Last week, the dean of the law school at Villanova, John Y. Gotanda, admitted that the school had knowingly reported inaccurate data to the American Bar Association. In a letter circulated Feb. 4, Gotanda wrote: On Thursday, January 20, 2011, I became aware of inaccuracies in the admissions data reported to the American Bar Association (ABA) by VLS for years prior to 2010. The inaccuracies were discovered and reported to me by a special Law School committee charged with assessing and enhancing the effectiveness of our Academic Success Program. Click here for a post, which contains the contents of the letter, over at Above the Law. Click here for ATL’s follow-up post. A university spokesperson later told the ABA Journal that “at this point it appears that it is limited to LSAT and GPA scores.” Villanova spokesman Jonathan Gust declined to speculate about why the inaccurate reporting to the ABA occurred. An investigation is reportedly continuing. WSJ Law Blog February 8, 2011
A piece of legislation proposed February 9 would require University of Iowa to sell the famed Jackson Pollock "Mural," which had an estimated value of $140 million in 2008, to provide scholarship assistance to UI undergraduate students from Iowa. House Study Bill 84 was introduced by state Rep. Scott Raecker, R-Urbandale, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Raecker did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Peggy Guggenheim donated the 1943 painting to UI in 1951. The regents' review described it as "one of the most important works by one of the most important American artists. Its cultural value to the nation is such that it would be welcome in any major museum in the country. But it also has a unique value to the University of Iowa." http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20110210/NEWS01/102100341/Has-time-run-out-for-the-Pollock-
Emerging Legal Issues in Social Media: Part I by Ken Strutin Social media is engaging masses of people in unprecedented ways. At the same time, the diversity of social networking applications has permeated and extended the range of legal investigation, discovery and litigation. As human activity is played out and recorded online, the laws governing cyber-behavior, privacy and discovery continue to evolve. And the distinction between public and private discourse blurs as the demand grows to fill limitless self-published cyber-columns. The materials collected in this article aim to provide a sense of the emerging issues created by the crosshatch of social media and legal practice. They represent a current sampling of notable developments in law enforcement, law practice, civil and criminal litigation, and technology's influence on human behavior. Due to the breadth of this topic, the article will be published in two parts. Part I covers select statutes, case law, ethics opinions, and news media. Part II will address pertinent materials appearing in professional journals and blogs, law reviews, reports, books and secondary resources. http://www.llrx.com/features/legalissuessocialmedia.htm
Deep Web Research 2011 by Marcus P. Zillman, Bots, Blogs and News Aggregators (http://www.BotsBlogs.com/) is a keynote presentation that I have been delivering over the last several years. Much of my information comes from the extensive research that I have completed over during this time into the "invisible" or the "deep" web. The Deep Web covers in the vicinity of 1 trillion plus pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats that current Internet search engines cannot find or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines locate and provide access to hundreds of billions of pages at this time. In the last several years, some of the more comprehensive search engines have written algorithms to search the deeper portions of the world wide web by attempting to find files such as .pdf, .doc, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others. These files are predominately used by businesses to communicate their information within their organization or to disseminate information to the external world from their organization. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers to obtain a vast amount of corporate information that was previously unavailable or inaccessible. http://www.llrx.com/features/deepweb2011.htm
To my knowledge, you can no longer buy powdered cleansers, only liquid cleaning agents. For homemade cleanser, try: straight baking soda for scouring away soap scum and mildew. Sprinkle it into the tub and add just enough water to make a paste. Then scour away. Spray the chrome with the counter top mixture (above) of vinegar and water then wipe down to make it shine. If you have heavy mold or mildew, straight vinegar sprayed directly on the affected area works well for loosening it. Many other recipes are at: http://www.savingadvice.com/articles/2008/06/24/102178_recipes-for-homemade-cleansers.html
Buzz marketing Chief Executive Officer Kitty Kolding of Irvington, New York-based House Party has a database of about 900,000 potential hosts, who fill out online demographic profiles and compete to throw product parties. Corporate clients are willing to pay House Party an average of $250,000 for 2,000 parties because the company's staff uses such criteria as age, ethnicity, and breed of family dog to select the hosts best suited to talking up a certain product or brand, according to Kolding. That level of targeting is nirvana for those pitching consumer products—but often tough to achieve using conventional marketing. While companies such as Kraft, P&G, and Kimberly-Clark (KMB) continue to pour money into TV and Web advertising, they're mindful that consumers are programmed to "resist the sales push," says Ronald C. Goodstein, a marketing professor at Georgetown University. "The advantage of word-of-mouth is if I'm giving you a personal recommendation because we're friends, you don't counterargue that." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_07/b4215030210139.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories
The GeoNames geographical database covers all countries and contains over eight million placenames that are available for download free of charge. http://www.geonames.org/ Sample search for Castile, NY produced eight records http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=castile%2C+NY&country= I was surprised to find elevation, latitude and longitude for each item found.
Greg Prickman, a University of Iowa Special Collections librarian, took an 800-year-old book out of a large box and placed it on a table. Prior to now, students had to make a special trip to the Main Library to see the tome's animal-skin pages, but with more than 400,000 pieces of the library’s archives digitized, students can access them online. Now, library officials are pushing digitizing further, working on all of the 20,000 items in the Civil War collection in time for its sesquicentennial. http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/63799
Byron Bennett can legally call his East Village shop the Chocolate Library. This fall the education department — which regulates the use of the words library, school, academy, institute and kindergarten in certificates of incorporation and company names — rejected Mr. Bennett’s application. The thought was that the store might be confused with one of those places that lends out books or provides free Internet access. But after a call from Diner’s Journal, officials reconsidered. Mr. Bennett received a letter from the department on January 31 telling him that he could amend his business’s incorporated title, Chocolate 101, to reflect the name on his shop’s awning. http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/o-k-youre-a-library-state-tells-chocolate-shop/
Government investigators have rejected claims that electronic defects caused Toyota cars and trucks to accelerate out of control, a finding released Tuesday that offers a measure of long-awaited vindication for the world's largest automaker and shifts blame to the drivers who reported the incidents. The report, based on work by NASA engineers, deflates accusations by drivers suing Toyota that mysterious electronic glitches instigated the episodes of runaway cars. It also supports the industry trend of entrusting critical engine operations to ever more sophisticated electronics and microprocessors. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/08/AR2011020806400.html
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Super Bowl ads spark controversy for HomeAway and Groupon
The pitch for HomeAway.com touts the benefits of renting a home on a trip vs. staying in a hotel room. During the ad, a baby (played by a doll) is accidentally slammed against a glass wall in a cramped, simulated hotel room in a lab setting. Though the infant was clearly not real and labeled "test baby," the ad has been slammed by those who think showing child abuse -- even simulated -- for entertainment is irresponsible. The story quoted a HomeAway press release that said: "We used the test baby scene to create a 'Super Bowl-worthy' moment that breaks through the clutter of so many ads. While everyone loves babies and wouldn't want to see a real infant get mistakenly flung into the air, we hope viewers will get a good laugh from our test baby's unfortunate flight. The comic situation is used to highlight the fact that families, particularly those with children, could use a little extra space when traveling." However, today I was taken aback to receive an email HomeAway, inviting me to go to its website and play the ad, or plug in various endings, including one in which the test baby smashes through the glass wall and is decapitated. The social network-powered discount buying service Groupon has been slammed for its irreverent take on the political struggle in Tibet. The 30-second spot, directed by Christopher Guest of Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap, starts with visuals of snow-capped mountains, smiling girls in ethnic dress and Lhasa's Potala Palace as actor Timothy Hutton intones, "the people of Tibet are in trouble." But it ends with Hutton sitting in a Himalayan restaurant in Chicago, enjoying an "amazing fish curry" thanks to a 50% discount through Groupon. "The juxtaposition of this somber aspect of the Tibetan issue with Tibetan ability to make 'amazing fish curry' in a way trivializes the experience of the Tibetan people.
http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/02/homeaways-smushed-baby-super-bowl-ad-creates-controversy/141996/1
James Buchanan Eads was born, May 23, 1820, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana and died March 8, 1887, in Nassau, Bahamas. Eads was an engineer known for the Eads Bridge, a triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River that connects East St. Louis, Illinois to St.. Louis, Missouri. Eads also worked to create a channel into New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico that would be navigable year round by means of jetties. Eads mother named him after her cousin, Congressman and later President James Buchanan. His early life was spent moving among larger cities while his father pursued many failed business ventures. By the time Eads was a teenager he lived in St. Louis and had lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky. His education initially came from reading the books of his first employer, a dry-goods merchant in St. Louis. As a young adult he signed on as the purser of a steamboat. While working on the Mississippi Eads noticed the great loss of goods that came from the many riverboat wrecks. The Mississippi River was a dangerous place to navigate, filled as it was with debris called snags. Eads, at the age of 22, decided that he could devise a means to salvage steamboat accidents. He invented a boat equipped with a diving bell that allowed him to walk on the river bottom. He called his boat a submarine, although only the diving bell was submersible. His invention proved successful as Eads recovered cargoes from the river bottom. During the twelve years he operated his salvage boat he made a fortune. He took his earnings and settled down to establish a glass manufacturing plant in the West, but was ruined by the Mexican War. Returning to the salvage business Eads steadily improved his innovation and built more salvage boats. Aware that control of the country's river systems would important to both sides in the Civil War, Eads proposed the U.S. government invest in the development of steam-powered, ironclad warships. Eads made his proposal before the war, but his idea was coolly received. When he was awarded a contract, he employed upwards of 4,000 men to build the U.S. ironclad armada that would prove decisive in Union efforts against Forts Henry and Donelson, at Memphis, Island No. 10, Vicksburg, and Mobile Bay. In a remarkable feat Eads turned out his first ironclad 45 days after he began production. The ironclad idea would be adopted by the Confederacy and both sides would improve on Eads' idea throughout the war. After the war Eads found a new project, the spanning of the Mississippi with a suitable bridge to carry everything from people to trains. The self-trained engineer proposed a triple-arch design fabricated from steel. Each span was roughly 500 hundred feet and rested on piers resting on bedrock some 100 feet beneath the river bottom. The building of the arches involved steel supplied by Andrew Carnegie's steel works. Eads required that the 18 inch diameter hollow tubes conform to a test strength of 60,000 pounds. Many times during construction steel was returned to be re-rolled so that it might meet Eads' exacting standards. Keeping the shipping lanes open was necessary during construction, so Eads designed a cantilever system to support the unjoined arches. A system of pulleys stretched over the piers and supported the arches. Eads was also innovative in that he employed a threaded iron plug to close the arches. He allowed five inches on each arch to be used for threading the plug and closing the distance between the arches. The Eads Bridge was the largest of its kind and quickly became world renowned. The Eads Bridge opened in 1874, but little time passed before Eads found his next project, creating a year-round navigation channel for the city of New Orleans. Employing a system of jetties Eads allowed the river's natural flow to carve a permanent channel by 1879. Other projects he embarked on included promoting a ship-carrying railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Mexico, as a more efficient alternative to the Panama Canal, and various installations and docks in places as diverse as Mexico, England, and Canada. http://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/landings/Ambot/TECH/TECH20.htm
When Eads was finished, he had created the largest steel structure in the world, and his work ushered in the age of the great steel bridges.
