Distill and simplify, or competitors like Twitter will

Evening Edition isn’t alone in trying to simplify and distill the oceans of information that flow past us every day.  That was also the point behind services like Summify and News.me — both of whom have said they found a surprisingly intense interest in their daily email newsletters with a selection of the day’s top stories.  Twitter bought Summify in January, and is now sending out similar weekly emails, as part of its growing attempts to filter and “curate” content for readers.   This need also explains much of the success of outlets like the Huffington Post, which routinely gets accused of “over-aggregation” for summarizing or excerpting news stories from mainstream outlets like the New York Times.  The painful reality many traditional media players don’t want to consider is that their readers don’t want all of their carefully researched and painstakingly edited stories — they may only want a brief summary or excerpt, which the Huffington Post and Google News and other aggregators are more than happy to provide. 

http://gigaom.com/2012/07/19/note-to-media-serve-your-users-not-your-platform/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29

Evening Edition is "the perfect commute-sized way to catch up on the day’s news after a long day at work."   The July 24 edition had 4 brief stories with links to 4 others.  http://evening-edition.com/

In comparison, Google News has 12 categories, each with about 20 stories.  Librarian's Muse is a news aggregation, concentrating on law, language, libraries, history and the arts.  A number of its stories come from Google News.  It comes out about 3 times weekly with 6-7 stories each time.

Quotes

. . . she doesn't think like anybody else - - - she thinks backward.

It's a sign of maturity to be able to change your mind when you realise that you're wrong.

Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them.  Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other--and land, of course.  

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, eighth in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith   

See Alexander McCall Smith's four series of novels at:  http://www.mccallsmith.com/novels.htm

First Book has distributed more than 90 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the United States and Canada.  First Book is transforming the lives of children in need and elevating the quality of education by making new, high-quality books available on an ongoing basis.  http://www.firstbook.org/first-book-story

 On July 19, Dolores Samson, who is affiliated with the Toledo Federation of Teachers, traveled with fellow teachers and students to a warehouse just outside Detroit to pick up more than 10,000 new books provided by a program called First Book.  "At first I was pretty much tongue-tied," Ms. Samson said.  "There were thousands and thousands of boxes of books.  We filled almost a whole U-Haul with books just for Toledo."  First Book, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1992, was created to provide new books to schools and programs that serve low-income families, said Brian Minter, the communications director for First Book.  Although the group is based in Washington, it works with 27,000 schools and programs across the country.  To qualify to receive books from First Book, those who register must be part of groups or schools in which 70 percent of the children come from low-income families. 

http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2012/07/23/Charity-benefits-Toledo-students.html

The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years.  The colloquial name is in honour of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields.  Fields was instrumental in establishing the award, designing the medal itself, and funding the monetary component.  The Fields Medal is often viewed as the greatest honour a mathematician can receive.  It comes with a monetary award, which since 2006 is C$15,000.  The medal was first awarded in 1936 to Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and American mathematician Jesse Douglas, and it has been awarded every four years since 1950.  Its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions.  See picture at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal   

Jonah Lehrer, 31, acknowledged in a statement from his book publisher that some quotes he used did "not exist", and others were misquoted.  The resignation came after the online magazine Tablet wrote an in-depth piece on the quotations used in Imagine: How Creativity Works.  Shipments of the book, which was published in March, have been halted.  The e-book version has been unlisted. Houghton Mifflin, the publisher, said Lehrer had committed a "serious misuse".  Lehrer was already out of favour at the New Yorker, which is known for its thorough fact checking, after he admitted last month having recycled passages for the magazine that he had written for previous publications.  His admission came after Michael Moynihan of the Tablet contacted him about the quotes.  "I told Mr Moynihan that [the quotes] were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan's representatives," he said.  "This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic.  "The lies are over now.  I understand the gravity of my position.  I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers."  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19056671

See also:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-rt-us-media-jonahlehrer-resignsbre86u01x-20120730,0,6807408.story 

The. Obama. Campaign. Slogan. Is. Causing. Grammarians. Whiplash.  In 1992, George H.W. Bush's line, "Who do you trust?" generated chatter about the use of "who" versus "whom."  Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 slogan "I like Ike" is clearly a sentence, but didn't include a period.  George W. Bush's "Yes, America Can" slogan included a comma; Mr. Obama's "Yes We Can" chant four years later did not.  Meanwhile, the title of the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, "Restore Our Future," seems to bend the rules of space and time, if not grammar.  Those who brandish red pens for a living are divided on whether Mr. Obama's campaign slogan passes muster.  On its page-one nameplate and elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal maintains its period, a holdover from the 1800s.  No one at the paper knows why the Journal kept it when other papers gradually dropped their traditional periods, a spokeswoman.  Mr. Romney has called the "Forward." slogan "absurd," and has seized on it to argue Mr. Obama's policies would take the country "forward over a cliff."  Mr. Romney's slogan, "Believe in America" (no period), has its share of critics as well.  "I think that's about as close to a standard slogan as you can possibly get," said Fred Davis, a Republican media consultant.  Carol E. Lee  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444840104577553020326811222.html 

