NAME CHANGES  Academy Award-winning Italian film actress Sofia Loren (born Sofia Villani Scicolone 1934)   Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Jones (born Phylis Lee Isley 1919, died 2009)  Nobel Prize in Literature winner Tony Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford 1931)   Character actor Herbert Lom (born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru in Prague 1917, died 2012)  He made his screen debut in the Czech film Zena Pod Krizem (1937).  NOTE that Herbert Lom is best-known today as Inspector Clouseau's long-suffering boss, Chief Inspector Dreyfus, in the Pink Panther movies.

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

lection  (LEK-shuhn)  noun  1.  A version of a text in a particular copy or edition.  2.  A selection read in a religious service.  Also known as pericope.  From Latin lection- (reading), from lectus, past participle of legere (to read, choose, collect).  Ultimately from Indo-European root leg- (to collect) which also gave us lexicon, lesson, lecture, legible, legal, select, alexia, cull, ligneous, lignify, prolegomenon, subintelligitur, and syllogistic.  Earliest documented use:  1300.

Where does the expression ‘by the skin of my teeth’ come from?  The phrase comes from the Book of Job.  Exactly what ‘the skin of one’s teeth’ might be is not entirely clear, and there have been many theories put forward.  The most plausible explanation is that it refers to the thin porcelain exterior of the tooth (rather than the gums).  In other words, Job escaped with his teeth, but just barely.  Job is comparing the narrow margin of his escape with the shallow ‘skin’ or porcelain of a tooth: the equivalent, in fact, of a ‘hair’s breadth’.  An extract from What Made the Crocodile Cry? by Susie Dent.  Find other idioms explained, including 'cut the mustard' and  'in a nutshell' at http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/11/popular-idioms-explained/

When he was not writing literary works like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll dabbled in mathematics.  One of the results of his diversion was an 1887 perpetual calendar algorithm for calculating the day of the week for a given date.  Many calendar algorithms preceded Carroll's.  In fact, the great mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss had his own version in 1800.  But Carroll was the first person to devise an algorithm suitable for mental calculation.  Carroll himself could perform his calendar algorithm in his head, calculating the day of the week for a given date in about 20 seconds.  Many years later longtime Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner read about Carroll's calendar algorithm.  Gardner then told his friend, John Horton Conway, about Carroll's algorithm and challenged Conway to come up with a simpler one.  Conway, being a world-class mathematician, did come up with a much simpler algorithm in 1973.  He called his algorithm the "doomsday rule."  The doomsday rule is now more commonly known as the doomsday algorithm.  The algorithm is simple and only involves basic arithmetic.  Moreover, it requires very little memorization.  With practice, it can done mentally without paper and pencil in just a few seconds.  Despite its usefulness in retracing failed predictions by Camping and other prognosticators of end times, the doomsday algorithm has nothing to do with the apocalypse. Conway named his calendar algorithm after discovering an interesting property of a certain day of the week in a given year, which he called "doomsday."  But his use of "doomsday" is probably a misnomer.  One could just as easily refer to it as "anchor day."  The idea that makes the doomsday algorithm tick is that certain memorizable dates always share the same day of the week within any given year.  For example, April 4, June 6, August 8, October 10 and December 12 all fall on a Monday in 2011.  Conway used this fact as the basis for his algorithm.  This special day of the week, shared by 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12, is the anchor day.  (Which day of the week anchor day falls on varies from year to year.)  Other memorizable dates also fall on a given year's anchor day:  5/9, 9/5, 7/11 and 11/7 are all Mondays in 1994 and 2011.  Just as 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12 are easy to remember because of repeating digits, one can easily remember the four additional dates using Conway's simple mnemonic:  "Working  9 to 5 at the 7–Eleven."  Chamberlain Fong  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calendar-algorithm/  See also a calendar calculation technique from a book called Mind Performance Hacks at   https://blog.artofmemory.com/how-to-calculate-the-day-of-the-week-4203.html

Forgiveness is for yourself because it frees you.  It lets you out of that prison you put yourself in.  Louise L. Hay  * The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  Mahatma Gandhi  * Forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much.  Oscar Wilde  * https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_forgiveness.html

Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken.  Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words etc.  Read much more at http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/jcoleman/PHONOLOGY1.htm

Aioli or aïoli is a Mediterranean sauce made of garlic and olive oil; in some regions other emulsifiers such as egg are used.  The names mean "garlic and oil" in Catalan and Provençal.  Current versions of the French-Provençal sauce are typically closer to a garlic mayonnaise, incorporating egg yolks and lemon juice, whereas the original French Provencal and Spanish Catalan versions are without egg yolk and have considerably more garlic.  It is usually served at room temperature.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aioli

Classic aioli is made with nothing but garlic and olive oil pounded in a mortar and pestle.  Find a version using egg yolks at http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/01/two-minute-foolproof-aioli-recipe.html  A recipe using the term aiolo in a September 15, 2017 newspaper calls for 3 tablespoons mayonnaise, 1 tbsp maple syrup and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon.

Have you thought about the letter combination ough?  No letter combination in English is more frustrating.  It can be pronounced at least nine different ways:  rough (uff),  through (oo), bough (ow), cough (off), dough (oh), hiccough (up), fought (aw), Poughkeepsie (uh) and Coughlin (og).  Slough causes problems because it’s pronounced different ways, depending on meaning.  Slough pronounced sluff is the term for shedding skin, like snakes do.  Slough meaning wet, swampy ground can be pronounced either sloo or slou (rhymes with cow).  Dictionary.com prefers slou, while the American Heritage Dictionary prefers sloo.  Brian Wasko    http://blog.writeathome.com/index.php/2011/08/902/

Persian Cucumber and Radish Salad with Hungarian Paprika  recipe from “King Solomon’s Table,” by Joan Nathan  copyright 2017 by Random House  all rights reserved:  1/3 cup flavorful, light vinegar, such as white wine or white balsamic vinegar, 1 teaspoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika, salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, 1 large shallot or the white part of 2 scallions, peeled and diced, 6 tiny Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced, 4 radishes, thinly sliced.  In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, sugar, paprika, and salt and pepper to taste.  Add the diced shallot or scallions, then set aside until almost ready to serve.  Adjust the sugar to your taste.  About 15 minutes before serving, put the cucumbers and radishes in a serving bowl, then toss with the vinegar mixture and sprinkle with more paprika.  http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/food/1.782339

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1780  October 6, 2017  On this date in 1683, German immigrant families founded Germantown in the colony of Pennsylvania, marking the first major immigration of German people to America.  On this date in 1723, Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia at the age of 17.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_6