent.
FREEKEH Freekeh is the name used for any wheat, usually durum, that's harvested when still green, then fire-threshed to give it a smoky intensity and pliant pop. Perhaps the fastest up-and-comer in the ancient grain crowd, freekeh (pronounced FREE-kah) can be found in warm salads, risottos and pilafs.
FARRO Though best known as a recent import from Italy, farro was cycled into rice crop rotations in the American south before the Civil War. The term farro is broadly used for wheat family members that have a nutty flavor and stout build, including emmer, spelt and einkorn.
MILLET If you find yourself thinking millet looks suspiciously like birdseed, that's because it is. Yet humans have been eating millet for millennia; it preceded rice as the staple grain of China. It can be eaten raw or cooked.
RYE Whole rye grains cook up like a dense, earthy cousin of wheat berries. Here you'll find a taste that's close to that of a walnut. At Seattle's Emmer & Rye, chef Seth Caswell simmers the restaurant's namesake ingredients together, along with various aromatics to make a rustic risotto-like side. KRISTEN MIGLORE Read more and see image at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577141363042147218.html?mod=WSJ_ITP_offduty_12
Veteran crime writer Elmore Leonard, 86, looms large on the set of "Justified," the FX series starring his exceedingly courteous but trigger-happy character, U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. Writers for the show consult his novels to study their dialogue and tone. Mr. Leonard suggests plot developments. Raylan, a cowboy type who's prone to dispensing justice vigilante-style, first appeared in the 1993 novel "Pronto." He returned in the 1995 novel "Riding the Rap" and last appeared in the 2001 short story "Fire in the Hole." FX used the short story as the basis for "Justified," which has been picked up for a third season and draws a weekly average of nearly four million viewers. Mr. Leonard set aside Raylan for more than a decade, publishing nine other books. But he's grown so enamored of the TV series that he decided to write a new novel starring the Kentucky marshal—an unusual reversal of the page-to-screen adaptation process.
How has your writing style evolved over the years? It started to evolve in the '60s, I think. I could detect a change. I wasn't using as many words. I wasn't using as many adverbs. I just finally kind of fell into my style. I'm not sure what to call it.
Which writers influenced you, and who do you like to read?
I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.
In your "10 Rules of Writing" you tell people what not to do: Never open a book with the weather, never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. Do you have any rules for what writers should do? Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write. It's just that if you avoid these, you're going to come out ahead.
You're 86 and still writing every day. What keeps you working when you could easily retire?
I still like to write. I might as well do it. I can't just sit here and look out the window. There's a lot of snow out there right now. ALEXANDRA ALTER
Read the rest of the interview at: http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577155180069629066.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_3
Etta James,equally at home singing unadulterated blues, searing R&B and sophisticated jazz, died on Jan. 20. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and her biggest hit, 'At Last,' has been enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her dusky voice, which could stretch from a sultry whisper to an aching roar, influenced generations of singers who came after, from Tina Turner to Bonnie Raitt to Christina Aguilera. And pop-R&B singer Beyonce carefully studied James before portraying her in the loosely historical 2008 film "Cadillac Records." As a teen, James formed a trio called the Peaches, which was discovered by R&B musician and promoter Johnny Otis. Soon, she was in a duo called Etta & Harvey with Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows, the R&B group behind the 1955 hit "Sincerely." Early on, she toured with Johnny Guitar Watson, the Texas singer, songwriter and guitarist, in an association that figured prominently in her approach to music for the rest of her life. Read much more at: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-etta-james-20120121,0,1608543.story
Known as "ancient grains," thanks to the advanced age of the species (a cool 5,000 years old in some cases) and because they've managed to evade the industrial grooming of modern crops like wheat and corn, these old-school strains have retained their unique personalities. Some are plump and creamy; others lean and laced with smoke. They're perfect for shoring up unfilling salads and brothy soups, stuffing small birds and pork loins or standing in for rice in risottos. And because preparing these grains is no more demanding than boiling pasta or steaming rice, they're easier to cook at home than you might think.
QUINOA A magic bullet for both gluten-free and vegetarian diets, this quick-cooking complete protein absorbs other flavors well. Though technically a seed, quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) performs like a cereal with its soft and fluffy texture.
KAMUT The word kamut is actually a trademarked name for an oversized strain of organically grown wheat that's 99% free of any genetically modified organisms—or even modern interlopers. Its grains are sturdy, golden and twice as large as most wheats.
TEFF Teff is said to be the teeniest grain on earth: 150 times smaller than a single wheat berry. When ground into a flour, it's used to make the Ethiopian staple injera, a spongy fermented flatbread. Cooked whole, teff makes a nutty hot cereal and will melt into stews as a flavorful, gluten-free thickening agent.
FREEKEH Freekeh is the name used for any wheat, usually durum, that's harvested when still green, then fire-threshed to give it a smoky intensity and pliant pop. Perhaps the fastest up-and-comer in the ancient grain crowd, freekeh (pronounced FREE-kah) can be found in warm salads, risottos and pilafs.
FARRO Though best known as a recent import from Italy, farro was cycled into rice crop rotations in the American south before the Civil War. The term farro is broadly used for wheat family members that have a nutty flavor and stout build, including emmer, spelt and einkorn.
MILLET If you find yourself thinking millet looks suspiciously like birdseed, that's because it is. Yet humans have been eating millet for millennia; it preceded rice as the staple grain of China. It can be eaten raw or cooked.
RYE Whole rye grains cook up like a dense, earthy cousin of wheat berries. Here you'll find a taste that's close to that of a walnut. At Seattle's Emmer & Rye, chef Seth Caswell simmers the restaurant's namesake ingredients together, along with various aromatics to make a rustic risotto-like side. KRISTEN MIGLORE Read more and see image at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577141363042147218.html?mod=WSJ_ITP_offduty_12
Veteran crime writer Elmore Leonard, 86, looms large on the set of "Justified," the FX series starring his exceedingly courteous but trigger-happy character, U.S. Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. Writers for the show consult his novels to study their dialogue and tone. Mr. Leonard suggests plot developments. Raylan, a cowboy type who's prone to dispensing justice vigilante-style, first appeared in the 1993 novel "Pronto." He returned in the 1995 novel "Riding the Rap" and last appeared in the 2001 short story "Fire in the Hole." FX used the short story as the basis for "Justified," which has been picked up for a third season and draws a weekly average of nearly four million viewers. Mr. Leonard set aside Raylan for more than a decade, publishing nine other books. But he's grown so enamored of the TV series that he decided to write a new novel starring the Kentucky marshal—an unusual reversal of the page-to-screen adaptation process.
How has your writing style evolved over the years? It started to evolve in the '60s, I think. I could detect a change. I wasn't using as many words. I wasn't using as many adverbs. I just finally kind of fell into my style. I'm not sure what to call it.
Which writers influenced you, and who do you like to read?
I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.
In your "10 Rules of Writing" you tell people what not to do: Never open a book with the weather, never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. Do you have any rules for what writers should do? Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write. It's just that if you avoid these, you're going to come out ahead.
You're 86 and still writing every day. What keeps you working when you could easily retire?
I still like to write. I might as well do it. I can't just sit here and look out the window. There's a lot of snow out there right now. ALEXANDRA ALTER
Read the rest of the interview at: http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204257504577155180069629066.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_3
Etta James,equally at home singing unadulterated blues, searing R&B and sophisticated jazz, died on Jan. 20. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and her biggest hit, 'At Last,' has been enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her dusky voice, which could stretch from a sultry whisper to an aching roar, influenced generations of singers who came after, from Tina Turner to Bonnie Raitt to Christina Aguilera. And pop-R&B singer Beyonce carefully studied James before portraying her in the loosely historical 2008 film "Cadillac Records." As a teen, James formed a trio called the Peaches, which was discovered by R&B musician and promoter Johnny Otis. Soon, she was in a duo called Etta & Harvey with Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows, the R&B group behind the 1955 hit "Sincerely." Early on, she toured with Johnny Guitar Watson, the Texas singer, songwriter and guitarist, in an association that figured prominently in her approach to music for the rest of her life. Read much more at: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-etta-james-20120121,0,1608543.story
Friday, January 20, 2012
The Supreme Court on Jan. 18 upheld a 1994 law granting copyright protection to a large number of foreign works that had been freely available in the public domain. The ruling was a victory for the movie, music and publishing industries, which argued that granting copyright protections for the foreign works was an important step in securing reciprocal overseas rights for U.S. works. The decision means some musicians and other artists will have to keep paying to use the now-copyrighted foreign works. Congress enacted the measure to bring the U.S. in compliance with the Berne Convention, an 1886 treaty providing for international recognition of copyrights. The court, by a 6-2 vote, said Congress acted within its powers in granting the protections. "Congress determined that U.S. interests were best served by our full participation in the dominant system of international copyright protection," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. The ruling defeated a challenge by a group of orchestra conductors, performers, educators and others who argued that Congress exceeded its powers by restricting their ability to perform, share and build upon foreign works that once had been free for use.
BRENT KENDALL and JESS BRAVIN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168752017626174.html
Phrases from Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, a novel of deception and revenge set in a private school
the blackboard and his smug cousin, the chalkboard
Suits and their natural enemy, the Tweed Jacket
a good teacher knows that there is fake anger and real anger
I was hooked, lined and sinkered
a word or two of Latin speaks volumes to the fee-paying parents
Joanne Harris is the author of Five Quarters of the Orange, Chocolat and the co-author with Fran Warde of My French Kitchen, The French Market.