The Wall Street Journal February 5, 2011
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. ISO is a non-governmental organization established in 1947. The mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. ISO's work results in international agreements which are published as International Standards. Shouldn't the acronym be " IOS " ? Yes, if it were an acronym - which it is not. In fact, "ISO" is a word, derived from the Greek isos, meaning "equal ", which is the root of the prefix " iso-" that occurs in a host of terms, such as " isometric " (of equal measure or dimensions - Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) and " isonomy " (equality of laws, or of people before the law - ibid.). From "equal" to "standard", the line of thinking that led to the choice of "ISO" as the name of the organization is easy to follow. http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/taacmtg_sep96/iso.htm
More than 1000 great buildings from around the world and across history are listed and illustrated at: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/ In addition to buildings, you will find Statue of Library, Stourhead Garden, Great Wall of China and Stonehenge.
I searched rhythmic isometric expecting to find something on music. Instead I found an interesting page with exaamples of isometric, heterometric, normative, quantitative and variable poems from RAID:
Restrictions, Adaptations, Innovations and Derivations The Poets' Reference and Skill Building Site. http://raid.layliturgy.org/?p=3577
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, p. 135 Thanks, Beth.
The original sense of the word haywire was 'light baling wire, as used for binding hay'. Haywire was used, especially in logging camps, to refer to any substandard thing, or a poorly equipped outfit. The use probably combines two ideas: the use of haywire for makeshift repairs, thus signifying any broken-down or defective thing, and, less prominently, the use of haywire in place of a heavier wire, thus suggesting cheapness and low quality. A slightly different sense than 'substandard' is 'out of order, proper condition, or control; ruined'. Used of people, this itself has the subsense 'mentally deranged; crazy'. Though the word haywire in the literal sense 'light baling wire' is first recorded in 1917, the expression haywire outfit 'poorly equipped logging company' is found in 1905, suggesting that the literal haywire is older still, but unrecorded in print or undiscovered by lexicographers until later.
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980721
The pitch for HomeAway.com touts the benefits of renting a home on a trip vs. staying in a hotel room. During the ad, a baby (played by a doll) is accidentally slammed against a glass wall in a cramped, simulated hotel room in a lab setting. Though the infant was clearly not real and labeled "test baby," the ad has been slammed by those who think showing child abuse -- even simulated -- for entertainment is irresponsible. The story quoted a HomeAway press release that said: "We used the test baby scene to create a 'Super Bowl-worthy' moment that breaks through the clutter of so many ads. While everyone loves babies and wouldn't want to see a real infant get mistakenly flung into the air, we hope viewers will get a good laugh from our test baby's unfortunate flight. The comic situation is used to highlight the fact that families, particularly those with children, could use a little extra space when traveling." However, today I was taken aback to receive an email HomeAway, inviting me to go to its website and play the ad, or plug in various endings, including one in which the test baby smashes through the glass wall and is decapitated. The social network-powered discount buying service Groupon has been slammed for its irreverent take on the political struggle in Tibet. The 30-second spot, directed by Christopher Guest of Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap, starts with visuals of snow-capped mountains, smiling girls in ethnic dress and Lhasa's Potala Palace as actor Timothy Hutton intones, "the people of Tibet are in trouble." But it ends with Hutton sitting in a Himalayan restaurant in Chicago, enjoying an "amazing fish curry" thanks to a 50% discount through Groupon. "The juxtaposition of this somber aspect of the Tibetan issue with Tibetan ability to make 'amazing fish curry' in a way trivializes the experience of the Tibetan people.
http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/02/homeaways-smushed-baby-super-bowl-ad-creates-controversy/141996/1
James Buchanan Eads was born, May 23, 1820, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana and died March 8, 1887, in Nassau, Bahamas. Eads was an engineer known for the Eads Bridge, a triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River that connects East St. Louis, Illinois to St.. Louis, Missouri. Eads also worked to create a channel into New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico that would be navigable year round by means of jetties. Eads mother named him after her cousin, Congressman and later President James Buchanan. His early life was spent moving among larger cities while his father pursued many failed business ventures. By the time Eads was a teenager he lived in St. Louis and had lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky. His education initially came from reading the books of his first employer, a dry-goods merchant in St. Louis. As a young adult he signed on as the purser of a steamboat. While working on the Mississippi Eads noticed the great loss of goods that came from the many riverboat wrecks. The Mississippi River was a dangerous place to navigate, filled as it was with debris called snags. Eads, at the age of 22, decided that he could devise a means to salvage steamboat accidents. He invented a boat equipped with a diving bell that allowed him to walk on the river bottom. He called his boat a submarine, although only the diving bell was submersible. His invention proved successful as Eads recovered cargoes from the river bottom. During the twelve years he operated his salvage boat he made a fortune. He took his earnings and settled down to establish a glass manufacturing plant in the West, but was ruined by the Mexican War. Returning to the salvage business Eads steadily improved his innovation and built more salvage boats. Aware that control of the country's river systems would important to both sides in the Civil War, Eads proposed the U.S. government invest in the development of steam-powered, ironclad warships. Eads made his proposal before the war, but his idea was coolly received. When he was awarded a contract, he employed upwards of 4,000 men to build the U.S. ironclad armada that would prove decisive in Union efforts against Forts Henry and Donelson, at Memphis, Island No. 10, Vicksburg, and Mobile Bay. In a remarkable feat Eads turned out his first ironclad 45 days after he began production. The ironclad idea would be adopted by the Confederacy and both sides would improve on Eads' idea throughout the war. After the war Eads found a new project, the spanning of the Mississippi with a suitable bridge to carry everything from people to trains. The self-trained engineer proposed a triple-arch design fabricated from steel. Each span was roughly 500 hundred feet and rested on piers resting on bedrock some 100 feet beneath the river bottom. The building of the arches involved steel supplied by Andrew Carnegie's steel works. Eads required that the 18 inch diameter hollow tubes conform to a test strength of 60,000 pounds. Many times during construction steel was returned to be re-rolled so that it might meet Eads' exacting standards. Keeping the shipping lanes open was necessary during construction, so Eads designed a cantilever system to support the unjoined arches. A system of pulleys stretched over the piers and supported the arches. Eads was also innovative in that he employed a threaded iron plug to close the arches. He allowed five inches on each arch to be used for threading the plug and closing the distance between the arches. The Eads Bridge was the largest of its kind and quickly became world renowned. The Eads Bridge opened in 1874, but little time passed before Eads found his next project, creating a year-round navigation channel for the city of New Orleans. Employing a system of jetties Eads allowed the river's natural flow to carve a permanent channel by 1879. Other projects he embarked on included promoting a ship-carrying railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Mexico, as a more efficient alternative to the Panama Canal, and various installations and docks in places as diverse as Mexico, England, and Canada. http://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/landings/Ambot/TECH/TECH20.htm
When Eads was finished, he had created the largest steel structure in the world, and his work ushered in the age of the great steel bridges.
The Wall Street Journal February 5, 2011
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. ISO is a non-governmental organization established in 1947. The mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. ISO's work results in international agreements which are published as International Standards. Shouldn't the acronym be " IOS " ? Yes, if it were an acronym - which it is not. In fact, "ISO" is a word, derived from the Greek isos, meaning "equal ", which is the root of the prefix " iso-" that occurs in a host of terms, such as " isometric " (of equal measure or dimensions - Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) and " isonomy " (equality of laws, or of people before the law - ibid.). From "equal" to "standard", the line of thinking that led to the choice of "ISO" as the name of the organization is easy to follow. http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/taacmtg_sep96/iso.htm
More than 1000 great buildings from around the world and across history are listed and illustrated at: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/ In addition to buildings, you will find Statue of Library, Stourhead Garden, Great Wall of China and Stonehenge.
I searched rhythmic isometric expecting to find something on music. Instead I found an interesting page with exaamples of isometric, heterometric, normative, quantitative and variable poems from RAID:
Restrictions, Adaptations, Innovations and Derivations The Poets' Reference and Skill Building Site. http://raid.layliturgy.org/?p=3577
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, p. 135 Thanks, Beth.
The original sense of the word haywire was 'light baling wire, as used for binding hay'. Haywire was used, especially in logging camps, to refer to any substandard thing, or a poorly equipped outfit. The use probably combines two ideas: the use of haywire for makeshift repairs, thus signifying any broken-down or defective thing, and, less prominently, the use of haywire in place of a heavier wire, thus suggesting cheapness and low quality. A slightly different sense than 'substandard' is 'out of order, proper condition, or control; ruined'. Used of people, this itself has the subsense 'mentally deranged; crazy'. Though the word haywire in the literal sense 'light baling wire' is first recorded in 1917, the expression haywire outfit 'poorly equipped logging company' is found in 1905, suggesting that the literal haywire is older still, but unrecorded in print or undiscovered by lexicographers until later.
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980721
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Risky Business of Information Sharing: Why You Need to Care About Copyright
It's easy--and costly--to run afoul of copyright in the Internet age. But if technology has escalated infringement, it has also brought new solutions that make it simple to comply with copyright law and still embrace the sharing that is the digital workplace's most valued asset. The action was simple enough: one senior executive regularly forwarded copies of digital material to two other executives. It's the kind of routine, rapid-fire information swapping that's done on the fly every day in offices. Check. Next task. The tab, though, was anything but common. To settle the resulting copyright infringement lawsuit, the executives' employer paid $500,000. Copyright is an essential tool in the spread of new ideas, and the workplace has become ground zero for infringement. Ask employees up and down the corporate hierarchy, and they'll tell you that whisking information electronically to co-workers is integral to their jobs. Their employers will emphatically agree. But unauthorized swaps of information also carry enormous potential risk: Ordinary office exchanges, so natural to the digital world, can easily violate the copyright rights of others and bring costly lawsuits or settlements. Now the same technology that has dramatically defined the Internet age is drawing a new roadmap to compliance, with software tools that simplify adherence to copyright requirements.
What's Protected by Copyright?
Literary works: blogs, books, cartoons, emails, letters, magazines, memos, newspapers, newsletters, trade journals, training materials and other written material, in paper or digital format.
Computer software: on disc, downloaded or in other formats.
Pictorial, graphics and sculptures: three-dimensional artworks and other creations, as well as two-dimensional cartoons, graphical images, maps and photographs, in paper or digital format.
Architectural works: buildings and the like.
Sound recordings and accompanying words: recorded or performed on compact discs, phonographic records, podcasts or other media.
