It’s Tuesday, April 9, 2019, and National Chinese Almond Cookie Day. Those aren’t fortune cookies, but the ones shown below. (I have no idea what lobby managed to get this comestible its own holiday):
It’s also the Christian Feast Day for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged by the Nazis on April 9, 1945. Here I am making an exception of my rule “No religious feast days”, as I admire Bonhoeffer for his courage and because his theology was relatively sane (though still, of course, theology).
On this day in 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to America left on its way to Roanoke Island, where it landed and established the Roanoke Colony (Raleigh wasn’t on the expedition). By 1590, the Colony mysteriously vanished, and we still don’t know what happened to its settlers. On April 9, 1860, according to Wikipedia, “On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.” The machine worked by “transcrib[ing’ sound waves as undulations or other deviations in a line traced on smoke-blackened paper or glass.” Here’s what the device looked like:
On this day in 1865, the fighting of the American Civil War ended as Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In 1939, black singer Marian Anderson, after being denied by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) the right to sing to an integrated audience at the DAR’s Constitution Hall, gave a replacement concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Thousands of people came in support of Anderson and many, like Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned from the DAR in protest. Here’s the big concert:
As noted above, it was on this day in 1945 that pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis for his “subversive” activities and for spying.
On April 9, 1959, NASA introduced the “Mercury Seven” astronauts to the public, a scene depicted very well in the Tom-Wolfe inspired movie “The Right Stuff”. You can see the three videos of the real press conference here, here, and here. On this day in 1965, the first indoor professional baseball game was played as the Houston Astrodome opened. Finally, it was on this day 14 years ago that Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil ceremony in Windsor.
Notables born on this day include Charles Baudelaire (1821), Eadweard Muybridge (1830), Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865), Paul Robeson (1898), Hugh Hefner (1926), Tom Lehrer (1928), Carl Perkins (1932), Valerie Solanas (1936), Sam Harris (1967), Kristen Stewart (1990), and Jackie Evancho (2000).
Here’s a Muybridge photo of a leaping cat (he also, as you may know, proved through his stop-motion photography that a running horse has at one point all four hooves off the ground):
Those who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on April 9 include François Rabelais (1553), Francis Bacon (1626), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882), William Henry Johnson (“Zip the Pinhead”, 1926), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1945), Frank Lloyd Wright (1959), and Phil Ochs (1976).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus shows some tenderness towards Hili. Hili isn’t impressed.
Hili: Why are you standing over me?Cyrus: Out of concern for your safety.Hili: But nothing is threatening me.Cyrus: That’s beside the point.
Hili: Czemu tak nade mną stoisz?
Cyrus: W trosce o twoje bezpieczeństwo.
Hili: Przecież nic mi nie grozi.
Cyrusa: Nie szkodzi.
From Heather Hastie: Interspecific love between a cat and a ferret:
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1110930769034260480
Two tweets from reader Nilou. This first one restores my faith in humanity:
https://twitter.com/MsMollyRachael/status/1109879593689862147
From the Ravenmaster at the Tower of London:
Even the humble raven contains within its blackness a whole spectrum, a whole rainbow, a chord of black. The black can be sooty, soily, glazed, cindery, blackboard black, kohl black, coal black, noir, Schwarz. I don’t know how many words and phrases there are to describe black. pic.twitter.com/1k9JumIi23
— Ravenmaster (@ravenmaster1) March 30, 2019
Tweets from Matthew. First, a lovely stag beetle (he says “click on the picture if you see a blur”):
My kids & I found the most incredible (and also rare) stag beetle at Osorno, a volcano in Chile! ~9cm long male of Chiasognathus grantii, also called ciervo volante, the flying deer. Like deer, males use their incredible headgear in contests for females. pic.twitter.com/CYqylSnbVC
— Amy Lynn Toth (@Amy_L_Toth) April 7, 2019
A hornet attacking what looks to be an orthopteran. Translation of the Japanese: “The hornets were strong!”
スズメバチは強かった！ pic.twitter.com/ojQR7KZEWk
— 女仙人 (@OnNaSen2in) April 7, 2019
I’m not sure how I feel about this breed of domestic duck.
Funky duck, Oswestry Agricultural Show.
