An automatic or self-winding watch is a mechanical watch in which the natural motion of the wearer provides energy to run the watch, making manual winding unnecessary.  A mechanical watch which is neither self-winding nor electrically driven is called a manual watch.  The earliest reference to self-winding watches is at the end of 1773 when a newspaper reported that Joseph Tlustos had invented a watch that did not need to be wound.  But his idea was probably based on the myth of perpetual motion, and it is unlikely that it was a practical solution to the problem of self-winding watches.  The earliest credible evidence for a successful design is the watch made by the Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Perrelet, who lived in Le Locle.  In late 1776 or early 1777, he invented a self-winding mechanism for pocket watches using an oscillating weight inside the watch that moved up and down.  The Geneva Society of Arts, reporting on this watch in 1777, stated that 15 minutes walking was necessary to fully wind the watch.  During the years 1776 to 1810 four different types of weight were used:  Side-weight,  Center-weight,  Rotor-weight and Movement-weight.  The advent of the wrist watch after World War I led to renewed interest in self-winding mechanisms, and all four types listed above were used.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_watch

" . . . it doesn't make sense to spend money on a car in a place like New Jersey because even if the tailgaters don't get you, the potholes will . . . "  The Girl Next Door by Brad Parks

Brad Parks has had his work recognized by, among others, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the National Headliner Awards, the National Association of Black Journalists and the New Jersey Press Association, which gave its top award for enterprise reporting to Brad's forty-year retrospective on the Newark riots.   He was also a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists (sometimes called the "Junior Pulitzers").  While on assignment for The Star-Ledger in 2004, Brad covered a quadruple homicide in Newark that provided the real-life launching point for Carter Ross, a fictional character who bears no resemblance to Brad beyond their shared height, weight, eye color, hair color, skin color, charmed upbringing, sartorial blandness, and general worldview.  Brad left the newspaper industry in 2008 to pursue fiction-writing.  In 2009, he published Faces of the Gone, which sold through its first print run in nine days and went on to win the Nero Award for Best American Mystery and the Shamus Award for Best First Mystery.  It made Brad the only author in the combined sixty-year history of those awards to win both prizes for the same book.  Yahoo.com declared Brad was "the literary love child of Evanovich and (Harlan) Coben."  The next installment of the Carter Ross series, Eyes Of The Innocent, also went back to print nine days after its release. Library Journalcheered it was "as good if not better (than) his acclaimed debut" and The Wall Street Journal called it "engaging."  Meanwhile, readers on a popular book review website voted Carter Ross "The World's Favorite Amateur Sleuth" in a sixty-four-sleuth, tournament-style bracket, where Brad beat out Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the finals (Brad's explanation of the upset:  "I'm on Twitter. Agatha Christie isn't.").  He was also named one of "Crime Fiction's Sexiest Authors of 2011," for which there is no explanation, beyond blindness.  The Girl Next Door, the third Carter Ross adventure, won the Lefty Award for best humorous mystery, as voted on by attendees of the Left Coast Crime conference.  It was placed on Kirkus Reviews' Best Fiction of 2012 list, one of a small handful of mysteries to earn that honor, and reached No. 3 on the Baker & Taylor Fiction/Mystery Bestseller List.  Shelf-Awareness gave it a starred review, calling it "perfect for a reader who loves an LOL moment but wants a mystery that's more than just empty calories."  Brad's fourth book, The Good Cop, won the 2014 Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Novel, making him the only former Best First Shamus winner to subsequently win in the Best Novel category.  By also taking the Lefty Award, Brad became the only author besides Janet Evanovich to win back-to-back Leftys, and the first author to win the Lefty and the Shamus for the same book.  The Good Cop prompted Library Journal to opine, "Parks's award-winning series is essential reading."  In 2017, Brad published his first standalone thriller, Say Nothing, which was translated into a dozen languages and became an international bestseller.  It was named a Best Book of 2017 by Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal, the only novel to appear on both lists.  In addition, it was named Thriller of the Month by the Sunday Times of London, and Book of the Month by Irish bookseller Eason, and German booksellers Beucher.de and Thalia.  An enthusiastic public speaker, Brad was the Toastmaster at the 2014 Left Coast Crime and has also served as a keynote speaker at numerous other events, including Crested Butte Writers Conference, Creatures Crimes and Crooks Conference, Deadly Ink, Hampton Roads Writers Conference, Hunt Country Writers Retreat, and James River Writers Conference.  He and Daniel Palmer have serenaded banquet-goers at the International Thriller Writer's conference, ThrillerFest, for more years than anyone cares to acknowledge.  Brad has also been known to burst into song at bookstores, libraries, and other places where no one was thoughtful enough to muzzle him.  http://bradparksbooks.com/bio.php

