May 18, 2012  Earlier this month, it was revealed that Joanne Harris’s bestselling novel Chocolat (1999) had officially passed the one million copies mark, placing her in what The Bookseller called the “Millionaire’s Club”.  Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper (2003) followed suit, as did John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006).  Astonishingly, according to Nielsen BookScan figures, the Harris, Picoult and Boyne novels joined the ranks of just 68 books (some of them non-fiction) that have sold more than one million copies since records began in 1998.  Harris became only the fourth British female novelist to top one million copies, after J K Rowling (Harry Potter), Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones) and Kate Mosse (Labyrinth).  Carl Wilkinson  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9272388/The-Millionaire-Authors-Club.html

One of Italy's leading universities - the Politecnico di Milano - is going to switch to the English language.  The university has announced that from 2014 most of its degree courses - including all its graduate courses - will be taught and assessed entirely in English rather than Italian.  "Universities are in a more competitive world, if you want to stay with the other global universities - you have no other choice," says Professor Giovanni Azzone.  He says that his university's experiment will "open up a window of change for other universities", predicting that in five to 10 years other Italian universities with global ambitions will also switch to English.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17958520

The dynamic lexicon changes the way we look at problems ranging from human-computer interaction to logic itself, but it also has an application in the political realm.  Over the last few decades, some important legal scholars and judges — most notably the United States Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia — have made the case that the Constitution is not a living document, and that we should try to get back to understanding the Constitution as it was originally written by the original framers — sometimes this doctrine is called textualism.  Scalia’s doctrine says that we cannot do better than concentrate on what the Constitution actually says — on what the words on paper say.  Scalia once put this in the form of a tautology: “Words mean what they mean.”  In his more cautious formulation he says that “words do have a limited range of meaning, and no interpretation that goes beyond that range is permissible.”  Pretty clearly Scalia is assuming what I have called the static picture of language.  But “words mean what they mean” is not the tautology that Scalia seems to think it is.  If word meanings can change dramatically during the course of a single conversation how could they not change over the course of centuries?  But more importantly, Scalia’s position seems to assume that the original meanings of the words used in the Constitution are nearly fully determined — that the meaning of a term like “person” or phrase like “due process,” as used in the Constitution is fully fleshed out.  But is it really determined whether, for example, the term “person” in the Constitution applies to medically viable fetuses, brain dead humans on life support, and, as we will have to ask in the fullness of time, intelligent robots?  The dynamic picture says no.  The words used by lawmakers are just as open ended as words used in day-to-day conversation.  Peter Ludlow  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/the-living-word/

The story goes that the John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, asked for beef served between slices of bread so that he could eat while continuing to play cards and his friends asked "to have the same as Sandwich", according to the British Sandwich Association.  The first written record of the sandwich was in 1762 and the Kent town of Sandwich, which is the earldom of the Montagu family, is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the meal.  Sir Edward Montagu, a prominent naval commander, became the first Earl of Sandwich when he was offered a peerage in 1660.  Steve Laslett, one of the organisers of the Sandwich Celebration Festival, said Sir Edward Montagu chose the title because "at the time Sandwich was the premier sea port in England".  "When he was offered the earldom he could have chosen Portsmouth but he chose Sandwich - today we could be eating a Portsmouth."   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-18010424

The Preakness Range on northern New Jersey was originally inhabited by the Munsee (Minsi) Lenape.  Preakness appears to be a modernized form of per-ukunees, a Lenape term thought to mean young buck.  For a time, Dutch settlers actually referred to the range as Harteberg, which appropriately translates to Deer Mountain.  For most of modern history the Preakness Range remained a wilderness providing recreation to the inhabitants of surrounding towns.  Only the southern section of the range was particularly built up, with William Paterson University acting as buffer to hold back development from encroaching northward across the main ridge of Preakness Mountain.  In the 1980s, when development began to threaten the remaining wilderness of the range, a push by local citizens to preserve the Preakness Range for the public interest was begun, ultimately resulting in the creation of High Mountain Park Preserve.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preakness_Range

One variation of Preakness was Preckiness, used by General George Washington to describe the area where his troops were quartered in the winter of 1776-77.  Nearly a century later, Milton H. Sanford, a thoroughbred owner, became attracted to the name.  He called his farms, one in New Jersey and another in Kentucky, Preakness.  His Jersey farm was located in the Indians' "quail woods."  Today, there remains a Preakness, N.J.   When he bought a yearling sired by Lexington and foaled by Bay Leaf from A. J. Alexander, he named the colt (bred in Kentucky at Woodburn Farm) Preakness, unaware that he was contributing to turf immortality.  It was Preakness who turned up as a 3-year-old for his debut in the Dinner Party Stakes at Pimlico's inaugural in 1870.  He was derided as a "cart horse" for his ungainly appearance, but won that first stakes at Old Hilltop, which became a history-producing victory.  It was the colt's only start in 1870 but he left a lasting impression at Pimlico.  Three years later, the Maryland Jockey Club honored him by calling its newest stakes race "Preakness".  The Dinner Party Stakes eventually became the present-day Dixie Handicap.  http://www.preakness-stakes.info/preakness.php 

Reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.  Reduplication is used both inflectionally to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and derivationally to create new words.  English uses some kinds of reduplication, mostly for informal vocabulary.  There are three types:

Rhyming reduplications:  abracadabra, boogie-woogie, bow-wow, chock-a-block, claptrap, gang-bang, eency-weeny, fuddy-duddy, fuzzy-wuzzy, hanky-panky, harum-scarum, heebie-jeebies, helter-skelter, herky-jerky, hi-fi, higgledy-piggledy, hobnob, Hobson-Jobson, hocus-pocus, hodge-podge, hoity-toity, hokey-pokey, honey-bunny, hubble-bubble, hugger-mugger, Humpty-Dumpty, hurly-burly, hurry-scurry, itsy-bitsy, itty-bitty, loosey-goosey, lovey-dovey, mumbo-jumbo, namby-pamby, nimbly-bimbly, nitty-gritty, nitwit, okey-dokey, pall-mall, palsy-walsy, pee-wee, pell-mell, picnic, razzle-dazzle, roly-poly, sci-fi, super-duper, teenie-weenie, tidbit, walkie-talkie, willy-nilly, wingding

Exact reduplications:  (baby-talk-like): bonbon, bye-bye, choo-choo, chop-chop, chow-chow, dum-dum, fifty-fifty, go-go, goody-goody, knock-knock, no-no, pee-pee, poo-poo, pooh-pooh, rah-rah, so-so, tsk-tsk, wee-wee.

Ablaut reduplications:  bric-a-brac, chit-chat, criss-cross, dilly-dally, ding-dong, fiddle-faddle, flimflam, flip-flop, hippety-hoppety, kitcat, knick-knack, mish-mash, ping-pong, pitter-patter, riff-raff, riprap, see-saw, shilly-shally, sing-song, teeny-tiny, teeter-totter, tic-tac-toe, tick-tock, ticky-tacky, tip-top, tittle-tattle, wish-wash, wishy-washy, zig-zag 

See much more at:  http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemistry/Reduplication

Search the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art and find examples such as the sculpture Gorilla by Daisy Youngblood at:  http://classes.toledomuseum.org:8080/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/111/10/invno-asc?t:state:flow=f1385fa4-f7d9-42e4-96aa-0f13ad77c46b

Two anniversaries in 2012:  Coleridge-Taylor and Coleridge

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) Afro-British composer, conductor & professor

Centennial of his death is on September 1, 1912

http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/song.html

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a leader of the British Romantic movement (1772-1834)  Find selected bibliography at:  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/292

Printing was first conceived and developed in China and Korea. The oldest printed book using woodblock printing, a Korean Buddhist scripture, dates to 751 AD.  The oldest surviving book printed using block printing, the Chinese Diamond Sutra, dates to 868.  The movable type printer was invented by Bi Sheng in 1041 during Song Dynasty China.  The movable type metal printing press was invented in Korea in 1234 by Chwe Yoon Eyee during the Goryeo Dynasty -216 years ahead of Gutenberg in 1450.  By the 12th and 13th century many Chinese libraries contained tens of thousands of printed books.  The name of Gutenberg first appears, in connection with printing, in a law case in Strasbourg in 1439.  He is being sued by two of his business partners.  Witnesses, asked about Gutenberg's stock, describe a press and a supply of metal type.  It sounds as though he is already capable of printing small items of text from movable type, and it seems likely that he must have done so in Strasbourg.  But nothing from this period survives.  By the time he is next heard of in connection with printing, he is in Mainz.  He borrows 800 guilders in 1450 from Johann Fust with his printing equipment as security.  http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=469

Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, between the western bank of the Connecticut River and the Mount Tom Range of mountains.  As of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 39,880. Sitting only 8 miles north of the major city of Springfield, Massachusetts, Holyoke is considered part of the Springfield Metropolitan Area - one of the two distinct metropolitan areas in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  The City of Holyoke was named for Elizur Holyoke, a Springfielder who first explored the area in 1664.  Holyoke was one of the first planned industrial communities in the United States.  Its rectilinear grid pattern is notable in Western Massachusetts, where few roads are straight.  The city's advantageous location on the Connecticut River - the largest river in New England - beside Hadley Falls, the river's steepest drop (60 feet), attracted the Boston Associates, who had successfully developed Lowell, Massachusetts' textile industry.  From the late 19th century until the mid-20th century, Holyoke was the world's biggest paper manufacturer.  The elaborate Holyoke Canal System, a system of canals built to power paper and textile mills, distinguishes it from other Connecticut River cities.  Holyoke is nicknamed The Paper City due to its fame as the world's greatest paper producer.   The sport of volleyball was invented in Holyoke in 1895.  The Volleyball Hall of Fame is located there.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holyoke,_Massachusetts