Audiovisual works: motion pictures, multimedia presentations, demonstrations and slideshows, in analog or digital format.
Dramatic works and accompanying music: plays and screenplays, regardless of the medium in which performed or displayed.
Pantomimes and choreographic works: dance and mime performances. http://www.llrx.com/features/informationsharingcopyright.htm
milliner (MIL-uh-nuhr) noun Someone who designs, makes, or sells women's hats. After Milan, Italy, from where women's wares were imported. First recorded use: 1530.
The word used to appear as the derogatory term "man milliner" implying someone who busies himself with trifling occupations. Poet Robert Southey said in 1796: "I look upon a man milliner not only as one of the most despicable members of society, but as one of the most injurious."
helot (HEL-uht, HEE-luht) noun A serf or slave.
After Helos, a town in Laconia in ancient Greece, whose inhabitants were enslaved. First recorded use: 1579. Another word derived from the name of a town in Laconia is spartan, which is coined after Sparta, the capital of Laconia. And Laconia has a word coined after it too: laconic.
verdigris (VUHR-di-grees, -gris, -gree) noun A bluish-green patina formed on copper, brass, and bronze when exposed to air or water for a long time. From Old French verte grez (green of Greece). It was earlier used as a pigment by artists. The Greek connection is not clear.
Earliest documented use: 1336. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
The Ingoldsby Legends are a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham. The legends were first printed during 1837 as a regular series of the magazine Bentley's Miscellany and later in New Monthly Magazine. The legends were illustrated by John Leech and George Cruikshank. They proved immensely popular and were compiled into books published during 1840, 1842 and 1847 by Richard Bentley. They remained popular during the 19th century but have since become little known. An omnibus edition was published during 1879: The Ingoldsby Legends; or Mirth and marvels. As a priest of the Chapel Royal, Barham was not troubled with strenuous duties and he had ample time to read and compose stories. Although based on real legends and mythology, such as the "hand of glory", they are mostly deliberately humorous parodies or pastiches of medieval folklore and poetry. The collection contains one of the earliest transcriptions of the song A Franklyn's Dogge, an early version of the modern children's song Bingo. Other than this, the best-known poem of the collection is the Jackdaw of Rheims about a jackdaw who steals a cardinal's ring and is made a saint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ingoldsby_Legends
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Julie Mida Hinderer Subject: benthic
As an ecologist working in the (North American) Great Lakes, I was pleased to see "benthic" as the word of the day. I spent some time a few summers back working on a research vessel, and one of my duties at each station was to collect benthic samples. I learned some new words doing this. We grabbed samples from the lake bottom using a device called a ponar, which I found out is actually an acronym of the last names of the five scientists who invented it. Once we had pulled up our ponar grab, we dumped it into a large metal basin and separated the organisms from the muck using a hose and a filtering sock of sorts. This process is called elutriation, a word whose root means "to wash".
From: Terry Dowling Subject: isograms for codes
Many years ago, my father explained a trick he used when he ran a small-town shop. He was able to code purchase costs onto the price tags of objects so he could easily determine his ability to discount without making a loss. He did this using a 10-letter isogram (he chose 'cumberland') with each letter representing the digits 1, 2, 3... 0. So, 'cud' = 120. These days I use the same system, but different words, to remember my PINs and passcodes
From: tiberall Subject: writing with constraints
If you are interested in constraints in writing, Douglas Hofstadter wrote a phenomenal book called Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. Starting with Clement Marot's 28-line poem in French, he explores the constraints on poetic translation which leads to all sorts of examples of lipograms and everything else. A must read.
From: Robert Wasko Subject: This week's theme
This week's theme reminded me of the lipogrammatic novel by Georges Perec written in French under the title "La Disparition" and translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void. Both versions of this 300-page novel contained not a single "e". Years ago, when I told my then middle-school-aged daughter about the book, she tried her hand at a school essay without using the letter "a". Her essay was published in her school's literary magazine. Unfortunately, a clueless editor changed my daughter's carefully worded "the month following December", used to describe the birth month of the subject of her essay, to "January", thus introducing the letter "a" twice in one word and destroying the lipogram.
Dead reckoning is the process of estimating the position of an airplane or ship based solely on speed and direction of travel and time elapsed since the last known position (or fix). So all you need to figure out approximately where you are is an airspeed indicator or log or other measure of speed, a clock or watch, and a compass. Dead reckoning stands in contrast to pilotage (navigation by visible landmarks) and celestial navigation (navigation by reference to stars or other heavenly bodies). Since the development of radio technology, various forms of electronic navigation have also been developed, the best known of which is the satellite-based Global Positioning System. Navigating by external reference points is more accurate, but dead reckoning is the fallback when all else fails. The term dates from the seventeenth century, so we have to look to the sea for the origin of the term, not the air. Of all the dictionaries I checked that gave an etymology, the American Heritage Dictionary is most amenable to the "deduced" theory, saying "Possibly alteration of ded. abbr. of deduced." "Possibly" is the kindest treatment this theory is given in any dictionary I could find. The Encarta World English Dictionary says "probably from dead 'absolute' or 'exact,' although 'dead' may be by folk etymology from ded., a shortening of deduce or deduction." The Dictionary of Misinformation says of the "deduced" theory, "There is no evidence for such a belief." The Oxford English Dictionary says that the term is from the adjective "dead" and doesn't deign to even discuss the supposed derivation from "deduced". The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology provides the final nail in the coffin: "a proposed etym. ded., for deduced, has no justification." These sources agree on the derivation from the adjective "dead" but differ on what "dead" is supposed to mean in this context. One theory, supported by the OED, is that it's dead in the sense "complete(ly)" or "absolute(ly)," also found in "dead wrong," "dead ahead," "dead last," etc. The idea seems to be that the dead-reckoning position is one based completely on reckoning (calculation) and not at all on observation of landmarks. Others hold that "dead" means "unmoving," as in "dead in the water." The idea here is that dead reckoning is calculated with respect to an object (like the log) that is dead in the water (not moving with respect to the surface of the water). Yet another theory is that it comes from "dead seas" (supposed to mean "unknown seas"), where dead reckoning would be an important tool. Much more at: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2053/is-dead-reckoning-short-for-deduced-reckoning
ROOT-WORDS are ROGA & ROG which come from the Latin rogare meaning to ask and beg. Some examples:
Rogation (roe gay’ shun) n. Petition, prayer
Arrogation (ar o gay’ shun) n. The act of claiming for oneself
Arrogant (ar’ o gant) adj. Proud, presuming
Derogatory (de rog’ a tore e) adj. Making a thing appear to be less important
Interrogate (in ter’ o gate) v. To question formally, ask the reason
Prerogative (pre rog’ at iv) n. A privilege, superiority
Prorogate (pror’ o gate) v. To delay, postpone
Supererogatory (sup e re rog’ a tore e) adj. More than needed, nonessential
Surrogate (sur’ o gate) n. A substitute; as, a surrogate judge http://www.english-for-students.com/roga.html
It's easy--and costly--to run afoul of copyright in the Internet age. But if technology has escalated infringement, it has also brought new solutions that make it simple to comply with copyright law and still embrace the sharing that is the digital workplace's most valued asset. The action was simple enough: one senior executive regularly forwarded copies of digital material to two other executives. It's the kind of routine, rapid-fire information swapping that's done on the fly every day in offices. Check. Next task. The tab, though, was anything but common. To settle the resulting copyright infringement lawsuit, the executives' employer paid $500,000. Copyright is an essential tool in the spread of new ideas, and the workplace has become ground zero for infringement. Ask employees up and down the corporate hierarchy, and they'll tell you that whisking information electronically to co-workers is integral to their jobs. Their employers will emphatically agree. But unauthorized swaps of information also carry enormous potential risk: Ordinary office exchanges, so natural to the digital world, can easily violate the copyright rights of others and bring costly lawsuits or settlements. Now the same technology that has dramatically defined the Internet age is drawing a new roadmap to compliance, with software tools that simplify adherence to copyright requirements.
What's Protected by Copyright?
Literary works: blogs, books, cartoons, emails, letters, magazines, memos, newspapers, newsletters, trade journals, training materials and other written material, in paper or digital format.
Computer software: on disc, downloaded or in other formats.
Pictorial, graphics and sculptures: three-dimensional artworks and other creations, as well as two-dimensional cartoons, graphical images, maps and photographs, in paper or digital format.
Architectural works: buildings and the like.
Sound recordings and accompanying words: recorded or performed on compact discs, phonographic records, podcasts or other media.
Audiovisual works: motion pictures, multimedia presentations, demonstrations and slideshows, in analog or digital format.
Dramatic works and accompanying music: plays and screenplays, regardless of the medium in which performed or displayed.
Pantomimes and choreographic works: dance and mime performances. http://www.llrx.com/features/informationsharingcopyright.htm
milliner (MIL-uh-nuhr) noun Someone who designs, makes, or sells women's hats. After Milan, Italy, from where women's wares were imported. First recorded use: 1530.
The word used to appear as the derogatory term "man milliner" implying someone who busies himself with trifling occupations. Poet Robert Southey said in 1796: "I look upon a man milliner not only as one of the most despicable members of society, but as one of the most injurious."
helot (HEL-uht, HEE-luht) noun A serf or slave.
After Helos, a town in Laconia in ancient Greece, whose inhabitants were enslaved. First recorded use: 1579. Another word derived from the name of a town in Laconia is spartan, which is coined after Sparta, the capital of Laconia. And Laconia has a word coined after it too: laconic.
verdigris (VUHR-di-grees, -gris, -gree) noun A bluish-green patina formed on copper, brass, and bronze when exposed to air or water for a long time. From Old French verte grez (green of Greece). It was earlier used as a pigment by artists. The Greek connection is not clear.
Earliest documented use: 1336. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
The Ingoldsby Legends are a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham. The legends were first printed during 1837 as a regular series of the magazine Bentley's Miscellany and later in New Monthly Magazine. The legends were illustrated by John Leech and George Cruikshank. They proved immensely popular and were compiled into books published during 1840, 1842 and 1847 by Richard Bentley. They remained popular during the 19th century but have since become little known. An omnibus edition was published during 1879: The Ingoldsby Legends; or Mirth and marvels. As a priest of the Chapel Royal, Barham was not troubled with strenuous duties and he had ample time to read and compose stories. Although based on real legends and mythology, such as the "hand of glory", they are mostly deliberately humorous parodies or pastiches of medieval folklore and poetry. The collection contains one of the earliest transcriptions of the song A Franklyn's Dogge, an early version of the modern children's song Bingo. Other than this, the best-known poem of the collection is the Jackdaw of Rheims about a jackdaw who steals a cardinal's ring and is made a saint.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ingoldsby_Legends
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Julie Mida Hinderer Subject: benthic
As an ecologist working in the (North American) Great Lakes, I was pleased to see "benthic" as the word of the day. I spent some time a few summers back working on a research vessel, and one of my duties at each station was to collect benthic samples. I learned some new words doing this. We grabbed samples from the lake bottom using a device called a ponar, which I found out is actually an acronym of the last names of the five scientists who invented it. Once we had pulled up our ponar grab, we dumped it into a large metal basin and separated the organisms from the muck using a hose and a filtering sock of sorts. This process is called elutriation, a word whose root means "to wash".
