Striped icebergs in Lake Michigan? No! An e-mail currently circulating says that there are striped icebergs in Lake Michigan. "The photos in the e-mail are incredible. Can they possibly be real?" The photos are real. But these bergs aren't anywhere near Lake Michigan. To be classified as an iceberg, the ice must originate from glaciers or the polar ice shelf, according to the National Ice Center, a joint venture of the Navy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Coast Guard. The NIC tracks Arctic, Antarctic, Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay ice conditions. The height of an iceberg must be greater than 5 meters above sea level, the thickness must be 30 to 50 meters and the area must cover at least 500 square meters, the NIC states. Ice often forms in heavy sheets along the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Sometimes, blocks break off, but they are not the Titanic-sinking icebergs with 7/8 of the mass below the surface that can be encountered in the North Atlantic. This e-mail first surfaced in 2008, according to Snopes.com, a nonpartisan, well-respected website that confirms or debunks rumors and urban legends. A version that popped up in January 2010 put the striped icebergs in Lake Michigan. http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2011-02-13/story/fact-check-icebergs-lake-michigan-no http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/stripedicebergs.asp
Whales in Lake Michigan? No! The whales in Lake Michigan began as a satirical website called Lake Michigan Whale Watching. The site is down now but caused an uproar when a Mormon-based "educational" publishing group in Utah apparently saw the site and did not understand it was a joke (although there was a disclaimer on the site). This group publishes "Studies Weekly" in most US states, and their Michigan version (I think in 2002) carried the story of whales in the lake. This was distributed in some Michigan public schools. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Discuss:Are_there_whales_in_lake_Michigan
Hipmunk is a new flight search site that makes it easy to find the right flight.
Q. How is your approach different from other flight search sites?
A. Other sites make you click through dozens of pages of results to get a feel for the interesting flights. Hipmunk shows you all the interesting results on one page. Hipmunk focuses on helping you find the right flight as quickly as possible—not bombarding you with distractions like ads.
Q. What is Agony, and why would I want to sort by it?
A. Agony is our way of sorting flights to take into account price, duration, and number of stops. There's more to a flight than its price, so we provide this sort to give you better all-around results. http://www.hipmunk.com/
Locked in a climate-controlled vault at the Newberry Library in Chicago, a volume titled “The Pen and the Book” can be studied only under the watch of security cameras. The book, about making a profit in publishing, scarcely qualifies as a literary masterpiece. It is highly valuable, instead, because a reader has scribbled in the margins of its pages. The scribbler was Mark Twain. “People will always find a way to annotate electronically,” said G. Thomas Tanselle, a former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. “But there is the question of how it is going to be preserved. And that is a problem now facing collections libraries.” These are the sorts of matters pondered by the Caxton Club, a literary group founded in 1895 by 15 Chicago bibliophiles. With the Newberry, it is sponsoring a symposium in March titled “Other People’s Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell.” The symposium will feature a new volume of 52 essays about association copies—books once owned or annotated by the authors—and ruminations about how they enhance the reading experience. The essays touch on works that connect President Lincoln and Alexander Pope; Jane Austen and William Cowper; Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Marginalia was more common in the 1800s. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a prolific margin writer, as were William Blake and Charles Darwin. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/books/21margin.html?_r=1
The American literary tradition is filled with writers who have understood that the power of writing springs not only from the precision of sentences but from the feeling evoked by their rhythm. Here's F. Scott Fitzgerald in the brilliant last sentence of "The Great Gatsby": "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Note those effortful "b" sounds—the way they intensify the meaning. Rhythm isn't just decorative. It serves a purpose even in a book like "Moby-Dick," which aspires to social realism. Melville could well have made his opening line "Call me Richard"—it was a popular American name then as now—but it lacks the tragic Old Testament resonance of Ishmael. It also doesn't sound as good as Ishmael, whose two gentler stresses balance out the sentence's strikingly stressed first word. What's more, "Call" and "el" chime off each other, resulting in a sentence that's as sonorous and inviting as "Call me Richard" plainly isn't. Ernest Hemingway developed his innovative style, which used few commas and lots of "ands" and one-syllable words. Consider this sentence—the opening line of his short story "In Another Country": "In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more." by Meghan O'Rourke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703529004576160322387772618.html
The Battle of the Titans by Katie Martin
The biggest banks believe the new competitors that have been grabbing their business and staff will soon start to find this battle too tough, particularly as they seek to excel in all areas. "It takes continuous investment," says Zar Amrolia, global head of foreign exchange at Deutsche Bank AG, which has held the top slot in the business for the past six years. Over the past 12 months, he says, the bank has added salespeople and increased technology spending. At UBS, which has the second-biggest market share in the business, a series of technological upgrades and new initiatives is due for release over the course of this year. Christopher Purves, global head of electronic trading in currencies at the bank in London, is circumspect about exactly what the new features will involve. Still, he says, "we have a whole list of things coming out that we think our clients will love," particularly in trading technology. "Competing with the top six is like setting up a burger shop over the road from McDonald's," says one senior executive at a large firm. "You might make a better burger on that street, but you will not compete on a global basis." "Banks want to get into foreign exchange because it's a flow business with a low usage of capital," says Mr. Boillereau at HSBC. "But it's not as easy as people think, and building up takes time. I think the next two years are going to be difficult for the newcomers. Some will give up, but some will carry on." This year will bring a key test of that theory. See table of 20 top-ranked banks in foreign exchange for 2010 at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703886904576031241782587256.html
Today, 7.2 million men and women are under correctional supervision. Of this total, five million are monitored in the community on probation or parole and 2.3 million are incarcerated in prisons or jails. As a result the nation maintains the highest rate of incarceration in the world at 743 per 100,000 population. The scale of the correctional population results from a mix of crime rates and legislative and administrative policies that vary by state. In recent years, lawmakers have struggled to find the resources to maintain state correctional systems; 46 states are facing budget deficits in the current fiscal year, a situation that is likely to continue, according to the National Governors Association. Many states are looking closely at ways to reduce correctional costs as they seek to address limited resources. States like Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York have successfully reduced their prison populations in recent years in an effort to control costs and effectively manage prison capacity. Overall, prison populations declined in 24 states during 2009, by 48,000 persons, or 0.7 percent. The State of Sentencing 2010: Developments in Policy and Practice by Nicole D. Porter February 2011
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/publications/Final%20State%20of%20the%20Sentencing%202010.pdf
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Black Swan Theory or Theory of Black Swan Events is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that The event is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight. The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain: The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology; the non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities); and the psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs. Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem", the "Black Swan Theory" (capitalized) refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Black Swan Events were characterized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book (revised and completed in 2010), The Black Swan. Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans"—undirected and unpredicted . He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11 attacks as examples of Black Swan Events. The term black swan was a Latin expression—its oldest known reference comes from the poet Juvenal's characterization of something being "rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno" (6.165). In English, this Latin phrase means "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan." When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the simile lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
Read interview with Taleb by Charlie Rose in the February 28-March 6, 2011 issue of Bloomberg Business Week at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm
In 2004, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first listed the Santa Cruz Island fox as an endangered species, fewer than 100 remained. Their evolutionary story likely began when a pair of errant gray foxes somehow rafted across the 20-mile ocean channel from the California mainland around 15,000 years ago. They coexisted with the Chumash Indians and the island’s last remaining pygmy mammoths, whose fossils are still lodged in the soils. Only in the past 150 years did the ecological insults begin to pile up. Ranchers brought sheep and pigs, which denuded the island of much of its native vegetation. By the 1960s, a legacy of DDT disposal in the waters south of Los Angeles wiped out resident bald eagles. The DDT accumulated in the tissues of the fish and carrion the eagles fed on, weakening their eggshells so that the eggs were easily crushed. With the territorial bald eagles out of the way, golden eagles moved into the island’s cliffside perches in the 1990s, lured by a steady diet of feral pigs. The decision was made to round up 10 pairs of the remaining foxes for a captive breeding program. The Conservancy and the National Park Service, which owns the eastern quarter of the island, began a multimillion-dollar effort to restore ecological balance. The plan was to capture and relocate the golden eagles, re-establish bald eagles and set them free on the island, and eradicate the non-native feral pigs, which had nearly devoured the island’s rare and endangered native plants. With the threat of golden eagles diminished, the foxes have bounced back. At last count, Conservancy scientists estimated that more than 1,200 foxes live on the island, and Conservancy biologist Lotus Vermeer is waiting to see whether this year the population returns to its historical size of 1,500. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2011/features/art33121.html