South Korean netizens have expressed sympathy for Swiss footballer Michel Morganella, after he was sent home from the Olympics for racially abusing South Korea's players on Twitter. 
Morganella had directed an offensive jibe at the players after Switzerland's 2-1 defeat to the Asian side on Sunday.  "While the committee felt that Michel had been provoked on his Twitter account and that he has publicly apologised, the Swiss Olympic Committee and Swiss Football Association condemn Morganella's actions to the fullest."  In a post on Twitter that was later deleted, Morganella wrote:  "I am going to batter the Koreans, burn them all... bunch of 'trisos'." 
'Trisos' is a French slang word for people born with Down's Syndrome.  However, many South Korean Internet users said the player had been sorely provoked by Korean comments on social media.  South Korean fans had found Morganella's Facebook page and posted thousands of strong criticisms, both in English and Korean, about the way he played during Sunday's match.  The comments were later deleted.  Another user, Bae Sung-Hwan, said:  "We already won (the game) so we just had to ignore him.  But we just had to visit his Facebook page, talk about his parents.  Even I would be mad.  A user identified as Cho A-Ra said:  "We were rude to him on the Internet first and he reacted to it.  But saying that he is a racist, I think it's gone too far." 
However, others' comments respected the decision made by the Swiss committee and said Morganella deserved to be sent home.  http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_sports/view/1216847/1/.html

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Craig Nielsen  Subject:  Short Words

A confident person doesn't need big words ... "If it is to be, it is up to me."
From:  Creede Lambard  Subject:  Fey (and short words in general)
Where I used to work we would play a game called "One Pulse Words" where the goal of the game was to just use words with no more than one 'pulse' to them.  It would drive some of the folks we worked with nuts when we used these words of just one pulse, on and on and on.  Try it and see if you can send that clod in the next cube up the wall.
From:  Rhonda Hudson   Subject:  The power of word
Thanks for the words. I forward them to my 86-year-old father, a retired professor, and it has brought our relationship to a place it never has been in the past.  The power of words!
From:  Jim Ellis  Subject:  adverbs
Adverbs have a central place in the study of Criminal Law.  When enacting criminal statutes, legislatures must select which mental state the prosecution must prove in order to obtain a conviction.  The Model Penal Code establishes a taxonomy of adverbs for this task: "purposely", "knowingly", "recklessly", or "negligently".  (The higher in that list a particular law is, the heavier the burden that the prosecution must bear in individual cases.)  As a result, first year law students find, often to their surprise, that the selection and interpretation of adverbs are crucial topics in their studies.

Foundation and Earth is a Locus Award nominated science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, the fifth novel of the Foundation series and chronologically the last in the series.  It was published in 1986, four years after the first sequel to the Foundation trilogy, which is titled Foundation's Edge.  Foundation and Earth takes place only some 500 years into the 1,000-year Seldon Plan.  As detailed by his wife in It's Been a Good Life, Asimov intended to write a sequel, but his attempts were fruitless.  He did not know what to do next.  This is why he wrote the prequels (Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation) instead.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_and_Earth

Google and Boolean Logic

AND*
The and operator will reduce the volume of "hits" by requiring that more than one keyword is found in a record. 
OR
The or operator will increase the number of hits by requiring that one or both of the keywords is found in the record.  Google generates synonyms and applies “or” for every word automatically, but to control which synonyms are included use “OR” (in all caps).
NOT**
The not operator will decrease the number of "hits" by requiring that one and only one keyword is found in a record, and not returning those records that contain the second keyword.  Google automatically excludes most articles and common words. 
Other search tips and tricks for Google:
Phrase searching with quotation marks when small words are important.  Exact term searching with the plus sign when you don’t want Google to use synonyms.  Fill-in-the-blank searching using the asterisk.  http://learningcenter.berklee.edu/downloads/forums/2010_06_29-google_ninja_doc.pdf
*  Because AND is Google's default you don't need to use it at all.
** Instead of NOT, you may use a space followed by the minus sign.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America.  The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.  The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London.  "The Anacreontic Song" (or "To Anacreon in Heaven"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States.  "The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889, and by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner

Indiana  state senator Vaneta Becker has proposed a law punishing anybody who changes the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner.  She wants to impose a fine of $25 (£16) on singers who dare to improvise, extemporise or undermine the United States' national anthem.  Senator Becker, a Republican, is furious about parodies of The Star-Spangled Banner, including a "disrespectful" satirical version one of her constituents heard at a sporting event.  "I don't think the national anthem is something we ought to be joking around with," she said.  "Singing our national anthem is a sign of gratitude to those who have served our country."  Becker's national anthem bill would introduce "performance standards" at state-sponsored events, with singers signing a contract before they warble the tune.  Schools would also be forced to maintain audio recordings of every single performance of the anthem, in case anyone complained.  "I don't think it would be very difficult for schools," Becker said.  "You could record it on a cellphone."  For the tin-eared among us, Becker wants to be clear:  "It's not like we're going after anyone's ability to sing," she told the LA Times.  "We just want them to respect the words and the tune as it was originally intended and we normally sing it."  Though she would excuse some flats and sharps, Becker would crack down on performances such as Steven Tyler's in 2001, when he changed the line "home of the brave" to "home of the Indianapolis 500".  It's unclear how the senator would react to Jimi Hendrix's famous reinvention, or the version in Puccini's Madame Butterfly.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/05/us-national-anthem

Massachusetts has a decades-old law imposing a fine of up to $100 for playing or singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" "as dance music, as an exit march or as a part of a medley of any kind."  Michigan has a similar law, passed in 1931, prohibiting anyone from singing or playing the national anthem in any public place except in its entirety and "without embellishment.''  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/01/indiana-lawmaker-proposes-fine-for-butchering-the-national-anthem-.html 

15 Spectacular Libraries in Europe by Jill Harness   The libraries are ornate; an exception is the Delft University of Technology Library with a massive skylight in the ceiling that becomes a steel cone and an eco-friendly grass-covered roof.  See pictures at:  http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/124742 

The Olympic Hymn, officially known as the Olympic Anthem, is played when the Olympic Flag is raised.  It is a musical piece composed by Spyridon Samaras with words written from a poem of the Greek poet and writer Kostis Palamas.  Both the poet and the composer were the choice of Demetrius Vikelas, a Greek Pro-European and the first President of the IOC.  The anthem was performed for the first time for the ceremony of opening of the 1896 Athens Olympic Games but wasn't declared the official hymn by the IOC until 1957.  In the following years every hosting nation commissioned the composition of a specific Olympic hymn for their own edition of the Games.  This happened up until the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.  In the US, Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream" is often considered to be the "Olympic theme".  Written in 1958 for Arnaud's Charge Suite, it is this piece, more than any of the fanfares or Olympic themes, that Americans recognize as the Olympic theme, a connection which began when ABC television used it in broadcasts for the 1964 Olympics, and was continued in subsequent years by ABC and NBC.   For the Games of the XX Olympiad Munich 1972 the German composer and arranger Herbert Rehbein (15 April 1922 – 28 July 1979) created an Olympic Fanfare that was used as the TV signature tune of the German Olympic Centre (Deutsches Olympia-Zentrum, DOZ) as well as prelude to the medal ceremonies.  John Williams composed the "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" for the 1984 Olympic Games, which were held in Los Angeles.  In 1996, an alternate version of "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" was released on the album Summon the Heroes for the Atlanta Olympic Games.  In this arrangement, the first part of the piece was replaced with Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream."  "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" (not including the familiar part by Arnaud) was awarded a Grammy in 1985.  The Williams theme was used during the closing ceremony of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, as the nations' flagbearers entered BC Place Stadium surrounding the Olympic Flame.  Another piece by Williams, "The Olympic Spirit", was written for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and the corresponding NBC broadcast.  Williams also wrote the official theme of the 1996 Atlanta summer games, "Summon the Heroes", and the 2002 Salt Lake City winter games, "Call of the Champions  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_symbols

The nature fakers controversy was an early 20th-century American literary debate highlighting the conflict between science and sentiment in popular nature writing.  Following a period of growing interest in the natural world beginning in the late 19th century, a new literary movement, in which the natural world was depicted in a compassionate rather than realistic light, began to take shape.  Works such as Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) and William J. Long's School of the Woods (1902) popularized this new genre and emphasized sympathetic and individualistic animal characters.  In March 1903, naturalist and writer John Burroughs published an article entitled "Real and Sham Natural History" in the Atlantic Monthly.  Lambasting writers such as Seton, Long, and Charles G. D. Roberts for their seemingly fantastical representations of wildlife, he also denounced the booming genre of realistic animal fiction as "yellow journalism of the woods".  Burroughs' targets responded in defense of their work in various publications, as did their supporters, and the resulting controversy raged in the public press for nearly six years.  The debate involved important American literary, environmental and political figures of the day.  Dubbed the "War of the Naturalists" by The New York Times, it showcased seemingly irreconcilable contemporary views of the natural world; while some nature writers of the day argued as to the veracity of their examples of anthropomorphic wild animals, others questioned an animal's ability to adapt, learn, teach, and reason.  The constant publicity given to the debate contributed to a growing distrust of the truthfulness of popular nature writing of the day, and often pitted scientist against writer.  The controversy effectively ended when President Theodore Roosevelt publicly sided with Burroughs, publishing his article "Nature Fakers" in the September 1907 issue of Everybody's Magazine.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_fakers_controversy