From: Terry Dowling Subject: isograms for codes
Many years ago, my father explained a trick he used when he ran a small-town shop. He was able to code purchase costs onto the price tags of objects so he could easily determine his ability to discount without making a loss. He did this using a 10-letter isogram (he chose 'cumberland') with each letter representing the digits 1, 2, 3... 0. So, 'cud' = 120. These days I use the same system, but different words, to remember my PINs and passcodes
From: tiberall Subject: writing with constraints
If you are interested in constraints in writing, Douglas Hofstadter wrote a phenomenal book called Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. Starting with Clement Marot's 28-line poem in French, he explores the constraints on poetic translation which leads to all sorts of examples of lipograms and everything else. A must read.
From: Robert Wasko Subject: This week's theme
This week's theme reminded me of the lipogrammatic novel by Georges Perec written in French under the title "La Disparition" and translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void. Both versions of this 300-page novel contained not a single "e". Years ago, when I told my then middle-school-aged daughter about the book, she tried her hand at a school essay without using the letter "a". Her essay was published in her school's literary magazine. Unfortunately, a clueless editor changed my daughter's carefully worded "the month following December", used to describe the birth month of the subject of her essay, to "January", thus introducing the letter "a" twice in one word and destroying the lipogram.
Dead reckoning is the process of estimating the position of an airplane or ship based solely on speed and direction of travel and time elapsed since the last known position (or fix). So all you need to figure out approximately where you are is an airspeed indicator or log or other measure of speed, a clock or watch, and a compass. Dead reckoning stands in contrast to pilotage (navigation by visible landmarks) and celestial navigation (navigation by reference to stars or other heavenly bodies). Since the development of radio technology, various forms of electronic navigation have also been developed, the best known of which is the satellite-based Global Positioning System. Navigating by external reference points is more accurate, but dead reckoning is the fallback when all else fails. The term dates from the seventeenth century, so we have to look to the sea for the origin of the term, not the air. Of all the dictionaries I checked that gave an etymology, the American Heritage Dictionary is most amenable to the "deduced" theory, saying "Possibly alteration of ded. abbr. of deduced." "Possibly" is the kindest treatment this theory is given in any dictionary I could find. The Encarta World English Dictionary says "probably from dead 'absolute' or 'exact,' although 'dead' may be by folk etymology from ded., a shortening of deduce or deduction." The Dictionary of Misinformation says of the "deduced" theory, "There is no evidence for such a belief." The Oxford English Dictionary says that the term is from the adjective "dead" and doesn't deign to even discuss the supposed derivation from "deduced". The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology provides the final nail in the coffin: "a proposed etym. ded., for deduced, has no justification." These sources agree on the derivation from the adjective "dead" but differ on what "dead" is supposed to mean in this context. One theory, supported by the OED, is that it's dead in the sense "complete(ly)" or "absolute(ly)," also found in "dead wrong," "dead ahead," "dead last," etc. The idea seems to be that the dead-reckoning position is one based completely on reckoning (calculation) and not at all on observation of landmarks. Others hold that "dead" means "unmoving," as in "dead in the water." The idea here is that dead reckoning is calculated with respect to an object (like the log) that is dead in the water (not moving with respect to the surface of the water). Yet another theory is that it comes from "dead seas" (supposed to mean "unknown seas"), where dead reckoning would be an important tool. Much more at: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2053/is-dead-reckoning-short-for-deduced-reckoning
ROOT-WORDS are ROGA & ROG which come from the Latin rogare meaning to ask and beg. Some examples:
Rogation (roe gay’ shun) n. Petition, prayer
Arrogation (ar o gay’ shun) n. The act of claiming for oneself
Arrogant (ar’ o gant) adj. Proud, presuming
Derogatory (de rog’ a tore e) adj. Making a thing appear to be less important
Interrogate (in ter’ o gate) v. To question formally, ask the reason
Prerogative (pre rog’ at iv) n. A privilege, superiority
Prorogate (pror’ o gate) v. To delay, postpone
Supererogatory (sup e re rog’ a tore e) adj. More than needed, nonessential
Surrogate (sur’ o gate) n. A substitute; as, a surrogate judge http://www.english-for-students.com/roga.html
Friday, February 4, 2011
When searching agreeable person, I came across Lexipedia: http://www.lexipedia.com/english/agreeable Look on the left and find under relationships fuzzynyms.
I was actually looking for this quote: My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. Benjamin Disraeli British politician (1804-1881)
Qualifiers/intensifiers are words like very, too, so, quite, rather.
Qualifiers are function parts of speech. They do not add inflectional morphemes, and they do not have synonyms. Their sole purpose is to "qualify" or "intensify" an adjective or an adverb. Qualifiers / intensifiers modify adjectives or adverbs, telling to what degree. http://www.towson.edu/ows/qualifiers.htm
A paraprosdokian (from Greek "παρα-", meaning "beyond" and "προσδοκία", meaning "expectation") is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis. See examples at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraprosdokian
Syllepsis, also known as semantic zeugma, is a particular type of zeugma in which the clauses disagree in either meaning or grammar. The governing word may change meaning with respect to the other words it modifies. This creates a semantic incongruity that is often humorous. Alternatively, a syllepsis may contain a governing word or phrase that does not agree grammatically with one or more of its distributed terms. This is an intentional construction in which rules of grammar are bent for stylistic effect. See examples at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllepsis#Syllepsis
I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
The ROOT-WORD TUDE is the suffix which means STATE OF & CONDITION OF. A few examples are attitude, aptitude, latitude, longitude, fortitude, pulchritude, lassitude, gratitude, multitude, solitude.
http://www.english-for-students.com/tude.html
You have probably seen poems or posters making use of some of these words.
The dream of creating a visual music comparable to auditory music found its fulfillment in animated abstract films by artists such as Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norman McLaren; but long before them, many people built instruments, usually called "color organs," that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music. Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle and Pythagoras, speculated that there must be a correlation between the musical scale and the rainbow spectrum of hues. That idea fascinated several Renaissance artists including Leonardo da Vinci (who produced elaborate spectacles for court festivals), Athanasius Kircher (the popularizer of the "Laterna Magica" projection apparatus) and Archimboldo who (in addition to his eerie optical-illusion portraits composed of hundreds of small symbolic objects) produced entertainments for the Holy Roman Emperors in Prague. Two rival color-organ artists vied for American and international audiences during the 1920s. Danish-born Thomas Wilfred came to America as a singer of early music, and got involved with a group of Theosophists who wanted to build a color organ to demonstrate spiritual principles. Wilfred called his color organ the Clavilux, and named the artform of color-music projections "Lumia." He stressed polymorphous, fluid streams of color slowly metamorphosing. He established an Art Institute of Light in New York, and toured giving Lumia concerts in the United States and Europe (at the famous Art Déco exhibition in Paris). He also built "lumia boxes," self-contained units that looked rather like television sets, which could play for days or months without repeating the same imagery. Mary Hallock Greenewalt had studied piano with the illustrious Theodore Leschetizky and had a concert career, including recordings of Chopin for Columbia Records. Her desire to control the ambience in a concert hall for sensitive music like Chopin's led her to experiment with light modulation. She invented the rheostat in order to make smooth fade-ups and fade-outs of light, and the liquid-mercury switch, both of which have become standard electric tools. When other people (including Thomas Wilfred) began infringing on her patents by using adaptations of the rheostat and mercury switch, she tried to sue, but a judge ruled that these electric mechanisms were too complex to have been invented by a woman, and denied her case. She continued to perform on her color-organ, the Sarabet, for which she created a special notation that recorded the intensity and deployment of various colors during any given musical composition. See much more at: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.1/articles/moritz2.1.html
I was actually looking for this quote: My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. Benjamin Disraeli British politician (1804-1881)
Qualifiers/intensifiers are words like very, too, so, quite, rather.
Qualifiers are function parts of speech. They do not add inflectional morphemes, and they do not have synonyms. Their sole purpose is to "qualify" or "intensify" an adjective or an adverb. Qualifiers / intensifiers modify adjectives or adverbs, telling to what degree. http://www.towson.edu/ows/qualifiers.htm
A paraprosdokian (from Greek "παρα-", meaning "beyond" and "προσδοκία", meaning "expectation") is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis. See examples at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraprosdokian
Syllepsis, also known as semantic zeugma, is a particular type of zeugma in which the clauses disagree in either meaning or grammar. The governing word may change meaning with respect to the other words it modifies. This creates a semantic incongruity that is often humorous. Alternatively, a syllepsis may contain a governing word or phrase that does not agree grammatically with one or more of its distributed terms. This is an intentional construction in which rules of grammar are bent for stylistic effect. See examples at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllepsis#Syllepsis
I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
The ROOT-WORD TUDE is the suffix which means STATE OF & CONDITION OF. A few examples are attitude, aptitude, latitude, longitude, fortitude, pulchritude, lassitude, gratitude, multitude, solitude.
http://www.english-for-students.com/tude.html
You have probably seen poems or posters making use of some of these words.
