That the Moon appears much larger when viewed near the horizon was described thousands of years ago in early Greek and Chinese writings, and appears in Aristotle’s writings around 350 B.C.E. The illusion applies to the Sun, Moon, constellations and any celestial phenomenon that can be viewed low in the sky. Although many people assume that the phenomenon has something to do with the Earth’s atmosphere, in reality the refraction of light by the atmosphere acts to make the Moon appear slightly smaller and flatter near the horizon—not larger. Various activities provide evidence that the illusion has to do with the way in which our brain processes visual information. For example, if you bend over and look between your legs at the Moon — or if you lie on your side, or if you close one eye — you can reduce or eliminate the illusion. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/webscope/activities/pdfs/moonT.pdf
The moon illusion http://retina.anatomy.upenn.edu/~bart/scriptie.html
Moon illusion explained http://facstaff.uww.edu/mccreadd/intro9.htm
Americans hold diverse views, both positive and negative, about the internet’s impact on the political debate.
54% of online adults say that the internet makes it easier to connect with others who share their views politically: 44% say that the internet makes this “a lot easier” and 10% say that the internet makes this “a little easier.” The internet users who get news or take part in politically-related activities on social networking sites are especially likely to say that the internet helps them connect with others around political issues.
At the same time, 55% of all internet users feel that the internet increases the influence of those with extreme political views, compared with 30% who say that the internet reduces the influence of those with extreme views by giving ordinary citizens a chance to be heard.
61% of online adults agree with the statement that the internet exposes people to a wider range of political views than they can get in the traditional news media. Young adults and political social networkers are more likely than average to view the internet as a source of information they can’t find elsewhere.
At the same time, 56% of internet users say that it is usually difficult for them to tell what is true from what is not true when it comes to the political information they find online. Read 39-page report from Pew Internet & American Life Project at: http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/Internet%20and%20Campaign%202010.pdf
In testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission discussed its efforts to protect consumer privacy through enforcement actions, consumer education, and policy initiatives like the FTC staff’s recent preliminary privacy report. The report proposes a framework to balance consumer privacy with industry innovation by: 1) building privacy protections into everyday business practices (“privacy-by-design”); 2) simplifying privacy choices for consumers; and 3)improving transparency with clearer, shorter privacy notices. The Commission told Congress that industry stakeholders have made important progress in implementing Do Not Track, a mechanism proposed in the staff's preliminary privacy report last December that would allow consumers to choose not to have their Internet browsing tracked by third parties. The testimony noted that two of the major Internet browsers – Microsoft and Mozilla – “have recently announced the development of new choice mechanisms for online behavioral advertising that seek to provide increased transparency, greater consumer control, and improved ease of use.” http://ftc.gov/opa/2011/03/privacy.shtm
401(K) PLANS: Issues Involving Securities Lending in Plan Investments GAO-11-359T testimony before the Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11359t.pdf
Informatics includes the sciences concerned with gathering, manipulating, storing, retrieving, and classifying recorded information. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=informatics
Informationist Derived from the word information. Informationist and informationism are first known to have arisen in the work of a group of Scottish poets in the 1994 book Contraflow on the SuperHighway. Since then use of the term has become progressively greater. One who gathers, analyzes, interprets and uses information. This can be used as a job title. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/informationist
The Informationist is a debut novel by Taylor Stevens http://www.taylorstevensbooks.com/
What food is it? This citrus fruit originated in China but is associated with Japan. The fruit's name has four letters, two of which are u. Answer is forthcoming.
Free legal news
ABA Journal http://www.abajournal.com/
Bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/news/law/
BLT: The Blog of Legal Times http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/
Findlaw http://news.findlaw.com/
Jurist http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/
Law.Com http://www.law.com/jsp/law/index.jsp
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
vice versa
The reverse of the previous statement, with the main items transposed. Vice versa originates as Latin, with the literal translation being 'the other way round' or 'the position being reversed', but is now fully absorbed into English. The phrase is usually used to imply the complement of a statement without expressing as much in words. For example: "Fish can't live where we are most comfortable, and vice versa". It is often misspelt as visa versa.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/vice-versa.html
KUMATO® is a registered trademark of the SYNGENTA Group designating fresh tomatoes. Only SYNGENTA and its authorized resellers and licensees may use the KUMATO® trademark in advertising, promotional, and sales materials. The brand KUMATO® designates tomato fruits grown from hybrid tomato plants varieties SX387 and/or OLMECA that are protected by Community Plant Variety Rights. http://www.kumato.com/en/all-rights-reserved.aspx
A system for the protection of plant variety rights has been established by European Community legislation. The system allows intellectual property rights, valid throughout the Community, to be granted for plant varieties. The Community plant variety right (CPVR) is a form of intellectual property akin to a patent.
The system is based on the four underlying Regulations:
Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 of 27 July 1994 on Community plant variety rights
Commission Regulation (EC)N° 874/2009 of 17 September 2009 establishing implementing rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 as regards proceedings before the Community Plant Variety Office;
Commission Regulation (EC) No 1238/95 of 31 May 1995 establishing implementing rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 as regards the fees payable to the Community Plant Variety Office, as last amended by Commission Regulation (EC) N° 572/2008 of 19 June 2008, as regards the level of the annual fee and the fees relating to technical examination, payable to the Community Plant Variety Office, and the manner of payment.
Commission Regulation (EC) No 1768/95 of 24 July 1995 implementing rules on the agricultural exemption provided for in Article 14 (3) of Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 on Community plant variety rights, as last amended by Commission Regulation (EC) N° 2605/98 of 3 December 1998 . http://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/propertyrights/index_en.htm
In the U.S. and Canada, Kumato tomatoes are distributed by Mastronardi Produce, which has the Sunset line of tomatoes. Mastronadri is growing these in huge greenhouses in Ontario. It is unclear if distribution is regional or national. A California company, Dulcinea, is also selling a black tomato that it calls "Rosso Bruno," and this may be the same tomato. Syngentia is only releasing the seed to commercial growers as happened with the "Santa" "Grape Tomato" previously.
http://depthofprocessing.blogspot.com/2009/07/kumato-brand-tomatoes-from.html
Tips for creating a secure password: Don't use anything easily guessed, such as a pet's name. Come up with a core password and modify by adding different prefixes or suffixes. Then test the strength of your password at: http://www.passwordmeter.com/ I put in a password I use and got a rating of 50%, good. When I changed the numerals to symbols, the same keys produced 64%, strong. A table of additions and deductions shows how the percentage is calculated. For instance, consecutive letters or numerals cause a deduction.
