Friday, August 14, 2015

Horseracing and gaming are related activities that often appeal to a similar demographic.  The development and increased legalization of casino/slots-style gaming and the establishment of state sponsored lotteries have increased competition for gambling/gaming dollars across the country.  The relationship between racetrack and casino/slots-style gaming and the development of “racinos”, a hybrid of racetrack and casino, are explored in this 35-page paper from Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics at http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/08058.pdf

German-born Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann famously said, “In nature, light creates the color.  In the picture, color creates the light.”  This idea is beautifully manifested in the work of Stanley Whitney (b. 1946), whose compact but exhilarating survey exhibition—28 pictures on canvas and paper from 2008 to now—is on view at the Studio Museum in Harlem through October 25, 2015.  The show’s title, “Dance the Orange,” derives from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and is as joyously applicable to Mr. Whitney’s paintings as are Hofmann’s words. The exhibition’s eponymous painting from 2013 is a 4-foot-square oil-on-linen picture—a modest size for Mr. Whitney, whose paintings range up to 8 feet on a side.  Four horizontal rows of rectangles—one of the middle ones packed with slightly vertical, brightly colored forms, the bottom row looking like a narrow peek into an elevator stopped between floors—nudge one another into a casual harmony.  Peter Plagens  http://www.wsj.com/articles/stanley-whitney-dance-the-orange-review-1439332061?tesla=y  The Studio Museum is located at 144 W. 125th St. in Manhattan.  Phone:  (212) 864-4500  See also http://www.studiomuseum.org/

The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco whose stated mission is to change the way the world learns.  It has been described by the New York Times as the most important science museum to have opened since the mid-20th century, an achievement attributed to "the nature of its exhibits, its wide-ranging influence and its sophisticated teacher training program".   Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory nature of its exhibits and its self-identification as a center for informal learning has led to it being cited as the prototype for participatory museums around the world.  The Exploratorium was founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer and opened in 1969 at the Palace of Fine Arts, its home until January 2, 2013.  On April 17, 2013, the Exploratorium reopened at Piers 15 and 17 on San Francisco's Embarcadero.  The Exploratorium at Pier 15 was designed by architecture firm EHDD.  The piers had been neglected for decades leading up to the Exploratorium’s move, and extensive renovation and repair was required.  Nearly two thirds of the pilings under Pier 15 were repaired, including almost every piling needed to provide structural integrity, and new pilings were sunk.   The use of natural light whenever possible challenged exhibit designers relying on carefully controlled light levels; this was solved by using curtains and glare-reducing paint colors.  Other conflicts between construction and energy use included the glass in the Observatory, which would have presented a problem in cooling the building on warm days.  This was overcome by adding fritted glass to the windows in thin horizontal lines through the panes to decrease the transparency without affecting the views.  The fritting also makes the reflective surfaces of the Bay Observatory safe for birds.    Despite being generally thought of as a science museum, the Exploratorium has always incorporated both science and art.  As early as 1966, Frank Oppenheimer presented a paper discussing the connections between art and science, and the role of a museum in appealing to both casual visitors and serious students of all ages.  The formal artist in residence program was started in 1974, but artworks such as Bob Miller’s Sun Painting were commissioned shortly after the museum was opened in 1969.  Since the founding of the artist in residence program, over 250 artworks in various disciplines have been created.  Each year, the museum invites ten to twenty artists to participate in residencies ranging from two weeks to two years.  Artists-in-residence work with staff and the visiting public to create original installations, exhibits, or performances.  Artists are given a stipend, housing, travel expenses, and technical support, and they have at their disposal the Exploratorium's full array of metal and woodworking shops and materials.  Two artists-in-residence who went on to become staff members have been awarded MacArthur Fellowship "genius" grants:  Walter Kitunduand Ned Kahn.  The new Embarcadero campus opened with more than 40 pieces by prominent artists, including Douglas Hollis, Golan Levin, Lucky Dragons, Amy Balkin, and Fujiko Nakaya. The Center for Art and Inquiry, a new project at the new location, is an initiative to catalyze and orchestrate art across the museum.  The Exploratorium has an equally long history with musical, film and other performances.  Participating artists and performers included Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Ali Akbar Khan, Trimpin, and The Mermenhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratorium  See also http://www.exploratorium.edu/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritted_glass

