Friday, July 28, 2017

My English teacher claimed, that if I survive the first 20 pages of any book, the reading will get much easier because the words that occurred on those pages constitute 90% of all words in the book.  The experiment:  The Secret Adversary is an average length book.  It is 250 pages with exactly 75208 words.  Each word in average appears 14 times, what gives us 5248 unique words in the book.  You will know 90% of words after 40 pages which are 16.00% of the book.  Eve’s Diary is a short story.  Its 22 pages contain only 6858 words (1104 unique).  You will know 90% of them after just 9 pages (40.91% of a book).  Ulysses is lengthy 870 pages with 261202 words.  In average words appear 11 times.  There are 23920 unique words.  You will know 90% of words after 221 pages which are 25.40% of a book.  It is not 20 pages but my teacher was somewhat right.  The exact number of pages to read may vary depending on the book length and author’s variegated language.  However, it probably won’t get much harder then Ulysses, where you need to read 221 pages (25% of the book).  Roman Kierzkowski  https://blog.vocapouch.com/do-20-pages-of-a-book-gives-you-90-of-its-words-795a405afe70

EPONYMS   In Queens, the largest of the five New York City boroughs  Ascan Avenue pays tribute to Ascan Backus, whose homestead was on the northeast corner of 69th Road and Queens Boulevard.  He began acquiring parcels of farmland in 1829 and was referred to as “The King Farmer of Long Island.”  Austin Street was named after developer Austin Corbin, who was also a 19th century Long Island Railroad president.  Streets are co-named periodically, as in the case of Ascan Avenue and Austin Street being designated “Geraldine Ferraro Way.”  http://queensledger.com/view/full_story/24609607/article-The-forgotten-street-names-of-Forest-Hills

Often referred to as the “world’s borough,” Queens is the most diverse county in the world.  Of the three million immigrants living in New York City, a total of 1.06 million of them live in Queens, making it the borough with the largest population of New Americans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  Approximately 138 languages are spoken in the borough.  http://queenstribune.com/queens-tribune-celebrates-worlds-borough/

Fresh mozzarella is a type of pulled curd or pasta filata cheese which originated in Southern Italy.  It can be made with cow's milk, which is more common and easier to find, or water buffalo's milk (mozzarella di bufala), which can be more expensive and tougher to find.  Fresh mozzarella has a delicate, milky flavor and an elastic texture.  It's a fresh, semi-soft cheese.  Fresh mozzarella cheese is widely available at grocery stores and can easily be made at home.   How To Make Homemade Fresh Mozzarella  Fresh mozzarella has a high moisture content, so it's best served soon after it's made, though it can be stored in brine and chilled for up to a week.  Burrata literally translates into "buttered," and has a solid outer curd made from fresh mozzarella, which is formed into a hollow pouch, then filled with a soft, stringy curd and fresh cream.  It has a milky, buttery flavor that's rich without being too indulgent.  Look for burrata in Italian markets, cheese shops, and in the cheese section of specialty grocery stores.  Burrata is typically served at room temperature, and since it's fresh, it's best served within 48 hours of purchase.  After that it's considered past its prime (even though it's still perfectly edible).  And the real magic happens when burrata is sliced open and the creamy insides spill out.  It makes a nice topping on a salad and is wonderful served with crusty bread.  Kelli Foster  Link to recipes for mozzarella and burrata at http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-mozzarella-and-burrata-word-of-mouth-219642

incredible means unbelievable--incredulous means unbelieving   Something incredible is beyond belief, so when we experience it, we are incredulous.  Incredulous refers to a state of astonishment or disbelief.  It is not a deft synonym for incredible. http://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/incredible-incredulous.asp  Incredible describes something you can't believe because it's so right, like an incredible double rainbow.  Incredulous describes how you feel when you can't believe something because it's so wrong, like when someone tells you leprechauns left two pots of gold.  Something incredible is not credible; it's unbelievable.  People, rainbows, and other things can be described as incredible but only people can feel incredulous, or unbelieving and a little irked.  https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/incredible-incredulous/