Nationally acclaimed writer T.C. Boyle has written a new novel dramatizing efforts to restore the endangered species of Santa Cruz Island. The book, When the Killing’s Done, Viking Press, is loosely based on the efforts of the Conservancy’s island program director, biologist Lotus Vermeer, and dramatizes the challenges and difficulties of restoring several species that would likely now be extinct but for the quick work of conservationists. T.C. Boyle has written often about the environment, but this is the first time he has set a book on Santa Cruz Island, located just 20 miles south of his Santa Barbara home. The novel explores the question of who owns nature, says Boyle. “Can you separate yourself from everybody else and live in the wild, and do you take advantage of the wild?” he asks. “Are you making a profit from it, by running sheep for instance, but at the same time degrading it? And who has the right to do that and who has the right to say no?” Boyle says he was fascinated by the history of the Channel Islands, and he read many memoirs and accounts of shipwrecks and early ranching efforts. Although largely set in modern times, the novel looks at the history of the island and how human activity launched a chain of unintended changes. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2011/features/art33132.html
Media Influence
Actor Martin Sheen, whose birthname is Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez, adopted his stage name early in his career, in honor of Fulton John Sheen, born Peter John Sheen, a popular religious figure on television during the 1950s, whose radio broadcasts he admired since childhood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen
Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff attended Beverly Hills High School. During his high school years, he managed both the Beverly Hills and Westwood United Artists movie theater; his father had left Arnold Palmer Enterprises to become president of the Diner's Club franchises. At the age of 12, after seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, Jack decided to become a devout, orthodox Jew. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff
The 1940 animated film Fantasia is the third animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The film features eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music, seven of which were performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor provides live-action introductions to each segment. The idea for Fantasia arose in 1937 while Disney planned to revive the declining popularity of Mickey Mouse with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a more elaborate edition of the Silly Symphonies series. As production costs grew, Disney reconsidered Stokowski's suggestion to expand the concept and produce a feature-length film with a variety of illustrations set to musical pieces. The soundtrack was recorded with an early stereo sound process called Fantasound, making Fantasia the first commercial film released in multi-channel sound. In May 1992, the Philadelphia Orchestra filed a lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company and Buena Vista Home Video, believing that as a co-creator of the film, it was entitled to half of the estimated $120 million in profits from video and laser disc sales. The suit ended after the orchestra dropped its case, in October 1994. British music publisher Boosey & Hawkes filed a further lawsuit in 1993, contending that Disney did not have the rights to use The Rite of Spring in the VHS release of Fantasia. The company had bought the rights to the piece in 1947. Boosey & Hawkes won the case in August 1996. Music in Fantasia: Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite – selection of pieces from the ballet depicts the changing of the seasons from summer to autumn to winter, with no plot; Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice – based on Goethe's 1797 poem Der Zauberlehrling. Mickey Mouse, an apprentice of sorcerer Yen Sid, attempts some of his master's magic tricks before knowing how to control them; Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring – a reinterpretation of the history of Earth is shown to select pieces of the ballet, from the planet's formation to the first living creatures, followed by the reign and extinction of the dinosaur; Ludwig van Beethoven's The Pastoral Symphony – a mythical ancient Greek world of centaurs, fauns and other creatures of classical mythology; Amilcare Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours – featuring Madame Upanova and her ostriches followed by Hyacinth Hippo and her servant; Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Franz Schubert's Ave Maria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(film)
In 1950, nearly half of the more than 10,000 New Yorkers living in the heart of Little Italy identified as Italian-American. The narrow streets teemed with children and resonated with melodic exchanges in Italian among the one in five residents born in Italy and their second- and third-generation neighbors. By 2000, the census found that the Italian-American population had dwindled to 6 percent. Only 44 were Italian-born, compared with 2,149 a half-century earlier. Sambuca’s Café, at 105 Mulberry Street, is listed by Yelp, the food-oriented Web site, as being in Chinatown—it is owned by the president of the Little Italy Merchants Association. Last year, the National Park Service designated a Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District with no geographic distinction between the neighborhoods. The two neighborhoods have begun organizing a Marco Polo Day and an East Meets West Christmas Parade. City Hall will soon further erase the boundaries. Following the lead of three local community boards, the City Planning Commission is expected in March to approve the creation of a Chinatown Business Improvement District, which would engulf all but about two square blocks of a haven that once spanned almost 50 square blocks and had the largest concentration of Italian immigrants in the United States. Paolucci’s, a popular restaurant that opened on Mulberry in 1947, moved to Staten Island after the owner’s rent was raised in 2005 to $20,000 a month from $3,500, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/nyregion/22littleitaly.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
More companies are jumping into the business of refurbishing and reselling the used cellphones and other electronic gadgets clogging Americans' drawers and closets. Within a few years, the used market could account for a fifth of all cellphone sales in the U.S., says Stephen Manning, chief executive of ReCellular Inc., one of the largest U.S.-based cellphone refurbishers. ReCellular resold or recycled 5.2 million cellphones last year, up from 2.1 million five years earlier. ReCellular sells about 60% of its phones in the U.S. and the rest mostly to dealers in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Until recently, the privately owned company acquired phones only in bulk, getting them from charities that held collection drives and retailers or others with returned merchandise. Now ReCellular advertises on cable TV that it is willing to buy phones one at a time from individuals via the Usell.com Web site. Big retailers including Best Buy Co., phone makers, wireless carriers and a profusion of Web-site operators are all selling the reconditioned phones and offering cash or store credit for castoff devices. Some have recently begun advertising on television and radio to persuade more people to sell their old electronic gadgets, including game consoles and MP3 music players as well as phones. ReCellular and its rivals offer a few dollars for many basic phones with several years of wear and up to about $400 for the most advanced Apple Inc. iPhones. The phones are then often resold in the U.S. or abroad via retailers or Web sites. Others end up as replacement phones provided under warranty or insurance programs. At a ReCellular plant in Dexter, Mich., a 57,000-square-foot building formerly used to make automotive plastics receives thousands of old cellphones each day. About three-quarters of them can be buffed up or reconditioned and sold. The others—including 20-year-old car phones—are so dated they can only be mined for metals and plastics at a nearby recycling plant to partially cover the company's costs. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704520504576162431091194572.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
Read interview with Taleb by Charlie Rose in the February 28-March 6, 2011 issue of Bloomberg Business Week at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm
In 2004, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first listed the Santa Cruz Island fox as an endangered species, fewer than 100 remained. Their evolutionary story likely began when a pair of errant gray foxes somehow rafted across the 20-mile ocean channel from the California mainland around 15,000 years ago. They coexisted with the Chumash Indians and the island’s last remaining pygmy mammoths, whose fossils are still lodged in the soils. Only in the past 150 years did the ecological insults begin to pile up. Ranchers brought sheep and pigs, which denuded the island of much of its native vegetation. By the 1960s, a legacy of DDT disposal in the waters south of Los Angeles wiped out resident bald eagles. The DDT accumulated in the tissues of the fish and carrion the eagles fed on, weakening their eggshells so that the eggs were easily crushed. With the territorial bald eagles out of the way, golden eagles moved into the island’s cliffside perches in the 1990s, lured by a steady diet of feral pigs. The decision was made to round up 10 pairs of the remaining foxes for a captive breeding program. The Conservancy and the National Park Service, which owns the eastern quarter of the island, began a multimillion-dollar effort to restore ecological balance. The plan was to capture and relocate the golden eagles, re-establish bald eagles and set them free on the island, and eradicate the non-native feral pigs, which had nearly devoured the island’s rare and endangered native plants. With the threat of golden eagles diminished, the foxes have bounced back. At last count, Conservancy scientists estimated that more than 1,200 foxes live on the island, and Conservancy biologist Lotus Vermeer is waiting to see whether this year the population returns to its historical size of 1,500. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2011/features/art33121.html
