How long is the U.S. shoreline?  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shoreline length calculation of 95,471 miles was determined by hand in 1939-40 with a recording instrument on the largest-scale charts and maps available at that time.  Shorelines of outer coast, offshore islands, sounds, bays, rivers, and creeks were included to the head of the tidewater or to a point where tidal waters narrow to a width of 100 feet.  For the Great Lakes, the shoreline lengths were measured in 1970 by the International Coordinating Committee on Great Lakes Basic Hydraulic and Hydrologic Data.  The total length of tidal shoreline includes measurements of the coastal states as well as the outlying U.S. territories and possessions.  http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/shorelength.html

Paraphrases from Silence, a novel by Thomas Perry  He pushed the speed limit, but let the future organ donors flash past him.  People pretend until they believe.

Thomas Perry (born 1947) is an American mystery and thriller novelist.  He received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel.  Perry's work has covered a variety of fictional suspense starting with The Butcher's Boy, which received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel, followed by Metzger's Dog, Big Fish, Island, and Sleeping Dogs.  He then launched the critically acclaimed Jane Whitefield series:  Vanishing Act (chosen as one of the "100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association), Dance for the Dead, Shadow Woman, The Face Changers, Blood Money, Runner, and Poison Flower.  The New York Times selected Nightlife for its best seller selection.  From this point, Perry has elected to develop a non-series list of mysteries with Death Benefits, Pursuit (which won a Gumshoe Award in 2002), Dead Aim, Night Life, Fidelity, and Strip.  In The Informant, released in 2011, Perry brought back the hit-man character first introduced in The Butcher's Boy and later the protagonist in Sleeping Dogs.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Perry_(author)

With more than 9,200 acres of rolling hills, gentle trails, relaxing waterfront and shaded woodlands, Philadephia's Fairmount Park keeps a wealth of natural landscapes within easy reach of all city residents.  You can take a stroll, head out for an afternoon of softball, organized frisbee or pier-side fishing, or just settle in for a family picnic.  There are miles of trails for horseback riding, off-road cycling and deep-woods hiking, yet there are also tours of historic mansions, Japanese tea ceremonies and outdoor concerts.  Three environmental centers, as well as a wildlife refuge treatment center, help bring the natural world to life for adults as well as children.  In 1876, more than 10 million people journeyed to Fairmount Park for the nation’s Centennial celebration.  A Victorian-style trolley offers tours of the Colonial-era mansions that dot the landscape.  Two outdoor concert venues feature some of the tops names in music.  The world-famous Philadelphia Museum of Art sits at the headway of the Park and overlooks the row of Victorian-era boathouses that have become architectural landmarks.  Bankruptcy and the quest for clean water were the two driving forces behind the creation of Fairmount Park.  When Robert Morris, financier of the Revolutionary War, went bankrupt, his country farm and gardens were purchased by another businessman who created such lovely gardens, he charged admission.  The property changed hands again only to suffer from yet another economic downturn.  In 1843, a shrewd city councilman pressed to purchase the property which was situated above the municipal water works.  By purchasing the property and designating it as parkland, the city was able to end the industrial contamination of the river that had occurred downstream.  http://www.visitphilly.com/outdoor-activities/philadelphia/fairmount-park/

Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was a comic playwright of ancient Athens.  Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete.  These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and are used to define it.  Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author.  His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.  Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters (now lost).  He won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians (also now lost).  It was usual for foreign dignitaries to attend the City Dionysia, and The Babylonians caused some embarrassment for the Athenian authorities since it depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill.  Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis and possibly took legal action against the author.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristophanes

Paraphrases from Murder One, a novel by Robert Dugoni  Actions define us, not our thoughts.  The amount of brass in the conference room could have made instruments for a marching band. 

Robert Dugoni is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of the Tracy Crosswhite Series:  My Sister's Grave, Her Final Breath (September 2015) and A Clearing in the Woods (May 2016).  He is also the author of the critically acclaimed, David Sloane series:  The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One and The Conviction. Dugoni has twice been nominated for the Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction, was a 2015 International Thriller Writer's finalist for thriller of the year, and the 2015 winner of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction.  His books are sold world-wide in more than 20 countries and have been translated into a dozen languages including French, German, Italian and Spanish.  Dugoni and author Steven James teach a four day writing intensive.    www.novelwritingintensive.com  Dugoni wrote his way to Stanford University, receiving writing awards along the way, and majored in communications/journalism and creative writing while working as a reporter for the Stanford Daily.  He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and worked briefly as a reporter in the Metro Office and the San Gabriel Valley Office of the Los Angeles Times.  Dugoni attended the UCLA law school and practiced law for 13 years in San Francisco.  His longing to return to writing never wavered, however, and in 1999 he awoke one morning and made the decision to quit law and write novels.  On the four-year anniversary of his wedding day, keeping a promise to his wife, he drove a U-Haul trailer across the Oregon-Washington border and settled in Seattle to pursue his dreams.  For the next three years, Dugoni worked daily in an 8 foot by 8 foot windowless office in Pioneer Square to complete three novels, winning the 1999 and 2000 Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference Literary Contests.  http://www.robertdugoni.com/dugoni.html

In three-dimensional space, a Platonic solid is a regular, convex polyhedron.  It is constructed by congruent regular polygonal faces with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex.  Five solids meet those criteria, and each is named after its number of faces:  tetrahedron (4 faces), cube (6 faces), octahedron (8 faces), dodecahedron (12 faces), and icosahedron (20 faces).  Read more and see graphics at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

The nonprofit, non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates released the list of moderators September 2, 2016.  The first presidential debate, set for Sept. 26 at New York's Hofstra University, will be moderated by NBC Nightly anchor Lester Holt.  CNN's Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of ABC's "This Week," will moderate the second debate, set for Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis.  Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace will moderate the third presidential debate.  It is planned for Oct. 19 at University of Nevada in Las Vegas.  Elaine Quijano, anchor for CBSN and a correspondent with CBS News, will moderate the vice presidential debate, planned for Oct. 4 at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.  Steve Scully, senior executive producer, White House and political editor for C-SPAN Networks, will be the backup moderator for all debates.  The Sept. 26 and Oct. 19 debates, as well as the vice presidential one, will include topics selected by moderators and announced at least one week before the debate.  Each candidate will be asked a question and then given two minutes to respond followed by an opportunity to reply to each other.  The Oct. 9 debate will take the form of a town hall.  Half of the questions will be posed by citizen participants and the other half will come from the moderators.  The candidates will have two minutes to respond and then an additional minute from the moderator for more discussion.  The town meeting participants will be uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organization.  All debates will be run from 9-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time without commercial breaks.  http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/09/presidential_debate_moderators.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1522  September 5, 2016  On this date in 1882, the first United States Labor Day parade was held in New York City.  On this date in 1927, the first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon, Trolley Troubles, produced by Walt Disney, was released by Universal Pictures.