Conversation is thinking in its natural state. Thinking is the conversation within us. The Soul Book, 3d. ed. by Malvina Reynolds (1900-1978) singer, social activist and composer of songs such as Little Boxes, Turn Around and Magic Penny.

Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code encodes the ISO basic Latin alphabet, some extra Latin letters, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals as standardized sequences of short and long signals called "dots" and "dashes" respectively, or "dits" and "dahs". Because many non-English natural languages use more than the 26 Roman letters, extensions to the Morse alphabet exist for those languages. See the code at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

American Sign Language (ASL) is a complete, complex language that employs signs made by moving the hands combined with facial expressions and postures of the body. It is the primary language of many North Americans who are deaf and is one of several communication options used by people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Different sign languages are used in different countries or regions. For example, British Sign Language (BSL) is a different language from ASL, and Americans who know ASL may not understand BSL. http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/asl.aspx

The American Manual Alphabet is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred or only option, such as with proper names or the titles of works. Letters should be signed with the dominant hand and in most cases, with palm facing the viewer. See chart at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_manual_alphabet

Thomas Augustine Arne (1710–1778) was a British composer, best known for the patriotic song. Between 1733 and 1776, Arne wrote music for about 90 stage works, including plays, masques, pantomimes, and opera. Many of his dramatic scores are now lost, probably in the disastrous fire at Covent Garden in 1808. In 1741, Arne filed a complaint in Chancery pertaining to a breach of musical copyright and claimed that some of his theatrical songs had been printed and sold by Henry Roberts and John Johnson, the London booksellers and music distributors. The matter was settled out of court. Arne was certainly one of the very first composers to have appealed to the law over copyright issues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Arne

Irving Berlin came up with “God Bless America” in 1918, while serving in the Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, N.Y. It was intended for a military revue called Yip Yip Yaphank. His musical secretary Harry Ruby remembered, “There were so many patriotic songs coming out at the time. Every songwriter was pouring them out. I said, ‘Geez, another one?’” Berlin decided Ruby was right, calling the song “just a little sticky.” He cut it from the score, stashing it away in his trunk. Two decades later, Berlin saw new hope in the old tune. “I had to make one or two changes in the lyrics, and they in turn led me to a slight change and improvement in the melody, one line in particular. The original ran: ‘Stand beside her and guide her to the right with a light from above.’ In 1918, the phrase ‘to the right’ had no political significance, as it has now (told to a journalist in 1938). So for obvious reasons, I changed the phrase to ‘Through the night with a light from above.’” http://performingsongwriter.com/god-bless-america/

William Jacob "Will" Cuppy (1884–1949) was an American humorist and literary critic, known for his satirical books about nature and historical figures. Many of Cuppy's articles for The New Yorker and other magazines were later collected as books: How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931); and How to Become Extinct (1941). Cuppy also edited three collections of mystery stories: World's Great Mystery Stories (1943); World's Great Detective Stories (1943); and Murder Without Tears (1946). His last animal book, How to Attract the Wombat, appeared two months after his death in 1949. Cuppy's best-known work, a satire on history called The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, was unfinished when he died. The book's appeal can be gauged by the fact that CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and his colleague Don Hollenbeck took turns reading from it on the air "until the announcer cracked up." In 2003, a committee of the International Astronomical Union approved the name "15017 Cuppy" for an asteroid. Cuppy described his mother as "a singer of great talent." While she sang in the choir of the Auburn Presbyterian Church, Will pumped the old-fashioned pipe organ, an experience that he said led to his membership in the "Guild of Former Pipe Organ Pumpers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Cuppy

"Family style" usually means that the host or hostess serves the meat, and the side dishes are passed to the right (counterclockwise) with each dinner guest helping himself. This helps maintain a sense of order at the table while all the dishes are being served. Exception to this rule: If someone sitting to your immediate left requests a second helping of potatoes, don't send the dish all the way around the table. It's perfectly fine to directly pass the dish to the left. http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipes/table-manners/pass-food-peggy-dec04

Platters are passed from right to left because most people are right handed and find it convenient to hold the plate in the left hand while using the right hand to serve themselves food. Those who are left-handed can reach over with the right hand (thus having to experience how awkward it is to have food approaching from the wrong side) and transfer the platter to the right. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-03-15/features/0703130275_1_invited-etiquette-business-etiquette-books

”In 1989, Seeds of Change began with a simple mission: to preserve biodiversity and promote sustainable, organic agriculture. By cultivating and sharing an extensive range of organically grown vegetable, flower, herb and cover crop seeds, we have honored that mission for almost 25 years." Find links to urban gardening, four season growing and gardening how-to at: http://www.seedsofchange.com/

The richest thing in the world is the earth, for from it come all our bounties.
Clever Manka, a Czech fairy tale http://ils.unc.edu/~sturm/storytelling/cuecards/clevermanka%20(Betsy%20Spackman).html

For pottage and puddings and custards and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.
Pilgrim verse, circa 1633 http://www.allaboutpumpkins.com/history.html

As their savory odor drifts upward, a dreamy look will overspread your countenance, and as you taste their rare succulence, their yielding tenderness, their glorious just-off-the-vine flavor, a feeling of blissful satisfaction will literally permeate you. Advertisement for frozen peas
The New Yorker, January 1936 http://www.foodreference.com/html/peas-and-dates.html

Phaedrus by Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett (excerpt)
SOCRATES: There is time enough. And I believe that the grasshoppers chirruping after their manner in the heat of the sun over our heads are talking to one another and looking down at us. What would they say if they saw that we, like the many, are not conversing, but slumbering at mid-day, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think? Would they not have a right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we were slaves, who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie asleep at noon around the well. But if they see us discoursing, and like Odysseus sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from the gods that they may impart them to men.
PHAEDRUS: What gifts do you mean? I never heard of any.
SOCRATES: A lover of music like yourself ought surely to have heard the story of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died. And now they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return which the Muses make to them -- they neither hunger, nor thirst, but from the hour of their birth are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and when they die they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours them on earth. They win the love of Terpsichore for the dancers by their report of them; of Erato for the lovers, and of the other Muses for those who do them honour, according to the several ways of honouring them; -- of Calliope the eldest Muse and of Urania who is next to her, for the philosophers, of whose music the grasshoppers make report to them; for these are the Muses who are chiefly concerned with heaven and thought, divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest utterance. For many reasons, then, we ought always to talk and not to sleep at mid-day.
PHAEDRUS: Let us talk. Read more at: http://books.mirror.org/plato/phaedrus/

Gig Young (1913–1978) was an American film, stage, and television actor. Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him and his older siblings in Washington D.C. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays, and after some amateur experience he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in Pancho, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed to supporting player contracts with the studio. His early work was uncredited or as Byron Barr (not to be confused with another actor with the same name, Byron Barr), but after appearing in the 1942 film The Gay Sisters as a character named "Gig Young", the studio decided he should adopt this name professionally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gig_Young

Names as palindromes
Ada, Anna, Ava, Bob, Eve, Elle, Gig, Hannah

Mark Carter concedes that he's a digital hoarder. He estimates he has 24,000 MP3 files, 4,000 digital books, 2,000 CDs, 3,000 family photos saved on DVDs and at least 1,300 saved emails, including some from 20 years ago. "They're great memory aids," says the 42-year-old inventory manager at the Wal-Mart in Bloomington, Ill. "Digital hoarding is a huge problem. There is so much available storage, we don't have to make decisions anymore," says David D. Nowell, a neuropsychologist specializing in attention issues in Worcester, Mass. "The problem isn't that it slows down your computer—it slows down your brain," he warns, since each of those photos, links and folders demands some mental energy. Kathy Riemer, a communications consultant in Chicago, says her "digital retentiveness"—including 2,400 Word documents and 39,575 business emails, divided into 69 file groups—enhances her productivity and gives her peace of mind. "Saving it all helps me avoid recreating an already-built wheel and enables me to provide historic context for long-term projects," she says. Christina Villarreal, a cognitive-behavioral therapist in Oakland, Calif., says she has clients in the tech industry—young men mostly—who spend so much time and money amassing collections of music or games or gadgets that they withdraw from the real world. "They can't pay their rent or buy food because they have to have this latest piece of equipment to support their habit," says Dr. Villarreal. Melinda Beck Find out how to "dig out" at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577305520318265602.html

In January of 2012 the Design Review Board of Arts Commission of Greater Toledo selected local artist and stone worker Calvin Babich for a neighborhood art project commission. Calvin’s design concept features materials and construction methods that are common to Old Orchard. It also features three stylized fruit trees referencing the orchards that existed before the neighborhood was developed. See more information and a picture of the maquette at: http://www.acgt.org/index.php?option=com_morfeoshow&task=view&gallery=63&Itemid=135
Area residents may see Calvin at work on the Old Orchard side of Kenwood and Secor on March 29 and 30.