Nationally acclaimed writer T.C. Boyle has written a new novel dramatizing efforts to restore the endangered species of Santa Cruz Island. The book, When the Killing’s Done, Viking Press, is loosely based on the efforts of the Conservancy’s island program director, biologist Lotus Vermeer, and dramatizes the challenges and difficulties of restoring several species that would likely now be extinct but for the quick work of conservationists. T.C. Boyle has written often about the environment, but this is the first time he has set a book on Santa Cruz Island, located just 20 miles south of his Santa Barbara home. The novel explores the question of who owns nature, says Boyle. “Can you separate yourself from everybody else and live in the wild, and do you take advantage of the wild?” he asks. “Are you making a profit from it, by running sheep for instance, but at the same time degrading it? And who has the right to do that and who has the right to say no?” Boyle says he was fascinated by the history of the Channel Islands, and he read many memoirs and accounts of shipwrecks and early ranching efforts. Although largely set in modern times, the novel looks at the history of the island and how human activity launched a chain of unintended changes. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2011/features/art33132.html
Media Influence
Actor Martin Sheen, whose birthname is Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez, adopted his stage name early in his career, in honor of Fulton John Sheen, born Peter John Sheen, a popular religious figure on television during the 1950s, whose radio broadcasts he admired since childhood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen
Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff attended Beverly Hills High School. During his high school years, he managed both the Beverly Hills and Westwood United Artists movie theater; his father had left Arnold Palmer Enterprises to become president of the Diner's Club franchises. At the age of 12, after seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, Jack decided to become a devout, orthodox Jew. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff
The 1940 animated film Fantasia is the third animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The film features eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music, seven of which were performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor provides live-action introductions to each segment. The idea for Fantasia arose in 1937 while Disney planned to revive the declining popularity of Mickey Mouse with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a more elaborate edition of the Silly Symphonies series. As production costs grew, Disney reconsidered Stokowski's suggestion to expand the concept and produce a feature-length film with a variety of illustrations set to musical pieces. The soundtrack was recorded with an early stereo sound process called Fantasound, making Fantasia the first commercial film released in multi-channel sound. In May 1992, the Philadelphia Orchestra filed a lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company and Buena Vista Home Video, believing that as a co-creator of the film, it was entitled to half of the estimated $120 million in profits from video and laser disc sales. The suit ended after the orchestra dropped its case, in October 1994. British music publisher Boosey & Hawkes filed a further lawsuit in 1993, contending that Disney did not have the rights to use The Rite of Spring in the VHS release of Fantasia. The company had bought the rights to the piece in 1947. Boosey & Hawkes won the case in August 1996. Music in Fantasia: Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite – selection of pieces from the ballet depicts the changing of the seasons from summer to autumn to winter, with no plot; Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice – based on Goethe's 1797 poem Der Zauberlehrling. Mickey Mouse, an apprentice of sorcerer Yen Sid, attempts some of his master's magic tricks before knowing how to control them; Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring – a reinterpretation of the history of Earth is shown to select pieces of the ballet, from the planet's formation to the first living creatures, followed by the reign and extinction of the dinosaur; Ludwig van Beethoven's The Pastoral Symphony – a mythical ancient Greek world of centaurs, fauns and other creatures of classical mythology; Amilcare Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours – featuring Madame Upanova and her ostriches followed by Hyacinth Hippo and her servant; Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Franz Schubert's Ave Maria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(film)
In 1950, nearly half of the more than 10,000 New Yorkers living in the heart of Little Italy identified as Italian-American. The narrow streets teemed with children and resonated with melodic exchanges in Italian among the one in five residents born in Italy and their second- and third-generation neighbors. By 2000, the census found that the Italian-American population had dwindled to 6 percent. Only 44 were Italian-born, compared with 2,149 a half-century earlier. Sambuca’s Café, at 105 Mulberry Street, is listed by Yelp, the food-oriented Web site, as being in Chinatown—it is owned by the president of the Little Italy Merchants Association. Last year, the National Park Service designated a Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District with no geographic distinction between the neighborhoods. The two neighborhoods have begun organizing a Marco Polo Day and an East Meets West Christmas Parade. City Hall will soon further erase the boundaries. Following the lead of three local community boards, the City Planning Commission is expected in March to approve the creation of a Chinatown Business Improvement District, which would engulf all but about two square blocks of a haven that once spanned almost 50 square blocks and had the largest concentration of Italian immigrants in the United States. Paolucci’s, a popular restaurant that opened on Mulberry in 1947, moved to Staten Island after the owner’s rent was raised in 2005 to $20,000 a month from $3,500, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/nyregion/22littleitaly.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
More companies are jumping into the business of refurbishing and reselling the used cellphones and other electronic gadgets clogging Americans' drawers and closets. Within a few years, the used market could account for a fifth of all cellphone sales in the U.S., says Stephen Manning, chief executive of ReCellular Inc., one of the largest U.S.-based cellphone refurbishers. ReCellular resold or recycled 5.2 million cellphones last year, up from 2.1 million five years earlier. ReCellular sells about 60% of its phones in the U.S. and the rest mostly to dealers in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Until recently, the privately owned company acquired phones only in bulk, getting them from charities that held collection drives and retailers or others with returned merchandise. Now ReCellular advertises on cable TV that it is willing to buy phones one at a time from individuals via the Usell.com Web site. Big retailers including Best Buy Co., phone makers, wireless carriers and a profusion of Web-site operators are all selling the reconditioned phones and offering cash or store credit for castoff devices. Some have recently begun advertising on television and radio to persuade more people to sell their old electronic gadgets, including game consoles and MP3 music players as well as phones. ReCellular and its rivals offer a few dollars for many basic phones with several years of wear and up to about $400 for the most advanced Apple Inc. iPhones. The phones are then often resold in the U.S. or abroad via retailers or Web sites. Others end up as replacement phones provided under warranty or insurance programs. At a ReCellular plant in Dexter, Mich., a 57,000-square-foot building formerly used to make automotive plastics receives thousands of old cellphones each day. About three-quarters of them can be buffed up or reconditioned and sold. The others—including 20-year-old car phones—are so dated they can only be mined for metals and plastics at a nearby recycling plant to partially cover the company's costs. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704520504576162431091194572.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
Monday, March 7, 2011
Humanity’s musical treasures—Beethoven piano sonatas, Schubert songs, Mozart symphonies and the like—come to life in performance. But they truly survive as black marks on a page, otherwise known as scores. Now a Web site founded five years ago by a conservatory student, then 19 years old, has made a vast expanse of this repertory available, free. The site, the International Music Score Library Project, has trod in the footsteps of Google Books and Project Gutenberg and grown to be one of the largest sources of scores anywhere. It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month. That is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and selling scores in expensive editions backed by the latest scholarship. More than a business threat, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers. The site (imslp.org) is an open-source repository that uses the Wikipedia template and philosophy, “a visual analogue of a normal library,” in the words of its founder, Edward W. Guo, the former conservatory student. Volunteers scan in scores or import them from other sources, like Beethoven House, the museum and research institute in Bonn, Germany. Other users oversee copyright issues and perform maintenance. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/arts/music/22music-imslp.html?scp=1&sq=%22free%20music%20scores%22&st=cse
A deaf dachshund is getting some expert help learning more sign language after finding a new home at the Missouri School for the Deaf. The 1-year-old dog named Sparky arrived at the school this winter after receiving training through a program that pairs rescue dogs with prison inmates. When the eight weeks of training were over, the inmates at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking decided they wanted Sparky to live with deaf students. The superintendent of the Fulton school, Barbara Garrison, jumped at the chance. The students continue adding to the sign language Sparky learned from the inmates. He already knows the signs for “no,” “sit,” “lay down,” “stay,” “stop” and “heel.” http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/feb/07/school-adopts-deaf-dachshund/
The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and that relates the "history" of the Land of Oz. Oz was originally created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen Oz books. Although most of the Oz books are strictly adventures, Baum—as well as many later Oz authors—styled themselves as "Royal Historians" of Oz to emphasize the concept that Oz is a genuine place. Later authors wrote 26 other "official" books after Baum's death. Many other authors have put their own twists on Oz, notably Gregory Maguire's revisionist Wicked (1995). For more such books, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_published_Oz_Apocrypha
lacuna (luh-KYOO-nuh) plural lacunae (luh-KYOO-nee) or lacunas noun
An empty space, gap, missing part, an opening.
