It’s Sunday, October 28, 2018, and National Chocolate Day. I expect that at least 30% of the readers (with me among them) will be paying homage to this most delicious plant product. It’s also International Animation Day, so let’s see an old one. Cartoons aren’t what they used to be, as the YouTube notes suggest about this 1931 classic, based on a jazz song with a long history.
In the Betty Boop short film “Snow White”, Koko the Clown (voiced by Cab Calloway) sings “St. James Infirmary Blues” when he believes Betty Boop is dead. Cab Calloway’s voice is unique and specially eerie for this song. Koko’s dancing during the “St. James” number is rotoscoped from footage of Calloway.
Freaky, eh? What would today’s kids think of that one?
Here’s a tweet, sent by both Jiten and Matthew, that gets pride of place for Tweet of the Month. Yes, it is a cat.
This picture of a crow is interesting because…it's actually a cat pic.twitter.com/dWqdnSL4KD
— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) October 28, 2018
Lots happened on this day in history. in 1420, Beijing was officially designated the capital of the Ming Dynasty, with the Forbidden City completed in that year. On October 28, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba during his first voyage across the Atlantic. Here’s his route before he went back home (on none of his four voyages did he land on mainland North America):
On this day in 1636, a vote of the court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first college in what would become the U.S.: Harvard University. Exactly 250 years later, Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty (a gift from the people of France) in New York Harbor. It was also on that day in 1886 that workers threw ticker tape into the streets in celebration, starting the first “ticker tape parade”. That, of course, is passé, as ticker tape no longer exists. On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, creating “Prohibition” that began in January, 1920, and lasted for 13 years. No booze!!! According to Wikipedia, it was on this day in 1948 that “Paul Müller [was] awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.”
And in 1956, Elvis Presley got a polio shot on national television, which, it’s said, raised immunization levels in the U.S. from 0.6% to 80% in just six months. Don’t ever say that Elvis didn’t do anything good! Here’s a fascinating 7-minute video, produced by the University of Cambridge, about how vaccination was promoted in the U.S. Elvis’s bit begins 8 seconds in, but watch the whole thing. I’m old enough to remember when polio was a huge scare, and we were told not to go to public swimming pools lest we get infected.
On this day in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended when Nikita Khrushchev ordered that Soviet missiles be removed from Cuba. Finally, on October 28, 1965, the Nostra aetate, the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions” of the Second Vatican Council, was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI, absolving the the Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus, reversing Innocent III’s 760-year-old declaration. Thanks, Pope!
Notables born on this day include Erasmus (1466), Edith Head (1897), Evelyn Waugh (1903), Jonas Salk (1914), Bill Gates (1955), and Julia Roberts (1967). Those who died on October 28 include John Locke (1704), Abigail Adams (1818), Ted Hughes (1998) and Porter Wagoner (2007).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s dialogues have become so arcane that not even Malgorzata understands them:
Hili: All this makes up one whole.A: What makes up one whole?Hili: I told you, all this.
Hili: To wszystko składa się w jedną całość.
Ja: Co się składa w jedną całość?
Hili: Mówiłam, że wszystko.
Tweets sent by Grania. The first one is cow love, but I think an otter or duck cuddle would trump a cow cuddle.
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1056265590057259009
The tweet below refers refers to Christina Rad’s video accusation that she was groped by physicist Lawrence Krauss, and to Krauss’s counter-accusation that she made the video to enrich herself. You can find the accusation of monetization on pp. 9-10 of a 51-page document written by Krauss and sent to Arizona State University’s President to defend himself after ASU’s Dean recommended that Krauss be fired. If you want it, ask.
So Krauss is now saying I published my videos against him to make money. To this I say LOL. Those videos are not (and never were) monetized. Anybody can check this, you will see no adds, I'm getting literally 0$ revenue from the views of those videos. FYI and such. @LKrauss1
— Cristina Rad (@CrissRad) October 26, 2018
A true cat scan:
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1055987993587138561
. . and an order of purritos to go.
Just a bunch of Purritos.. pic.twitter.com/G3YywEdOGC
— Land of cuteness (@landpsychology) October 25, 2018
Matthew has finished his book on the history of research on the human brain. Congrats, Dr. Cobb!
I just pressed 'send' and the brain book MS is winging its way to @ejklake @ProfileBooks. Let's see what he thinks. This bastard has taken me nearly 3.5 years to write. It's not only about 18 months late, it's also about 40% overweight – 178k words in total. Urgh.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) October 24, 2018
From Matthew Cobb. His first tweet is about springtails: a HUGE group of them.
https://twitter.com/Docteur_Drey/status/1056278544303702016
And the Big Guy speaks. But I thought he was omnipotent!
https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/1056210688610263041
If you follow adaptations derived from endosymbiosis, here’s one:
Alien invasion! We propose symbiotic bacteria DNA in an ancestral insect genome birthed the germline determinant oskar. Our new preprint presents evidence:
Bacterial contribution to genesis of the novel germ line determinant oskar https://t.co/avKmRJYSw3— Cassandra Extavour (@redmakeda) October 25, 2018
And my favorite procyonid. These critters are fiercely smart, and this one unscrews the bottom of a bird feeder with its bottom legs!
https://twitter.com/LiverPunch0351/status/1055448426626846721
There’s a reason they call it a catwalk. Naturally, it’s in the cat-loving city of Istanbul. But how can the models ignore that cute moggie?