The dream of creating a visual music comparable to auditory music found its fulfillment in animated abstract films by artists such as Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norman McLaren; but long before them, many people built instruments, usually called "color organs," that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music. Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle and Pythagoras, speculated that there must be a correlation between the musical scale and the rainbow spectrum of hues. That idea fascinated several Renaissance artists including Leonardo da Vinci (who produced elaborate spectacles for court festivals), Athanasius Kircher (the popularizer of the "Laterna Magica" projection apparatus) and Archimboldo who (in addition to his eerie optical-illusion portraits composed of hundreds of small symbolic objects) produced entertainments for the Holy Roman Emperors in Prague. Two rival color-organ artists vied for American and international audiences during the 1920s. Danish-born Thomas Wilfred came to America as a singer of early music, and got involved with a group of Theosophists who wanted to build a color organ to demonstrate spiritual principles. Wilfred called his color organ the Clavilux, and named the artform of color-music projections "Lumia." He stressed polymorphous, fluid streams of color slowly metamorphosing. He established an Art Institute of Light in New York, and toured giving Lumia concerts in the United States and Europe (at the famous Art Déco exhibition in Paris). He also built "lumia boxes," self-contained units that looked rather like television sets, which could play for days or months without repeating the same imagery. Mary Hallock Greenewalt had studied piano with the illustrious Theodore Leschetizky and had a concert career, including recordings of Chopin for Columbia Records. Her desire to control the ambience in a concert hall for sensitive music like Chopin's led her to experiment with light modulation. She invented the rheostat in order to make smooth fade-ups and fade-outs of light, and the liquid-mercury switch, both of which have become standard electric tools. When other people (including Thomas Wilfred) began infringing on her patents by using adaptations of the rheostat and mercury switch, she tried to sue, but a judge ruled that these electric mechanisms were too complex to have been invented by a woman, and denied her case. She continued to perform on her color-organ, the Sarabet, for which she created a special notation that recorded the intensity and deployment of various colors during any given musical composition. See much more at: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.1/articles/moritz2.1.html
Thursday, February 3, 2011
There came by the post the loveliest thing that one could imagine a postman might bring! It came to me from a friends of mine, it came to me from my Valentine! Elizabeth Winton
If apples were pears, and peaches were plums, and roses had a different name; If tigers were bears, and fingers were thumbs, I'd love you just the same. Unknown
Coyotes Join Wildlife Migration to Cities
CHICAGO AREA IS HOME TO GROWING NUMBERS OF COYOTES
“A delicate balance definitely exists between good and bad impacts when coyotes come to town,” says Dr. Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist and professor at Ohio State University. “There’s no way to minimize how people feel when the family cat doesn’t come home.” Gehrt is in charge of ongoing studies to monitor urban coyotes in the Chicago area; studies started when he worked at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee, Illinois. Gehrt began studies in Cook County when residents began noticing more coyotes in urban areas near fields and wild areas. A few cats and dogs disappeared, and biologists decided it was time to understand more about the situation. Coyotes once were rare in Illinois. As many as 30 years ago, coyote populations were low due to now-defunct eradication programs. Coyotes have proliferated since then, moving from the western U.S. into eastern habitat where wolves used to be. Coyotes are adaptable and can live almost anywhere. “Surprisingly, in Chicago there is plenty of food for coyotes,” Gehrt notes. “Coyotes help stem urban deer over-population -- a serious concern to vehicle drivers, gardeners and park managers. In some areas, coyotes take 70 to 80 percent of urban fawns each year. Also, anyone who has battled throngs of cranky Canada geese or slipped on a blanket of droppings in the park knows that geese often are a problem. Coyotes eat goose eggs, goslings and occasionally nesting adults.” He notes that people sometimes demand eradication of coyotes. But eliminating all coyotes is not practical, economical or workable. Research shows that once coyotes are removed, others quickly replace them. Therefore, widespread removal is a temporary solution. Steps for keeping pets safe, if your home is near coyote habitat, include:
Don’t feed any wild animals such as raccoons or deer, which encourages coyotes as well.
Keep cats indoors at all times.
Keep your dog on a leash.
Don’t leave cat or dog food outside.
Secure garbage in areas where coyotes can’t access it; keep yards clean of refuse and brush.
Do not let pets out at night unless accompanied by a person.
About 30 percent of country-living coyotes live to see a new year; in the city, that survival rate is 58 percent. Diseases have little impact on urban coyotes; their biggest cause of death is automobiles. For more information on coyotes in Illinois, contact Illinois DNR at 217-782-6384. Learn more about coyotes by visiting the Fur Hunting and Trapping in Illinois website at dnr.state.il.us/orc/wildlife
http://dnr.state.il.us/orc/wildlife/virtual_news/releases/070104_coyotes.htm
An elegant legal brief (a written argument submitted to a court) has all the harmony of great prose. Attorney and author Adam Freedman, in his January 29 Word Craft column in The Wall Street Journal, writes that at his old law firm "Does it sing?" was code for "Is your brief finished?" The key is boiling down your arguments to a single theme. If there is an obvious weakness, concede it upfront to clear the air and allow the judge to focus on the facts that support your theme.
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) is most famous outside Germany as the author of the ‘Ode to Joy’, set by Beethoven’s in his Ninth Symphony. Poet, playwright, writer on aesthetics, his most famous plays are The Robbers, Don Carlos, Wallenstein and William Tell. Schiller’s play, William Tell, was completed in 1804 and is known throughout the world as a hymn to, and archetypical dramatic expression of, self-liberation from tyranny. http://www.librislondon.co.uk/books/1870352866.html
Gnocchi is the name for a thick, soft, small dumpling that is a traditional dish in Italian food. It can be made of a number of different ingredients, though it is most traditionally composed of porridge-like dough that is cut up into small pieces and then cooked. It is served as both a side dish and as a main meal. The origins of gnocchi are probably Middle Eastern. While gnocchi is most commonly referred to as an Italian dish with mainly Italian origins, it is important to know the importance of the dish in other countries, namely in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. These countries had a high percentage of Italian immigrants at the start of the 20th century who brought gnocchi dishes along with them. Gnocchi became so popular here that a sort of holiday was created in its honor. This is a monthly "holiday" that occurs on the 29th day of each month, and it is called "Noquis del 29" or "Gnocchi of the 29th." http://www.ehow.com/about_4572254_does-gnocchi-come.html
Triskaidekaphobia (from Greek tris meaning "3", kai meaning "and", deka meaning "10" and phobia meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is fear of the number 13; it is a superstition and related to a specific fear of Friday the 13th, called paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.
The term was first used by I.H. Coriat in "Abnormal Psychology", 1910. Tetraphobia, fear of the number 4. In Korea, China and Japan, as well as in many other East-Asian and some Southeast-Asian countries, it is not uncommon for buildings (including offices, apartments, hotels) to lack floors with the number 4, and Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia's 1xxx-9xxx series of mobile phones does not include any model numbers beginning with a 4. In China, this is because in Mandarin, the pronunciation of the word for "four" (四, sì) is a homophone to that of the word for "death" (死, sǐ). 17 is an unlucky number in Italy, because in Roman digits 17 is written XVII, that could be rearranged to "VIXI", which in Latin means "I have lived" but can be a euphemism for "I am dead." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia
Tuesday is considered, by many Greeks, to be the unluckiest day of the week. It was on Tuesday, May 29th, 1453 that the city of Constantinople was besieged and taken by the Ottoman Turks. The loss of life was considerable. Conversely, Greeks consider the number 13 (on its own) to be good luck. The ancient philosophy of Numerology considers 13 to be "the most selfless of all" and "love for the world revolves around" thirteen. The Celts also considered the number 13 to be related to good fortune. However, the combination of Tuesday and 13 as Tuesday the 13th of the month is considered a very unlucky day in Greek culture. Spanish speaking cultures fear "Martes Trece", Tuesday the 13th. http://everything2.com/title/Tuesday+the+13th
The 7th edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans advises: Enjoy your food, but eat less. Avoid oversized portions. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals – and choose the foods with lower numbers. Drink water instead of sugary drinks. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines is available at www.dietaryguidelines.gov. For more information on dietary guidelines, see www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines and www.healthfinder.gov/prevention
After two years of congestion decline — likely attributable to the economic crisis and the reduction in overall driving — commuters in 439 American cities experienced a rise in traffic in 2009. That’s according to this year’s Urban Mobility Report (pdf), published by the Texas Transportation Institute. The report found that congestion in 2009 cost commuters about $115 billion in unused time and fuel. I n personal terms, the average commuter lost $808 and 34 hours sitting in rush-hour. Residents of Chicago and Washington, D.C. experienced the year’s worst traffic, as measured in the report by annual hours delayed per commuter. People in both cities lost 70 hours to congestion, on average, in 2009. Other cities in the top 5 of the report’s “very large areas” — cities with populations greater than 3 million — were Los Angeles (63 hours), Houston (58), and San Francisco (49). Though the Urban Mobility Report is considered by some to be an industry standard for determining congestion, some analysts have found flaws in its method. An evaluation of last year’s report, performed by CEOs for Cities, often reached opposite conclusions about the traffic problem in certain large cities. The latest Urban Mobility Report boasts of an improved methodology that considers traffic speed data as well as volume data to provide a “more detailed picture of the problems facing urban travelers.” But some aren’t seeing much of a change. Streetsblog says this year’s report is filled with “maddening wrongness”. To be fair, the new report ranks cities by several metrics — with speed being just one. Still, CEOs for Cities doesn’t seem impressed with the changes either. Although it hasn’t performed a thorough analysis, its cursory review prompted a statement calling the new report a “flawed and misleading guide” (pdf).
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/24/new-report-ranks-congestion-in-americas-cities/
The Carnegie Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum have a friendly wager going on involving the temporary transfer of a French impressionist painting. PennFuture and Clean Wisconsin are playing dueling environmentalists in a Super Bowl fundraising challenge. Heck, even Bishop David Zubik (formerly the bishop of Green Bay) is working out a wager with the current bishop of Green Bay. The presidents of St. Vincent College in Latrobe and St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., announced a Super Bowl wager. At stake is cheese and sausage from Wisconsin and a bag of flour and loaf of bread from St. Vincent College's historic grist mill. Schoolchildren at St. Bernard School in Mt. Lebanon have bet that they can donate more cans of soup than their counterparts at St. Bernard School in Green Bay. At least 37 other Pittsburgh schools are also involved in soup-related competitions.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11032/1122038-455.stm
NASA's Kepler space telescope has upended a cornucopia of planet candidates on astronomy, including 54 in the "habitable zone" of their stars. The spacecraft eyeballs stars in the "Orion Spur" of our Milky Way galaxy, a lane of stars filled with sun-like stars. In 2009, mission chief scientist William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., suggested the space telescope would find 1,200 planets in four years. Yale astronomer Debra Fischer called the results "historic" and suggested about 80% would eventually prove to be planets, not mistakes.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/02/kepler-exoplanet-astronomers/1
If apples were pears, and peaches were plums, and roses had a different name; If tigers were bears, and fingers were thumbs, I'd love you just the same. Unknown
Coyotes Join Wildlife Migration to Cities
CHICAGO AREA IS HOME TO GROWING NUMBERS OF COYOTES
“A delicate balance definitely exists between good and bad impacts when coyotes come to town,” says Dr. Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist and professor at Ohio State University. “There’s no way to minimize how people feel when the family cat doesn’t come home.” Gehrt is in charge of ongoing studies to monitor urban coyotes in the Chicago area; studies started when he worked at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee, Illinois. Gehrt began studies in Cook County when residents began noticing more coyotes in urban areas near fields and wild areas. A few cats and dogs disappeared, and biologists decided it was time to understand more about the situation. Coyotes once were rare in Illinois. As many as 30 years ago, coyote populations were low due to now-defunct eradication programs. Coyotes have proliferated since then, moving from the western U.S. into eastern habitat where wolves used to be. Coyotes are adaptable and can live almost anywhere. “Surprisingly, in Chicago there is plenty of food for coyotes,” Gehrt notes. “Coyotes help stem urban deer over-population -- a serious concern to vehicle drivers, gardeners and park managers. In some areas, coyotes take 70 to 80 percent of urban fawns each year. Also, anyone who has battled throngs of cranky Canada geese or slipped on a blanket of droppings in the park knows that geese often are a problem. Coyotes eat goose eggs, goslings and occasionally nesting adults.” He notes that people sometimes demand eradication of coyotes. But eliminating all coyotes is not practical, economical or workable. Research shows that once coyotes are removed, others quickly replace them. Therefore, widespread removal is a temporary solution. Steps for keeping pets safe, if your home is near coyote habitat, include:
Don’t feed any wild animals such as raccoons or deer, which encourages coyotes as well.
