The making of footballs  Since 1941 Wilson has provide the official NFL game ball and since 1955 those balls have been laced and branded in a single manufacturing plant in Ada, Ohio.  The only dedicated football plant worldwide pumps out more than 700,000 balls. each year.  A single cowhide results in ten footballs, each constructed of four panels and a single piece of lace woven through 16 holes (don't tell us you really thought it was pigskin?).  http://www.popsci.com/node/31638 

The making of baseballs  For 10 hours a day, workers at the world's only factory authorized to supply Major League Baseball, in the town of Turrialba in central Costa Rica, sit at desks yanking strands of waxy red fiber to form each baseball's 108 stitches.  In professional games the balls quickly become too dirty and scuffed by bats to use, or get lost in the crowd on a foul ball or home run.  To feed the demand, the factory turns out as many as 2.4 million baseballs a year, all assembled by hand.  The cork and rubber cores, Tennessee Holstein cowhide and gray New Zealand sheep's wool yarn are shipped tax-free to the plant where more than 300 workers sit in neat rows to sew, their arms rhythmically rising and falling like a rowing team.  The finished balls are boxed up and shipped to Miami.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/09/us-costarica-baseballs-idUSTRE62831Z20100309 

The making of tennis balls The first stage in the life of a tennis ball is a big sheet of rubber.  This sheet of rubber is fed through a machine that stamps out little plugs of rubber.  These are called slugs.  The slugs are melted in a machine and poured into molds.  The molds are a hollow half-sphere shape, just like a bowl.  Each slug forms one of these bowl shapes called half-shells.  The half-shells are then fed into a machine where they are shaken until they are all facing the same direction, with the open side up.  The half-shells are dropped into trays where glue is applied to the rim. Then the half-shells go into a press.  Other trays of half-shells are flipped upside down and placed on top, gluing the two sides together.  The press closes, squeezing the two sides together and forming a perfect sphere.  The cores are then sent to a machine that roughens up the surface of the ball by scuffing it.  Having a rougher surface allows glue to stick to it better.  Meanwhile, felt is cut to wrap around the ball.  The felt is cut into peanut-shaped strips.  When two of these strips are wrapped together around the core, they link up perfectly and there are no overlapping or empty spots.  http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4899206_how-tennis-balls-made.html 

From:  Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)  Subject:  Dispatches from Japan - Part 2  (See part 1 at:  http://wordsmith.org/awad/awadmail584.html)  Last month, on Aug 6, as I sat under a pavilion that protected people from oppressive heat, it was hard to imagine that that place was much much hotter exactly 68 years ago.  I was in Hiroshima, the place that has the dubious distinction of being the first city to experience an atomic bomb.  Every year, the day is observed with a Peace Memorial Ceremony.  At 8:15 am, the time when the bomb was dropped, a peace bell is rung.  There's a large gathering and addresses by the Prime Minister of Japan, the Mayor of Hiroshima, and atomic bomb survivors among others.  The theme remains the same:  peace.  Every time a country conducts an atomic weapon test, the mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter of protest.  After the ceremony I walked around the park.  There are many memorials, but the most touching is of a 12-year-old girl named Sadako Sasaki.  She was about a mile from the hypocenter when the bomb dropped and her exposure to the radiation resulted in leukemia.  While in hospital, she heard the Japanese legend that anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes gets a wish.  She started folding cranes, she folded more than a thousand cranes, but she still died.  In her memory, schoolchildren around the world still send countless strings of paper cranes to Hiroshima.  (There's a statue of Sadako in Seattle as well.)  I went inside the Peace Museum and attended a presentation by a hibakusha (survivor of an atomic blast) relate her experience.  During the hour-long talk, I tried to detect any trace of bitterness without success.  Later in the day, I visited Hiroshima Castle.  On the castle grounds I met a man, now retired, who volunteered as a guide.  He showed me a eucalyptus tree that was scorched by the nuclear blast but is now thriving.  Before taking leave, I asked the man what he thought of Americans considering the US turned their city into a cemetery.  He told me, "Hate war, not hate people."  Dispatches from Japan Part 3  The former capital, Kyoto (literally, "capital city") and modern capital Tokyo (literally, "eastern capital") are anagrams of each other.  Tokyo Metropolitan Police has its own mascot. In fact, police in each of the 47 prefectures in Japan have their own cartoon mascots.  In the Hiroshima Peace Museum, I saw a man with a tattoo in binary code on his leg.  There's a vending machine at each street corner. No, let me be more precise. There are multiple vending machines on each street corner, selling dozens of hot & cold drinks, including tea, coffee, beer, and even Coke and Pepsi. If you don't find what you are looking for, chances are it'll be in the vending machine a few feet down.  See Part 4 at:  http://wordsmith.org.awad/awadmail587. html