Kurt Perschke is an artist who works in sculpture, video, collage and public space. His most acclaimed work, RedBall Project, is a traveling public art project that has taken place in Abu Dhabi, Taipei, Perth, England, Barcelona, St. Louis, Korea, Portland, Sydney, Arizona, Chicago and Toronto, and received a National Award from Americans for the Arts Public Art Network. http://redballproject.com/artist#   See images in the cities it has been displayed at:  http://redballproject.com/redball-cities

One of the nation's largest independent book stores, The Book Loft of German Village, is located at 631 South Third Street in Columbus, Ohio, just a few blocks south of the state capitol building. The pre-Civil War era buildings that once were general stores, a saloon and a nickelodeon cinema, now are home to 32 rooms of Bargain Books.  http://www.bookloft.com/

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and San Francisco International Airport both now offer free yoga rooms in terminals.  Several airports, including Indianapolis, Cleveland, St. Louis and DFW, have laid out half-mile walking paths through terminals in conjunction with the American Heart Association, hoping to turn "mall walkers" into "terminal walkers."  And many are pushing vendors to offer options that are lower in fat and calories—even writing healthy-food requirements into new leases.  San Francisco has a medical clinic for treating traveler and employee colds and offering vaccinations for overseas trips.  The clinic had 13,446 patient visits in the last fiscal year, up 11%.  About 20% of the patients were ill travelers, an airport spokesman said.  Dallas has been on a comfort kick after several episodes of customers being stranded in terminals for days by airline disruptions, from major storms to airline shutdowns.  After stocking up on cots and blankets, the airport looked at other changes to improve long visits. It installed leg rests on 2,000 seats.  The airport also created lounging areas with comfortable seating away from noisy gates.  It's planning to open sleep pods for short-term rentals by the end of the year.  Scott McCartney     http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303612804577530901183639984.html

Blobitecture

Lars Spuybroek is credited by many with bringing Blob Architecture to the notice of not only the world of architecture, but the world as a whole.  Spuybroek’s breakthrough design for his NOX architecture firm was the Water Pavilion, constructed in the mid-1990s for the Delta Expo on the Dutch island of Neeltje Jans.  Though often lumped in with other buildings of the Deconstructivist style, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain’s Basque Country straddles a number of architectural genres including Blobism.  Indeed, it’s difficult if not impossible to find a single straight line or flat plane of any size on the structure.  The bulk of the main building is sheathed in polished titanium panels meant to evoke the scales of a fish; fishing being the traditional occupation of generations of Bilbao’s natives.  See many pictures of blobby buildings including that of the Philology Library of the Freie Universität Berlin at:  http://weburbanist.com/2010/08/08/blobitecture-11-cool-ways-architecture-gets-a-round/

LANSING, Mich.—Just how big is 14-point type?  That's one of the hottest political disputes in Michigan as the state Supreme Court ponders whether a ballot question about fixing the state's troubled cities and schools should go before voters.  At issue is whether a summary of the question, used on a petition to gather signatures to get the question on the ballot, was written in a type size specified by state law:  14-point boldface.  The typeface used on the petition was 14-point Calibri produced by Microsoft Corp.'s Word software, but a dispute has arisen over whether the font renders the type at the full 14-point size.  At stake, depending on which side's lawyers were talking July 25 in Michigan Supreme Court, is either a narrow matter of whether statutes about ballot questions should be enforced as written, or a broader philosophical question of whether typographical quirks can be used to block citizens from deciding major issues at the polls.  For more than an hour, justices dug into the history of typography and the intricacies of type sizes.  While the arguments at times sounded like a typography seminar, the underlying dispute isn't academic.  It involves a power struggle between the Republican-dominated state government and business leaders on one side, and public-employee unions and city officials on the other.  The ballot question is a union-backed initiative seeking to repeal Michigan's Public Act 4, commonly known as the emergency-manager law.  The statute, passed in 2011 by a newly installed Republican-led legislature and signed by new GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, gives the governor the power to effectively take over the management of cities and school districts deemed to be on the edge of bankruptcy.  Lucas de Groot, a type designer in Berlin who created Calibri, said by email that "the typical height of capital letters is around 70% of the type size, so all typefaces are 'smaller' than 14 pt when set at 14 pt.  However, Calibri has a high readability per square inch compared to many other typefaces, and from a typographers point of view 14 point is huge for reading text.  It is big enough for people with bad vision or for elderly without reading glasses."  Joseph B. White    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444840104577549202116809114.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

According to Real Life Adventures July 27 comic strip, the three branches of government are elephants, donkeys and clowns.