Keep cats indoors at all times.
Keep your dog on a leash.
Don’t leave cat or dog food outside.
Secure garbage in areas where coyotes can’t access it; keep yards clean of refuse and brush.
Do not let pets out at night unless accompanied by a person.
About 30 percent of country-living coyotes live to see a new year; in the city, that survival rate is 58 percent. Diseases have little impact on urban coyotes; their biggest cause of death is automobiles. For more information on coyotes in Illinois, contact Illinois DNR at 217-782-6384. Learn more about coyotes by visiting the Fur Hunting and Trapping in Illinois website at dnr.state.il.us/orc/wildlife
http://dnr.state.il.us/orc/wildlife/virtual_news/releases/070104_coyotes.htm
An elegant legal brief (a written argument submitted to a court) has all the harmony of great prose. Attorney and author Adam Freedman, in his January 29 Word Craft column in The Wall Street Journal, writes that at his old law firm "Does it sing?" was code for "Is your brief finished?" The key is boiling down your arguments to a single theme. If there is an obvious weakness, concede it upfront to clear the air and allow the judge to focus on the facts that support your theme.
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) is most famous outside Germany as the author of the ‘Ode to Joy’, set by Beethoven’s in his Ninth Symphony. Poet, playwright, writer on aesthetics, his most famous plays are The Robbers, Don Carlos, Wallenstein and William Tell. Schiller’s play, William Tell, was completed in 1804 and is known throughout the world as a hymn to, and archetypical dramatic expression of, self-liberation from tyranny. http://www.librislondon.co.uk/books/1870352866.html
Gnocchi is the name for a thick, soft, small dumpling that is a traditional dish in Italian food. It can be made of a number of different ingredients, though it is most traditionally composed of porridge-like dough that is cut up into small pieces and then cooked. It is served as both a side dish and as a main meal. The origins of gnocchi are probably Middle Eastern. While gnocchi is most commonly referred to as an Italian dish with mainly Italian origins, it is important to know the importance of the dish in other countries, namely in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. These countries had a high percentage of Italian immigrants at the start of the 20th century who brought gnocchi dishes along with them. Gnocchi became so popular here that a sort of holiday was created in its honor. This is a monthly "holiday" that occurs on the 29th day of each month, and it is called "Noquis del 29" or "Gnocchi of the 29th." http://www.ehow.com/about_4572254_does-gnocchi-come.html
Triskaidekaphobia (from Greek tris meaning "3", kai meaning "and", deka meaning "10" and phobia meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is fear of the number 13; it is a superstition and related to a specific fear of Friday the 13th, called paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.
The term was first used by I.H. Coriat in "Abnormal Psychology", 1910. Tetraphobia, fear of the number 4. In Korea, China and Japan, as well as in many other East-Asian and some Southeast-Asian countries, it is not uncommon for buildings (including offices, apartments, hotels) to lack floors with the number 4, and Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia's 1xxx-9xxx series of mobile phones does not include any model numbers beginning with a 4. In China, this is because in Mandarin, the pronunciation of the word for "four" (四, sì) is a homophone to that of the word for "death" (死, sǐ). 17 is an unlucky number in Italy, because in Roman digits 17 is written XVII, that could be rearranged to "VIXI", which in Latin means "I have lived" but can be a euphemism for "I am dead." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia
Tuesday is considered, by many Greeks, to be the unluckiest day of the week. It was on Tuesday, May 29th, 1453 that the city of Constantinople was besieged and taken by the Ottoman Turks. The loss of life was considerable. Conversely, Greeks consider the number 13 (on its own) to be good luck. The ancient philosophy of Numerology considers 13 to be "the most selfless of all" and "love for the world revolves around" thirteen. The Celts also considered the number 13 to be related to good fortune. However, the combination of Tuesday and 13 as Tuesday the 13th of the month is considered a very unlucky day in Greek culture. Spanish speaking cultures fear "Martes Trece", Tuesday the 13th. http://everything2.com/title/Tuesday+the+13th
The 7th edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans advises: Enjoy your food, but eat less. Avoid oversized portions. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals – and choose the foods with lower numbers. Drink water instead of sugary drinks. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines is available at www.dietaryguidelines.gov. For more information on dietary guidelines, see www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines and www.healthfinder.gov/prevention
After two years of congestion decline — likely attributable to the economic crisis and the reduction in overall driving — commuters in 439 American cities experienced a rise in traffic in 2009. That’s according to this year’s Urban Mobility Report (pdf), published by the Texas Transportation Institute. The report found that congestion in 2009 cost commuters about $115 billion in unused time and fuel. I n personal terms, the average commuter lost $808 and 34 hours sitting in rush-hour. Residents of Chicago and Washington, D.C. experienced the year’s worst traffic, as measured in the report by annual hours delayed per commuter. People in both cities lost 70 hours to congestion, on average, in 2009. Other cities in the top 5 of the report’s “very large areas” — cities with populations greater than 3 million — were Los Angeles (63 hours), Houston (58), and San Francisco (49). Though the Urban Mobility Report is considered by some to be an industry standard for determining congestion, some analysts have found flaws in its method. An evaluation of last year’s report, performed by CEOs for Cities, often reached opposite conclusions about the traffic problem in certain large cities. The latest Urban Mobility Report boasts of an improved methodology that considers traffic speed data as well as volume data to provide a “more detailed picture of the problems facing urban travelers.” But some aren’t seeing much of a change. Streetsblog says this year’s report is filled with “maddening wrongness”. To be fair, the new report ranks cities by several metrics — with speed being just one. Still, CEOs for Cities doesn’t seem impressed with the changes either. Although it hasn’t performed a thorough analysis, its cursory review prompted a statement calling the new report a “flawed and misleading guide” (pdf).
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/24/new-report-ranks-congestion-in-americas-cities/
The Carnegie Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum have a friendly wager going on involving the temporary transfer of a French impressionist painting. PennFuture and Clean Wisconsin are playing dueling environmentalists in a Super Bowl fundraising challenge. Heck, even Bishop David Zubik (formerly the bishop of Green Bay) is working out a wager with the current bishop of Green Bay. The presidents of St. Vincent College in Latrobe and St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., announced a Super Bowl wager. At stake is cheese and sausage from Wisconsin and a bag of flour and loaf of bread from St. Vincent College's historic grist mill. Schoolchildren at St. Bernard School in Mt. Lebanon have bet that they can donate more cans of soup than their counterparts at St. Bernard School in Green Bay. At least 37 other Pittsburgh schools are also involved in soup-related competitions.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11032/1122038-455.stm
NASA's Kepler space telescope has upended a cornucopia of planet candidates on astronomy, including 54 in the "habitable zone" of their stars. The spacecraft eyeballs stars in the "Orion Spur" of our Milky Way galaxy, a lane of stars filled with sun-like stars. In 2009, mission chief scientist William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., suggested the space telescope would find 1,200 planets in four years. Yale astronomer Debra Fischer called the results "historic" and suggested about 80% would eventually prove to be planets, not mistakes.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/02/kepler-exoplanet-astronomers/1
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Labradors were invented, so to speak, in the fifteenth century. They were originally used as fishing dogs for the villagers of Newfoundland. Labs attained resistance to the cold waters of the North Atlantic by developing two distinct layers of hair - an inner layer of short fuzzy hair for insulation, and a longer guard hair for shedding water. They also developed webbed paws for swimming. Loyalty, dedication, and a wonderful temperament came standard. Genetic colors were black, yellow and chocolate. (See history of the Chocolate Lab for special information). By the 1800's Labs migrated to England and then on to the United States. Here, fishing was not the required task, but retrieving ducks took center stage. Hunters loved to show off their Labs, and worked with them diligently to develop their skills. Selective breeding kept the desire to retrieve coupled with a good nose in the lineages. Hunters began to hold events where their Labs were graded according to their performance against a set standard. These were called Hunt Tests. http://www.labpups.com/history-of-labrador-retrievers.htm As origins go, the one of Labradors (or Labrador Retriever as they are more correctly known) is rather remarkable--most people assume that the dog comes from Labrador. This, of course, is inaccurate. This breed's origins start in Newfoundland (the actual name 'Labrador' may come from the Labrador Current found nearby or the Portuguese word 'labrador', meaning laborer). Not so remarkable yet, but the difference between the Retriever's origins and other breeds is that no one is certain what dogs were crossed to create it. Most assume that the Greater Newfoundland played a part, but the rest is speculation. What is known is the instant popularity of the breed. http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-10-2006-105106.asp
January and February have a rhyming quality because in each word, the last four letters are the same, there are four syllables, and the emphasis is on the first syllable. September, October, November and December also have a rhyming quality because all words end in ber, and all except October end in ember. Also, all of these months have three syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable. Three months (April, July and August) have two syllables and three have one syllable (March, May and June).
2011 meteor showers http://www.theskyscrapers.org/meteors/
2011 astronomy calendar of celestial events contains dates for notable celestial events including moon phases, meteor showers, eclipses, occultations, oppositions, conjunctions, and other interesting events. Most of the astronomical events on this calendar can be seen with unaided eye, although some may require a good pair of binoculars for best viewing. http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy_calendar_2011.html
Daylight saving time (DST) has been a subject of recurring debate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries around the world for about a hundred years. Ancient civilizations were known to practice a similar process of the concept of DST where they would adjust their daily schedules in accordance to the sun, such as the Roman water clocks that used different scales for different months of the year. The idea of daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 during his stay in Paris. He published an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” that proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to make use of the morning sunlight. Although many believe that Benjamin Franklin invented DST, some say that modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand. Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society that proposed a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. He followed up his proposal with an article in 1898, and although there was interest in the idea, it was never followed through. The invention of DST was mainly credited to William Willett in 1905 when he came up with the idea of moving the clocks forward in the summer to take advantage of the daylight in the mornings and the lighter evenings. His proposal suggested moving the clocks 20 minutes forward each of four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on four Sundays in September. Willett’s daylight saving plan caught the attention of Robert Pearce who introduced a bill to the House of Commons in February 1908. The first Daylight Saving Bill was drafted in 1909 and presented to Parliament several times and examined by a select committee. However, the bill was opposed by many, especially farmers and thus the bill was never made into a law. Willett died in 1915 without getting the chance to see his idea come to life. DST was first adopted to replace artificial lighting so they could save fuel for the war effort in Germany during World War I at 11:00pm (23:00) on April 30, 1916. It was quickly followed by Britain and many countries from both sides, including the United States. Many countries reverted back to standard time post-World War I, and it wasn’t until the next World War that DST would make its return to many countries in order to save vital energy resources for the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in the United States, called “War Time” during World War II from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. The law was enforced 40 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and during this time, time zones were called “Eastern War Time”, “Central War Time”, and “Pacific War Time”. After the surrender of Japan in mid-August 1945, the time zones were relabeled “Peace Time”. Daylight saving was first recognized as an energy saving aspect during World War II when Double Summer Time was applied in Britain which moved the clocks two hours ahead of GMT during the summer and one hour ahead of GMT during the winter. http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/history.html
In the United States, clocks move ahead one hour at 2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March, daylight saving time begins--March 13 in 2011. Standard time resumes every year at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November when clocks move one hour back--November 6 in 2011. Arizona, and Hawaii do not observe DST.