The Week magazine March 11, 2011
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. "Rembrandt" is a modification of the spelling of the artist's first name that he introduced in 1633. Roughly speaking, his earliest signatures (ca. 1625) consisted of an initial "R", or the monogram "RH" (for Rembrant Harmenszoon; i.e. "Rembrant, the son of Harmen"), and starting in 1629, "RHL" (the "L" stood, presumably, for Leiden). In 1632, he used this monogram early in the year, then added his patronymic to it, "RHL-van Rijn", but replaced this form in that same year and began using his first name alone with its original spelling, "Rembrant". In 1633 he added a "d", and maintained this form consistently from then on, proving that this minor change had a meaning for him (whatever it might have been). In 1968 the Rembrandt Research Project was started under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research; it was initially expected to last a highly optimistic ten years. Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonné of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been removed from their list, although others have been added back. Many of those removed are now thought to be the work of his students. One example of activity is The Polish Rider, in New York's Frick Collection. Its authenticity had been questioned years before by several scholars, led by Julius Held. Many, including Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about whom little is known. The Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of". More recent opinion has shifted in favor of the Frick, with Simon Schama in his 1999 book Rembrandt's Eyes, and a Rembrandt Project scholar, Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master. Many scholars feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work. Another painting, Pilate Washing His Hands, is also of questionable attribution. Critical opinion of this picture has varied since 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as "a somewhat abnormal work" by Rembrandt. Scholars have since dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil, possibly Arent de Gelder. The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master's command of illumination and modeling. The attribution and re-attribution work is ongoing. In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt's students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: Study of an Old Man in Profile and Study of an Old Man with a Beard from a US private collection, Study of a Weeping Woman, owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet, painted in 1640. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt
The reverse of the previous statement, with the main items transposed. Vice versa originates as Latin, with the literal translation being 'the other way round' or 'the position being reversed', but is now fully absorbed into English. The phrase is usually used to imply the complement of a statement without expressing as much in words. For example: "Fish can't live where we are most comfortable, and vice versa". It is often misspelt as visa versa.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/vice-versa.html
KUMATO® is a registered trademark of the SYNGENTA Group designating fresh tomatoes. Only SYNGENTA and its authorized resellers and licensees may use the KUMATO® trademark in advertising, promotional, and sales materials. The brand KUMATO® designates tomato fruits grown from hybrid tomato plants varieties SX387 and/or OLMECA that are protected by Community Plant Variety Rights. http://www.kumato.com/en/all-rights-reserved.aspx
A system for the protection of plant variety rights has been established by European Community legislation. The system allows intellectual property rights, valid throughout the Community, to be granted for plant varieties. The Community plant variety right (CPVR) is a form of intellectual property akin to a patent.
The system is based on the four underlying Regulations:
Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 of 27 July 1994 on Community plant variety rights
Commission Regulation (EC)N° 874/2009 of 17 September 2009 establishing implementing rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 as regards proceedings before the Community Plant Variety Office;
Commission Regulation (EC) No 1238/95 of 31 May 1995 establishing implementing rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 as regards the fees payable to the Community Plant Variety Office, as last amended by Commission Regulation (EC) N° 572/2008 of 19 June 2008, as regards the level of the annual fee and the fees relating to technical examination, payable to the Community Plant Variety Office, and the manner of payment.
Commission Regulation (EC) No 1768/95 of 24 July 1995 implementing rules on the agricultural exemption provided for in Article 14 (3) of Council Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 on Community plant variety rights, as last amended by Commission Regulation (EC) N° 2605/98 of 3 December 1998 . http://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/propertyrights/index_en.htm
In the U.S. and Canada, Kumato tomatoes are distributed by Mastronardi Produce, which has the Sunset line of tomatoes. Mastronadri is growing these in huge greenhouses in Ontario. It is unclear if distribution is regional or national. A California company, Dulcinea, is also selling a black tomato that it calls "Rosso Bruno," and this may be the same tomato. Syngentia is only releasing the seed to commercial growers as happened with the "Santa" "Grape Tomato" previously.
http://depthofprocessing.blogspot.com/2009/07/kumato-brand-tomatoes-from.html
Tips for creating a secure password: Don't use anything easily guessed, such as a pet's name. Come up with a core password and modify by adding different prefixes or suffixes. Then test the strength of your password at: http://www.passwordmeter.com/ I put in a password I use and got a rating of 50%, good. When I changed the numerals to symbols, the same keys produced 64%, strong. A table of additions and deductions shows how the percentage is calculated. For instance, consecutive letters or numerals cause a deduction.
The Week magazine March 11, 2011
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. "Rembrandt" is a modification of the spelling of the artist's first name that he introduced in 1633. Roughly speaking, his earliest signatures (ca. 1625) consisted of an initial "R", or the monogram "RH" (for Rembrant Harmenszoon; i.e. "Rembrant, the son of Harmen"), and starting in 1629, "RHL" (the "L" stood, presumably, for Leiden). In 1632, he used this monogram early in the year, then added his patronymic to it, "RHL-van Rijn", but replaced this form in that same year and began using his first name alone with its original spelling, "Rembrant". In 1633 he added a "d", and maintained this form consistently from then on, proving that this minor change had a meaning for him (whatever it might have been). In 1968 the Rembrandt Research Project was started under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research; it was initially expected to last a highly optimistic ten years. Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonné of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been removed from their list, although others have been added back. Many of those removed are now thought to be the work of his students. One example of activity is The Polish Rider, in New York's Frick Collection. Its authenticity had been questioned years before by several scholars, led by Julius Held. Many, including Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about whom little is known. The Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of". More recent opinion has shifted in favor of the Frick, with Simon Schama in his 1999 book Rembrandt's Eyes, and a Rembrandt Project scholar, Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master. Many scholars feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work. Another painting, Pilate Washing His Hands, is also of questionable attribution. Critical opinion of this picture has varied since 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as "a somewhat abnormal work" by Rembrandt. Scholars have since dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil, possibly Arent de Gelder. The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master's command of illumination and modeling. The attribution and re-attribution work is ongoing. In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt's students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: Study of an Old Man in Profile and Study of an Old Man with a Beard from a US private collection, Study of a Weeping Woman, owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet, painted in 1640. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Words derived from animals
cynic (SIN-ik) noun
1. One who believes people are motivated by self-interest only.
2. A person with a negative outlook, one disposed to find fault.
From Latin cynicus, from Greek kynikos (like a dog), from kyon (dog). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwon- (dog), which is also the source of canine, chenille (from French chenille: caterpillar, literally, little dog), kennel, canary, hound, dachshund, corgi, and cynosure. Earliest documented use: 1547.
aegis or egis (EE-jis) noun
Protection, support, guidance, or sponsorship of a particular person or organization.
From Latin aegis, from Greek aigis (goatskin), from aix (goat). Aigis was the name of the shield or breastplate of Zeus or Athena in Greek mythology. It was made of goatskin. Earliest documented use: 1704.
pedigree (PED-i-gree) noun
1. Lineage or ancestry.
2. A distinguished ancestry.
3. The origin or history of a person or thing.
From Anglo-Norman pé de grue (crane's foot), from p´ (foot) + de (of) + grue (crane), from the resemblance of a crane's foot to the succession lines in a genealogical chart. Earliest documented use: 1425.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
YouTube has partnered with U. of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia College of Chicago to launch YouTube Creator Institute Programs. The programs, which are accepting applications at youtube.com/creatorinstitute through March 25, are designed to help college-age students develop digital media skills through special courses to be offered in Los Angeles and Chicago later this year. YouTube users will vote on the submissions and help determine the 20 students who will be accepted into the programs. The application involves students answering a series of questions and submitting a two-minute demonstration of their work. Online voting on the submissions will begin March 28 to determine the first round of candidates. From there, USC and Columbia College faculty members will determine the final 20 winners, to be announced April 20.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118033693?refCatId=1009
Eudora Welty quotes
"It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves--like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them . . . "
"Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."
"There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer."
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7973.Eudora_Welty
Eudora Alice Welty (1909-2001) the oldest of her family's three children and the only girl, was born in Jackson, Mississippi. That neither of her parents came from the Deep South may have given her some detachment from her culture and helped her become a careful observer of its manners. Welty's education in the Jackson schools was followed by two years at Mississippi State College for Women between 1925 and 1927, and then by two more years at the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor of arts degree in 1929. Her father, who believed that she could never earn a living by writing stories, encouraged her to study advertising at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City during 1930 and 1931. Welty returned to Jackson in 1931 after her father's death and worked as a part-time journalist, copywriter, and photographer for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was aimed at providing jobs for writers. The latter job took her on assignments throughout Mississippi, and she began using these experiences as material for short stories. In June 1936, her story "Death of a Traveling Salesman" was accepted for publication.
http://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Welty-Eudora.html
A seventh anniversary is called septennial--its time period is called septennium or septennary. A seventeenth anniversary is called septendecennial--its time periods is called septendecennium or septendecenniary.