The auto industry has a long tradition of adapting military technology to improve passenger cars for civilians, said John Wolkonowicz, an independent auto analyst in Boston who specializes in automotive history.  “Just about any material used in a passenger car was probably improved with military research,” he said.  Boosting fuel economy has become a high priority for automakers that face a doubling of efficiency standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025 or face fines.  Among U.S. car-shoppers’ priorities this year, mileage soared to the top of the list, surpassing reliability, a good deal and exterior styling, according to a survey by researcher J.D. Power & Associates.  The military research at Tardec, 17 miles (27 km) north of General Motors Co. (GM)’s Detroit headquarters, offers the possibility of breakthroughs that may also someday benefit Ford and Chevy cars and trucks.  The site has long been an engine of progress.  The U.S. Army contracted with then-Chrysler Corp. in August 1940 to create the country’s first government-owned, contractor-operated factory at the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant in Warren --later heralded as the “Arsenal of Democracy.”  The first prototype tank was finished in April 1941, according to the official history of the facility.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-14/detroit-54-5-mpg-mandate-gets-help-from-u-s-army-s-tanks.html 

 In 2002, Hormel attempted to assert its trademark rights against Spam Arrest, a software company, Spam Buster, an e-mail blocker, and Spam Cube, an Internet security firm, but no dice.  Hormel even sued Jim Henson Productions for naming a warthog character “Spa’am” in Muppet Treasure Island.  The judge dismissed the suit, noting, “One might think Hormel would welcome the association with a genuine source of pork.”  Powerless to stop the widely accepted usage, the company watched helplessly as “spam” entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001 not as a pork product but as unsolicited messages.   Spam has not only survived, it’s thrived.  Hormel sold 122 million cans of Spam last year, an increase of 11 percent over 2009, continuing a string of three consecutive years of strong growth.  Company executives attribute the resurgence to the recession (which drew consumers to the affordable lunchmeat), a tireless parade of brand extensions, and, crucially, a willingness to be in on the joke that Spam had become.  Geo. A. Hormel & Co. canned the first ham in 1926.  Hormel’s hams became popular among hotels and restaurants but the cans were considered too bulky to break into the home market.  Eleven years later, Jay C. Hormel, the founder’s son, devised a solution:  a rectangular, 12-ounce can of ham and shoulder meat named, by the brother of one of his VPs, Spam, short for SPiced hAM.  The original cans were labeled “The Meat of Many Uses” and at 10¢ each were an immediate hit with depression-era families.  http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/how-spam-meat-has-survived-spam-e-mail

The Glass-Steagall Act, also known as the Banking Act of 1933 (48 Stat. 162), was passed by Congress in 1933 and prohibits commercial banks from engaging in the investment business.

It was enacted as an emergency response to the failure of nearly 5,000 banks during the Great Depression.  The act was originally part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program and became a permanent measure in 1945.  It gave tighter regulation of national banks to the Federal Reserve System; prohibited bank sales of securities; and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures bank deposits with a pool of money appropriated from banks.  Beginning in the 1900s, commercial banks established security affiliates that floated bond issues and underwrote corporate stock issues. (In underwriting, a bank guarantees to furnish a definite sum of money by a definite date to a business or government entity in return for an issue of bonds or stock.)  The expansion of commercial banks into securities underwriting was substantial until the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Depression.  In 1930, the Bank of the United States failed, reportedly because of activities of its security affiliates that created artificial conditions in the market.  In 1933, all of the banks throughout the country were closed for a four-day period, and 4,000 banks closed permanently.  Search about 50 articles including A Brief History Lesson:  How We Ended Glass Steagall published May 17, 2012  at:  http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html

It will still be months before they are available for rent, and a few days before their precise locations will be revealed.  But the 10,000 bicycles in New York’s much anticipated bike-sharing program have a name: Citi Bike.  The name did not come cheaply: Citigroup, which runs Citibank, is paying $41 million to be the lead sponsor of the program for five years.  Mayor Bloomberg in recalling the bicycle’s new name — called it Citibank several times.   Citi may have struck a good deal.  At the end of July, the first bikes are scheduled to reach the streets in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.  By next summer, all 10,000 bikes, docked at 600 stations, are expected to be available for use.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/nyregion/new-york-cycle-sharing-gets-a-name-citi-bike.html

Facebook Inc. has reached a “settlement agreement in principle” with a group of users who allege the social network used their names and likeness in paid advertisements without their consent.  The agreement was disclosed in a court filing Monday, May 21 in federal court in San Jose; the terms of it were not. U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh has requested that the parties file a report on the progress of the settlement discussions by Friday.  The lawsuit targets Facebook’s “Sponsored Story,” a type of ad that is created when a Facebook user “likes” a product or service.  That endorsement is then visible to his or her friends.  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/22/facebook-reaches-settlement-in-principle-in-lawsuit-over-ads/