National Public Radio, the University of New Orleans, and a group of business and community leaders will announce July 27 the creation of a nonprofit newsroom to compete against the city's for-profit newspaper, the Times-Picayune.  The planned operation, funded annually by $1 million to $2 million in memberships, donations and sponsorships, will have a staff of 10 to 20 producing news for the Web, mobile devices and radio.  The announcement comes two months after the Times-Picayune's owners, New York-based Advance Publications Inc., said it would cut staff and reduce print publication to three days a week this fall, making New Orleans the largest U.S. city without a daily print newspaper.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577551262563081728.html

For fans of the Berkshires, you may be interested in RI Recommends.  Subscribe to the newsletter at Rural Intelligence.com   Here's part of July 25 issue:

Great Barrington Through Aug. 13

Berkshire Fringe  This three-week festival of avant-garde theater welcomes two overseas troupes and, for the first time, presents a work by its own founders:  Dark:  An End of the World Play with Music and an Exercise Bike.  The festival includes open rehearsals, theater workshops for the public and free pre-show concerts. 

Hudson, Wednesdays through Aug. 15, 6 p.m.

Hudson Water Music  Treat the family to a free concert each Wednesday evening on the Henry Hudson Riverfront Park.  Tomorrow night’s lineup:  New Orleans’ The Wasted Lives and Pocatella. 
Hudson, Thursday, July 26
Eat for Books  It's better than a library bake sale.  Eat and drink in any participating restaurant in Hudson and a portion of what you spend there will be donated to the Hudson Area Library.  There’s a restaurant for every taste and time of day, say the organizers. 

On July 15, about a dozen people walked into a cozy San Francisco restaurant with a window sign reading “private event” to savor foie gras, California’s newest forbidden fruit.  They paid $100 apiece for “a 10-course tasting of quasi-legal goodness,” according to the online notice for the“Duckeasy” event.  Two weeks after California’s ban on selling and producing the fatty duck liver, chefs are hosting clandestine events, offering it as a free side dish or selling it to regulars without listing it on the menu.  The 2004 law that went into effect July 1 is backed by animal-rights activists who say force-feeding ducks and geese through a tube to produce a fat liver is cruel.  Violators are subject to a fine of as much as $1,000 per infraction, and as much as $1,000 for each day it continues.  Daniel Mallahan, 27, a San Francisco resident and one of the Duckeasy dinner’s chefs and organizers, said the event fell within the law.  “We’re not charging for foie at all,” Mallahan said. “We’re charging for tickets to an event.  None of the foie is actually from the state of California.  That’s not really an issue.”  On July 14, the Presidio Social Club, a San Francisco restaurant, drew a crowd to savor a $20 seared foie gras slider garnished with pineapple and a main dish of steak with an $18 foie gras side in honor of Bastille Day.  The restaurant, once a barracks in the Presidio of San Francisco, a former Army post near the Golden Gate Bridge that is now a national park, is on federal land and immune from the state law, owner Ray Tang, 44, said during the dinner.  Hot’s Kitchen, just steps from the Pacific Ocean in Hermosa Beach, lists “The Burger” with foie gras as a“complimentary” side.  The dish, topped with balsamic thyme onions and whole-grain mustard, costs $13, more than double the other burgers.  Opponents of the law say serving the liver free gets around the ban since the legislation prohibits only its sale.  Supporters say it violates the law because customers know they are paying to get foie gras.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/foie-gras-goes-underground-at-california-duckeasies-.html

In Manhattan's Midtown, Bryant Park offers not just cafe tables in the shade of its majestic London plane trees but master classes in fencing and "breakfast briefings" with local business executives . As if the throngs needed more than wild grasses and native plants to keep them coming, the High Line is negotiating to install the more visceral thrill of a 70-foot replica steam engine by artist Jeff Koons slung over a future section of the tracks.  Even the staid Metropolitan Museum of Art has joined in with increasingly interactive rooftop installations; this summer, Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno's Cloud City looks like a pile of cast-off helicopter windshields turned into an adult jungle gym.  The parks are city-owned and the Met is private, but they all belong to a city-wide trend of pumping up the volume at outdoor venues.  The Young Architects Program (YAP) organized by MoMA PS1 in Queens, now in its 13th year, offers young architects a chance to unleash their imaginations in a competition to come up with temporary designs.  This summer, the six-year-old New York architecture firm HWKN won the YAP competition with "Wendy," a 46-foot-tall, many-pointed blue star caged in heavy scaffolding.  Shade is provided inside the star on platforms accessible via steep stairs—stairs that after opening night were deemed too unsafe for use because the industrial fans suspended inside and rigged with misters make the interiors not only loud and wet but also slippery.  Seating of a sort is fashioned from swim-noodle foam wrapped around the lower scaffold pipes.  The architects worked with Pureti, a green-tech manufacturer (and winner of a 2011 "What's New" award from Popular Science), to develop a spray version of a titanium nano particle that, when activated by sunlight, oxidizes airborne particulates and converts them into water vapor and trace amounts of carbon dioxide.  A powder form for concrete is already in use at self-cleaning sidewalks in Malmo, Sweden, and the Jubilee Church in Rome.  YAP has turned out to be hugely popular for MoMA PS1; so successful, it has spawned YAPs in Rome and in Santiago, Chile.  There is some good news for everyday New Yorkers looking for outdoor activities that are a little less hip and hyper.  Now under construction, the landscape overhaul of Governors Island will include a Hammock Grove with 50 hammocks for swinging of a gentler kind.  Julie V. Iovine   See picture of Wendy at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373804577521204259129634.html