Cat of the YEAR.
Cat crashes #Istanbul fashion show, struts on #catwalk with #models and steals the spotlight. pic.twitter.com/ilMuDrOBXv
— Amir Baloch (@IMAmirKA) October 27, 2018
If I may be so bold as to try to interpret Hili, I think she is referencing a Native American saying, “we are all part of the whole.” That means that all people, animals, trees, plants, all living beings are part of the whole, and what affects one in some way affects all.
I never understood why christians are mad that anyone killed Jeebus. (HINT: It was the Romans, if anyone. The Romans were remarkably good, fast and brutal at dealing with any threats, perceived or otherwise, to their order.) Jeebus had to die. It is the central idea of their religion – salvation by substitutionary atonement. No dead Jeebus – no christianity. Granted, it is a remarkably silly idea, but it is their idea.
In the Gnostic gospel of Judas, Jeebus hails Judas for getting him killed. That is what he wanted.
I think there are two roots to christian antisemitism – besides that usual human hatred of the other. The first is that the Jeebus movement was a Jewish movement. The proto-christians expected to take over Judaism from Temple Judaism. After the fall of the Temple when the Pharisees took over Judaism from the Temple priests (which led to rabbinical Judaism), the groups like the Jeebus movement that lost out grew increasingly hostile to Judaism. You see it progress through the gospels – with John being the worst of all.
The second is that once the Roman version of christianity (there were many others) took over as the Roman state reliogion, you really could not blame the Romans for killing Jeebus. So let’s blame the Jews! And let’s wipe out all the other versions of christianity. Most christian martyrs were from the other forms of christianity at the hands of the Roman version.
But still, the initial question. Why are any christians mad that Jeebus was killed? HE HAD TO DIE. At least to get your story going. And he did not even stay dead. Less than too days. killed Friday afternoon, up and at it by Sunday morning.
“There’s always 30 or 40 Christians standing around, saying, “It’s a shame that he has to die.” And Jesus is saying, “Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to if somebody would get a ladder and pair of pliers!!”” -Sam Kinison
Jesus gave his weekend for your sins.
You wanna thank a pope, boss, thank John XXIII. He was dead before Nostra aetate was signed, but he convened Vatican II. And he’s the pope who’s been nominated as “Righteous Among the Nations” at Yad Vashem for the lives he saved during Shoah. He also began the “Christian-Jewish reconciliation” policy immediately upon his election to the papacy in 1959.
John 23 is one of a handful of clergy I hold up as heroes for their humanitarian work notwithstanding their religious faith.
I agree wholeheartedly. Giuseppe Roncalli was a true man of honor and principle and compassion.
…Man of true honor…
I beg to differ. Ticker tape is the stuff that you feed through a ticker timer to record motion. The last batch was too broad for the timer guides. I HATE MY DEPARTMENT HEAD.
Timothy Leary claimed to have been conceived on the day that Prohibition began. (Of course, he also claimed to remember the moment of conception – can’t think what could have affected his brain…)
That trippy Betty Boop animation took me back to the 70’s, when it was a popular feature for stoners in the independent “art” theaters that proliferated in that era. It might have shown with Fantasia or the hilarious Reefer Madness.
I started reading this post about an hour ago, but immediately got caught up in Cab Calloway’s life story. What a performer! What strikes me are Koko the Clown’s dance moves that are amazingly similar to dance moves today. I see lots of Prince & MJ in what Calloway does. Love everything about this guy’s dancing and singing. And love the cartoon. “Trippy” indeed!
Are you familiar with Cab Calloway’s actual dance moves, from which Koko’s moves were rotoscoped? If not, check out this brief “Cab Calloway Dance Moves” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Qi_MbaOyk.
Yes, I spent an hour delving into everything Cab Calloway first thing today. God, he is amazing!
Indeed, he’s amazing. This post and your comment inspired me to reacquaint myself with Cab Calloway, and I’m glad for that.
Guess who Michael Jackson took most of his moves from?
When animation was a new thing the artists were more experimental; less constrained by tradition, sentimentality, and realism; more constrained by the medium. Even the early Mickey Mouse animations are trippy.
I was going to let “I say LOL” pass, but “FYI and such”?
Perhaps with Hili’s “All this makes up one whole” remark, she expresses that it is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about,…
I was reading up on springtales from the link and came across this interesting tidbit.
Although firmly denied by the US government despite the existence of the Pine Bluff Arsenal of biological weapons, destroyed in 1971–1972 under Nixon’s presidency,[67] it has been reported that springtails were used by the US army as a “six-legged weapon” in biological warfare performed during the Korean War. Species cited in allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War were Isotoma (Desoria) negishina (a local species) and the “white rat springtail” Folsomia candida. According to these reports, isotomids were intended to serve as carriers of fatal diseases (anthrax, dysentery, cholera, small pox), dropped by airplanes above rebel villages.
I suspect the catwalking feline was searching for its missing bed in the fashion collection, much of which could easily be mistaken for re-purposed cat blankets.