Brad Parks (born 1974) is an American author of mystery novels and thrillers.   Parks was born in New Jersey but grew up in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where he attended Ridgefield High School.  He first started writing professionally for his hometown newspaper, The Ridgefield Press, at age 14, covering high school sports.  He attended Dartmouth College, founding his own newspaper, The Sports Weekly (now defunct) and singing with the Dodecaphonics, a co-ed a cappella group.  While still a student, he worked as a stringer for The New York Times and as an intern for The Boston Globe.  After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth in 1996, he interned at The Washington Post, and was eventually hired full-time by the paper, which assigned him to a bureau in Manassas, Virginia.  In 1998, he moved to The Star-Ledger and began working as a sports features writer and, later, a news feature writer.  In 2007, Crossroads, his four-part series on the 1967 Newark riots won the New Jersey Press Association's top prize for enterprise reporting.  He now lives in Virginia with his wife and two small children.  Parks has become known for writing his novels at a Hardee's restaurant.  In response, Hardee's has presented Parks with a plaque and declared him its writer in residence.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Parks

The Pantheon is a former Roman temple, now a church, in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC–14 AD).  It was completed by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated about 126 AD.  Its date of construction is uncertain, because Hadrian chose not to inscribe the new temple but rather to retain the inscription of Agrippa's older temple, which had burned down.  The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment.  A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky.  Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.  The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 142 feet (43 m).  It is one of the best-preserved of all Ancient Roman buildings, in large part because it has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda".  The name "Pantheon" is from the Ancient Greek "Pantheion" (Πάνθειον) meaning "of, relating to, or common to all the gods":  (pan- / "παν-" meaning "all" + theion / "θεῖον"= meaning "of or sacred to a god").   Cassius Dio, a Roman senator who wrote in Greek, speculated that the name comes either from the statues of so many gods placed around this building, or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens.  The Pantheon's large circular domed cella, with a conventional temple portico front, was unique in Roman architecture.  Nevertheless, it became a standard exemplar when classical styles were revived, and has been copied many times by later architects.  The interior of the dome was possibly intended to symbolize the arched vault of the heavens.  The oculus at the dome's apex and the entry door are the only natural sources of light in the interior.  Throughout the day, the light from the oculus moves around this space in a reverse sundial effect.  The oculus also serves as a cooling and ventilation method.  During storms, a drainage system below the floor handles the rain that falls through the oculus.  The dome features sunken panels (coffers), in five rings of 28.  This evenly spaced layout was difficult to achieve and, it is presumed, had symbolic meaning, either numerical, geometric, or lunar.  In antiquity, the coffers may have contained bronze stars, rosettes, or other ornaments.  Circles and squares form the unifying theme of the interior design.  The checkerboard floor pattern contrasts with the concentric circles of square coffers in the dome.  Each zone of the interior, from floor to ceiling, is subdivided according to a different scheme.  As a result, the interior decorative zones do not line up.  The overall effect is immediate viewer orientation according to the major axis of the building, even though the cylindrical space topped by a hemispherical dome is inherently ambiguous.  This discordance has not always been appreciated, and the attic level was redone according to Neoclassical taste in the 18th century.  See stunning pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome

EASY AND PLEASANT  Flavor water (for broth or beverage) with leftover fruit peelings, for instance, from apples or oranges.  Save water from cooking fresh vegetables such as green beans or broccoli, and use for broth or beverage.

Live map:  2018 midterm elections results  https://www.axios.com/live-map-axios-2018-midterm-elections-results-e54da558-b5e9-4b09-ad1e-5663cc78f1b7.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  November 7, 2018  Issue 1983  311th day of the year