The high school basketball experience at Riverside High School is unusual.  Start with the building itself.  A motorist might do a double take traveling westbound along 30th Street where the former Heslar Naval Armory rises four stories at the edge of the White River.  Inscribed around the rotunda entrance of the 60,000-square foot white building are the names of significant figures in Naval history, including David Farragut, who rose to acclaim for his role for the Union in the Civil War and best known for his line:  “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864.  It is easy to get lost in the history here.  Workers broke ground on the armory in 1936 as a Works Project Administration program that put nearly 200 local men to work for two years.  The building was designed as a Naval training center, but also as a community center for residents in the area.  The $500,000 building was dedicated in October of 1938 and immediately put to use as a training center for men who would go on to serve in World War II.  In 2015, the United States Navy Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve moved out of the building.  Ownership transitioned from the city to Indiana Landmarks to Herron High School, which set about a $10.6 million renovation project to turn the former Naval armory into a second school modeled after Herron, a public charter school located at 16th and Pennsylvania streets and member of the Indianapolis Classic Schools network based on a classical, liberal arts education.  So began Riverside High School.  The school’s sports teams are the perfectly-named Argonauts.  Kyle Neddenreip  https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/high-school/2018/12/24/riverside-argonauts-find-new-use-indianapolis-naval-armory/2192129002/

The Turing Test was passed for the very first time by supercomputer Eugene Goostman during Turing Test 2014 held at the renowned Royal Society in London on June 7, 2014.  'Eugene', a computer programme that simulates a 13 year old boy, was developed in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  The development team includes Eugene's creator Vladimir Veselov, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States, and Ukrainian born Eugene Demchenko who now lives in Russia.  The Turing Test is based on 20th century mathematician and code-breaker Turing's 1950 famous question and answer game, 'Can Machines Think?'  The experiment investigates whether people can detect if they are talking to machines or humans.  If a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five minute keyboard conversations it passes the test.  No computer has ever achieved this, until now.  Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it was human.  This historic event was organised by the University's School of Systems Engineering in partnership with RoboLaw, an EU-funded organisation examining the regulation of emerging robotic technologies.  https://phys.org/news/2014-06-turing-success-milestone-history.html  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Goostman 

Broccoli, botanically known as Brassica oleracea italica, is native to the Mediterranean.  It was engineered from a cabbage relative by the Etruscans—an ancient Italian civilization who lived in what is now Tuscany—who were considered to be horticultural geniuses.  Its English name, broccoli, is derived from the Italian word broccolo, which means "the flowering crest of a cabbage," and the Latin brachium meaning arm, branch, or shoot.  When first introduced in England in the mid-18th century, broccoli was referred to as "Italian asparagus."  There are records of Thomas Jefferson, who was an avid gardener, experimenting with broccoli seeds brought over from Italy in the late 1700s, but although commercial cultivation of broccoli dates back to the 1500s, it did not become a popular foodstuff in the United States until Southern Italian immigrants brought it over in the early 1920s.  The large head and thick stalk broccoli we are most familiar with is Calabrese broccoli (named after Calabria, Italy), although it is typically labeled simply as broccoli.  Even though it is available in stores year-round, it is a cold-weather crop.  There is another variety that features several thin stalks and heads called sprouting broccoli, and you may also come across Romanesco broccoli, which is tightly packed in a cone shape and is bright green in color.  If you like broccoli, you may want to try broccolini, also called baby broccoli, which is a cross between broccoli and kale, or you might find broccoflower, a cross between broccoli and cauliflower, an appealing snack if you're a fan of both of these flowering vegetables.  Peggy Trowbridge Fillippone   Link to histories of other foods at https://www.thespruceeats.com/broccoli-history-1807573

PARAPHRASES FROM The Third Victim, a novel by Lisa Gardner  * Salacious rumors are more appealing than hard, cold facts.  *  Do you want a solution or an excuse to be angry? 

