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October 16 is World Dictionary Day, marking the birthday of the great American lexicographer Noah Webster. Born in Connecticut in 1758, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, in 1806, but it was his two-volume American Dictionary of the English Language published in 1828 (when he was 70 years old) that earned him his place in history as the foremost lexicographer of American English. The statistics alone speak for themselves: Webster's American Dictionary took him 28 years to complete. In preparation he learned 26 languages, including Old English, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. The final...

The BBC is adapting John le Carre's novel The Night Manager for a new six-part series. The book, published in 1993, is about a former British soldier who ends up going undercover as part of a sting against a black market weapons dealer. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston are set to star, according to the Hollywood Reporter, but the BBC said that was just speculation. US networks are also looking to pick up the series, the magazine reported.

Best Review yet... it could be a little thicker though. my AR-15 shoots right through it.

I have just returned from Liberia with a group of physicians and health activists. We are heading back in a few days. The country is in the midst of the largest ever epidemic of Ebola haemorrhagic fever. It’s an acute and brutal affliction. Ebola is a zoonosis – it leaps from animal hosts to humans – which is caused by a filovirus (a thread-like virus that causes internal and external bleeding). It was first described in 1976 in rural Congo, not far from the Ebola River, as an acute-onset syndrome characterised by complaints of weakness, followed by fever and abdominal...

If you’re like me, you’re baffled and disturbed, that weeks after the ebola epidemic has raged across Africa, we are still letting people from those areas into the U.S. If you are not baffled or disturbed, I’m thinking you don’t understand what ebola is. What it is not is the flu or measles. You have the flu and cough in a room full of people, most won’t even get sick, let alone die. You have ebola and cough in a room, many may get it (no immunities) and, well, the fatality rate puts this disease somewhere above anthrax (which doesn’t...

This original and fascinating book sets out to discover which of the ten centuries from 1000 to 2000 saw the most change in the human condition. Surely, most of us would say, it can only be the 20th century? Flying, mass motoring, space travel, advanced weapons, atomic power, telephones, radio and television, computers and iPads — what more change do you want? Ah, says the historian Ian Mortimer, history is not just a matter of inventions. More important are changes in the conditions under which we live and, above all, in the ideas that are ruling at any one time....

Audio 39:53 John Batchelor interviews Gregg Jones author of new book Last Stand at Khe Sahn (Vietnam)

Maybe President Obama should have asked his Cabinet secretaries to sign book-royalty agreements when they took their oaths of office, so he could share in the spoils. Too late now: Here’s Leon Panetta, former defense secretary and CIA director, publishing the third memoir by a top foreign policy official while Obama is still in office.

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“If you have read ‘Killing Kennedy,’” author and TV commentator Bill O'Reilly reminds his readers, “you know that Martin Dugard and I are not conspiracy theorists. We write from a factual point of view, with no axes to grind.” Thus, in the afterword of “Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General” Mr. O'Reilly seeks to assure those who have just read this most recent volume in the co-authored (with Mr. Dugard) “killing” series that their findings are simply facts, not hype. Careful shoe-leather detective work buttressed by research, access to decades-old correspondence and never-before publicized...

Dennis Rader, the Kansas serial killer known as the "BTK killer," told a Wichita newspaper that he's cooperating with Katherine Ramsland, an author writing a book about his crimes. Rader murdered 10 people in the Wichita area from 1974 to 1991, and his victims ranged in ages from 9 to 62. He gave himself the nickname "BTK," which he said stood for "bind, torture, kill." Rader is serving 10 consecutive life sentences for the slayings, and won't be eligible for parole until 2180. In a letter to Wichita reporter Roy Wenzl, Rader claims he's cooperating with the book project in...

Just a link. http://pulptastic.com/thought-fashion-sense-bad-discovered-god-help-us/ Yes, the images are "Safe for Work" .. Just not recommended for viewing after a meal.

I've been campaigning against Common Core for six years -– this VIDEO is one of the best things I've seen. A bit long at 22 minutes but please watch it all. Yes, you'll be depressed and may even cry. This video confirms my sense that we should cancel Common Core entirely. Don't discuss or negotiate. The people behind Common Core are far-leftists. They will keep lying and manipulating. I don't imagine they will negotiate in good faith. ----- (My own most recent article is called "Common Core fulfills an ugly dream." It gives an historical perspective. On Examiner.com. Just Google...

Pierre Ryckmans, writer and academic. Born 1935, died 2014 Nowadays Mao is generally regarded as a tyrant on a par with Hitler and Stalin — worse, by some measures, if “indirect deaths” (starvation due to his policies) are counted in the overall toll. Yet in the 1970s he was the darling of the European radical Left. Pierre Ryckmans was born in Brussels into a well-off, devout Roman Catholic family. One relative was a monsignor; another a governor of the Belgian Congo. He first visited China in 1955 as a student and subsequently worked in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong before...

After a successful summer engaging poets near and far, the University of Iowa International Writing Program (IWP) will launch its second Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), How Writers Write Fiction, on Friday, Sept. 26.The course, taught entirely on the Internet through the use of recorded video lectures, is designed to reach an unlimited number of participants. The first UI MOOC, How Writers Write Poetry, had just over 4,500 participants by the end of the course; the fiction MOOC should easily surpass that number. “The International Writing Program has developed the University of Iowa’s first MOOCs, and the university has...

An archaeologist who has been part of the restoration and excavation effort at Turkey's Tokat Castle believes he has uncovered the dungeons where Vlad the Impaler was once held. Ibrahim Cetin tells the Hurriyet Daily News that the two dungeons that were found were "built like a prison." And while he deems it "hard to estimate" which room the man who served as Dracula's inspiration was held in, "he was around here," he says.

An American journalist has revealed the homeland of vampires is Serbia, not Romania.

Persecuted Catholic clergymen in Elizabethan England hid in 'priest holes' built into the stately homes of sympathetic nobles.

Actor Nicolas Cage will reportedly star in what producers hope will be a new, improved movie version of the best-selling, end-times thriller Left Behind.

It's Banned Books Week! But people are trying to keep great books out of libraries and schools every hour of every day, year round. And often, people's reasons for challenging these titles are really, really... outlandish. Here are 12 SF and fantasy books that people have given incomprehensible reasons for banning.