Daylight saving time around the world in 2011 http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/2011.html
From muse reader: I wonder if your readers know that the book Catch 22 was originally named by Heller Catch 18? Heller's publishers were also publishing Leon Uris's book Mila 18,and so suggested the more "catchy" title.
If you enjoy Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, you may want to travel a few miles south to see Winterthur (pronounced “winter-tour”) museum of American decorative arts, founded by Henry Francis du Pont . Its 60-acre naturalistic garden is among the country’s best, and its research library serves scholars from around the world. http://www.winterthur.org/
Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community While the economy was declining, the online activities of the information consumer were increasing. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Americans were online, up 12% from 2005 (Internet World Stats, September 2010). comScore reported that a quarter of U.S. mobile phones are now smartphones that provide Internet access, a growth of 1,050% from 2005. Many of the online practices of young information consumers in 2005 were across all ages in 2010. Over 90% of Boomers used e-mail and search engines, and over 50% used a social networking site. In 2010, 68% of information consumers had a library card. For those Americans economically impacted, that rate was even higher—81%. Information consumers who have experienced a job impact were not just getting library cards at greater rates; they were using the library for more services and more often in 2010. And their perception of library value was significantly different from those not impacted—their perceived value was higher. http://www.oclc.org/reports/2010perceptions/2010perceptions_all.pdf
The best books I've ever read on clear writing have been aimed at lawyers; for instance, any edition of Plain English for Lawyers by Richard C. Wydick. For answering your grammar questions, there are two books called The Grammatical Lawyer. This week, a muse reader recommends: "Typography for Lawyers, Essential Tools for Polished & Persuasive Documents," by Matthew Butterick. It's not just for lawyers. Should be required reading for anyone who produces writings and I know you would enjoy it.
Remember: prepare, pare down, polish, persuade and package in an easy-to-read format.
Frank Cavestani and his wife fell behind on their Capital One credit card payments about a decade ago. Their accounts were subsequently closed by the lender, which wrote off about $2,000 in debt they couldn't pay. So it was more than a little strange when the Hollywood couple received a pair of bills from Cap One the other day for a combined $5,195.07 in debt and interest. Stranger still, when Cavestani contacted Cap One, he said a service rep told him the resurrecting of old loans is accommodated by recent credit card regulations approved by the Federal Reserve — even though most states have a statute of limitations for how long credit card debt can be pursued by a lender. In California's case, that statute of limitations is four years. Cavestani's debt dates back to 2000, which means Cap One can't sue him for failing to pay up.
Cap One spokeswoman Tatiana Stead essentially confirmed Cavestani's story. She said Cap One was complying with Section 226.5(b)(2) of the Federal Reserve's Regulation Z, which requires lenders to send a statement for each billing cycle. But it stipulates that "a periodic statement need not be sent for an account if the creditor deems it uncollectable, or if delinquency collection proceedings have been instituted." The regulation requires Cap One to send out statements for charged-off accounts, "regardless of whether we are still actively seeking to recover on the debt," Stead said. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20110201,0,639051.column
January and February have a rhyming quality because in each word, the last four letters are the same, there are four syllables, and the emphasis is on the first syllable. September, October, November and December also have a rhyming quality because all words end in ber, and all except October end in ember. Also, all of these months have three syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable. Three months (April, July and August) have two syllables and three have one syllable (March, May and June).
2011 meteor showers http://www.theskyscrapers.org/meteors/
2011 astronomy calendar of celestial events contains dates for notable celestial events including moon phases, meteor showers, eclipses, occultations, oppositions, conjunctions, and other interesting events. Most of the astronomical events on this calendar can be seen with unaided eye, although some may require a good pair of binoculars for best viewing. http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy_calendar_2011.html
Daylight saving time (DST) has been a subject of recurring debate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries around the world for about a hundred years. Ancient civilizations were known to practice a similar process of the concept of DST where they would adjust their daily schedules in accordance to the sun, such as the Roman water clocks that used different scales for different months of the year. The idea of daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 during his stay in Paris. He published an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” that proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to make use of the morning sunlight. Although many believe that Benjamin Franklin invented DST, some say that modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand. Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society that proposed a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. He followed up his proposal with an article in 1898, and although there was interest in the idea, it was never followed through. The invention of DST was mainly credited to William Willett in 1905 when he came up with the idea of moving the clocks forward in the summer to take advantage of the daylight in the mornings and the lighter evenings. His proposal suggested moving the clocks 20 minutes forward each of four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on four Sundays in September. Willett’s daylight saving plan caught the attention of Robert Pearce who introduced a bill to the House of Commons in February 1908. The first Daylight Saving Bill was drafted in 1909 and presented to Parliament several times and examined by a select committee. However, the bill was opposed by many, especially farmers and thus the bill was never made into a law. Willett died in 1915 without getting the chance to see his idea come to life. DST was first adopted to replace artificial lighting so they could save fuel for the war effort in Germany during World War I at 11:00pm (23:00) on April 30, 1916. It was quickly followed by Britain and many countries from both sides, including the United States. Many countries reverted back to standard time post-World War I, and it wasn’t until the next World War that DST would make its return to many countries in order to save vital energy resources for the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in the United States, called “War Time” during World War II from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. The law was enforced 40 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and during this time, time zones were called “Eastern War Time”, “Central War Time”, and “Pacific War Time”. After the surrender of Japan in mid-August 1945, the time zones were relabeled “Peace Time”. Daylight saving was first recognized as an energy saving aspect during World War II when Double Summer Time was applied in Britain which moved the clocks two hours ahead of GMT during the summer and one hour ahead of GMT during the winter. http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/history.html
In the United States, clocks move ahead one hour at 2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March, daylight saving time begins--March 13 in 2011. Standard time resumes every year at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November when clocks move one hour back--November 6 in 2011. Arizona, and Hawaii do not observe DST.
Daylight saving time around the world in 2011 http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/2011.html
From muse reader: I wonder if your readers know that the book Catch 22 was originally named by Heller Catch 18? Heller's publishers were also publishing Leon Uris's book Mila 18,and so suggested the more "catchy" title.
If you enjoy Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, you may want to travel a few miles south to see Winterthur (pronounced “winter-tour”) museum of American decorative arts, founded by Henry Francis du Pont . Its 60-acre naturalistic garden is among the country’s best, and its research library serves scholars from around the world. http://www.winterthur.org/
Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community While the economy was declining, the online activities of the information consumer were increasing. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Americans were online, up 12% from 2005 (Internet World Stats, September 2010). comScore reported that a quarter of U.S. mobile phones are now smartphones that provide Internet access, a growth of 1,050% from 2005. Many of the online practices of young information consumers in 2005 were across all ages in 2010. Over 90% of Boomers used e-mail and search engines, and over 50% used a social networking site. In 2010, 68% of information consumers had a library card. For those Americans economically impacted, that rate was even higher—81%. Information consumers who have experienced a job impact were not just getting library cards at greater rates; they were using the library for more services and more often in 2010. And their perception of library value was significantly different from those not impacted—their perceived value was higher. http://www.oclc.org/reports/2010perceptions/2010perceptions_all.pdf
The best books I've ever read on clear writing have been aimed at lawyers; for instance, any edition of Plain English for Lawyers by Richard C. Wydick. For answering your grammar questions, there are two books called The Grammatical Lawyer. This week, a muse reader recommends: "Typography for Lawyers, Essential Tools for Polished & Persuasive Documents," by Matthew Butterick. It's not just for lawyers. Should be required reading for anyone who produces writings and I know you would enjoy it.
Remember: prepare, pare down, polish, persuade and package in an easy-to-read format.
Frank Cavestani and his wife fell behind on their Capital One credit card payments about a decade ago. Their accounts were subsequently closed by the lender, which wrote off about $2,000 in debt they couldn't pay. So it was more than a little strange when the Hollywood couple received a pair of bills from Cap One the other day for a combined $5,195.07 in debt and interest. Stranger still, when Cavestani contacted Cap One, he said a service rep told him the resurrecting of old loans is accommodated by recent credit card regulations approved by the Federal Reserve — even though most states have a statute of limitations for how long credit card debt can be pursued by a lender. In California's case, that statute of limitations is four years. Cavestani's debt dates back to 2000, which means Cap One can't sue him for failing to pay up.
Cap One spokeswoman Tatiana Stead essentially confirmed Cavestani's story. She said Cap One was complying with Section 226.5(b)(2) of the Federal Reserve's Regulation Z, which requires lenders to send a statement for each billing cycle. But it stipulates that "a periodic statement need not be sent for an account if the creditor deems it uncollectable, or if delinquency collection proceedings have been instituted." The regulation requires Cap One to send out statements for charged-off accounts, "regardless of whether we are still actively seeking to recover on the debt," Stead said. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20110201,0,639051.column
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1944 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. It has a distinctive non-chronological style where events are described from different characters' points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot. The novel follows Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier, and a number of other characters. Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. Within the book, "Catch-22" is a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. In Heller's own words: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. Other forms of Catch-22 are invoked throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions. At one point, victims of harassment by military police quote the MPs' explanation of one of Catch-22's provisions: "Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating." Another character explains: "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing." The theme of a bureaucracy marginalizing the individual in an absurd way is similar to the world of Kafka's The Trial, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The concept of 'doublethink' has definite echoes in Heller's work. Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has potent effects. Indeed, because it does not exist there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of force with specious legalistic justification is one of the book's primary motifs. The motif of bureaucratic absurdity is further explored in 1994's Closing Time, Heller's sequel to Catch-22. This darker, slower-paced, apocalyptic novel explores the pre- and post-war lives of some of the major characters in Catch-22, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Yossarian and tailgunner Sammy Singer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22
From True Detectives by Jonathan Kellerman How about some water? Ice or room, bubbly or flat? Ice flat is fine.
Amusing words: Buzz, buzzword, buzzophere
Misuses of buzzwords
Thought-control via intentional vagueness. In management, by stating organization goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used. (See newspeak)
To inflate the trivial to importance and stature.
To impress a judge or an examiner by seeming to know a legal psychologic theory or a quantum physics principle, by name-dropping it, e.g. "cognitive dissonance", the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle".