The monograph, "Lawn Tennis Tournaments, The True Method of Assigning Prizes with a Proof of the Fallacy of the Present Method," by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a 19th century mathematician better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, is a proposal for a better way to conduct a sports tournament. Let's get one thing straight: Carroll didn't invent the bracket. In writing this nine-page plan, his only goal was to make it better. In Carroll's system, the draw would be assigned alphabetically with no attention paid to skill. If a player won his first-round match, Carroll proposed, he would advance to play other winners. But the losers would not be eliminated. Rather, they would move on to play other losers. The only way any player could be eliminated, he wrote, was after they had amassed three "superiors." He defined a superior as any player who has beaten you, or any player who has beaten a player who has beaten you. In a nutshell: Lots of competitors can advance in any given round, even if they don't win. Losing a single match to anyone won't kill you, so long as you keep winning. The only way to be knocked out is if the player who beats you drops two more matches along the way. In the monograph, Carroll sketched out a 32-player tournament using letters instead of names, and showed how a winner could be determined, using this approach, in nine rounds. Rachel Bachman http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577297821444746352.html

Corsica lies approximately 112 miles south of the main French coast, and is itself about 115 miles long by about 52 miles wide, maximum dimensions. With 5,500 square miles, it is the third largest island in the western Mediterranean, and about a third of the surface area of Sardinia, its Italian neighbour to the south. Its coastline extends to over 600 miles and it rises to nearly 9,000 feet - the highest island in the Mediterranean. French is the official language, and is spoken by everybody but you will hear Corsican spoken everywhere, in the villages in particular. The Corsican language derives from the Genoese occupation and is close to Italian. Dialects vary from area to area - even from village to village. http://www.directcorsica.com/cpbookweb.pdf

Few travellers have not succumbed to Corsica's potent scenery and showered it with
epithets - lIe de Beaute, the Scented Isle, the Mountain of the Sea, the Granite Island. See pictures at: http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/Contents_1995_files/AJ%201995%20123-130%20Harding%20Corsica.pdf

The Wild Maquis of Corsica by Sibylle Hechtel
I’d read stories about Corsica’s maquis, but the mixture of fragrances that greeted me when I arrived overwhelmed me. Corsica’s scented maquis reaches from the sea up to 3,000 feet. In appearance, it resembles California’s chaparral, but the similarity ends there. Even after one visit, if you put me on an airplane blindfolded and took me to Corsica, I would know with utter certainty that I stood in the maquis. Imagine standing on a fragrant hillside surrounded by eucalyptus, juniper, laurel, rosemary, highly scented shrubs of the rock rose family, heather, myrtle, sage, mint, thyme and lavender. Add to that more than a dozen aromatic flowers that grow only in Corsica and you’ll get an idea of the heady, clean aroma that infuses the island’s air. More than 2,500 species of wildflowers grow in Corsica, and about 250 of these are native to the island. http://www.herbcompanion.com/Gardening/The-Wild-Maquis-of-Corsica.aspx

John Newbery published a compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradl 1791 edition of Mother Goose's Melody which switched the focus from fairy tales to nursery rhymes, and in English this was until recently the primary connotation for Mother Goose. A book of poems for children entitled Mother Goose's Melody was published in England in 1781, and the name "Mother Goose" has been associated with children's poetry ever since. In music, Maurice Ravel wrote Ma mère l'oye, a suite for the piano, which he then orchestrated for a ballet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Goose

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English language nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. Though not explicitly mentioned, he is typically portrayed as an egg and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person. The riddle may depend on the assumption that, whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French, or "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English. In addition to his appearance in Through the Looking-Glass, as a character Humpty Dumpty has been used in a large range of literary works, including L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose (1901), where the rhyming riddle is devised by the daughter of the king, having witnessed Humpty's "death" and her father's soldiers' efforts to save him. Robert Rankin used Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy-tale character murderer in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (2002). Jasper Fforde included Humpty Dumpty in two of his novels, The Well of Lost Plots (2003) and The Big Over Easy (2005), which use him respectively as a ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike and as the victim of a murder. See images of Humpty by William Wallace Denslow and John Tenniel at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

Musée de Cluny du Moyen Âge (National Museum of the Middle Ages) sits in Paris's 5th arrondissement. The museum houses many notable medieval artifacts, including sculptures from the 7th and 8th century, important manuscripts, gold and ivory pieces, and many antique furnishings. The museum also owns a fine collection of tapestries of that era, including "The Lady and the Unicorn", a series woven in Flanders and made of wool and silk. These are often considered among the finest works of art from medieval Europe. The museum is housed in building known as the Hôtel de Cluny. Not a hotel in its most commonly known form but rather a expansive house, the Hôtel de Cluny was - in the early 14th century - owned by the abbots of Cluny, who headed a powerful Benedictine order. The complex also once included a college for religious education, but that is no longer standing. http://www.aviewoncities.com/paris/museedecluny.htm

Venice continues to sink an average of one to two millimeters (0.04 to 0.08 inches) a year. "It’s a small effect, but it’s important," Yehuda Bock, a research geodesist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, Calif., said. With the Adriatic rising in the Venetian lagoon at the same rate, the combined effect is a 4mm (0.16 inches) a year increase in sea level. This means that Venice could sink up to 80 mm (3.2 inches) by 2032. The study, which will be published March 28 in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, also found that the City of Water in north-east Italy is listing one millimeter or two (0.04 to 0.08 inches) eastward per year. http://news.discovery.com/earth/venice-sinking-120326.html

The United States Secret Service is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the nation's financial infrastructure and payment systems. As a part of this mission, the Secret Service constantly implements and evaluates prevention and response measures to guard against electronic crimes as well as other computer related fraud. The Secret Service derives its authority to investigate specified criminal violations from Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 3056. The counterfeiting of money is one of the oldest crimes in history. At some periods in early history, it was considered treasonous and was punishable by death. During the American Revolution, the British counterfeited U.S. currency in such large amounts that the Continental currency soon became worthless. "Not worth a Continental" became a popular expression of the era. During the Civil War, one-third to one-half of the currency in circulation was counterfeit. At that time, approximately 1,600 state banks designed and printed their own bills. Each bill carried a different design, making it difficult to detect counterfeit bills from the 7,000 varieties of real bills. While a national currency was adopted in 1862 to resolve the counterfeiting problem, it was soon counterfeited and circulated so extensively that it became necessary to take enforcement measures. As a result, on July 5, 1865, the United States Secret Service was established to suppress the widespread counterfeiting of the nation's currency. http://www.secretservice.gov/criminal.shtml

Find links to Conlangs (constructed languages) Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Solresol, Volapük, Other IALs, Tolkien's languages, Star Trek languages and D'ni at: http://www.omniglot.com/links/conlangs.htm

MEAN KITTY--words of Bucky Katt in comic strip Get Fuzzy
12/21/11 unsmartness
1/21/12 I feel oddly comforted in that I'm comforted and you're odd.
3/22/12 I know nothing about anything.

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) Author of stories for the young at heart of all ages, the most well known of her creations are probably the lyrics to the song Morning Has Broken, written in 1931 for an old Gaelic tune, and highly popularized by the Cat Stevens rendition of it in 1971. Her father encouraged her writing from the age of five, and at 18 she wrote the lyrics for an operetta "Floretta" to the music created by her older brother, Harry Farjeon, who became a well respected composer. She had a wide range of friends with great literary talent including D.H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, and Robert Frost. One of her most notable works Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard was written as a gift to the poet Edward Thomas. In 1956 she won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her contributions to children's literature. http://www.biographybase.com/biography/farjeon_eleanor.html

Taxpayers will have until Tuesday, April 17, to file their 2011 tax returns and pay any tax due because April 15 falls on a Sunday, and Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in the District of Columbia, falls this year on Monday, April 16. According to federal law, District of Columbia holidays impact tax deadlines in the same way that federal holidays do; therefore, all taxpayers will have two extra days to file this year. Taxpayers requesting an extension will have until Oct. 15 to file their 2012 tax returns. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=251825,00.html

Nearly everything about the Foxwoods Resort Casino is improbable, beginning with its scale. It is the largest casino in the Western Hemisphere — a gigantic, labyrinthine wonderland set down in a cedar forest and swamp in an otherwise sleepy corner of southeastern Connecticut. Forty thousand patrons pack into Foxwoods on weekend days. The place has 6,300 slot machines. Ten thousand employees. If you include everything — hotel space, bars and restaurants, theaters and ballrooms, spa, bowling alley — Foxwoods measures about 6.7 million square feet, more than the Pentagon. The owner of this enterprise is the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. The Pequots misjudged the market, borrowed too much and expanded unwisely. Foxwoods’s debt is on a scale befitting the size of the property — $2.3 billion. It would be easy to look at what has occurred at Foxwoods and think, Here are people who fell into money and didn’t know how to handle it. Which happens to be true. But how the casino reached this point, and the challenges its owners and operators now confront, is part of a much larger story — one involving the gradual relaxation of moral prohibitions against gambling, a desperate search for new revenue by state governments and the proliferation of new casinos across America. Casino gambling has become a commodity, available within a day’s drive to the vast majority of U.S. residents. Some in the industry talk of there being an oversupply, as if their product were lumber or soybeans. Foxwoods has had its own in-state competition since 1996 from the Mohegan Sun, which lies just west, across the Thames River. Owned by the Mohegan Tribe, it is a more modest property, though only by comparison — Mohegan is the second-largest casino in the hemisphere. In October, a casino opened at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens with 4,500 slot machines, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing an expansion plan for the site that includes a hotel and what would be the nation’s largest convention center. Michael Sokolove http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/mike-sokolove-foxwood-casinos.html

