Historian Edward L. Widmer tells us that O.K. was “briefly short for ‘oll korrect,’ a Dutch phrase for ‘all right,’ but then got shifted onto Martin Van Buren as he ran for president.”  Several histories state that the moniker O.K.—short for Old Kinderhook—was used by Democratic supporters of Van Buren in the 1840 campaign, when he was challenged by Gen. William Henry Harrison, a Whig, who ultimately defeated him.  William Safire, a former Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times has discussed the origins of “O.K.” in January 1982, June 1982, February 1989 and July 1991.  Mr. Safire decisively concluded that “O.K.” comes from “oll korrect.”  Sewell Cahn  Read much more at https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/a-spitzer-tale-is-not-oll-korrect/?_r=0

DATA MEASUREMENT CHART  Bit:  Single Binary Digit (1 or 0);  Byte:  8 bits;  Kilobyte (KB):  1,024 Bytes;  Megabyte (MB):  1,024 Kilobytes;  Gigabyte (GB):  1,024 Megabytes;  Terabyte (TB):  1,024 Gigabytes;  Petabyte (PB):  1,024 Terabytes;  Exabyte (EB):  1,024 Petabytes  Find other charts such as connection speed and audio/video at http://www.wu.ece.ufl.edu/links/dataRate/DataMeasurementChart.html  How to pronounce gigabyte  https://forvo.com/word/gigabyte/  How to pronounce giga  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga-

Justice has many faces, but they don't always include mercy.  Racing the Devil, #19 in the Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery series by Charles Todd ( mother-and-son writing team Caroline and Charles Todd).

In the politics of the United States, dark money is a term that describes funds given to nonprofit organizations—primarily 501(c)(4) (social welfare) and 501(c)(6) (trade association) groups—that can receive unlimited donations from corporations, individuals, and unions, and spend funds to influence elections, but are not required to disclose their donors.  In some elections, dark money groups have surpassed traditional political action committees (PAC) and "super PACs" (independent-expenditure-only committees) in the volume of spending.  In 2014, the group Freedom Partners was identified as the "poster child" for the rise of dark money.  In 2012, Freedom Partners had the ninth-highest revenues among all U.S. trade associations which filed tax returns that year, more than "established heavyweights" such as the American Petroleum Institute, PhRMA, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Freedom Partners largely acted as a conduit for campaign spending; of the $238 million it spent in 2012, 99 percent went to other groups, and Freedom Partners itself did not have any employees.  This was a major distinction between other high-revenue trade associations, which typically have many employees and devote only about 6 percent of spending to grants to outside groups.  The rise of dark money groups was aided by the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2008) and Citizens United v. FEC (2010).  In Citizens United, the Court ruled (by a 5-4 vote) that corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against political candidates.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money

At first, Joseph Pulitzer did not have to worry much about competing with other newspapers. He purchased the “New York World” in 1883 and things were going well.  Under Pulitzer, the “World” had circulation grow from 15,000 to 600,000.  However, things started to change in 1895.  William Randolph Hearst purchased the “New York Journal” and wasted no time in starting a circulation battle.  The two papers embellished stories and sometimes made them up all together.  This strategy of sensationalizing the news to raise circulation was named “yellow kid” Journalism after a popular cartoon that both papers ran at the time, but was soon shortened to yellow journalism.  One of the prime examples is their coverage of the Spanish-American War.  When Hearst heard about tension building in Cuba, he sent an artist down to capture images of the war that was supposedly about to start.  However, the artist spent some time in Cuba and could not find the problems he was told to illustrate.  He sent a telegraph to Hearst to tell him there were no problems and that there would be no war.  Hearst responded by telling him, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”  The USS Maine exploded on February 15, 1898, and both papers jumped at the opportunity for a story.  Despite the fact the cause of the explosion was unknown, the “World” ran a story about the ship being blown up by an enemy torpedo along with a picture of a violent explosion.  The “Journal” ran a similar story, claiming they would give a $50,000 reward to anyone with information on the attack.  This was obviously just to pull in readers since there was no actual attack on the ship.  Read more and see pictures at http://historyofjournalism.onmason.com/2009/09/16/46/

