Friday, August 30, 2013


Auriga is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy and remains one of the 88 modern constellations.  Located north of the celestial equator, its name is the Latin word for "charioteer", associating it with various mythological charioteers including Erichthonius and Myrtilus.  Auriga is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, along with the five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism.  Because of its northern declination, Auriga is only visible as far as 34° south; for observers farther south it lies partially or fully below the horizon.  Its brightest star, Capella, is an unusual multiple star system among the brightest stars in the night sky.  In Chinese mythology, Auriga's stars were incorporated into several constellations, including the celestial emperors' chariots, made up of the modern constellation's brightest stars.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auriga_(constellation) 

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham   extract from a scene in Parma, Italy
With a casual wave at the cheese he said, "Of course you know the greatest cheese of all. Parmigiano-Reggiano.  You say Parmesan.  The king of cheese, and made right here.  Only real parmigiano comes from our little town.  "Next," he said, pointing to the first loop, "is the world-famous prosciutto.  You say Parma ham.  Made only here, from special pigs raised on barley and oats and the milk left over from making the parmigiano.  Our prosciutto is never cooked," he said gravely, wagging a finger for a second in disapproval.  "But cured with salt, fresh air, and lots of love.  Eighteen months it's cured."  "And then we have culatello, from the pig's leg, pulled off the bone, only the best parts, then covered in salt, white wine, garlic, lots of herbs, and rubbed by hand for many hours before stuffed into a pig's bladder and cured for fourteen months.  The summer air dries it, the wet winters keep it tender."  "These are the best pigs, for the culatello," he said, with another frown.  "Small black pigs with a few red patches, carefully selected and fed only natural foods.  Never locked up, no.  These pigs roam free and eat acorns and chestnuts." http://fuyuhoshikim.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/john-grisham-2007-playing-for-pizza.pdf

Anolini is a stuffed pasta from Parma, where it is served in broth during the holiday season.  The first recipe for anolini, a direct descendent of ravioli, was published in a book written by Bartolomeo Scappi at the beginning of the 16th century.  Naturally, it contains parmigiana reggiano.  Find recipe at:  http://www.academiabarilla.com/italian-recipes/emilia-romagna/anolini.aspx

Playing for Pizza is a novel about the Parma Panthers, an Italian football team.  There is a real team called the Parma Panthers, and they won their fourth consecutive IFL league title by beating the Milano Seamen 51-28 in the Italian Super Bowl XXXIIII in 2013.  Read about it at:  http://www.americanfootballinternational.com/tag/italian-super-bowl/

Element 115 – which has a temporary name of ununpentium – was first created in 2003 in Russia by scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna and collaborators from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.  That team produced four atoms of ununpentium, which quickly lost two neutrons and decayed into element 113.  A committee from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry will study the Lund report and decide whether to grant element 115 official status on the periodic table of elements.  If that happens, the element will get a new name.  (The folks at Lawrence Livermore noted that element 106 was discovered in 1974 but didn’t get its official name of seaborgium until 23 years later.)  Both of ununpentium’s neighbors on the periodic table have completed this vetting process.  Element 114 was discovered in 1998 (also at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research) and named Flerovium in 2012 in honor of the institute’s Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions.  Element 116 was first created in 2000 and named Livermorium, in honor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in 2012.  Scientists create these unstable, super-heavy elements because they can – they want to see if there’s a fundamental limit to the periodic table.  But they also expect that as they synthesize heavier and heavier atoms, they’ll reach what they call the “island of stability” – a group of elements that can last for entire seconds or even minutes before their nuclei break apart and they decay into other elements.  Karen Kaplan  http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-element-115-ununpentium-confirmed-20130827,0,2224471.story 

One of the biggest canyons in the world has been found beneath the ice sheet that smothers most of Greenland.  The canyon - which is 800km long and up to 800m deep - was carved out by a great river more than four million years ago, before the ice arrived.  It was discovered by accident as scientists researching climate change mapped Greenland’s bedrock by radar.  The British Antarctic Survey said it was remarkable to find so huge a geographical feature previously unseen.  The hidden valley is longer than the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  It snakes its way from the centre of Greenland up to the northern coastline and before the ice sheet was formed it would have contained a river gushing into the Arctic Ocean.  Now it is packed with ice.  The ice sheet, up to 3km (2 miles) thick, is now so heavy that it makes the island sag in the middle (central Greenland was previously about 500m above sea level, now it is 200m below sea level). 