Guy Murchie (Jr.) (1907 1997), the son of Ethel A. and Guy Murchie Sr., was a Chicago Tribune photographer, staff artist and reporter, who had served as a war correspondent in England and Iceland from 1940 to 1942. His books included Men on the Horizon (1932), Song of the Sky (1954), Music of the Spheres (1961), and The Seven Mysteries of Life (1978). Murchie also illustrated his books with etchings and woodcuts of his own design. The American Museum of Natural History awarded him the John Burroughs Medal in 1956 for Song of the Sky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Murchie

Sonnets were published along with the music for The Four Seasons (which Vivaldi composed based on four paintings of the seasons by Marco Ricci.) The poems are generally thought to be written by Vivaldi himself -- based on comments he made in the margins of his sheet music, but there is some question over the attribution. Vivaldi was a prolific composer, writing 46 operas and over 500 concerti. His works, such as The Four Seasons, were much anticipated in their day, but dropped out of style and were figuratively and literally lost until the early 20th century when most of his work was 're-discovered' and popularized by several artists and musicians including the poet Ezra Pound. Read the sonnets at: http://theotherpages.org/poems/part2/vivaldi01.html

"Happy Birthday to You", also known more simply as "Happy Birthday", is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person's birth. According to the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records, "Happy Birthday to You" is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" was written and composed by American siblings Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. Patty was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky, developing various teaching methods at what is now the Little Loomhouse; Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters created "Good Morning to All" as a song that would be easy to be sung by young children. The combination of melody and lyrics in "Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print in 1978, and probably existed even earlier. None of these early appearances included credits or copyright notices. In the European Union, the copyright of the song will expire on December 31, 2016. The actual American copyright status of "Happy Birthday to You" began to draw more attention with the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft in 2003, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned "Happy Birthday to You" in his dissenting opinion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You

Q. What do the letters B, M, P and W have in common?
A. You must close your lips to pronounce them.

Marostica is a town in the province of Vicenza, in the Veneto region in northern Italy. It is mostly famous for its living chess event held every two years in September where people take on the roles of the various chess pieces (king, knight, bishop, etc.). This is typically done on an outdoor field, with the squares of the board marked out on the grass. Many Human Combat Chess Matches are choreographed stage shows performed by actors trained in stage combat. The story of the Chess Game dates back to 1454 when Marostica belonged to the Venetian Republic. http://italianmedia.com.au/w4/index.php/english-magazine/english-features/tourism-in-italy/5768-marostica-a-living-chess-game-with-real-people-on-the-board

Tom Swift (in the 2nd series Tom Swift, Jr.) is the name of the central character in five series of books, first appearing in 1910, totaling over 100 volumes, of American juvenile science fiction and adventure novels that emphasize science, invention and technology. The character was created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book-packaging firm. His adventures have been written by a number of different ghostwriters over the years. Most of the books are published under the collective pseudonym Victor Appleton. Translated into a number of languages, the books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Tom Swift has also been the subject of a board game and a television show. A number of prominent figures, including Steve Wozniak and Isaac Asimov, have cited "Tom Swift" as an inspiration. The series' writing style, which was sometimes adverb-heavy, suggested a name for a type of adverbial pun promulgated in the 1960s, the "Tom Swifties". Some examples are: "'I lost my crutches,' said Tom lamely"; and "'I'll take the prisoner downstairs', said Tom condescendingly." Tom Swift's fictional inventions have directly inspired several actual inventions, among them Lee Felsenstein's "Tom Swift Terminal", which "drove the creation of an early personal computer known as the Sol", and the taser. The name "taser" was originally "TSER", for "Tom Swift Electric Rifle". The invention was named after the central device in Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (1911); according to inventor Jack Cover, "an 'A' was added because we got tired of answering the phone 'TSER.'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift

Maltese is a Central Semitic language spoken by about 350,000 people on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo. The Maltese language developed from the Siculo-Arabic or Sicilian Arabic, a form of Arabic that developed in Sicily and Malta between the 9th and 14th centuries. Siculo-Arabic was extinct in Sicily by about 1300, but continued to be spoken in Malta and evolved into Maltese. The first reference to Malta having a distinct language dates from 1364, and the language is first referred to as lingua maltensi in the will of a certain Pawlu Peregrino from 1436. There is also a theory that Maltese developed from Carthaginian or Punic, the language of Carthage, which was a form of Phoenician. As Carthaginian and Arabic are both Semitic languages that developed from the same roots, it is difficult to be sure whether Maltese words arrived via Carthaginian or Arabic. The first known literary text in Maltese, II Cantilena, appeared during the 15th century, the first Maltese dictionary was published in 1649. As well as the Arabs who began taking over Malta in 870 AD, Malta was occupied by Norman-speaking Normans from 1090, and between 1530 and 1798 by the Knights Hospitaller of St John who spoke French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Latin and German. In 1800 Malta became a British colony and the British tried to replace Italian with English as the local language. As a result, about half of the vocabulary of Maltese comes from Sicilian and Italian, and a fifth comes from English. Maltese also contains quite a bit of vocabulary from Norman and French. After Malta become independent in 1964 both English and Maltese were given official status and Maltese became the national language of Malta. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/maltese.htm

Galicia is an autonomous community in northwest Spain, with the official status of a nationality of Spain. Its component provinces are A Coruña, Lugo, Ourense and Pontevedra. It is bordered by Portugal to the south, the Spanish autonomous communities of Castile and León and Asturias to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Bay of Biscay to the north. Besides its continental territory, Galicia includes Arousa Island, and the archipelagos of Cíes, Ons, Sálvora Island, Cortegada Island, Malveiras Islands, Sisargas Islands, and other minor isles and islets. Galicia has roughly 2.79 million inhabitants as of 2011. Two languages are official and widely used in Galicia, Galician, a Romance language which, along with Portuguese, descends from medieval Galician-Portuguese, and Castilian. Like most of Western Europe, Galicia's history has been defined by mass emigration. There was significant Galician emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the industrialized Spanish cities of Barcelona, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Madrid and to Latin America - Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba in particular. The two cities with the greatest number of people of Galician descent outside of Galicia itself are Buenos Aires, Argentina, and nearby Montevideo, Uruguay, where immigration from Galicia was so significant that Argentines and Uruguayans now commonly refer to all Spaniards as gallegos (Galicians). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Spain)

Most American food history sources confirm "chop suey" is an American dish. Notes here: Chop suey was invented, fact or fiction?, Library of Congress. "The second famous "Chinese-American" dish to come out of the mining frontier is chop suey, the subject of some historical controversy. It has been common wisdom to say that chop suey...did not exist in old China. The stir-fried hash was invented, according to tradition, in a San Francisco restaurant during the wee hours one morning when a rowdy group of holidaying diners would not hear of the Chinese cook's plea that he had no food. Rather than risk a drubbing, the cook concocted chop suey of the day's scraps. Perhaps. At least one Chinese authority...insists that chop suey was intimately familiar to emigrants from Toisan, the region south of Canton that is the ancestral home of more than half the American Chinse. It does seem hard to believe that a people wracked by poverty had not thought to put together "miscellaneous stuff" before they arrived at the "Golden Mountain."
---Bacon, Beans and Galantines: Food and Foodways on the Western Mining Frontier, Joseph R. Conlin [University of Nevada Press: Reno] 1986 (p. 192-3)
Mr. Conlin's alternate theory is confirmed here: "Last of all, chop suey is not--as many would-be connoisseurs belive--an American invention. As Li Shu-fan points out in his delightful autobiography, Hong Kong Surgeon (1964), it is a local Toisanese dish. Toisan is an rural district south of Canton, the home for most of the early immigrants from Kwangtung to California. The name is Cantonese tsap seui (Mandarin tsa sui), "Miscellaneous scraps." Basically , it is leftover of odd-lot vegetables stir-fried together. Noodles are often included. Bean sprouts are almost invariably present, but the rest of the dish varies according to whatever is around. The origin myth of chop suey is that it was invented in San Francisco, when someone demanded food late at night at a small Chinese restaurant. Out of food, the restaurant cooked up the day's slops, and chop suey was born. (The "someone" can be a Chinese dignitary, a band of drunken miners, a San Francisco political boss, and so on.)" ---Food of China, E. N. Anderson [Yale University Press:New Haven] 1988 (p. 212-3)
"Edamame...In summer, pods of young soybeans (daizu) on the stalk are boiled and the beans eaten as a side dish with beer. Also called sayamame." ---A Dictionary of Japanese Food: Ingredients & Culture, Richard Hosking [Chartles E. Tuttle Company:Rutland VT] 1996 (p. 39)
Food historians genereally agree the classic "fortune cookie" served in Chinese-American restaurants is a Japanese-American culinary contribution. The cookie's actual "invention" is a classic example of food lore. Many claimants covet this particular title. None of the stories can be verified. There is agreement on these points: (1) The first fortune cookies surfaced in California in the early 20th century; (2) The first commercial fortune cookies were manufactured by Japanese companies; (3) Fortune cookies became ubiquitous by the 1960s.
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodasian.html#chopsuey

Ohio Art Co., maker of the classic baby boomer toy, is sending a big box of Etch A Sketches to the presidential campaigns to say thanks for the publicity and a boost in sales. It all started when Mitt Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom was asked March 21 about the candidate's politics now versus next fall, and he likened the campaign to an Etch A Sketch: "You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again." Its stock, which trades over the counter, almost tripled March 22, closing at $9.65, and major stores reported a jump in sales, chairman Bill Killgallon said. "We're proud that one of our products is shaking up the debate," he said. Ohio Art has sold more than 100 million Etch A Sketches worldwide since its introduction in 1960. The toy, with its familiar gray screen and bright-red frame, allows youngsters to draw things by twisting two white knobs. A quick shake erases the image and lets you start over. http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/article/20120323/NEWS01/203230307/Politics-puts-Etch-Sketch-back-picture

Frederick Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was born in Rye, New York, to Edmund Strudwick Nash and Mattie Chenault. His father was in the import-export business, but the Nash family's ancestry in North Carolina stretched back to the American Revolutionary era; the city of Nashville, Tennessee, was named in honor of an ancestor. Nash grew up in various East Coast communities and also lived in Savannah, Georgia, during his youth. He was accepted to Harvard but dropped out in 1921 after a year. Nash held a variety of jobs but none for very long. He worked on Wall Street as a bond salesperson, but sold only one bond—to his godmother—and instead spent his afternoons in movie theaters. He was a schoolteacher for a year at St. George's School, and from there he was hired as an advertising copywriter for streetcar signs. In 1925 he was hired in the marketing department of the Doubleday publishing house and did well enough that he moved on to its editorial department as a manuscript reader. Nash said that it was the poor quality of the manuscripts he read that led him to try to write. He attempted to produce serious verse in the style of the eighteenth-century Romantic poets but soon gave it up. He preferred to scribble comic verse on pages that he crumpled and tossed across the office to the desks of coworkers. This led Nash and a friend named Joseph Alger to work together to produce a 1925 children's book, The Cricket of Carador. A few years later, Nash teamed with two Doubleday coworkers to produce Born in a Beer Garden; or, She Troupes to Conquer, which made fun of classic literature. In 1930 Nash wrote a poem called "Spring Comes to Murray Hill" and submitted it to the New Yorker. The New Yorker published the poem and invited Nash to submit more; his regular appearances in the magazine led to a contract for his first work, Hard Lines, published in 1931. It was a tremendous success, going into seven printings in its first year alone. Nash soon quit his Doubleday job. He referred to himself simply as a "worsifier" instead of a "versifier." http://www.notablebiographies.com/Mo-Ni/Nash-Ogden.html

Ogden Nash wrote the lyrics for One Touch of Venus with Kurt Weill. He wrote the verses to accompany Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals at the urging of Andre Kostelanetz who also had Nash write verses for Ravel's Mother Goose Suite and Peter and the Wolf. http://classicalmusicmayhem.freeforums.org/today-in-classical-music-history-august-t1327-45.html Seven of the Carnival of Animals verses appear on p. 26 of The New Yorker, January 7, 1950. According to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, the verses for Peter and the Wolf were written by the composer, Sergei Prokofiev, not Ogden Nash.

In 1885 Saint-Saëns wrote a witty, uncomplicated piece called Wedding Cake (1885), which to his chagrin became so popular that he gained a temporary reputation as a "light" composer. Because he wanted to be considered a composer of serious, substantial music, he suppressed Carnival of the Animals shortly after its premiere in the following year. However, this "zoological fantasy," one of the most successful examples of humourously themed music in the repertory, has become one of the composer's most popular works. Carnival of the Animals, cast as a suite of 14 short pieces, is scored for an ensemble comprising two pianos, two violins, viola, cello, double bass, flute, clarinet, and glockenspiel. http://www.answers.com/topic/the-carnival-of-the-animals

European Union countries and candidates
http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/index_en.htm

In the United States presidential election of 1844, Democrat James K. Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on foreign policy, with Polk favoring the annexation of Texas and Clay opposed. Democratic nominee James K. Polk ran on a platform that embraced American territorial expansionism, an idea soon to be referred to as Manifest Destiny. At their convention, the Democrats called for the annexation of Texas and asserted that the United States had a “clear and unquestionable” claim to “the whole” of Oregon. By informally tying the Oregon boundary dispute to the more controversial Texas debate, the Democrats appealed to both Northern expansionists (who were more adamant about the Oregon boundary) and Southern expansionists (who were more focused on annexing Texas as a slave state). (The slogan "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!” is often incorrectly regarded as being part of this president's election campaign rhetoric; it became a popular slogan in the months after the election, used by those proposing the most extreme solution to the Oregon boundary dispute). This was the last presidential election to be held on different days in different states. Starting with the presidential election of 1848, all states held the election on the same date in November. Joseph Smith, Jr., mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, ran as an independent. He proposed the redemption of slaves by selling public lands and decreasing the size and salary of the United States Congress; the closure of prisons; the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada; the securing of international rights on high seas; free trade; and the re-establishment of a national bank. The campaign ended when he was assassinated while in prison on June 27, 1844. James Birney ran as the anti-slavery Liberty Party candidate, garnering 2.3% of the popular vote, and over 8% of the vote in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. The votes he won were more than the difference in votes between Henry Clay and James K. Polk; some scholars have argued that Birney's support among anti-slavery Whigs in New York swung that decisive state in favor of Polk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1844

Windsor Castle is an official residence of the Queen of England and the largest occupied castle in the world. The castle was the inspiration for the Royal family's surname. William the Conqueror built the castle in 1080 and it has remained a royal palace and fortress for over 900 years. Windsor is the oldest royal home in Britain and, covering 13 acres, it's the largest castle in the world that is still lived in. Find descriptions and pictures of many British castles at: http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/castles.htm

One of the most interesting features in Chester, England is the city wall. It is one of the most complete – maybe the most complete – city walls in the UK and runs for more than 2 km around a central area of the city. In parts of the wall you can see original Roman wall foundations and stones. The Rows – two city blocks of shops that are on two levels. There are the street level shops, and then above them a level of shops that are accessed by a balcony or sort of boardwalk that run along the outside. Sort of like a modern shopping mall. http://bookwormamanda.wordpress.com/

St John the Baptist's Church, Chester is in the city of Chester, Cheshire, England. It lies outside the city walls on a cliff above the north bank of the River Dee. The church was reputedly founded by King Aethelred in 689. After the Dissolution, much of the east end of the church was demolished and some of it remains as ruins to the east of the present church. In 1468 the central tower collapsed. In 1572 the northwest tower partially collapsed and in 1574 there was a greater collapse of this tower which destroyed the western bays of the nave. While the northwest tower was being repaired in 1881 it collapsed again, this time destroying the north porch. The church is built in sandstone. At the west end is the ruined first stage of the northwest tower. The organ had been built as a temporary organ for the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 by William Hill and Company of London. It was then rebuilt for St John's, transported to Chester by barge and installed in the west gallery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John_the_Baptist's_Church,_Chester

A New York judge on March 21 threw out one of the first of more than a dozen lawsuits around the country that accuse law schools of advertising misleading post-graduate employment statistics. http://www.scribd.com/doc/86242133/schweitzer#fullscreen. The plaintiffs, a group of nine New York Law School graduates, claimed they overpaid for their degrees, because they were led to believe, as a reasonable consumer would be, that between 90% and 92% of the school’s graduates secured full-time jobs as lawyers. But that percentage also included students in part-time jobs, as well as jobs that don’t require a law degree. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/03/21/judge-tosses-lawsuit-against-law-school-over-employment-stats/

More than 130 years ago, a pair of farmers outside of Warwick, N.Y., gave up some of their property to help establish a reservoir and pipeline for the village’s water supply. In exchange, the current owner says, the water department agreed provide water to the property in perpetuity and free of charge. Now, a federal appeals court has ruled that a lower court should examine whether the village violated the current landowner’s constitutional rights by shutting off the property’s water after a dispute. Read the story and see the summary order at: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/03/20/a-130-year-old-contract-that-may-hold-water/

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio A meditation on the fragility of life.
Hamlet says this in a graveyard as he looks at the skull of Yorick, a court jester he had known as a child, and grieves for him. From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1602. Often misquoted for some reason as 'Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well'. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/25500.html

Since its debut in 1868, The World Almanac and Book of Facts has become the best-selling American reference book of all time, with more than 82 million copies sold. his essential household and workplace desk reference is “the most useful reference book known to modern man,” according to the L.A. Times. Renowned New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz calls it his “#1 reference work for facts.” The 1932 World Almanac was buried in the cornerstone of the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC by Mrs. William Howard Taft on October 13, 1932. The 1938 World Almanac was buried in a 5,000 Year Time Capsule at the World Fair Grounds in New York, September 23, 1938. http://www.worldalmanac.com/world-almanac.aspx

Famous Ohioans: Hamilton and Gish
It is ironic that Margaret Hamilton (1902-1985) as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939) was so scary to children, because her first job was as a kindergarten teacher. She loved and doted upon children all her life. Until the day she died she had children recognizing her and coming up to her to ask why she was so mean to Dorothy. She became very concerned about the role's effect on children, and finally guested on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" (1968) to explain that the Witch was just a character in the film, and not herself. She was the kindergarten teacher of five-year-old William Windom, until she threw him out for rambunctious behavior. Another of her students was Jim Backus. Gave her most noted recollection of her role in The Wizard of Oz (1939) by writing the Preface to the book "The Making of The Wizard of Oz" by Aljean Harmetz. Under her married name of Margaret Meserve, she served on the Beverly Hills Board of Education from 1948 to 1951. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002121/bio

