Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Although the rules are simple, there is scope for scientific play.  Whist is a descendant of the 16th-century game of trump or ruff.  Whist replaced the popular variant of trump known as ruff and honours.  The game takes its name from the 17th-century whist (or wist) meaning quiet, silent, attentive, which is the root of the modern wistful.  According to Daines Barrington, whist was first played on scientific principles by a party of gentlemen who frequented the Crown Coffee House in Bedford Row, London, around 1728.  Edmond Hoyle, suspected to be a member of this group, began to tutor wealthy young gentlemen in the game and published A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist in 1742.  It became the standard text and rules for the game for the next hundred years.  In 1862, Henry Jones, writing under the pseudonym "Cavendish", published The Principles of Whist Stated and Explained, and Its Practice Illustrated on an Original System, by Means of Hands Played Completely Through, which became the standard text.  Many subsequent editions and enlargements of this work were published using the simpler title Cavendish On Whist.  By this time, whist was governed by elaborate and rigid rules covering the laws of the game, etiquette and play which took time to study and master.  In the 1890s, a variant known as bridge whist became popular which eventually evolved into contract bridge.  The traditional game of whist survives at social events called whist drives.  See rules, variants and graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whist  See also https://cardgames.io/whist/ 

menhir (plural menhirs)  noun  (archaeology) A single tall standing stone as a monument, especially one dating to prehistoric times. quotations ▼ Synonym:  orthostat  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/menhir#English

The Nobel Library is the public library of the Swedish Academy instituted to assist the evaluation of Nobel laureates to the Prize in Literature and other awards granted by the academy.  The library is located in the so-called Stock Exchange Building at 4, Källargränd, a short alley passing between Slottsbacken and Stortorget in Gamla stan, the old town in central Stockholm, Sweden.  Since its foundation in 1901, the primary task of the library is to acquire literary works and journals needed for the evaluation of the laureates, a task achieved by collecting works mainly in other languages than Swedish.  As of 2007, the collection encompasses some 200,000 volumes and is thus one of the largest libraries devoted to literature in northern Europe.  The library is offering loans to the general public and to other libraries in Nordic countries, as well as guided tours on request, lectures, and seminars.  The library was founded on November 16, 1901 in connection to the inauguration of the Nobel Institute of the Swedish Academy.  It was first accommodated in a ten-room-flat at Norra Bantorget in a building designed by Ferdinand Boberg, the so-called LO-borgen today accommodating the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) but at the time called Vasaborgen ("The Castle of Vasa").  The collection encompassed some 15,000 literary works after five years and within two decades the library had become cramped for space and was relocated to its present address.  Link to list of Nobel Laureates at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Library    

When Robert Indiana left New York for good, in 1978, he was a bitter man.  LOVE made him an international art star, but he felt he had little to show for it relative to his peers.  Pre-LOVE, Indiana worked in orbs and herms, using painted circles and shapes that resembled ginkgo leaves.  His herms were totemlike constructions, made with wooden beams, iron wheels, and other industrial elements that he found in his neighborhood.  His personal geography began showing up in his art as early as 1959, when he started working on The Slips, an eight-foot-tall oil-on-board painting naming the various slips of his neighborhood—Coenties, Catharine, Market, and five others.  Indiana began riffing on the idea of LOVE in 1961 as a two-dimensional painting entitled 4-Star Love.  Painting on a canvas of blood-red paint roughly twelve inches square, Indiana placed the word LOVE in block letters along the bottom edge, with an upright letter O.  Above the letters, he arranged four stars, two over two.  From that early idiom, the image evolved until it became its iconic self.  Instead of four stars, two over two, Indiana placed the four letters of LOVE two over two.  Just as he honored his mother with EAT—a massive, twenty-four-foot-square electric sculpture first shown at the World’s Fair in Queens in 1964—he honored his father with LOVE by framing the letters in the colors of the logo for Phillips 66, where his father worked pumping gas.  Finally, the touch of brilliance:  he tilted the letter O to the right just so, “as if the foot of the L has given it a kick,” the critic Grace Glueck wrote years later in the New York Times.  Bob Keyes  https://lithub.com/on-robert-indianas-love-hate-relationship-with-the-sculpture-that-made-him-a-starrobert-indianas-love-hate-relationship-with-the-sculpture-that-made-him-a-star/ Herms are squared stone pillars with a carved head on top (typically of Hermes), used in ancient Greece as a boundary marker or a signpost.   

Robert Indiana (1928-2018) was adopted as an infant by Earl Clark and Carmen Watters Clark and named Robert Earl Clark.  He grew up in a financially unstable environment, as his father held a wide range of jobs, from an oil executive to pumping gas.  When Indiana was nine, his parents divorced and his mother went to work; her time as a diner waitress would be influential to Indiana's artistic career.  A free spirit, his mother frequently moved; by age seventeen, Indiana had lived in twenty-one different locations.  Indiana's early interest in art was initially encouraged by his first grade teacher, who thrilled him when she asked to keep a few of his drawings because she knew he would be a famous artist one day.  Forty years later, Indiana visited this teacher who showed him the saved drawings; he then signed them again as a successful artist.  https://www.theartstory.org/artist/indiana-robert/life-and-legacy/ 

It takes just seven ordinary, imperfect shuffles to mix a deck of cards thoroughly, researchers have found.  Fewer are not enough and more do not significantly improve the mixing.  The mathematical proof, discovered after studies of results from elaborate computer calculations and careful observation of card games, confirms the intuition of many gamblers, bridge enthusiasts and casual players that most shuffling is inadequate.  The finding has implications for everyone who plays cards and everyone, from casino operators to magicians, who has a stake in knowing whether a shuffle is random.  The mathematical problem was complicated because of the immense number of possible ways the cards in a deck can be arranged; any of 52 could be first in the deck, any of 51 could be second, 50 could be third and so on.  Multiplied out, the number of possible permutations, 52 factorial, or 52;51;50, etc. is 1063 or 10 with 62 zeros after it.  Gina Kolata  https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/09/science/in-shuffling-cards-7-is-winning-number.html 

COFFEE CAKE  Use coffee as the liquid in any cake you want to make. 

COKE CAKE  Use Coke as liquid in your cake batter.  (No need to add sugar to the mix.)   

The moon will be full at exactly 10:57 a.m. EDT (2:57 p.m. GMT) on October 20, 2021, when the sun, Earth and moon line up (in that order), according to NASA.  October's Hunter's Moon will appear full for three days, from Monday night (Oct. 18) through Thursday night (Oct. 21).  Skygazers can also catch another treat; the Orionid meteor shower, peaks Wednesday, although the light from the full moon may make it hard to see the shower's "shooting stars," Space.com, a Live Science sister site, reported.  Laura Geggel  Read more and see graphics at https://www.livescience.com/october-full-hunters-moon-2021 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2442  October 20, 2021