Publishers are convinced that viewers of Downton Abbey who obsessively tune in to follow the war-torn travails of an aristocratic family and its meddling but loyal servants are also literary types, likely to devour books on subjects the series touches. So they are rushing to print books that take readers back to Edwardian and wartime England: stories about the grandeur of British estates (“Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle” by the Countess of Carnarvon); the recollections of a lady’s maid (“Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor” by Rosina Harrison); and World War I (“A Bitter Truth” by Charles Todd), the bloody backdrop to the show’s second season, which had its premiere in the United States Jan. 8 on PBS, drawing 4.2 million viewers. Book publicists have swarmed Twitter, where “Downton Abbey” has been endlessly discussed and analyzed, to drop suggestions and link to alluring titles in both their e-book and print editions, borrowing hashtags like #downtonabbey and #downtonpbs that are already in heavy circulation. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/business/media/mad-for-downton-publishers-have-a-reading-list.html
Today's networks are suffering from unnecessary latency and poor system performance. The culprit is bufferbloat, the existence of excessively large and frequently full buffers inside the network. Large buffers have been inserted all over the Internet without sufficient thought or testing. They damage or defeat the fundamental congestion-avoidance algorithms of the Internet's most common transport protocol. Long delays from bufferbloat are frequently attributed incorrectly to network congestion, and this misinterpretation of the problem leads to the wrong solutions being proposed. A network with no buffers has no place for packets to wait for transmission; thus, extra packets are dropped, creating an increasing loss rate and decreasing throughput, though the received packets would have the same constant delay. To operate without buffers, arrivals must be completely predictable and smooth; thus, global synchronized timing is critical to avoiding loss. Such networks are complex, expensive, and restrictive (i.e., they lack the flexibility of the Internet). A well-known example of a bufferless network is the original telephone network before packet switching took over. Adding buffers to networks and packetizing data into variable-size packets was part of the fundamental advance in communications that led to the Internet. The fundamental transport protocol of the Internet is TCP/IP. TCP's persistence is testimony both to the robust and flexible design of the original algorithm and to the excellent efforts of the many researchers and engineers who have tuned it over the decades. TCP made use of the idea of pipesize and the knowledge that there was reasonable but not excessive buffering along the data path to send a window of packets at a time—originally sending the entire window into the network and waiting for its acknowledgment before sending more data. JIM GETTYS and KATHLEEN NICHOLS Read much more at: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2071893
What does TCP/IP stand for? Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
http://www.acronymfinder.com/Transmission-Control-Protocol%2FInternet-Protocol-(TCP%2FIP).html
A brownie supplier to Ben & Jerry's ice cream, a skateboard maker and a payday lender are among the hundreds of existing businesses that plan to incorporate as "benefit corporations" in coming months. They will be taking advantage of a new and untested corporate charter, available in only a half dozen states, allowing a company's governing board to consider social or environment objectives ahead of profits. The legal structure is intended to shield the board from investor lawsuits. That anything other than maximizing shareholder value should be considered in a company's decision-making normally can open the door to investor suits. The idea has its share of critics. "For an investor, this is a terrible idea," says Charles Elson, who teaches corporate governance at the University of Delaware. "The structure creates a lack of accountability," he adds, so if the management of a benefit corporation makes a bad decision, "there's very little you can do about it as a shareholder." Others say that companies can simply add specific goals into their articles of incorporation under existing corporate codes, making a benefit-corporation designation unnecessary. It costs about $30 to incorporate as a benefit corporation, not including fees paid to outside lawyers. The incorporation isn't to be confused with "B Corp" certification, which is a privately administered program to label companies aiming to tackle social and environmental problems. ANGUS LOTEN
Find list of states with benefit corporation laws at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577168591470161630.html
On August 25th, 1994, Jimmy Buffett crashed his Grumman G-44 Widgeon, N1471N, while attempting to takeoff in the waters off Nantucket, Massachusetts. The airplane nosed over, and Jimmy was able to swim to safety, sustaining only minor injuries. Buffett credits his survival to Navy Survival Training he had to complete before being able to ride in an F-14 Tomcat from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
http://www.buffettworld.com/incidents/widgeon-seaplane-crash/
On January 16, 1996, Jimmy Buffett’s Grumman HU-16 Albatross, dubbed the Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by Jamaican authorities as he taxied in the waters near Negril. The Jamaicans had mistaken it for a drug-runner’s plane, though Jimmy had “only come for chicken.” On board the plane was Chris Blackwell from Island Records and U2′s Bono and his family. Buffett penned a tune about the incident: “Jamaica Mistaica”, which appeared on the 1996 album Banana Wind. See excerpt from the song plus Bono's account of the incident at: http://www.buffettworld.com/incidents/jamaica-mistaica/
Russian cuisine Learn about caviar, Beef Stroganoff, created for Russian Count Alexander Grigorievitch Stroganoff (1795-1891), vodka, Strawberries Romanoff, created for Romanoff Czar Nicholas II (ruled 1894 -1917), in the early 1900s by famous French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier, and desserts named for Anna Pavlova and Nadezhda Pavlova. See pictures, including those of General Prince Piotr Bagration, whose 30 year military career included 20 campaigns and 150 battles. Bagration was one of the Russian heroes of the Napoleonic War, and important figure in Tolstoy's War and Peace and his wife, Princess Katerina, for whom Bagration soup was created by Antoine Careme, the "King of Chefs and Chef of Kings." http://www.frccusa.org/Cuisine.html
BRENT KENDALL and JESS BRAVIN http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168752017626174.html
Phrases from Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, a novel of deception and revenge set in a private school
the blackboard and his smug cousin, the chalkboard
Suits and their natural enemy, the Tweed Jacket
a good teacher knows that there is fake anger and real anger
I was hooked, lined and sinkered
a word or two of Latin speaks volumes to the fee-paying parents
Joanne Harris is the author of Five Quarters of the Orange, Chocolat and the co-author with Fran Warde of My French Kitchen, The French Market.
Publishers are convinced that viewers of Downton Abbey who obsessively tune in to follow the war-torn travails of an aristocratic family and its meddling but loyal servants are also literary types, likely to devour books on subjects the series touches. So they are rushing to print books that take readers back to Edwardian and wartime England: stories about the grandeur of British estates (“Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle” by the Countess of Carnarvon); the recollections of a lady’s maid (“Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor” by Rosina Harrison); and World War I (“A Bitter Truth” by Charles Todd), the bloody backdrop to the show’s second season, which had its premiere in the United States Jan. 8 on PBS, drawing 4.2 million viewers. Book publicists have swarmed Twitter, where “Downton Abbey” has been endlessly discussed and analyzed, to drop suggestions and link to alluring titles in both their e-book and print editions, borrowing hashtags like #downtonabbey and #downtonpbs that are already in heavy circulation. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/business/media/mad-for-downton-publishers-have-a-reading-list.html
Today's networks are suffering from unnecessary latency and poor system performance. The culprit is bufferbloat, the existence of excessively large and frequently full buffers inside the network. Large buffers have been inserted all over the Internet without sufficient thought or testing. They damage or defeat the fundamental congestion-avoidance algorithms of the Internet's most common transport protocol. Long delays from bufferbloat are frequently attributed incorrectly to network congestion, and this misinterpretation of the problem leads to the wrong solutions being proposed. A network with no buffers has no place for packets to wait for transmission; thus, extra packets are dropped, creating an increasing loss rate and decreasing throughput, though the received packets would have the same constant delay. To operate without buffers, arrivals must be completely predictable and smooth; thus, global synchronized timing is critical to avoiding loss. Such networks are complex, expensive, and restrictive (i.e., they lack the flexibility of the Internet). A well-known example of a bufferless network is the original telephone network before packet switching took over. Adding buffers to networks and packetizing data into variable-size packets was part of the fundamental advance in communications that led to the Internet. The fundamental transport protocol of the Internet is TCP/IP. TCP's persistence is testimony both to the robust and flexible design of the original algorithm and to the excellent efforts of the many researchers and engineers who have tuned it over the decades. TCP made use of the idea of pipesize and the knowledge that there was reasonable but not excessive buffering along the data path to send a window of packets at a time—originally sending the entire window into the network and waiting for its acknowledgment before sending more data. JIM GETTYS and KATHLEEN NICHOLS Read much more at: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2071893
What does TCP/IP stand for? Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
http://www.acronymfinder.com/Transmission-Control-Protocol%2FInternet-Protocol-(TCP%2FIP).html
A brownie supplier to Ben & Jerry's ice cream, a skateboard maker and a payday lender are among the hundreds of existing businesses that plan to incorporate as "benefit corporations" in coming months. They will be taking advantage of a new and untested corporate charter, available in only a half dozen states, allowing a company's governing board to consider social or environment objectives ahead of profits. The legal structure is intended to shield the board from investor lawsuits. That anything other than maximizing shareholder value should be considered in a company's decision-making normally can open the door to investor suits. The idea has its share of critics. "For an investor, this is a terrible idea," says Charles Elson, who teaches corporate governance at the University of Delaware. "The structure creates a lack of accountability," he adds, so if the management of a benefit corporation makes a bad decision, "there's very little you can do about it as a shareholder." Others say that companies can simply add specific goals into their articles of incorporation under existing corporate codes, making a benefit-corporation designation unnecessary. It costs about $30 to incorporate as a benefit corporation, not including fees paid to outside lawyers. The incorporation isn't to be confused with "B Corp" certification, which is a privately administered program to label companies aiming to tackle social and environmental problems. ANGUS LOTEN
Find list of states with benefit corporation laws at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577168591470161630.html
On August 25th, 1994, Jimmy Buffett crashed his Grumman G-44 Widgeon, N1471N, while attempting to takeoff in the waters off Nantucket, Massachusetts. The airplane nosed over, and Jimmy was able to swim to safety, sustaining only minor injuries. Buffett credits his survival to Navy Survival Training he had to complete before being able to ride in an F-14 Tomcat from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
http://www.buffettworld.com/incidents/widgeon-seaplane-crash/
On January 16, 1996, Jimmy Buffett’s Grumman HU-16 Albatross, dubbed the Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by Jamaican authorities as he taxied in the waters near Negril. The Jamaicans had mistaken it for a drug-runner’s plane, though Jimmy had “only come for chicken.” On board the plane was Chris Blackwell from Island Records and U2′s Bono and his family. Buffett penned a tune about the incident: “Jamaica Mistaica”, which appeared on the 1996 album Banana Wind. See excerpt from the song plus Bono's account of the incident at: http://www.buffettworld.com/incidents/jamaica-mistaica/
Russian cuisine Learn about caviar, Beef Stroganoff, created for Russian Count Alexander Grigorievitch Stroganoff (1795-1891), vodka, Strawberries Romanoff, created for Romanoff Czar Nicholas II (ruled 1894 -1917), in the early 1900s by famous French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier, and desserts named for Anna Pavlova and Nadezhda Pavlova. See pictures, including those of General Prince Piotr Bagration, whose 30 year military career included 20 campaigns and 150 battles. Bagration was one of the Russian heroes of the Napoleonic War, and important figure in Tolstoy's War and Peace and his wife, Princess Katerina, for whom Bagration soup was created by Antoine Careme, the "King of Chefs and Chef of Kings." http://www.frccusa.org/Cuisine.html
Thursday, January 19, 2012
100 novels everyone should read, Telegraph selection of the essential fiction library
100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.