The increasing role of standardized testing in U.S. classrooms is triggering pockets of rebellion across the country from school officials, teachers and parents who say the system is stifling teaching and learning.  The importance of standardized testing increased markedly in 2002 with the passage of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that requires that schools test students in math and reading in third through eighth grade and once in high school.  Under NCLB, schools could face closure if not enough students pass the exams, which are often one-day, multiple-choice tests.  In recent years, the tests have been used to evaluate teachers, propelled in large part by President Barack Obama's $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative.  The program offered funds to states that linked teacher evaluations to test scores.  At least 26 states have adopted such policies.  Mr. Obama also offered money to states that overhaul low-performing schools—including ousting teaching staffs—based, in part, on student test scores.  The biggest complaint is that teacher and schools are compelled to orient their curricula and classroom experience around passing the exams—known as "teaching to the test."  Because many of the exams measure basic standards, critics say, that shortchanges students who could be spending time learning more advanced material.  Matthew Goldman, a junior at Wellington High School in the Palm Beach school district, said he took a high-school level algebra course in eighth grade and geometry as a ninth grader.  But the Florida ninth-grade math test focused on algebra, so his geometry class spent weeks reviewing algebra concepts.  Stephanie Banchero  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406603829668714.html 

Personal note:  I took a standardized test from Princeton to fulfill requirements for a master's degree and, to my amazement, couldn't understand some of the questions with awkward negative phrases.  What were they looking for?  What were they thinking? 

tenable   (TEN-uh-buhl)  adjective:  Capable of being held or defended.  From French tenable, from tenir (to hold), from Latin tenere (to hold).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root ten- (to stretch), which also gave us tense, tenet, tendon, tent, tenor, tender, pretend, extend, tenure, tetanus, hypotenuse, pertinacious, and detente.  Earliest documented use:  1604.

foursquare   (FOHR-skwair)   adjective:  1. Firm; unyielding.   2. Frank; forthright.  3. Square in shape.  adverb:  In a firm or forthright manner.   From four + square, from Latin exquadrare (to square). Earliest documented use:  before 1300.

orthogonal  (or-THOG-uh-nuhl)  adjective:     1.  At right angles.  2.  Unrelated or independent of each other.  From Latin orthogonius (right-angled), from Greek orthogonios, from ortho- (right, correct) + gonia (angle).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root genu- (knee), which also gave us knee, kneel, genuflect, and diagonal.  Earliest documented use:  before 1560. 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

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From:  Nancy Brandon  Subject:  Foursquare  adjective:  1. Firm; unyielding;  2. Frank; forthright; 3.  Square in shape; adverb:  In a firm or forthright manner.  Foursquare also refers to a classic American house design, especially popular in the 1920s - 1930s.  It is a classic style that immediately identifies its neighborhood as belonging to the era of the Arts and Crafts/Craftsman architectural period.  For a more in-depth description, along with pictures, see

http://architecture.about.com/od/periodsstyles/ig/House-Styles/Foursquare.htm

From:  Winsome Brown  Subject:  foursquare  Foursquare is also a ball game which consists very simply of a large square painted on the playground which is itself divided into four squares.  Four players have a square each, the person in square one bounces a large ball then pats/slams it into another square, then that player lets it bounce once then pats or slams it with the hands into another square and so on.  If you send it out of a square or miss it when it comes to you, you're out and everyone below you moves up a square and the first person in the line joins in at square number four.  The object is to get to square number one and stay there as long as possible or until the bell rings for the end of break time.  It sounds a bit tame, and it's surprisingly hard to describe something so simple, but it's a time-honoured game and can get very competitive!  

In 2005, a group of culinary adventurers  challenged people from the San Francisco area (and all over the world) to eat within a 100 mile radius of their home for the month of August.....

In 2007 they extended that challenge to the month of September.  They encouraged folks to try canning and preserving food for the wintertime.   http://www.locavores.com/ 

Jessica Prentice’s claim to fame comes from coining the term locavore, chosen as the 2007 Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.  The New York City-trained natural chef lives and breathes the locavore lifestyle.  She is a co-founder of Three Stone Hearth, a community supported kitchen cooperative in Berkeley, California, which sells nutrient-dense, prepared foods (think soups and stews in bone broth made from scratch), and co-creator of the Local Foods Wheel, a whimsically illustrated guide to local, seasonal and ecologically-sound eating.  Read interview at:  http://lettuceeatkale.com/2010/qa-with-locavore-jessica-prentice-of-three-stone-hearth/

The Pulitzer Prize  is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition.  It was established by publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1917 and is administered by Columbia University in New York City.  Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories.  For all categories, you submit a $50 entry fee, an entry form, a personal photograph, a personal biography and four copies of the book.  Please note that being an entrant is not the same as being a nominee. 