The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington is a new center for cutting-edge and compelling scholarship about George Washington, Colonial America, and the Revolutionary Era.   Link to hours and directions, calendar of events, the collection, FAQs, photos and more at:  http://www.mountvernon.org/library 

A List of Early Maps and Surveys Drawn or Annotated by George Washington  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gwmlst.html 

Places named for George Washington   In addition to the state of Washington, find many places--both in and out of the United States-- named for the first president at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_named_for_George_Washington 

Sept. 27, 2013  Emoticons started 31 years ago, when a joke about a fake mercury spill at Carnegie Mellon University was posted on a digital message board and mistaken for a genuine safety warning.  The board's users cast about for a means to distinguish humorous posts from serious content.  On Sept. 19, 1982, faculty member Scott E. Fahlman entered the debate with the following message:  I propose that [sic] the following character sequence for joke markers:  :-)  Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.  For this, use:  :-(   The rest is Internet history.  Dr. Fahlman's expressive, minimal icons became an integral part of online communication, if not always a welcome one.  These "smileys," as they came to be known, were effectively the first online irony marks.  Keith Houston,  the author of "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks" (W.W. Norton) from which this is adapted.  Read more history of emoticons at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304213904579093661814158946.html?mod=djemITP_h 

Sept. 28, 2013  The Southern California Independent Booksellers Assn.--SCIBA--celebrated its favorite books of the last year and got to know some writers with books on the way Sept. 27 at its 2013 Authors Feast.  Bestselling thriller writer Jeffery Deaver, whose book "The October List" debuts next week, gave the keynote address.  To be eligible for the awards, books must in some way reflect the Southern California experience, and the author must live in the region, Mexican border north to Morro Bay. Winners were:  Fiction:  "Mary Coin" by Marisa Silver; Nonfiction:  "Little Flower: Recipes from the Cafe" by Christine Moore; Glen Goldman Art, Architecture and Photography:  "Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip" by Robert Landau; T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award:  "What the Heart Remembers" by Debra Ginsberg; Young Adult Fiction:  "Far Far Away" by Tom McNeal; Middle Grade Fiction:  "Write This Book" by Pseudonymous Bosch; Picture Book:  "The Dark" by John Klassen and Lemony Snicket.  Carolyn Kellogg  http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-so-cal-independent-booksellers-celebrate-their-2013-favorites-20130928,0,6459824.story 

Sept. 24, 2013  What would you do if you went to the library in search of "The Adventures of Captain Underpants" for your child, or to re-read Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Beloved" only to find that the book had been pulled from the shelves because another patron objected to its content?  It happens in the United States more often than many realize.  At least 464 formal complaints were filed in 2012 seeking to remove books from libraries or schools, according to the American Library Association, a sponsor of Banned Books Week, Sept. 22-28. in 2013.  Its mission is to celebrate the freedom to read and highlight the pitfalls of censorship.  The annual event started in 1982, the same year the Supreme Court ruled that students' First Amendment rights were violated when Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" and eight other books were removed from school libraries.  Despite the legal precedent, schools and libraries still receive formal challenges to remove books from library shelves or nix them from reading lists to protect children from material some see as inappropriate.  Just this month, a North Carolina school board voted to ban Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" based on complaints from the parent of an 11th-grader.  The board is reportedly scheduled to reconsider its decision.  Emanuella Grinberg and CNN Library  http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/24/living/banned-books-week/index.html

