Wednesday, October 31, 2012


When you buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, you expect it to be bottled at a Coca-Cola distributor and not a rinsed-out “genuine Coca-Cola bottle” filled with a “cola-like carbonated beverage” (United States v. Petrosian).  The International Trademark Association’s 2004 report on counterfeiting detailed at least 10 food and beverage counterfeiting operations across 8 states, including the 45,000 pounds of counterfeit baby formula in California that the FDA uncovered in 1995.  An estimated $18 million in “counterfeit wine” was sold around the world annually in 2004.  No wonder scientists from the University of Seville in Spain developed a process for “fingerprinting” champagne and other wines, which when run against a sample of 35 sparkling wines was 100 percent accurate in distinguishing champagne from cava.  At the benign end of the spectrum is a phenomenon one might call associative packaging—the way a book publisher will mimic a best-seller’s jacket design to suggest a new book has similar appeal.  If a product is popular but there’s not enough of it, some retailers may try to create a substitute. For instance, a high-end national gourmet shop might pick up an item like Alziari olive oil, produced in Nice, France.  But Alziari is a small operation.  “So that national shop will outsource it and try to come up with something comparable in taste and packaging,” with oils from various nearby regions, says Joe Macaluso of Chefs Warehouse.  It’s not exactly mislabeled, as it doesn’t claim to be Alziari.  But the label is reminiscent enough of the Alziari label for a consumer to make the association.  Sly substitution is another variation.  Most grocery store “saffron,” for example, is actually safflower—similar in color, sort of similar in taste.  Then there’s the “Rolflex” phenomenon:  the fake item with the slightly different name.  Kraft makes a product called parmesan cheese that’s definitively not parmigiano-reggiano.  Primo taglio turns out prosciutto that was never air dried by Apennine breezes.  But to any sophisticated consumer, this is not deception but choice:  Do you need to drop $25 per pound for prosciutto di Parma, or will the primo taglio suffice at half that price?  Moving up the deceit scale, some products are altered to be perceived as more valuable. Porcini mushrooms are a wonderful delicacy, provided they haven’t been soaked in water to add to their weight (and thus their cost).  They should also be small, and when you slice into them, their meat should be white and dry.  The big ones are past their flavor, says Mario Ascione, executive chef and owner of San Francisco’s Caffè Macaroni.  When prices get higher, though, it becomes outright fraud. When you pay $50 an ounce for a truffle, you expect to be buying a black Périgord truffle (Tuber melanosporum) or a white truffle from Alba. But the heat wave of 2004 cut Périgord’s harvest down from 50 tons to 9 tons, and as the dollar stays weak against the euro, some restaurants and gourmet shops are passing off Chinese truffles (Tuber indicum) as French.  But while the Chinese black truffle looks just like its French cousin, it tastes nothing like it. France is conducting random DNA testing on truffles, with a $1,300 fine for anyone caught trying to deceive consumers with Chinese truffles.  Italy’s Consorzio, a government group that regulates the quality of agricultural products, has agents who travel to importers to ensure that truffles from Italy are actually what’s being sold (and assess fines if they’re not).   Coldiretti, the Italian farmers’ association, claims that 7 out of 10 Italian products in the United States are not the real deal—translating to $1.4 billion in true Italian exports and $3.5 billion for the fakes, including wine, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, cheese, tomato sauce, and ham.  “A lot of olive oil, especially extra virgin, is expensive to sell in the U.S. and worldwide market.  So a company will bring in oil from different parts of Europe, package it in Italy, and ship it to those markets where customers are looking for Italian olive oil,” says Ascione.  “But bottled or packaged in Italy doesn’t mean that it’s from there.  If you don’t see the DOC or DOCG labeling, it’s not going to be what you think you’re getting.  Look at its origin, not where it’s bottled.”  http://www.chow.com/food-news/53481/which-one-of-these-is-fake/

The adjective regretful refers to people and means full of regret.  Regrettable applies to incidents or situations and means causing or deserving regret.  http://grammar.about.com/od/alightersideofwriting/a/regretgloss.htm