Seamus Heaney, one of the world’s best-known poets and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature, has died aged 74 after a short illness, his family said on August 30, 2013.  Northern Ireland-born Heaney was one of the world’s foremost poets writing in English whose works include his 1966 debut “Death of a Naturalist”, “The Spirit Level” and “District and Circle”.  Heaney was a rarity among poets, having won acclaim from critics while producing best-sellers. It once took him three hours to walk down Dublin’s main street as autograph hunters pursued him.  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/nobel-prize-winning-irish-poet-seamus-heaney-dies-at-74/article14036308/ 

Find a list of books by Seamus Heaney divided by poetry, prose, translator (for instance, Beowulf) and editor at:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/seamus-heaney.  The bibliography is followed by a list of books about Heaney. 

Find "Remarks by the President at the "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington" at:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/28/remarks-president-let-freedom-ring-ceremony-commemorating-50th-anniversa  The speech took close to thirty minutes, but you can read it in much less time.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013


rill
noun   a small stream   a shallow channel cut in the ground by running water
verb   flow in or as in a rill:  the springwater rilled over our cold hands
(as adjective rilled) indented with small grooves: blocks of butter pounded into artful shapes with rilled paddles  Origin:  mid 16th century: probably of Low German origin

As a body of water, a kill is a creek. The word comes from the Middle Dutch kille, meaning "riverbed" or "water channel."  The term is used in areas of Dutch influence in the Delaware and Hudson Valleys and other areas of the former New Netherland colony of Dutch America to describe a strait, river, or arm of the sea.  Examples are Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill, both separating Staten Island, New York from New Jersey, Dutch Kills and English Kills off Newtown Creek, Bronx Kill between The Bronx and Randall's Island, and used as a composite name, Wallkill River in New York and New Jersey and the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania.   Fresh Kills is the primary waterway that leads to the former Fresh Kills landfill which serviced New York City in the second half of the 20th Century and was once the largest in the world.  Peekskill is a city on the Hudson River settled by the Dutch, founded by one, Jan Peake, a fur trader and sea captain.  The creek, or "Kill" that fed the Hudson at this wide bend in the river, and gave the city its name, was abundant with fish, surrounded by game, and became an early settlement and trading center.  Humorously, in Delaware, there exists a Murderkill River.  "Kill" also shows up in location names as in the Catskill Mountains and the town of Fishkill, New York, which was the subject of a campaign against etymology by animal rights group, PETA, which wanted a more animal-friendly name.  

More and more Americans are outliving their ability to drive safely.  As a result of impairments in three functions that are important for driving – vision, cognition and motor function – older drivers have a higher crash risk than middle aged adults.  To address this issue, many states have have enacted laws that contain specific licensing requirements for older drivers.  33 States and the District of Columbia have special provisions for mature drivers.  These include:  Accelerated renewal frequency; Restriction of online or mailed renewals; Vistion test; Road test; or Reduced or waived renewal fees.  See charts and requirements at:   http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/olderdriver_laws.html 

A compass is an instrument containing a freely suspended magnetic element which displays the direction of the horizontal component of the Earth's magnetic field at the point of observation.  The magnetic compass is an old Chinese invention, probably first made in China during the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.).  Chinese fortune tellers used lodestones (a mineral composed of an iron oxide which aligns itself in a north-south direction) to construct their fortune telling boards.  Eventually someone noticed that the lodestones were better at pointing out real directions, leading to the first compasses.  They designed the compass on a square slab which had markings for the cardinal points and the constellations.  The pointing needle was a lodestone spoon-shaped device, with a handle that would always point south.  Mary Bellis  http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Compass.htm 

Over thousands of years China has produced a great stream of inventions, ranging from the mundane chopstick and wheelbarrow, to sophisticated earthquake detectors and the advanced concept of bank notes.  But in China there are four inventions traditionally referred to as the Four Great Inventions.  These are paper, gunpowder, the compass and printing.  http://www.sacu.org/greatinventions.html 

Treasure fleet may refer to: 
Spanish treasure fleet, a convoy system in the Spanish Empire transporting treasure and other cargo from 1566 to 1790 or a Chinese treasure fleet, a fleet of ships led by the 15th-century Ming Dynasty admiral Zheng He.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_fleet 