 Tile Club of Toledo

Since 1895, no more than 20 men have belonged to this club at any one time.  Membership is selective but not arrogant; a big commitment but inexpensive.  Guided by ritual, Tile Club meetings are much as they've been for thousands of previous Tuesday evenings: thick steaks are likely to be grilled in the fireplace, portraits will be sketched, songs sung, jokes told, backs slapped, and cards dealt.  After dinner, attendees' names will be recorded in the huge ledger, circa 1901.  “Many of the Tuesday-night discussions centered around the possibility of a museum, and the museum itself, when it finally took shape, became one of the club's primary interests,” notes a 1945 history of the Tilers' first 50 years.  Indeed, they raised a substantial portion of the funds used to establish the Toledo Museum of Art, of which George Stevens, a Tiler, became the director.  They begin strolling in after 5 p.m., most in suits and ties, and quickly dive into drinks, snacks, and conversation.  By 6, artists drift upstairs to the studio where they'll draw, perhaps a guest.  Downstairs, musicians led by pianist Jack Straub, an attorney, play and sing.  In the dining room by 7, they've clambered over wide wooden benches around the huge oak table designed by David Stine (charter member and the architect who gave us the Lucas County Courthouse, Scott and Waite high schools, and beautiful Old West End homes).  Wine and candles.  Someone circles the table, pouring cowboy coffee from a huge white enamel pot.  These walls are paneled with wooden grain chutes salvaged long ago from a grain-elevator fire and pried off the walls of the club's previous meeting place when they had to vacate it in 1955.  At feast's end, guests speak about themselves and are encouraged to tell funny stories.  After cleanup and farewells, a game of rummy begins and the diehards may continue until 9:30.  The idea for the club originated with the Tile Club in New York City, a group of 31 male painters, sculptors, illustrators, and architects, including Winslow Homer and William Merritt Chase.  Between 1877 and 1887, they met for fun and art, painting on ceramic tiles and taking excursions to draw.  Along the way, they popularized European trends such as plein air painting and Impressionism.  Tahree Lane  http://www.toledoblade.com/Culture/2010/04/18/The-art-of-friendship-Camaraderie-and-history-come-together-in-Tile-Club.html

You will find pictures relating to the Tile Club of Toledo on pages 10-12 of club member Jim Brower's book Mood & Mode, a Selection of Transparent Watercolor Paintings.  Jim also belongs to the Monday Morning Painters, and his pictures relating to that group are on pages 14-19 of Mood & Mode.   

Q.  What Ohioan served as a legal reporter, assistant prosecutor, law professor, Collector of Internal Revenue, Judge, U.S. Solicitor General, first Civil Governor of the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of War, Provisional Governor of Cuba, President of the U.S., and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court?

A.  William Howard Taft  (1857-1930)

During the Taft presidency, 1909-1913

·         He established a parcel post service that helped stimulate nationwide commerce and trade.
·         The sixteenth amendment creating a federal income tax was passed.
·         The Department of Labor was created to help the average worker by insuring things like workplace safety, wage standards, work hours, and unemployment insurance.
·         The 17th amendment was passed stating that U.S. Senators were to be elected by the people rather than by the state legislatures.
·         The states New Mexico and Arizona were added to the country making Taft the first president over the 48 contiguous states.
·         His wife, Helen Taft helped to coordinate the planting of 3,000 Japanese cherry trees around the Tidal Basin on the Washington D.C. National Mall.
·         He started the tradition of throwing out the first ball of the MLB baseball season.
http://www.ducksters.com/biography/uspresidents/williamtaft.php

After 40 years of award-winning service to the guests, students, staff, faculty, and alumni of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, NY, the college’s Escoffier Restaurant closed permanently on Thursday, July 5, 2012.  The restaurant first opened in 1973, and it became known as The Escoffier Room in 1974.  The space occupied by the Escoffier Restaurant will undergo a dramatic renovation, led by the CIA’s Creative Director—Adam Tihany—and will reopen in the winter of 2013 as The Bocuse Restaurant.  At its annual 2011 Leadership Awards event, the CIA recognized Chef Paul Bocuse, now 86, as the college’s Chef of the Century.  It was this recognition that prompted the change in the college’s flagship restaurant.  According to Dr. Tim Ryan, President of The Culinary Institute of America, Chef Paul Bocuse is simply more relevant to both today’s CIA students and its guests who frequent the college’s restaurant.  http://www.ciarestaurants.com/diningatthecia/escoffier-restaurant/

