Friday, May 11, 2018


Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest upon reciprocity.  Attributed to C. S. Lewis.
A Google search turns up the usual citation-less suspects.  Wikiquote doesn’t have it, even on the discussion page of disputed quotes.  Searching Google Books for the entire quotation with the author restricted to C. S. Lewis returns no hits.  This is pretty telling because Google Books can search everything C. S. Lewis wrote.  Just to be sure, I tried searching for the word reciprocity in a few books (e.g., The Four LovesThe Weight of Glory), but it’s not there. Just for good measure, I tried searching Google Books for the whole quotation with Lewis’s name at the end.  No dice.  It’s attributed in various places to Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Latter Days Saints (Mormons).  “However, never underestimate the power of privately extending a simple, loving, but direct challenge.  Though it may not be reciprocated, such love is never wasted.”  I can see how that got lifted out of context and meme-ified, giving the quote as we have it today.  https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2018/04/25/love-is-never-wasted-c-s-lewis/

15-Minute Garlic Chicken  Recipe for four servings uses 1and 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into 1/2-inch cubes.  https://www.familyfoodonthetable.com/15-minute-honey-garlic-chicken/

Urban agriculture has always been a part of city life in the United States, whether in the development of frontier towns or as a strategy to improve urban conditions.  Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens grown during the First World War to augment food supply, and post-industrial community gardens are examples.  Urban agriculture includes a range of cultivated areas, from urban farms to community gardens, and has been cropping up in vacant land, rooftops, back yards, warehouses, and shipping containers from Baltimore to Oakland.  Growing food in cities has been on the rise since the 1980s, when an increase in access to urban land made it easier to establish small farms and gardens and the social, political, and economic climate accelerated interest.  In New York City, promoters are a strategic part of the city’s parks department and have a background in urban design.  The city is home to the largest number of urban gardens in the United States.  Green Thumb, an organization that has led efforts to develop urban agriculture in New York City since 1978, oversees more than 550 sanctioned urban gardens in all five boroughs.  The group started when activists and volunteers cleaned up vacant lots so they could plant community gardens.  Now, community gardens in New York cover 100 acres of land, primarily in low-income areas, and almost three quarters of the gardens include an urban agriculture component that grows food.  Lisa Palmer  Read more at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-017-0014-8

On June 1, 2017, the United Nations joined a growing local trend—they installed three apiary yards, better known as beehives, on their grounds in midtown Manhattan.  The UN is hopeful that by summer’s end, their 150 bees will turn into a thriving colony of 250,000 bees.  If this happens, the UN bees will not be alone.  There are millions of bees buzzing around the five boroughs and not only in the backyards of earthy residents in neighborhoods like Park Slope and Greenpoint.  From the rooftops of high-rises in Manhattan to community gardens stretching from the Bronx to Staten Island, New York City is home to thousands of active beehives, but this wasn’t always the case.  Prior to a 2010 ruling, beekeeping existed in the five boroughs but only under the radar.  At the time, the city deemed beekeeping to be as dangerous as keeping cobras, tarantulas, or hyenas on one’s property.  Indeed, if caught, underground beekeepers faced hefty fines of up to $2000.  Since the 2010 ruling that legalized beekeeping, both bees and beekeepers have been on the rise citywide and so have organizations and services designed to help residents explore apiculture.  Cait Etherington  Read much more and see pictures at https://www.6sqft.com/beekeeping-finds-a-home-throughout-nycs-five-boroughs/

"Toisan was a desperately poor city in Canton Province that was in such a bad way that many of its young men left in the late 1800s to seek their fortunes around the world.  All the Chinatowns in America were built up by Toisan men."  Snakes Can't Run, mystery by Ed Lin

Ed Lin is a Taiwanese-American writer, actor and novelist.  He is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards.  His first novel, Waylaid won a Members' Choice Award at the Asian American Literary Awards and also a Booklist Editors' Choice Award in Fiction in 2002.  Lin has written a series of crime novels revolving around Chinese-American cop Robert Chow set in 1976 New York City Chinatown, which begins in This Is A Bust, which won a Members' Choice Award at the Asian American Literary Awards, and continues with Snakes Can't Run and One Red Bastard.  Lin is also an actor, and stars as the title character "Norman Mao" in Derek Nguyen's The Potential Wives of Norman Mao.  He also stars alongside his wife Cindy Cheung in a Music Video for Magnetic North and Taiyo Na's "Home: Word" Directed by Wong Fu Productions.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Lin

Farro Is Not Spelt, and Spelt Is Not Farro  The  misperception that these two grains are identical in flavor and usage persists.  It doesn't help that the Italians often call them by interchangeable names.  But they are only cousins--not siblings--and they are different in gluten content, texture, and taste.  That al dente quality of spelt is what makes us love it in grain salads, while farro is much better for risotto-like soft hot dishes.  Faith Durand  https://www.thekitchn.com/farro-is-not-spelt-and-spelt-i-71041#comments-71041
                                               
sublimate  transitive verb  1a sublime 1 b archaic to improve or refine as if by subliming
2to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable  intransitive verb to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state sublime  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sublimate

subjugate  transitive verb  1to bring under control and governance as a subject conquer


Researchers exposed five young crocodiles to simple visual and auditory stimuli by flashing red and green visual cues at varying strengths and intervals, and by playing random chord noises between 1,000 and 3,000 Hz.  They also exposed the creatures to complex sounds by playing Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, which is the same music that was used in scans of other animals.  The scans showed greater brain response in the crocodiles' brain in the presence of music compared to the simple sounds, with different parts of the brain activating in response to the complex stimuli.  Interestingly, the observed pattern even runs similar to the previously observed patterns in birds and mammals.  These results suggest that the functional aspects of sensory processing were possibly conserved during the evolution of the sauropsids, the group of land vertebrates which include all existing reptiles and birds, as well as their fossil ancestors.  Researchers also consider the possibility that such brain processes may have developed much earlier than previously thought.  Apart from the interesting results of the MRI scan, researchers also believe that their study shows the future possibilities of using MRI technology on creatures that have never been investigated on such a scanner before.  The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B at http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1877/20180178

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1886  May 11, 2018  Word of the Day  Feynman diagram  noun  pictorial representation of the interactions of subatomic particles, showing their paths in space and time as lines, and their interactions as points where lines meet.  American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who invented the diagram, was born on this day a hundred years ago in 1918.  Wiktionary

No comments: