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BUNNY POEMS FOR SPRING AND EASTER
March 23, 2016 National
Recording Registry Recognizes "Mack the Knife," Motown and
Mahler Two cuts at Kurt Weill's
"Mack the Knife"—by Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin—will join Billy
Joel's single "Piano Man," Gloria Gaynor's "I Will
Survive," the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go," a recording of
the fourth quarter of Wilt Chamberlain's historic 100-point game and a poignant
capture of Mahler's ninth symphony among the recordings recently selected for
induction into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Acting Librarian of Congress David S. Mao
today named 25 new sound recordings to the registry that have been recognized
for their cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society
and the nation's aural legacy.
"These recordings, by a wide range of artists in many genres of
music and in spoken word, will be preserved for future listeners," Mao
said. "This collection of blues,
jazz, rock, country and classical recordings, interspersed with important
recordings of sporting events, speeches, radio shows and comedy, helps
safeguard the record of what we've done and who we are." Under the terms of the National Recording
Preservation Act of 2000, the Librarian, with advice from the Library's
National Recording Preservation Board (NRPB), annually selects 25 recordings
that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and
are at least 10 years old. The
selections for the 2015 registry bring the total number of recordings on the
registry to 450, only a minuscule portion of the Library's vast recorded-sound
collection of more than 3 million items.
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2016/16-056.html
Home in vs. hone in
Home in means to
direct on a target. The phrasal verb derives
from the 19th-century use of homing pigeons, but it resurged in the 20th
century to refer to missiles that home in on their targets. It’s also commonly used metaphorically, where
to home in on something is to focus on and make progress toward it. Hone in began
as an alteration of home in, and many people regard it as an
error. It is a very common, though,
especially in the U.S. and Canada—so common that many dictionaries now list
it—and there are arguments in its favor.
Hone means to sharpen or to perfect, and we can think
of homing in as a sharpening of focus or a perfecting of one’s trajectory
toward a target. So while it might not
make strict logical sense, extending hone this way is not a
huge leap. Outside North America, home
in prevails by a huge margin.
It also prevails in North America, but only by a ratio of about two to
one. Hone in is common even in technical, scientific, and
military contexts, where one might expect home in to
prevail. A few American and Canadian
publishers clearly favor home in as a matter of policy, but
most apparently have no strictly enforced policy one way or the other. http://grammarist.com/eggcorns/home-in-hone-in/
Copyright Law:
Why is it okay to use a DVR or
DVD burner to record a movie on cable TV, but it's considered wrong to copy
that very same movie from a rented DVD? by Richard Knight This is a good, valid question, but I regret the
answer is technically complex, logically convoluted, and generally
unsatisfactory in the end. In summary, I think the
answer can best be summarized as "because each use-scenario resulted from
court decisions decided at different times, using different technological
backdrops, and taking different risks to copyright economics into
consideration." A bit longer answer--which presumes a basic
understanding of the ins-and-outs of general copyright laws--is that recording
a digital cable TV signal onto a DVR or DVD was not much different than doing
so for an analog cable TV signal on an analog tape (e.g., taping a t.v. movie
on VHS), which in turn was considered akin to audio recording an open-air AM/FM
radio broadcast, and the courts had long ago decided that making a personal
recording of a radio broadcast was not a copyright violation. A key distinction here was that the resultant
"copy" was something less than the original in terms of quality,
completeness, purity, etc., and/or at most simply "time-delayed" the
content (but with commercials, station ID, etc. still intact), and thus did not
diminish the economic value of the original.
On the other hand, copying a movie from a rented DVD to another
DVD--which results in a perfect digital copy of the
original--was deemed to be more akin to copying computer software from one CD
to another or from one CD to more than one computer. Because this latter
activity was already determined by the courts--at a much later time and in a different
context--to be akin to every other form of completely illegal copyright
theft--the same reasoning was applied to DVD/digital media technology because
of its technical similarity and perceived negative impact on the economic value
to the original (i.e., to specifically avoid purchasing the additional copies
of software). As a result, merely
"time delaying" broadcast content was considered permissible--as long
as no further copying or distribution occurred, and thus no economic
detriment--while making perfect copies of digital content (to avoid purchasing
the content) was considered impermissible because it equated to a lost
sale.
