‘To err is human; to forgive, divine’.  The source and origin for this quotation is Alexander Pope (1688-1744), one of the leading neoclassical or Augustan poets of the first half of the eighteenth century.  Neoclassical poetry was marked by its sense of order and reason:  Augustan poets recalled the days of the Roman emperor Augustus, under whose rule poetry and the arts had flourished.  https://interestingliterature.com/2023/04/to-err-is-human-to-forgive-divine-meaning-origin/  Thank you, Muse reader!   

Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870) was a French writer in the movement of Romanticism, and one of the pioneers of the novella, a short novel or long short story.  He was also a noted archaeologist and historian, and an important figure in the history of architectural preservation.  He is best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.  He learned Russian, a language for which he had great affection, and translated the work of several important Russian writers, including Pushkin and Gogol, into French.  From 1830 until 1860 he was the inspector of French historical monuments, and was responsible for the protection of many historic sites, including the medieval citadel of Carcassonne and the restoration of the façade of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.  Along with the writer George Sand, he discovered the series of tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn, and arranged for their preservation.  He was instrumental in the creation of Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris, where the tapestries now are displayed.  The official database of French monuments, the Base Mérimée, bears his name.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_M%C3%A9rim%C3%A9e   

From:  Mary Bristow  Subject:  hallux  I recently saw a close-up picture of a bare foot of the Statue of Liberty, with the second toe longer than the first.  Apparently this was a trait the ancient Greeks thought beautiful.  AWADmail Issue 1111   

Jackfruit is a large tropical fruit native to Asia.  Canned jackfruit comes in a brine or syrup solution; rinse before using.  The texture is similar to shredded pork, which is why it’s a popular meat alternative.  Southern Living  June-July 2023   See 30+ Easy Jackfruit Recipes The Whole Family Will Love  July 7, 2023 by Mira M. at https://thegreenloot.com/vegan-jackfruit-recipes/   

"I, Robot" is a science fiction short story by Eando Binder (nom de plume for Earl and Otto Binder), part of a series about a robot named Adam Link.  It was published in the January 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.  The story is about a robot's confession.  Some weeks earlier, its builder, Dr. Charles Link, built it in the basement.  Link teaches his robot to walk, talk and behave civilly.  Link's housekeeper sees the robot just enough to be horrified by it, but his dog is totally loyal to it.  The robot is fully educated in a few weeks, Link then names it Adam Link, and it professes a desire to serve any human master who will have it.  Soon afterwards, a heavy object falls on Dr. Link by accident and kills him.  His housekeeper instantly assumes that the robot has murdered Dr. Link, and calls in armed men to hunt it down and destroy it.  They do not succeed; in fact, they provoke the robot to retaliate, both by refusing to listen to it and by accidentally killing Dr. Link's dog.  Back at the house, the robot finds a copy of Frankenstein, which Dr. Link had carefully hidden from the robot, and finally somewhat understands the prejudice against it.  In the end the robot decides that it simply is not worth killing several people just to get a hearing, writes its confession, and prepares to turn itself off.  Isaac Asimov was heavily influenced by the Binder short story.  In his introduction to the story in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories (1979), Asimov wrote:  It certainly caught my attention.  Two months after I read it, I began 'Robbie', about a sympathetic robot, and that was the start of my positronic robot series.  Eleven years later, when nine of my robot stories were collected into a book, the publisher named the collection I, Robot over my objections.  My book is now the more famous, but Otto's story was there first.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(short_story)     

October 17, 2023  A 21-year-old computer scientist named Luke Farritor just became the first person in nearly 2,000 years to read words from a papyrus scroll that was buried under more than 60 feet of volcanic ash after the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.  Farritor used a machine learning program to pinpoint the Greek word for “purple” in one of the hundreds of carbonized scrolls that were unearthed in Herculaneum, a town that was obliterated by the eruption along with its more famous neighbor, Pompeii.  The scrolls were found in 1752 during excavations of an ancient villa in Herculaneum that may have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.  Excavators at that time quickly realized that the singed and fragile works disintegrated when they were unrolled, and so left most of them bound in their original form.  Farritor, who is enrolled at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, has earned the first award ever issued as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition that aims to dole out $1,000,000 in prize money to participants who can use AI, machine learning, and computer vision to identify letters and words in these unread scrolls.  Becky Ferreira  https://www.vice.com/en/contributor/becky-ferreira   

http:///librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2734  October 20, 2023