Rebooting legal research in a digital age by Steven A. Lastres
Research has always been core to the practice of law.  However, we are seeing a “New Normal” in today’s business climate, and profound change in legal education and the delivery of legal services that impacts how research is conducted.  New technologies, resources, and methods of conducting research are evolving faster than ever before.  How have new attorneys, law schools and employers adapted, and what is the state of legal research today?  In a recent survey, law firm associates indicated they spend nearly a third of their working hours conducting legal research, or about 15 hours per week on average.  Much of that research is conducted online using a variety of sources and particular methodologies.  Associates believe their employers expect them to have  strong legal research skills when starting their first position out of law school.  With this in mind, many feel that legal research should be a larger part of the law school curriculum.  See eight-page article at:  http://www.llrx.com/files/rebootinglegalresearch.pdf   Thanks, Julie

scrut-  (Latin:  search, investigation, inquiry; examining, examination; inspect, inspection)
Find nouns (scrutator, scrutineer), adjectives and verbs using strut at:  http://wordinfo.info/unit/1920/ip:4/il:S 

The Romans did not count days in the month as a simple number, as we do, but backwards from one of three fixed points in the month:  the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides.  The Kalends are always the first of the month.  The Nones fell on the 7th day of the long months (March, May, Quinctilis, October), and the 5th of the others.  (Note that this long-short distinction refers to their length in the republican calendar, not the later version.)  Likewise, the Ides fell on the 15th if the month was long, and the 13th if the month was short.  http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=calhistory/earlier/roman/kalends 

In the ancient Roman calendar, Quintilis or Quinctilis was the month following Junius (June) and preceding Sextilis (August).  Quintilis is Latin for "fifth", that is, it was the fifth month (quintilis mensis) in the earliest calendar attributed to Romulus, which began with Martius ("Mars' month," March) and had 10 months.  After the calendar reform that produced a 12-month year, Quintilis became the seventh month, but retained its name.  In 45 BC, Julius Caesar instituted a new calendar (the Julian calendar) that corrected astronomical discrepancies in the old.  After his death in 44 BC, the month of Quintilis, his birth month, was renamed Julius in his honor, hence July.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintilis 

True wisdom comes at great cost.  Only ignorance is free.”  Taoist proverb  http://www.nextreads.com/display2.aspx?recid=3544107&FC=1

Monday, August 26, 2013


What comes after primary, secondary, tertiary?  The sequence continues with quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, and denary, although most of these terms are rarely used.  There's no word relating to the number eleven but there is one that relates to the number twelve:  duodenary. 

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS.  It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present.  The relatively short period is characterized by a series of glaciations and by the appearance and expansion of anatomically modern humans.  The Quaternary includes two geologic epochs: the Pleistocene and Holocene.  A proposed but as yet informal third epoch, the Anthropocene, has also gained credence as the time in which humans began to profoundly affect and change the global environment, although its start date is still disputed.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary 

What is the ICS?  The International Commission on Stratigraphy is the largest and oldest constituent scientific body in the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).  Its primary objective is to precisely define global units (systems, series, and stages) of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart that, in turn, are the basis for the units (periods, epochs, and age) of the International Geologic Time Scale; thus setting global standards for the fundamental scale for expressing the history of the Earth.  http://www.stratigraphy.org/ 

Joe Yule Jr., also known as Mickey Rooney, was born September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York.  His parents, chorus girl Nell Carter and comic Joe Yule Sr., were vaudeville performers.  Two weeks after Mickey's birth, he was on the road with the circuit traveling throughout North America.  At 17 months old, his talent surfaced by accident.  While hiding underneath a shoeshine stand in a Chicago theatre, fascinated by his father's act, he let out a sneeze.  The noise caused a spotlight to find him in the crowd.  Not knowing what to do he stood up and blew on his tiny toy mouth organ that was hanging on a string around his neck.  The audience erupted with laughter.  The show's manager got him a pint-sized tuxedo after the incident, and young Mickey began performing small ballads and speeches on stage.  His big break came in 1927 when he was cast for "Mickey 'Himself' McGuire," a series based on a comic strip.  His mother wanted to legally change his name to Mickey McGuire for publicity reasons, but the comic's creator did not approve this.  Instead she renamed him Mickey Rooney after getting approval from his manager.  In 1934, Mickey was competing in a table tennis tournament in Los Angles and was showing off to the audience. MGM producer David O. Selznick noticed his antics.  He told MGM studio chief Louis Mayer that he had found a kid that was a "goldmine" and begged him to sign Mickey to MGM.  Mayer was reluctant to do so. Selznick made a role for Mickey in the film "Manhattan Melodrama," which was later made famous when notorious gangster John Dillinger was shot and killed while leaving the theater where he had been watching it. http://www.mickeyrooney.com/biography.html 

