Invasive species have become a vexing problem in the United States, with population explosions of Asian carp clogging the Mississippi River and European green crabs mobbing the coasts. With few natural predators in North America, such fast-breeding species have thrived in American waters, eating native creatures and out-competing them for food and habitats. While most invasive species are not commonly regarded as edible food, that is mostly a matter of marketing, experts say. Imagine menus where Asian carp substitutes for the threatened Chilean sea bass, or lionfish replaces grouper, which is overfished. “We think there could be a real market,” said Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food and Water Watch, whose 2011 Smart Seafood Guide recommends for the first time that diners seek out invasive species as a “safer, more sustainable” alternative to their more dwindling relatives, to encourage fisherman and markets to provide them. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is now exploring where it might be helpful. Models suggest that commercial harvest of Asian carp in the Mississippi would most likely help control populations there, “as part of an integrated pest management program,” said Valerie Fellows, a spokeswoman. To increase culinary demand, Food and Water Watch has teamed up with the James Beard Foundation and Kerry Heffernan, the chef at the South Gate restaurant in New York City, to devise recipes using the creatures. At a recent tasting, there was Asian carp ceviche and braised lionfish filet in brown butter sauce. Lionfish, it turns out, looks hideous but tastes great. The group had to hire fishermen to catch animals commonly regarded as pests. Mr. Heffernan said he would consider putting them on his menu and was looking forward to getting some molting European green crabs to try in soft-shell crab recipes. Last summer, the Nature Conservancy sponsored a lionfish food fair in the Bahamas, featuring lionfish fritters and more. They offered fishermen $11 a pound — about the price of grouper — and got an abundant supply. Lionfish, native to the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, arrived in the Caribbean in the early 1990s. Mitchell Davis, vice president of the Beard Foundation, said other species had moved from being pariah pests to must-have items on American plates, like dandelion greens for salads. Elisabeth Rosenthal
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/science/earth/10fish.html

Q: I bet that Star Trek's Capt. James T. Kirk never said, "Beam me up, Scotty."
A: Correct. The closest Kirk came was, "Beam us up, Mr. Scott," during a 1968 episode, "The Gamesters of Triskelion."
Q: What was the highest U.S. money note printed?
A: The $100,000 Gold Certificate, Series 1934, printed from Dec. 18, 1934, to Jan. 9, 1935, were issued by the U.S. Treasurer to Federal Reserve Banks against an equal amount of gold held by the Treasury. They were used only among Federal Reserve banks. U.S. Treasury Department.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Dec/JU/ar_JU_120511.asp?d=120511,2011,Dec,05&c=c_13

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Name that nym
Find definitions of allonym, aptronym, charactonym, cryptonym, demonym, exonym, hypernym, hyponym, metonym and more at: http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/Name-That-Nym-A-Brief-Introduction-To-Words-And-Names.htm

Charactonyms are fictional characters whose names reflect their attributes.
Examples of charactonyms
Squire Allworthy from the novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (also called Tom Jones), 1749
Mrs. Malaprop (from mal--bad and apropos--fitting) from play The Rivals, 1775
Daddy Warbucks from comic strip Little Orphan Annie, 1924-2010 (title comes from "Little Orphant Annie," an 1885 poem) written by James Whitcomb Riley.
Tex Richman from The Muppets film, 2011

terrene (teh-REEN, TER-een) adjective
Relating to the earth; earthly; worldly; mundane.
From Latin terra (earth). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ters- (to dry), which is also the source of territory, terrace, turmeric, and toast. Earliest documented use: 1300s.
baldachin (BAL-duh-kin, BOL-) Also, baldacchino, baldachino (bal-duh-KEE-noh) noun
1. A rich embroidered fabric of silk and gold.
2. A canopy.
English baldachin is derived from Italian baldacchino which is from Baldacco, the Italian name for Baghdad. The city was once known for this fabric and earlier canopies were made of it. Earliest documented use: 1598.
Babylon (BAB-uh-luhn, -lawn) noun
A place of great luxury and extravagance, usually accompanied with vice and corruption.
After Babylon, an ancient city of southwestern Asia, on the Euphrates River, now the site of Al Hillah city. It was the capital of Babylonia and known for its opulence and culture. It was the site of the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Earliest documented use: around 1225.
muslin (MUHZ-lin) noun
A plain-woven cotton fabric made in various degrees of fineness.
From French mousseline, from Italian mussolina, from Mussolo (Mosul, Iraq) which was known for this fabric. Earliest documented use: 1609. Earlier sheer muslin was used for women's dresses and as a result, the word muslin was used collectively for women. Today muslin is mostly used for curtains, sheets, tablecloths, etc.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