93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.
3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”.
2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale which ate his leg.
1 Middlemarch by George Eliot
“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.
See entire list at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4248401/100-novels-everyone-should-read.html
Top 100 Desert Island Books (in no particular order)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "Always a joyous and thought-provoking read." (Recommended by Sharon Cognetti)
Toni Morrison, Beloved: "One of the few books that actually caused me to drop my jaw while reading -- haunting, magical, and beautifully poetic; tragic and uplifting at the same time." (Recommended by Jennifer Grabowski and Sharon Cognetti)
Laura Esquival, Like Water For Chocolate: "Although I teach it, this book is one of my favorites! On a desert island, the passion for food and love would be perfect." (Recommended by Heather Hickman)
Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: "A fantastic collection of entertaining poems that got me through childhood and the difficult times in adulthood." (Recommended by Greg Krikava)
Read entire list at: http://ecs.edisonchargers.com/dsp.subpage.print.cfm?id=838
Top 100 Fantasy Books
100. Tiganaby by Guy Gavriel Kay (1990)
After losing his son in a battle against Tigana, a king places a curse on the land. All those born within it will be unable to remember its name.
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (2007)
Read entire list at: http://www.fantasybooksandmovies.com/best-fantasy-books.html
Ten 100-year predictions that came true In 1900, American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. Read the ones that came true and those that didn't at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16444966
Inspired by the predictions of Watkins, readers of BBC News Magazines sent in twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now. Read what futurologists Ian Pearson and Patrick Tucker think of the ideas at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16536598
Antique cut glass Do not serve hot food in cut glass. Do not put the glass in the refrigerator or dishwasher. Wash two or three times a year in warm water and pure soap with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of ammonia. Never let liquids stand in old glass bottles or decanters.
Top ten rules of glass care: http://www.antique-central.com/antique-glass-care-cleaning.shtml
Australia is the world's smallest continent, comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands including Tasmania, New Guinea, the Aru Islands and Raja Ampat Islands. Australia and these nearby islands, all part of the same geological landmass, are separated by seas overlying the continental shelf — the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the last glacial maximum about 18,000 BC, the lands formed a single, continuous landmass. During the past ten thousand years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Geologically, the continent extends to the edge of the continental shelf, so the now-separate lands can still be considered a continent. Due to the spread of flora and fauna across the single Pleistocene landmass the separate lands have a related biota. New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia. Australia is sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul, Australinea and Meganesia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)
On June 15 and 16, 2012, 32 ACM A.M. Turing Award Winners http://turing100.acm.org/index.cfm?p=awardees come together for the first time at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco to honor the 100th Anniversary of Alan Turing and reflect on his contributions, as well as on the past and future of computing. Celebrate with us! Registration is free but limited to 700 attendees. http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1043823 and includes the Friday reception. http://www.acm.org/news/featured
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field". The Turing Award is recognized as the "highest distinction in Computer science" and "Nobel Prize of computing". The award is named after Alan Turing, mathematician and Reader in Mathematics at The University of Manchester. Turing is "frequently credited for being the Father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence". As of 2007, the award is accompanied by a prize of $250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet. The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK. They have now been photographed and are available to the public through a new online museum exhibit released Jan. 17. The find was made by the palaeontologist Dr Howard Falcon-Lang. Dr Falcon-Lang, who is based in the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, spotted some drawers in a cabinet marked "unregistered fossil plants".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16578330
The collection was assembled by botanist Joseph Hooker (Darwin’s best friend) while he was briefly employed by the Survey in 1846. The material includes some of the first thin sections ever made by William Nicol, the pioneer of petrography, in the late 1820s, as well as specimens picked up by Darwin and Hooker on their round the world voyages in the 1830s and 1840s.
Link to the online exhibit at: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/25377-charles-darwin-fossils-foun
100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.
93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.
3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”.
2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale which ate his leg.
1 Middlemarch by George Eliot
“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.
See entire list at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4248401/100-novels-everyone-should-read.html
Top 100 Desert Island Books (in no particular order)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "Always a joyous and thought-provoking read." (Recommended by Sharon Cognetti)
Toni Morrison, Beloved: "One of the few books that actually caused me to drop my jaw while reading -- haunting, magical, and beautifully poetic; tragic and uplifting at the same time." (Recommended by Jennifer Grabowski and Sharon Cognetti)
Laura Esquival, Like Water For Chocolate: "Although I teach it, this book is one of my favorites! On a desert island, the passion for food and love would be perfect." (Recommended by Heather Hickman)
Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: "A fantastic collection of entertaining poems that got me through childhood and the difficult times in adulthood." (Recommended by Greg Krikava)
Read entire list at: http://ecs.edisonchargers.com/dsp.subpage.print.cfm?id=838
Top 100 Fantasy Books
100. Tiganaby by Guy Gavriel Kay (1990)
After losing his son in a battle against Tigana, a king places a curse on the land. All those born within it will be unable to remember its name.
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (2007)
Read entire list at: http://www.fantasybooksandmovies.com/best-fantasy-books.html
Ten 100-year predictions that came true In 1900, American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. Read the ones that came true and those that didn't at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16444966
Inspired by the predictions of Watkins, readers of BBC News Magazines sent in twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now. Read what futurologists Ian Pearson and Patrick Tucker think of the ideas at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16536598
Antique cut glass Do not serve hot food in cut glass. Do not put the glass in the refrigerator or dishwasher. Wash two or three times a year in warm water and pure soap with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of ammonia. Never let liquids stand in old glass bottles or decanters.
Top ten rules of glass care: http://www.antique-central.com/antique-glass-care-cleaning.shtml
Australia is the world's smallest continent, comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands including Tasmania, New Guinea, the Aru Islands and Raja Ampat Islands. Australia and these nearby islands, all part of the same geological landmass, are separated by seas overlying the continental shelf — the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the last glacial maximum about 18,000 BC, the lands formed a single, continuous landmass. During the past ten thousand years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Geologically, the continent extends to the edge of the continental shelf, so the now-separate lands can still be considered a continent. Due to the spread of flora and fauna across the single Pleistocene landmass the separate lands have a related biota. New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia. Australia is sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul, Australinea and Meganesia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)
On June 15 and 16, 2012, 32 ACM A.M. Turing Award Winners http://turing100.acm.org/index.cfm?p=awardees come together for the first time at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco to honor the 100th Anniversary of Alan Turing and reflect on his contributions, as well as on the past and future of computing. Celebrate with us! Registration is free but limited to 700 attendees. http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1043823 and includes the Friday reception. http://www.acm.org/news/featured
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field". The Turing Award is recognized as the "highest distinction in Computer science" and "Nobel Prize of computing". The award is named after Alan Turing, mathematician and Reader in Mathematics at The University of Manchester. Turing is "frequently credited for being the Father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence". As of 2007, the award is accompanied by a prize of $250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet. The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK. They have now been photographed and are available to the public through a new online museum exhibit released Jan. 17. The find was made by the palaeontologist Dr Howard Falcon-Lang. Dr Falcon-Lang, who is based in the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, spotted some drawers in a cabinet marked "unregistered fossil plants".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16578330
The collection was assembled by botanist Joseph Hooker (Darwin’s best friend) while he was briefly employed by the Survey in 1846. The material includes some of the first thin sections ever made by William Nicol, the pioneer of petrography, in the late 1820s, as well as specimens picked up by Darwin and Hooker on their round the world voyages in the 1830s and 1840s.
