When Julie Zerbo heard from two readers of her eight-month-old blog, the Fashion Law, last month saying a bracelet featured prominently in Chanel's recent Fall 2012 runway show seemed familiar, her antennae went up.  She looked at the show images online.  "That's when it clicked to me 'oh my God, that's a Chanel bracelet, that's not a Pamela Love bracelet'," she says, referring to the small New York-based jewelry designer.  Ms. Zerbo then banged out the blog item "Chanel's Crystal Bangles Look FAMILIAR!" about how the Chanel bangles bore a "striking resemblance" to cuffs in Ms. Love's Fall 2011 collection.  She posted the item with side-by-side pictures.  Since the Fashion Law's following is small, Ms. Zerbo alerted the much-larger Fashionista blog, which linked to her post on a Monday.  By Tuesday, Chanel issued a statement to Fashionista saying it decided not to offer the bracelets in question for sale "out of respect for the concerns raised."  It was a coup for Ms. Zerbo, a second-year law student at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.  Copyright is a contentious area in fashion.  While trademarks such as Tiffany's signature blue box are protected by copyright, fashion designs in the U.S. aren't.  Christian Louboutin and Yves Saint Laurent are embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the shoe brand over YSL's use of red soles in shoes in its resort 2011 collection.  Christian Louboutin's red sole is trademarked.  YSL has said a designer should not be allowed to "monopolize a color."  The case is currently in an appeals court.  The Council of Fashion Designers of America has been pushing for the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that offers copyright protection for designs.  Ray A. Smith  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303592404577364333707766366.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Black Rice takes a bit longer time to cook comparing to traditional rice.  Soaking and rinsing the rice before cooking will help to save some cooking time.  Black Rice should be cooked with two cups of water to every one cup of rice.  As a general rule it will need to cook for half an hour (25-30 min) after soaking or around one hour (60-70 min) if you cook unsoaked rice.  Link to recipes at:  http://www.blackrice.com/q/2/

Black Rice is also known as “forbidden rice”.  In ancient China Black Rice was set aside specifically for the Emperor and / or the royal family, regular people weren’t allowed anywhere near the stuff.  Black Rice contains even more antioxidants (per serving) than blueberries.  http://www.blackrice.com/history/

There's a great history of temporary architecture, the showcases for which have often been world's fairs, where grand pavilions are built to convey the passions and fashions of the moment.  The "White City" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago allowed American architects to present their vision for ideal public spaces.  Not that everyone was happy with the experiment:  Chicago architect Louis Sullivan rejected the Neoclassicism that dominated, and contributed a building rich with color and ornamentation.  He is said to have griped that the rest of the White City se t back American architecture by decades.  Forty years later architects were at it again in Chicago. This time, at 1933's Century of Progress International Exposition, the buildings were a futuristic fantasy of the modern and moderne, with the prefab disposability of the buildings part of the architectural statement.  They would be as influential, in their way, as the White City had been a generation before.  If Gustave Eiffel's iron tower had been proposed as a permanent structure, it probably would never have been built.  But as a temporary novelty for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, why not?  When it came time to take it down, Paris officials somewhat grudgingly allowed that it had become a part of the city.  Eric Felten  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303425504577353790993830980.html?mod=rss_keyword_free_articles

The World's Columbian Exposition (the official shortened name for the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as The Chicago World's Fair) was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.  The fair was planned in the early 1890s, the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth, immigration, and class violence.  World's fairs, such as London's 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, had been successful in Europe as a way to bring together societies fragmented along class lines.  The exposition was located in Jackson Park and on the Midway Plaisance on 630 acres (2.5 km²) in the neighborhoods of South Shore, Jackson Park Highlands, Hyde Park and Woodlawn.   Charles H. Wacker was the Director of the Fair. The layout of the fairgrounds was created by Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Beaux-Arts architecture of the buildings was under the direction of Daniel Burnham, Director of Works for the fair.  As detailed in Erik Larson's popular history The Devil in the White City, extraordinary effort was required to accomplish the exposition, and much of it was unfinished on opening day.  The famous Ferris Wheel, which proved to be a major attendance draw and helped save the fair from bankruptcy, was not finished until June, because of waffling by the board of directors the previous year on whether to build it.

Early in July, a Wellesley College English teacher named Katharine Lee Bates visited the fair.  The White City later inspired the reference to "alabaster cities" in her poem "America the Beautiful".   See a list of books plus one film featuring the fair at:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition

By Diana Marcum, Los Angeles Times  April 30, 2012, 1:29 a.m.

COLOMA-LOTUS VALLEY, Calif — In the week since a fireball shot across the sky and exploded, scattering a rare type of meteorite over California's Gold Country, these hills have drawn a new rush of treasure seekers.  Once again there are lively saloons, fortune hunters jockeying for prime spots and astounding tales of luck — including that of Brenda Salveson, a local who found a valuable space rock while walking her dog Sheldon, named after the theoretical physicist on the TV show "The Big Bang Theory."  In the Gold Rush town of Rescue (elevation and population both 1,400), Salveson, a wife and mother of two, read a local news article about the meteorites.  The area scattered with them, about three miles wide and 10 miles long, included Henningsen Lotus Park, where she walks her dog every morning.  She noted what to look for: a rock that seemed out of place — different from anything around it.  It would be dark and delicate.  On April 25, near the end of her stroll with Sheldon, Salveson picked up a rock the size of a spool of thread that seemed to match the description.  She walked over to a group with metal detectors.  "I opened my hand and they all let out a collective gasp," she said. 
The geologists, as they turned out to be, wrapped the 17-gram stone in foil and told Salveson to get it into a bank vault.  A few minutes before, a firefighter had stopped to search at the park on his way to work and found a 2-gram meteorite in less than 20 minutes.  A dealer paid him $2,000 on the spot.  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-meteorite-search-20120501,0,5730445.story?track=icymi

Brown University agreed May 1 to voluntary payments of $31.5 million to Providence over 11 years, on top of what the school already pays in voluntary remittances and taxes on some of its properties.  Brown, the Rhode Island capital's largest landowner, currently writes checks to Providence for about $4 million a year:  $2.5 million in voluntary payments and $1.6 million in taxes on certain commercial and leased property.  A "significant minority" of colleges and universities nationwide already make voluntary payments in lieu of taxes, but more are being pressured to do so as local governments struggle, particularly in the college-studded Northeast, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass.  Johnson & Wales University said in February it would more than triple its annual voluntary payments in lieu of taxes to $958,000 a year.  Lifespan, the Providence hospital group that runs Rhode Island and Miriam hospitals, said April 30 it will give $800,000 this fiscal year and more going forward.  Jennifer Levitz   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304050304577377882290627666.html?mod=googlenews_wsj