Welcome to the weekend: it’s Saturday, April 22, 2017, and National Jelly Bean Day. There’s a jar in the office for general filching: should I have one? If so, what flavor?
Some people have noticed that I’ve been typing “zeroes” instead of “o”s in my words, and have sent me corrections. Please keep doing so. The reason is below:
While stuffing clothes into my backpack in Rotorua, I snapped a tendon in my right ring finger. Now it’s in a splint for four more weeks, which makes it hard to type and, of course, you’ll know that the “zero” key is what you hit when an artificially extended finger tries to type a “o”. Thus you wind up with err0rs like the 0nes in this sentence. Please keep letting me know if I err. It’s also Earth Day, commemorated by Google, and if you click on the screenshot below, you’ll go to a series of drawings that highlight climate change. Time Magazine explains:
In a series of illustrations, the Google doodle tells the story of a sleeping fox that has a nightmare about the consequences of climate change, featuring melted icebergs and dead plants. Disturbed, the fox enlists two friends to be more thoughtful about conservation—the trio eat vegetables, grow plants, ride bikes and use solar energy. [JAC: those are the first five drawings.]
Google also offered conservation tips for Earth Day, reminding people to turn off lights, plant trees, eat locally sourced food and avoid driving.
On this day in 1889, the Oklahoma Land Rush began, and Oklahoma City was founded. On April 22, 1906, the modern era of the Olympic Games began in Athens, and, 39 years later, Adolf Hitler decided to commit suicide in the Führerbunker in Berlin. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, and some of you may remember that exactly 17 years ago, six-year-old Elián González was forcibly taken from his relatives’ home in Miami and sent back to his father in Cuba.
Notables born on this day include Immanuel Kant (1724), Vladimir Lenin (1870), Vladimir Nabokov (1899), J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904), Charles Mingus (1922), and Jack Nicholson (1937), who is 80 today!. Those who died on this day include Ansel Adams (1984), Richard Nixon (1994), and Pat Tillman (2004). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, once again Hili is rescued by Andrzej from the windowsill, and asserts her felinitude:
A: Why don’t you come when I call you?Hili: Because I’m not a dog.
Ja: Dlaczego nie przychodzisz jak cię wołam?
Hili: Bo nie jestem psem.
Either the picture is mirrored or it’s Jerry’s *left* ring finger.
Either way, get well soon!
It’s mirrored; taken on Mac Photobooth.
Tendons can be worse and take longer to heal than a Fracture, don’t use it and it will heal faster.
The 1906 games in Athens you mention were an intercalated games (the original intent was that there should be one per decade), and if classed as on Olympics were the fourth such after 1896 (Athens, famous for Spyridon Louis’ triumph in the Marathon), 1900 (Paris, combined with and overshadowed by the Exposition Universelle) and 1904 (St Louis, an absolute fiasco). On the earth day theme, here is my own post on the subject: https://aspiblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/shouldnt-every-day-be-earth-day/
What a “nice” souvenir… Just reading that made me wince.
If memory serves, the first Earth Day was in 1970.
Yep, fixed, thanks!
You came that close to giving everyone the finger. Better luck next time.
0h, my! Get better s00n!
Ouch. I hope your finger heals quickly and completely. We tend to take them for granted when they work well.
Good on Google for doing their bit for Earth Day. However, the locally sourced food thing is not necessarily true. It was proven categorically several years ago, for example, that if you live in London there are quite a few fresh foods from New Zealand that have a carbon footprint multiple times lower than their equivalent grown in England, and the quality is better. New Zealand farmers are much more efficient, use less chemicals, etc.
Happy Earth Day!
Looks like you tore the extensor tendon off the distal phalanx – a ‘mallet finger’. Seems to me that half the time when you take the splint off the terminal phalanx simply drops back into the mallet position. It’s not much of a handicap though, and at least it takes you halfway to that desirably biological sounding deformity – the swan neck!
Rather than Google, use http://www.ecosia,org – they plant trees!
Here, I fixed it for you… http://www.ecosia.org 😉