Link to the online exhibit at: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/25377-charles-darwin-fossils-foun
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The humor stakes are so high in Los Angeles that live-audiences sitcoms are turning to laughter ringers, folks so good at guffawing they're planted in the audience and get everyone else cackling at the right moment. To find those ringers, TV execs turn to Central Casting, the staffing company that's been LA's go-to place for extras and stand-ins since 1925. That's where we are right now, at Central Casting's giant warehouse-sized headquarters in Burbank, ready to meet with the woman who started it all: Lisette St. Claire. She started auditioning people, looking for dominating, infectious laughs, guffaws that were explosive and unique. She aimed for a 50-50 mix of men and women, and she discovered those in their 40s and 50s tended to be the best. She doesn't know why; maybe it takes more life experiences, more joy and sorrow, to find things to really laugh about. Her formula was a hit. Her phone started ringing off the hook, with three to four shows a week planting her cacklers in their audience. While demand for St. Claire's laughers eventually began to wane, lately she says business is picking up. It could be tied in to the return of the laugh track; with competition fierce for the few comedy slots left on TV, folks are eager for any advantage they can get. JOEL WARNER http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2011/12/how_to_be_a_professional_laugh.php
A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director. Some publishers even bought it before reading a translation. Yet none of the publishers, translators or editors knows the author's identity. Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong's last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a "politically questionable family" who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised. In a publishing world where an author's identity is often more important than their talent, it is striking that publishers as far afield as Italy, Norway, Brazil and Israel have responded to the writing alone. Lennie Goodings of Virago bought it without knowing a word of Chinese – and was relieved to discover that it lived up to her expectations when she commissioned an English translation. She said: "It's a beautiful love story, almost like a Romeo and Juliet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/08/hawthorn-tree-zhang-yimou-ai-mi
Quotes
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into a flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) German philosopher, physician, musician, humanitarian, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize
UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme is an international initiative launched to safeguard the documentary heritage of humanity against collective amnesia, neglect, the ravages of time and climatic conditions, and willful and deliberate destruction. It calls for the preservation of valuable archival holdings, library collections and private individual compendia all over the world for posterity, the reconstitution of dispersed or displaced documentary heritage, and the increased accessibility to and dissemination of these items. The Memory of the World Register is a compendium of documents, manuscripts, oral traditions, audio-visual materials, library, and archival holdings of universal value. Inscription on the Register leads to improved conservation of the documentary heritage by calling upon the program's networks of experts to exchange information and raise resources for the preservation, digitization, and dissemination of the material. The program also has the aim of using state-of-the-art technologies to enable wider accessibility and diffusion of the items inscribed on the Register. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_of_the_World_Programme Memory of the World official site http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/memory-of-the-world/homepage/
Edgar Allan Poe
Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. By the age of thirteen, Poe had compiled enough poetry to publish a book, but his headmaster advised Allan against allowing this. Read more and see events at the Poe Museum site: http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php
BALTIMORE—Each year, on the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, several fans of the writer spend a chilly night by his grave here. They are hoping to catch a glimpse of another Poe admirer—one who wears a dark hat and coat and for several decades has left three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac by the tombstone. But the mysterious figure—who, due to a masculine gait and imposing size, is presumed to be male—hasn't shown up the past two years. And if the so-called Poe Toaster doesn't pay a visit sometime late Wednesday or early Thursday, the Poe fanatics who keep vigil in the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground will declare "nevermore." The tradition will be over. JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577166873613905702.html
Follow-up: Wikipedia has taken its English-language site offline as part of protests against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US. Users attempting to access the site see a black screen and a political statement: "Imagine a world without free knowledge." The user-generated news site Reddit and the blog Boing Boing are also taking part in the "blackout". Wikipedia, which attracts millions of hits every day, is opposed to the US Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) being debated by Congress. The legislation would allow the Justice Department and content owners to seek court orders requiring search engines to block results associated with piracy. The site's founder, Jimmy Wales, told the BBC: "Proponents of Sopa have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy". "But that's not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it's going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don't have anything to do with stopping piracy." Read more and find Full explanation on Sopa and Pipa at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585
A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director. Some publishers even bought it before reading a translation. Yet none of the publishers, translators or editors knows the author's identity. Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong's last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a "politically questionable family" who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised. In a publishing world where an author's identity is often more important than their talent, it is striking that publishers as far afield as Italy, Norway, Brazil and Israel have responded to the writing alone. Lennie Goodings of Virago bought it without knowing a word of Chinese – and was relieved to discover that it lived up to her expectations when she commissioned an English translation. She said: "It's a beautiful love story, almost like a Romeo and Juliet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/08/hawthorn-tree-zhang-yimou-ai-mi
Quotes
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into a flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) German philosopher, physician, musician, humanitarian, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize
UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme is an international initiative launched to safeguard the documentary heritage of humanity against collective amnesia, neglect, the ravages of time and climatic conditions, and willful and deliberate destruction. It calls for the preservation of valuable archival holdings, library collections and private individual compendia all over the world for posterity, the reconstitution of dispersed or displaced documentary heritage, and the increased accessibility to and dissemination of these items. The Memory of the World Register is a compendium of documents, manuscripts, oral traditions, audio-visual materials, library, and archival holdings of universal value. Inscription on the Register leads to improved conservation of the documentary heritage by calling upon the program's networks of experts to exchange information and raise resources for the preservation, digitization, and dissemination of the material. The program also has the aim of using state-of-the-art technologies to enable wider accessibility and diffusion of the items inscribed on the Register. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_of_the_World_Programme Memory of the World official site http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/flagship-project-activities/memory-of-the-world/homepage/
Edgar Allan Poe
Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. By the age of thirteen, Poe had compiled enough poetry to publish a book, but his headmaster advised Allan against allowing this. Read more and see events at the Poe Museum site: http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php
BALTIMORE—Each year, on the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, several fans of the writer spend a chilly night by his grave here. They are hoping to catch a glimpse of another Poe admirer—one who wears a dark hat and coat and for several decades has left three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac by the tombstone. But the mysterious figure—who, due to a masculine gait and imposing size, is presumed to be male—hasn't shown up the past two years. And if the so-called Poe Toaster doesn't pay a visit sometime late Wednesday or early Thursday, the Poe fanatics who keep vigil in the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground will declare "nevermore." The tradition will be over. JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577166873613905702.html
Follow-up: Wikipedia has taken its English-language site offline as part of protests against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US. Users attempting to access the site see a black screen and a political statement: "Imagine a world without free knowledge." The user-generated news site Reddit and the blog Boing Boing are also taking part in the "blackout". Wikipedia, which attracts millions of hits every day, is opposed to the US Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) being debated by Congress. The legislation would allow the Justice Department and content owners to seek court orders requiring search engines to block results associated with piracy. The site's founder, Jimmy Wales, told the BBC: "Proponents of Sopa have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy". "But that's not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it's going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don't have anything to do with stopping piracy." Read more and find Full explanation on Sopa and Pipa at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens http://www.dickens2012.org/
The Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street (the author’s only surviving London house) holds the world's most important Dickens collection with over 100,000 items including manuscripts, rare editions, personal items, paintings and other visual sources. http://www.dickensmuseum.com/
Travel quotes
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430.
One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry Valentine Miller (26 December 1891 - 7 June 1980) American writer
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, 1957 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Miller
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
Pat Conroy (b. 1945) American teacher and writer
Stink bugs infiltrated the U.S. as cargo ship stowaways from Asia about 15 years ago and have proliferated in the past two years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the immigrants have spread to 36 states; trade groups say they were responsible for $37 million of damage to apple crops alone in 2010. "It's not so much an evolution but a takeover," says Anne Nielsen, an entomologist recruited by Rutgers University in New Jersey specifically to study stink bugs, known to scientists as the Halyomorpha halys. Brian McCausland, a contractor from Chester County, Pa., conjured up his own solution. He invented a trap that uses light and a spruce-scented spray to draw the pests to a bowl, where they drown. So far, he says, he's sold 5,000 of the $9.99 contraptions by word-of-mouth. The stink bug measures between 1/2 inch and one inch long, with a speckled brown exoskeleton. Its colloquial name stems from the odor emitted from glands on its abdomen—a defense mechanism triggered by disturbances like predators or homeowners who stumble upon them in attics. It feeds through a stylus that is "as hard as steel," says Mark Seetin of the U.S. Apple Association. Scientists are more concerned with the bug's appetite for crops than its smell. The insects are voracious vegetarians that forage on about 300 species of produce, trees and vegetation. HEATHER HADDON http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577148833091069496.html
On Jan. 15, the White House outlined its opposition to two similar bills pending in the House and Senate that would crack down on the sale of pirated American movies, music and other goods on foreign-based websites. The bills would require Internet companies to hobble access to foreign pirate websites, bar search engines from linking to them and prevent U.S. companies from placing ads on them. The Senate is still scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the legislation on Jan. 24. House backers haven't announced any plans to advance the legislation, but they said on Jan. 13 that they will remove a provision that worried some cybersecurity experts. The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act has stoked wild rhetoric from both supporters and detractors. Opponents, including technology companies, have compared some provisions in the legislation to methods used by dictatorial regimes. To protest the proposed legislation, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia said it will close down its English language version for 24 hours on Jan. 18. But supporters say the competitiveness of the movie and television industry—and even that of American business as a whole—is at stake. Major media companies that own TV channels and movie studios have been among the legislation's supporters. They worry that piracy could thwart their still nascent efforts to get consumers to pay for online content. In the TV business, for instance, channels are increasingly making their shows available online only to paying subscribers to cable and satellite operators—a system that could be undermined by pirate sites.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577165081404005466.html
Exactly 100 pieces of trefoil-shaped construction paper crisscross the walls of the Girl Scouts headquarters in Toledo. Every emblem proclaims a message squarely knotted to the Girl Scouts' 100th birthday this year, beginning with No. 1: "1st Chartered Council in the U.S." In 1917, the same year Girl Scouts were for the first time selling homemade cookies as a way to fund troop activities, founder Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low was signing her name to the first charter for a local council in the United States, and that council was here in Toledo. "No. One" is penned in the corner of that charter, a copy of which is proudly displayed in the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio office on Collingwood Boulevard in the Old West End. An Ohio Historical Marker, now in the works, is to be erected in May to commemorate Toledo's significant link to an organization that has had more than 50 million members since that night when Mrs. Low called a friend saying, "Come right over. I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight." She assembled 18 girls from Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 1912, to register the first troop meeting of the American Girl Guides; the name was changed to Girl Scouts the following year, and the rest is history. Actually, in 2012, declared by the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. as the Year of the Girl, it is being termed "HERstory." "It is one of the little-known facts about the Girl Scouts of our area," said Allison Demkowski, program services manager for Toledo and Lima regions of the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio. As part of the celebration, Girl Scouts in the Toledo area will have a rare opportunity to spend the night at the Toledo Museum of Art. "There will be sleeping bags all over," said Carol Bintz, chief operating officer at the museum. She's expecting about 2,000 girls to participate in Girl Scout Night at the Museum on May 5-6, featuring hands-on projects, flashlight tours, and storytelling. On May 5 about 4 p.m., the Ohio Historical Marker is to be dedicated on the grounds of the art museum during a public ceremony, she said, noting close connections between the scouts and the museum. When the Girl Scouts' first charter was issued to the Toledo council, the first commissioner was Nina Stevens, who was assistant director of the museum. She was the wife of museum director George Stevens. The charter was signed by the new council officials on the steps of the museum. All of these significant historical connections are fantastic, she said. Not only is the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. celebrating its 100th anniversary, but the museum is marking the 100th anniversary of the completion of the building's center core, Ms. Bintz said.