From Latin lacuna (hole, gap), from lacus (lake). Earliest documented use: 1663.
diktat (dik-TAT) noun
1. An order or decree imposed without popular consent.
2. A harsh settlement imposed upon a defeated party.
From German Diktat (command, order, dictation), from Latin dictatum (something dictated), from dictare (to dictate), frequentative of dicere (to say). Ultimately from the Indo-European root deik- (to show, to pronounce solemnly), which is also the source of words such as judge, verdict, vendetta, revenge, indicate, dictate, paradigm, interdict, and fatidic. Earliest documented use: 1922, in reference to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, by Germany. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
A TANK AWAY FROM TOLEDO, COLUMBUS, CHICAGO OR ANN ARBOR
On March 4, we drove to the "Summit City" (Fort Wayne, Indiana) and ate at a Chuck and Bird's, a small restaurant featuring local foods and groceries. You may order food online and have it delivered. We came home with local foods, including honey, maple sugar and bee pollen. http://www.chuckandbirds.com/
At the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, http://www.fwmoa.org/ , we enjoyed seeing Paul Manship's four bronze sculptures, The Moods of Time, and a case of "brilliant cut glass", three pieces created by Libbey Glass of Toledo. http://corporate.libbey.com/History We saw Robert Indiana's picture of Numbers, with the zero titled to one side as the letter O is tilted in his famous LOVE sculpture. Also, we saw a small picture by Claes Oldenburg: Washington Monument, D.C. resembling scissors with the handles drawn underground, and the blades above ground as the obelisk. Quotations on the walls were: Art points us in new directions that make us think and question (Warren Criswell), All children are artists… the problem is how to remain an artist as one grows up. (Pablo Picasso), and I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn' t say any other way - things I had no words for (Georgia O'Keefe). The featured exhibit, on display through April 10, is the work of winners in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. About 1,000 students in grades 7-12 submitted more than 3,000 entries in the annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional competition organized by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Student art entries came from 13 northeast Indiana counties and 13 northwest Ohio counties. Student writing entries came from an area encompassing 52 counties in Indiana and Ohio.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110210/ENT/102100310
The competition was founded in 1923.
We went to the movies at CinemaCenter, just a few blocks from the Art Museum. Fort Wayne Cinema Center, Inc. is a not-for-profit film society founded in 1976. It has just one screen, and there were no commercial ads, and no previews. http://www.cinemacenter.org/ We saw the movie Casino Jack and wanted to find more information on its subject, lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Found this Pulitzer prize winner on Investigative Reporting in 2006: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/7035 Abramoff was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy, and was released December 3, 2010. http://www.enotes.com/topic/Jack_Abramoff
Quotes
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. American jurist (1841-1935)
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. Robert Southey, poet laureate of England (1774-1843) See Southey's poems, books, quotes and biography at: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_southey
A deaf dachshund is getting some expert help learning more sign language after finding a new home at the Missouri School for the Deaf. The 1-year-old dog named Sparky arrived at the school this winter after receiving training through a program that pairs rescue dogs with prison inmates. When the eight weeks of training were over, the inmates at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking decided they wanted Sparky to live with deaf students. The superintendent of the Fulton school, Barbara Garrison, jumped at the chance. The students continue adding to the sign language Sparky learned from the inmates. He already knows the signs for “no,” “sit,” “lay down,” “stay,” “stop” and “heel.” http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/feb/07/school-adopts-deaf-dachshund/
The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and that relates the "history" of the Land of Oz. Oz was originally created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen Oz books. Although most of the Oz books are strictly adventures, Baum—as well as many later Oz authors—styled themselves as "Royal Historians" of Oz to emphasize the concept that Oz is a genuine place. Later authors wrote 26 other "official" books after Baum's death. Many other authors have put their own twists on Oz, notably Gregory Maguire's revisionist Wicked (1995). For more such books, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_published_Oz_Apocrypha
lacuna (luh-KYOO-nuh) plural lacunae (luh-KYOO-nee) or lacunas noun
An empty space, gap, missing part, an opening.
From Latin lacuna (hole, gap), from lacus (lake). Earliest documented use: 1663.
diktat (dik-TAT) noun
1. An order or decree imposed without popular consent.
2. A harsh settlement imposed upon a defeated party.
From German Diktat (command, order, dictation), from Latin dictatum (something dictated), from dictare (to dictate), frequentative of dicere (to say). Ultimately from the Indo-European root deik- (to show, to pronounce solemnly), which is also the source of words such as judge, verdict, vendetta, revenge, indicate, dictate, paradigm, interdict, and fatidic. Earliest documented use: 1922, in reference to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, by Germany. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
A TANK AWAY FROM TOLEDO, COLUMBUS, CHICAGO OR ANN ARBOR
On March 4, we drove to the "Summit City" (Fort Wayne, Indiana) and ate at a Chuck and Bird's, a small restaurant featuring local foods and groceries. You may order food online and have it delivered. We came home with local foods, including honey, maple sugar and bee pollen. http://www.chuckandbirds.com/
At the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, http://www.fwmoa.org/ , we enjoyed seeing Paul Manship's four bronze sculptures, The Moods of Time, and a case of "brilliant cut glass", three pieces created by Libbey Glass of Toledo. http://corporate.libbey.com/History We saw Robert Indiana's picture of Numbers, with the zero titled to one side as the letter O is tilted in his famous LOVE sculpture. Also, we saw a small picture by Claes Oldenburg: Washington Monument, D.C. resembling scissors with the handles drawn underground, and the blades above ground as the obelisk. Quotations on the walls were: Art points us in new directions that make us think and question (Warren Criswell), All children are artists… the problem is how to remain an artist as one grows up. (Pablo Picasso), and I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn' t say any other way - things I had no words for (Georgia O'Keefe). The featured exhibit, on display through April 10, is the work of winners in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. About 1,000 students in grades 7-12 submitted more than 3,000 entries in the annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional competition organized by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Student art entries came from 13 northeast Indiana counties and 13 northwest Ohio counties. Student writing entries came from an area encompassing 52 counties in Indiana and Ohio.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110210/ENT/102100310
The competition was founded in 1923.
We went to the movies at CinemaCenter, just a few blocks from the Art Museum. Fort Wayne Cinema Center, Inc. is a not-for-profit film society founded in 1976. It has just one screen, and there were no commercial ads, and no previews. http://www.cinemacenter.org/ We saw the movie Casino Jack and wanted to find more information on its subject, lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Found this Pulitzer prize winner on Investigative Reporting in 2006: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/7035 Abramoff was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy, and was released December 3, 2010. http://www.enotes.com/topic/Jack_Abramoff
Quotes
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. American jurist (1841-1935)
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. Robert Southey, poet laureate of England (1774-1843) See Southey's poems, books, quotes and biography at: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_southey
Friday, March 4, 2011
Quotes
Marine reserves are like libraries. New Zealand tour guide
People are our treasures. Maori storyteller
The swiftest thing in the world is thought. The sweetest thing in the world is sleep. The richest thing in the world is earth, for out of the earth come all the riches of the world. Clever Manka, Czechoslovakian folk tale
A nonpartisan map of all 435 congressional districts in the nation has never been drawn. The widespread diffusion of redistricting technology and data and the training of a group of students dedicated to that purpose has made such a map possible for the first time. DrawCongress.org represents the first attempt to create an internet depository for nonpartisan congressional maps for the entire country. DrawCongress.org is an outgrowth of the “Redistricting and Gerrymandering” course at Columbia Law School. At this website you will find a series of student-drawn nonpartisan redistricting plans, which will culminate in a complete map of all 435 congressional districts. The students used Caliper Corporation's Maptitude for Redistricting software to draw their plans. http://www.law.columbia.edu/redistricting
The Poughkeepsie Bridge (sometimes known as the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, the High Bridge, or, since October 3, 2009, the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park) is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, New York on the east bank and Highland, New York on the west bank. Built as a double-track railroad bridge, it was completed on January 1, 1889, and went out of service on May 8, 1974. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, updated in 2008. It was opened to the public on October 3, 2009, as a pedestrian and cyclist bridge and New York State Park. The bridge was considered an engineering marvel of the day and has seven main spans. The total length is 6,767 feet (2082.15 meters), including approaches, and the deck is 212 feet (65.23 meters) above water. It is a multispan cantilever and truss bridge, having two river-crossing cantilever spans of 548 feet each (168.62 meters), one center span of 546 feet (168 meters), two anchor (connecting) spans of 525 feet each (161.53 meters), two shore spans of 201 feet each (61.85 meters), a 2,640-foot (812.31 meters) approach viaduct on the eastern bank and a 1,033-foot (317.85 meters) approach viaduct on the western bank. The bridge remained as the only Hudson River crossing south of Albany until the construction of the Bear Mountain (road) Bridge in 1924, and was advertised as a way to avoid New York City car floats and railroad passenger ferries. During World War II, the bridge was a vital link for war freight traffic, and was guarded by U.S. Army soldiers 24 hours a day. See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poughkeepsie_Bridge
There are three elements that make up a bowl of Vietnamese pho: the broth, the rice noodles and the meat. How long should it take for beef bones to simmer in order to come up with a good pho broth? Mai Pham and Andrea Nguyen both recommend at least three hours to simmer the broth, but there are other recipes that state that the beef bones must be boiled gently for six to eight hours. For restaurant-quality pho, the time required to simmer the broth can take up to 12 hours or more. Find recipe links at: http://www.lovingpho.com/pho-corner-everything-pho/pho-broth-soup-stock-vietnamese-pho/
Semolina (sem oh LEEN ah) [Alteration of Italian semolino, diminutive of semola, bran, from Latin simila, fine flour, ultimately of Semitic origin.]