Authors and translators the Muser is grateful for

Flannery O'Connor  https://www.loa.org/books/105-collected-works

John McPhee  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee

Samuel Putnam  https://www.lib.umich.edu/cervantes/

Gary M. Pomerantz  http://www.garympomerantz.com/about-gary

Life is a Highway: Art and American Car Culture  June 15, 2019-September 15, 2019  The Toledo Museum of Art Canaday Gallery   The first large-scale domestic exhibition to provide a historical overview of this topic with an emphasis upon the Midwest, Life is a Highway will bring together a diverse selection of artists to showcase the automobile’s reshaping of the 20th-century American landscape and cultural attitudes of self-expression.  Featuring more than 100 works from the Toledo Museum of Art’s own collection and both private and public loans, this exhibition will chart the rise of automobility as a visual icon of American identity.  With works spanning from early depictions through the Pop Artists’ portrayal of the automobile’s impact upon consumer culture to the present, the car’s image as a symbol of newness, freedom and independence, mobility, and renewal will be explored.  Organized through four themes that call attention to the social, aesthetic, environmental, and industrial dimensions of its legacy, this exhibition will include a range of visual media.  This is a ticketed exhibition.  https://www.toledomuseum.org/art/exhibitions#block-views-art-exhibitions-page-past  A selection of original paintings by McClelland Barclay (1891-1943) from Stephen D. and Julie Taylor's collection, will be in Galleries 4 and 5. 

Artists the Muser is grateful for

Eric Sloane  http://www.artnet.com/artists/eric-sloane/

William Chadwick  http://www.artnet.com/artists/william-chadwick/

Laurence A. Campbell  http://www.artnet.com/artists/laurence-a-campbell/

Bruce Braithwaite  http://www.artnet.com/artists/bruce-braithwaite/

Joseph Floch  http://www.artnet.com/artists/maurice-freedman/

A. Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Haussmannize  (HAUS-muh-nyz)  verb tr.  To redevelop or rebuild an area, especially on a massive scale.  Coined after Georges-Eugène Haussman (1809-1891) who was appointed by Napoleon III to carry out the renovation of Paris.  Earliest documented use:  1865.

MacGyver  (muh-GY-vuhr)  verb tr.  To improvise an ingenious solution using whatever is available at hand.  After Angus MacGyver, a secret agent in the television series MacGyver, who was known for improvising ingenious solutions to the problems he faced.  He carried a Swiss Army knife and duct tape.  Earliest documented use:  1992.  Some related terms, though not synonyms, are kludge and jury-rig.

macadamize  (muh-KAD-uh-myz)  verb tr.  To construct or pave a road with small, broken stones bound with asphalt or tar.  After John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836), civil engineer, who pioneered this method of building a road.  Earliest documented use:  1823.  McAdam also appears in the word tarmac.  The word was originally a trademark, coined by combining tar + McAdam.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Andrew Pressburger  Subject:  Haussmannize  Probably the most famous inhabitant of Boulevard Haussmann was the writer Marcel Proust, author of the novel In Search of Lost Time (better known in English as Remembrance of Things Past).

From:  John Slobodniuk  Subject:  MacGyver’d It  We had an air conditioner removed and it left a hole for two years.  I finally decided to try to fix it.  I did it by using several beer coasters, a rusty screw, and some putty while my wife was at work.  Painted it over it and BOOM... new wall!  When my wife got home, she asked what I did. I replied “MacGyver’d it.”  That’s all that needed to be said.

From:  Jorge del Desierto  Subject:  macadamize   In the French-speaking province of Quebec, Canada, many old words remain due to its centuries-long isolation from France after the British conquest.  The word char (chariot) is still used to describe an automobile.  Macadam is a wonderful word for poet and musicians.  Jean-Luc Ferland, a ‘60s icon in the province’s music scene, wrote Les fleurs de macadam (1962)  2:40 video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLQjdfTfZts

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2103  May 28, 2019