Rayon was the first manufactured fiber developed, it was made from wood or cotton pulp and  first known as artificial silk. The Swiss chemist, Georges Audemars invented the first crude artificial silk around 1855, by dipping a needle into liquid mulberry bark pulp and gummy rubber to make threads. The method was too slow to be practical.  In 1884, a French chemist, Hilaire de Charbonnet, Comte de Chardonnay, patented an artificial silk that was a cellulose-based fabric known as Chardonnay silk."  Pretty but very flammable, it was removed from the market.  In 1894, British inventors, Charles Cross, Edward Bevan, and Clayton Beadle, patented a safe a practical method of making artificial silk that came to be known as viscose rayon.  Avtex Fibers Incorporated first commercially produced artificial silk or rayon in 1910 in the United States.  The term "rayon" was first used in 1924.  Find more information on manufactured fabrics, including kevlar, ultrasuede and polyester at:  http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfabric.htm

B2B usually means business to business, exchange of products, services, or information between businesses.  Find many other definitions at:  http://www.acronymfinder.com/B2B.html

The Grass Crown or Blockade Crown (Latin: corona graminea or corona obsidionalis) was the highest and rarest of all military decorations in the Roman Republic and early Roman empire.  It was presented only to a general, commander, or officer whose actions saved the legion or the entire army.  One example of actions leading to awarding of a grass crown would be a general who broke the blockade around a beleaguered Roman army.  The crown was made from plant materials taken from the battlefield, including grasses, flowers, and various cereals such as wheat; it was presented to the general by the army he had saved.   Pliny wrote about the grass crown at some length in his Natural History.   The crown of grass was never conferred except at a crisis of extreme desperation, never voted except by the acclamation of the whole army, and never to any one but to him who had been its preserver.  Other crowns were awarded by the generals to the soldiers, this alone by the soldiers, and to the general. This crown is known also as the "obsidional" crown, from the circumstance of a beleaguered army being delivered, and so preserved from fearful disaster.  If we are to regard as a glorious and a hallowed reward the civic crown, presented for preserving the life of a single citizen, and him, perhaps, of the very humblest rank, what, pray, ought to be thought of a whole army being saved, and indebted for its preservation to the valour of a single individual?   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Crown

For The Grass Crown, second historical novel in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series, see:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grass_Crown_(novel)

Keret House is a structure and art installation in Warsaw, Poland.  It was designed by the architect Jakub Szczęsny through the architecture firm Centrala.  The two story art installation was named after Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret, who was the building's first tenant.   Keret plans to give the house to a colleague after he moves out.  The building measures 92 centimetres (3.02 ft) at its narrowest point and 152 centimetres (4.99 ft) at its widest point.   

 New York's Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the state should consider a levee system or storm surge barriers and face up to the inadequacy of the existing protections.  “The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations.  We are only a few feet above sea level,” Mr. Cuomo said during a radio interview.  “As soon as you breach the sides of Manhattan, you now have a whole infrastructure under the city that fills — the subway system, the foundations for buildings,” and the World Trade Center site.  The Cuomo administration plans talks with city and federal officials about how to proceed.  The task could be daunting, given fiscal realities:  storm surge barriers, the huge sea gates that some scientists say would be the best protection against floods, could cost as much as $10 billion.  But many experts say, given what happened with the latest storm, that inertia could be more expensive.  After rising roughly an inch per decade in the last century, coastal waters in New York are expected to climb as fast as six inches per decade, or two feet by midcentury, according to a city-appointed scientific panel.  That much more water means the city’s flood risk zones could expand in size.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/nyregion/for-years-warnings-that-storm-damage-could-ravage-new-york.html?ref=todayspaper 

Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th President of the United States in the coming Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln,” is donating the papers of his parents to the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University.  Mr. Day-Lewis, a two-time Academy Award-winner (for “My Left Foot” and “There Will Be Blood”), comes from estimable stock:  his father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, was an Oxford University alumnus who was elected its professor of poetry in 1951 and named the poet laureate of the United Kingdom in 1968; his mother, the actress Jill Balcon, was a star of film, television, radio and theater.  Among the papers that Mr. Day-Lewis and his sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, are donating to Oxford include correspondence between their parents and notable figures like W. H. Auden, Kingsley Amis, Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Robert Graves, Alec Guinness and Christopher Isherwood.  The Bodleian Libraries said it will host a special one-day event on Tuesday to celebrate the gift of the papers, at which Tamasin Day-Lewis will discuss her father’s work and recordings of Jill Balcon’s readings of Cecil Day-Lewis’s poetry will be played.  The documents that will be displayed during the event include a portion of “The Newborn,” a poem written by Cecil Day-Lewis to honor his son’s birth.  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/day-lewis-gives-parents-papers-to-oxford/?ref=todayspaper