Find anniversaries and time periods from 1 to 10,000 at: http://home.comcast.net/~igpl/NXY.html
cynic (SIN-ik) noun
1. One who believes people are motivated by self-interest only.
2. A person with a negative outlook, one disposed to find fault.
From Latin cynicus, from Greek kynikos (like a dog), from kyon (dog). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwon- (dog), which is also the source of canine, chenille (from French chenille: caterpillar, literally, little dog), kennel, canary, hound, dachshund, corgi, and cynosure. Earliest documented use: 1547.
aegis or egis (EE-jis) noun
Protection, support, guidance, or sponsorship of a particular person or organization.
From Latin aegis, from Greek aigis (goatskin), from aix (goat). Aigis was the name of the shield or breastplate of Zeus or Athena in Greek mythology. It was made of goatskin. Earliest documented use: 1704.
pedigree (PED-i-gree) noun
1. Lineage or ancestry.
2. A distinguished ancestry.
3. The origin or history of a person or thing.
From Anglo-Norman pé de grue (crane's foot), from p´ (foot) + de (of) + grue (crane), from the resemblance of a crane's foot to the succession lines in a genealogical chart. Earliest documented use: 1425.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
YouTube has partnered with U. of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia College of Chicago to launch YouTube Creator Institute Programs. The programs, which are accepting applications at youtube.com/creatorinstitute through March 25, are designed to help college-age students develop digital media skills through special courses to be offered in Los Angeles and Chicago later this year. YouTube users will vote on the submissions and help determine the 20 students who will be accepted into the programs. The application involves students answering a series of questions and submitting a two-minute demonstration of their work. Online voting on the submissions will begin March 28 to determine the first round of candidates. From there, USC and Columbia College faculty members will determine the final 20 winners, to be announced April 20.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118033693?refCatId=1009
Eudora Welty quotes
"It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves--like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them . . . "
"Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."
"There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer."
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7973.Eudora_Welty
Eudora Alice Welty (1909-2001) the oldest of her family's three children and the only girl, was born in Jackson, Mississippi. That neither of her parents came from the Deep South may have given her some detachment from her culture and helped her become a careful observer of its manners. Welty's education in the Jackson schools was followed by two years at Mississippi State College for Women between 1925 and 1927, and then by two more years at the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor of arts degree in 1929. Her father, who believed that she could never earn a living by writing stories, encouraged her to study advertising at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City during 1930 and 1931. Welty returned to Jackson in 1931 after her father's death and worked as a part-time journalist, copywriter, and photographer for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was aimed at providing jobs for writers. The latter job took her on assignments throughout Mississippi, and she began using these experiences as material for short stories. In June 1936, her story "Death of a Traveling Salesman" was accepted for publication.
http://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Welty-Eudora.html
A seventh anniversary is called septennial--its time period is called septennium or septennary. A seventeenth anniversary is called septendecennial--its time periods is called septendecennium or septendecenniary.
Find anniversaries and time periods from 1 to 10,000 at: http://home.comcast.net/~igpl/NXY.html
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (1881-1975), called Plum by most of his family and friends, was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Terry Pratchett. The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, given annually for the finest example of comic writing in the UK, was established and named in his honour in 2000. Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he split his time between England and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the U.S. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognise the seriousness of the conflict. Subsequently, the German military authorities in occupied France, interned him with several other Englishmen in the same condition, as an "enemy alien" according to the definition of such by the Geneva Convention, first in Belgium, then at Tost- now Toszek- in Upper Silesia -now in Poland. Of the latter, he is recorded as having said, "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like..." While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues. He was released from internment because of having reached the limit of age (60 years) stated by the mentioned Convention of Geneva (Wodehouse's version) or because of a deal with the German Ministry of Propaganda. He then proceeded to broadcast through the German radio services and with the full cooperation of the German propaganda services several humoristic autobiographical commentaries as a basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America (then not at war with Germany). When the text of his commentaries was published in England many years later, several short sentences of the commentaries had been suppressed, probably by Wodehouse himself, for showing him being relatively friendly to the German military men when they arrived at Le Touquet. Wodehouse believed he would be admired as showing himself to have "kept a stiff upper lip" during his internment. Some libraries banned his books. Foremost among his critics was A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books; Wodehouse took revenge in a short story parody, Rodney Has a Relapse (1949), in which a character based on Milne writes about his son, a ridiculous character named "Timothy Bobbin". See lists of characters, plots and adaptations at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse
A Celebration of P.G. Wodehouse http://www.terry-mordue.co.uk/Wodehouse/
E-mail precautions I delete notices from companies I don't deal with, things that say "you asked for this" or something similar, and e-mails with no subject line. Even if I know the person sending the e-mail with no subject line, it could be that someone (Nigeria scammer, for instance) has taken over their mailing list. It slows you down when you're opening mail, but it's worth it.
Q: How do bells fit into a U.S. Navy ship's operations?
A: Bells have a long tradition at sea, starting with the British in the late 1400s. Signaling, keeping time, and sounding alarms are important in any ship's routine and readiness. Time at sea was once measured by the trickle of sand through a half-hour glass. One of the ship's boys was ordered to watch the glass and turn it. When he turned the glass, he struck the bell to show he had performed his duty. Thus the tradition began of striking the bell once at the end of the first half hour of a four-hour watch, twice after the first hour, etc., until eight bells marked the end of the watch. The process is repeated for the succeeding watches. Sounding the bell on the hour and half hour still has its place in the nuclear- and missile-oriented Navy, regulating daily routine just as it did on vessels under sail. U.S. Navy.
Q: How did Samuel Clemens decide to use the pen name "Mark Twain"?
A: In "Life on the Mississippi," Twain wrote: "I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands -- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say." classiclit.about.com. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Mar/JU/ar_JU_031411.asp?d=031411,2011,Mar,14&c=c_13
"Half twain! Quarter twain! M-a-r-k twain!" For most people, the name "Mark Twain" is virtually synonymous with the life along the Mississippi River immortalized in the author's writing. Clemens first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada. "Mark Twain" (meaning "Mark number two") was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feet—safe depth for the steamboat. http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/MTP/mississippi.html
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Eva-Maria von Hauff Subject: sitzfleisch A sitzfleischorden is a promotion or decoration someone receives not because of personal merit but due to seniority.
From: Edith Slembek Subject: sitzfleisch A very common understanding in Germany is: you have guests and politeness wants that the guest has to decide when he wants to leave. Sometimes there are guests who stay and stay, you want to go to bed but guest sits and sits, we say 'He has sitzfleisch.'
From: BranShea Subject: sitzfleisch Germans are clever with word glue. Besides Sitzfleisch they also have the word Fleischersatz, meaning the whole magic world of tempe, tofu, breadcrumbs, mashed beans, and Analogkäse.
From: Rudy Rosenberg Sr Subject: ersatz During WWII in occupied Europe everything became ersatz. There were ersatz ladies' stockings, ersatz butter, but mostly ersatz coffee (basically malt). When my mother Frieda and I went into hiding (for 27 months), we took along a small test tube filled with about a dozen real coffee beans and settled to drinking ersatz coffee until the liberation in 1944. Mother had saved the dozen coffee beans to offer a real cup of coffee to our eventual liberators. When I talk to groups about our diet of herring, turnips, black bread, and ersatz coffee, I am always greeted with puzzled looks from the audience. It had never occurred to me that this was a word not known in the USA. Thank you for resuscitating Ersatz. Incidentally, we were liberated by the British and they drank tea!
A new paper by James M. Donovan from the University of Kentucky College of Law caught much attention recently. The paper is self-archived and it examines the citation trend of open access articles from three different law journals. The opening sentence from the abstract sounds very powerful: “Open access legal scholarship – which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties – can expect to receive 50% more citations than non-open access writings of similar age from the same venue.” The introduction to research is done with the mention of Harvard, ranked number one among world universities according to Times Higher Education, as the first law school to make an institutional commitment to open access. Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats, is also described as a strong argument for open access gaining ground with law librarians who are also facing crisis due to increasing prices of journal subscriptions. “The AALL’s Price Index for Legal Publications… reports a 42% increase in costs for all periodicals (both law-school subsidized and commercial) from 2005-2009, with the average price jumping from $155 to $222.” http://intechweb.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/focusing-on-the-impact-of-open-access-on-legal-scholarship-50-more-citations/ Thanks, Julie.
