Earth Hour, an annual event, will take place on Saturday, March 27, at 8:30 p.m. local time. People are urged to turn off non-essential lights for one hour. World Wildlife Fund started Earth Hour in 2007, and says that last year 4,000 cities turned off lights in official buildings in 87 countries, including 318 U.S. cities. It estimates 80 million Americans participated. This year, 30 states (up from eight last year) plan to flip the light switch in governors' mansions and other public buildings. Among monuments and other landmarks taking part: the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Las Vegas Strip, Niagara Falls and the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, in Chicago.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/03/millions-of-homes-stores-buildings-go-dark-for-earth-hour/1

ebrary Launches Free Natural Disaster and Extreme Weather Searchable Information Center News release: "ebrary®, a leading provider of digital content products and technologies..announced that it has created a publicly available research center featuring hundreds of important government documents related to natural disasters and extreme weather - the Natural Disaster and Extreme Weather Searchable Information Center."

Postal Service Proposes to Eliminate Saturday Service
News release: Postal Service Outlines Five-Day Delivery Proposal The U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors has approved management’s request to move forward with its five-day delivery proposal and to file a request for an advisory opinion with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) on March 30. A website will be launched to provide customers with the details of the proposal. The website also will include a special section telling business mailers how to manage a change in delivery.
"War Dances" by novelist Sherman Alexie has won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the organizers announced on March 23. The prestigious annual award, presented by the Washington-based PEN/Faulkner Foundation, was given to Alexie because of his book's breadth of topics and innovative style, judges said. "War Dances" consists of short stories interspersed with poems. Alexie, who lives in Seattle, won a National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2007 and this week, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. He is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who grew up on a reservation 50 miles northwest of Spokane. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032301846.html?hpid=sec-artsliving

Languages freely borrow words from one another. Often a borrowed word becomes so assimilated we don't realize its exotic provenance. If you speak English, you know parts of at least a hundred different languages. Besides the usual sources--Latin, Greek, German, French, etc --English has words borrowed from languages as diverse as Tongan (taboo), Hindi (cot), Hungarian (coach), among others. Sometimes languages borrow only the idea from a language and translate a word literally. English skyscraper becomes rascacielos (literally scrape-skies) in Spanish, gratte-ciel in French, Wolkenkratzer in German, and so on. This process of borrowing is called loan translation or calque (from French calquer: to trace or copy). German Gedankenexperiment becomes "thought experiment" in English through loan translation. French marche aux puces gets translated as flea market. The term loan translation itself is a loan translation of German Lehnübersetzung.
cloud-cuckoo-land or cloud cuckoo land (KLOUD-koo-koo-land) noun
An idealized, unrealistic state; a place out of touch with reality. Loan translation of Greek Nephelokokkugia, from nephele (cloud) + kokkux (cuckoo). The word was coined in The Birds, a comedy by Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c. 450-388 BCE). Nephelokokkugia was the name of a city in the sky, built by the birds in collaboration with some Athenians.
moment of truth (MOH-muhnt of trooth) noun
A crucial point; a turning point; a decisive moment.
Loan translation of Spanish el momento de la verdad. In bullfighting, the moment when a matador is about to kill the bull is called el momento de la verdad.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Quote No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else. Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

A yellow flower the size and shape of a gumdrop, it's the bloom of an Amazonian herb called Spilanthes acmella, known in this country as paracress, spotflower, and toothache plant. Koppert Cress, a Dutch distributor of microgreens, is growing paracress on Long Island and marketing the plant's tongue-buzzing blossoms as "Sechuan Buttons." Though the entire plant is saturated with spilanthol, an analgesic alkaloid that numbs the mouth and stimulates saliva flow, it is its flower, resembling nothing so much as the heart of a very fat daisy, that packs the greatest sensory wallop. Chewing an entire bud will numb your tongue and gums, and a taste of even a few filaments will subject your mouth to spilanthol's peculiarly electric frisson. See picture and more at: http://www.saveur.com/article/kitchen/the-electric-paracress

LYNNE'S TIPS
Give this idea of folding fresh herbs into cooked rice another take by borrowing the concept of red rice from Carolina Low Country tradition. Sauté bacon and onions in a little oil. Spoon off excess fat, add a minced garlic clove and the 2 cups of long grain rice, a 14-ounce can of whole tomatoes, pureed, and 3 cups of water. Cook as directed above, and when done, fold in 1 cup each of snipped chives and torn basil. The Splendid Table March 24, 2010