Lillian Gish was born Lillian Diana de Guiche on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio; her sister, Dorothy (1898–1968), was born in Dayton. All of the Gish women—Lillian, Dorothy, and their mother, Mary—were talented actors, but Lillian excelled both in front of the camera and behind it, with a career stretching from 1902, when she debuted at The Little Red School House in Rising Sun, Ohio, through 1988, when she made her 106th feature film, The Whales of August, at the age of ninety-two. Gish made her debut as the first female film director in 1920 with Remodeling Her Husband, starring her sister Dorothy. In 1922, Lillian Gish started making movies at MGM, where she gained the distinctive privilege of artistic control over her films. She made her first sound movie, One Romantic Night, in 1930. Shortly thereafter, she returned to the Broadway stage, where she spent most of the remainder of her career, returning periodically to do films. http://www.ohioana.org/features/profiles/lilliangish.pdf

Flutist FLOO-tist The word flutist was first recorded in 1603, and FLOO-tist has been and still is the only acceptable pronunciation for it. The variant flautist was adapted from the Italian flautista in 1860. The preferred pronunciation for flautist is FLAW-tist (FLAW- like flaw) The variant FLOW-tist (FLOW- rhyming with cow), which mimics the Italian pronunciation of -au, appears in current dictionaries but only the NBC Handbook (1984) prefers it. Unless you have some special reason for preferring Italian spellings and pronunciations, stick with the English flutist (FLOO-tist), which is both traditional and unaffected. http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/beastly/#Flutist

James Galway says, "I am a flute player not a flautist. I don't have a flaut and I've never flauted." http://www.flute4all.com/articles/flutistflautist.html

Find 100 examples of suggested pronunciations from The Big Book Of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide For The Careful Speaker by Charles Harrington Elster at: http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/beastly/
Chart of the original thirteen colonies including years of settlement and founders is at: http://americanhistory.about.com/library/charts/blcolonial13.htm

The Inn Crowd Vintage American Hotels Renovated: Past and Present, eight properties that are rooted in America's past but still have plenty of modern charm See a slideshow with before and after pictures at: http://www.cntraveler.com/features/2012/02/historic-hotels-america-renovated-boutique-new-york-california-colorado#slide=1

Here Greek and Roman find themselves Alive along these crowded shelves;
And Shakespeare treads again his stage, And Chaucer paints anew his age.
As if some Pantheon's marbles broke Their stony trance, and lived and spoke,
Life thrills along the alcoved hall, The lords of thought await our call!
from The Library by John Greenleaf Whittier, sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875 See whole poem at: http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/sherman/whittier/haverhill/ft_library.html

The Whittier Collection In 1887 the Whittier Club began to collect all known editions by the poet, as well as anything else relating to Whittier including books, photographs, manuscripts and broadsides. The club donated the articles to the library where they are properly maintained and protected. The collection is open to the public by appointment.
Haverhill Public Library 99 Main Street Haverhill, Massachusetts (978) 373-1586
Find information on The Whittier Trail and the Freeman Memorial Trail at: http://www.johngreenleafwhittier.com/pdf/Whittier_Brochure-WEB.pdf

Gastronaut is not a valid Scrabble word, but you can look up examples of its use at: http://www.wordnik.com/words/gastronaut

A Scene Grows in Brooklyn Brooklyn's Literary Landmarks Link to detailed lists of bookstores and bars in West Brooklyn, Park Slope Fort Greene and Williamsburg/Greenpoint at:
http://www.cntraveler.com/arts/2012/02/brooklyn-authors

There’s no doubt that Pinterest has exploded in popularity in recent months. But with that boom has come concerns for some users about copyright law. Pinterest allows its users to create virtual bulletin boards by pinning content from across the web, including photos and recipes. Some lawyers say that could potentially leave Pinterest users vulnerable to lawsuits — if they don’t have permission to use the content. Some lawyers say that could potentially leave Pinterest users vulnerable to lawsuits — if they don’t have permission to use the content. “The best and easiest way to avoid trouble is to put up your own content, the content you created,” Jonathan Pink, a California-based intellectual property lawyer with Bryan Cave LLP told the Law Blog. For example, Mr. Pink said that if a Pinterest user sees a piece of furniture that he or she likes, or a tasty-looking cookie, they’ll be safe taking out their smart phone, snapping a photo, and pinning it. “Own the content you are publishing,” Mr. Pink said. On the flip side, Mr. Pink said, “if you are going to play it conservative and safe, you should never pin an image on Pinterest for which you don’t own the copyright interest or for which you have not obtained a license from the copyright owner.” There are some exceptions: Old photos that pre-date 1923 can be “safely posted” under copyright law, he said. One area that might be somewhat less risky is recipes.
“You can post a recipe as long as you are creating the text of the recipe yourself," according to Mr. Pink. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/03/13/dont-get-stuck-by-pinterest-lawyers-warn/

LG Electronics was originally established in 1958 as GoldStar, producing radios, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioner. The LG Group was a merger of two Korean companies, Lucky and GoldStar, from which the abbreviation of LG was derived. The current "Life's Good" slogan is a backronym. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Electronics

Spring cleaning is the process of thoroughly cleaning a house from top to bottom once the weather has lost its winter chill. In the past, inadequate heating in homes and small living spaces often meant that certain types of cleaning had to wait for spring. For example, pioneers who used straw tick mattresses, tended to wait till spring to refill these, so that they could use fresh dry hay for filling. Before modern dryers, washing drapes or comforters was complicated by cold weather and tight living quarters. Those in cold climates and had no other choice but to wait for warm weather to hang laundry outdoors to dry. Read about spring cleaning based on other practices and celebrations at:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-origins-of-spring-cleaning.htm

Women in the White City, Lessons from the Woman’s Building Library at the Chicago World’s Fair by Susan E. Searing Next year will be the 120th anniversary of the World’s Columbian Exposition, more commonly known as the Chicago World’s Fair—a grand event that lasted six months, attracted 27 million visitors, and introduced attendees to the Ferris Wheel, shredded wheat, and belly dancing. Although you won’t learn it from Erik Larson’s bestseller The Devil in the White City, librarians participated in many aspects of the 1893 fair. A library of literature for youth was a key attraction in the Children’s Building, and elsewhere on the grounds a committee of American Library Association members established a model library that demonstrated innovative practices in our still-new profession. Now Sarah Wadsworth and Wayne Wiegand have brought to light another forgotten aspect of library history connected with the fair. In Right Here I See My Own Books: The Woman’s Building Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), the coauthors chronicle the unprecedented collection of works by “women in all ages and all countries” that was housed in the fair’s famed Woman’s Building. The library filled a large and beautifully furnished room on the second story of the temporary structure. Wadsworth, a scholar of 19th-century literature, and Wiegand, a library historian, recount the energetic planning and diligent work that went into gathering, cataloging, and exhibiting the impressive collection. It’s a surprisingly gripping tale of power struggles, budget crises, and last-minute machinations that will feel familiar to any reader who’s strived to meet impossible goals with inadequate resources. Never before had a library been assembled for the express purpose of showcasing women’s literary achievements. Committees of clubwomen in nearly every state of the Union identified female authors, living and deceased, and shipped copies of their works to Chicago. Many foreign women contributed books as well. The resulting collection topped 8,000 volumes and represented 24 nations.
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/02292012/women-white-city

To celebrate Wordsmith's octodecennial (18th anniversary), here are a few 18-letter words: preantepenultimate (fourth from the last), hemidemisemiquaver (64th note in music--from Greek hemi- (half) + French demi- (half) + Latin semi- (half) + quaver (an eighth note), from Middle English quaveren (to shake or tremble), gedankenexperiment (an experiment carried out in imagination only), plurisignification (use of a word to convey multiple meanings at the same time).

In a survey completed in February 2012, the Pew Internet Project found that 80% of adults use the internet and 66% of those online Americans use social networking sites. Some 75% of SNS users say their friends post at least some content related to politics and 37% of SNS users post political material at least occasionally. The survey found that a portion of SNS users have assessed some relationships based on political material that is posted on the sites. Some 18% of social networking site users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone due to political disagreements. http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2012/PIP_SNS_and_politics.pdf

