The World's 10 Worst Dictators (Parade magazine)

1. Robert Mugabe - Zimbabwe
Age: 85 In power since 1980
Last year's rank: 6

2. Omar al-Bashir - Sudan
Age: 65. In power since 1989
Last year's rank: 2

3. Kim Jong-Il - North Korea
Age: 67 In power since 1994
Last year's rank: 1

4. Than Shwe - Burma (Myanmar)
Age: 76. In power since 1992
Last year's rank: 3

5. King Abdullah - Saudi Arabia
Age: 85 In power since 1995
Last year's rank: 4

6. Hu Jintao - China
Age: 66 In power since 2002
Last year's rank: 5

7. Sayyid Ali Khamenei - Iran
Age: 69 In power since 1989
Last year's rank: 7

8. Isayas Afewerki - Eritrea
Age 63 In power since 1991
Last year's rank: 10

9. Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov - Turkmenistan
Age: 51 In power since 2006
Last year's rank: Unranked

10. Muammar al-Qaddafi - Libya
Age: 66 In power since 1969
Last year's rank 11

source: Parade magazine March 22, 2009
(Parade.com/dictators)

The American Academy of Arts and Letters

The academy was founded more than a century ago, with a mission "to foster and sustain an interest in literature, music and the fine arts." New members are elected after previous members die. There are 250 members.

Current members include Edward Albee, Philip Glass and Toni Morrison.
Past members included Henry Adams, Mark Rothko and Mark Twain.

May 2009 new members are: fiction writers T. Coraghessan Boyle (Drop City, World's End and Richard Price (Clockers, Lush Life); poets Jorie Graham and Yusef Komunyakaa; composers Stephen Hartke, Frederic Rzewski and Augusta Read Thomas; visual artist Judy Pfaff; and architect Tod Williams.

source: The Columbus Dispatch, April 2009

Pi

Pi - which, as the ratio indicating the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, is rounded to 3.14 - was calculated to 206,158,430,000 digits in 1999 by a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo.

(www.math.com)

The U. S. President's cabinet

The cabinet consists of the vice president as well as the heads of 15 executive departments - the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs - and the attorney general.

www.whitehouse.gov/administration/cabinet

the term "blue blood"

During the five-century reign of the Moors in Spain, from 700 to 1200, lighter-skinned aristocrats from the Castile region dubbed themselves "blue bloods" to distinguish themselves from the darker-skinned Moors. The reason: Their lighter skin made their veins look blue.

Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins

INITIALS

CS. Lewis = Clive Staples

J.R.R. Tolkien = John Ronald Ruel

W.H.Auden (British poet 1907-1973) = Wystan Hugh

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965 poet, playwright, literary critic, born in U.S. 1888, moved to U.K. 1914, became British subject 1927) = Thomas Stearns

A.N. Wilson (b.1950 English writer known for critical biographies, novels and works of popular and cultural history) = Andrew Norman