Friday, March 20, 2020


Umami is known as the fifth flavor that the taste buds respond to, along with sweet, salty, bitter and sour.  Umami is savory, silky and rich.  It’s full of layers and notes.  Umami is meaty.  It’s earthy.  It’s salty, but a little bit of it goes a long way.  Umami is a Japanese word that, loosely translated, means delicious.  Make this highly concentrated, savory paste to use with pasta, in sauces, as a condiment, dip, marinade ingredient, basting sauce or as a "secret sauce" ingredient in soups, stews, chilis and gravies.  Valerie Hoff  Find recipe for homemade umami paste at http://valeriehoff.com/content/homemade-umami-paste-condiment-cant-live-without/

Middy may refer to a middy blouse, an item of Sailor dress worn by girls and young women in the early twentieth century; the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway, an English railway company operating in the first half of the twentieth century; or a half pint beer glass, a term used in certain states of Australia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middy

Zeb-un-Nissa (1638  1702) was a Mughal princess and the eldest child of Emperor Aurangzeb and his chief consort Dilras Banu Begum.  She was also a poet, who wrote under the pseudonym of "Makhfi" (مخفی, "Hidden One").  Imprisoned by her father in the last 20 years of her life at Salimgarh FortDelhi, Princess Zeb-un-Nissa is remembered as a poet, and her writings were collected posthumously as Diwan-i-Makhfi.  See sample translation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeb-un-Nissa

Enjambment, derived from the French word enjambment, means to step over, or put legs across.  In poetry it means moving over from one line to another without a terminating punctuation mark.  It can be defined as a thought or sense, phrase or clause, in a line of poetry that does not come to an end at the line break, but moves over to the next line.  It is a running on of a thought from one line to another without final punctuation.  It is used in poetry to trick a reader.  Poets lead their readers to think of an idea, then move on the next line, giving an idea that conflicts with it.  Poets can achieve a fast pace or rhythm by using enjambment.  Multiple ideas can be expressed without using semi-colons, periods, or commas.  It helps reinforce the main idea that might seem to be confusing with pauses.  It can be seen in different songs and poems.  https://literarydevices.net/enjambment/

This is a recipe that Julia Child made with "Chef Brockett" (the late Don Brockett) for Fred Rogers on one of the "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" episodes.  It was first printed with permission from Family Communications Inc., Pittsburgh.  (Unfortunately, the cookbook is out of print.)
2/3 cup chopped walnuts or peanuts
1/2 cup chopped black olives
1/2 cup chopped red pimento
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
8 ounces semolina spaghetti
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese or shredded Swiss cheese
Mix walnuts, olives, pimento, parsley and chives in bowl; set aside.  Cook spaghetti according to package directions; drain well.  Place olive oil in serving bowl.  Add spaghetti; toss to coat well.  Season to taste.  Spoon walnut mixture over spaghetti.  Toss lightly at the table.  Serve immediately with cheese.  Julia Child quotes:   Eat the real thing, but a little of it."  "Anybody who looks at things in a moderate way, an adult way, is going to be able to enjoy good food."  http://old.post-gazette.com/food/20020815suz5.asp

Excavations at Russia’s Kostenki 11 site have uncovered one of the oldest and largest Ice Age structures made of mammoth bones.  Hunter-gatherers assembled bones from at least 60 mammoths into an imposing ring around 25,000 years ago, say archaeologist Alexander Pryor of the University of Exeter in England and colleagues.  Building this structure, which measures about 12.5 meters across, required a huge investment of time and energy, the scientists report in the April 2020 Antiquity.  Bones may have come from hunted mammoths or from carcasses of animals that died of natural causes.  Sieving of soil samples identified charred wood from fires set inside the ring, but it’s unclear how its makers used the structure, Pryor’s team says.  Circular mammoth bone structures, most dating to no more than 22,000 years ago, previously have been found across eastern Europe and western Russia (SN: 12/13/86).   Researchers have often assumed that these constructions, including two others found at Kostenki 11 in the 1950s and 1960s, housed people during harsh winters.  The new discovery challenges that idea.  A large, open space in the bone ring appears unsuitable for long-term occupation, in part because it would have been difficult to roof, Pryor’s group says.  Bruce Bower https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ice-age-structure-russia-made-mammoth-bones-largest

Coordinated Universal Time (or UTC) is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time.  It is within about 1 second of mean solar time at 0° longitude, and is not adjusted for daylight saving time.  In some countries, the term Greenwich Mean Time is used. 
The co-ordination of time and frequency transmissions around the world began on 1 January 1960.  UTC was first officially adopted as CCIR Recommendation 374, Standard-Frequency and Time-Signal Emissions, in 1963, but the official abbreviation of UTC and the official English name of Coordinated Universal Time (along with the French equivalent) were not adopted until 1967.   

'Happiness is contagious too':  caring for each other makes us feel better--World Happiness Report names Finland the happiest country and shows us how to move forward after the coronavirus outbreak.  Finland remains at number one for the third year running, while the UK has edged up the table, rising from 15th place to 13th.  The report--compiled by a group of independent experts and produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network--uses six variables to measure the quality of life in more than 150 countries across the globe:  GDP per capita; social support; healthy life expectancy; freedom; generosity and absence of corruption.  Joanna Moorhead  https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/20/happiness-is-contagious-too-caring-for-each-other-makes-us-feel-better-experts

The word equinox literally translates to equal ("equi") and night ("nox") in Latin.  The term vernal means "new and fresh," and comes from the Latin word vernus for "of spring."  In 2020, spring arrived earlier than it has in 124 years.  Michele Debczak  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/577353/spring-equinox-facts  Most countries experienced the vernal equinox on March 19—the others on March 20. 

The novel coronavirus presents an unprecedented challenge for scientists:  The speed at which the virus spreads means they must accelerate their research.  But this is what the world's fastest supercomputer was built for.  Summit, IBM's supercomputer equipped with the "brain of AI," ran thousands of simulations to analyze which drug compounds might effectively stop the virus from infecting host cells.  The supercomputer identified 77 of them.  It's a promising step toward creating the most effective vaccine.  Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory published their findings in the journal ChemRxiv.  Summit was commissioned by the US Department of Energy in 2014 for the purpose it's serving now--solving the world's problems.  It's got the power of 200 petaflops, which means it has the computing speed of 200 quadrillion calculations per second, aka:  It's 1 million times more powerful than the fastest laptop.  At its station in Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Summit has identified patterns in cellular systems that precede Alzheimer's, analyzed genes that contribute to traits like opioid addiction and predicted extreme weather based on climate simulations.  Scottie Andrew  https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/us/fastest-supercomputer-coronavirus-scn-trnd/index.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2243  March 20, 2020

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