#26104 MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2012 – NO. 1 Detmers v. Costner
In the early 1990s, Kevin Costner envisioned building a luxury resort called “The Dunbar” on property he owned near Deadwood, South Dakota. After discussions, Costner commissioned Peggy Detmers to design 17 buffalo and Lakota warrior sculptures, intending to display them at The Dunbar’s entrance. Detmers and Costner orally agreed that she would be paid $250,000, and would receive royalty rights in the sculptures’ reproductions that were to be marketed and sold at The Dunbar’s gift shop. When The Dunbar had not been built in the late 1990s, Detmers stopped working on the sculptures. In 2008, Detmers and Detmers Studios, Inc. brought suit against Costner, and The Dunbar, Inc. seeking a declaratory judgment that she did not agree to the placement of the sculptures as required by paragraph three of their May 2000 contract. For relief, Detmers sought an order requiring Costner to sell the sculptures with the proceeds dispersed consistent with paragraph three. Detmers claimed that because The Dunbar was not built within ten years and the sculptures were not “agreeably displayed elsewhere,” she was entitled to 50% of the proceeds from the sale of the sculptures, which would be specific performance. Before trial, Costner made a motion to use parol evidence. Detmers objected, requesting summary judgment that the May 2000 contract was not ambiguous and parol evidence was therefore inadmissible. The circuit court concluded that the May 2000 contract was not ambiguous. The court denied Costner’s motion to admit parol evidence. The sole issue at the bench trial was whether the sculptures were “agreeably displayed elsewhere.” Costner, Detmers, and Wyss testified at trial. After post-trial briefing, the court granted judgment in favor of Costner. The court maintained its earlier conclusion that the May 2000 contract was unambiguous. The court concluded that “‘[e]lsewhere,’ as used in the contract, clearly means at a site other than The Dunbar.” Additionally, “[b]ecause The Dunbar has not been built, any site is elsewhere, i.e., somewhere other than The Dunbar. The placement of the sculptures at Tatanka is elsewhere.” The court also concluded: “Detmers actions following the decision to place the sculptures at Tatanka indicate that she agreed to display them at that location. Detmers was notified of the plan to place the sculptures at Tatanka in January 2002 . . . .”
On appeal, the issues presented are:
1. Whether the circuit court erred in determining that the sculptures were agreeably displayed “elsewhere” as required under the contract.
2. Whether Detmers agreeably displayed the sculptures elsewhere in the absence of a promise or guarantee from Costner that The Dunbar would be built by 2010.
3. Whether the circuit court erred in concluding that construing the agreement literally would lead to an absurd result.
Read much more at: http://www.usd.edu/law/upload/Monday-9am.pdf

The parol evidence rule is a Legal rule that once a written agreement has been duly executed (signed by all concerned parties) then it cannot be altered or annulled by any oral evidence that may contradict the terms of the agreement, except in case of a fraud or mistake.
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/parol-evidence-rule.html

Ever since the Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, killing 1,517 people, researchers have puzzled over Capt. Edward Smith's seeming disregard of warnings that icebergs were in the area where the ship was sailing. Greenland icebergs of the type that the Titanic struck generally become stuck in the shallow waters off Labrador and Newfoundland, and cannot resume moving southward until they have melted enough to refloat or a high tide frees them, Olson said. So how was it that such a large number of icebergs had floated so far south that they were in the shipping lanes well south of Newfoundland that night? The team investigated speculation by the late oceanographer Fergus Wood that an unusually close approach by the moon in January 1912 may have produced such high tides that far more icebergs than usual managed to separate from Greenland, and floated, still fully grown, into shipping lanes that had been moved south that spring because of reports of icebergs. Olson said a "once-in-many lifetimes" event occurred on Jan. 4, 1912, when the moon and sun lined up in such a way that their gravitational pulls enhanced each other. At the same time, the moon's closest approach to Earth that January was the closest in 1,400 years, and the point of closest approach occurred within six minutes of the full moon. On top of that, the Earth's closest approach to the sun in a year had happened just the previous day. "This configuration maximized the moon's tide-raising forces on the Earth's oceans," Olson said. "That's remarkable." His research determined that to reach the shipping lanes by mid-April, the iceberg that the Titanic struck must have broken off from Greenland in January 1912. The high tide caused by the bizarre combination of astronomical events would have been enough to dislodge icebergs and give them enough buoyancy to reach the shipping lanes by April, he said. The research will appear in the April issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. http://www.timescolonist.com/Moon+blame+Titanic+sinking+scientists+believe/6284857/story.html

Number sign is a name for the symbol #, which is used for a variety of purposes including, in some countries, the designation of a number (for example, "#1" stands for "number one"). The symbol is in Unicode as code point U+0023 # NUMBER SIGN (HTML: #); it is also present in ASCII with the same value. In Commonwealth English, the symbol is usually called the hash and the corresponding telephone key is called the hash key. In American English, the symbol is usually called the pound sign (outside the US, this term often describes instead the British currency symbol "£") and the telephone key is called the pound key. In Canadian English, this key is most frequently called the pound key but also in some circumstances the number sign key. Beginning in the 1960s, telephone engineers have attempted to coin a special name for this symbol, with variant spellings including octothorp, octothorpe, octathorp, octotherp, octathorpe, and octatherp, none of which has become widely accepted. On social networking sites such as Twitter, # is used to denote a metadata tag, or "hashtag". See uses in mathematics, computing and other ways at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

The Once and Future Library, an architect’s perspective on designing for changing constituencies by Charles G. Mueller In what history may well mark as an important milestone in how we live and learn, Amazon and the Association of American Publishers reported in spring 2011 that ebook sales had surpassed print for the first time. The former grew by triple-digit percentages from February 2010 to the same month this past year; the latter declined 25% in the same period. Besides librarians, architects are among the people most concerned about how, and how rapidly, such trends play out. Plans made a year ago for library additions or even modest renovations—never mind an entirely new building—are probably out of date. Longstanding formulas to calculate the space required for stacks, seating, and even computer stations no longer apply. The library standards codified in many states, often a criterion for funding, would probably result in a library design that is larger than necessary, or certainly too big or too small in all the wrong places. Change may be inevitable, but it will not be uniform. For example, a public library I am working with reports its current monthly ebook circulation at a few hundred—versus 5,000+ paper editions. That’s less than 5% of the total. At the other end of the spectrum, Stanford University’s new Engineering Library made headlines in 2010 when officials proclaimed their intent to go “largely bookless” within the decade. Pared down by nearly two-thirds from the old facility’s size to a mere 6,000 square feet, the new library contains 16,500 physical books, a whopping decrease of more than 80%, while it holds 40,000 ebooks. Still, the culled books and periodicals didn’t disappear: They were carted off to a central university repository, which can provide any requested materials in less than a day. What are we looking at? In general terms, there will be more, varied spaces but probably less overall square footage, fewer physical books, and more services. Compact, efficient libraries can be a good thing for patrons as users and taxpayers. A public library addition that I am working on has shrunk from more than 40,000 square feet (based on a nearly decade-old plan that projected the book and VHS tape collections would continue to grow linearly) to less than 20,000 square feet—most of which is dedicated to children and young people. The best libraries today—old, new, or in design—are a cross between a modern community center, an old-fashioned YMCA, and a town center. http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/03062012/once-and-future-library

Quick Ten: ten famous people who once worked in libraries: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/24574

Reader feedback to chalk letterer: Put together a PowerPoint presentation on Tanamachi for my graphics class, thanks. In one of her videos, she says she references "Ghost Signs" as her inspiration.

A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising signage that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. They are found across the world with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada having many surviving examples. Ghost signs are also called fading ads and brickads. In many cases these are advertisements painted on brick that remained over time. Old painted advertisements are occasionally discovered upon demolition of later-built adjoining structures. Many ghost signs still visible are from the 1890s to 1960s. Such signs were most commonly used in the decades before the Great Depression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_sign

On a foray into the wilds of Staten Island in 2009, Jeremy A. Feinberg, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolution at Rutgers University, heard something strange as he listened for the distinctive mating call of the southern leopard frog — usually a repetitive chuckle. But this was a single cluck. “I started hearing these calls, and I realized they were really distinct,” Mr. Feinberg said. Three years later, Mr. Feinberg and four other scientists who joined him in multiple field and laboratory studies, are finally comfortable making their declaration: a new species of leopard frog — as yet unnamed — has been identified in New York City and a number of surrounding counties. The find is surprising on a number of fronts, not least of which is that the new frog was hiding in plain sight in one of the most populated centers in the world. (Most new species are found in remote areas. There are more than a dozen leopard frogs, ranging from Canada to Central America. Medium in size, with dark spots on a tan, olive or green background, they gravitate toward grassy meadows and breed in ponds or pools. The researchers say that the new frog species was confused for a long time with the southern leopard frog, which it closely resembles. Its known range is limited, more or less, to commuting distance from Midtown Manhattan, stretching from around Trenton, N.J., in the south, to Putnam County, N.Y., to the north. The findings are to be published in an issue of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, but are currently available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790312000383 Lisa W. Foderaro http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/nyregion/new-leopard-frog-species-is-discovered-in-nyc.html

President Obama unjustly criticized a dead Republican president — Rutherford B. Hayes — by putting words in Hayes’ mouth that he never uttered. Obama, speaking about his energy policies at Prince George’s Community College March 15 in Largo, Md., said: There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?” (Laughter.) That’s why he’s not on Mt. Rushmore — (laughter and applause) — because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. (Applause.) Actually, as New York Magazine‘s Daily Intel blog and others were quick to point out, Hayes never said that. In fact, Hayes was the first president to have a telephone in the White House. It was one of the earliest telephones anywhere in the nation’s capital. For the record, Hayes was also the first president to use a typewriter. And he invited Thomas Edison into the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. http://factcheck.org/2012/03/obamas-fake-hayes-quote/

DANA TANAMACHI is a graphic designer and custom chalk letterer who hails from the Lone Star State, but currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating in 2007 with a BFA in Communication Design from The University of North Texas, Dana moved to New York City to design Broadway show posters at Spotco—a leader in arts and live entertainment branding. In early 2010, she took a job working under Louise Fili at Louise Fili Ltd, specializing in the design of restaurants and food packaging. Currently, Dana works full time as a custom chalk letterer.
http://www.danatanamachi.com/about/