1. a hot breakfast cereal made of the endosperm of soft wheat
2. a wheat product cooked and used primarily for baby food and the elderly
3. any coarse ground grain, i.e. rice semolina, corn semolina
4. gritty by-product the flour made from durum wheat used primarily in making pasta
Couscous (KOOS-koos) [French, from Arabic kuskus, from kaskasa, to pulverize; Berber, k'seksu, of Semitic roots.]
1. a hand rolled pasta made of semolina popular in the Maghreb countries (Morrocco, Tunisia, Algeria)
2. a dish of the same name in which couscous is prepared and steamed over a soup or stew primarily of chicken or lamb with vegetables (Sources from various dictionaries and encyclopedias.) http://www.epicureantable.com/articles/agrainsemolina.htm
Some people are only glad when they're mad. If they're not mad, they feel bad.
One of the earliest examples of Mies van der Rohe's brand of modernism in New York City is Philip Johnson's Rockefeller Guest House. In the late 1940's and early 1950's, Johnson had built only single-story structures, and thus when faced with the dilemma of how to design a façade with a second floor, he turns to Mies van der Rohe's sketches, and places a second floor almost entirely of glass. The home is one room wide, and upon entering, the living room stretches far back until it is book-ended by floor to ceiling windows that closely mimic the façade's layout. The home was sold at auction for $11 million. Previous to being sold at auction, The Rockefeller Guest House was donated by the Rockefellers to the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, after which it had its share of owners. Johnson himself rented the home and lived there from 1971 to 1979. The home was given landmark status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in December 2000. See more plus location, how to get there, and images at: http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/rockefellerguest/index.htm The house is not open to the public.
Marine reserves are like libraries. New Zealand tour guide
People are our treasures. Maori storyteller
The swiftest thing in the world is thought. The sweetest thing in the world is sleep. The richest thing in the world is earth, for out of the earth come all the riches of the world. Clever Manka, Czechoslovakian folk tale
A nonpartisan map of all 435 congressional districts in the nation has never been drawn. The widespread diffusion of redistricting technology and data and the training of a group of students dedicated to that purpose has made such a map possible for the first time. DrawCongress.org represents the first attempt to create an internet depository for nonpartisan congressional maps for the entire country. DrawCongress.org is an outgrowth of the “Redistricting and Gerrymandering” course at Columbia Law School. At this website you will find a series of student-drawn nonpartisan redistricting plans, which will culminate in a complete map of all 435 congressional districts. The students used Caliper Corporation's Maptitude for Redistricting software to draw their plans. http://www.law.columbia.edu/redistricting
The Poughkeepsie Bridge (sometimes known as the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge, the High Bridge, or, since October 3, 2009, the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park) is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie, New York on the east bank and Highland, New York on the west bank. Built as a double-track railroad bridge, it was completed on January 1, 1889, and went out of service on May 8, 1974. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, updated in 2008. It was opened to the public on October 3, 2009, as a pedestrian and cyclist bridge and New York State Park. The bridge was considered an engineering marvel of the day and has seven main spans. The total length is 6,767 feet (2082.15 meters), including approaches, and the deck is 212 feet (65.23 meters) above water. It is a multispan cantilever and truss bridge, having two river-crossing cantilever spans of 548 feet each (168.62 meters), one center span of 546 feet (168 meters), two anchor (connecting) spans of 525 feet each (161.53 meters), two shore spans of 201 feet each (61.85 meters), a 2,640-foot (812.31 meters) approach viaduct on the eastern bank and a 1,033-foot (317.85 meters) approach viaduct on the western bank. The bridge remained as the only Hudson River crossing south of Albany until the construction of the Bear Mountain (road) Bridge in 1924, and was advertised as a way to avoid New York City car floats and railroad passenger ferries. During World War II, the bridge was a vital link for war freight traffic, and was guarded by U.S. Army soldiers 24 hours a day. See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poughkeepsie_Bridge
There are three elements that make up a bowl of Vietnamese pho: the broth, the rice noodles and the meat. How long should it take for beef bones to simmer in order to come up with a good pho broth? Mai Pham and Andrea Nguyen both recommend at least three hours to simmer the broth, but there are other recipes that state that the beef bones must be boiled gently for six to eight hours. For restaurant-quality pho, the time required to simmer the broth can take up to 12 hours or more. Find recipe links at: http://www.lovingpho.com/pho-corner-everything-pho/pho-broth-soup-stock-vietnamese-pho/
Semolina (sem oh LEEN ah) [Alteration of Italian semolino, diminutive of semola, bran, from Latin simila, fine flour, ultimately of Semitic origin.]
1. a hot breakfast cereal made of the endosperm of soft wheat
2. a wheat product cooked and used primarily for baby food and the elderly
3. any coarse ground grain, i.e. rice semolina, corn semolina
4. gritty by-product the flour made from durum wheat used primarily in making pasta
Couscous (KOOS-koos) [French, from Arabic kuskus, from kaskasa, to pulverize; Berber, k'seksu, of Semitic roots.]
1. a hand rolled pasta made of semolina popular in the Maghreb countries (Morrocco, Tunisia, Algeria)
2. a dish of the same name in which couscous is prepared and steamed over a soup or stew primarily of chicken or lamb with vegetables (Sources from various dictionaries and encyclopedias.) http://www.epicureantable.com/articles/agrainsemolina.htm
Some people are only glad when they're mad. If they're not mad, they feel bad.
One of the earliest examples of Mies van der Rohe's brand of modernism in New York City is Philip Johnson's Rockefeller Guest House. In the late 1940's and early 1950's, Johnson had built only single-story structures, and thus when faced with the dilemma of how to design a façade with a second floor, he turns to Mies van der Rohe's sketches, and places a second floor almost entirely of glass. The home is one room wide, and upon entering, the living room stretches far back until it is book-ended by floor to ceiling windows that closely mimic the façade's layout. The home was sold at auction for $11 million. Previous to being sold at auction, The Rockefeller Guest House was donated by the Rockefellers to the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, after which it had its share of owners. Johnson himself rented the home and lived there from 1971 to 1979. The home was given landmark status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in December 2000. See more plus location, how to get there, and images at: http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/rockefellerguest/index.htm The house is not open to the public.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
London architect David Adjaye After the Borough Tower Hamlets Council voted to replace its entire public library system with seven Idea Stores, Adjaye was chosen in 2001 to design two of the buildings, the first of which opened in 2004. The widely praised $14.6 million Whitechapel project is serving as a model for the public library of the 21st century, complete with its day care center, chic café and multimedia services. Equally impressive is the library's dazzling craftsmanship, from the glittery exterior of glass panels to its colorfully spacious interior. "Libraries are supposed to play a vital role in the social fabric of a community," says Adjaye. The architect sees the new libraries, replacements for ones that were neglected and crumbling, as critical to generating local development while spreading knowledge.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4081/is_200601/ai_n17187809/
Adjaye has designed a town house in Manhattan concealed behind an 1897 carriage house. He created a floating library on the second floor that is tethered by a glass bridge leading to the living room. W magazine March 2011
Andrew Carnegie's life is the quintessential rags-to-riches story. Emigrating from Scotland in 1848, the self-taught Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy A bobbin boy was a boy who collected bobbins of thread for low pay in textile mills in the 19th and early 20th century. A bobbin boy could expect to make about $1.00 a week. Andrew Carnegie got his first job as a bobbin boy. In a Pittsburgh cotton factory before becoming the world's richest person, his steel empire a dominant force in a booming American economy. The jolly Carnegie was truly larger than life (at 4'11" he was more comfortable dominating a room while seated) and a man of contradictory impulses devoid, seemingly, of external pressures. Carnegie infamously exploited workers--in the 1892 Homestead incident, he hired Pinkertons to subdue discontented strikers--though he shared his wealth with those in need by educating the poor and championing public institutions. He also advocated for world peace until his death in 1919. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Andrew+Carnegie.-a0156720090
Carnegie was nicknamed "The Star-Spangled Scotchman" and was renowned for building libraries and funding construction of 7000 pipe organs.
