Wineries With an English Accent by Christine Ajudua  October 15, 2015  One recent Saturday morning, four Australians, two Britons and this reporter met beside 17 acres of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier vines, ready to sample what’s been called one of the world’s finest sparkling wines, at the source.  We were 88 miles from France’s Champagne region, on the English side of the Channel, in a two-pub village called Ditchling, in East Sussex.  Here lies Ridgeview Estate (ridgeview.co.uk), which took the top prize for bubbly at the 2010 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA), never before given to a producer outside France.  This was no anomaly.  Increasingly, English sparkling wines have been racking up international awards, and like Ridgeview, many hail from the South Downs.  With the same chalky soil as Champagne’s Côte des Blancs—geologically linked by the Paris Basin, which runs under the English Channel—the rolling grassland, ancient woodland and white cliffs between Hampshire and Sussex counties in southeast England encompass not only part of Britain’s newest national park, but also a burgeoning wine region.  And rising temperatures have been working in its favor.  Or, according to the DWWA chairman Steven Spurrier—who organized the 1976 Paris tasting that famously pitted Californian wines against French and put Napa Valley on the map—“Part of it is global warming, but most of it is dedication, determination and deep pockets.”  Mark and Sarah Driver (a former hedge fund owner and a former lawyer turned fine-wine enthusiasts, husband and wife) bought 600 acres in a valley between Alfriston village and the East Sussex coast and started planting vines.  Their Rathfinny Estate (rathfinnyestate.com) recently opened as England’s largest vineyard.  With their Moët & Chandon–trained winemaker, the Drivers plan to produce one million bottles of “world-class” sparkling wine annually (last year, all of Britain released about 4 million) while creating a sustainable, state-of-the-art hub for English wine tourism.  See pictures at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/travel/wine-tasting-hampshire-sussex.html

16 Searches You Can Run on Wolfram Alpha That Don't Work on Google by David Nield  http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/16-searches-you-can-run-on-wolfram-alpha-that-dont-work-1733971884

Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers is a dance song based on the "Mashed Potato" dance craze, which is where The "Mash" in the title comes in.  The sound effects on the song were done as follows:  The coffin being opened was made by pulling a rusty nail out of a lump of wood with the claw of a hammer.  The bubbling sounds came from blowing through a straw in a glass of water.  The sound of the chains was made by dropping chains onto plywood planks on the record studio floor.  This is arguably the most successful novelty song of all time.  Bobby Pickett accomplished the rare feat of reaching the top 100 music chart three times with the same song.  http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=6618

See also The Monster Mash Man at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2534-2004Oct27.html?nav=rss_liveonline/entertainment

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow  Student Theater Production  Owens Community College 30335 Oregon Road  Perrysburg, OH  October 29 & 30 at 7:30 p.m., October 31 & November 1 at 2:00 p.m.  Mainstage Theatre  Tickets ($12 for general public, $8 for students; staff, faculty and alumni)  Washington Irving’s classic tale of Ichabod Crane & the Headless Horseman takes the stage at Owens for Halloween weekend!  For more information, call 567-661-2798.

Kid Theater with Tom Hanks  Tom Hanks and Jimmy read scenes written by elementary school kids where we gave them the title "Bridge of Spies," and they had to write the rest.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p1Iv9z8bOY  7:10

A U.S. appeals court ruled on October 16, 2015 that Google's massive effort to scan millions of books for an online library does not violate copyright law, rejecting claims from a group of authors that the project illegally deprives them of revenue.  The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers, and found that the project provides a public service without violating intellectual property law.  The authors sued Google, whose parent company is now named Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), in 2005, a year after the project was launched.  But Google argued that the effort would actually boost book sales by making it easier for readers to find works, while introducing them to books they might not otherwise have seen.  A lawyer for the authors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  Google had said it could face billions of dollars in potential damages if the authors prevailed.  Circuit Judge Denny Chin, who oversaw the case at the lower court level, dismissed the litigation in 2013, prompting the authors' appeal.  Chin found Google's scanning of tens of millions of books and posting "snippets" online constituted "fair use" under U.S. copyright law.  A unanimous three-judge appeals panel said the case "tests the boundaries of fair use," but found Google's practices were ultimately allowed under the law.  Joseph Ax  http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/16/us-google-books-idUSKCN0SA1S020151016

At a ceremony October 15, 2015 in Austin, Texas, three writers took home Kirkus Prizes:  Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hanya Yanagihara and Pam Muñoz Ryan.  The literary award, now in its second year, awards $50,000 to the winner in each category—nonfiction, fiction and young readers' literature.  Coates' Between the World and Me earned the honors in nonfiction.  In a statement, the judges praised it as "a formidable literary achievement and a crucial, urgent, and nuanced contribution to a long-overdue national conversation."  Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life continued its sterling run this literary awards season, winning the Kirkus for fiction.  Already a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and for the National Book Award Yanagihara's novel is "disturbing yet humane, capacious yet intimate, and never less than brilliant," according to the judges.  Pam Muñoz Ryan's Echo, a novel aimed at middle-grade readers, garnered the prize in young readers' literature.  The book, a quest tale centered on a mysterious harmonica, is nothing less than "a masterwork by a virtuoso storyteller," the judges said.  To be considered eligible for the prize, writers had to receive a starred review from the literary journal Kirkus Reviews.  The winners were selected from a pool of 1,032 eligible books.  http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/15/448961756/ta-nehisi-coates-hanya-yanagihara-and-pam-mu-oz-ryan-win-kirkus-prizes  Books can not be submitted just for the Kirkus Prize; eligibility for the Prize begins with the process of having a book reviewed by Kirkus Reviews.  (If your book is traditionally published, you or your publicist can learn how to submit your book for review by reading these guidelines.  If your book is self-published, you can submit your book to Kirkus’ indie department by following these guidelines.)  For answers to other questions, please visit the FAQ page for the Prize.  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/prize/rules/

Bingley, United Kingdom, 19 October 2015 – Emerald Group Publishing is marking International Open Access Week (19-25 October) with the launch of a Special Issue on Open Access (OA) from Online Information Review, with contributions from some of the world’s leading experts on the debate.   The aim of this Special Issue is to contribute insights, analysis and commentary towards an enhanced understanding of how Open Access “can be made to work in practice” (Pinfield, 2015, p.604).  Some of the authors that have contributed articles to this Special Issue include:  • Martin Paul Eve, Senior Lecturer, Birkbeck, University of London and Director of Open Library of Humanities, an advocate for OA that has written prolifically on this topic; • Robin Osborne, Professor, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, argues that the most important feature of OA should be ‘accessibility’; • Stephen Pinfield, Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield, who looks at the challenges for various stakeholders in delivering OA; and • Melissa Terras, Professor, Department of Information Studies, University College London and Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, writes extensively on OA issues including exploring the effects of what happens when you tweet and blog about research papers.  This Special Issue has been published in line with Emerald’s Green Open Access Zero Embargo trial, applicable for all articles published in the company’s Library and Information Science (LIS) journal programme and selected Information and Knowledge Management journals. This empowers authors to self-archive their post-prints, and thus ensure the Special Issue content is Open Access.  http://www.bespacific.com/emerald-group-publishing-launches-new-contribution-to-open-access-debate/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1365  October 19, 2015  On this date in 1386, the Universität Heidelberg held its first lecture, making it the oldest German university,  On this date in 1789, John Jay was sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.