Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (born February 12, 1948) is an American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist.  Aside from futurism, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition(OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments.  He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.  Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.  Kurzweil was the principal inventor of the first charge-coupled device flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first commercial text-to-speech synthesizer, the Kurzweil K250 music synthesizer capable of simulating the sound of the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.  Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States' highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony.  He was the recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for 2001, the world's largest for innovation.  And in 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office.  He has received twenty-one honorary doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents.  Kurzweil has been described as a "restless genius" by The Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes.  PBS included Kurzweil as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America" along with other inventors of the past two centuries.  Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among the "most fascinating" entrepreneurs in the United States and called him "Edison's rightful heir".  Kurzweil has written seven books, five of which have been national bestsellers.  The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in science.  Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near was a New York Times bestseller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.  Kurzweil speaks widely to audiences both public and private and regularly delivers keynote speeches at industry conferences like DEMO, SXSW and TED.  He maintains the news website KurzweilAI.net, which has over three million readers annually.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

Signe Hasso (1910-2002) was born Signe Larsson in Stockholm.  At the age of 12, appeared in productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre.  At 16, she became the youngest person to enrol in the theatre's academy.  Her first success was in the title role of Schiller's Maria Stuart, and she continued to act under her own name until her marriage to Swedish producer Harry Hasso in 1933, the year she entered films.  In 1940, she decided to go to the United States with her young son because she had been offered a contract by RKO, her marriage had broken down and the Nazis had invaded Norway.  But RKO failed to come up with any roles, and, after a short runon the New York stage, she made her Hollywood debut for MGM with a brief part in Journey For Margaret (1942).   Her last major Hollywood part was as Isabel Farrago, the cool wife of José Ferrer's South American dictator, in Crisis (1950).  On stage in the 1950s, she appeared in Uncle Vanya and The Apple Cart, as well as in live television dramas.  After her son died in a car accident in 1957, she returned to Sweden for a while, though she was soon acting again both in Sweden and the US, mostly on stage and in television.  Hasso, who held dual citizenship, also wrote music and lyrics for the album Scandin-avian Folk Songs Sung And Swung, and published novels, short stories and articles.  Ronald Bergan  Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jun/11/guardianobituaries

The adjective systematic means (1)  carried out using step-by-step procedures, or (2)  of, characterized, or constituting a system.  It typically describes carefully planned processes that unfold gradually.  Systemic, which is narrower in definition, means systemwide or deeply engrained in the system.  It usually describes habits or processes that are difficult to reverse because they are built into a system.  There is some gray area between the words.  When there is doubt, it’s usually safer to go with systematic, which is older and more broadly defined.  http://grammarist.com/usage/systematic-systemic/  

The Côte d'Azur literal translation "Coast of Azure"), often known in English as the French Riviera, is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the state of Monaco.  There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from the Italian border (Italian Riviera) in the east to Saint-Tropez, Hyères, Toulon, or Cassis in the west.  This coastline was one of the first modern resort areas.  It began as a winter health resort for the British upper class at the end of the 18th century.  With the arrival of the railway in the mid-19th century, it became the playground and vacation spot of British, Russian, and other aristocrats, such as Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, when he was Prince of Wales.  In the first half of the 20th century, it was frequented by artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Edith Wharton, Somerset Maugham, and Aldous Huxley, as well as wealthy Americans and Europeans.  After World War II, it became a popular tourist destination and convention site.  Many celebrities, such as Elton John and Brigitte Bardot, have homes in the region. Officially, the Côte d'Azur is home to 163 nationalities with 83,962 foreign residents, although estimates of the number of non-French nationals living in the area are often much higher.  As a tourist center, French Riviera benefits from 310 to 330 days of sunshine per year, 115 kilometres (71 miles) of coastline and beaches, 18 golf courses, 14 ski resorts and 3,000 restaurants.  The name Côte d'Azur was given to the coast by the writer Stéphen Liégeard in his book, La Côte d’azur, published in December 1887.  Liégeard was born in Dijon, in the French department of Côte-d'Or, and adapted that name by substituting the azure blue color of the Mediterranean for the gold of Côte-d'Or.  The term French Riviera is typical of English use.  It was built by analogy with the term Italian Riviera, which extends east of the French Riviera (from Ventimiglia to La Spezia).   Originally, riviera is an Italian noun which means "coastline".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Riviera

How do you pronounce David Baldacci's last name?   Ball-DAH-chee.  https://davidbaldacci.com/faq/#one

How do you pronounce Alan Alda's last name?   AL-da.  Most pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with ball, but considering Alda's father created the name from the first two letters of his first and last name (Alphonso D'Abruzzo), arguably the first syllable should be as in the Al in Alphonso.  https://www.bookbrowse.com/authors/author_pronunciations/

Official Pronunciation Guide for 'Game of Thrones'

http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/production-diary/2011/2/11/official-pronunciation-guide-for-game-of-thrones.html

In February 2017, NRKbeta, the tech vertical of the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, published an explainer about a proposed new digital surveillance law in the country.  Digital security is a controversial topic, and the conversation around security issues can become heated.  But the conversation in the comments of the article was respectful and productive:  Commenters shared links to books and other research, asked clarifying questions, and offered constructive feedback.  The team at NRKbeta attributes the civil tenor of its comments to a feature it introduced last month.  On some stories, potential commenters are now required to answer three basic multiple-choice questions about the article before they’re allowed to post a comment.  (For instance, in the digital surveillance story:  “What does DGF stand for?”)  While many outlets have gotten rid of comments and outsourced reader conversations to platforms such as Facebook, others like NRKbeta are working to improve on-site conversations.  Last week, Google parent company Alphabet announced that it was working with The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and Wikipedia to test a new tool called Perspective that uses machine learning to identify “toxic” comments, which it defines as “rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment that is likely to make you leave a discussion.”   Similarly, the Times, The Washington Post, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Knight Foundation launched the Coral Project, an initiative to create open-source tools to help news orgs improve their on-site community.  There’s also the startup Civil, which created its own commenting platform that requires users to grade the civility of comments before they’re allowed to post their own.  Joseph Lichterman  http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/this-site-is-taking-the-edge-off-rant-mode-by-making-readers-pass-a-quiz-before-commenting/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1754  August 15, 2017  On this date in 1843, Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opened in Copenhagen, Denmark.  On this date in 1914, the Panama Canal opened to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship SS Ancon.  On this date in 1939, The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_15  Thought for the Day  O, what a tangled web we weave, / When first we practise to deceive! - Walter Scott, novelist and poet (15 Aug 1771-1832)