A Celebration of P.G. Wodehouse http://www.terry-mordue.co.uk/Wodehouse/
E-mail precautions I delete notices from companies I don't deal with, things that say "you asked for this" or something similar, and e-mails with no subject line. Even if I know the person sending the e-mail with no subject line, it could be that someone (Nigeria scammer, for instance) has taken over their mailing list. It slows you down when you're opening mail, but it's worth it.
Q: How do bells fit into a U.S. Navy ship's operations?
A: Bells have a long tradition at sea, starting with the British in the late 1400s. Signaling, keeping time, and sounding alarms are important in any ship's routine and readiness. Time at sea was once measured by the trickle of sand through a half-hour glass. One of the ship's boys was ordered to watch the glass and turn it. When he turned the glass, he struck the bell to show he had performed his duty. Thus the tradition began of striking the bell once at the end of the first half hour of a four-hour watch, twice after the first hour, etc., until eight bells marked the end of the watch. The process is repeated for the succeeding watches. Sounding the bell on the hour and half hour still has its place in the nuclear- and missile-oriented Navy, regulating daily routine just as it did on vessels under sail. U.S. Navy.
Q: How did Samuel Clemens decide to use the pen name "Mark Twain"?
A: In "Life on the Mississippi," Twain wrote: "I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands -- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say." classiclit.about.com. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Mar/JU/ar_JU_031411.asp?d=031411,2011,Mar,14&c=c_13
"Half twain! Quarter twain! M-a-r-k twain!" For most people, the name "Mark Twain" is virtually synonymous with the life along the Mississippi River immortalized in the author's writing. Clemens first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada. "Mark Twain" (meaning "Mark number two") was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feet—safe depth for the steamboat. http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/MTP/mississippi.html
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Eva-Maria von Hauff Subject: sitzfleisch A sitzfleischorden is a promotion or decoration someone receives not because of personal merit but due to seniority.
From: Edith Slembek Subject: sitzfleisch A very common understanding in Germany is: you have guests and politeness wants that the guest has to decide when he wants to leave. Sometimes there are guests who stay and stay, you want to go to bed but guest sits and sits, we say 'He has sitzfleisch.'
From: BranShea Subject: sitzfleisch Germans are clever with word glue. Besides Sitzfleisch they also have the word Fleischersatz, meaning the whole magic world of tempe, tofu, breadcrumbs, mashed beans, and Analogkäse.
From: Rudy Rosenberg Sr Subject: ersatz During WWII in occupied Europe everything became ersatz. There were ersatz ladies' stockings, ersatz butter, but mostly ersatz coffee (basically malt). When my mother Frieda and I went into hiding (for 27 months), we took along a small test tube filled with about a dozen real coffee beans and settled to drinking ersatz coffee until the liberation in 1944. Mother had saved the dozen coffee beans to offer a real cup of coffee to our eventual liberators. When I talk to groups about our diet of herring, turnips, black bread, and ersatz coffee, I am always greeted with puzzled looks from the audience. It had never occurred to me that this was a word not known in the USA. Thank you for resuscitating Ersatz. Incidentally, we were liberated by the British and they drank tea!
A new paper by James M. Donovan from the University of Kentucky College of Law caught much attention recently. The paper is self-archived and it examines the citation trend of open access articles from three different law journals. The opening sentence from the abstract sounds very powerful: “Open access legal scholarship – which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties – can expect to receive 50% more citations than non-open access writings of similar age from the same venue.” The introduction to research is done with the mention of Harvard, ranked number one among world universities according to Times Higher Education, as the first law school to make an institutional commitment to open access. Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats, is also described as a strong argument for open access gaining ground with law librarians who are also facing crisis due to increasing prices of journal subscriptions. “The AALL’s Price Index for Legal Publications… reports a 42% increase in costs for all periodicals (both law-school subsidized and commercial) from 2005-2009, with the average price jumping from $155 to $222.” http://intechweb.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/focusing-on-the-impact-of-open-access-on-legal-scholarship-50-more-citations/ Thanks, Julie.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Amazon.com is trying to counter a new law aimed at forcing online retailers to collect sales taxes in the state. Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island have enacted similar laws, and California is weighing action. Amazon is also in a court battle with New York over such legislation. The Illinois law, signed by Gov. Pat Quinn March 10, requires online retailers that work with affiliates in the state to collect sales taxes on purchases made by Illinois residents and businesses. Amazon responded to the measure by cutting ties to its Illinois-based affiliates, which are blogs and other websites that refer traffic to Amazon's website and get paid commissions if customers make purchases there. A 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling said that retailers have to collect sales taxes in a state only if they have a substantial physical "nexus" there. The new Illinois law established marketing affiliates as nexuses. Amazon has referred to these affiliates as "advertisers." Amazon's stance against collecting sales tax has drawn the ire of brick-and-mortar retailers, who complain the company has an unfair business advantage over rivals that collect sales taxes. Meanwhile, lawmakers have become more determined to make the online giant collect taxes to help address budget shortfalls that have become big problems for many states.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-severing-ties-with-illinois-affiliates-2011-03-10
Charlie Sheen, just days after being fired from CBS' "Two and a Half Men," has fired back with a $100-million lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Chuck Lorre, the studio and executive producer behind the show. The suit, filed March 10 in Santa Monica Superior Court, charges that Sheen was only fired from the show because he had recently criticized Lorre both on radio and television. Warner Bros., in a letter to Sheen's attorney Martin Singer, had said Sheen was fired because he had become a liability on the show and his erratic off-stage life had started to affect his ability to perform. See copy of suit at: http://documents.latimes.com/charlie-sheen-lawsuit-warner-chuck-lorre/ The suit also says it is pursuing claims for the benefit of the entire cast , crew and actors to be paid for the rest of the current TV season. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/03/charlie-sheen-files-100-million-suit-against-warner-bros-and-chuck-lorre-.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef014e86a37eb4970d
March 14, 2011 marks the septendecennial of Wordsmith.org. On this day, 17 years ago, Anu Garg started what turned into Wordsmith.org. To celebrate, this week features words that are 17 letters long.
predestinarianism (pri-des-tuh-NAR-ee-uh-niz-uhm) noun
Belief in the doctrine of predestination, that the divine will has predetermined the course of events, people's fate, etc. From Latin praedestination, from prae- (before) + destinare (to determine), from stare (to stand). Earliest documented use: 1722. "I have reacquainted myself with the old taste of Scottish predestinarianism. Y'know, damned or saved; nothing to do with free will or good works."
Alexander Linklater; The Tale of the Three Alcoholics; The Guardian (London, UK); Nov 11, 2006.