To camouflage chit-chat saying nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword
Q: Why do we call some interstates "freeways" if they charge tolls?
A: The term "freeway" refers to how motorists enter and leave the highway, not to how the highway was financed. Freeways have grade separations at all railroads and public crossroads, with interchanges at selected crossroads. Traffic can enter or leave via the interchanges.
Toll roads incorporated into the Interstate System are freeways.
Federal Highway Administration
Q: What is "Zulu" time?
A: It is the same as Greenwich Mean Time, the time at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich, England, at 0 degrees longitude. It is five hours earlier than standard time in Ohio. The term is mostly used by the military.
U.S. Navy.
Wondering? Then, just ask by e-mail to justask@thecourier.com, by fax to 419-427-8480, or by mail to Just Ask, The Courier, P.O. Box 609, Findlay, OH 45839. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jan/JU/ar_JU_013111.asp?d=013111,2011,Jan,31&c=c_13
Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight. Many police officers owe their lives to Stephanie Kwolek, for Kevlar is the material used in bullet proof vests. Other applications of the compound include underwater cables, brake linings, space vehicles, boats, parachutes, skis, and building materials. Stephanie Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1923. Upon graduating in 1946 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Kwolek went to work as a chemist at the DuPont Company. She would ultimately obtain 28 patents during her 40-year tenure as a research scientist. In 1995, Stephanie Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blkevlar.htm
E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company once called Wallace Hume Carothers "one of the most brilliant organic chemists" the company had ever employed. In the nine years he spent working there, Carothers made contributions to the theory of organic chemistry that led to the invention of polymeric materials such as the synthetic materials nylon and neoprene, the first commercially successful synthetic rubber. Carothers grew up in Iowa, the son of a schoolteacher. After receiving a B.S. from Tarkio College, Carothers obtained his master's and doctor's degrees from the University of Illinois. After his graduation, Carothers became an instructor at Harvard, where he started experimenting with chemical structures of polymers with high molecular weight. In 1928, DuPont lured him away from Harvard to work in a new research lab in Wilmington, Del. for developing artificial materials. There, he investigated the structure of substances of high molecular weight and their formation by polymerization. The new super-polymer reached the market in 1937 in the form of toothbrush bristles advertised as superior to anything plucked from the hide of an animal. In 1938, DuPont went public, announcing the invention of nylon, "the first man-made organic textile fabric prepared entirely from new materials from the mineral kingdom." http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/carothers.html
Exquisite flowers, majestic trees, dazzling fountains, extravagant conservatory, starlit theatre, thunderous organ—all describe the magic of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a horticultural showstopper where the gardening arts are encased in classic forms and enhanced by modern technology. Many generations helped create Longwood Gardens, but one individual—Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954), industrialist, conservationist, farmer, designer, impresario, and philanthropist—made the most enduring contribution. Pierre du Pont was the great-grandson of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), who arrived from France in 1800 and founded the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company gunpowder works. Pierre turned the family business into a corporate empire in the early 20th century and used his resulting fortune to develop the Longwood property. More than 200 years earlier, the land had been inhabited by the native Lenni Lenape tribe who hunted, fished, and farmed the productive wilderness. In 1700, a Quaker family named Peirce purchased the property from William Penn and soon established a working farm. Joshua and Samuel Peirce began planting an arboretum on the farm in 1798. The farm was purchased in 1906 by Pierre du Pont so he could preserve the trees, and from 1907 until the 1930s Mr. du Pont created most of what is enjoyed today. The Longwood Organ will be re-inaugurated on February 4 and 5, 2011, after the second complete rebuilding in its 82-year history.
These activities are free with Gardens admission. Concerts are first-come, first-served seating.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
11am - 5 pm: Organ Touch Table Open
11:00 am: Organ Museum Talk
11:30 am: Player Organ Demonstration (computerized) http://www.longwoodgardens.org/TheStoryofLongwood_1_3_2_1_1.html
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/OrganFanFare.html
In 2011 the Chinese New Year falls on February 3 in the Year of the Rabbit. Here is information on the Chinese Lunar Calendar as well as an index to the Chinese Zodiac Signs and their associated characteristics. The Lunar Calendar & Chinese Zodiac
Non-Chinese Holidays in China Christmas Guide Valentine's Day American Thanksgiving http://gochina.about.com/od/chinesenewyear/p/ChineseNYGuide.htm
Parks are like poetry and music. They basically have no reason to exist--that is also what is so special about them. Our house in the north of Spain has three gardens. One is all mulberry, entirely natural. One is only 20% filled now. At the highest point there is an herb garden where I grow artichokes, vegetables and all kinds of tomatoes. In Spain there is a different tomato for every pasta, salad or sauce. These are comments by Adriaan Geuze. design director of West 8--a Dutch landscape firm based in Rotterdam with offices in Belgium, New York and Toronto. Wall Street Journal January 22-23, 2011 See images of West 8 designs at: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1916&bih=874&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=%22west+8%22&aq=f&aqi=g3&aql=&oq=
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed health care reform legislation: “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat.119 (2010), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-152, 124 Stat. 1029 (2010) (the “Act”). See 78-page order granting summary judgment issued by federal judge Roger Vinson January 31, 2011 at: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/013111healthcareruling.pdf
Unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Vinson concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01ruling.html?_r=1&hp
From True Detectives by Jonathan Kellerman How about some water? Ice or room, bubbly or flat? Ice flat is fine.
Amusing words: Buzz, buzzword, buzzophere
Misuses of buzzwords
Thought-control via intentional vagueness. In management, by stating organization goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used. (See newspeak)
To inflate the trivial to importance and stature.
To impress a judge or an examiner by seeming to know a legal psychologic theory or a quantum physics principle, by name-dropping it, e.g. "cognitive dissonance", the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle".
To camouflage chit-chat saying nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword
Q: Why do we call some interstates "freeways" if they charge tolls?
A: The term "freeway" refers to how motorists enter and leave the highway, not to how the highway was financed. Freeways have grade separations at all railroads and public crossroads, with interchanges at selected crossroads. Traffic can enter or leave via the interchanges.
Toll roads incorporated into the Interstate System are freeways.
Federal Highway Administration
Q: What is "Zulu" time?
A: It is the same as Greenwich Mean Time, the time at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich, England, at 0 degrees longitude. It is five hours earlier than standard time in Ohio. The term is mostly used by the military.
U.S. Navy.
Wondering? Then, just ask by e-mail to justask@thecourier.com, by fax to 419-427-8480, or by mail to Just Ask, The Courier, P.O. Box 609, Findlay, OH 45839. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jan/JU/ar_JU_013111.asp?d=013111,2011,Jan,31&c=c_13
Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight. Many police officers owe their lives to Stephanie Kwolek, for Kevlar is the material used in bullet proof vests. Other applications of the compound include underwater cables, brake linings, space vehicles, boats, parachutes, skis, and building materials. Stephanie Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1923. Upon graduating in 1946 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Kwolek went to work as a chemist at the DuPont Company. She would ultimately obtain 28 patents during her 40-year tenure as a research scientist. In 1995, Stephanie Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blkevlar.htm
E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company once called Wallace Hume Carothers "one of the most brilliant organic chemists" the company had ever employed. In the nine years he spent working there, Carothers made contributions to the theory of organic chemistry that led to the invention of polymeric materials such as the synthetic materials nylon and neoprene, the first commercially successful synthetic rubber. Carothers grew up in Iowa, the son of a schoolteacher. After receiving a B.S. from Tarkio College, Carothers obtained his master's and doctor's degrees from the University of Illinois. After his graduation, Carothers became an instructor at Harvard, where he started experimenting with chemical structures of polymers with high molecular weight. In 1928, DuPont lured him away from Harvard to work in a new research lab in Wilmington, Del. for developing artificial materials. There, he investigated the structure of substances of high molecular weight and their formation by polymerization. The new super-polymer reached the market in 1937 in the form of toothbrush bristles advertised as superior to anything plucked from the hide of an animal. In 1938, DuPont went public, announcing the invention of nylon, "the first man-made organic textile fabric prepared entirely from new materials from the mineral kingdom." http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/carothers.html
Exquisite flowers, majestic trees, dazzling fountains, extravagant conservatory, starlit theatre, thunderous organ—all describe the magic of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a horticultural showstopper where the gardening arts are encased in classic forms and enhanced by modern technology. Many generations helped create Longwood Gardens, but one individual—Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954), industrialist, conservationist, farmer, designer, impresario, and philanthropist—made the most enduring contribution. Pierre du Pont was the great-grandson of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), who arrived from France in 1800 and founded the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company gunpowder works. Pierre turned the family business into a corporate empire in the early 20th century and used his resulting fortune to develop the Longwood property. More than 200 years earlier, the land had been inhabited by the native Lenni Lenape tribe who hunted, fished, and farmed the productive wilderness. In 1700, a Quaker family named Peirce purchased the property from William Penn and soon established a working farm. Joshua and Samuel Peirce began planting an arboretum on the farm in 1798. The farm was purchased in 1906 by Pierre du Pont so he could preserve the trees, and from 1907 until the 1930s Mr. du Pont created most of what is enjoyed today. The Longwood Organ will be re-inaugurated on February 4 and 5, 2011, after the second complete rebuilding in its 82-year history.
These activities are free with Gardens admission. Concerts are first-come, first-served seating.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
11am - 5 pm: Organ Touch Table Open
11:00 am: Organ Museum Talk
11:30 am: Player Organ Demonstration (computerized) http://www.longwoodgardens.org/TheStoryofLongwood_1_3_2_1_1.html
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/OrganFanFare.html
In 2011 the Chinese New Year falls on February 3 in the Year of the Rabbit. Here is information on the Chinese Lunar Calendar as well as an index to the Chinese Zodiac Signs and their associated characteristics. The Lunar Calendar & Chinese Zodiac
Non-Chinese Holidays in China Christmas Guide Valentine's Day American Thanksgiving http://gochina.about.com/od/chinesenewyear/p/ChineseNYGuide.htm
Parks are like poetry and music. They basically have no reason to exist--that is also what is so special about them. Our house in the north of Spain has three gardens. One is all mulberry, entirely natural. One is only 20% filled now. At the highest point there is an herb garden where I grow artichokes, vegetables and all kinds of tomatoes. In Spain there is a different tomato for every pasta, salad or sauce. These are comments by Adriaan Geuze. design director of West 8--a Dutch landscape firm based in Rotterdam with offices in Belgium, New York and Toronto. Wall Street Journal January 22-23, 2011 See images of West 8 designs at: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1916&bih=874&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=%22west+8%22&aq=f&aqi=g3&aql=&oq=
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed health care reform legislation: “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat.119 (2010), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-152, 124 Stat. 1029 (2010) (the “Act”). See 78-page order granting summary judgment issued by federal judge Roger Vinson January 31, 2011 at: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/013111healthcareruling.pdf
Unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Vinson concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01ruling.html?_r=1&hp
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