Monday, October 29, 2012


Wine Library
•A special service and collection of the Sonoma County Library, the collection comprising 5,000 books on wine and related subjects, subscriptions and backfiles to over 80 wine-related periodicals.
•Located in the Healdsburg Regional Library, 139 Piper St. (corner of Piper and Center), Healdsburg, CA  Telephone 707-433-3772; Fax 707-433-7946.
•Wine Librarian Jon Haupt and the other professionals at the Healdsburg Library will be happy to get you the right article, bibliographic reference, photograph or piece of wine information.  Contact them at the above numbers or send e-mail to:
winelibrary@sonoma.lib.ca.us

The peanut butter and pickle sandwich is one of those unlikely pairings that shouldn’t work, but does  by Dwight Garner  I’ve been happily eating these distinctive little sandwiches for years.  The vinegary snap of chilled pickle cuts, like a dash of irony, against the stoic unctuousness of peanut butter.  My father passed them down to me.  Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches got him through law school at West Virginia University.  I’ve come to consider them the work-at-home writer’s friend.  The PB&P has been a minority enthusiasm in America for generations, lingering just under the radar.  The sandwiches appeared on lunch-counter menus during the Great Depression and in extension-service cookbooks in the 1930s and ’40s in recipes that generally called for a few spoonfuls of pickle relish.  A lot of people’s grandmothers used to eat them.  These days, they’re a cult item.  Kinsey Millhone, the fictional private investigator in Sue Grafton’s alphabet series of mysteries, is probably America’s best-known devotee.   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/dining/making-a-meal-out-of-peanut-butter-and-pickles.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Brownstone is a reddish-brown sandstone used extensively as a building stone in eastern United States during the nineteenth century.  Its place in geologic history, however, dates back to late Triassic and Early Jurassic times, about two hundred million years ago when the dinosaurs were establishing their domination over the lands.  http://www.state.nj.us/dep/seeds/staterock.htm
See also The Brownstone Guide, Maintenance & Repair Facts for Historic Property Owners (12 pages) from New York Landmarks Conservancy Technical Services Center
http://www.mzarchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BrownstoneGuide.pdf

Greystones are a unique form of residential building that defines the character of many of Chicago’s historic neighborhoods – the same way that “Brownstones” define neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY. “Greystone” refers to a style of construction – a masonry building with a front facade constructed of Bedford limetone quarried from southcentral Indiana – rather than a singular architectural style.  Popular between 1890 and 1930, Greystones were built in a wide range of sizes.  There are an estimated 30,000 Greystones remaining in the City of Chicago.  Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative® (12 pages)   http://www.nhschicago.org/images/uploads/pages/Greystone%20Booklet,%20FINAL%20DRAFT,%20062509.pdf

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.  Simone Weil
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/topics/attention/

Swabia (sometimes Suabia or Svebia) (German:  Schwaben, colloquially also Schwabenland or Ländle) is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.  In the past, Swabians were the target of many jokes and stories where they are depicted as excessively stingy, overly serious, prudish, or as simpletons, for instance in "The Seven Swabians" (Die sieben Schwaben) published in Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the Brothers Grimm.  However, this has ceased to a large extent, while Swabians are nowadays said to be frugal, clever, entrepreneurial and hard-working.  In a widely respected publicity campaign on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Baden-Württemberg, economically the most successful state in modern Germany, the Swabians famously replied to the former jokes with:  "We can do everything—except speak Standard German" (Wir können alles. Außer Hochdeutsch), alluding to the region's distinct local dialect.  Many Swabian surnames end with the suffixes -le, -el, -ehl, and -lin.  The popular surname Schwab is derived from this area, meaning literally "Swabian". 
See history and modern borders of Swabia depicted at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabia

Saved from Dumpster:  Amazing map collection makes librarians tingle
The discovery that real estate agent Matthew Greenberg made when he stepped inside a Mount Washington cottage will put the Los Angeles Public Library on the map.  Stashed everywhere in the 948-square-foot tear-down were maps.  Tens of thousands of maps.  Fold-out street maps were stuffed in file cabinets, crammed into cardboard boxes, lined up on closet shelves and jammed into old dairy crates.  Wall-size roll-up maps once familiar to schoolchildren were stacked in corners.  Old globes were lined in rows atop bookshelves also filled with maps and atlases.  The occupant of the 90-year-old cottage had died in February.  Greenberg's job was to empty the home so it could be demolished and its 18,000-square-foot lot, near the top of Canyon Vista Drive, divided into two parcels.  His clients had told him to rent a Dumpster and throw away whatever he found inside.  But Greenberg couldn't bring himself to do that, especially after he read a recent Los Angeles Times article about the Central Library's map collection.  Instead, he invited its map librarian, Glen Creason, to Mount Washington to look at the trove.  Creason called the find unbelievable.  Creason returned to the home October 18 with 10 library employees and volunteers to box up the maps.  The acquisition will give the city library one of the country's top five library map archives, behind the Library of Congress and public libraries in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, he said.  Bob Pool  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/19/local/la-me-map-house-20121019 

Detroit Tigers logo is in Old English font--see examples on the Web.