Ramesses the Great by John Ray  Ramesses II fought the Hittites and signed the world's first official peace treaty.  He undertook an unparalleled building programme, had over one hundred children and reigned for 67 years.  Ramesses has gained a multimedia afterlife:  his mummy is flown from Cairo to Paris to be exhibited and re­autopsied, and a series of airport­lounge best­sellers by a French writer, Christian Jacq, gives a soap­opera version of his life.  Yul Brynner captured the essence of his personality in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, and in popular imagination Ramesses II has become the Pharaoh of the Exodus.  A form of the king's throne­name passed into Classical tradition as Ozymandias, and was immortalised as a symbol of ostentatious tyranny by the poet Shelley.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/ramesses_01.shtml  
See the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ozymandias

Dreaming of Xanadu:  A Guide to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” by Bob Holman and Margery Snyder  Read about Kubla Khan and link to the poem at  http://poetry.about.com/od/poems/a/kublakhanguide_3.htm  
See also The Abyssinian Paradise in Coleridge and Milton at http://www.jstor.org/stable/432654?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The ketchup is a vegetable controversy refers to proposed United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) regulations, early in the presidency of Ronald Reagan, that intended to provide more flexibility in meal planning to local school lunch administrators coping with National School Lunch Plan subsidy cuts enacted by the Omnibus Regulation Acts of 1980 and 1981.  The regulations allowed administrators the opportunity to credit items not explicitly listed that met nutritional requirements.  While ketchup was not mentioned in the original regulations, pickle relish was used as an example of an item that could count as a vegetable.  A similar controversy arose in 2011 when Congress passed a bill prohibiting the USDA from increasing the amount of tomato paste required to constitute a vegetable; the bill allowed pizza with two tablespoons of tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable.  The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1980, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, reduced the Federal School Lunch and Child Nutrition Programs budget by approximately eight percent.  Building upon these reductions, the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 (passed as the Gramm-Latta Budget) made further spending cuts to the Federal School Lunch Program decreasing its fiscal year 1982 budget by 25 percent.  To administer the requirements made by both Omnibus Reconciliation Acts of 1980 and 1981, the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) was tasked with proposing ways to implement the regulations while maintaining nutritional requirements for school lunches despite the lower funding.  Among the recommendations made by the Food and Nutrition Service's September 3, 1981 regulations was a proposal to give local school lunch administrators flexibility in accrediting substitute food items that met FNS nutritional requirements and regulations.  The report stated an item could not be counted as a bread that was not enriched or whole-grain, "but could credit a condiment such as pickle relish as a vegetable."  While ketchup was not specifically mentioned as a potential substitute, critics demonstrated outrage in Congress and in the media against the Ronald Reagan administration for cutting school lunch budgets and allowing ketchup and other condiments to count as vegetables.  The Food and Nutrition Service proposed regulations had roots in four previous pieces of legislation:  the National School Lunch Act of 1946, the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1980, and the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981.  In 2011, Congress passed a bill that barred the USDA from changing its nutritional guidelines for school lunches.  The proposed changes would have limited the amount of potatoes allowed in lunches, required more green vegetables, and declared a half-cup of tomato paste to count as a serving of vegetables, rather than the current standard of 2 tablespoons.  The blocking of these proposed higher standards meant that the smaller amount of tomato paste in pizza could continue to be counted as a vegetable in school lunches.  The move resulted in widespread mockery, with headlines saying Congress had declared pizza to be a vegetable.  The blocking legislation was criticized heavily, since the change had also been lobbied for by food companies such as ConAgra, and the block was a substantial blow to efforts to make school lunches healthier. 

37 amazing images of the 2015 Perseid meteor shower 


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com    Issue 1338  August 14, 2015  On this date in 1888, an audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made, was played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London, England.  On this date in 1893, France became the first country to introduce motor vehicle registration.

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