Supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is co-writing a new book to be released in January 2017.  The book, entitled My Own Words, will comprise of a “selection of writings and speeches by Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the supreme court, on being Jewish, on law and lawyers in opera and on the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US constitution”.  My Own Words will be a collaborative effort between Ginsburg and her authorized biographers, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W Williams.  Ginsburg will write an introduction to the book and Hartnett and Williams will write introductions to each of the chapters with quotes from the hundreds of interviews they have conducted with Ginsburg for a forthcoming biography of the justice.  Hartnett and Williams will also assist Ginsburg in selecting the writings to be included in the book.  In 2015, the book Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, based on a fan site, proved a popular hit.  Mahita Gajanan  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/10/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-justice-new-book-my-own-words

More than 2,000 Cabinet positions exist today in the federal government.  All Cabinet members in the United States must go through Senate confirmation and be approved by the Senate before they can be officially appointed to their position.  More than 98 percent of Cabinet nominations are approved by the Senate.  http://www.ehow.com/facts_7251040_process-appointing-cabinet-members-us_.html

A Plagiarism Scandal Is Unfolding In The Crossword World by Oliver Roeder   A group of eagle-eyed puzzlers, using digital tools, has uncovered a pattern of copying in the professional crossword-puzzle world that has led to accusations of plagiarism and false identity.  Since 1999, Timothy Parker, editor of one of the nation’s most widely syndicated crosswords, has edited more than 60 individual puzzles that copy elements from New York Times puzzles, often with pseudonyms for bylines, a new database has helped reveal.  The puzzles in question repeated themes, answers, grids and clues from Times puzzles published years earlier.  Hundreds more of the puzzles edited by Parker are nearly verbatim copies of previous puzzles that Parker also edited.  Most of those have been republished under fake author names.  Nearly all this replication was found in two crosswords series edited by Parker:  the USA Today Crossword and the syndicated Universal Crossword.  (The copyright to both puzzles is held by Universal Uclick, which grew out of the former Universal Press Syndicate and calls itself “the leading distributor of daily puzzle and word games.”)  http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-plagiarism-scandal-is-unfolding-in-the-crossword-world/

The Constellations  Ever since people first wandered the Earth, great significance has been given to the celestial objects seen in the sky.  Throughout human history and across many different cultures, names and mythical stories have been attributed to the star patterns in the night sky, thus giving birth to what we know as constellations.  The ancient Greeks were the first to describe over half of the 88 constellations recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) today.  Forty eight of the constellations we know were recorded in the seventh and eighth books of Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest, although the exact origin of these constellations still remains uncertain.  Ptolemy’s descriptions are probably strongly influenced by the work of Eudoxus of Knidos in around 350 BC.  Between the 16th and 17th century AD, European astronomers and celestial cartographers added new constellations to the 48 previously described by Ptolemy; these new constellations were mainly “new discoveries” made by the Europeans who first explored the southern hemisphere.  Those who made particular contributions to the “new” constellations include the Polish-born, German astronomer Johannes Hevelius; three Dutch cartographers, Frederick de Houtman, Pieter Dirksz Keyser and Gerard Mercator; the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille; the Flemish mapmaker Petrus Plancius and the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.  Find names and charts at

 http://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/ 

More than 50 major players in the U.S. publishing industry are petitioning the White House and Congress to end the Cuba trade embargo as it pertains to books and educational materials. 

Calling the book embargo "counter to American ideals of free expression," the petition—endorsed by publishing companies, authors and agents—says "books are catalysts for greater cross-cultural understanding, economic development, free expression, and positive social change."  Publishers Weekly, which plans to run the petition on the cover of the magazine's March 14 edition, posted it on its website.  It says that last month about 40 American publishing industry representatives met with their counterparts in Havana to "build bridges of understanding and explore opportunities for greater cultural and economic collaboration."  The petition also notes that Cuba's adult literacy rate of nearly 100 percent is among the highest in the world.  It says there are plenty of commercial opportunities for American and Cuban publishers that could benefit "readers and writers everywhere."  The petition comes as the U.S. continues to work to normalize relations with the island nation and just ahead of President Obama's historic visit to Cuba on March 21-22.  He will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.   http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/10/469987895/publishing-heavyweights-petition-white-house-congress-to-end-cuba-book-embargo

Answers to State trivia questions  Three states have four letters in their names:  Iowa, Ohio and Utah.  Three states have thirteen letters in their names:  Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina.  Eight state names begin with the letter M:  Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri and Montana.   Eight state names begin with the letter N:  Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and North Dakota. 

Birds feature prominently in Shakespeare's plays and poetry.  But one of the bard's birds has become a major nuisance in the US.  Choughs, wrens, cormorants, owls, nightingales, larks and some 60 other species all have their place in the playwright's canon.  Such references have inspired bird lovers for centuries.  So much so that in 1890, a German immigrant named Eugene Schieffelin decided it would be a great idea to introduce as many of Shakespeare's birds as possible to North America.  One cold winter's day he released 60 starlings into New York's Central Park in the hope they would start breeding.  Unfortunately, they did.  The US is now home to an estimated 200 million European starlings.  Thickset and pugnacious, starlings are the bruisers of the avian world.  And they are now such a nuisance they are one of the few bird species unprotected by law.  "Starlings are lean and mean.  In the industry they're often called feathered bullets," says Michael Begier, National Coordinator for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Airports Wildlife Hazards Program.  "They're a particular problem at airports because they flock in very large numbers, and compared to other birds their bodies are very dense.  They are about 27% more dense than a herring gull which is a much larger bird."  When a flock of starlings strikes a plane the effects can be devastating.  In 1960 they caused the most deadly bird strike in US aviation history.  The birds flew into the engines of a plane as it took off from Boston's Logan Airport, and it crashed into the harbour, killing 62 people on board.  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27055030  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Acclimatization_Society

The assassination of Julius Caesar on March 15, 44BC is one of the most notorious events in history.  You may be familiar with a version of events in William Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar.  Find 10 things  about one of the world's most famous political murders in an article by   Martin Chilton at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/julius-caesars-assassination-10-facts-about-the-ides-of-march-mu/

In the mists of time, the early Romans began each month at the new moon.  They called that day the Kalends (Kalendae).  Two weeks later came the full moon, which they named the Ides (Idus).  Midway between the two was the half-moon, which they referred to as the Nones (Nonae).  For some inexplicable reason, they then chose to refer to every other day in the month in terms of its relationship to the next one of these coming up.  So they would say, “five days before the Kalends of March,” or “three days before the Nones of June”.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/12193529/The-Ides-of-March-The-assassination-of-Julius-Caesar-and-how-it-changed-the-world.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1441  March 15, 2016  On this date in 1839, Paul Heyse, German author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate, was born.  On this date in 1993, Alyssa Reid, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist, was born.