Leahy-Smith America Invents Act Implementation 

MESSAGE FROM DIRECTOR DAVID KAPPOS: USPTO Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee on AIA Implementation

On Wednesday, June 20, 2012, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the agency's implementation of the AIA.  This was the second Congressional oversight hearing directed to AIA implementation since the new legislation was signed into law.  Previously, on May 16, 2012, I testified before the House Judiciary Committee about our AIA implementation activities.  In brief, I informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that the agency remains on track to issue final rules for various new provisions that go into effect on September 16, 2012, and is actively preparing proposed fees rule following two fee setting hearings held in February 2012.  I also informed the Committee that the agency has successfully implemented other provisions including (i) prioritized examination for which over 4000 applications have been received, over 2300 first Office actions have been issued, and 200 patents have granted; (ii) the pro bono program, which started in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is now operational in Denver with plans to expand to 4 additional areas by the end of the calendar year; and (iii) the satellite office program with the first office opening in Detroit in July and additional office locations to be announced later this summer.

MESSAGE FROM JANET GONGOLA, PATENT REFORM COORDINATOR: Rules Delivered to OMB for Interagency Clearance

The USPTO is progressing well in its preparation and clearance of various final rules for provisions that become effective on September 16, 2012.  These provisions include inventor's oath/declaration, preissuance submissions, citation of patent owner statements, supplemental examination, inter partes review, post grant review, and covered business method review.  Specifically, as of mid-June 2012, the USPTO submitted all of these final rules to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for interagency clearance.  As soon as this process concludes, the agency will publish the final rules in the Federal Register, which will occur no later than August 16, 2012--one month before the provisions are effective.  Search AIA text and see map of "2012 Fall Roadshow" at:  http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementation/index.jsp

Well before president Obama signed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) into law last September, the bill was already being hailed as the biggest overhaul to U.S. patent law since 1952.  Promising to spur innovation, shorten application backlogs, and curtail legal costs, the bipartisan bill easily passed both houses of Congress.  But despite grand aims, lawmakers did not rebuild the patent law from the ground up.  Instead, they assembled a hodgepodge of compromises, particularly between the interests of large software companies, for whom patents have largely been a net drain, and those of biotechnology firms, which favored strong patent protection.  To the bill's mildest critics, AIA did not go far enough in meeting the needs of the software industry.  To bigger detractors, the new law is even worse than the old system—it is the legislative equivalent of spaghetti code, a jumble of rules whose meaning and implications will take judges and intellectual property (IP) lawyers years to untangle.  "This law is what the British call a 'dog's breakfast'—a little bit of everything," says University of California–Irvine law professor Dan Burk, who testified during Congressional deliberations last March.  Although the full implications are not known, most experts agree on which handful of changes will have the greatest impact on the software industry, for which the threat of patent-infringement claims has long been a thorn in its side.  Consider, for example, the Texas case earlier this year in which World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee testified for the defense against a group of plaintiffs who claimed that anyone using interactive Web features was trampling on their intellectual property.  "There are thousands and thousands of examples of software used by companies for making things," explains law professor John Allison of the University of Texas–Austin.  In many other countries, patent laws enable companies to keep such internally used techniques a trade secret without worrying that they would be on the hook for patent infringement if someone else decided to patent the same technique.  In the U.S., on the other hand, "under the old law you could lose your ability to use technology that you invented," says John Duffy, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.  The AIA's introduction of the prior-user defense changes all of that.  Especially given the costs of patenting, firms will likely have less incentive to disclose their inventions under this new provision, so the upshot could well be fewer patent filings and more trade secrecy.  Even so, only time will tell whether companies will increase investment in technologies that they will not be patenting, says Allison, an empirical legal scholar.  One of the biggest and most positive changes with the America Invents Act is the establishment of prior-user rights as a defense against patent infringement suits.  The America Invents Act's expansion of what counts as "prior art" that can be used to invalidate a patent will create new incentives to file early and often.  Read more and see suggestions for further reading at:  http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/7/151237-patently-inadequate/fulltext

Bookyard is a project where Massimo Bartolini bring the public library to the great outdoors.