In the past few months, online clubs with such names as BookLending.com and Lendle.me have proliferated. The sites, some of which have gathered thousands of users, allow strangers to borrow and lend e-books for Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook free. The sites are the latest twist in the industry of e-books, which has disrupted the traditional book-publishing industry and changed that business's economics. Public libraries can't lend e-books in the Kindle format, though they can for other e-reading devices. The lending sites have drawbacks. One is limited selection. Most major book publishers haven't made their e-books lendable, and the books can be lent only once and for only 14 days. That means that with every successful loan, the sites' available library shrinks unless new users with books to lend join. BookLending and Lendle users can swap only Kindle titles, while eBook Fling will allow Kindle and Nook borrowing. All three lending sites are free to users. But if books aren't available for borrowing, the sites refer users to Amazon, and they make a commission if users buy a book there. The three sites offer incentives for users to make their books available for lending. Lendle requires users to make at least one book available for loan before starting to borrow, and the site has an algorithm that improves users' chances of getting a book they want if they lend frequently. BookLending has a similar algorithm, though it has no requirement to make books available for loan first.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703726904576192923709743108.html
In a recent assessment, the value of Lake Erie and its tributaries, with respect to sport fishing and related commerce, was estimated to exceed $850 million annually. The study unit contains about 300 public recreational areas and about 90,000 acres of inland waters for public use. Lake Erie supports the largest freshwater fishery in the Great Lakes (an estimated 50-60 million pounds of fish are caught per year) and is widely considered to be the best walleye fishery in the world. Lakes Erie and St. Clair and the St. Clair, Detroit, and Niagara Rivers are vital shipping links that connect the upper Great Lakes to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/FS-036-99/
The U.S. Department of Transportation and Consumer Reports on March 7 announced a new partnership to educate parents, teachers, and teens about the dangers of distracted driving. Consumer Reports released the results of a new poll that shows younger drivers are more likely to use handheld devices while driving--and less likely to view them as a danger. The free brochure “Distracted Driving Shatters Lives” produced by DOT and CR recommends six steps for parents:
• Set a good example by putting down your phone while driving.
• Talk to your teen about the risks and responsibilities of driving and the danger of dividing their attention between a cell phone and the road.
• Establish ground rules for not texting or talking on a handheld device while behind the wheel.
• Have your child sign a pledge to not use a cell phone while driving, agreeing on penalties for violating the pledge.
• Educate yourself about the problem at Distracted.gov and ConsumerReports.org/Distracted.
• Spread the word by communicating with friends and family.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/streaming/PDFs/distracted-driving-brochure.pdf
The tallest luxury residential tower in New York City's history, by Frank Gehry, nears completion: the finest skyscraper to rise in New York since Eero Saarinen’s CBS building went up 46 years ago. And like that tower, and Philip Johnson’s AT&T (now Sony) building after it, 8 Spruce Street seems to crystallize a particular moment in cultural history, in this case the turning point from the modern to the digital age. The tower, 76 stories high and clad in a rumpled stainless-steel skin, stands at the northern edge of the financial district on a tight lot hemmed in by one-way streets. The Pace University building, a wide, Brutalist-style structure completed in 1970, cuts it off from the rest of the city to the north; just beyond are the spaghettilike access ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge. The building’s exterior is made up of 10,500 individual steel panels, almost all of them different shapes, so that as you move around it, its shape is constantly changing. And by using the same kind of computer modeling that he used for his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, more than a decade ago, he was able to achieve this quality at a close to negligible increase in cost. See images at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/arts/design/10beekman.html
The Pentagon was built in "stripped classical" style, a variation of Greek and Roman classicism popular in the middle of the 20th century and often used for government buildings. On January 15, 1943, just 16 months after construction began, the Pentagon was completed. In April, occupants began moving in. Including outside facilities, the project cost about $83,000,000. Since five roads surrounded the site, builders chose a five-sided building, which is how the Pentagon got its name. The building consists of five concentric rings connected by ten corridors that run, like spokes, from the inner ring to the outer. Interior courtyards that provide light separate the rings. The corridors are a total of 17.5 miles long, while the building provides a gross floor area of 6,500,000 square feet. There are 3,800,000 square feet for offices, concessions, and storage. The five-sided center courtyard covers five acres. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/pentagon1.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-severing-ties-with-illinois-affiliates-2011-03-10
Charlie Sheen, just days after being fired from CBS' "Two and a Half Men," has fired back with a $100-million lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Chuck Lorre, the studio and executive producer behind the show. The suit, filed March 10 in Santa Monica Superior Court, charges that Sheen was only fired from the show because he had recently criticized Lorre both on radio and television. Warner Bros., in a letter to Sheen's attorney Martin Singer, had said Sheen was fired because he had become a liability on the show and his erratic off-stage life had started to affect his ability to perform. See copy of suit at: http://documents.latimes.com/charlie-sheen-lawsuit-warner-chuck-lorre/ The suit also says it is pursuing claims for the benefit of the entire cast , crew and actors to be paid for the rest of the current TV season. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/03/charlie-sheen-files-100-million-suit-against-warner-bros-and-chuck-lorre-.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef014e86a37eb4970d
March 14, 2011 marks the septendecennial of Wordsmith.org. On this day, 17 years ago, Anu Garg started what turned into Wordsmith.org. To celebrate, this week features words that are 17 letters long.
predestinarianism (pri-des-tuh-NAR-ee-uh-niz-uhm) noun
Belief in the doctrine of predestination, that the divine will has predetermined the course of events, people's fate, etc. From Latin praedestination, from prae- (before) + destinare (to determine), from stare (to stand). Earliest documented use: 1722. "I have reacquainted myself with the old taste of Scottish predestinarianism. Y'know, damned or saved; nothing to do with free will or good works."
Alexander Linklater; The Tale of the Three Alcoholics; The Guardian (London, UK); Nov 11, 2006.
In the past few months, online clubs with such names as BookLending.com and Lendle.me have proliferated. The sites, some of which have gathered thousands of users, allow strangers to borrow and lend e-books for Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook free. The sites are the latest twist in the industry of e-books, which has disrupted the traditional book-publishing industry and changed that business's economics. Public libraries can't lend e-books in the Kindle format, though they can for other e-reading devices. The lending sites have drawbacks. One is limited selection. Most major book publishers haven't made their e-books lendable, and the books can be lent only once and for only 14 days. That means that with every successful loan, the sites' available library shrinks unless new users with books to lend join. BookLending and Lendle users can swap only Kindle titles, while eBook Fling will allow Kindle and Nook borrowing. All three lending sites are free to users. But if books aren't available for borrowing, the sites refer users to Amazon, and they make a commission if users buy a book there. The three sites offer incentives for users to make their books available for lending. Lendle requires users to make at least one book available for loan before starting to borrow, and the site has an algorithm that improves users' chances of getting a book they want if they lend frequently. BookLending has a similar algorithm, though it has no requirement to make books available for loan first.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703726904576192923709743108.html
In a recent assessment, the value of Lake Erie and its tributaries, with respect to sport fishing and related commerce, was estimated to exceed $850 million annually. The study unit contains about 300 public recreational areas and about 90,000 acres of inland waters for public use. Lake Erie supports the largest freshwater fishery in the Great Lakes (an estimated 50-60 million pounds of fish are caught per year) and is widely considered to be the best walleye fishery in the world. Lakes Erie and St. Clair and the St. Clair, Detroit, and Niagara Rivers are vital shipping links that connect the upper Great Lakes to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/FS-036-99/
The U.S. Department of Transportation and Consumer Reports on March 7 announced a new partnership to educate parents, teachers, and teens about the dangers of distracted driving. Consumer Reports released the results of a new poll that shows younger drivers are more likely to use handheld devices while driving--and less likely to view them as a danger. The free brochure “Distracted Driving Shatters Lives” produced by DOT and CR recommends six steps for parents:
• Set a good example by putting down your phone while driving.
• Talk to your teen about the risks and responsibilities of driving and the danger of dividing their attention between a cell phone and the road.
• Establish ground rules for not texting or talking on a handheld device while behind the wheel.
• Have your child sign a pledge to not use a cell phone while driving, agreeing on penalties for violating the pledge.
• Educate yourself about the problem at Distracted.gov and ConsumerReports.org/Distracted.