Quote  People die, but then they don't die.  They leave ideas, impressions, remembrances, art, words, and this is how they live forever.  Music of the Mill, a novel by Luis J. Rodriguez

Luis J. Rodriguez (born 1954) is an American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist.  His work has won several awards, and he is recognized as a major figure of contemporary Chicano literature.  His best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., is the recipient of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, among others, and has been the subject of controversy when included on reading lists in California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas schools due to its frank depictions of gang life.  Rodriguez has also founded or co-founded numerous organizations, including the Tía Chucha Press, which publishes the work of unknown writers, Tía Chucha's Centro Cultural, a San Fernando Valley cultural center, and the Chicago-based Youth Struggling for Survival, an organization for at-risk youth.  See quotes and bibliography of his poetry, nonfiction and fiction at:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_J._Rodriguez

It seems harder to search efficiently on Internet these days.  Google consistently pads their results with at least one of your terms not appearing.  Bing and Facebook bring gossipy rather than substantive results    "Bing has rolled out their social search features more broadly.  Now more people can see what their friends have liked when searching on Bing.com.  Search is about finding information to help you make decisions."  "When you search for something on Bing or in web results on Facebook (powered by Bing), you'll be able to see your friends' faces next to web pages they've liked. So, you can lean on friends to figure out the best websites for your search."

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=437112312130

Istanbul  This museum honors a work of fiction, its exhibits and artifacts reflecting events that never took place, except in the imagination of the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.  In perhaps his most ambitious creation, possibly the world's only museum of its kind, the writer has taken literature on a course that is remarkably novel.  Yet the Museum of Innocence is also a genuine institution and, after more than a decade of planning, a huge triumph for Mr. Pamuk.  The author not only curated the displays but collected all the items, grouped in 83 numbered panels, one for each chapter of his 2008 book, "The Museum of Innocence."  "I conceived both the novel and the museum together," he insisted during a private tour a few days after the museum's April 28 opening.  Mr. Pamuk bought the four-story building that now houses the museum in 1998.  Painted a rich wine red, the 19th-century structure sits in Cukurcuma, a fashionable area of Istanbul close to where the author lives.  Cukurcuma is also the setting of his love story about Kemal, an Istanbul socialite who is engaged to be married to Sibel, but then suddenly falls hopelessly in love with a teenager, Fusun.  The novel details Kemal's infatuation during the mid-1970s and '80s, and, in the real world, the museum reflects Mr. Pamuk's own intense obsession.  Ron Gluckman  Find more plus pictures at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577392024005675152.html

The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe.  The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement of 1998.  However, sporadic violence has been ongoing since then.  The principal issues at stake in the Troubles were the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the relationship between the mainly Protestant unionist and mainly Catholic nationalist communities in Northern Ireland.  The Troubles had both political and military (or paramilitary) dimensions.  Its participants included republican and loyalist paramilitaries, the security forces of the United Kingdom and of the Republic of Ireland, and nationalist and unionist politicians and political activists.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

Her dramatic gold medal at the Munich Olympics in 1972 ensured her status in her home country of Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles.  Now the pentathlete Dame Mary Peters is to be remembered in a 12-minute opera composed to coincide with the London Games.  Our Day, by Conor Mitchell, will be performed by Northern Ireland Opera at New Music 20x12, a programme of newly commissioned pieces which will be played across a weekend in July at London's Southbank Centre.  The piece does not focus on Dame Mary, but instead explores the effect of her win at one of the lowest points of the Troubles in 1972.  Mitchell, who was born five years after the event, said:  "That year all hell broke loose and then there was this day when someone from Northern Ireland won a medal and for one day it all just stopped."  Nick Clark  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/mary-peters-olympic-glory-remembered-in-mini-opera-7689177.html 

With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country, crippling debt is no longer confined to dropouts from for-profit colleges or graduate students who owe on many years of education, some of the overextended debtors in years past.  Now nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor’s degree is borrowing.  As prices soar, a college degree statistically remains a good lifetime investment, but it often comes with an unprecedented financial burden.   Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education — up from 45 percent in 1993, according to an analysis by The New York Times of the latest data from the Department of Education.  This includes loans from the federal government, private lenders and relatives.  Graduates of Ohio’s more than 200 colleges and universities carry some of the highest average debt in the country, according to data reported by the colleges and compiled by an educational advocacy group.  The current balance of federal student loans nationwide is $902 billion, with an additional $140 billion or so in private student loans.  “If one is not thinking about where this is headed over the next two or three years, you are just completely missing the warning signs,” said Rajeev V. Date, deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal watchdog created after the financial crisis.  Mr. Date likened excessive student borrowing to risky mortgages.  And as with the housing bubble before the economic collapse, the extraordinary growth in student loans has caught many by surprise.  But its roots are in fact deep, and the cast of contributing characters — including college marketing officers, state lawmakers wielding a budget ax and wide-eyed students and families — has been enabled by a basic economic dynamic:  an insatiable demand for a college education, at almost any price, and plenty of easy-to-secure loans, primarily from the federal government.   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html

Slow Food Fast  See a collection of seasonal recipes for busy home cooks who don't have all day, prepared for The Wall Street Journal by well-known chefs.

http://topics.wsj.com/subject/S/slow-food-fast/6829

The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells published in 1897.  Originally serialised in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year.  The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it absorbs and reflects no light and thus becomes invisible.  He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse the procedure.  While its predecessors, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, were written using first-person narrators, in The Invisible Man Wells adopts a third-person objective point of view.  See plot summary, characters and adaptations at:  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Man 

Find references to Invisible Man in literature (3), film (2), television (5)  and music (6) at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Man_(disambiguation)