The New York Giants logo featured the letters N and Y printed on top of each other in a manner very similar to the logos the Yankees and Mets still use today.  The familiar orange and black colors were also present since the beginning, as the New York Giants caps were black with orange letters.  The font of the logo went through minor evolutions over the years, becoming slightly more ornate.  By the time the Giants left New York in 1957, their logo had become iconic.  In an effort to maintain as much of the team's identity as possible during the move, the new San Francisco Giants made minimal changes to their logo. An S and F written in a similar font replaced the N and Y on the team's cap.  The team's colors remained orange and black, and the logo used in promotional materials, a baseball with the word Giants written over it in cursive, remained unchanged.  The promotional logo has gone through evolutions that reflect the changing styles of the times.  In the 1970s, the white baseball behind the Giants name was changed from white to orange, and in the 1980s a bolder, uppercase type font replaced the cursive Giants from the earlier logo.  Through it all, the S and F on the team's cap have remained a constant, although in minor league play and on special occasions throughout the season, the team plays with caps displaying a cursive G that harkens back to the old promotional logo.  http://sanfrancisco.lovetoknow.com/wiki/San_Francisco_Giants_Logo  The Giants use many custom fonts, and you will see examples on the Web. 

Friday, October 26, 2012


The origin of blackballing or blacklisting lies in Ancient Greece. Ostraka, (singular ostrakon, ὄστρακον) refers to the shards of broken pottery that were used as writing material for the purpose of voting.  Once a year Athenians were offered the opportunity to ostracize, or exile, someone in the community.  The citizens wrote the name of the individual they wanted to exile on the pottery shards and put them in an urn.  The votes were counted, and if certain criteria were met, then the person with the most votes was exiled for ten years.  The penalty for returning before the ten years expired was death; after ten years the exiled one was allowed to return and resume life as usual.  Blackballing was a way for members of clubs and organizations to discreetly reject prospective members.  Members put either a white ball of support or a black ball of rejection into a covered ballot box.  Specific rules concerning the vote varied depending on the club and time period.  http://www.ehow.com/about_5379348_meaning-blacklisted.html

Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote, turned to his wife last year and asked if she had suggestions for how the software company might improve the lives of its employees and their families.  His wife, who also works at Evernote, didn’t miss a beat:  housecleaning.   Today, Evernote’s 250 employees — every full-time worker, from receptionist to top executive — have their homes cleaned twice a month, free.  It is the latest innovation from Silicon Valley:  the employee perk is moving from the office to the home.  Facebook gives new parents $4,000 in spending money.  Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery.  Genentech offers take-home dinners and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go to school.  These kinds of benefits are a departure from the upscale cafeteria meals, massages and other services intended to keep employees happy and productive while at work.  And the goal is not just to reduce stress for employees, but for their families, too.  If the companies succeed, the thinking goes, they will minimize distractions and sources of tension that can inhibit focus and creativity.  Now that technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, it seems that companies are trying to address the impact of home life on work.  There is, of course, the possibility that relieving people of chores at home will simply free them up to work more.  But David Lewin, a compensation expert and management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he viewed the perks as part of a growing effort by American business to reward people with time and peace of mind instead of more traditional financial tools, like stock options and bonuses.  Matt Richtel  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/us/in-silicon-valley-perks-now-begin-at-home.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=todayspaper

Saunter into the yards of chef David Bouley's house in Kent, Conn., or chef Jose Garces's country home in Bucks Country, Pa., and you'll stumble upon the ultimate status symbol for today's culinary crowd.  It isn't a wood-burning pizza oven or whole-hog rotisserie.  It's a farm.  "I seed, I weed, I cultivate. I do everything," said Mr. Bouley, owner of Michelin-rated restaurants Bouley and Brushstroke in New York City.  Now in his second year of farming, Mr. Bouley drives a John Deere tractor and works his 1-acre plot, where he experiments with growing conditions that will yield the tastiest and healthiest produce.  Farm-to-table has become a popular food-industry catch phrase—even McDonald's launched an ad campaign celebrating farmers earlier this year.  Now, chefs are cutting the farmer out of the deal by becoming farmers themselves.   Zakary Pelaccio, the founding chef of trendy New York restaurants Fatty Crab and Fatty 'Cue, traded the city earlier this year for a farm in Old Chatham, N.Y., near where he is planning to open a new restaurant later this year.  Katy McLaughlin  Read much more at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443294904578048412121179622.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

"You can disagree without being disagreeable" is attributed to both Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.  An October 16 Google search for the phrase brought 391,000 results.  Most people realize the need for civility and are muting attack ads on TV.