• Spread the word by communicating with friends and family.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/resources/streaming/PDFs/distracted-driving-brochure.pdf
The tallest luxury residential tower in New York City's history, by Frank Gehry, nears completion: the finest skyscraper to rise in New York since Eero Saarinen’s CBS building went up 46 years ago. And like that tower, and Philip Johnson’s AT&T (now Sony) building after it, 8 Spruce Street seems to crystallize a particular moment in cultural history, in this case the turning point from the modern to the digital age. The tower, 76 stories high and clad in a rumpled stainless-steel skin, stands at the northern edge of the financial district on a tight lot hemmed in by one-way streets. The Pace University building, a wide, Brutalist-style structure completed in 1970, cuts it off from the rest of the city to the north; just beyond are the spaghettilike access ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge. The building’s exterior is made up of 10,500 individual steel panels, almost all of them different shapes, so that as you move around it, its shape is constantly changing. And by using the same kind of computer modeling that he used for his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, more than a decade ago, he was able to achieve this quality at a close to negligible increase in cost. See images at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/arts/design/10beekman.html
The Pentagon was built in "stripped classical" style, a variation of Greek and Roman classicism popular in the middle of the 20th century and often used for government buildings. On January 15, 1943, just 16 months after construction began, the Pentagon was completed. In April, occupants began moving in. Including outside facilities, the project cost about $83,000,000. Since five roads surrounded the site, builders chose a five-sided building, which is how the Pentagon got its name. The building consists of five concentric rings connected by ten corridors that run, like spokes, from the inner ring to the outer. Interior courtyards that provide light separate the rings. The corridors are a total of 17.5 miles long, while the building provides a gross floor area of 6,500,000 square feet. There are 3,800,000 square feet for offices, concessions, and storage. The five-sided center courtyard covers five acres. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/pentagon1.html
Friday, March 11, 2011
Data-gathering firms and technology companies are aggressively matching people's TV-viewing behavior with other personal data—in some cases, prescription-drug records obtained from insurers—and using it to help advertisers buy ads targeted to shows watched by certain kinds of people. At the same time, cable and satellite companies are testing and deploying new systems designed to show households highly targeted ads. In an early test of Cablevision's technology, the U.S. Army used it to target four different recruitment ads to different categories of viewers. In one method, TV providers such as Cablevision can beam different ads to different set-top boxes, even when they're tuned to the same channel. A second method for targeting ads works differently. Companies including TRA Inc., Rentrak Corp. and WPP PLC's Kantar Media, along with tech titan Microsoft Corp., are taking data on TV-viewing behavior harvested from set-top boxes and matching it with a broad array of household data. Then they, and other tech firms including Google Inc., help advertisers buy ads targeted to shows watched by certain types of people. by Suzanne Vranica
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tvs-next-wave-tuning-in-to-you-2011-03-06
We're drawing ever-closer to the Philip K. Dickian dystopia paradise in which all advertising is personalized according to the purchasing power of each individual consumer. (That means YOU, Kevin Spacey fan and likely Casino Jack ticket-buyer!) In a report on the booming taxi ad biz, the Times notes that people riding cabs through the East Village can now expect to see backseat TV ads for Blue Man Group, which performs on Lafayette Street. The theater troupe is just one of the advertisers "using the GPS devices in cabs to pinpoint when and where its commercials should play." They know where you are, and they're coming for you. The Times also finds that VeriFone Media Solutions, which handles advertising sales for 12,000 yellow cabs, is reporting revenue up 60 percent in the past year. http://gothamist.com/2010/12/13/taxi_tv_ads_now_using_gps_to_target.php
Quotes
Laughter has no foreign accent. Paul Lowney
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. Abraham Lincoln
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh — at yourself. Ethel Barrymore http://www.laughteryogaamerica.com/4fun/grow/118-quotes-laughter-joy-happiness-729.php
gamut (GAM-uht) noun The complete range of something. [From Medieval Latin, contraction of gamma ut, from gamma (third letter of the Greek alphabet), used to represent the lowest tone + ut, from the names of the notes ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si (ut and si later changed to do and ti). Gamma + ut contracted to gamut and the meaning expanded to denote all notes.]
http://gtotd.blogspot.com/2007/09/gamut-word-with-its-roots-in-do-re-mi_07.html
Answer to Who Am I Joyce Carol Oates has written fiction, essays, poetry, memoirs under her own name and novels under the pseudonyms of Lauren Kelly and Rosamond Smith. The search longhand awards 1968 2006 brings up the correct answer. A Tampa muse reader got it first, followed quickly by a Savannah reader. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oates
Richard Wilbur was born on March 1, 1921 in New York City. Wilbur has also published numerous translations of French plays—specifically those of the 17th century French dramatists Molière and Jean Racine—as well as poetry by Valéry, Villon, Baudelaire, Akhmatova, Brodsky, and others. Wilbur is also the author of several books for children and a few collections of prose pieces, and has edited such books as Poems of Shakespeare (1966) and The Complete Poems of Poe (1959). Among his honors are the Wallace Stevens Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Frost Medal, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two Bollingen Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Award, a Ford Foundation Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Memorial Award, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, the National Arts Club medal of honor for literature, two PEN translation awards, the Prix de Rome Fellowship, and the Shelley Memorial Award. He was elected a chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and is a former Poet Laureate of the United States. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/202
Almost all of Richard Wilbur's poems are metered, more than half are strictly rhymed, and most are less than a page. Mr. Wilbur, U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987-88, matured in the late 1940s, during the reign of New Criticism, an academic movement that favored poems capable of yielding multiple ambiguities after a rigorous analysis, and he has always written in its approved neoclassical style. The springy elegance of his mind, which serves to clarify the problems of life, not to muddle them with vatic obscurities, has brought him triple glory—as a poet, a translator (no one has captured Molière in English better than he) and a lyricist. Stephen Sondheim, not a critic easy to please, has declared Mr. Wilbur's words for "Candide," done in tandem with Leonard Bernstein's score, "the most scintillating set of songs yet written for the musical theater." His productivity, never high to begin with, has slowed with age. He finishes poems at the rate that Antonio Stradivari constructed a violin. "I often don't write more than a couple of lines in a day of, let's say, six hours of staring at the sheet of paper," he told the Paris Review in 1977. "Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia." by Richard B. Woordward http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166452338502880.html
Poems of Richard Wilbur http://www.poemhunter.com/richard-wilbur/poems/
In the context of web archiving and digital preservation, one often hears that the average lifespan of a web page is forty-four days. This statistic has been repeated among those in the digital preservation community for years, but it never seems to be accompanied by a citation . In a 2002 article by Peter Lyman a footnote briefly explains why the source of this figure is so elusive: "These data sources were originally published on the Web, but are no longer available, illustrating the problem of Web archiving." Ironically, the very source of a statistic often used to support the cause of web preservation has itself become a victim of "link rot." Link rot refers to the loss or removal of content at a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over time. In other words, when an attempt is made to open a documented link, either different or irrelevant information has replaced the expected content, or else the link is found to be broken, typically expressed by a 404 or "not found" error message. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Web-based materials often disappear as URLs change and web sites are changed, updated, or deleted. In 2007, the Georgetown Law Library and the state law libraries of Maryland and Virginia formed the Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive to begin preserving these important web-published law- and policy-related materials. In the three years since the archive was launched, this law library collaborative has built a collection comprising more than 2300 titles and 5700 digital items and, all of which were originally posted to the web. by Sarah Rhodes Much more at: http://www.llrx.com/features/linkrot.htm
For the next 10 weeks, prosecutors will battle Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam in courtroom 17B in lower Manhattan. But they will win or lose the insider-trading case in a nearby "war room." That is a nondescript conference room in the Manhattan federal courthouse, lined with boxes of evidence and a snack-strewn table, where three prosecutors will strategize, likely long into the night, preparing for the next day's hearing. Seventeen months after bringing charges in the largest insider-trading case in decades, the pressure is on the U.S. to prove its case against Mr. Rajaratnam. The trial of Mr. Rajaratnam got under way March 8 with the beginning of jury selection. Over the next day or so, the government and a defense team from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP will assemble a 12-member jury to decide the fate of Mr. Rajaratnam, who could face more than 20 years in prison if he is convicted on all 14 charges of criminal securities fraud and conspiracy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188960685479264.html
"We dedicate this page to short people, deceased and living, who overcame the obstacles society placed before them and became persons of distinction." A sortable list with biographies includes General Tom Thumb (1838-1883) at 2'9", Alexander Pope (1688-1744) at 4'6", Edith Piaf (1915-1963) at 4'8", Linda Hunt (b. 1945) at 4'9", Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) and Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) at 4'10" each, Kristin Chenoweth (b. 1970) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) at 4'11" each. http://www.shortsupport.org/cgi-bin/whowho_list.cgi
Sunday, March 13, 2011 At 2:00 AM local time, the clock is moved forward to 3:00 AM in the United States. In some locations, local time is moved back, and the date varies. See more at: http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/events.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tvs-next-wave-tuning-in-to-you-2011-03-06
We're drawing ever-closer to the Philip K. Dickian dystopia paradise in which all advertising is personalized according to the purchasing power of each individual consumer. (That means YOU, Kevin Spacey fan and likely Casino Jack ticket-buyer!) In a report on the booming taxi ad biz, the Times notes that people riding cabs through the East Village can now expect to see backseat TV ads for Blue Man Group, which performs on Lafayette Street. The theater troupe is just one of the advertisers "using the GPS devices in cabs to pinpoint when and where its commercials should play." They know where you are, and they're coming for you. The Times also finds that VeriFone Media Solutions, which handles advertising sales for 12,000 yellow cabs, is reporting revenue up 60 percent in the past year. http://gothamist.com/2010/12/13/taxi_tv_ads_now_using_gps_to_target.php
Quotes
Laughter has no foreign accent. Paul Lowney
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. Abraham Lincoln
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh — at yourself. Ethel Barrymore http://www.laughteryogaamerica.com/4fun/grow/118-quotes-laughter-joy-happiness-729.php
gamut (GAM-uht) noun The complete range of something. [From Medieval Latin, contraction of gamma ut, from gamma (third letter of the Greek alphabet), used to represent the lowest tone + ut, from the names of the notes ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si (ut and si later changed to do and ti). Gamma + ut contracted to gamut and the meaning expanded to denote all notes.]