In early 2010, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Yelp, Inc. and alleged that it had attempted to force a Long Beach veterinary hospital into paying $300 a month "to suppress or delete reviews that disparaged the hospital."  The following month, nine additional businesses joined the class-action lawsuit and "two similar lawsuits" were filed.  Yelp denied that its sales force was "strong arming" businesses and in response to the lawsuits, Yelp altered its "review policy" and added new web features in April 2010 to deter misconceptions by business owners.   In an effort to increase review process transparency, Yelp stopped offering business advertisers the option to bring a positive review to the top position.This collection of 2010 lawsuits was combined into one "potential class-action lawsuit" and was dismissed by San Francisco U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in 2011.  Despite objections from the plaintiff's lawyer,Chen ruled that Yelp's choices for which user reviews to display on the site were covered by the Communications Decency Act which protects Internet companies from liability concerns caused by user-generated content.  In August 2012, two New Haven, CT business owners alleged that Yelp had removed positive reviews after they declined to buy advertising.  In October, Yelp "began using a computer filter to help uncover companies that purchase[d] fake positive reviews" and published the names of those companies.  ABC news reported that several companies were offering to pay people to publish positive reviews on the Yelp website and that "according to various online reports, as many as 30 percent of online reviews are fake."  In November, CBS Denver reported a complaint from a "small business owner" about Yelp's review filtering system.   In 2013, a California court upheld Yelp's right to use "an automated review filter to suppress" inappropriate business reviews using an undisclosed criterion.  Yelp successfully defended itself in a similar case (Levitt v. Yelp) in 2011.  In July, an article in the International Business Times reported that the company continues to be criticized outside the courtroom and that "anti-Yelp sentiment is rampant on the Internet and social media."  As of July 2013, the Federal Trade Commission has received almost 700 complaints against Yelp in the prior 4 years.  In October 2012, the company's web site began using a consumer alert (or badge of shame) on those business listings which they concluded were guilty of buying reviews.  The alert is designed to remain for 3 months before being removed.  In August 2013 Yelp Inc. launched a series of town hall style meetings in an attempt to remove misconceptions amongst local business owners.  The company plans to hold these events in 22 major American cities before year end.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp,_Inc. 

hodgepodge (n.)  also hodge podge, hodge-podge, early 15c., hogpoch, alteration of hotchpotch (late 14c.) "a kind of stew," especially "one made with goose, herbs, spices, wine, and other ingredients," earlier an Anglo-French legal term (late 13c.) meaning "collection of property in a common 'pot' before dividing it equally," from Old French hochepot "stew, soup," first element from hocher "to shake," from a Germanic source (cf. Middle High German hotzen "shake").  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hodgepodge  Hodge-podge is a word used to describe a confused or disorderly mass or collection of things; a "mess" or a "jumble."  The forerunner term hotchpotch is still (also) used, especially in British English.  Hodge-podge or Hodgepodge may also refer to:  Hodge-Podge, a character from the comic strip Bloom County; Hodge-Podge, a type of mutton soup; Hodgepodge, a Neal Morse album.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodge-podge 

In European history, the Middle Ages, or Medieval period, lasted from the 5th to the 15th century.It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the early modern period.  The Middle Ages is the middle period of the traditional division of Western history into Antiquity, Medieval, and Modern periods.  The period is subdivided into the Early, the High, and the Late Middle Ages.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages 

Electricity is the lifeblood of many aspects of our world.  Without volts and amps, many of our technological innovations would cease to exist.  Even our bodies wouldn't function without an electrical charge zipping through our cells.  But what electricity gives, electricity can take away.