Impeccably hand-drawn in a range of styles, Dana Tanamachi's old-timey and evocative chalk-only compositions have appeared on everything from wine bottles to in-store displays to the cover of O, the Oprah Magazine. It was just over two years ago when Ms. Tanamachi, 26, accidentally started her new career by attending a friend's housewarming party in Brooklyn. The hosts had created several chalk walls in their new apartment by using commercially bought "chalkboard" paint (a thick matte variety that can turn any wall into a chalkboard-like surface), and they asked Ms. Tanamachi to sketch something on one of them. The drawing was a hit, and photos of partygoers posing in front of it quickly surfaced on Facebook. Ms. Tanamachi made similar works for each of their subsequent parties and word spread among friends and friends of friends. In May 2010, Ms. Tanamachi received her first official commission: an in-store display for Desiron, a furniture showroom in SoHo. A friend of a friend led to a second commission, this time from Google—she wrote "Room to Breathe" in elegant block letters on a chalkboard wall in one of the Internet giant's new Chelsea offices. Jobs soon followed with New York's Ace Hotel, the British Columbia winery Nagging Doubt and Rugby Ralph Lauren, for which Ms. Tanamachi made a series of window displays in type reminiscent of 1940s-era signage. Chalk, she discovered, was the perfect medium for her work; it's cheap and easy to manipulate. For any given commission, her tools are a tape measure, a rag and a pack of dollar-store chalk—nothing else. "The cheaper the better," she said regarding the chalk. "It's more hollow so it goes on smooth. The more expensive stuff is denser, and that's what makes those bad noises." Rachel Wolff See picture of the artist's chalkboard wall in her bedroom at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577265453430025274.html

Words spelled with more letters on the right of the keyboard are associated with more positive emotions than words spelled with more letters on the left, according to new research by cognitive scientists Kyle Jasmin of University College London and Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research, New York. Their work shows, for the first time, that there is a link between the meaning of words and the way they are typed - a relationship they call the QWERTY* effect. Their study is published online in Springer's journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Some words are spelled with more letters on the right side of the keyboard, others with more letters on the left. In a series of three experiments, the researchers investigated whether differences in the way words are typed correspond to differences in their meanings. They found that the meanings of words in English, Dutch and Spanish were related to the way people typed them on the QWERTY keyboard. Overall, words with more right-side letters were rated more positive in meaning than words with more left-side letters. This effect was visible in all three languages and was not affected by either word length, letter frequency or handedness. The QWERTY effect was also found when people judged the meanings of fictitious words like “pleek,” and was strongest in new words and abbreviations like “greenwash” and “LOL” coined after the invention of QWERTY. Why should the positions of the keys matter? The authors suggest that because there are more letters on the left of the keyboard midline than on the right, letters on the right might be easier to type, which could lead to positive feelings. *The most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six keys appearing in the top left letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120307112711.htm

The 14th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (CLMPS), held last July in France, included a special symposium on the subject of "What is an algorithm?" This may seem to be a strange question to ask just before the Turing Centenary Year, which is now being celebrated by numerous events around the world (see http://www.turingcentenary.eu/ ). Didn't Turing answer this question decisively? Isn't the answer to the question "an algorithm is a Turing machine"? But conflating algorithms with Turing machines is a misreading of Turing's 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." Turing's aim was to define computability, not algorithms. His paper argued that every function on natural numbers that can be computed by a human computer (until the mid-1940s a computer was a person who computes) can also be computed by a Turing machine. There is no claim in the paper that Turing machines offer a general model for algorithms. So the question posed by the special CLMPS symposium is an excellent one. Incontrovertibly, algorithms constitute one of the central subjects of study in computer science. Should we not have by now a clear understanding of what an algorithm is? It is worth pointing out that mathematicians formalized the notion of proof only in the 20th century, even though they have been using proofs at that point for about 2,500 years. Read very different definitions of algorithm by two keynote speakers at the symposium:
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/3/146261-what-is-an-algorithm/fulltext

One of America's most enduring poems was written by Robert Degen, who died in 2009 on his 104th birthday. His creation, "The Hokey Pokey," seems timeless. Though the tune and lyrics are often credited to the Ram Trio, who popularized it in the late 1940s in Sun Valley, the "Hokey Pokey Dance" was copyrighted in 1944 by Degen, who maintained the Rams stole it. However, American and British servicemen sang a similar song, "The Hokey Cokey" written by someone else, even earlier in the war. And according to Degen's NY Times obituary, some Catholic clergy and the Oxford English Dictionary contend that "hokey pokey" is derived from "hocus pocus," and the song was written by Puritans in the 1700s to satirize the Catholic mass. Degen's words figured into the winning entry in the 2003 Washington Post Style Invitational Contest, wherein readers could enter instructions to anything as long as it was composed in the manner of a famous person. Jeff Brechlin submitted "The Hokey-Poke" as written by Shakespeare. "O proud left foot, that ventures quick, within/ Then soon upon a backward journey./ Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:/ Command sinistral pedestal to writhe./ Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,/ A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl./ To spin! A wilde release from heaven's yoke./ Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl./ The Hoke, the poke - - banish now thy doubt/ Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about." http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2011/04/hokey_pokey_1.php

See a list of recent Washington Post Style Invitational weekly contests at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/style-invitationa l-weekly-contest-archives/2010/07/06/AB15r7D_linkset.html

January 21, 2012 The Tucson Unified School District has dismantled its Mexican-American studies program, packed away its offending books, shuttled its students into other classes. It was blackmailed into doing so: keeping the program would have meant losing more than $14 million in state funding. It was a blunt-force victory for the Arizona school superintendent, John Huppenthal, who has spent years crusading against ethnic-studies programs he claims are “brainwashing” children into thinking that Latinos have been victims of white oppression. As a state legislator, he co-wrote a law cracking down on ethnic studies, and as superintendent he decided that Tucson’s district was violating it. Mr. Huppenthal's law prohibits programs that “promote the overthrow of the United States government,” “promote resentment toward a race or class of people” and “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” Unless two students win a federal lawsuit arguing that the loss of the program violates their First Amendment rights, Tucson school officials and students are going to have to enrich their curriculum another way. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/rejected-in-tucson.html

March 14, 2012 The Librotraficante Caravan is scheduled to arrive in Tucson March 16 carrying copies of books banned by TUSD. March 17 highlights: All Day: The Libros Libres Taco Truck will hand out free books around Tucson. 1-4pm: The Ultimate Lit Workshop 1-4pm: John Valenzuela Youth Center, 1550 S. 6th Ave. 7pm: Literary Showcase: Leading authors will present their literary works: UA Social Sciences Building, Room 100, 1145 E. South Campus. http://tucsoncitizen.com/in-the-aggregate/2012/03/14/librotraficante-wet-books-events-in-tucson-saturday/

Internal Komen documents reviewed by Reuters reveal the complicated relationship between the Komen Foundation and the Catholic church, which simultaneously contributes to the breast cancer charity and receives grants from it. In recent years, Komen has allocated at least $17.6 million of the donations it receives to U.S. Catholic universities, hospitals and charities. Church opposition reached dramatic new proportions in 2011, when the 11 bishops who represent Ohio's 2.6 million Catholics announced a statewide policy banning church and parochial school donations to Komen. Such pressure helped sway Komen's leadership to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to current and former Komen officials. The earliest signs of discord came in 2005, when South Carolina's Catholic diocese pulled out of the local Komen fundraiser. I t was followed over the next four years by individual dioceses in Arizona, Indiana, Florida, Missouri and other states, where bishops either spoke out against Komen or took steps to stem donations to the charity, mainly because of its Planned Parenthood link. The momentum picked up in 2011 when top Ohio clerics met in Columbus. High on their agenda was the question of whether the state's nine dioceses should participate in Komen fundraisers. No Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio receive Komen money. But the bishops decided that diocese funds should no longer benefit the charity, for fear that money sent from local Komen affiliates to the Dallas headquarters could wind up in Planned Parenthood's coffers or help fund research on stem cells collected from human fetuses, according to church officials. But even as opposition to Komen continues, some Catholic recipients of Komen money have promoted their ties with the breast cancer charity to the media. Other institutions carry hypertext links to Komen on their Web sites and some display the Susan G. Komen for the Cure logo, including a pink ribbon. Catholic institutions overall collected $7.4 million from the charity in 2011 alone, while Planned Parenthood's receipts totaled $684,000 during the same year. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/15/us-usa-komen-catholic-idUSBRE82E12Q20120315

An eyespot (sometimes ocellus) is an eye-like marking. They are found on butterflies, reptiles, birds and fish. In members of the Felidae family (such as the Leopard Cat and Leopard), the white circular markings on the backs of the ears are termed ocelli, and they are functionally similar to eyespots in other animals. Eyespots may be a form of mimicry in which a spot on the body of an animal resembles an eye of a different animal to deceive potential predator or prey species; to draw a predator's attention away from the most vulnerable body parts; or to appear as an inedible or even dangerous animal. In larger animals, eyespots may play a role in intraspecies communication or courtship – the most well-known example is probably the eyespots on a peacock's display feathers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyespot_(mimicry)