Does the legal research platform you use matter to the results you receive?  Turns out, it very much matters.  Different legal research platforms deliver surprisingly different results.  In fact, in a comparison of six leading research providers, there was hardly any overlap in the cases that appeared in the top-10 results returned by each database.  This startling finding is the result of research performed by Susan Nevelow Mart, director of the law library and associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, where she teaches advanced legal research and analysis and environmental legal research.  Mart has published a draft of her research paper, The Algorithm as a Human Artifact: Implications for Legal {Re} Search, and she presented some of her findings in a program I attended at the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries.  Mart’s exploration of the differences among research services was spurred in part by an email she received from Mike Dahn, senior vice president for Westlaw product management at Thomson Reuters, in which he noted that “all of our algorithms are created by humans.”  Why is that statement significant?  Because if search algorithms are built by humans,  then those humans made choices about how the algorithm would work.  And those choices, Mart says, become the biases and assumptions that get coded into each system and that have implications for the results they deliver.  So Mart set out to study how hidden biases and assumptions affect the results provided by some of the major legal research providers.  She chose six to study:  Casetext, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Lexis Advance, Ravel and Westlaw.  The results, Mart writes, “are a remarkable testament to the variability of human problem solving.”  An average of 40 percent of the cases were unique to one database, and only about 7 percent of the cases were returned in search results in all six databases.  Robert Ambrogi  Read more at http://abovethelaw.com/2017/07/legal-research-services-vary-widely-in-results-study-finds/  Thank you, Muse reader!

July 25, 2017  "Adobe has long played a leadership role in advancing interactivity and creative content--from video, to games and more--on the web. Where we’ve seen a need to push content and interactivity forward, we’ve innovated to meet those needs.  Where a format didn’t exist, we invented one--such as with Flash and Shockwave.  And over time, as the web evolved, these new formats were adopted by the community, in some cases formed the basis for open standards, and became an essential part of the web.  But as open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web.  Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards.  Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.  Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners--ncluding AppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoft and Mozilla--Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash.  Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats."  Adobe News  Read more at

Feedback to Christopher Daly's article on "jumping the shark":  While pointing out Mr. Hinch’s incorrect use of the shark phrase, Mr. Daly confused gibe (taunt) with jibe (agree).  Thank you, Muse reader!  "Jibe" is used both for the verb meaning "to be in accord," agree" ("jibe with") and for the nautical verb and noun ("jibe the mainsail," "a risky jibe in heavy seas").  "Gibe" is used for the verb "to deride or tease" and the noun "a taunting remark."  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gibe

The largest associations of museums in the country have publicly pilloried a Massachusetts museum's plan to sell off 40 valuable pieces of artwork, including two paintings gifted to the 114-year-old institution by Norman Rockwell.  "One of the most fundamental and long-standing principles of the museum field is that a collection is held in the public trust and must not be treated as a disposable financial asset," the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors said Tuesday in a joint statement concerning Berkshire Museum's "new vision" plan.  Announced July 19, 2017, the Berkshire plan hinges upon $50 million in anticipated revenues generated by an auction of the 40 pieces.  The Rockwells in question include "Shuffleton's Barbershop" and "Shaftsbury Blacksmith Shop," both featured in The Saturday Evening Post.  According to the museum, Sotheby's will run the auction, anticipated to take place within the next six months.  AAM's code of ethics for museums forbids the sale of collection items for "anything other than acquisition or direct care of collections."  The Berkshire plan proposes to use the $50 million for a renovation of the South Street building and to sock away $40 million into an endowment fund -- activities well outside the relatively narrow scope outlined by AAM.  Phil Demers  http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/07/nations_largest_museum_groups.html


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1744  July 28, 2017  On this date in 1866, at the age of 18, Vinnie Ream became the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln).  On this date in 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_28

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