Although this form of energy is vital to so much of our lives, it's one of those things that are only good in the right amounts.  Too much electricity can electrocute people.  Likewise, it can kill our modern electronics and machines.  But thanks to Michael Faraday, the brilliant 19th-century scientist, and one of his namesake inventions, the Faraday cage, we humans have developed plenty of ways to control electricity and make it safer for our computers, cars and other inventions -- and for us, too.  Faraday cages shield their contents from static electric fields.  An electric field is a force field surrounding a charged particle, such as an electron or proton.  Nathan Chandler 

Read much more at:  http://science.howstuffworks.com/faraday-cage.htm 

D-Day, the Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor

·         During the hour before midnight on 5 June, 1944, the roar of hundreds of aircraft engines in a constant stream could be heard over villages near airfields in southern and central England.  Three airborne divisions were taking to the air in over 1200 aircraft. 

·         On the water, the armada was the largest fleet that had ever put to sea.  Nearly 5,000 landing ships and assault craft were escorted by six battleships, four monitors, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers and 152 escort vessels, with 277 minesweepers clearing channels ahead of them.  Most were British, American and Canadian, but there were also French, Polish, Dutch and Norwegian warships. 

·         On 13 July, the British Second Army held what was supposed to be a victory parade in the Place Saint-Martin.  A Scottish pipe band began to play.  The bewilderment on the faces of the French crowd was plain.  They had never heard the 'Marseillaise' played on bagpipes.

·         The United States Army was the most mechanized force that the world had ever seen . . . a single tank on average consumed 8,000 gallons of fuel a week . . . the 3rd Armored Division estimated that just following the road, the division required 60,000 gallons a day . . . on top of the fuel, an armored division required thirty-five tons of rations per day for 21,000 men including all those attached to it . . .

·         The leading American elements from the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron and the 4th Infantry Division entered Paris 25 August at 07.30 hours from the southern side.  They found ‘the people bewildered and afraid of us.  They were not sure whether we were Americans or Germans.'  But once they were convinced of the Americans' identity ‘then the fun started'.

·         Altogether 19,890 French civilians were killed during the liberation of Normandy  . . .  this was on top of the 15,000 French killed and 19,000 injured during the preparoty bombing for Overlord in the first five months of 1944. . .  it is a sobering thought that 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied action during the course of the war . . . a figure which exceeds the total number of British killed by German bombing. 

Books by Antony Beevor 

Crete – The Battle and the Resistance, London, 1990

——, Stalingrad, London, 1998
——, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, London, 2002
——, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, London, 2006
——, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, London, 2009
Beevor, Antony & Cooper, Artemis, Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, London, 1994
Beevor, Antony & Vinogradova, Lyuba, [eds.] A Writer at War – Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945, London, 2005  http://www.antonybeevor.com/index.php/previous-books/the-second-world-war/bibliography-ww2-2/ 

Military designations of days and hours

D-Day is the unnamed day on which an operation commences or is due to commence.  This may be the commencement of hostilities or any other operation.  The most famous D-Day was June 6, 1944, when "Operation Overlord" began.  Contrary to popular belief, the "D" does not stand for any specific word – the most popular being disembark. (NATO).  According to http://www.history.army.mil/faq/ddaydef.htm the "D" stands for "Day".

H-Hour is the specific time at which an operation or exercise commences, or is due to commence (this term is used also as a reference for the designation of days/hours before or after the event). (NATO)  Find terms starting with all letters of the alphabet at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_designation_of_days_and_hours