In Ghent, Belgium, St. Peter’s Abbey Vineyard has been a part of the town landscape since the Middle Ages.  Now this historic vineyard has gotten a beautiful new addition, dubbed Bookyard, which was recently installed by the Italian artist Massimo Bartolini.  Designed as part of the art festival Track: A Contemporary City Conversation, 12 sweeping bookcases align with the Abbey’s grapevines and harken back to an old world Europe that was once filled with bounded print, and free from digital forms.  See pictures at:  http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/bookyard

Every horse in the 2012 Kentucky Derby is a cousin of one sort or another to every other horse.  In fact, each horse racing is a descendant of an English-born stallion named “Bonnie Scotland.”  In 1872, William Giles Harding bought a stallion for stud that had been raced in England a few years earlier.  The stallion’s English racing career wasn’t particularly distinguished, but he had an impeccable bloodline.  That horse was named Bonnie Scotland. While at Belle Meade Plantation near Nashville, Bonnie Scotland’s performance at stud far surpassed his performance on the race course.  Bonnie Scotland appears in the genealogical charts of many of American racing’s greatest horses:  Secretariat. Northern Dancer. Seattle Slew. A.P. Indy.  Bonnie Scotland died in 1880 in Davidson County, Tennessee, after serving eight highly successful years at stud, siring the ancestors of all of the 2012 Derby contenders, and thousands of other thoroughbreds.  http://mnemosynesmagicmirror.blogspot.com/2012/05/kentucky-derby-2012-from-pedigree.html

 

We have all heard about the wonders of frictionless sharing, whereby social networks automatically let our friends know what we are reading or listening to, but what we hear less about is frictionless surveillance.  Though we invite some tracking — think of our mapping requests as we try to find a restaurant in a strange part of town — much of it is done without our awareness.  “Every year, private companies spend millions of dollars developing new services that track, store and share the words, movements and even the thoughts of their customers,” writes Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado.  “These invasive services have proved irresistible to consumers, and millions now own sophisticated tracking devices (smartphones) studded with sensors and always connected to the Internet.”  Mr. Ohm labels them tracking devices.  So does Jacob Appelbaum, a developer and spokesman for the Tor project, which allows users to browse the Web anonymously.  Scholars have called them minicomputers and robots.  Everyone is struggling to find the right tag, because “cellphone” and “smartphone” are inadequate.  This is not a semantic game.  Names matter, quite a bit.  In politics and advertising, framing is regarded as essential because what you call something influences what you think about it.  That’s why there are battles over the tags “Obamacare” and “death panels.”  In just the past few years, cellphone companies have honed their geographic technology, which has become almost pinpoint.  The surveillance and privacy implications are quite simple.  If someone knows exactly where you are, they probably know what you are doing.  Cellular systems constantly check and record the location of all phones on their networks — and this data is particularly treasured by police departments and online advertisers.  Cell companies typically retain your geographic information for a year or longer, according to data gathered by the Justice Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/thats-not-my-phone-its-my-tracker.html

The annual July event is called Ragbrai, the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, draws about 25,000 cyclists each year.  And there's a reason it's called a ride not a race.  Every 10 miles or so, cyclists pass through a small Iowa town, where churches, restaurants and ad hoc vendors line the streets to tempt bikers with homemade pie, buttered corn on the cob and pork chops. Those three delicacies comprise the "Holy Grail of Ragbrai," says T.J. Juskiewicz, the event's director.  Many cyclists have trained for months to be able to bike about 70 miles a day past rolling fields of tasseled corn and sturdy soybeans under the blistering heat of a Midwestern summer sun, and, this year in a terrible drought.  The ride isn't just for amateurs: Lance Armstrong has made four appearances on Ragbrai, most recently last year.  While Mr. Armstrong isn't planning to be there for this year's trek, 65 cyclists raising money for his foundation, known as Livestrong, do plan to ride.  Cyclists start the ride on the banks of the Missouri River and end when they dip their wheels into the waters of the Mississippi.  This is Ragbrai's 40th anniversary, and cyclists will cover 471.1 miles from July 22 to 28.  Organizers plug the ride as the "oldest, largest and longest bicycle touring event in the world."  Ovens are ablaze in Zearing. Bev Chance and 10 other church women are preparing to bake 50 to 60 pies for visitors cycling through the town, which has a population of 550.  "We've got banana cream, raisin cream, pumpkin, mincemeat and pecan," says the 69-year-old retired nurse. "Cherry, apple, blueberry, blackberry, oh, and raspberry."  Mr. Pork Chop Jr., as Matt Bernhard calls himself, says sometimes the heat and hassle of preparing for the ride—setting up two giant grills and cooking for hours in 90-degree-plus heat—is a drag.   "I would probably quit if it wasn't for Ragbrai itself," Mr. Bernhard says.  "But Dad's been on it for 30 years.  It gets in your blood."  The cyclists, he says, "expect that they'll come over the hill and they'll see those pork chops."  It's that camaraderie that keeps cyclists coming back for more Ragbrai.  And more food.  Jeannette Neumann 

Read more at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444330904577535281743599436.html?mod=googlenews_wsj