Mike Hessman, a fixture of Toledo sports for most of the last decade, announced in late November 2015 that he had hung up his batting gloves for the final time in order to pursue a career in coaching.  The 37 year-old slugger sits at the top of the minor league home run list, with 433 career MiLB homers.  The record-breaking hit, which was fittingly his final career home run, came as a grand slam against Lehigh Valley back on August 3 2015.  With this hit he surpassed Buzz Arlett, who had held the record for the previous 78 years.  His career was sensational for not only this feat, but for his amazing consistency as well.  During the 19 seasons that he was in the league, Hessman played in 2,095 minor league games, scored 1,095 runs, and recorded 1,207 RBIs.  Affectionately dubbed the "The King" by Toledo Mud Hens fans, Hessman had numerous stints with Major League teams, including time spent with the Detroit Tigers during the 2007 and 2008 seasons.  Hessman hit .188, with 14 home runs and 33 RBIs in 229 big league at-bats.  Fond Hessman memories are in high supply for the Mud Hens faithful, from the time he played all nine positions for Toledo in a 2009 game to when he represented the USA as a member of the national baseball team during the 2008 Summer Olympics.  In his first season with the Mud Hens back in 2005, Hessman led the team to their first Governors' Cup championship in 38 years.  During his final season with the team, Hessman hit .237 with 16 home runs and 57 RBIs, capped off by the record-breaking homer.  http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20151130&content_id=158485920&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_t512

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 

What are combining forms?  You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg:  play + godt: well) bricks of language.  As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form, which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can’t attach to another affix). 

hippology  (hi-POL-uh-jee)  noun  The study of horses.  From Greek hippo- (horse) + -logy (study).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root ekwo- (horse), which also gave us equestrian, equitant, hippocampus, hippogriff, and the name Philip (lover of horses).  Earliest documented use:  1854.

steganography  (ste-guh-NOG-ruh-fee)  noun  The practice of concealing a message within another nonsecret message.  From Greek stego- (cover) + -graphy (writing).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root (s)teg- (to cover), which also gave us thatch, toga, stegosaurus, detect, and protect.  Earliest documented use:  1569.
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From:  Ann Hiemstra  Subject:  hippo  Living on the southern tip of Africa, “hippo”, for Kruger National Park loving me, immediately brings to mind our huge river (fresh) water living and seemingly lazy sunbathing gigantic mammal, the hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), which by the way, has very little resemblance to any horse I have seen.  In my mother tongue, Afrikaans, this animal is called a “seekoei” (sea cow), to which it also has no resemblance, either in looks or habitation, and our Dutch speaking language “family” call it a “nijlpaard” (Nile horse), which seems a little closer to the real thing.  For some inexplicable reason, the hippopotamus, which is, with the exception of the African elephant, larger than any of “The Big Five” of Africa, the other four being the lion, leopard, rhino, and African buffalo, is not reckoned as one of these big ones.

From: Carter Bancroft   Subject:  steganography  I read with interest your definition of steganography, and particularly your example of putting a secret text on a dot.  I thought you might be interested in the attached Nature paper (Hiding messages in DNA microdots)  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6736/full/399533a0.html  I published some years back.  Our paper describes how we used DNA on a microdot attached over the period of an innocuous letter to conceal a secret message.  The message was written in DNA language and then hidden steganographically in a great excess of concealing DNA, in such a way that only the intended recipient could recover and read the message.

There would be no “Carousel” without the immortal story of “Liliom”, the best known play of famed Hungarian playwright and novelist Molnár Ferenc (1878-1952).  Ferenc wanted to become a journalist from his high-school years on, at the Református Gimnázium in Budapest.  Yet, at his parents’ pressure, he studied law at the university in Geneva, then in Budapest.  In those days he had some of his articles published in the daily papers such as the Pesti Hirlap.  Concurrently, he was working on literary items and translations of foreign plays.  He Magyarized his name from Neumann to Molnár (=Miller), justifying it with the fact that among his ancestors there had been some millers.  He started publishing novels in 1901.  The satirical “Az éhes város” (The Hungry City) was his first, followed by the tragic love story of a 15-year- old girl “Egy gazdátlan csónak története” (Story of a Derelict Boat).  His first stage piece, “A doktor úr” (The Doctor), was shown with great success at its Vigszinház premiere in November, 1902.  His first stage success abroad came in 1907 with his play “Az ördög” (The Devil).  From 1908 on his theatrical works were produced in several foreign cities such as Vienna and Berlin as well as in Italy and in the United States but they were not always received well due to the criticism from pious bourgeois society.  Molnár met his greatest success with “Liliom”, the story of a carousel barker.  The 1909 opening in Budapest was followed by the Vienna premiere in 1912.  With the advent of sound motion pictures, in 1934 Fritz Lang directed a French film of the same title based on the original stage play.  The production served as a base for the musical “Carousel” on Broadway in 1945.  About a dozen of his plays were turned into movies, “Liliom” being one of them.  When composer Giacomo Puccini asked for Molnár’s permission to turn his 1909 play into an opera, he refused, fearing that it would be remembered more as a Puccini opera than a Molnár play.  He also refused Gershwin.  But after seeing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical “Oklahoma!”, he gave his consent for them to turn “Liliom” into a musical.  During the dress rehearsals for “Carousel”, he entered the theater to watch.   Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were terrified that Molnár would be very disapproving of the changes they had made in the play, especially the new final scene.  Instead, Molnár was ecstatic about the show and declared that he liked the new ending best of all.  Olga Vállay Szokolay   Read more and see pictures at http://magyarnews.org/news.php?viewStory=1617

The 10 Best Books of 2016 selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/01/books/review/10-best-books-of-2016.html

On 28 November 2016, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) approved the name and symbols for four elements:  nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og), respectively for element 113, 115, 117, and 118.  Keeping with tradition, the newly discovered elements have been named after a place or geographical region, or a scientist.  Read the story of each new element at https://iupac.org/iupac-announces-the-names-of-the-elements-113-115-117-and-118/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1559   December 5, 2016  On this date in 1830, Christina Rossetti, English poet and author, was born.  On this date in 1979, Sonia Ann Harris was excommunicated from the Mormon church for actively supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.  "Congress had passed the ERA by the required 2/3 majority in 1972 and sent it on for ratification by the required 3/4 of state legislatures.  It was at this stage that the Mormon Church mounted its opposition, a reversal of greater liberalism earlier in its history:  Utah women first voted in 1870; the church sponsored delegates to national suffrage conventions; and in 1910–a decade prior to the 19^th Amendment that enfranchised all American women--the first female state senator was a Utah physician and the fourth wife of a Mormon leader.  Other women who understood this tradition joined Johnson in forming "Mormons for ERA," and in 1978, she testified for the ERA to the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights.  She faced immense animosity from the Mormon Church for this–but also a great deal of favorable publicity elsewhere.  Johnson went on a national speaking tour and announced a "genuine Mormon fast," angering church leaders so much that they excommunicated her–generating still more publicity.  ERA opponents successfully stalled it, as Indiana’s 1977 ratification became the 35^th of the necessary 38 states.  Congress cooperated with feminists by extending the 1979 deadline to 1982, but Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory moved ERA supporter Jimmy Carter out of the White House.  Conservatives were in charge; the second deadline passed with no more ratifications . . . "  https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/sonia-johnson/