Back in February, Raymond Bragar and Gregory Blue sued legal database providers Westlaw and LexisNexis, claiming they were engaged in the “unabashed wholesale copying of thousands of copyright-protected works” created and owned by lawyers and law firms.  Those works, of course, are legal briefs.  But who really registers their legal briefs with the copyright office?  Edward L. White, for one.  He’s one of the plaintiffs, representing a purported class of lawyers who have gone to the trouble.  Another plaintiff, Kenneth Elan, represents the vast majority of lawyers who have not.  On May 16, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan booted the would-be class of lawyers without registration from the lawsuit.  “The statute is unequivocal that completing registration or pre-registration is a prerequisite to filing a claim,” Judge Rakoff said.   Messrs. Bragar and Blue argued that lawyers whose briefs are unregistered, even if they can’t sue for infringement, could seek an injunction and a declaratory judgment that Westlaw and LexisNexis broke the law.  Judge Rakoff declined both requests.  The lawsuit still has a pulse. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis has moved to dismiss claims by Mr. White and the class he seeks to represent.  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/17/rakoff-dismisses-copyright-claims-against-westlaw-lexis/?mod=djemlawblog_h

 

UPDATE:  Apparently a few employees are still roaming the halls at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP’s Manhattan offices.  Make that 100, to be precise.  On May 16 the firm amended its WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) filing with the New York state Department of Labor to reflect the following:  there are 533 total employees, not 433, as stated in the initial May 8 filing.  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/16/and-then-there-were-none-deweys-landgraf-exits-for-arnold-porter/

 

Access to web-published content can be lost as websites are routinely updated, reorganized, or deleted over time.  In the five years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 8,600 digital items and 3,700 titles, almost all originally posted to the web but captured and preserved within the group's digital archive.   Every year, the Chesapeake Group investigates whether or not the documents in the archive can still be found at the original web addresses from which they were captured.  The group analyzes two samples of web addresses, or URLs, pulled from the archive's records. ...  In 2012, 218 out of 579 URLs in the sample no longer provide access to the content that was originally selected, captured, and archived by the Chesapeake Group.  In other words, link rot has increased to 37.7 percent within five years.  Link to full report from the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group at:  http://web.docuticker.com/go/docubase/68740 

Authors are trying to satisfy impatient readers who have become used to downloading any e-book they want at the touch of a button, and the publishers who are nudging them toward greater productivity in the belief that the more their authors’ names are out in public, the bigger stars they will become.  “It used to be that once a year was a big deal,” said Lisa Scottoline, a best-selling author of thrillers.  “You could saturate the market.  But today the culture is a great big hungry maw, and you have to feed it.”   Television shows are rushed online only hours after they are originally broadcast, and some movies are offered on demand at home before they have left theaters.  In this environment, publishers say, producing one a book a year, and nothing else, is just not enough.  Ms. Scottoline has increased her output from one book a year to two, which she accomplishes with a brutal writing schedule:  2,000 words a day, seven days a week, usually “starting at 9 a.m. and going until Colbert,” she said.  The British thriller writer Lee Child, who created the indelible character Jack Reacher, is now supplementing his hardcover books with short stories that are published in digital-only format, an increasingly popular strategy to drum up attention for the coming publication of a novel.  Mr. Child’s first story, a 40-page exploration of Reacher as a teenager, was released last August, several weeks before his latest novel came out in print.  On the advice of his publisher, he is planning to write another digital-only short story this summer.  “Everybody’s doing a little more,” said Mr. Child, who is published by Delacorte Press, part of Random House.  Even John Grisham is working overtime.  Mr. Grisham, who used to write one book each year, now does an additional series aimed at middle-grade readers, the popular “Theodore Boone” novels that are published annually.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/in-e-reader-age-of-writers-cramp-a-book-a-year-is-slacking.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The Canadian one cent penny will be no more as of this autumn.  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives introduced the federal budget at the end of March.  In the annual budget, it was announced that the government will save $11 million per year by not producing one cent pennies, which cost 1.6 cents to create.  Some Members of Parliament are advocating for the end of the five-cent nickel as well.  This would make the 10-cent dime the lowest denominated currency in Canada.  http://digitaljournal.com/article/324178

Thanks primarily to rising costs of zinc – the main material in a penny – the U.S. Mint now spends 2.4 cents to make a penny.  Just last year, the U.S. mint made 4.9 billion pennies.  It doesn’t add up:  That’s $118 million to make just $49 million worth of pennies.  The current Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner told Congress earlier this week that something has to be done about the sky-rocketing costs of making U.S. coins.  And it’s not just the penny: the lowly nickel costs 11.18 cents to make.  http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/u-s-penny-to-be-kept-as-canada-bids-coin-farewell/