"We are celebrating our centennials together," she said. "We really want to make this a great event for the girls." The Green Hat Society, a nationwide Girl Scout alumnae organization founded in Toledo in 2004, is to hold its 2012 national encampment at Camp Libbey Aug. 15-19, and Green Hatters from New York, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin are among those expected to attend, according to Bonnie Hamic of Whitehouse, Green Hat Society, Maumee Valley Chapter chairman.
JANET ROMAKER See images, including the document showing the nation's first charter at: http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/01/16/Toledo-celebrates-its-role-in-herstory.print
The first published recipe for Girl Scout cookies was printed in July, 1922. Find recipe and instructions at: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Original-Girl-Scout-Cookies-100807
The Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street (the author’s only surviving London house) holds the world's most important Dickens collection with over 100,000 items including manuscripts, rare editions, personal items, paintings and other visual sources. http://www.dickensmuseum.com/
Travel quotes
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430.
One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry Valentine Miller (26 December 1891 - 7 June 1980) American writer
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, 1957 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Miller
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.
Pat Conroy (b. 1945) American teacher and writer
Stink bugs infiltrated the U.S. as cargo ship stowaways from Asia about 15 years ago and have proliferated in the past two years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the immigrants have spread to 36 states; trade groups say they were responsible for $37 million of damage to apple crops alone in 2010. "It's not so much an evolution but a takeover," says Anne Nielsen, an entomologist recruited by Rutgers University in New Jersey specifically to study stink bugs, known to scientists as the Halyomorpha halys. Brian McCausland, a contractor from Chester County, Pa., conjured up his own solution. He invented a trap that uses light and a spruce-scented spray to draw the pests to a bowl, where they drown. So far, he says, he's sold 5,000 of the $9.99 contraptions by word-of-mouth. The stink bug measures between 1/2 inch and one inch long, with a speckled brown exoskeleton. Its colloquial name stems from the odor emitted from glands on its abdomen—a defense mechanism triggered by disturbances like predators or homeowners who stumble upon them in attics. It feeds through a stylus that is "as hard as steel," says Mark Seetin of the U.S. Apple Association. Scientists are more concerned with the bug's appetite for crops than its smell. The insects are voracious vegetarians that forage on about 300 species of produce, trees and vegetation. HEATHER HADDON http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577148833091069496.html
On Jan. 15, the White House outlined its opposition to two similar bills pending in the House and Senate that would crack down on the sale of pirated American movies, music and other goods on foreign-based websites. The bills would require Internet companies to hobble access to foreign pirate websites, bar search engines from linking to them and prevent U.S. companies from placing ads on them. The Senate is still scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the legislation on Jan. 24. House backers haven't announced any plans to advance the legislation, but they said on Jan. 13 that they will remove a provision that worried some cybersecurity experts. The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act has stoked wild rhetoric from both supporters and detractors. Opponents, including technology companies, have compared some provisions in the legislation to methods used by dictatorial regimes. To protest the proposed legislation, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia said it will close down its English language version for 24 hours on Jan. 18. But supporters say the competitiveness of the movie and television industry—and even that of American business as a whole—is at stake. Major media companies that own TV channels and movie studios have been among the legislation's supporters. They worry that piracy could thwart their still nascent efforts to get consumers to pay for online content. In the TV business, for instance, channels are increasingly making their shows available online only to paying subscribers to cable and satellite operators—a system that could be undermined by pirate sites.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577165081404005466.html
Exactly 100 pieces of trefoil-shaped construction paper crisscross the walls of the Girl Scouts headquarters in Toledo. Every emblem proclaims a message squarely knotted to the Girl Scouts' 100th birthday this year, beginning with No. 1: "1st Chartered Council in the U.S." In 1917, the same year Girl Scouts were for the first time selling homemade cookies as a way to fund troop activities, founder Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low was signing her name to the first charter for a local council in the United States, and that council was here in Toledo. "No. One" is penned in the corner of that charter, a copy of which is proudly displayed in the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio office on Collingwood Boulevard in the Old West End. An Ohio Historical Marker, now in the works, is to be erected in May to commemorate Toledo's significant link to an organization that has had more than 50 million members since that night when Mrs. Low called a friend saying, "Come right over. I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight." She assembled 18 girls from Savannah, Ga., on March 12, 1912, to register the first troop meeting of the American Girl Guides; the name was changed to Girl Scouts the following year, and the rest is history. Actually, in 2012, declared by the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. as the Year of the Girl, it is being termed "HERstory." "It is one of the little-known facts about the Girl Scouts of our area," said Allison Demkowski, program services manager for Toledo and Lima regions of the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio. As part of the celebration, Girl Scouts in the Toledo area will have a rare opportunity to spend the night at the Toledo Museum of Art. "There will be sleeping bags all over," said Carol Bintz, chief operating officer at the museum. She's expecting about 2,000 girls to participate in Girl Scout Night at the Museum on May 5-6, featuring hands-on projects, flashlight tours, and storytelling. On May 5 about 4 p.m., the Ohio Historical Marker is to be dedicated on the grounds of the art museum during a public ceremony, she said, noting close connections between the scouts and the museum. When the Girl Scouts' first charter was issued to the Toledo council, the first commissioner was Nina Stevens, who was assistant director of the museum. She was the wife of museum director George Stevens. The charter was signed by the new council officials on the steps of the museum. All of these significant historical connections are fantastic, she said. Not only is the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. celebrating its 100th anniversary, but the museum is marking the 100th anniversary of the completion of the building's center core, Ms. Bintz said.
"We are celebrating our centennials together," she said. "We really want to make this a great event for the girls." The Green Hat Society, a nationwide Girl Scout alumnae organization founded in Toledo in 2004, is to hold its 2012 national encampment at Camp Libbey Aug. 15-19, and Green Hatters from New York, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin are among those expected to attend, according to Bonnie Hamic of Whitehouse, Green Hat Society, Maumee Valley Chapter chairman.
JANET ROMAKER See images, including the document showing the nation's first charter at: http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/01/16/Toledo-celebrates-its-role-in-herstory.print
The first published recipe for Girl Scout cookies was printed in July, 1922. Find recipe and instructions at: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Original-Girl-Scout-Cookies-100807
Monday, January 16, 2012
Poets, novelists, essayists, and anyone who writes uses the same currency: words. That's all they need to say to say all there is to say. The trick is to choose the right denomination and arrange them in the right way. There are times when nothing quite fits, and then you can invent your own. You have the building blocks. This week we'll feature words made by using combining forms. What are combining forms? You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg: play + godt: well) bricks of language. As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can't attach to another affix).
duopsony (doo-OP-suh-nee, dyoo-) noun
A market condition in which there are only two buyers, thus exerting great influence on price.
From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).
From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).
NOTES
monopoly: one seller, many buyers
duopoly: two sellers, many buyers
oligopoly: a few sellers, many buyers
gerontology (jer-uhn-TOL-uh-jee) noun
The scientific study of aging.
From Greek geronto-, from geras (old age) + -logy (study). Earliest documented use: 1903.
autologous (ah-TOL-uh-guhs) adjective
Involving a situation in which the donor and the recipient (of blood, skin, bone, etc.) are the same person. From Greek auto- (self) + -logous (as in homologous), from logos (proportion, ratio, word). Earliest documented use: 1911.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
The Fine Art of Where to Start by DARIN STRAUSS
Good stories can be good for a thousand and one reasons, but failed stories often fail in the same way. For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc. But there's no need for any of that.
One of the first lessons in writing school is (to paraphrase my great teacher Lee K. Abbott) "a story equals trouble"—that is, no trouble, no story. E.L. Doctorow made the same point, a bit cryptically, when he recommended starting a story "as late as possible." By which he meant as late as possible in the crucial action. The clearest guidance on this point may come from the Canadian writer Douglas Glover, a master of narrative structure. He compares a story's protagonist to a boulder perched insecurely on a hilltop and suggests that we imagine a bird coming along to knock the boulder off the hill. That's a perfect place to begin—the moment of impact, the start of the trouble. The motion of the boulder is the story. For an example of this, look at a classic: Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." His opening line: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect." The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs. —Mr. Strauss's books include the novel "Chang & Eng" and the memoir "Half a Life," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550304577138892700746530.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) was a writer and critic of 18th-century British children's literature. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Trimmer
TWO HUNDRED AND COUNTING Armies, archaeology and art are on the agenda at Ohio Historical Society sites in coming weeks. The War of 1812 bicentennial gets underway in 2012 and featured events begin, appropriately, with the 2012 Bentley Lecture Series at Fort Meigs, our reconstructed War of 1812 fort in Perrysburg near Toledo.
