Another warm day in Chicago lies ahead, with highs of 58°F (14°C), and it will get up to 60°F by the weekend. It’s almost spring weather! On this day in history, Martin Luther publicly burned his copy of the papal bull (was he having a barbecue? I’ll be here all week, folks.) In 1884, Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn, the book that, according to Ernest Hemingway, is the beginning of all American literature. And, in 1896, Alfred Nobel, the Father of the Mother of All Prizes, died (curiously, on this date in 1901, which may not be coincidental, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded). As I child I dreamed of getting that Prize, but sadly, it’s too late, I’m not famous enough, and they don’t give them in evolutionary biology anyway. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is warming her butt on the printer and being as solpsistic as usual. We live in a Hilicentric solar system.
Hili: I’m thinking about an ideal democracy.
A: And do you have any definition yet?
Hili: Yes – when everybody agrees on a compromise that is exactly as I want it.
In Polish
Hili: Zastanawiam się nad idealną demokracją.
Ja: I masz już jakąś definicję?
Hili: Tak, kiedy wszyscy zgadzają się na kompromis, żeby było tak jak ja chcę.
I have a chum who works for the Nobel prizes & a colleague whose uncle (by marriage) won one…! I think the awards now coincide with his birthday 21st of October. I suspect the timing was deliberate.
Unseasonably warm in London & continuing wet acorss the northern part of the British Isles. The jet stream is playing with us across the northern hemisphere –
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/why-are-so-many-storms-targeting-bc-heres-the-answer/60791/
In a warming world, more moisturecan be held in the atmosphere of course so we have the risk of heavier storms…
Hili is looking for the ideal democracy while I will be looking for Omaha today. Only 5 shootings and two dead yesterday and last night so nothing to worry about there.
Hili remembers Bei Dao – Freedom is nothing but the distance between the Hunter and the Hunted.
I am in full agreement with Hili this morning. An electric heating pad on L5.
On L5 ???
What has the trailing Lagrangian point got that, say, the sofa, hasn’t? Apart from a very low gradient of gravitational potential energy, and a hard-to-exhaust supply of hard vacuum?
😎
Yeah, that’s how many American politicians define democracy, too.
Well, Hili’s has no bell, and she’s certainly a prize….
b&
Yes, and being the center of the solar system is appropriate as well, as she’s already a star.
Jerry mentioning that the Nobel isn’t usually given in evolutionary biology made me think about how the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine has not yet been awarded to an epidemiologist, something I find disheartening but also useful; I bring it up when my Epi colleagues become annoyingly smug. People think the non-recognition in Epi has to do with the increasing transdisciplinarity of the field (discoveries in Epi build on each other and emerge gradually, unlike the Nobel archetype of a more unique, sudden discovery made by a handful; though, I hear people say this isn’t how it works in basic science either).
It looks like Elie Weisel accepted his Nobel today in 1986.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-acceptance.html
Hili sounds just like the Missus.