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the most sweeping financial law enacted since the Great Depression, is supposed to protect investors and shield the economy from bubbles and speculation.  Its promise is hard to judge; many detailed rules are still being drafted.  What can be said with confidence is that Dodd-Frank has been a boon for lobbyists.  This spring a scrum of them is grappling over a relatively obscure provision known as Section 1504.  Bill Gates, George Soros, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) have endorsed the proviso.  Big Oil and mining corporations are determined to undo it.  At issue is a problem not typically associated with Wall Street reform:  how to help citizens in poor countries stop their leaders from stealing money earned from oil and mineral sales.  Dodd-Frank would use Securities and Exchange Commission rules to require resource companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to make timely, detailed disclosures of the tax and royalty payments they make to governments worldwide.  Anti-poverty groups such as Oxfam and Publish What You Pay have long argued that such transparency can help reduce corruption in oil-rich, thievery-plagued places such as Nigeria and Iraq by giving local media and civil society the hard data they need to ask where their country’s cash is going.  Large oil and mining companies already participate in a voluntary regime, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Executives at ExxonMobil (XOM), the world’s biggest oil company, have sat on the Initiative’s board.  Reformers have been frustrated by the slow and incomplete nature of the disclosures required by EITI; Dodd-Frank is a chance to push through tougher rules.  Lobbyists are now urging the SEC to delay action or to narrow the kinds of disclosures that would be required.  The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s Washington arm, is leading the push, but all major oil and mining companies have joined in on their own.  (Newmont Mining (NEM) is the only major exception; it has expressed support for the 1504 rules.)  The companies argue that the proposed rules would be “excessively burdensome,” in the words of Patrick Mulva, ExxonMobil’s vice president and controller.  Big Oil’s “greater concern,” as Mulva wrote in a letter to the commission, is  that 1504 would have a “detrimental effect” on the “global competitiveness of U.S. companies.” The fear is that Chinese, Russian, Brazilian, and Indian oil and mining companies, lacking qualms and unburdened by Dodd-Frank rules, would exploit the financial disclosures made by their Western competitors to outbid them—and potentially persuade leaders of resource-rich countries in the developing world to stay away from U.S. companies altogether.  http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/exxonmobil-vs-dot-dodd-frank

People with clear skies across most of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico will experience a partial eclipse of the Sun late this Sunday afternoon (May 20, 2012).  Sky and Telescope's website describes several recommended Sun-viewing methods:   "When the eclipse is deep or annular, the clear blue sky will become a darker, deeper blue than normal," says MacRobert.  "Look for Venus - it's shining east of the Sun by about two fist-widths at arm's length.  Jupiter and Mercury will be tougher.  They're on the other side of the Sun by about a quarter and a third as far, respectively, and they're not as bright."   A partial or annular eclipse is a rewarding experience in itself, but it's no match for a *total* eclipse of the Sun. "The next total eclipse of the Sun to cross the United States will be on August 21, 2017," says MacRobert.  "So consider Sunday's event a warm-up."  But another solar spectacle is coming up much sooner.  Just 16 days later, on the afternoon of June 5th, it's the planet Venus's turn to cross the face of the Sun. The silhouette of Venus will be a small black dot with just 3% the diameter of the Sun, compared to the Moon's 94% on May 20th.   Read  much more at:  http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Solar_Eclipse_to_Sweep_North_America_on_Sunday_May_20th_999.html

Scott Pask, a Tony Award-winning scenic designer (for "The Pillowman," "The Coast of Utopia," "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" and "The Book of Mormon" ), was at the New York Botanical Garden's Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, where he was helping set the stage and the mood for the NYBG's new exhibition "Monet's Garden." (runs May 19-Oct. 21)  The task:  evoking Giverny, the Normandy estate that was manse and muse to one of Impressionism's founding fathers—the man who said "I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."   "Monet's Garden," which includes two rarely seen paintings by the artist, is a return engagement for Mr. Pask, who designed the set pieces for last year's NYBG exhibition "The Orchid Show: On Broadway."  His contributions included a proscenium arch, a chandelier and a balcony.  Joanne Kaufman  See much more plus pictures at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304371504577403981962193586.html

The Death Master File, a list compiled by the U.S. Social Security Administration contains birth dates and other sensitive information on more than 89 million deceased.  The government doesn’t put the file on the Internet itself.  It sells the records to local governments, hospitals, pension funds, and private companies.  Because the list is considered public information, it’s legal for any buyer to post it online.  That means criminals don’t have to look very hard for names and numbers to poach.  Thieves can file a fraudulent return either by claiming false income or false dependents, and request that a refund be deposited onto a prepaid debit card.  Nina Olson, the U.S. Taxpayer Advocate, has called it a “relatively new tactic” in the realm of tax-related identity theft, which the IRS says has ensnared more than 490,000 victims since 2008.  Once the IRS dispatches the money to a debit card, it’s hard to trace.  Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue has said it will take an act of Congress to restrict the death file’s release to companies that meet a set of qualifying standards—which a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would do.  http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/identity-theft-grave-robbing-for-a-tax-refund