Public art lost Working Classroom Inc. works with at-risk youth artists. They've been involved in many art projects around Albuquerque and created a giant fiberglass cactus. The cactus cost taxpayers $50,000. Originally handed out by the state legislature, the money was given to the Albuquerque Public Art Program. The city gave Working Classroom Inc. the money, which paid for an international artist to spend two months with about a half dozen handpicked kids to create the cactus sculpture. The money paid for the artist, a stipend for the kids and materials. Parks and Recreation Department employees admitted to their managers that the sculpture had been hauled off after being vandalized. "They did not realize that that was a public art project," city spokesman Chris Ramirez said. Instead of notifying the Public Art Department, the workers contacted the Solid Waste Department and had the artwork taken to the landfill where it was destroyed. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20033309-504083.html
Private art saved In 1961, two years before he made it big with Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak painted a mural on the bedroom wall of two very, very lucky children. Larry and Nina Chertoff were six and four years old respectively when “Uncle Moo Moo” painted a joyful parade of children and animals on their wall as a favor to their parents who were close friends of his. When their mother, Glynn Chertoff, died a few years ago, they had to relinquish the Upper West Side apartment. Larry and Nina realized they had to do something to preserve the mural or else it would just be painted over rental beige for the next tenants and the only surviving mural by Maurice Sendak would be lost forever. So they contacted the Rosenback Museum & Library in Philadelphia, the museum chosen by Sendak himself to host a massive archive of 10,000 pieces of his art and writings, and the owners of the apartment building to see what could be done. Most wonderfully, the property owners agreed to allow the museum to take out the entire wall. The museum was able to work out the challenging logistics so that the 4-by-13-foot mural could go from the 13th floor of a New York apartment building to Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square where it would become a star of the Rosenback’s Maurice Sendak Gallery. Restoration is scheduled to be completed in March. See picture of mural at: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/9683
Polysemantic words
Parity (PAR-i-tee) noun
Equality in amount, status, etc. Via French from Latin paritas, from par (equal). Earliest documented use: 1572.
noun
1. The condition of having given birth.
2. The number of children born by a woman. From Latin parere (to give birth). Earliest documented use: 1877.
fell (fel) adjective
1. Fierce; cruel; lethal.
2. In the idiom, in one fell swoop (all at once, as if by a blow). From Old French, variant of felon (wicked, a wicked person). Earliest documented use: Before 1300.
verb tr.
1. To knock down, strike, or cut down.
2. To sew a seam by folding one rough edge under the other, flat, on the wrong side, as in jeans.
noun
1. The amount of timber cut.
2. In sewing, a felled seam. From Old English fellan/fyllan (to fall). Earliest documented use: Around 1000.
noun
A stretch of open country in the highlands. From Old Norse fjall/fell (hill). Earliest documented use: Before 1300.
noun
The skin or hide of an animal. From Old English fel/fell (skin or hide). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pel- (skin or hide), which also gave us pelt, pillion, and film. Earliest documented use: Around 1000.
seadog (SEE-dog) noun
1. A veteran sailor.
2. A harbor seal.
3. A pirate or privateer.
4. A faint rainbow-like formation seen in foggy conditions. Also called mistbow, fogbow, and white rainbow. From sea + dog, from use of the word dog as a playful term to refer to someone, as in old dog. Earliest documented use: 1598. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4081/is_200601/ai_n17187809/
Adjaye has designed a town house in Manhattan concealed behind an 1897 carriage house. He created a floating library on the second floor that is tethered by a glass bridge leading to the living room. W magazine March 2011
Andrew Carnegie's life is the quintessential rags-to-riches story. Emigrating from Scotland in 1848, the self-taught Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy A bobbin boy was a boy who collected bobbins of thread for low pay in textile mills in the 19th and early 20th century. A bobbin boy could expect to make about $1.00 a week. Andrew Carnegie got his first job as a bobbin boy. In a Pittsburgh cotton factory before becoming the world's richest person, his steel empire a dominant force in a booming American economy. The jolly Carnegie was truly larger than life (at 4'11" he was more comfortable dominating a room while seated) and a man of contradictory impulses devoid, seemingly, of external pressures. Carnegie infamously exploited workers--in the 1892 Homestead incident, he hired Pinkertons to subdue discontented strikers--though he shared his wealth with those in need by educating the poor and championing public institutions. He also advocated for world peace until his death in 1919. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Andrew+Carnegie.-a0156720090
Carnegie was nicknamed "The Star-Spangled Scotchman" and was renowned for building libraries and funding construction of 7000 pipe organs.
Public art lost Working Classroom Inc. works with at-risk youth artists. They've been involved in many art projects around Albuquerque and created a giant fiberglass cactus. The cactus cost taxpayers $50,000. Originally handed out by the state legislature, the money was given to the Albuquerque Public Art Program. The city gave Working Classroom Inc. the money, which paid for an international artist to spend two months with about a half dozen handpicked kids to create the cactus sculpture. The money paid for the artist, a stipend for the kids and materials. Parks and Recreation Department employees admitted to their managers that the sculpture had been hauled off after being vandalized. "They did not realize that that was a public art project," city spokesman Chris Ramirez said. Instead of notifying the Public Art Department, the workers contacted the Solid Waste Department and had the artwork taken to the landfill where it was destroyed. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20033309-504083.html
Private art saved In 1961, two years before he made it big with Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak painted a mural on the bedroom wall of two very, very lucky children. Larry and Nina Chertoff were six and four years old respectively when “Uncle Moo Moo” painted a joyful parade of children and animals on their wall as a favor to their parents who were close friends of his. When their mother, Glynn Chertoff, died a few years ago, they had to relinquish the Upper West Side apartment. Larry and Nina realized they had to do something to preserve the mural or else it would just be painted over rental beige for the next tenants and the only surviving mural by Maurice Sendak would be lost forever. So they contacted the Rosenback Museum & Library in Philadelphia, the museum chosen by Sendak himself to host a massive archive of 10,000 pieces of his art and writings, and the owners of the apartment building to see what could be done. Most wonderfully, the property owners agreed to allow the museum to take out the entire wall. The museum was able to work out the challenging logistics so that the 4-by-13-foot mural could go from the 13th floor of a New York apartment building to Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square where it would become a star of the Rosenback’s Maurice Sendak Gallery. Restoration is scheduled to be completed in March. See picture of mural at: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/9683
Polysemantic words
Parity (PAR-i-tee) noun
Equality in amount, status, etc. Via French from Latin paritas, from par (equal). Earliest documented use: 1572.
noun
1. The condition of having given birth.
2. The number of children born by a woman. From Latin parere (to give birth). Earliest documented use: 1877.
fell (fel) adjective
1. Fierce; cruel; lethal.
2. In the idiom, in one fell swoop (all at once, as if by a blow). From Old French, variant of felon (wicked, a wicked person). Earliest documented use: Before 1300.
verb tr.