America’s first native landscape painter by William Tylee Ranney Abbott 
The paintings of Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) represent America’s earliest tradition of landscape painting.  His intense admiration for nature resulted in painterly depictions of the utmost truthfulness. The popularity of this new development facilitated the advancement of the landscape painting tradition in the United States, paving the way for future masters such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church.  Thomas Doughty was born on July 19, 1793 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to the local ship carpenter James Doughty.  The young Thomas Doughty was locally educated and became a leather worker, before utilizing his largely self-taught skills as an artist.  By 1814, Doughty was working as a leather currier in Philadelphia, and just two years later he was registered as a painter at 16 Pennsylvania Avenue, Philadelphia.  In this same year, Doughty exhibited for the first time at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  At this stage in his career, Doughty sought to improve upon his artistic skills by painting from Old Masters including Jan Van Goyen, Gaspard Poussin, and Nicholas Poussin.  By 1824, his commitment to art in Philadelphia paid off when he was elected to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as an Academician.  A year later, Doughty received another honor, this time in the form of a recommendation from Rembrandt Peale to Thomas Jefferson for the position of art instructor at the University of Virginia.  http://www.questroyalfineart.com/artist/thomas-doughty 

In a nation where sheep are given names and kept inside homes as companion animals, the most popular television show is "Khar Bii," or literally, "This Sheep," in the local Wolof language.  It's an American Idol-style nationwide search for Senegal's most perfect specimen.  Now in its fourth season, the show airs several times a week in the months leading up to Eid al-Adha, or Tabaski, as it's known here.  The TV show's Facebook page has nearly 9,000 fans.  The sheer volume of entries and its loyal viewership are testaments to just how much the Senegalese love their sheep.  As the country has urbanized, many have kept alive the tradition of sheep raising.  It's not unusual to see them grazing in an urban traffic circle or seeking shade near cars at a taxi rank.  The TV show "Khar Bii" follows a team of judges as they make housecalls to scope out potential candidates for regional finals.  Trekking down sandy side streets and up on to rooftops, the crews set off in search of an animal with both size and composure.  The finalists from home visits then square off at regional finals, where one doting owner even brought a special umbrella to protect his sheep Dogo from the blazing sun overhead.  "Some people love cats, some people love dogs.  Here we have sheep," says Abou Aziz Mare, 27, who says he spends three to four hours a day on his terrace with his animals.  "I live with him like a close friend," he says of Dogo.  Samba Fall, 44, keeps seven sheep at his home in Dakar's Medina neighborhood though his clear favorite is blue-eyed Papis General Fall.  "He is like my little son," Fall says, stroking Papis between his horns. "I prefer being with my sheep to being with people.  Sheep don't talk about insignificant things."  http://www.omaha.com/article/20121011/AP07/310119938

On October 25, 1854,  one of the most famous battles of military history was fought at Balaclava, in the Crimea.  Upon reading reports of the disaster in the Times five weeks later, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade," composing the poem while raking leaves, he later said, and writing it out in a few minutes.  As poet laureate, Tennyson wrote a number of nationalistic poems, but he was anxious not to be perceived as a jingoist or war-lover.  His epilogue to "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade," a poem written decades later, contains the lines, "And who loves War for War's own sake, / Is fool or crazed or worse."   But the story behind Tennyson's later, "Heavy Brigade" poem is an interesting and more complicated one.  Many of the surviving Balaclava soldiers, long returned to England and long forgotten, were so destitute that a charity drive was undertaken on their behalf.  When little money was raised, the charity organizers suggested that the veterans visit Tennyson, who might rally support.  When they did so, he wrote his "Heavy Brigade" poem and appealed for more donations.  http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=10/25/1854