At Fort Meigs in Perrysburg Visitor Center
Third Thursdays except June, July, August and December
Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Detroit and the War of 1812, with Dr. Denver Brunsman of Wayne State University
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Thus Fell Tecumseh, with Frank Kuron
See future dates in various locations at: http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/enews/0112f.shtml
Bentley Lecture Series programs are free. For more information, call 800.283.8916
or visit fortmeigs.org.
JERUSALEM In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry. The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough. Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage. The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards. ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html
duopsony (doo-OP-suh-nee, dyoo-) noun
A market condition in which there are only two buyers, thus exerting great influence on price.
From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).
From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).
NOTES
monopoly: one seller, many buyers
duopoly: two sellers, many buyers
oligopoly: a few sellers, many buyers
gerontology (jer-uhn-TOL-uh-jee) noun
The scientific study of aging.
From Greek geronto-, from geras (old age) + -logy (study). Earliest documented use: 1903.
autologous (ah-TOL-uh-guhs) adjective
Involving a situation in which the donor and the recipient (of blood, skin, bone, etc.) are the same person. From Greek auto- (self) + -logous (as in homologous), from logos (proportion, ratio, word). Earliest documented use: 1911.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
The Fine Art of Where to Start by DARIN STRAUSS
Good stories can be good for a thousand and one reasons, but failed stories often fail in the same way. For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc. But there's no need for any of that.
One of the first lessons in writing school is (to paraphrase my great teacher Lee K. Abbott) "a story equals trouble"—that is, no trouble, no story. E.L. Doctorow made the same point, a bit cryptically, when he recommended starting a story "as late as possible." By which he meant as late as possible in the crucial action. The clearest guidance on this point may come from the Canadian writer Douglas Glover, a master of narrative structure. He compares a story's protagonist to a boulder perched insecurely on a hilltop and suggests that we imagine a bird coming along to knock the boulder off the hill. That's a perfect place to begin—the moment of impact, the start of the trouble. The motion of the boulder is the story. For an example of this, look at a classic: Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." His opening line: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect." The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs. —Mr. Strauss's books include the novel "Chang & Eng" and the memoir "Half a Life," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550304577138892700746530.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) was a writer and critic of 18th-century British children's literature. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Trimmer
TWO HUNDRED AND COUNTING Armies, archaeology and art are on the agenda at Ohio Historical Society sites in coming weeks. The War of 1812 bicentennial gets underway in 2012 and featured events begin, appropriately, with the 2012 Bentley Lecture Series at Fort Meigs, our reconstructed War of 1812 fort in Perrysburg near Toledo.
At Fort Meigs in Perrysburg Visitor Center
Third Thursdays except June, July, August and December
Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Detroit and the War of 1812, with Dr. Denver Brunsman of Wayne State University
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Thus Fell Tecumseh, with Frank Kuron
See future dates in various locations at: http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/enews/0112f.shtml
Bentley Lecture Series programs are free. For more information, call 800.283.8916
or visit fortmeigs.org.
JERUSALEM In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry. The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough. Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage. The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards. ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html
Friday, January 13, 2012
The Velvet Underground sued a foundation that manages artist Andy Warhol’s legacy in a trademark dispute over the influential New York-based rock band’s iconic cover for its 1967 album “The Velvet Underground & Nico.” The cover features a banana on a white background with Warhol’s signature. The artist selected the banana design from an element of advertisement in the public domain, according to the lawsuit. The band essentially served as the house band for Warhol’s studio, The Factory, and contributed soundtracks to several of his film projects. A partnership, which manages the band’s catalogue and includes band members Lou Reed and John Cale as partners, claims that The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. has infringed the band’s trademark by licensing the banana image to third parties, including purportedly cases for iPhones and iPads. The partnership, which filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on Jan. 11, is seeking a declaration that the Warhol Foundation has no copyright interest in the design. CHAD BRAY
See image of Warhol banana at: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/11/yes-we-have-no-bananas-velvet-underground-sues-warhol-group/
December 08, 2011
As one of the pioneers of information technology, LexisNexis has earned its reputation as an innovator that only works with best-in-class solutions. After careful consideration, the company picked MarkLogic Corporation, the company empowering organizations to make high stakes decisions on Big Data in real time, to power components of the new platform behind Lexis Advance, the next generation legal research solution.
http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2011-12-08/aBLTkRBMK3Fo.html
Please note that this is a "puff piece".
January 12, 2012
Today, Bernstein Research. released a report: Reed Elsevier: Voices Calling for Asset Divestitures Should Grow Louder, and Perhaps Fall on Deaf Ears which includes some significant implications for the legal publishing marketplace. The report recommends that Reed Elsevier divest some units including LexisNexis and suggests by implication that Bloomberg Law is standing by and ready to purchase those assets. The report also notes that interviews with U.S. law librarians were a key source used in the report. http://deweybstrategic.blogspot.com/
THREE SISTERS
Three Sisters (play), a play by Anton Chekhov.
The Three Sisters (1930 film)
Three Sisters (film), a 1970 motion picture adaptation of the Chekhov play
Three Sisters (TV series), a 2001 comedy series on NBC
Three Sisters (Oregon), a cluster of volcanoes in Oregon
Three Sisters (District of Columbia), three islands in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
Three Sisters (Great Lakes), a series three islands on the Great Lakes.
The Three Sisters (New York), three small islands off the west side of Goat Island in the Niagara Falls State Park.
The Three Sisters (Queensland), three islands in the Torres Strait North Queensland, Australia.
The Three Sisters (Aleutian Islands), Alaska
The Three Sisters (Ireland), a group of three rivers in Ireland.
Three Sisters Springs (Florida), on the Crystal River.
Three Sisters Wilderness, a wilderness area in the Oregon Cascades.
Three Sisters (Pittsburgh), a collection of three nearly identical bridges in Pittsburgh
Three Sisters (Waipoua Forest), three large Kauri trees in Waipoua Forest, New Zealand.
Three Sisters (agriculture), the three basic agricultural crops of indigenous peoples in North America.
Three Sisters (tomato), a variety of tomato See many more items at:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_term_three_sisters_mean
Giving Turnips a Second Look TARA PARKER-POPE
Last fall, I was speaking with the Meatball Shop chef, Daniel Holzman, and the conversation turned to one of his favorite side dishes: Smashed Turnips With Fresh Horseradish. The turnip, Chef Holzman says, is one of the most “underappreciated and often overlooked” vegetables at the market. “They are super-delicious, really inexpensive and easy to cook,” he said. “But for whatever reason, they are not part of our regular culinary quiver.” This week, Martha Rose Shulman weighs in with five new ways to enjoy turnips, including her own take on mashed turnips, as well as a frittata, a creamy gratin, a stir-fry and a comforting couscous.
Turnip Gratin:
Couscous With Turnips and Sweet Potatoes:
Frittata With Turnips and Olives: Rice Noodles With Stir-Fried Chicken, Turnips and Carrots:
Mashed Turnips and Potatoes With Turnip Greens: Find recipes at: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/giving-turnips-a-second-look/?ref=health
Homemade brass and copper polish Put 2 tablespoons of salt into a cup of white vinegar. Add just enough flour to form a smooth paste. Dip a damp cloth into the paste, then rub until the stains disappear. Rinse with cold water, dry.
See image of Warhol banana at: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/11/yes-we-have-no-bananas-velvet-underground-sues-warhol-group/
December 08, 2011
As one of the pioneers of information technology, LexisNexis has earned its reputation as an innovator that only works with best-in-class solutions. After careful consideration, the company picked MarkLogic Corporation, the company empowering organizations to make high stakes decisions on Big Data in real time, to power components of the new platform behind Lexis Advance, the next generation legal research solution.
http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2011-12-08/aBLTkRBMK3Fo.html
Please note that this is a "puff piece".
January 12, 2012
Today, Bernstein Research. released a report: Reed Elsevier: Voices Calling for Asset Divestitures Should Grow Louder, and Perhaps Fall on Deaf Ears which includes some significant implications for the legal publishing marketplace. The report recommends that Reed Elsevier divest some units including LexisNexis and suggests by implication that Bloomberg Law is standing by and ready to purchase those assets. The report also notes that interviews with U.S. law librarians were a key source used in the report. http://deweybstrategic.blogspot.com/
THREE SISTERS
Three Sisters (play), a play by Anton Chekhov.
The Three Sisters (1930 film)
Three Sisters (film), a 1970 motion picture adaptation of the Chekhov play
Three Sisters (TV series), a 2001 comedy series on NBC
Three Sisters (Oregon), a cluster of volcanoes in Oregon
Three Sisters (District of Columbia), three islands in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
Three Sisters (Great Lakes), a series three islands on the Great Lakes.
The Three Sisters (New York), three small islands off the west side of Goat Island in the Niagara Falls State Park.
The Three Sisters (Queensland), three islands in the Torres Strait North Queensland, Australia.
The Three Sisters (Aleutian Islands), Alaska
The Three Sisters (Ireland), a group of three rivers in Ireland.
Three Sisters Springs (Florida), on the Crystal River.
Three Sisters Wilderness, a wilderness area in the Oregon Cascades.
Three Sisters (Pittsburgh), a collection of three nearly identical bridges in Pittsburgh
Three Sisters (Waipoua Forest), three large Kauri trees in Waipoua Forest, New Zealand.
Three Sisters (agriculture), the three basic agricultural crops of indigenous peoples in North America.
