Caesar Salad consists of greens (classically romaine lettuce) with a garlic vinaigrette dressing. In the 1930s, Caesar Salad was voted by the master chefs of the International Society of Epicures in Paris as the "greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years. Most historians believe that Caesar salad honors restaurateur Caesar Cardini (1896-1956), who invented it in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924 on the Fourth of July weekend. It is said that on this busy weekend, Cardini was running low on food and he put together a salad for his guests from what was left over in the kitchen. His original recipe included romaine, garlic, croutons, and Parmesan cheese, boiled eggs, olive oil and Worcestershire sauce. The original salad was prepared at tableside. When the salad dressing was ready, the romaine leaves were coated with the dressing and placed stem side out, in a circle and served on a flat dinner plate, so that the salad could be eaten with the fingers. In 1926, Alex Cardini joined his brother, Caesar, at the Tijuana restaurant. Alex, an ace pilot in the Italian Air Force during World War I, added other ingredients, one of which was anchovies, and named the salad "Aviator's Salad" in honor of the pilots from Rockwell Field Air Base in San Diego. It is reported that Alex's version became very popular, and later this salad was renamed "Caesar Salad." Caesar was said to be staunchly against the inclusion of anchovies in this mixture, contending that the Worcestershire sauce was what actually provided that faint fishy flavor. He also decreed that only Italian olive oil and imported Parmesan cheese be used in the dressing. In 1948 Caesar Cardini established a patent on the dressing (which is still packaged and sold as "Cardini's Original Caesar dressing mix," distributed by Caesar Cardini Foods, Culver City, California. Link to other salad and salad dressing histories at: http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/SaladHistory.htm

A blue hole is a cave (inland) or underwater sinkhole. They are also called vertical caves. There are many different blue holes located around the world, typically in low-lying coastal regions. The best known examples can be found in Belize, the Bahamas, Guam, Australia (in the Great Barrier Reef), and Egypt (in the Red Sea). Blue holes are roughly circular, steep-walled depressions, and so named for the dramatic contrast between the dark blue, deep waters of their depths and the lighter blue of the shallows around them. Their water circulation is poor, and they are commonly anoxic below a certain depth; this environment is unfavorable for most sea life, but nonetheless can support large numbers of bacteria. The deep blue color is caused by the high transparency of water and bright white carbonate sand. Blue light is the most enduring part of the spectrum; where other parts of the spectrum—red, yellow, and finally green—are absorbed during their path through water, blue light manages to reach the white sand and return back upon reflection. The deepest blue hole in the world—at 202 metres (663 ft)—is Dean's Blue Hole, located in a bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island, Bahamas. Other blue holes are about half that depth at around 100–120 metres (330–390 ft). The diameter of the top entrance ranges typically from 25–35 metres (82–115 ft) (Dean's Blue Hole) to 300 metres (980 ft) (Great Blue Hole in Belize). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_hole

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." Author Unknown

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Arthur Silverstein Subject: Promethean
You might be interested in the application of 'Promethean' (and his brother Titan 'Epimethean') in the field of immunology. We recognize two mechanisms of defence against disease: a germline mechanism acquired over longtime evolution (the 'innate system') and an 'acquired system' (appearing suddenly in vertebrates) able to protect against newly developed germs and viruses. The former has been called by an immuno-philosopher "Epimethean evolution" (backward-looking) and the latter "Promethean evolution" (forward-looking).
From: Robert Payne Subject: Prometheus
The subtitle of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel "Frankenstein" was "The Modern Prometheus".
From: Don Williams Subject: Dionysian
As a botanist and amateur enologist, Dionysus makes for interesting reading and discussion. I have been using Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire, as a supplementary reading assignment for my botany students. Periodically, after they have had a chance to read an assigned chapter, we then come together and discuss both the botanical as well as the cultural and intellectual aspects of his book. I have quite enjoyed the way he has juxtaposed Dionysus and Apollo throughout his book. Surprisingly, I have found that many students are unaware of these Greek characters.
From: Asa Goodwillie Subject: Apollonian
Def: Serene; harmonious; disciplined; well-balanced.
An Apollonian gasket is the name for a beautiful fractal composed of ever-shrinking, mutually tangent circles. It's named for a Greek mathematician, Apollonius of Perga, whose work on conic sections gave us the names of some more common mathematical objects: the ellipse, the hyperbola, and the parabola.

Kent Hartman has written an entire book about session musicians, specifically a posse of players who flourished in Los Angeles during the 1960s and in various permutations contributed to the instrumental tracks for hit records such as "Be My Baby," "Good Vibrations," "I Got You, Babe," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Light My Fire," "California Dreamin' " and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." The Wrecking Crew operated, as Mr. Hartman aptly observes, at "the intersection of time and money." Because its members played expertly and efficiently, they saved many costly hours in the recording studio. The Wrecking Crew thought as well as played. It was Mr. Blaine's idea, for instance, to slam automobile snow chains against a cement floor in order to heighten the percussive intensity of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," whose grandiose arrangement was inspired, in part, by Phil Spector's production of the Righteous Brothers' rendition of "Old Man River." Mr. Hartman's chronicle is chock-full of such nuggets. I, for one, had never recognized that the "chink-chink" guitar chords in the background of the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" echo those in the foreground of the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry, Baby" and were played by the same session. KEN EMERSON http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577209153859157584.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Production designer David Wasco and his wife, set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, created Jack Rabbit Slim's, the 1950s-themed restaurant where John Travolta and Uma Thurman do the twist in "Pulp Fiction." They crafted the intricate, quirky interior of the derelict Harlem mansion where Gwyneth Paltrow sulks in "The Royal Tenenbaums." And they styled the prep school where Bill Murray falls in love with a teacher in "Rushmore." The couple's work tends to have an offbeat, edgy feel, inspired by California midcentury-modern architecture and design, and it has won them accolades. The partners were recognized by Cooper-Hewitt Museum's 2003 National Design Triennial for pushing the boundaries of design. The couple met in Boston in the 1970s, where they both learned the basics of modern design while working at a company called Design Research, a store that spawned a rash of offshoots. After moving to Los Angeles, they worked together on period dramas for PBS in the 1980s and then the 1992 movie "Reservoir Dogs." The couple have veered into other fields occasionally. For the Los Angeles County Museum of Art they created full-size mock-ups of iconic "test case" midcentury-modern houses using movie production techniques.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204883304577221180988336966.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

If Paramount Pictures gets its way, the latest “Godfather” sequel novel will sleep with the fishes. The film studio has sued the estate of Mario Puzo, arguing that the heirs of the author of the “Godfather” were tarnishing the reputation of the studio’s film trilogy by publishing a pair of sequel novels. The lawsuit, filed Feb. 17 in Manhattan federal court, seeks damages and to prevent publication of a Godfather novel set for release this year, claiming that it would be a threat to the “legacy and integrity” of Paramount’s film franchise. Puzo sold the studio the rights to the Godfather story in 1969, the lawsuit said. The first two Godfather films produced by the studio both received the Academy Award for Best Picture. Paramount claims that after Puzo’s death in 1999, the studio agreed to allow his estate to publish a single novel by another author continuing the story. That novel, “The Godfather Returns” was released in 2004. But Paramount, a unit of Viacom Inc., is now seeking damages from the Puzo estate, claiming that it violated its rights to the franchise by publishing a subsequent, unauthorized sequel in 2006, and planning another.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/02/21/paramount-sues-to-stop-godfather-sequel-novel/?mod=djemlawblog_h