Earl Hamner
Jr.,
the Virginia-born writer who created not only TV’s folksy, Depression-era
family drama “The Waltons” but the California wine country prime-time soap
opera “Falcon Crest,” died March 24, 2016 at the age of 92. In a long career that included writing
episodes of “The Twilight Zone” in the 1960s and adapting the E.B. White
classic “Charlotte’s Web” for a 1973 animated film, Hamner was best known for
tapping his childhood memories of growing up in a large family in
“Spencer’s Mountain,” Hamner’s childhood-inspired 1961
novel, was turned into a 1963 movie starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara. His 1970 book “The Homecoming: A Novel About
Spencer’s Mountain,” inspired by Christmas Eve 1933 when Hamner’s father was
late in arriving home, was turned into “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story,” a
two-hour CBS television movie that introduced the family, renamed the Waltons,
to television viewers in December 1971. Its
success led to the weekly hourlong TV series.
Dennis McLellan
There will only be one type of candy served at this year's White House
Easter Egg Roll and it was invented by a 7-year-old.
The candy is zollipops. Its inventor, Alina Morse, now 10, came
up with the idea to create a lollipop that's actually good for your teeth three
years ago. The ingredients she settled
on (xylitol and erythritol) help to reduce the risk of tooth decay and
neutralize acid found in the mouth after a meal.
After settling on the perfect formula, Alina invested $7,500 of
her savings from her grandparents to start the company her 5-year-old sister
named "Zollipops" in 2014. Business
has been so good that Alina has committed 10 percent of company profits to
bringing oral health education to schools. Last year, Zollidrops–and its inventor–were
invited to the White House Easter Egg Roll by First Lady
Michelle Obama and they'll return March 28, 2016 as the event's only
candy. Tiare Dunlap http://www.people.com/article/zollidrops-alina-morse-10-year-old-invented-candy-served-white-house-easter-egg-roll See also https://www.whitehouse.gov/eastereggroll
March 26, 2016 Momentous
Week in Cuba by Michael Wissenstein
The week opened with the arrival of President Barack Obama in Air Force
One, accompanied by more than 1,000 employees of a government that waged a cold
war against Cuba for more than 50 years.
The week ended with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie
Watts firing "Jumpin' Jack Flash" ''Sympathy for the Devil" and
"Satisfaction" into a jubilant crowd from 3-story-tall
high-definition television screens and thumping towers of speakers. "Havana, Cuba, and the Rolling
Stones!" Jagger cried. "This is amazing! It's really good to be here!
It's good to see you guys!" The
Stones romped through 18 of their classics, picking up force as the crowd in
the open-air Ciudad Deportiva, or Sports City, jumped and chanted "Rollings!
Rollings!" The Rolling Stones were
the biggest mainstream rock act to play in Cuba since its 1959 revolution
brought a communist government to power and isolated the island from the United
States and its allies. Ordinary Cubans
said they felt shot through with energy, reconnected with the world. "After today I can die," said
62-year-old night watchman Joaquin Ortiz. "This is like my last wish, seeing the
Rolling Stones." http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Music/2016/0326/A-momentous-week-in-Cuba-From-Barack-Obama-to-Mick-Jagger
Jim Harrison, 'Legends Of The Fall' Author, Dies At 78
by Tom Vitale Jim Harrison wrote
more than three dozen books, including the novels Dalva and True North, the
novella Legends of the Fall and
many collections of poetry. He died Saturday March 26, 2016. Harrison set his stories in the untamed
corners of America—the Big Sky country of Montana, the arid deserts of the
Southwest, the swamplands and forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he
spent his summers. Harrison described
the "massive presence of Lake Superior" beside the
"undifferentiated wilderness." There were rivers, creeks and beaver ponds. "I had a wolf right outside my cabin
years ago," he recalls. "It
was a lovely experience." Read Harrison's 2007 poem "Water" at http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/27/469817873/legends-of-the-fall-author-who-found-freedom-outdoors-dies-at-78
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1447
March 28, 2016 On this date in
1890, Paul Whiteman, American violinist, composer, and bandleader,
was born. On this date in 1986, Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta),
American singer-songwriter, dancer, producer, and actress, was born.
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