Retired librarian Marlene Heard wanted to continue to share her passion for books, so she started her own little library. She can't live without books.  "I have to be with a library, I just have to be."  So when Marlene found out about the Little Free Library movement, by reading of course, she knew instantly she had to be a part of it.  "I called my son and said hey, you can cover a whole bunch of holidays; I want this.  So he got it and made it up right away," she explains.   Marlene's already noticed books flying off her shelf. "I just looked this morning and there are very few in there!" Heard exclaims.  But thanks to the painted "Take one, leave one?" instructions, books are not only returned, but the collection grows.  Marlene even had to add two extra book bins, "Just to see people take books, bring them back, bring back 3, 4 and they only took out one and they get them from neighbors, this is just... to me, I just love it, it's fun!"  The Little Free Library movement began in Hudson, Wisconsin and is spreading across the nation.  http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/150656865.html

Aristotle, one of the most important philosophers ever to write about justice lived in ancient Greece, some 2400 years ago.  He thought that justice means giving each person his due, or what he deserves.  But how do we know what people deserve?  What goods and opportunities should go to which persons?  Aristotle’s answer is that we have to consider the telos—the end or the purpose—of the good in question.  Find eight topics for discussion at: 

http://www.justiceharvard.org/resources/episode-10-discussion-guide-beginner/

Book I of Plato's The Republic appears to be a Socratic dialogue on the nature of justice.  The goal of the discussion is to discover the genuine nature of the subject at hand, but the process involves the proposal, criticism, and rejection of several inadequate attempts at defining what justice really is.  The elderly, wealthy Cephalus suggests that justice involves nothing more than telling the truth and repaying one's debts.  But Socrates points out that in certain (admittedly unusual) circumstances, following these simple rules without exception could produce disastrous results.  (Republic 331c)  Returning a borrowed weapon to an insane friend, for example, would be an instance of following the rule but would not seem to be an instance of just action.  The presentation of a counter-example of this sort tends to show that the proposed definition of justice is incorrect, since its application does not correspond with our ordinary notion of justice.  In an effort to avoid such difficulties, Polemarchus offers a refinement of the definition by proposing that justice means "giving to each what is owed."  The new definition codifies formally our deeply-entrenched practice of seeking always to help our friends and harm our enemies.  http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2g.htm

Getting what you deserve may also be phrased as getting your just deserts.

Quote  Justice was based on a word in Hebrew that meant giving people what they needed, not what they deserved.    Cage of Stars, a novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has found that the red wax seal on the Maker’s Mark bourbon whiskey is protected trade dress. The ruling gave Judge Boyce Martin Jr. an opportunity to talk at length about the history of bourbon — an opportunity he clearly relished.  Judge Martin’s opinion begins, Justice Hugo Black once wrote, “I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.”  While there may be some truth to Justice Black’s statement that paints Kentucky bourbon as such an economic force that its competitors need government protection or preference to compete with it, it does not mean a Kentucky bourbon distiller may not also avail itself of our laws to protect its assets.  This brings us to the question before us today: whether the bourbon producer Maker’s Mark Distillery, Inc.’s registered trademark consisting of its signature trade dress element—a red dripping wax seal—is due protection, in the form of an injunction, from a similar trade dress element on Casa Cuervo, S.A. de C.V.’s Reserva de la Familiatequila bottles.  We hold that it is.  The judgments of the district court in this trademark infringement case are AFFIRMED.  What makes bourbon bourbon?  Corn-based mash and aging in charred oak barrels.  The name itself can be traced to one of the original nine counties of Kentucky — Bourbon County – named in honor of the French royal family. 

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/09/sixth-circuit-wax-seal-on-makers-mark-bourbon-is-protected/

A comparative analysis of Wikipedia’s appearance on page one of the search results shows Google favors Wikipedia far more than Bing, appearing on page one 46 percent of the time for combined keywords (informational and transactional) compared to 31 percent for Bing. Comparison of instances Wikipedia did not appear in the search results at all shows it occurred 64 percent of the time for Bing compared to 29 percent of the time for Google.  http://www.conductor.com/blog/2012/05/googles-love-affair-with-wikipedia-far-more-serious-than-bings-study/

Two Toledo searchers ran "lunch hour" to test the theory above.  Searchers #1 and #2 each got 7,850,000 hits in Google with Wikipedia mentioned on page 1.   Searcher #1 got 2,630,000 hits in Bing with no mention of Wikipedia on page 1.  Searcher #2 got 1,250,000 hits in Bing with no mention of Wikipedia on page one.  Searcher #2 reports:  "I also ran the search in DuckDuckGo, a non-filtering search engine.  Wikipedia does not show up on the results listed below.  Between Google and Bing there appears to be a marked difference between results, but DuckDuckGo and Bing appear somewhat similar (though there are some unique results).  As DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing, this is not surprising." 

Some of the largest companies on the Web have attempted to compete with Google and failed. DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, is about as small as a company can be—it has one full-time employee—and has come up with one of the most appealing Google alternatives to date.  It doesn't involve e-mail, maps, real-time results or social networking.  It's just a simple, straightforward search engine that's reminiscent of early Google, with a no-nonsense privacy policy  (it will not store any information that could tie you to your searches).  Best of all, the results are dependably relevant and devoid of spam.  Link to The 50 Best Websites of 2011 at:  http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088176_2088178,00.html