Girl Crazy (1943)  Originally a George and Ira Gershwin stage hit, Girl Crazy had been filmed by RKO in 1932, starring Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey in a version that put the emphasis on comedy and gave short shrift to the show's wonderful songs.  MGM bought the property in 1939 and considered using it as a follow-up vehicle for Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell after Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940).  But music supervisor and Garland mentor Roger Edens had other plans, convincing his reluctant star (who was impatient to move on to adult roles) that this was a perfect vehicle for one more re-teaming of her and Mickey as rambunctious teens.  Girl Crazy casts Rooney as an irresponsible young playboy who's sent to a Western mining school where Garland, as the dean's daughter, helps straighten him out.  Together they save the financially strapped college by staging a rodeo/beauty contest/musical extravaganza.  Garland's character, called Ginger Gray, was played onstage by Ginger Rogers.  The Mickey-Judy version of Girl Crazy, produced by MGM's prestigious Arthur Freed unit, restores the show's entire score and adds "Fascinatin' Rhythm" from another Gershwin musical, Lady Be Good. Rooney and Garland are at their irrepressible best on "Could You Use Me?" and "I Got Rhythm," while Garland solos (or sings with the chorus) on "Bidin' My Time," "Embraceable You" and a heart-rending "But Not For Me." June Allyson, then at the beginning of her MGM career, energetically partners Rooney on "Treat Me Rough."  Rooney, quite impressively, plays piano with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra during "Fascinatin' Rhythm."  http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?id=374118%7C25891 

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
1.   Never open a book with weather.
2.   Avoid prologues.
3.   Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4.   Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5.   Keep your exclamation points under control.  You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
 
6.   Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7.   Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8.   Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9.   Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.   See explanations of each rule at:  http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/394179/71/Elmore-Leonards-10-rules-of-writing-
 

Elmore Leonard did not finish his 46th novel Blue Dreams.  His son Peter, also an author, told BBC Radio 4 he had talked to other family members about completing it.  Leonard's funeral was held in the author's home town of Birmingham, Michigan, on August 24, 2013.  Blue Dreams was to have featured the Stetson-wearing US marshal Raylan Givens, who has appeared in a string of Leonard's stories.  In an interview with Radio 4's Broadcasting House that was aired on Sunday, presenter Paddy O'Connell asked Peter Leonard whether he would finish the book.  "I would, I think so," he replied.  "It's been discussed among family members and I've talked to Greg Sutter, Elmore's longtime researcher."  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23832331   

Elmore Leonard’s favorite fan mail came from prisons.  He liked to pull a gag to get through airport security more quickly. And he never let his children leave behind those morsels of gristle and fat on their dinner plates.  “Fat is flavor. That’s what he told me,” son Bill Leonard told a laughing audience at his father’s funeral.  “And that’s what I tell my kids.”  In the days since the death of the legendary Michigan-based crime novelist, tributes to his lean writing style and mastery of dialogue rolled in from Hollywood to New York City.  Read much more at:  http://www.freep.com/article/20130824/NEWS/308240058/Elmore-Leonard-funeral-services 

An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs.  The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia.  North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands.  The globe’s lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is “Hic Sunt Dracones.”  “ ‘Here be dragons,’ a very interesting sentence,” said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society.  “In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say, ‘There’s bad stuff out there.’ ”  The only other map or globe on which this specific phrase appears is what can arguably be called the egg’s twin:  the copper Hunt-Lenox Globe, dated around 1510 and housed by the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library.  Before the egg, the copper globe had been the oldest one known to show the New World.  The two contain remarkable similarities.  After comparing the two globes, Missinne concluded that the Hunt-Lenox Globe is a cast of the engraved ostrich egg.  Many minute details, such as the lines and contours of the egg’s territories, oceans and script, match those on the well-studied Hunt-Lenox Globe.  Meeri Kim  See picture at:  http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021676401_rareglobexml.html

Friday, August 23, 2013


A Venn diagram or set diagram is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets.  Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn.  They are used to teach elementary set theory, as well as illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics and computer science.  See diagrams at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram 