Wednesday, October 24, 2012


The “yellow pages” phone book, despite its relentless decline in the digital age, still has something going for it: the highest level of First Amendment protection.  In 2010, Seattle passed an ordinance requiring yellow-pages publishers to advertise an opt-out registry on the front covers of their directories.  Adding insult, the companies had to pay a fee for each book they distributed, to cover the city’s costs of operating the registry.  The companies challenged the ordinance in November of that year, arguing that it stepped on their free-speech rights.  Seattle, meanwhile, portrayed the phone book as a vehicle for advertisers that deserved lesser protections than, say, a newspaper or a magazine — an argument that found favor with a federal district judge.  But even though it is typically larded with ads, the phone book is still “fully protected expression,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held on October 15, striking down the 2010 ordinance as unconstitutional.  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/10/15/the-phone-book-is-protected-speech/

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is challenging innovators to create solutions that will block illegal robocalls.  These solutions should block robocalls on landlines and mobile phones and can operate on a proprietary or non-proprietary device or platform.  Entries can be proposed technical solutions or functional solutions and proofs of concept.  The vast majority of telephone calls that deliver a prerecorded message trying to sell something to the recipient are illegal.  As technology has advanced over the years, so have the number of illegal robocalls.  The winning solution will win $50,000 in cash, as well as opportunities for promotion, exposure, and recognition by the FTC.  Solvers will retain ownership of their solutions.  Companies with over 10 employees will be eligible to compete for the Federal Trade Commission Technology Achievement Award, which does not include a cash prize.  http://robocall.challenge.gov/
The submission period is October 25, 2012 (5:00 p.m. ET) to January 17, 2013 (5:00 p.m. ET).  The Judging Period is January 17, 2013 (5:00 p.m. ET) to March 31, 2013 (5:00 p.m. ET).   Winners will be announced on or around April 1, 2013.   See official rules at:  http://robocall.challenge.gov/rules

Born in Woodstown, New Jersey, Everett Shinn (1876-1953) began his career as a designer of gas lighting fixtures.  As a young newspaper artist for the Philadelphia Press, he met Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, and John Sloan.  These artists later formed the core members of The Eight, a group named after their notorious 1908 exhibition in New York.  Shinn and his colleagues broke with the art establishment by rejecting standard Impressionist themes of the leisured life of the upper class, and painting instead more realistic scenes of urban life.  In an era of rapid social change, when European immigrants comprised almost half the total population of Manhattan, Shinn and his friends focused on the city's grittiness, its class and ethnic diversity, life in its streets, parks, and tenements, its theaters, restaurants, and other urban entertainments.  Shinn in particular became known for his paintings of the theater and vaudeville.  At various times in his career he also wrote and staged his own vaudeville acts, designed sets and costumes for movies and the theater, and worked as a Hollywood art director, muralist, and interior decorator.  Shinn was often dubbed the "American" Degas, after the French nineteenth-century painter who depicted Paris theater and café entertainments.  http://www.nbmaa.org/timeline_highlights/essays/shinn.html

A mockbuster (sometimes also called a knockbuster or a drafting opportunity) is a film created with the apparent intention of piggy-backing on the publicity of a major film with a similar title or theme and is often made with a low budget.  Mockbusters have a long history in Hollywood and elsewhere.  For example, the 1959 Vanwick film The Monster of Piedras Blancas was a clear derivative of Creature from the Black Lagoon, complete with a creature suit by the same designer, Jack Kevan.  Attack of the 50 Foot Woman spawned Village of the Giants; The Blob generated The Green Slime; The Land That Time Forgot spun Legend of Dinosaurs & Monster Birds; Star Wars gave derivative birth to a jumble of imitations — Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars, among others.  The success of Spielberg's 1982 family-film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial spawned the infamous 1988 film Mac and Me.  The 1984 film Gremlins and its ensuing popularity inspired the creation of the notoriously bad 1988 rip-off Hobgoblins. 

A film does not necessarily have to be a derivative of an actual pre-existing film in order to be a knockoff, and instead might attempt to capitalize on the popularity of an existing TV series or any other such form of media with a public following.  The 1979 film Angel's Revenge is widely considered to be a film knockoff of the concept behind the popular TV series Charlie's Angels.  This same principle can also work in reverse.  The Mister Ed television series was derived from the popular film series Francis the Talking Mule, as was the Disney film Gus.  GoodTimes  Entertainment was notorious for making animated "mockbuster" counterparts to popular Disney films in the 1990s.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockbuster

A mockumentary (a portmanteau of the words mock and documentary), is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format.  These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself.  They may be either comedic or dramatic in form, although comedic mockumentaries are more common.  A dramatic mockumentary (sometimes referred to as docufiction) should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events.  Mockumentaries are often presented as historical documentaries, with B roll and talking heads discussing past events, or as cinéma vérité pieces following people as they go through various events.  Though the precise origins of the genre are not known, examples emerged during the 1950s, when archival film footage became relatively easy to locate.  A very early example was a short piece on the "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" that appeared as an April fools' joke on the British television program Panorama in 1957.  The term "mockumentary" is thought to have been popularized in the mid-1980s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it in interviews to describe that film.  It is not known with certainty when the term "mock-documentary" was first used, but the Oxford English Dictionary notes appearances of "mockumentary" from 1965.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockumentary

Smart Voter provides nonpartisan information on elections and voting.  The goal is to offer the complete list of all contests on your ballot including local offices.  Where possible Smart Voter obtains this information by a collaboration of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters with election officials to present an accurate and complete ballot.  Type in your address, zip code and select a date from the menu.  http://www.smartvoter.org/

The League of Women Voters, sponsored the Presidential debates in 1976, 1980 and 1984.  On October 2, 1988, the LWV's 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3 they issued a press release condemning the demands of the major candidates' campaigns:  The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates...because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.  It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions.  The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.  —League President Nancy M. Neuman, LWV October 03, 1988  The League was founded in 1920 to help 20 million women register and carry out their new responsibilities as voters.  In 1973 the League included men and helps minorities and the poor to register.  The League sponsors seminars and produces manuals, pamphlets, and editorials to educate the voting public on the political issues it deems important.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Women_Voters#cite_note-5   NOTE that you may find LWV informational booklets at your public library

Your library--a place for all seasons and many reasons

Monday, October 22, 2012

On December 15 and 16, Toledo Ballet will present its 72nd production of The Nutcracker.  This is the longest running annual Nutcracker in the United States.  (Thanks, Eric.)  Tchaikovsky composed The Nutcracker during four months in 1891.  A large part of the ballet was written at sea on a journey from Europe to the United States.  Perhaps the most beloved of all ballet, The Nutcracker had its premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1892.  The beloved classical ballet takes place one Christmas Eve in a nineteenth century Russian town.  Uncle Drosselmeyer, a conjurer and magician, delights the entire family with tricks and magic gifts.  He gives Marie, his young niece, a rather plain looking doll in a red uniform.  Marie loves the doll which has an unusual mouth ("...so strong it can crack nuts") -a toy mechanical nutcracker.  Marie's brother breaks the doll in jealousy, and Uncle Drosselmeyer places it under the Christmas tree to mend.  Marie falls asleep under the tree with her broken doll in her arms and enters a dream world where the Christmas tree shoots up to the sky and all the toys come alive!  http://www.kultur.com/The-Nutcracker-Bolshoi-Ballet-p/d0062.htm  In most versions of the popular holiday ballet the Nutcracker, the young girl who falls asleep and dreams about a prince is named Clara.  As the curtain opens, the wealthy Staulbahm family, including young children Clara and Fritz, is busily preparing for their annual Christmas Eve party.  Clara and Fritz are anxiously awaiting the arrival of several invited guests.  The original story of The Nutcracker is based on a tale by E.T.A. Hoffman entitled "Der Nussnacker und der Mausekonig", or "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King."  In the story, Clara is not the Stahlbaum's cherished daughter but an unloved and neglected orphan.  Somewhat like Cinderella, Clara is required to do chores in the household that usually go unappreciated.  In 1847, Alexandre Dumas rewrote Hoffman's story, removing some of its darker elements and changing the name of Clara.  He chose to refer to Clara as "Marie." 

While it may be unusual in modern times for animals to avail themselves of our justice system, it wasn’t always so.  Thanks to one of our editors, we found “The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals,” by E.P. Evans published in 1906:   http://archive.org/stream/criminalprosecut00evaniala#page/n9/mode/2up.  The book, which takes itself very seriously, explains that animal trials were common in the Middle Ages.  We were struck by the due process afforded some field mice in a 1519 case in Italy described in the book.  The community of Stelvio commenced criminal proceedings against field mice accused of damaging crops by burrowing.  A man named Hans Grinebner was appointed to defend the mice.  At trial, a long list of witnesses testified that the damage wrought by the mice prevented them from paying their rent.  Mr. Grinebner “urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural class by destroying noxious insects and larvae and by stirring up and enriching the soil,” according to the article.  Mr. Grinebner also argued that, should the mice be sentenced “to depart,” that they be given safe passage from dogs, cats or other foe.  The judge, a rather decent man, apparently, exiled the male adult mice immediately but gave young and pregnant mice 14 days to pack up and leave. Seriously.  Read about pigs at:  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/10/12/of-lawyers-and-mice/