http://gtotd.blogspot.com/2007/09/gamut-word-with-its-roots-in-do-re-mi_07.html
Answer to Who Am I Joyce Carol Oates has written fiction, essays, poetry, memoirs under her own name and novels under the pseudonyms of Lauren Kelly and Rosamond Smith. The search longhand awards 1968 2006 brings up the correct answer. A Tampa muse reader got it first, followed quickly by a Savannah reader. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oates
Richard Wilbur was born on March 1, 1921 in New York City. Wilbur has also published numerous translations of French plays—specifically those of the 17th century French dramatists Molière and Jean Racine—as well as poetry by Valéry, Villon, Baudelaire, Akhmatova, Brodsky, and others. Wilbur is also the author of several books for children and a few collections of prose pieces, and has edited such books as Poems of Shakespeare (1966) and The Complete Poems of Poe (1959). Among his honors are the Wallace Stevens Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Frost Medal, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two Bollingen Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Award, a Ford Foundation Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Memorial Award, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, the National Arts Club medal of honor for literature, two PEN translation awards, the Prix de Rome Fellowship, and the Shelley Memorial Award. He was elected a chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and is a former Poet Laureate of the United States. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/202
Almost all of Richard Wilbur's poems are metered, more than half are strictly rhymed, and most are less than a page. Mr. Wilbur, U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987-88, matured in the late 1940s, during the reign of New Criticism, an academic movement that favored poems capable of yielding multiple ambiguities after a rigorous analysis, and he has always written in its approved neoclassical style. The springy elegance of his mind, which serves to clarify the problems of life, not to muddle them with vatic obscurities, has brought him triple glory—as a poet, a translator (no one has captured Molière in English better than he) and a lyricist. Stephen Sondheim, not a critic easy to please, has declared Mr. Wilbur's words for "Candide," done in tandem with Leonard Bernstein's score, "the most scintillating set of songs yet written for the musical theater." His productivity, never high to begin with, has slowed with age. He finishes poems at the rate that Antonio Stradivari constructed a violin. "I often don't write more than a couple of lines in a day of, let's say, six hours of staring at the sheet of paper," he told the Paris Review in 1977. "Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia." by Richard B. Woordward http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166452338502880.html
Poems of Richard Wilbur http://www.poemhunter.com/richard-wilbur/poems/
In the context of web archiving and digital preservation, one often hears that the average lifespan of a web page is forty-four days. This statistic has been repeated among those in the digital preservation community for years, but it never seems to be accompanied by a citation . In a 2002 article by Peter Lyman a footnote briefly explains why the source of this figure is so elusive: "These data sources were originally published on the Web, but are no longer available, illustrating the problem of Web archiving." Ironically, the very source of a statistic often used to support the cause of web preservation has itself become a victim of "link rot." Link rot refers to the loss or removal of content at a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over time. In other words, when an attempt is made to open a documented link, either different or irrelevant information has replaced the expected content, or else the link is found to be broken, typically expressed by a 404 or "not found" error message. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Web-based materials often disappear as URLs change and web sites are changed, updated, or deleted. In 2007, the Georgetown Law Library and the state law libraries of Maryland and Virginia formed the Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive to begin preserving these important web-published law- and policy-related materials. In the three years since the archive was launched, this law library collaborative has built a collection comprising more than 2300 titles and 5700 digital items and, all of which were originally posted to the web. by Sarah Rhodes Much more at: http://www.llrx.com/features/linkrot.htm
For the next 10 weeks, prosecutors will battle Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam in courtroom 17B in lower Manhattan. But they will win or lose the insider-trading case in a nearby "war room." That is a nondescript conference room in the Manhattan federal courthouse, lined with boxes of evidence and a snack-strewn table, where three prosecutors will strategize, likely long into the night, preparing for the next day's hearing. Seventeen months after bringing charges in the largest insider-trading case in decades, the pressure is on the U.S. to prove its case against Mr. Rajaratnam. The trial of Mr. Rajaratnam got under way March 8 with the beginning of jury selection. Over the next day or so, the government and a defense team from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP will assemble a 12-member jury to decide the fate of Mr. Rajaratnam, who could face more than 20 years in prison if he is convicted on all 14 charges of criminal securities fraud and conspiracy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188960685479264.html
"We dedicate this page to short people, deceased and living, who overcame the obstacles society placed before them and became persons of distinction." A sortable list with biographies includes General Tom Thumb (1838-1883) at 2'9", Alexander Pope (1688-1744) at 4'6", Edith Piaf (1915-1963) at 4'8", Linda Hunt (b. 1945) at 4'9", Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) and Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) at 4'10" each, Kristin Chenoweth (b. 1970) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) at 4'11" each. http://www.shortsupport.org/cgi-bin/whowho_list.cgi
Sunday, March 13, 2011 At 2:00 AM local time, the clock is moved forward to 3:00 AM in the United States. In some locations, local time is moved back, and the date varies. See more at: http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/events.html
Thursday, March 10, 2011
On March 8, Charlie Sheen launched another salvo in an online-video broadcast where he described the decision to fire him as "completely and entirely illegal," and attacked the executives involved as "nothing shy of traitors," among other personal insults. The outcome of the fight could come down to a legal decision about the actor's contract—and whether Warner Bros. can prove that his actions give them grounds to terminate it, some employment lawyers say. "It's going to be for a fact-finder to determine whether they had the ability to discharge him," said Barry Peek, an entertainment labor lawyer at Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein. A key question could be Mr. Sheen's performance on set, lawyers said. If Mr. Sheen's admitted partying behavior affected his ability to work, Warner Bros. could have cause to terminate his contract. In its March 7 letter to Mr. Sheen's lawyer, Warner Bros. said that it has filming outtakes that show "Mr. Sheen had difficulty remembering his lines and hitting his marks." "If they can establish it, that will be the case—whether he can perform his job," Mr. Stein said. There is also the question of Mr. Sheen's off-screen behavior. Mr. Sheen's attorney has said the star is not subject to a traditional "morals clause," which typically allows an employer to fire a star for embarrassing behavior. But Warner Bros., in its March 7 letter, quoted a section of Mr. Sheen's contract that offers a narrower standard: If producers believe the star has committed felonies involving "moral turpitude."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188962205491674.html
1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, from the next room. The Scottish-born Bell had a lifelong interest in the nature of sound. He was born into a family of speech instructors, and his mother and his wife both had hearing impairments. While ostensibly working in 1875 on a device to send multiple telegraph signals over the same wire by using harmonics, he heard a twang. That led him to investigate whether his electrical apparatus could be used to transmit the sound of a human voice. Bell’s journal, now at the Library of Congress, contains the following entry for March 10, 1876: I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.’” We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. Watson’s journal, however, says the famous quote was: “Mr. Watson come here I want you.” That disagreement, though, is trifling compared to the long controversy over whether Bell truly invented the telephone. Another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a similar device, and recent books claim that Bell not only stole Gray’s ideas, but may even have bribed a patent inspector to let him sneak a look at Gray’s filing.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/03/0310bell-invents-telephone-mr-watson-come-here/