The person who pays a fair price for something is likely to place far more value on it than the one who got the same item for nothing. 
Paraphrase from The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz 

Thomas Myles Steinbeck is a writer and the eldest son of Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck.  Steinbeck, who has written numerous screenplays, published his first book of short stories, Down to a Soundless Sea, in 2002.  His first novel, In the Shadow of the Cypress, was published in 2010.  In the fall of 2012, Thomas published, The Silver Lotus to excellent reviews.  He is currently writing his memoir.  Along with twenty-six of California’s most popular storytellers, Thom agreed to serve as a contributor to the My California project published by Angel City Press.  Each of the writers involved donated a story about their most beloved part of the state in an attempt to save the California Arts Council.  The book is now in its third printing and has successfully served its purpose.  http://www.thomassteinbeck.com/ 

hardscape  The part of a building's grounds consisting of structures, such as patios, retaining walls, and walkways, made with hard materials.  http://www.wordnik.com/words/hardscape 

A softscape is, simply put, the living parts of a landscape, in contrast with a hardscape, which composes the inanimate portions of landscaping and gardening.  The term is often used in landscaping jargon, with most gardeners preferring to just say “plants.”  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-softscape.htm 

streetscape  1. a pictorial view of a street.  2.  an environment of streets:  The little park provides a tranquil refuge so uncharacteristic of the urban streetscape. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/streetscape 

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed a royal tomb with treasures and mummified women from about 1,200 years ago.  The discovery north of Lima could shed new light on the Wari empire, which ruled in the Andes before the rise of the better-known Inca civilisation.  More than 60 skeletons were inside the tomb, including three Wari queens buried with gold and silver jewellery and brilliantly-painted ceramics.  Many mummified bodies were found sitting upright - indicating royalty.  The archaeologists say the tomb was found in El Castillo de Huarmey, about 280km (175 miles) north of Lima.  "We have found for the first time in Peruvian archaeological history, an imperial tomb of the Wari culture," co-director of the project Milosz Giersz was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.  "The contents of the chamber consisted of 63 human bodies, most of them women, wrapped in funerary bundles buried in the typical seated position, a native Wari pattern."  
"The fact that most of the skeletons were of women and the very rich grave goods, leads us to the interpretation that this was a tomb of the royal elite and that also changes our point of view on the position of the women in the Wari culture."  The archaeologists spent months secretly digging through the burial chambers amid fears that grave robbers would find out and loot the site.  The Wari civilization thrived from the 7th to 10th centuries AD, conquering all of what is now Peru before a mysterious and dramatic decline.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23092825

The State Role in Local Government Financial Distress
Within a two-week span in the summer of 2012, three California cities moved to file for bankruptcy protection.  By the end of the year, nine others had declared financial emergencies.  The state government offered no help, sticking to a long-standing tradition of leaving it up to local officials to fix their broken finances.  Rhode Island, by contrast, responded aggressively when Central Falls filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011.  State officials appointed a financial manager, called a receiver, to make sure the city could pay its bills by cutting spending, raising taxes, slashing employee retirement benefits, and paying investors on the bonds they bought.  The state’s action was a reason for Central Falls’ exit from bankruptcy last year after only 13 months, the shortest of several recent, high-profile municipal bankruptcies.  The difference between hands-off California and hands-on Rhode Island illustrates two sides of a discussion that is increasingly taking place in statehouses and city halls around the country because of cities’ particularly slow recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-09.  The question comes down to what role, if any, states should play in helping cities, towns, and counties recover from serious financial trouble—what officials generically call intervention.  Against this backdrop, The Pew Charitable Trusts conducted a study that examined the range of state involvement in local government finances, drawing on current literature, statutes, a survey of state officials, and interviews with government finance analysts.  It focused on identifying the characteristics of local financial distress, how those difficulties can escalate to state intervention or, in extreme cases, bankruptcy, and the relevant laws that states have in place.  The research also considered the history of state intervention in the financial practices of embattled cities, why it matters to states, and how their practices differ.  The findings are explored in detail in this report, but, briefly, Pew’s research shows:

•• Fewer than half of the states have laws allowing them to intervene in municipal finances.

•• Intervention practices vary among the 19 states that have such programs.

•• In most cases, states react to local government financial crises instead of trying to prevent them.

•• States intervene to protect their own financial standing and that of their other municipalities, to enhance economic growth, and to maintain public safety and health.