1. To knock down, strike, or cut down.
2. To sew a seam by folding one rough edge under the other, flat, on the wrong side, as in jeans.
noun
1. The amount of timber cut.
2. In sewing, a felled seam. From Old English fellan/fyllan (to fall). Earliest documented use: Around 1000.
noun
A stretch of open country in the highlands. From Old Norse fjall/fell (hill). Earliest documented use: Before 1300.
noun
The skin or hide of an animal. From Old English fel/fell (skin or hide). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pel- (skin or hide), which also gave us pelt, pillion, and film. Earliest documented use: Around 1000.
seadog (SEE-dog) noun
1. A veteran sailor.
2. A harbor seal.
3. A pirate or privateer.
4. A faint rainbow-like formation seen in foggy conditions. Also called mistbow, fogbow, and white rainbow. From sea + dog, from use of the word dog as a playful term to refer to someone, as in old dog. Earliest documented use: 1598. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Several of the world’s top experts in the conservation of very old wood covered with very old paint met recently in a windowless, cramped room of the St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. For two days, they worried over planks that had been cut from Baltic oak trees six centuries ago. The room, named the Villa Chapel, houses the multi-panelled Ghent Altarpiece, a six-hinged polyptych, measuring twelve feet high by seventeen feet wide when it is fully opened, which is sometimes called “The Adoration of the Lamb,” after its largest panel. The work is believed to have been begun by Hubert van Eyck in the early fourteen-twenties and was finished in 1432, six years after his death, by his brother Jan van Eyck, who was at least as important to Northern European painting as Giotto, a century earlier, had been to Italian painting. The work is the premier tourist attraction in Ghent. The experts had been charged with assessing the physical condition of the altarpiece, which last underwent a major restoration in 1950-51, and with recommending a site and a design for its future display.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_schjeldahl
Giotto di Bondone (1266–1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari relates that Giotto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child who was loved by all who knew him. The great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice. Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of such stories about Giotto's skill. He writes that when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, his young apprentice painted such a lifelike fly on the face of the painting that Cimabue was working on, that he tried several times to brush it off. Vasari also relates that when the Pope sent a messenger to Giotto, asking him to send a drawing to demonstrate his skill, Giotto drew, in red paint, a circle so perfect that it seemed as though it was drawn using a compass and instructed the messenger to give that to the Pope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto_di_Bondone
When the Toledo Symphony makes its Carnegie Hall debut on May 7, the program is intended to dazzle with important 20th-century works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 6 in B minor, and a bold collaborative piece for actors and orchestra by composer Andre Previn and playwright Tom Stoppard: Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. ("Every Good Boy Deserves Favor" is a mnemonic device used by young music students to remember the lines of the five-bar music scale, from bottom to top: E, G, B, D, F.) The TSO is collaborating with the University of Toledo Department of Theatre and Film on the Previn-Stoppard work. Programming was a key criterion for Spring for Music founders, who had to choose from a field of 65 orchestras to fill seven performance slots. "You have a really great program. It knocked us out. It’s creative, it’s interesting, and it fits this orchestra and its music director," said Thomas Morris of Spring for Music during a visit to Toledo last fall. http://beta.toledoblade.com/Music-Theater-Dance/2011/02/20/Untitled-BQ17DQ88-10N.html
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Sean Duggan Subject : lacuna Def: An empty space, gap, missing part, an opening.
Interesting. I never realized that lacuna referred to all kinds of gaps. I had always seen it exclusively referring to a hole in the text, such as a missing chapter or a smudge on a manuscript which has eliminated some of the words. I seem to remember being introduced to the word via the Xanth books which featured a character by that name who could erase the words of a text at will, and who was also at risk of becoming a lost footnote in history owing to an entirely uneventful life.
From: Kiko Denzer Subject: miasma Def: 1. Noxious emissions: smoke, vapors, etc., especially those from decaying organic matter. 2. An oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere.
Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map tells a gripping and inspiring story about how Dr. John Snow (and a few allies) conquered cholera in London, in the 1800s, by proving that water spread the disease, not miasma.
From: Jayadev U.K Subject: plural of mongoose
Talking of plurals, it reminds me of the story of a little boy who wanted to buy a couple of the animal called a mongoose. He did not know whether to say two mongooses or two mongeese. So he asked the shopkeeper to pack one mongoose and while at it, pack another one.
From: Bob Nyden Subject: adopted plurals, not: Euro
When the European Union adopted the Euro as its currency, the plural was defined in the legislation as euro so that the various EU languages would not bend it to varied pluralization rules. Yet in the United States, either through ignorance or arrogance, we say euros. Even the New York Times uses euros, so I guess it's a lost cause.
Parcheesi, also known by the names Pachisi and Twenty-five, originated as an ancient game in India. The name Pachisi comes from the Indian word for 25, pacis. That number holds a significant place in the game. Twenty-five is the maximum number of places achievable at one time and the maximum score achievable by throwing the cowry shells. This number also plays a part in the strategy of moving to the finish box on the game board. Though wood and cardboard materials make up the Parcheesi game boards of today, games were originally created of colorful woven and embroidered cloth. Game boards today resemble the shape and design of ancient games. A symmetrical cross containing columns of small squares around the board and a place in the middle for the game to begin and end make up the design of the board. Wooden beehive-shaped game pieces for each player and six cowry shells for determining the number of spaces to move make up the game equipment. Variations of Parcheesi or Parcheesi-like games called "Cross and Circle" appear in ancient historical accounts from many cultures. Ancient Asian game remnants of the same type were found in the Americas, which helps confirm that early Asians colonized in America. Evidence found in Aztec and Mayan artifacts indicates they too played a similar game. To this day, native Americans play variations of circle and cross games. http://www.ehow.com/about_5049766_parcheesi-history.html
The traditional Indian Pachisi game inspired the designs and rules of both Parcheesi and Sorry! E.G. Selchow & Company introduced Parcheesi in 1869. Parker Brothers first published the American version of the Parcheesi-derived Sorry! in 1934. Both Parcheesi and Sorry! players push pawns around the board. Parcheesi players roll dice to determine movement, while the fate of a Sorry! player depends on a drawn card. http://www.ehow.com/facts_7650170_difference-between-parcheesi-sorry.html
In case you didn't figure out who said that cooking is a very good way to decompress, it was British actor and writer Colin Firth.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_schjeldahl
Giotto di Bondone (1266–1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari relates that Giotto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child who was loved by all who knew him. The great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice. Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of such stories about Giotto's skill. He writes that when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, his young apprentice painted such a lifelike fly on the face of the painting that Cimabue was working on, that he tried several times to brush it off. Vasari also relates that when the Pope sent a messenger to Giotto, asking him to send a drawing to demonstrate his skill, Giotto drew, in red paint, a circle so perfect that it seemed as though it was drawn using a compass and instructed the messenger to give that to the Pope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto_di_Bondone
When the Toledo Symphony makes its Carnegie Hall debut on May 7, the program is intended to dazzle with important 20th-century works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 6 in B minor, and a bold collaborative piece for actors and orchestra by composer Andre Previn and playwright Tom Stoppard: Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. ("Every Good Boy Deserves Favor" is a mnemonic device used by young music students to remember the lines of the five-bar music scale, from bottom to top: E, G, B, D, F.) The TSO is collaborating with the University of Toledo Department of Theatre and Film on the Previn-Stoppard work. Programming was a key criterion for Spring for Music founders, who had to choose from a field of 65 orchestras to fill seven performance slots. "You have a really great program. It knocked us out. It’s creative, it’s interesting, and it fits this orchestra and its music director," said Thomas Morris of Spring for Music during a visit to Toledo last fall. http://beta.toledoblade.com/Music-Theater-Dance/2011/02/20/Untitled-BQ17DQ88-10N.html
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Sean Duggan Subject : lacuna Def: An empty space, gap, missing part, an opening.
Interesting. I never realized that lacuna referred to all kinds of gaps. I had always seen it exclusively referring to a hole in the text, such as a missing chapter or a smudge on a manuscript which has eliminated some of the words. I seem to remember being introduced to the word via the Xanth books which featured a character by that name who could erase the words of a text at will, and who was also at risk of becoming a lost footnote in history owing to an entirely uneventful life.
From: Kiko Denzer Subject: miasma Def: 1. Noxious emissions: smoke, vapors, etc., especially those from decaying organic matter. 2. An oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere.
Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map tells a gripping and inspiring story about how Dr. John Snow (and a few allies) conquered cholera in London, in the 1800s, by proving that water spread the disease, not miasma.
From: Jayadev U.K Subject: plural of mongoose
Talking of plurals, it reminds me of the story of a little boy who wanted to buy a couple of the animal called a mongoose. He did not know whether to say two mongooses or two mongeese. So he asked the shopkeeper to pack one mongoose and while at it, pack another one.
From: Bob Nyden Subject: adopted plurals, not: Euro
When the European Union adopted the Euro as its currency, the plural was defined in the legislation as euro so that the various EU languages would not bend it to varied pluralization rules. Yet in the United States, either through ignorance or arrogance, we say euros. Even the New York Times uses euros, so I guess it's a lost cause.