Affordable Care Act:  the Marketplace and what’s changing in 2014

Whether you’re uninsured, you’ve been denied coverage in the past, or you just want to explore new options, the Health Insurance Marketplace will give you more choice and control over your health coverage.  The Marketplace will operate in all states, so no matter where you live you’ll have access to coverage.  In the Marketplace, you can compare coverage options based on price, benefits, quality, and other features important to you.  You can choose the combination of price and benefits that fits your budget and meets your needs.  You can get lower costs on coverage:  the Marketplace application will tell you if you’re eligible for a new way to get lower costs on your monthly premiums or out-of-pocket costs for private insurance.  You’ll also learn if you can get free or low-cost coverage through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  Essential health benefits are covered in the Marketplace:  All plans must offer a comprehensive set of essential health benefits including doctor visits, preventive care, hospitalization, prescriptions, and more.  Pre-existing conditions will be covered:  Plans won’t be able to deny you coverage or charge you more due to pre-existing health conditions, including a pregnancy or disability.  You can get help in your area:  If you need help finding a plan, several kinds ofhelp will be available to give you personalized assistance with the process.  Fees begin:  Beginning 2014, most people are required to have health coverage.  If they don’t, they may have to pay a fee.  Open enrollment for Marketplace plans begins October 1, 2013.  Coverage begins as early as January 1, 2014. Find out how you can get ready now.

https://www.healthcare.gov/how-does-the-affordable-care-act-affect-me/ 

Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau (born 1948) is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip.  In 1975, he became the first comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer, traditionally awarded to editorial-page cartoonists.  He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 1990.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Trudeau 

Pulitzer Prize past winners & finalists by category  http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat 

Reactions to simple expressions and what they mean

Methinks “uh huh” may also mean that someone is pretending to be listening / following along, while in fact is distracted with something else.

UH...oh  means something bad will happen or I think I just made a mistake.

Most young children pick up simple expressions easily and also non-verbal mannerisms such as pointing with the index finger.

Non-verbal communication is a system consisting of a range of features often used together to aid expression.  The combination of these features is often a subconscious choice made by native speakers or even sub-groups/sub-cultures within a language group.  The main components of the system are:   Kinesics (body language) Body motions such as shrugs, foot tapping, drumming fingers, eye movements such as winking, facial expressions, and gestures; Proxemics (proximity) Use of space to signal privacy or attraction; Haptics Touch; Oculesics Eye contact; Chronemics Use of time, waiting, pausing; Olfactics Smell; Vocalics Tone of voice, timbre, volume, speed; Sound symbols Grunting, mmm, er, ah, uh-huh, mumbling; Silence Pausing, waiting, secrecy; Posture Position of the body, stance; Adornment Clothing, jewellery, hairstyle; and Locomotion Walking, running, staggering, limping. 

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/non-verbal-communication 

Non-verbal communication is absent in the written word.  Without facial expressions and gestures, words (notably in e-mail) may seem harsher than intended. 

100 Mostly Small But Expressive Interjections by Mark Nichol  Check words beginning with U to find variations of spelling used in the last muse (Common expressions--easy to use, but hard to write out?)  http://www.dailywritingtips.com/100-mostly-small-but-expressive-interjections/ 

Sept. 25, 2013  The first computer built entirely with carbon nanotubes has been unveiled, opening the door to a new generation of digital devices.  "Cedric" is only a basic prototype but could be developed into a machine which is smaller, faster and more efficient than today's silicon models.  Nanotubes have long been touted as the heir to silicon's throne, but building a working computer has proven awkward.  The computer operates on just one bit of information, and can only count to 32.  "In human terms, Cedric can count on his hands and sort the alphabet.  But he is, in the full sense of the word, a computer," says co-author Max Shulaker.  "There is no limit to the tasks it can perform, given enough memory".  In computing parlance, Cedric is "Turing complete". In principle, it could be used to solve any computational problem.  It runs a basic operating system which allows it to swap back and forth between two tasks - for instance, counting and sorting numbers.  And unlike previous carbon-based computers, Cedric gets the answer right every time.   Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow cylinders composed of a single sheet of carbon atoms.  They have exceptional properties which make them ideal as a semiconductor material for building transistors, the on-off switches at the heart of electronics.  For starters, CNTs are so thin - thousands could fit side-by-side in a human hair - that it takes very little energy to switch them off.  James Morgan  Read much more at:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24232896  See also Stanford Researchers Create the World's First Working Carbon Nanotube Computer in Nature World News, Sept. 26. 2013  at http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4173/20130926/stanford-researchers-create-worlds-first-working-carbon-nanotube-computer.htm and Carbon nanotube computer in Nature, international weekly journal of science at:  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v501/n7468/full/nature12502.html 

September 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.  There are 96 days remaining until the end of the year.  Events:

1580 – Sir Francis Drake finishes his circumnavigation of the Earth.