•• Among states that intervene, some are more aggressive about stepping in to help.

•• Local officials often resent state officials infringing on their right to govern their affairs.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013


bite the dust  fall to the ground, wounded or dead.  The same notion is expressed in the earlier phrase 'lick the dust', from the Bible, where there are several uses of it, including Psalms 72 (King James Version), 1611:  "They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust."  The earliest citation of the 'bite the dust' version is from 1750 by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett , in his Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane:  "We made two of them bite the dust, and the others betake themselves to flight."  Homer's epic poem The Iliad was written in around 700 BC.  That was in Greek of course.  It was translated into English in the 19th century by Samuel Butler and his version contains a reference to 'bite the dust' in these lines:  "Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him."  Whether that can be counted as an 8th century BC origin for 'bite the dust' is open to question and some would say that it was Butler's use of the phrase rather than Homer's.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/65500.html 

The Blue Castle is a 1926 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for her novel Anne of Green Gables (1908).  The story takes place in the early 1920s in the fictional town of Deerwood, located in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada.  Deerwood is based on Bala, Ontario, which Montgomery visited in 1922.  This novel is considered one of L.M. Montgomery's few adult works of fiction, along with A Tangled Web, and is the only book she wrote that is entirely set outside of Prince Edward Island.  It has grown in popularity since being republished in 1990.  The book was adapted for the stage twice; in 1982 it was made into a successful Polish musical and ten years later Canadian playwright Hank Stinson authored another version, The Blue Castle: A Musical Love Story.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Castle 

The Blue Castle from Project Gutenberg Australia http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200951h.html

Some people think that Colleen McCullough rewrote The Blue Castle for her novel, The Ladies of Missalonghi, but McCullough denies it.  "All writing is derivative even when it seems most original.  So, for that matter, is all art, and all music and even science." 

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.  It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently generated further publicity.  Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites.  Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.   

Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term after Streisand unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for violation of privacy.  The US$50 million lawsuit endeavored to remove an aerial photograph of Streisand's mansion from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs.  Adelman photographed the beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the government-sanctioned and government-commissioned California Coastal Records Project.  Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, "Image 3850" had been downloaded from Adelman's website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand's attorneys.  As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month.  See examples from 1978-2013 at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect 

On the Return of a Long-Lost Library Book, the World Rejoices  Read the stories (one book returned 221 years after being taken from the New York Society Library) at:  http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/08/library-book/67917/ 

Books on Bikes is a pilot program that uses pedal power and a customized trailer to bring Library services to popular community events around Seattle.  Read all about it at:  http://www.spl.org/using-the-library/library-on-the-go/books-on-bikes 

Full moons occur every 29.5 days on average, when the moon is directly opposite the sun from the perspective of Earth.  This causes its whole disk to be fully illuminated as a large, bright circle.  Usually, when the moon is full, it passes either above or below Earth's shadow, but sometimes, when it is perfectly aligned, it travels right through the shadow, causing a lunar eclipse, when its disk is dark.  Blue Moons don't happen too often, which is why the phrase "once in a Blue Moon," has sprung up to mean only very rarely.  After the event on August 20, 2013, the next Blue Moon isn't set to occur until 2015.  Other names for the August full moon are Full Sturgeon Moon, Full Red Moon, Green Corn Moon and the Grain Moon. 

Legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard died at 87 on August 20.  Several of Leonard’s books have been made into movies, including “Get Shorty, ” Jackie Brown, ” “Out of Sight” and “Hombre.” The latest to get the big-screen treatment is “The Switch.”  A movie version starring Jennifer Aniston, Mos Def, Tim Robbins and Isla Fisher is scheduled to debut at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.  FX television series “Justified” is inspired by the Leonard short story “Fire in the Hole.”  http://www.freep.com/article/20130820/ENT05/308200074/Elmore-Leonard-Dies-Get-Shorty  See also:  http://www.elmoreleonard.com/ 

Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, into a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States.  The design won the International Interior Design Association’s 2012 Library Interior Design Competition.  MSR stripped out the old ceiling and walls of the building, gave the perimeter walls and bare warehouse ceiling a coat of white paint, and set to work adding glass-enclosed spaces, bright architectural details and row after row of books.  See many pictures at:  http://weburbanist.com/2012/09/04/abandoned-walmart-is-now-americas-largest-library/