October 15, 2012  Lemonade apples  Elongated pale green apples with faint yellow-red patches, a little bit like Golden Delicious but more green than yellow, shape long kind of like Red Delicious but without the ribs.  New Zealand Lemonade is not the first apple to be named Lemonade.  In New Berlin, Wisconsin there is a heirloom apple orchard which grows (amongst others) two varieties only known to this particular orchard:  the Old Church apple and the Lemonade apple.   See pictures and tasting notes at http://sevengreenapples.com/apple-varieties/lemonade/

"When the Internet began it was more valuable as an investigative tool . . . It seems to have become one big chat-room for lonely people."  "Some people needed others to lose in order to feel like winners."  Survival of the Fittest, 13th novel in the Alex Delaware series by Jonathan Kellerman 

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was an English philosopher who initiated a philosophy called ‘Social Darwinism’.  He coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’ seven years before Darwin’s publication of his theory of natural history, The Origin of the Species in 1859.  Spencer became an enthusiastic supporter of Darwin’s theory of evolution, believing it could also be applied equally well to human societies.  http://neamathisi.com/new-learning/chapter-4-learning-civics/herbert-spencer-on-the-survival-of-the-fittest

An essential ingredient in Korean cuisine, gochugaru (or kochukaru) is a coarsely ground red pepper with a texture between flakes and powder.  Traditionally, gochugaru is made from sun-dried chile peppers, and versions that are prepared in this manner are still considered the best tasting.  The flavor is hot, sweet, and slightly smoky.  Substitutes like crushed red pepper or cayenne just don't compare.  Look for gochugaru ar Asian markets and online, and store in an airtight container, away from heat and light.  Gochugaru is a common ingredient in kimchi, dipping sauces for spring rolls, dressing, and marinades.  Link to recipes using gochugaru at https://www.thekitchn.com/inside-the-spice-cabinet-gochugaru-142194

Mannerism, Italian Manierismo, (from maniera, “manner,” or “style”), artistic style that predominated in Italy from the end of the High Renaissance in the 1520s to the beginnings of the Baroque style around 1590.  The Mannerist style originated in Florence and Rome and spread to northern Italy and, ultimately, to much of central and northern Europe.  The term was first used around the end of the 18th century by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Lanzi to define 16th-century artists who were the followers of major Renaissance masters.  Read more and see graphics at https://www.britannica.com/art/Mannerism

Bolivia is the only wine region in the world where you can visit a good quality vineyard in the morning and a coffee plantation in the afternoon.  The country has 4 wine regions, and its most northerly--Samaipata--is not only on the border of the Amazon rainforest, but also on the very edge of cool climate seasonality.  Any further north than this and the climate becomes tropical, with temperatures too warm all year round to grow grapes, whereas coffee beans thrive.  Bolivia has some of the highest altitude vineyards in the world.  Her biggest and best wine region, the “Central Valley”, lies in the “foothills” of the Andes around the town of Tarija in the south of the country, at altitudes between 1600–2250mts.  Only Salta, roughly 300kms south and just across the border into Argentina, has higher vineyards than this anywhere else in the world.  These high altitude vineyards are essential at this latitude--Tarija lies just south of the Tropic of Capricorn--because the nights are cool and daytime temperatures rarely rise above 35C.  They produce red wines with powerful aromatics and immense fruit concentration, combined with a welcoming freshness.  Bolivian wine has a rich and fascinating history dating back to the early Spanish settlers, who planted vines around the wealthy silver-mining city of Potosi back in the mid 16th Century.  The result of this is that Bolivia has some of, if not the oldest vines in the world which are still used for wine production.   http://www.winesofbolivia.com/bolivian-wines-south-americas-secret-treasure/

TOM LONDON  (1889-1963)  Over the course of a career that lasted almost fifty years, Tom London amassed an incredibly long list of serial, feature, and television acting credits.  He portrayed a widely varied assortment of character types--bullying thugs, cagy slickers, upright lawmen, rascally sidekicks, solid citizens--with unvarying believability; his thin and deeply-lined face made him look both shifty and tough enough to be an effective heavy, while his pleasant, Southern-inflected voice and genial smile made it equally easy for him to play sympathetic roles.  The majority of his screen appearances were in B-western features, but his serial filmography is quite substantial as well; not counting stuntmen, the only actor who appeared in more chapterplays than London did was his frequent co-worker, the similarly prolific Edmund Cobb.  Like most serial character actors, London played bits far more often than major parts--but was always immediately recognizable--and always entertaining--even in a walk-on role.  Tom London was born Leonard Clapham in Louisville, Kentucky.  He went on the road as a traveling salesman before he was out of his teens, working the East Coast and the Midwest before abandoning this career for a job with Chicago’s Selig Polyscope Company--one of the earliest American movie studios; he initially worked as a prop man for Polyscope, but soon took on other duties with the company, among them that of equestrian stuntman.  When Polyscope’s owner, William Selig, shifted the studio’s base of operations from Chicago to California in 1909, young Clapham appears to have temporarily returned home to Kentucky, but by the early 1910s had rejoined the Selig outfit on the West Coast.  In 1915 he left his behind-the-scenes job at Polyscope and began seeking acting work, winning one of his first credited parts in the Universal silent serial The Purple Mask (1916).  Read more and see many graphics at https://filesofjerryblake.com/serial-character-actors-2/tom-london/

The Nose Knows by Amanda Pampuro   Purple and pleasant, lavender has long been used by folk medicine to induce calmness.  Now, a study published October 23, 2018 in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience offers new insight into how linalool, one of the relaxation-inducing components found in lavender, works.  Researchers in the physiology department at Kagoshima University in Japan found that linalool, a terpene alcohol naturally found in lavender, decreased anxiety levels in laboratory mice when simply inhaled and does not need to enter the bloodstream to work.  In addition to effectively decreasing anxiety in mice, linalool does not cause detrimental side effects associated with medications often prescribed to reduce anxiety.  https://www.courthousenews.com/scientists-confirm-scent-of-lavender-reduces-anxiety/

To Kill a Mockingbird was voted by viewers as America’s #1 best-loved novel in The Great American Read.  One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country.  It views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.  To Kill a Mockingbird lead The Great American Read voting from the first week, and kept the lead for the entire five months of voting, despite strong competition from the rest of our five finalists.  See final rankings at https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/results/

Three books have emerged with one of the world's most lucrative literary awards.  At a ceremony October 25, 2018 in Austin, Texas, judges named the winners of the Kirkus Prize—the select few plucked from among 1,193 books published in the past year.  Ling Ma's novel Severence took home the prize for fiction.  Call Them by Their True Names, an essay collection by Rebecca Solnit, won in the nonfiction category.  And the picture book Crown:  An Ode to the Fresh Cut earned the young readers' literature prize for author Derrick Barnes and illustrator Gordon C. James.  Each winning book nets $50,000 for the folks behind it, along with the slightly less tangible—though surely no less rewarding — laurels of recognition.  Colin Dwyer  https://www.npr.org/2018/10/25/660619321/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2018-kirkus-prizes

October 25, 2018  An artwork created by an artificially intelligent program has been sold at auction for $432,000 (£337,000).  The painting, called Portrait of Edmond Belamy, was created by a Paris-based art collective called Obvious.  The artwork was produced using an algorithm and a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th and 20th Centuries.  To generate the image, the algorithm compared its own work to those in the data set until it could not tell them apart.  The portrait is the first piece of AI art to go under the hammer at a major auction house.  See picture at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45980863

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1976  October 26, 2018  299th day of the year