Parcheesi, also known by the names Pachisi and Twenty-five, originated as an ancient game in India. The name Pachisi comes from the Indian word for 25, pacis. That number holds a significant place in the game. Twenty-five is the maximum number of places achievable at one time and the maximum score achievable by throwing the cowry shells. This number also plays a part in the strategy of moving to the finish box on the game board. Though wood and cardboard materials make up the Parcheesi game boards of today, games were originally created of colorful woven and embroidered cloth. Game boards today resemble the shape and design of ancient games. A symmetrical cross containing columns of small squares around the board and a place in the middle for the game to begin and end make up the design of the board. Wooden beehive-shaped game pieces for each player and six cowry shells for determining the number of spaces to move make up the game equipment. Variations of Parcheesi or Parcheesi-like games called "Cross and Circle" appear in ancient historical accounts from many cultures. Ancient Asian game remnants of the same type were found in the Americas, which helps confirm that early Asians colonized in America. Evidence found in Aztec and Mayan artifacts indicates they too played a similar game. To this day, native Americans play variations of circle and cross games. http://www.ehow.com/about_5049766_parcheesi-history.html
The traditional Indian Pachisi game inspired the designs and rules of both Parcheesi and Sorry! E.G. Selchow & Company introduced Parcheesi in 1869. Parker Brothers first published the American version of the Parcheesi-derived Sorry! in 1934. Both Parcheesi and Sorry! players push pawns around the board. Parcheesi players roll dice to determine movement, while the fate of a Sorry! player depends on a drawn card. http://www.ehow.com/facts_7650170_difference-between-parcheesi-sorry.html
In case you didn't figure out who said that cooking is a very good way to decompress, it was British actor and writer Colin Firth.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Of the 2,213 trademark applications containing the word "yoga," more than 2,000 have been filed since 2001 relating to yoga styles and products, according to the government's Trademark Electronic Search System. The yoga entrepreneur movement is not without its adversaries. Since 2001 the Indian government has been cataloging more than 1,000 postures in a compendium created to protect against intellectual property infringement—what it calls "yoga theft." (The yoga portion of Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is scheduled to go online this spring.) Yet many yogamongers seem undeterred. Says Derek Beres, a New York-based Yama client who registered his EarthRise Yoga® in 2008: "While I understand that I have not invented any of the poses or underlying ideas that form the basis of [EarthRise Yoga], the way I've synthesized the elements is my own." Time will tell whether or not this generation of aspiring stars can avoid the fate of its forebears. Joseph Pilates, the godfather of the namesake mind-and-muscle control fitness routine, suffered for failing to trademark. When Pilates Inc. tried to protect the use of his name in 2000, the courts ruled that "pilates" was free for unrestricted use. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218078711181.htm
Singer John Legend was in Washington to sing at the White House on February 24. Legend told reporters before an evening concert celebrating Motown's music that too often the arts are the first thing to go when budgets need to be cut. "People fought to give me--a millionaire--a tax cut this year," he said. "I didn't need it. And all the other millionaires didn't need it either." The singer said he'd benefited from cultural organizations such as community choirs and arts councils in earlier years, which often suffer when budgets get trimmed.
http://www.billboard.com/news/john-legend-to-obama-take-my-millionaire-1005047982.story#/news/john-legend-to-obama-take-my-millionaire-1005047982.story
Valerie Worth (1933-1994) was most widely known for her "small poems" for children, composed in simple free verse. The poet and teacher Myra Cohn Livingston wrote of Ms. Worth's work in The New York Times Book Review in 1988, "The treasures Ms. Worth offers do not lie in some distant, golden land but in the everyday world." For example, of a safety pin, Ms. Worth wrote:
Closed, it sleeps
On its side
Quietly,
The silver
Image
Of some
Small fish;
Opened, it snaps
Its tail out
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/03/obituaries/valerie-worth-60-is-dead-a-novelist-for-young-readers.html
I discovered Valerie Worth through her poem The World is an Open Book on a bookmark produced by The Children's Book Council. Read at: http://www.seattleschools.org/schools/gatzert/Literacy/ToolkitTexts/TheWorldIsAnOpenBook.pdf
From another bookmark by The Children's Book Council: Don't bend my pages. (Use this bookmark.) Don't open me or set me down roughly. (It may break my back.) Don't turn my pages from the bottom. (Turn from the top so they won't tear.)
Quotes "Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted." "Music is the universal language of mankind -- poetry their universal pastime and delight."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
In 1884, a bust of the author was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London, England. He was the first American to be so honored. http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/longfellow/page.html
The first person interred in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey , Geoffrey Chaucer, owed his burial there in 1400 more to his position as Clerk of Works of the Palace of Westminster than to his fame as a writer. The erection of his magnificent tomb, however, by Nicholas Brigham in 1556 (to where Chaucer's remains were then transferred) and the nearby burial of Edmund Spenser in 1599 started a tradition that is still upheld. See images and statistics of poets at: http://www.answers.com/topic/poets-corner
The voting is done and Toyota just made it official: Prii is the plural of Prius. The made-up term Prii won with 25% of the vote. Prius, for both singular and plural, was second only 1 percentage point behind. Priuses got 20%; Prien, 19%; and Prium, 13%. Toyota vows it will use the winner, Prii, in advertising. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/02/toyota-prius-prii-prium-priuses-plural-james-lipton/1
Who said: "I think I'm going to cook a lot. I don't think I'm particularly good at it but I'm going to inflict my cooking on anybody within range. I tend to find that's a very good way to decompress." Find out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12606961
Singer John Legend was in Washington to sing at the White House on February 24. Legend told reporters before an evening concert celebrating Motown's music that too often the arts are the first thing to go when budgets need to be cut. "People fought to give me--a millionaire--a tax cut this year," he said. "I didn't need it. And all the other millionaires didn't need it either." The singer said he'd benefited from cultural organizations such as community choirs and arts councils in earlier years, which often suffer when budgets get trimmed.
http://www.billboard.com/news/john-legend-to-obama-take-my-millionaire-1005047982.story#/news/john-legend-to-obama-take-my-millionaire-1005047982.story
Valerie Worth (1933-1994) was most widely known for her "small poems" for children, composed in simple free verse. The poet and teacher Myra Cohn Livingston wrote of Ms. Worth's work in The New York Times Book Review in 1988, "The treasures Ms. Worth offers do not lie in some distant, golden land but in the everyday world." For example, of a safety pin, Ms. Worth wrote:
Closed, it sleeps
On its side
Quietly,
The silver
Image
Of some
Small fish;
Opened, it snaps
Its tail out
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/03/obituaries/valerie-worth-60-is-dead-a-novelist-for-young-readers.html
I discovered Valerie Worth through her poem The World is an Open Book on a bookmark produced by The Children's Book Council. Read at: http://www.seattleschools.org/schools/gatzert/Literacy/ToolkitTexts/TheWorldIsAnOpenBook.pdf
From another bookmark by The Children's Book Council: Don't bend my pages. (Use this bookmark.) Don't open me or set me down roughly. (It may break my back.) Don't turn my pages from the bottom. (Turn from the top so they won't tear.)
Quotes "Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted." "Music is the universal language of mankind -- poetry their universal pastime and delight."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
In 1884, a bust of the author was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London, England. He was the first American to be so honored. http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/longfellow/page.html
The first person interred in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey , Geoffrey Chaucer, owed his burial there in 1400 more to his position as Clerk of Works of the Palace of Westminster than to his fame as a writer. The erection of his magnificent tomb, however, by Nicholas Brigham in 1556 (to where Chaucer's remains were then transferred) and the nearby burial of Edmund Spenser in 1599 started a tradition that is still upheld. See images and statistics of poets at: http://www.answers.com/topic/poets-corner
The voting is done and Toyota just made it official: Prii is the plural of Prius. The made-up term Prii won with 25% of the vote. Prius, for both singular and plural, was second only 1 percentage point behind. Priuses got 20%; Prien, 19%; and Prium, 13%. Toyota vows it will use the winner, Prii, in advertising. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/02/toyota-prius-prii-prium-priuses-plural-james-lipton/1
Who said: "I think I'm going to cook a lot. I don't think I'm particularly good at it but I'm going to inflict my cooking on anybody within range. I tend to find that's a very good way to decompress." Find out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12606961
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