1777 – British troops Philadelphia campaign occupy Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.

1789 – Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first United States Secretary of State, John Jay is appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States, Samuel Osgood is appointed the first United States Postmaster General, and Edmund Randolph is appointed the first United States Attorney General.

1907 – New Zealand and Newfoundland each become dominions within the British Empire.
1914 – The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is established by the Federal Trade Commission Act.
1960 – In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
1981 – Baseball: Nolan Ryan sets a Major League record by throwing his fifth no-hitter.
1984 – The United Kingdom agrees to the handover of Hong Kong  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_26

Raising Alexandria by Andrew Lawler

There’s no sign of the grand marbled metropolis founded by Alexander the Great on the busy streets of this congested Egyptian city of five million, where honking cars spouting exhaust whiz by shabby concrete buildings.  But climb down a rickety ladder a few blocks from Alexandria’s harbor, and the legendary city suddenly looms into view.  Down here, standing on wooden planks stretching across a vast underground chamber, the French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur points out Corinthian capitals, Egyptian lotus-shaped columns and solid Roman bases holding up elegant stone arches.  He picks his way across the planks in this ancient cistern, which is three stories deep and so elaborately constructed that it seems more like a cathedral than a water supply system.  The cistern was built more than a thousand years ago with pieces of already-ancient temples and churches.  Beneath him, one French and one Egyptian worker are examining the stonework with flashlights.  “We supposed old Alexandria was destroyed,” Empereur says, his voice bouncing off the damp smooth walls, “only to realize that when you walk on the sidewalks, it is just below your feet.”  With all its lost grandeur, Alexandria has long held poets and writers in thrall, from E. M. Forster, author of a 1922 guide to the city’s vanished charms, to the British novelist Lawrence Durrell, whose Alexandria Quartet, published in the late 1950s, is a bittersweet paean to the haunted city.  But archaeologists have tended to give Alexandria the cold shoulder, preferring the more accessible temples of Greece and the rich tombs along the Nile.  The rediscovery of ancient Alexandria began 14 years ago, when Empereur went for a swim.  He had joined an Egyptian documentary film crew that wanted to work underwater near the 15th-century fort of Qait Bey, now a museum and tourist site.  The Egyptian Navy had raised a massive statue from the area in the 1960s, and Empereur and the film crew thought the waters would be worth exploring.  Most scholars believed that the Pharos had stood nearby, and that some of the huge stone blocks that make up the fortress may have come from its ruins.  No one knows exactly what the Pharos looked like. Literary references and sketches from ancient times describe a structure that rose from a vast rectangular base—itself a virtual skyscraper—topped by a smaller octagonal section, then a cylindrical section, culminating in a huge statue, probably of Poseidon or Zeus. Scholars say the Pharos, completed about 283 B.C., dwarfed all other human structures of its era.  It survived an astonishing 17 centuries before collapsing in the mid-1300s.  Franck Goddio is an urbane diver who travels the world examining shipwrecks, from a French slave ship to a Spanish galleon.  He and Empereur are rivals—there are rumors of legal disputes between them and neither man will discuss the other—and in the early 1990s Goddio began to work on the other side of Alexandria’s harbor, opposite the fortress.  He discovered columns, statues, sphinxes and ceramics associated with the Ptolemies’ royal quarter—possibly even the palace of Cleopatra herself.  In 2008, Goddio and his team located the remains of a monumental structure, 328 feet long and 230 feet wide, as well as a finger from a bronze statue that Goddio estimates would have stood 13 feet tall.  Perhaps most significant, he has found that much of ancient Alexandria sank beneath the waves and remains remarkably intact.   This 2007 article was adapted from its original form and updated to include new information for Smithsonian’s Mysteries of the Ancient World bookazine published in Fall 2009.  Read much more at:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Raising-Alexandria.html 

Beneath your feet  Roman ruins still exist underground in various countries, such as England, France, and--of course--Italy. 