March 28, 2017  The phrase “so-called” has been tossed around a lot in recent months, and it’s one that deserves attention and explanation.  Let’s look first at the form of the word:  should so-called have a hyphen or not (so called)?  Should the words be separated by a space or by a hyphen?  The answer isn’t as simple as we might hope.  Although, if you follow best practices with the rules of compound adjectives in English, then this is pretty easy to keep straight.  Generally speaking, when so-called is used as an adjective then you hyphenate.  It’s an adjective phrase, modifying the noun that immediately follows.  On the other hand, if so called isn’t used as part of an adjective-noun formulation, you shouldn’t use the hyphen.  When is it not an adjective?  When it might be an adverb.  Let’s slide into that now by covering the two different uses of so-called/so called: the more frequent contemporary use (as an adjective, and generally used unflatteringly) and the less frequent adverb use.  First the less-frequent older use.  It shows up in constructions that look like this:  Tanqueray is a London dry gin; it is so called because of its distillation process, as well as originating in Bloomsbury, London.  In this case, so called is an adverb.  Actually, so is the adverb, with called the verb. What it’s saying is “it is called by this name because.”  The same hyphen rule — hyphen as an adjective, no hyphen as an adverb—would also apply to so named, so labelled, so described, or any similar phrase in which the adverb or adjective function can vary in specific use and context.  Now, on to the contemporary use and meaning of so-called.  Most dictionaries allow for a broad interpretation of so-called, with both negative and neutral senses.  For example, Merriam-Webster succinctly notes that it indicates either how something is “commonly named” or that it is “falsely or improperly named.”  I suggest, however, that this is no longer accurate: in contemporary usage the phrase almost always has a negative meaning.  If you use the phrase so-called to describe something or someone—she was my so-called friend; departing employees received a so-called bonus; the case went before a so-called judge—it does not show that person or thing in a positive light.  If your goal is to remain neutral or objective, or to show the subject in a positive way, or simply to present information, then you should avoid this phrase.  The American Heritage Dictionary provides so-called with an interesting usage note that’s worth sharing:  Usage Note: Quotation marks should not be used to set off descriptions that follow expressions such as so-called and self-styled, which themselves relieve the writer of responsibility for the attribution:  his so-called foolproof method (not “foolproof method”).  Do you get that?  The “irony quotes”—maybe we should think of them as derision quotes or mocking quotes in this case—shouldn’t be used when so-called is brought into play because so-called already serves that purpose.  Using mocking quotes with so-called is redundant.  The OED also gives us a little more ammunition, adding to the definition “Called or designated by this name or term, but not properly entitled to it or correctly described by it.”  I kind of like their expansion of “falsely or improperly named” to “not properly entitled to it.”  That’s certainly how it’s commonly used when it’s thrown as an almost-civilized insult.  It might be an adverb, and that’s probably what most people would eventually decide it is, since there’s a verb being modified.  But in a strictly technical sense, it’s not.  I have it on good authority—the OED again—that so called is a class of adjective called a predicative adjective.  I’ve combed through many explanations of what a predicate is (and what a predicate adjective is), and finding one that really hits the nail on the head where so called is concerned was difficult.  This one might be about the best.  http://www.k12reader.com/term/predicate-adjective/  The wikipedia entry for predicative expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicative_expression is pretty good, too.  Christopher Daly  https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/another-so-called-or-is-it-so-called-blog-post/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1686  March 31, 2017  On this date in 1909, construction of the ill fated RMS Titanic began.  On this date in 1913, the Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.  On this date in 1918, Daylight Saving Time went into effect in the United States for the first time.  https://mybirthday.ninja/?m=March&d=31&y=1963&go=Go#axzz4ckWGhKMz