Three Sisters (tomato), a variety of tomato See many more items at:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_term_three_sisters_mean
Giving Turnips a Second Look TARA PARKER-POPE
Last fall, I was speaking with the Meatball Shop chef, Daniel Holzman, and the conversation turned to one of his favorite side dishes: Smashed Turnips With Fresh Horseradish. The turnip, Chef Holzman says, is one of the most “underappreciated and often overlooked” vegetables at the market. “They are super-delicious, really inexpensive and easy to cook,” he said. “But for whatever reason, they are not part of our regular culinary quiver.” This week, Martha Rose Shulman weighs in with five new ways to enjoy turnips, including her own take on mashed turnips, as well as a frittata, a creamy gratin, a stir-fry and a comforting couscous.
Turnip Gratin:
Couscous With Turnips and Sweet Potatoes:
Frittata With Turnips and Olives: Rice Noodles With Stir-Fried Chicken, Turnips and Carrots:
Mashed Turnips and Potatoes With Turnip Greens: Find recipes at: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/giving-turnips-a-second-look/?ref=health
Homemade brass and copper polish Put 2 tablespoons of salt into a cup of white vinegar. Add just enough flour to form a smooth paste. Dip a damp cloth into the paste, then rub until the stains disappear. Rinse with cold water, dry.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Houston Main Building (HMB) formerly the Prudential Building, was a skyscraper in the Texas Medical Center, Houston, Texas. It originally housed offices of the Prudential Insurance Company, before becoming a part of the MD Anderson Cancer Center. The building was demolished on January 8, 2012. The building was built in 1952. The building was the first corporate high rise building established outside of Downtown Houston. The 18 story, 500,000-square-foot (46,000 m2) building was designed by Kenneth Franzheim. The offices in the building served the states of Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. The MD Anderson Cancer Center bought the building in 1974. In 2002 MD Anderson announced that it planned to demolish the building and replace it with a four story medical campus. Area preservationists opposed the plan. William Daigneau, the vice president of operations and facilities, said that renovating the buildings would be too costly. In 2008 Daigneau said that the building was slowly disintegrating. A fresco, titled "The Future Belongs To Those Who Prepare For It," was located in the Prudential Building. The fresco, 16 feet (4.9 m) by 47 feet (14 m), depicts life on a farm in West Texas. The Prudential Life Insurance Company commissioned the mural from the artist Peter Hurd. The company wanted to evoke its motto, which was used as the painting's title. To create the mural, Hurd used construction workers as his models. Hurd himself appears as a soil conservation agent in the work. The vice president of MD Anderson, Bill Daigneau, said in 2008 the structural problems in the building are cracking the mural. Daigneau also said that the fresco "does not reflect the values of M.D. Anderson. ... There's the issue of who's running the farm, and who's working on it." In 2010 a benefactor from Artesia, New Mexico agreed to have the mural removed. The mural will become a part of the public library of Artesia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Main_Building
PETER HURD (1904-1984) arrived in Chadds Ford in 1923, with a click of his heels and a salute. He had recently left West Point after struggling through a personal conflict of interests: the military or painting. Hurd's respect for the work of N. C. Wyeth, and his own perseverance gave him the opportunity to meet Wyeth at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The meeting went well, and soon Hurd moved to Chadds Ford, and became a student of the renowned illustrator. Peter Hurd later commented that West Point was tough on its students, but N. C. Wyeth was tougher. For the next ten years, he lived and painted under the strict guidance of his teacher. All of the Wyeths were quite taken by this handsome, energetic young man in cowboy boots and hat, but none so much as N. C.’s eldest daughter, Henriette, who married Peter Hurd in 1929. Peter Hurd was born in Roswell, New Mexico, and his longing to return to New Mexico determined the course of his life and his art. Peter Hurd is best known for his watercolors, luminous egg temperas and lithographs depicting the New Mexican landscape he loved. Hurd was an early pioneer of the Italian renaissance medium of egg tempera in the US. In 1932, he introduced his young brother-in-law, Andrew Wyeth, to egg tempera. Eventually, N. C. Wyeth adopted the medium, as did son-in-law John W. McCoy.
http://www.wyethhurd.com/family.html
Hiccups are caused by involuntary contractions of your diaphragm — the muscle that separates your chest from your abdomen and plays an important role in breathing. This involuntary contraction causes your vocal cords to close very briefly, which produces the characteristic sound of a hiccup. There is no one proven cure for the hiccups. Different things may work at different times and for different people. The following hiccup remedies may be effective:
Holding your breath
Slowly drinking a cold glass of water
Breathing into a paper bag
Eating a spoonful of sugar
If your hiccups last longer than 48 hours, consult your doctor.
http://www.riversideonline.com/health_reference/Questions-Answers/AN01249.cfm
A legal battle between HarperCollins Publishers Inc. and a company run by one of its former chief executives is putting the spotlight on a key issue in book publishing today: Who owns the e-book rights to decades-old titles? Two days before Christmas, HarperCollins filed a copyright-infringement suit against Open Road Integrated Media Inc. in federal court in New York, seeking to block Open Road from selling an e-book edition of Jean Craighead George's 1972 children's novel "Julie of the Wolves." The lawsuit appears likely to reopen a critical issue relating to e-book rights that was thought to be resolved about a decade ago. That is, whether book contracts written before the digital age granted publishers digital rights, or whether those rights were retained by the author and could be sold to an e-publisher. JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577153142705735660.html
Chief Justice John Roberts starts out his analysis in Jan. 11’s unanimous ruling on a religious-freedom case by drawing on the biggest and oldest of them all, the Magna Carta or Great Charter of 1215. That’s when the chief’s namesake, King John, agreed that “the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.” Skipping lightly through Henry II, Henry VIII, the 1662 Act of Uniformity and Hamilton James Eckenrode’s 1910 review of 17th century Virginia colonial law, the chief justice finds that the Constitution prevents the government both from appointing ministers in a church and from “interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own.” All this is in service of resolving the complaint by Cheryl Perich, a kindergarten teacher at a Lutheran school who also held a diploma designating her as a commissioned minister. The school fired her after a disability leave, and Ms. Perich sued, claiming a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Chief Justice Roberts found that religious groups are entitled to an exception from federal employment laws because of their special constitutional status. Specifically, he wrote: “Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so … infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments.” And, to complete the case, the opinion found that Ms. Perich qualifies as a minister because of her credentials, although her actual job was as a schoolteacher.
Here’s the opinion http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-553.pdf and, if you share the reading habits of the chief, you can peruse that entire 1910 work, “Separation of Church and State in Virginia,” online at: http://books.google.com/books?id=2gwVAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=falseonline PETER LANDERS http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/11/justices-turn-to-english-law-in-religious-freedom-ruling/
PETER HURD (1904-1984) arrived in Chadds Ford in 1923, with a click of his heels and a salute. He had recently left West Point after struggling through a personal conflict of interests: the military or painting. Hurd's respect for the work of N. C. Wyeth, and his own perseverance gave him the opportunity to meet Wyeth at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The meeting went well, and soon Hurd moved to Chadds Ford, and became a student of the renowned illustrator. Peter Hurd later commented that West Point was tough on its students, but N. C. Wyeth was tougher. For the next ten years, he lived and painted under the strict guidance of his teacher. All of the Wyeths were quite taken by this handsome, energetic young man in cowboy boots and hat, but none so much as N. C.’s eldest daughter, Henriette, who married Peter Hurd in 1929. Peter Hurd was born in Roswell, New Mexico, and his longing to return to New Mexico determined the course of his life and his art. Peter Hurd is best known for his watercolors, luminous egg temperas and lithographs depicting the New Mexican landscape he loved. Hurd was an early pioneer of the Italian renaissance medium of egg tempera in the US. In 1932, he introduced his young brother-in-law, Andrew Wyeth, to egg tempera. Eventually, N. C. Wyeth adopted the medium, as did son-in-law John W. McCoy.
http://www.wyethhurd.com/family.html
Hiccups are caused by involuntary contractions of your diaphragm — the muscle that separates your chest from your abdomen and plays an important role in breathing. This involuntary contraction causes your vocal cords to close very briefly, which produces the characteristic sound of a hiccup. There is no one proven cure for the hiccups. Different things may work at different times and for different people. The following hiccup remedies may be effective:
Holding your breath
Slowly drinking a cold glass of water
Breathing into a paper bag
Eating a spoonful of sugar
If your hiccups last longer than 48 hours, consult your doctor.
http://www.riversideonline.com/health_reference/Questions-Answers/AN01249.cfm
A legal battle between HarperCollins Publishers Inc. and a company run by one of its former chief executives is putting the spotlight on a key issue in book publishing today: Who owns the e-book rights to decades-old titles? Two days before Christmas, HarperCollins filed a copyright-infringement suit against Open Road Integrated Media Inc. in federal court in New York, seeking to block Open Road from selling an e-book edition of Jean Craighead George's 1972 children's novel "Julie of the Wolves." The lawsuit appears likely to reopen a critical issue relating to e-book rights that was thought to be resolved about a decade ago. That is, whether book contracts written before the digital age granted publishers digital rights, or whether those rights were retained by the author and could be sold to an e-publisher. JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577153142705735660.html
Chief Justice John Roberts starts out his analysis in Jan. 11’s unanimous ruling on a religious-freedom case by drawing on the biggest and oldest of them all, the Magna Carta or Great Charter of 1215. That’s when the chief’s namesake, King John, agreed that “the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.” Skipping lightly through Henry II, Henry VIII, the 1662 Act of Uniformity and Hamilton James Eckenrode’s 1910 review of 17th century Virginia colonial law, the chief justice finds that the Constitution prevents the government both from appointing ministers in a church and from “interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own.” All this is in service of resolving the complaint by Cheryl Perich, a kindergarten teacher at a Lutheran school who also held a diploma designating her as a commissioned minister. The school fired her after a disability leave, and Ms. Perich sued, claiming a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Chief Justice Roberts found that religious groups are entitled to an exception from federal employment laws because of their special constitutional status. Specifically, he wrote: “Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so … infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments.” And, to complete the case, the opinion found that Ms. Perich qualifies as a minister because of her credentials, although her actual job was as a schoolteacher.