The MacArthur Foundation has named its 2013 class of MacArthur Fellows, recognizing 24 exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for even more significant contributions in the future.  Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000 (increased from $500,000) paid out over five years.  Without stipulations or reporting requirements, the Fellowship provides maximum freedom for recipients to follow their own creative vision.  Meet the 2013 MacArthur Fellows at:  http://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/2013/ 

Range Poultry Production Systems:  commonalities between systems by Anne Fannatico  June 29, 2013  Range poultry production offers potential niche markets for producers interested in boosting income and diversifying operations.  Common features of range poultry production systems include access to fresh pasture and the use of non-medicated, natural feeds.  The specific production system used is only a small part of a larger picture that allows a producer to access niche markets.  Many of these systems are integrated with cattle, sheep, or goats, which is especially helpful in keeping the forage at a manageable level for the chickens.  Birds forage on plants, insects, and worms but concentrate feed is important for commercial production and to properly balance nutrients.  Systems discussed are:  Pastured poultry, Free-range, Semi-intensive, and Permaculture.  http://www.apppa.org/content/12620  Read Kentucky farmer David Wilson's story and recipe at:  http://www.courant.com/entertainment/restaurants/a-la-carte/sc-food-0920-better-chicken-20130925,0,5783686,full.story  Sept. 25, 2013 

Common expressions--easy to use, but hard to write out?   Take the simple expression 'uh huh.' Uh huh can mean that we're listening to what the person is saying, so this is a way of keeping them talking.  It can also mean yes, or it can be pronounced 'um hmm.'"  Unh unh is no.  

Uh-Huh!  Lyrics and Actions at:  http://supersimplelearning.com/songs/original-series/two/uh-huh/

Example of Huh? as a sarcastic comment in the lead-in to Glenn Kessler's Fact Checker, the Truth Behind the Rhetoric:  One lawmaker says Obamacare is the most unpopular law in the history of the country.  Another says 59 percent support it.  Huh?  

Full article:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/25/how-unpopular-or-popular-is-obamacare/ 

Sen. Ted Cruz's all-night talk-a-thon on the need to defund Obamacare has finally ended, clocking in at 21 hours and 19 minutes.  After starting at 2:41 p.m. Sept. 24, 2013, Cruz wrapped up at noon Sept. 25.  Sen. Harry Reid had offered to allow the Texas Republican senator to continue speaking until 1 p.m., but Cruz declined the offer because he wanted to be granted unlimited time to speak.  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-pulls-nighter-senate-obamacare/story?id=20365712 

Sen. Ted Cruz decided at 8:04 p.m. on Sept. 24, 2013, just over five hours into what we're calling his talk-a-thon, to read from the Dr. Seuss classic “Green Eggs and Ham.”  The story now appears on the official Senate record.  Cruz broke with Dr. Seuss' classic rhyming couplet structure in order to modify the text:  "When Americans tried it, they discovered they did not like green eggs and ham and they did not like Obamacare either," Cruz read.  "They did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house or with a mouse.  It is not working."  “Green Eggs and Ham” was not the only children's literature Cruz referenced in his bid to stand in one place with cameras on him for a long time.  Within the first half hour, Cruz invoked the classic tale of perseverance, “The Little Engine that Could.”  Still talking Sept. 25, shortly before 9 EDT, Cruz referenced the work of novelist and Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand.  He chose to read from her longest novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” which, like “The Little Engine that Could,” also heavily features the theme of perseverance, and of course trains.  http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-ted-cruz-dr-seuss-ayn-rand-to-stall-senate-20130925,0,5096260.story 

The Senate will vote on a motion to proceed on the Continuing Resolution Sept. 25 at 1 p.m. ET.  If the motion to proceed passes, Senators will have 30 hours of debate on the measure to fund the federal government at current sequester levels of $986.3 billion through December 15 and to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Follow the procedure at:  http://www.c-span.org/