Costa Rica is a central American nation, located between Nicaragua and Panama.  Its borders span 309 kilometers (192 miles) with Nicaragua and 330 kilometers (205 miles) with Panama.  Costa Rica also borders the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, its coastline reaching across 1,290 kilometers (802 miles).  The country has 51,100 square kilometers (19,730 square miles) of land, which is slightly less than the size of West Virginia, including the Isla del Coco (a small island in the Pacific Ocean).  San José, the capital, is located in a highland valley in central Costa Rica called the Meseta Central.  Most of the country's population is located in this area formed by 2 basins separated by low, volcanic hills ranging from 900 to 1,500 meters above sea level.
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Americas/Costa-Rica.html

Panama is located in Central America between Costa Rica to the north and Colombia to the south.  It is at the southern end of the Central American isthmus (a narrow piece of land that connects two larger land areas) and forms the land bridge between North and South America.  The nation is S-shaped and runs from east to west with a length of 772 kilometers (480 miles) and a width that varies from 60 to 177 kilometers (37 to 110 miles).  Panama has an area of 77,381 square kilometers (29,762 square miles) which makes it slightly smaller than South Carolina.  This area consists of 75,990 square kilometers (29,340 square miles) of land and 2,210 square kilometers (853 square miles) of water.  The nation borders the Caribbean Sea on one coast and the Pacific Ocean on the other.  The 80-kilometer (50-mile) Panama Canal cuts the nation in half and joins the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Americas/Panama.html

Docufiction (or docu-fiction, often confused with docudrama) is a neologism which refers to the cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction.  It is a film genre which attempts to capture reality such as it is (as direct cinema or cinéma vérité) and which simultaneously introduces unreal elements or fictional situations in narrative in order to strength the representation of reality using some kind of artistic expression.  More precisely, it is a documentary contaminated with fictional elements, in real time, filmed when the events take place, and in which someone - the character - plays his own role in real life.  Film genre in expansion, it is adopted by an increasing number of filmmakers.  The new term appeared at the beginning of the 21st century.  It is now commonly used in several languages and widely accepted for classification by international film festivals.  In contrast, docudrama is usually a fictional and dramatized recreation of factual events in form of a documentary, at a time subsequent to the "real" events it portrays.  A docudrama is often confused with docufiction when drama is considered interchangeable with fiction (both words meaning the same).  Typically however, "docudrama" refers specifically to telefilms or other television media recreations that dramatize certain events often with actors.  A mockumentary (etymology:  mock documentary) is also a film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format, sometimes a recreation of factual events after they took place or a comment on current events, typically satirical or comedic (see genres: drama versus comedy and tragedy) or dramatic in nature.  The word docufiction is also sometimes used to refer to literary journalism (creative nonfiction).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docufiction

Definition of docusoap  noun   a documentary following people in a particular occupation or location over a period of time  Origin:  1990s:  blend of documentary and soap
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/docusoap

Q:  Do the American people get reimbursed for President Barack Obama's use of Air Force One for his political campaign?
A:  Yes, but how much is always the question.  The most familiar Air Force One, a highly-modified Boeing 747, costs $179,750 an hour to fly with the president and his staff, Secret Service agents, military personnel, fuel and supplies.  The White House, regardless of the incumbent, always has decided how much of any trip is political and how much is official, and that includes the flights.  This year, Obama's campaign has been reimbursing the government based on the cost of chartering a smaller Boeing 737 for a comparable flight.  By the way, any Air Force aircraft with the president aboard carries the Air Force One call sign. -- Associated Press.
Q:  When, and who was the first person to say, "I'm blah-blah and I approve this message"?
A:  It probably was a candidate in a political ad in early 2004, the first year of the Bipartisan Reform Act of 2002, better known as "McCain-Feingold."  It requires candidates and groups campaigning for federal offices to disclose the source of radio or television ads.  The phrase has become funny.  For example, President Barack Obama has been telling crowds about a father who showed his 4-year-old a picture of Obama and asked what the president does.  The boy replied, "He approves this message!" -- Various sources.
Q:  Did Al Gore really say he invented the Internet?
A:  No.  In March 1999, he said, in classic politicianspeak, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.  I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to the nation's economic growth and environmental protection." -- The Washington Post.  http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Oct/JU/ar_JU_101512.asp?d=101512,2012,Oct,15&c=c_13