Here’s the opinion http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-553.pdf and, if you share the reading habits of the chief, you can peruse that entire 1910 work, “Separation of Church and State in Virginia,” online at: http://books.google.com/books?id=2gwVAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=falseonline PETER LANDERS http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/11/justices-turn-to-english-law-in-religious-freedom-ruling/
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The only thing that lies between Americans and the sultry streets of Havana these days is the Florida Straits, since the Obama administration has widened the kind of travel allowed. A growing list of organizations have licenses to operate trips to Cuba, including National Geographic Expeditions, Austin-Lehman and the Center for Cuban Studies. There are also more flights from more American cities: Fort Lauderdale and Tampa recently joined New York, Miami and Los Angeles on the list, and Chicago will be added this year. The “people-to-people” rules require Americans to interact with Cubans (sun-and-sand vacations are still prohibited) so tours involve meeting with art historians, organic farmers and others. Conveniently, new restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts, some in gorgeous colonial villas, have sprung up over the past year as the government has allowed more private enterprise. Havana is also gearing up for its 11th Biennial, from May 11 to June 11, which will draw more than 100 Cuban and international artists. VICTORIA BURNETT
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/travel/45-places-to-go-in-2012.html
Q: I have some damaged currency. What can I do?
A: The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing generally reimburses the full value of damaged currency if more than half of the note remains. Fragments amounting to less than half are not redeemable. Go to http://www.moneyfactory.gov/damagedcurrencyclaim.html -- U.S. Treasury Department. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Jan/JU/ar_JU_010912.asp?d=010912,2012,Jan,09&c=c_13
Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate. When baking soda is combined with moisture and an acidic ingredient (yogurt, chocolate, buttermilk, honey), the resulting chemical reaction produces bubbles of carbon dioxide that expand under oven temperatures, causing baked goods to rise. The reaction begins immediately upon mixing the ingredients, so you need to bake recipes which call for baking soda immediately, or else they will fall flat. Baking powder contains sodium bicarbonate, but it includes the acidifying agent already (cream of tartar), and also a drying agent (usually starch). Baking powder is available as single-acting baking powder and as double-acting baking powder. Single-acting powders are activated by moisture, so you must bake recipes which include this product immediately after mixing. Double-acting powders react in two phases and can stand for a while before baking. With double-acting powder, some gas is released at room temperature when the powder is added to dough, but the majority of the gas is released after the temperature of the dough increases in the oven. You can substitute baking powder in place of baking soda (you'll need more baking powder and it may affect the taste), but you can't use baking soda when a recipe calls for baking powder. Baking soda by itself lacks the acidity to make a cake rise. Make your own baking powder by mixing two parts cream of tartar with one part baking soda. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/foodchemistry/f/blbaking.htm
There are growing numbers of rewards for serial "likers" who click that button. Hotel chain Marriott International Inc., for instance, is offering those who Like its Facebook pages prizes totaling 10 million reward points, including two grand prizes of a million points each. "It's become a real competition between companies to grow the size of that number [of online followers] and to have more fans than your rivals," said Matt Simpson, marketing director for Phoenix-based Bulbstorm, which develops social-media applications for companies such as NBC and World Wrestling Entertainment. "Over the last year, we've been seeing more and more of it, and it's been driven largely by promotional applications like sweepstakes." In the third quarter of last year, an average of 100 million "Like" buttons were being clicked on Facebook every day. That's double the amount of liking that went on during the same period last year. Corporations are doing this for a reason. They're building marketing lists, they're aiming to boost sales, and they're planting themselves in users' news feeds. Coca-Cola Co. has more than 36 million Likes, and Disney Co. has more than 29 million, assembling an audience that can be tapped at any time. Once a company has an army of online followers, that's not the end of the marketing road. There's the question of what to do with them all. That's why companies are proceeding to Phase Two of the Like operation: Figuring out how to engage and entertain Annie Scranton, the founder and president of a New York public relations company says: "My business is inextricably linked to social media, so if I wasn't constantly Liking things, my clients wouldn't be happy." "Even when I'm working, I'm on Facebook all day long. You can never do enough Liking." http://www.toledoblade.com/Technology/2012/01/03/Companies-rewarding-Likers-on-Facebook.html
noosphere (NOH-uh-sfeer) noun
The sum of human knowledge, thought, and culture.
From French noösphere, from Greek noos (mind) + sphere. Earliest documented use: 1930.
nutate (NOO-tayt, NYOO-) verb intr.
1. To nod the head.
2. To oscillate while rotating (as an astronomical body).
3. To move in a curving or circular fashion (as a plant stem, leaf, etc.).
Back-formation from nutation, from Latin nutare (to nod repeatedly), frequentative of -nuere (to nod), from numen (nod of the head, command, divine will). Earliest documented use: 1880. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Raisins are dried grapes. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Canada the word "raisin" is reserved for the dried large dark grape, with "sultana" being a dried large white grape, and "currant" being a dried small Black Corinth grape. The word raisin dates back to Middle English and is a loanword from Old French; in French, raisin means "grape," while a dried grape is referred to as a raisin sec, or "dry grape." The Old French word in turn developed from the Latin word racemus, "a bunch of grapes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raisin
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/travel/45-places-to-go-in-2012.html
Q: I have some damaged currency. What can I do?
A: The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing generally reimburses the full value of damaged currency if more than half of the note remains. Fragments amounting to less than half are not redeemable. Go to http://www.moneyfactory.gov/damagedcurrencyclaim.html -- U.S. Treasury Department. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Jan/JU/ar_JU_010912.asp?d=010912,2012,Jan,09&c=c_13
Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate. When baking soda is combined with moisture and an acidic ingredient (yogurt, chocolate, buttermilk, honey), the resulting chemical reaction produces bubbles of carbon dioxide that expand under oven temperatures, causing baked goods to rise. The reaction begins immediately upon mixing the ingredients, so you need to bake recipes which call for baking soda immediately, or else they will fall flat. Baking powder contains sodium bicarbonate, but it includes the acidifying agent already (cream of tartar), and also a drying agent (usually starch). Baking powder is available as single-acting baking powder and as double-acting baking powder. Single-acting powders are activated by moisture, so you must bake recipes which include this product immediately after mixing. Double-acting powders react in two phases and can stand for a while before baking. With double-acting powder, some gas is released at room temperature when the powder is added to dough, but the majority of the gas is released after the temperature of the dough increases in the oven. You can substitute baking powder in place of baking soda (you'll need more baking powder and it may affect the taste), but you can't use baking soda when a recipe calls for baking powder. Baking soda by itself lacks the acidity to make a cake rise. Make your own baking powder by mixing two parts cream of tartar with one part baking soda. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/foodchemistry/f/blbaking.htm
There are growing numbers of rewards for serial "likers" who click that button. Hotel chain Marriott International Inc., for instance, is offering those who Like its Facebook pages prizes totaling 10 million reward points, including two grand prizes of a million points each. "It's become a real competition between companies to grow the size of that number [of online followers] and to have more fans than your rivals," said Matt Simpson, marketing director for Phoenix-based Bulbstorm, which develops social-media applications for companies such as NBC and World Wrestling Entertainment. "Over the last year, we've been seeing more and more of it, and it's been driven largely by promotional applications like sweepstakes." In the third quarter of last year, an average of 100 million "Like" buttons were being clicked on Facebook every day. That's double the amount of liking that went on during the same period last year. Corporations are doing this for a reason. They're building marketing lists, they're aiming to boost sales, and they're planting themselves in users' news feeds. Coca-Cola Co. has more than 36 million Likes, and Disney Co. has more than 29 million, assembling an audience that can be tapped at any time. Once a company has an army of online followers, that's not the end of the marketing road. There's the question of what to do with them all. That's why companies are proceeding to Phase Two of the Like operation: Figuring out how to engage and entertain Annie Scranton, the founder and president of a New York public relations company says: "My business is inextricably linked to social media, so if I wasn't constantly Liking things, my clients wouldn't be happy." "Even when I'm working, I'm on Facebook all day long. You can never do enough Liking." http://www.toledoblade.com/Technology/2012/01/03/Companies-rewarding-Likers-on-Facebook.html
noosphere (NOH-uh-sfeer) noun
The sum of human knowledge, thought, and culture.
From French noösphere, from Greek noos (mind) + sphere. Earliest documented use: 1930.
nutate (NOO-tayt, NYOO-) verb intr.
1. To nod the head.
2. To oscillate while rotating (as an astronomical body).
3. To move in a curving or circular fashion (as a plant stem, leaf, etc.).
Back-formation from nutation, from Latin nutare (to nod repeatedly), frequentative of -nuere (to nod), from numen (nod of the head, command, divine will). Earliest documented use: 1880. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Raisins are dried grapes. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Canada the word "raisin" is reserved for the dried large dark grape, with "sultana" being a dried large white grape, and "currant" being a dried small Black Corinth grape. The word raisin dates back to Middle English and is a loanword from Old French; in French, raisin means "grape," while a dried grape is referred to as a raisin sec, or "dry grape." The Old French word in turn developed from the Latin word racemus, "a bunch of grapes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raisin
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