Leslie Valiant, professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has received the 2010 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, computational complexity and the theory of parallel and distributed computing. Often referred to as the Nobel prize in computing, the Turing award has, since its inception in 1966, honored computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/121118/20110310/harvard-computer-science-professor-computing-turing-award-computation-machine-learning-artificial-in.htm
Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp. , Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston's Emerson College with smartphones and unlimited service in exchange for students working gratis on the company's local Internet push. Universities, in some cases, receive funding or proprietary consumer data from companies for their research. Students get experience they can display on their résumés, and add lively classes to the usual mix of lectures and written exams. "We are helping students to go out and get hired," says Randy Hlavac, an instructor at Northwestern University's Medill School. "They've done the work." The partnerships are emerging as businesses are scurrying to bolster their ability to engage with their customers on the Web by using Facebook, Twitter and the like. Of course, some parents may be surprised to learn their tuition dollars are helping to underwrite corporate marketing in addition to their children's education. Sprint provided students in an online marketing class at Emerson College with 10 smartphones with unlimited wireless access. In exchange, students blogged, tweeted, produced YouTube videos and posted Facebook updates about the launch of Sprint's 4G network in Boston. "We're teaming up with the class again this semester it worked so well," says Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott.
http://special.registerguard.com/jobs/here-tweeting-is-a-class-requirement/
AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. recently ended a longstanding practice in which they "smooth" large gains and losses generated by pension assets into their financial results over a period of years. From now on, these companies will count all such gains and losses in the same year they are incurred. While the moves might seem like arcane accounting steps, they have important implications for investors. The companies say the changes will make their earnings reporting more transparent, but they also sweep away tens of billions in past pension losses the companies have yet to smooth into—and hurt—their results. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188843415326976.html
Miv Schaaf wrote the column "Things," which appeared in The Los Angeles Times' View section (now Life & Style) from 1972 to 1987. Her final column, published Oct. 4, 1987, offered a farewell to the house where she had raised a daughter, dogs and a garden, and where she had been widowed in 1984. She ended the column: "I wish you joy, and time to think." An advocate of historical preservation, she set up the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Commission in 1973 and co-wrote the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Ordinance. Schaaf also worked to promote public libraries and was a frequent speaker at librarians' conferences. She earned awards from the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System and the California Library Assn. Her books reflected her interests in preservation and libraries--"Residential Architecture in Southern California" and "Who Can Not Read About Crocodiles," about the joys of reading. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/aug/25/news/mn-16421
Setting Sail in a Sea of Books by Miv Schaaf
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/mar97/3-97.things.html
Who Am I?
I write in longhand for about seven hours a day. The New York Times in 1989 wrote that my "name is synonymous with productivity." I write fiction and non-fiction, and received ten awards between 1968 and 2006. Answer is forthcoming.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188962205491674.html
1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, from the next room. The Scottish-born Bell had a lifelong interest in the nature of sound. He was born into a family of speech instructors, and his mother and his wife both had hearing impairments. While ostensibly working in 1875 on a device to send multiple telegraph signals over the same wire by using harmonics, he heard a twang. That led him to investigate whether his electrical apparatus could be used to transmit the sound of a human voice. Bell’s journal, now at the Library of Congress, contains the following entry for March 10, 1876: I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here — I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.’” We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. Watson’s journal, however, says the famous quote was: “Mr. Watson come here I want you.” That disagreement, though, is trifling compared to the long controversy over whether Bell truly invented the telephone. Another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a similar device, and recent books claim that Bell not only stole Gray’s ideas, but may even have bribed a patent inspector to let him sneak a look at Gray’s filing.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/03/0310bell-invents-telephone-mr-watson-come-here/
Leslie Valiant, professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has received the 2010 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, computational complexity and the theory of parallel and distributed computing. Often referred to as the Nobel prize in computing, the Turing award has, since its inception in 1966, honored computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/121118/20110310/harvard-computer-science-professor-computing-turing-award-computation-machine-learning-artificial-in.htm
Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp. , Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston's Emerson College with smartphones and unlimited service in exchange for students working gratis on the company's local Internet push. Universities, in some cases, receive funding or proprietary consumer data from companies for their research. Students get experience they can display on their résumés, and add lively classes to the usual mix of lectures and written exams. "We are helping students to go out and get hired," says Randy Hlavac, an instructor at Northwestern University's Medill School. "They've done the work." The partnerships are emerging as businesses are scurrying to bolster their ability to engage with their customers on the Web by using Facebook, Twitter and the like. Of course, some parents may be surprised to learn their tuition dollars are helping to underwrite corporate marketing in addition to their children's education. Sprint provided students in an online marketing class at Emerson College with 10 smartphones with unlimited wireless access. In exchange, students blogged, tweeted, produced YouTube videos and posted Facebook updates about the launch of Sprint's 4G network in Boston. "We're teaming up with the class again this semester it worked so well," says Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott.
http://special.registerguard.com/jobs/here-tweeting-is-a-class-requirement/
AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. recently ended a longstanding practice in which they "smooth" large gains and losses generated by pension assets into their financial results over a period of years. From now on, these companies will count all such gains and losses in the same year they are incurred. While the moves might seem like arcane accounting steps, they have important implications for investors. The companies say the changes will make their earnings reporting more transparent, but they also sweep away tens of billions in past pension losses the companies have yet to smooth into—and hurt—their results. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188843415326976.html
Miv Schaaf wrote the column "Things," which appeared in The Los Angeles Times' View section (now Life & Style) from 1972 to 1987. Her final column, published Oct. 4, 1987, offered a farewell to the house where she had raised a daughter, dogs and a garden, and where she had been widowed in 1984. She ended the column: "I wish you joy, and time to think." An advocate of historical preservation, she set up the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Commission in 1973 and co-wrote the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Ordinance. Schaaf also worked to promote public libraries and was a frequent speaker at librarians' conferences. She earned awards from the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System and the California Library Assn. Her books reflected her interests in preservation and libraries--"Residential Architecture in Southern California" and "Who Can Not Read About Crocodiles," about the joys of reading. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/aug/25/news/mn-16421
Setting Sail in a Sea of Books by Miv Schaaf
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/mar97/3-97.things.html
Who Am I?
I write in longhand for about seven hours a day. The New York Times in 1989 wrote that my "name is synonymous with productivity." I write fiction and non-fiction, and received ten awards between 1968 and 2006. Answer is forthcoming.
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