In the fifth century B.C.E., Zeno of Elea offered arguments that led to conclusions contradicting what we all know from our physical experience—that runners run, that arrows fly, and that there are many different things in the world.  The arguments were paradoxes for the ancient Greek philosophers.  Because many of the arguments turn crucially on the notion that space and time are infinitely divisible, Zeno was the first person to show that the concept of infinity is problematical.  In the Achilles Paradox, Achilles races to catch a slower runner—for example, a tortoise that is crawling in a line away from him.  The tortoise has a head start, so if Achilles hopes to overtake it, he must run at least as far as the place where the tortoise presently is, but by the time he arrives there, it will have crawled to a new place, so then Achilles must run at least to this new place, but the tortoise meanwhile will have crawled on, and so forth.  https://iep.utm.edu/zeno-par/  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno 

White Castle is an American regional hamburger restaurant chain with 377 locations across 13 states, with its greatest presence in the Midwest.  It has been generally credited as the world's first fast-food hamburger chain.  It is known for its small, square hamburgers referred to as "sliders".  The burgers were initially priced at five cents until 1929 and remained at 10 cents until 1949.  In the 1940s, White Castle periodically ran promotional ads in local newspapers which contained coupons offering five burgers for ten cents, takeout only.  On January 14, 2014, Time labeled the White Castle slider as the most influential burger of all time.  Walter (Walt) A. Anderson (1880–1963), a cook, had been running food stands in Wichita since 1916 when he opened his first diner in a converted streetcar.  After a second and third location, he was looking to open a fourth location when he met Edgar Waldo "Billy" A. Ingram, an insurance and real-estate man, and together they started the White Castle chain.  White Castle was founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas.  Anderson partnered with Ingram to make White Castle into a chain of restaurants and market the brand and its distinctive product.  Anderson and Ingram started with only $700 for the original White Castle in Wichita, Kansas.  The original location was the northwest corner of First and Main; the building is no longer standing.  At the time, Americans were hesitant to eat ground beef after Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle had publicized the poor sanitation practices of the meat packing industry.  The founders set out to change the public's perception of the cleanliness of the industry they were creating.  To invoke a feeling of cleanliness, their restaurants were small buildings with stainless steel interiors, and employees outfitted with spotless uniforms.  Their first restaurants in Wichita, Kansas, were a success, and the company branched out into other Midwestern markets, starting in 1922 with El Dorado, Kansas.  Since fast food was unknown in the United States at the time of White Castle's founding, there was no infrastructure to support the business, as is common with today's fast-food restaurants.  The company established centralized bakeries, meat supply plants, and warehouses to supply itself.  It was said that the only things that they did not do themselves were raise the cows and grow their own wheat.  Ingram developed a device to produce previously unheard of paper hats (for employees to wear as part of the uniform).  In 1932, Ingram set up a subsidiary, Paperlynen, to produce these hats and other paper products used in his restaurants as well as for many other purposes.  At the time, White Castle's distribution stretched from Wichita to New York.  Ingram decided the central office should be in the center of the distribution area.  (To accommodate this, in 1936, the central office would relocate to Columbus, Ohio.  Furthermore, in the same year, Ingram decided to close all of the restaurants in the two smallest-profit markets, Wichita and Omaha.)  In 1955, Paperlynen produced over 42 million paper hats worldwide with more than 25,000 different inscriptions.  White Castle also created a subsidiary in 1934 named Porcelain Steel Buildings that manufactured movable, prefabricated, steel frame structures with porcelain enamel interior and exterior panels that could be assembled at any of its restaurant sites.  This is the first known use of this material in a building design.  Anderson is credited with the invention of the hamburger bun as well as "the kitchen as assembly line, and the cook as infinitely replaceable technician," hence giving rise to the modern fast-food phenomenon.  Due to White Castle's innovation of having chain-wide standardized methods, customers could be sure that they would receive the same product and service in every White Castle restaurant.  Ingram's business savvy not only was responsible for White Castle's success but for the popularization of the hamburger.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Castle_(restaurant) 

In the pink is an English idiom that means to be at the peak of health, to be in perfect condition.  The expression in the pink to mean to be at the peak of health goes back to the 1500s when the word pink did not refer to a color.  At that time, the word pink referred to a certain type of flower called dianthus, still referred to as pinks in the English vernacular, today.  Pinks, the flowers, were considered the pinnacle of floral design and so the word pink came to mean anything that was the pinnacle of excellence.  The word pink is derived from the Danish term pinck oogen, which translates as half-closed eyes or small eyes, a clear reference to the appearance of the dianthus flower.  Unbelievably, the word pink to mean a color was not used until the end of the 1700s, and not in general use until the 1800s.  https://grammarist.com/idiom/in-the-pink/  See pictures of the perennial dianthus at https://www.thespruce.com/perennial-dianthus-flower-1316045 

Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (AD 700–1000).  He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf.  Grendel is feared by all in Heorot but Beowulf.  He is usually depicted as a monster or a giant, although his status as a monster, giant, or other form of supernatural being is not clearly described in the poem and thus remains the subject of scholarly debate.  The character of Grendel and his role in the story of Beowulf have been subject to numerous reinterpretations and re-imaginings.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel 

Although Grendel looks something like a man—having two arms (or claws), two legs, and one head—he is much larger and can defeat dozens of men at a time.  He is protected from man's weapons by a magic charm.  He is a mix of man and beast; his fury is based on very human feelings of resentment and jealousy.  The novelist and Anglo-Saxon scholar John Gardner explores the inner conflicts of the character in his 1971 novel, Grendel, an intensely moving, funny, and perceptive book.  https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/beowulf/character-analysis/grendel  See also https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/grendel/characters/  Grendel, the first and most terrifying monster in English literature from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book.  "It deserves a place on the same shelf as Lord of the Flies, Cat's Cradle and Catcher in the Rye."-Christian Science Monitor.  https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/515158/grendel/john-gardner/ 

April 12 is the International Day of Human Space Flight, which is recognized by the United Nations to celebrate the start of the space era, to reaffirm space science and technology’s contributions towards achieving sustainable development goals, and to emphasize the need to maintain outer space for peaceful purposes.  It commemorates the first human space flight by the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, which took place on April 12, 1961.  Wikipedia 

If life's lessons could be reduced to single sentences, there would be no need for fiction. - Scott Turow, author and lawyer (b. 12 Apr 1949) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2350  April 12, 2021