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From: Michael Tremberth Subject: redolent Def: 1. Fragrant; smelling. 2. Suggestive; reminiscent.
I've thought of the power of this and other words that connect us to our sensory memories. Proust explored this space; so did Dickens and others who explored the pollution of the 19th century in terms of the sights, smells and sounds of the urban environment; Keats described a vintage "Tasting of Flora and the country green,/Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!" -- though his imagery is so powerful that you don't at first notice how he makes tasting do duty for other forms of sensory perception implied by his words, viz hearing, seeing and smelling. Olfaction seems to be the most powerful of these, which perhaps explains why the meaning of redolent has become extended.
From: Molly Kalifut Subject: Hegemony
Def: Predominance over others, especially of a country over other countries.
I loved the illustrated H for 'hegemony' -- the top cat being carried in a sedan chair. In other words: kitty litter.
Now I have to go back and study the rest of the week's illustrations much more carefully!
From: Michael Tremberth Subject: terrene, terrine Def: Relating to the earth; earthly; worldly; mundane.
Another word derived from Latin terra is terrine (tuhr-REEN). Terrene and terrine may be confused in speech because terrene can also be pronounced with the stress on the final syllable. Terrine, a loan word from French, is both a prepared food, ideally cooked in a tureen (terracotta utensil); and also the name for the utensil in which the food has been cooked. Lasagne (Italian) is a word of the same type, meaning both the food, and the utensil, literally a "chamber pot", in which it is baked. You may not have realised that Italian cookery is so eclectic!
From: Elizabeth E. Vaughn Subject: antediluvian
Hadn't thought of this word since Donovan's recording of Atlantis. Worth a YouTube search. Then listen to Hey Jude. Next, trick your children by playing the New Christy Minstrels' version which superimposes these two songs. Yes, I'm old and the first time I heard this done I thought my friend personally blended these songs.

On the bitterly cold afternoon of Dec. 2, 1944, West Point's Felix "Doc" Blanchard kicked the football to Annapolis's Bobby Tom Jenkins to begin the biggest contest in the history of the Army-Navy series. Sitting in the press box in Baltimore's Municipal Stadium, reporter Al Laney wrote, "There never has been a sports event, perhaps never an event of any kind, that received the attention of so many Americans in so many places around the world." On that day the world was at war, but for a few hours, for the legions of American servicemen huddled around shortwave sets in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Pacific, the hostilities seemed to stop. The matchup almost didn't happen. Slightly less than three years earlier, when the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor plunged the U.S. into World War II, there were calls from politicians and journalists for Americans to set aside peacetime frivolities. Professional baseball and college football had no place in a nation at war, some thought. "You can't train a man to be a fighter by having him play football and baseball," said Cmdr. James Joseph "Gene" Tunney, the Navy's director of physical training and boxing's former heavyweight champion. College football, he said, "has no place in war or preparing for war." Others disagreed. Cmdr. Thomas J. Hamilton, the head of the Navy's Prefight and Physical Training program and a former head coach at Annapolis, thought football was an ideal way to train men for combat. And since Hamilton had the ear of the Navy brass, his position carried the day. Football became an integral part of the Navy's V-5 preflight initiative. This training program was installed at select college campuses including Iowa and Georgia. Other larger Navy V-programs followed the V-5's lead. The mammoth V-12 program, instituted in over 130 colleges just before the 1943 football season to train naval and marine officers, also permitted—and even encouraged—these candidates to participate in varsity sports. While the Navy was underwriting the continuation of college football, the Army moved in the opposite direction. The Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), instituted in more than 240 colleges, prohibited cadets from participating in intercollegiate sports. These decisions by leaders of the Army and Navy reshaped college football. Traditions were shed and the prewar pecking order was scrambled. Schools with Army Specialized Training Program were out of the running as serious football schools. Most could not field a team and discontinued the sport. Alabama, Auburn, Stanford and Syracuse didn't field teams in 1943. Meanwhile, schools with V-12 programs, especially V-12 Marine programs, walked in tall cotton. As some football programs declined or folded, V-12 schools like Notre Dame, Southern California and Purdue snapped up their best players. A player from Ohio State or Illinois, for instance, could enlist in a Marine V-12 program in July and find himself playing in the opener for Notre Dame in September (not surprisingly, the Irish won the 1943 national title). Then there was Army's famous backfield of Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis—a tandem that's widely regarded as one of the best in the history of the sport. Blanchard, the fullback who was known as "Mr. Inside," had played his freshman year at North Carolina. Davis, the halfback known as "Mr. Outside" was one of the few big-name players on the Army team who had gone directly to West Point from the gridirons of high school. The game was close for three quarters. Army led 9-7 going into the fourth. Then came a nine-play, 52-yard Army scoring drive in which Blanchard carried the ball seven times and accounted for all but four of the team's yards. On the final play of the drive, he ran over three Navy defenders and bulled his way into the end zone. A short time later, Davis put an exclamation point on the game. Finding a sliver of space, he broke through the Navy line, dodged past several defenders and outraced everyone else for a euphoric 50-yard touchdown run. The 23-7 Army victory was Blaik's first in the series. After the game, the coach received a telegram from the Pacific: "The greatest of all Army teams—STOP—We have stopped the war to celebrate your magnificent success." It was signed MacArthur. Randy Roberts http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203501304577086691362897410.html

December 12: Independence Day in Kenya (1963)
1915 President Yuan Shikai of the Republic of China reinstated the monarchy and declared himself Emperor.
1918 The Flag of Estonia was raised for the first time atop the Pikk Hermann in Tallinn.
2000 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore that the election recount of the ballots cast in Florida for the presidential election must stop, effectively making George W. Bush the winner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page