Researchers studying the nature of crowds playing Foldit called some strategies “shocking” in how well they mimicked some of the methods already used by protein scientists. Gamers made headlines in September 2011 for unraveling the structure of a protein central to research on AIDS. On November 7, 2011, in a paper published online at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Washington researchers reveal the creative power of Foldit players’ strategies and compare them to the best-known scientist-developed methods. “We enabled players to create and improve each other’s best recipes to play the game. Once we looked at the variety and creativity of these recipes, we were shocked to find state-of-the-art algorithms.” said Zoran Popovic, principal investigator of the Foldit Project and the Director of the Center for Game Science. Foldit is developed by the Center in collaboration with the biochemistry laboratory of David Baker. Link to the game at: http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/paper-uncovers-power-of-foldit-gamers2019-strategies

A novella (also called a short novel, or novelette) is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The English word "novella" derives from the Italian word "novella", feminine of "novello", which means "new" The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000. Other definitions start as low as 10,000 words and run as high as 70,000 words. The novella is a common literary genre in several European languages. Famous English language novellas include John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. French examples of the novella include Voltaire's Candide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novella

The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, 15 U.S.C. §2601 et seq., provides EPA with authority to require reporting, record-keeping and testing requirements, and restrictions relating to chemical substances and/or mixtures. Certain substances are generally excluded from TSCA, including, among others, food, drugs, cosmetics and pesticides. TSCA addresses the production, importation, use, and disposal of specific chemicals including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos, radon and lead-based paint. For a more detailed summary, history, compliance and enforcement , see http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/tsca.html

One hundred organizations in 35 states on March 14 formally petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate toxic lead in hunting ammunition to protect public health and prevent the widespread poisoning of eagles, California condors and other wildlife. Up to 20 million birds die each year from lead poisoning after consuming spent lead shot and bullet fragments left in the wild from hunting. The petition follows the EPA’s refusal in 2010 to review a petition asking for a ban on lead bullets, shotgun pellets and fishing tackle under the Toxic Substances Control Act, and seeks federal rules requiring use of nontoxic bullets and shot for hunting and shooting sports. It was filed by groups representing conservationists, birders, hunters, zoologists, scientists, American Indians, wildlife rehabilitators and veterinarians. In the United States, 3,000 tons of lead are shot into the environment by hunters every year, while another 80,000 tons are released at shooting ranges. Birds and animals are poisoned when they scavenge on carcasses containing lead-bullet fragments or ingest spent lead-shot pellets, which can cover popular hunting grounds at high densities. http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/51136/

The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martii or Idus Martiae) is the name of the 15th day of March in the Roman calendar. The word Ides comes from the Latin word "Idus" and means "half division" especially in relation to a month. It is a word that was used widely in the Roman calendar indicating the approximate day that was the middle of the month. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. Caesar was stabbed (23 times) to death in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March

The 60 Plus Association began this week with a $3.5 million TV and online advertising campaign. The commercials target Democratic senators up for re-election this fall in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Montana and Missouri. In the ad, singer and association spokesman Pat Boone called the Independent Payment Advisory Board a panel of "unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats" with the power to deny Medicare treatments. American Crossroads and an affiliated conservative group plan to make abolishing the board a prominent issue in its $300 million campaign against Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans who control the House of Representatives plan to hold a floor vote this month to repeal the provision and dismantle the board before it can get started. The political stakes are high for both political parties among voters 65 and older, who make up 13% of the population, but accounted for more than one in five people who voted in the last election. The advisory board is tasked with finding ways to reduce spending in Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled. Its 15 members are to be selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate. None has been named yet. Starting in fiscal year 2015, the board must recommend cuts if the program's growth rate exceeds a specific target. Those recommendations will be sent to Congress for approval. If Capitol Hill doesn't like them, it must pass alternative cuts of the same size or the board's recommendations automatically take effect. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-13/health-care-ads/53520462/1

HEALTH INSURANCE DEDUCTIONS Self-Employed Requirements The IRS has two requirements to qualify for the self-employed health insurance deduction on Form 1040, line 29. The first is that you report a net profit on Schedule C - Profit or Loss From Business; Schedule C-EZ - Net Profit From Business; or Schedule F - Profit or Loss From Farming. The second requirement is that the health insurance policy be either in your name or the name of your business. Self-Employed Considerations If you are self-employed and your health insurance is Medicare, IRS Publication 535 and the instructions for Form 1040 indicate that Medicare premiums do not qualify for the self-employed health insurance deduction.
http://www.ehow.com/info_7757067_paid-health-insurance-deduction.html

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Phat means great or excellent. Other uses: Navy pilots making a good landing in a crosswind (1946-1947), Phat Bach, a great pun if you mispronounce "Bach" as "Back" (1957 jazz album), game of cards (an English trick-taking partnership card game derived from the 17th century game of All Fours), Pretty Hot and Tempting

A nanometer (also "nanometre") is a unit of measurement used to measure length. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter, so nanometers are certainly not used to measure long distances. Instead, they serve to measure extremely small objects, such as atomic structures or transistors found in modern CPUs. http://www.techterms.com/definition/nanometer

Journeying thousands of miles to New Zealand, Chad Furlong of Springfield, Ore. is one of a hard-core group of U.S. sheep handlers who competed in the recent Golden Shears World Championships. In a converted basketball court in this small town in a prime farming region, he tested his speed and dexterity with a pair of electric clippers, and strength in controlling a wriggling sheep, against 600 shearers from 25 other nations. At stake in New Zealand—the spiritual home of shearing and a country where sheep outnumber people about seven to one—is a prize of $2,000 and the title of world's best shearer. "It's like a martial art," said Angus Moore, 27, and New Zealand national champion, who was taking his third shot at the ultimate title. "Everything has got to be perfect. Your harmony with the animals makes you the best or not the best." Each round lasts about 14 minutes for the electric-powered machine shearers, but longer for divisions where cutting is done by hand. By the end, competitors are dripping with sweat and there are always a couple of injuries to contend with. Bad backs are par for the course and bangs and bruises are to be expected. "It takes the same amount of energy to work in a shearing shed for eight hours as it does to run a marathon twice," said Leann Brimmer, 38, of Biddle, Mont. Not only was she in New Zealand competing as a wool handler, but she travels the world following the shearing season each year sorting the fleeces as they come off the animals. New Zealander John Kirkpatrick, 41, took away the Golden Shears Open Shearing Final, which is open to all shearers whether they made their national team or not. Gavin Mutch, 32, who represented Scotland, won the World Open Machine Shearing event, for those on national teams. Winning was "surreal," he said. He had been battling injury and hadn't been sure he would be up to competing. Lucy Cramer http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577266150012936434.html

The Court of Justice of the European Communities (often referred to simply as ‘the Court’) was set up under the ECSC Treaty in 1952. It is based in Luxembourg. Article 19 TEU provides that the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is ‘(…) to ensure that in the interpretation and application of the Treaties the law is observed.’ It makes sure that EU legislation is interpreted and applied in the same way in all EU countries, so that the law is equal for everyone. It ensures, for example, that national courts do not give different rulings on the same issue. The Court also ensures that EU Member States and institutions do what the law requires. The Court has the power to settle legal disputes between EU Member States, EU institutions, businesses and individuals. The Court is composed of one judge per Member State, so that all 27 of the EU’s national legal systems are represented. The Court is assisted by eight ‘advocates-general’ whose role is to present reasoned opinions on the cases brought before the Court.
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/areas/industrialrelations/dictionary/definitions/EUROPEANCOURTOFJUSTICE.htm

The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a six-nation international organisation serving to unify Western Europe during the Cold War and create the foundation for the modern-day developments of the European Union. The ECSC was the first organisation to be based on the principles of supranationalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community

Find news about the European Court of Justice, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times at: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_court_of_justice/index.html

There are several large drumlin fields in the Great Lakes region. One of the largest and most widespread drumlin fields in the Midwest lies in the Michigan's NW Lower peninsula, centered on Antrim and Charlevoix Counties. The drumlin field is cut into many smaller pieces by deep (dry) valleys, some of which contain long narrow lakes such as Torch Lake and Lake Bellaire. The Leelanau peninsula also contains a significant drumlin field, as does the Mission Peninsula. See maps at: http://www.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/drumlins.html

Drumlins are asymmetrical, canoe shaped hills with aerodynamic profiles made mainly of till. Their heights vary from 15 to 50 meters and they can reach a kilometer in length. The tilted side of the hill looks toward the direction from which the ice advanced (stoss), while the longer slope follows the ice's direction of movement (lee). Drumlins are found in groups called drumlin fields or drumlin camps. An example of these fields is found east of Rochester, New York, and it is estimated that it contains about 10,000 drumlins. It is believed that many drumlins were formed when glaciers advanced over and altered the deposits of earlier glaciers. Read more about glacial geology and see images at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier#Drumlins

Depiction of a library in the snow from The Bingo Palace by Louise Erdrich " . . . the lighted castle of a building draws me across the snowy street. And there it is. There are great squares of glass, rectangles of golden warmth that stream onto the snow in a rich, full invitation."

The United States has 58 protected areas known as national parks, which are operated by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior. National parks must be established by an act of the United States Congress. The first national park, Yellowstone, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, followed by Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. The Organic Act of 1916 created the National Park Service "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." National parks usually have a variety of natural resources over large areas. Many of them had been previously protected as National Monuments by the President under the Antiquities Act before being upgraded by Congress. Seven national parks are paired with a National Preserve, six of which are in Alaska. The newest national park is Great Sand Dunes, established in 2004. See list of national parks in the U.S. at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_United_States

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