Stunna pic.twitter.com/eSzUqJ2QmT
— James Robinson (@JRfromStrickley) April 6, 2019
This letter from William Faulkner (second tweet below) is pretty well known:
Or this one. William Faulkner resigning as postmaster at the University of Mississippi. pic.twitter.com/RFVtadjNX8
— Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) April 3, 2019
Oh man, just when you think you’ve seen the last possible case of one species mimicking another, you find something like this—a spider mimicking a caterpillar!
A new caterpillar-like jumping spider of the genus Uroballus was recently described from Hong Kong, China!
Logunov & Obenauer (2019), doi: 10.5281/zenodo.263270, at https://t.co/tMKRpMTG9N@WSC_NMBE @BritishSpiders @ISArachnology @AracnidsCo @Tone_Killick pic.twitter.com/oHqlaDWax2
— William Galvis (@AracnoLoco) April 8, 2019
Tweets from Grania, with a gecko licking its eye:
https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1114789603280543744
Well, live and learn: I had no idea horseshoe crabs swam upside down!
https://twitter.com/PhysicsVideo_/status/1114769957718355968
A lovely view of the Chicago skyline taken from near one of the water-pumping stations out in Lake Michigan (the white-and-red structure in the foreground):
Just when I’m sure I’ve seen every possible photo of the #Chicago skyline, @barrybutler9 proves me wrong. Gorgeous! pic.twitter.com/smb8te1iCe
— Robin Baumgarten (@WGNRobin) April 6, 2019
This ant, apparently viewed with a scanning electron microscope, seems to have a friendly face:
顕微鏡で見たアリの顔 pic.twitter.com/bSOu9u4ikh
— chiro (@Chiro_chan_neko) April 7, 2019
Just a minor point of history, the Civil War for all intents and purposes ended at Appomattox, but fighting did continue until one month later, when Jefferson Davis declared an end to the whole affair.
The last Confederate general to surrender a field army was Kirby Smith.
I don’t understand the post from “Molly” with the “restores faith in humanity” comment.
I think the original twitter account has been deleted ,something to do with a parking spot i think it was .
Yes, I tried to follow the post to its source, which is “You Had One Job” and got a notice that the account has been suspended, so we can’t see what that was all about.
In recent weeks, whenever there was a tweet originating with that wonderful account, “You Had One Job,” though I could get to the twitter feed, I could never see the any of the photos. Obviously others could or the tweets wouldn’t have been reposted elsewhere, but I couldn’t see any images on that account. Now it’s been suspended.
What Happened?!
Seems like there are several Twitter accounts with variations on the “you had one job” name/meme. The one Molly RT’d has been suspended; but methinks most of the others are still active.
There’s a video going around the Internet of a man sweeping up rubbish in the street. As he walks past a certain car, the driver throws some litter out of the window, so the man sweeps it up and tips the entire contents of his long handled dustpan back into the car.
Judging by the comments on Molly’s Tweet, I think the video was that one.
You can hear what the phonautograph recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKBWsy5A2bA . The newsreader thought it sounded like “a bee trapped in a jar”, and she and the studio got the giggles – even though the next item was an obituary.
Black dog = post-travel blues?
That heirloom domestic duck from the agriculture show reminds me of Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair editor (and Spy magazine founder who tagged Donald Trump with the sobriquet “short-fingered vulgarian”):
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/graydon-carter-vanity-fair-donald-trump-stepping-down.jpg
I find myself appreciative of such epithets as “short-fingered vulgarian”. Falkner’s “itinerant scoundrel”, though a little old fashioned, is another goody. These will come in handy during the upcoming presidential campaign. 😎
Yeah, that resignation note from the bard of Oxford, MS is a real corker.
I thought it was a portrait Of Mr Trump, but it was of Mr Carter all along! How wrong can one be.
The first recognizable sound recording, by Scott, vibrations scratched on paper, was actually just intended to analyze the appearance of sound graphically and not for playback. Recent interest in early recording led to converting his recordings to digital form on a computer which could be played back. The 10 second bit of Au Clair de la Lune was played for the first time. The first attempt made the recording sound like a woman, but slowed down to what is thought to be the correct speed, it sounds like a man. Probably Scott himself.
The two clips are found on the right side of the Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard-L%C3%A9on_Scott_de_Martinville
Edison, of course, succeeded in putting it all together. It’s interesting to note that he didn’t start from scratch (pun).
Yes, engineering evolves too, albeit not necessarily by natural selection, definitely by selection.
No serious complexity without selection and evolution of some kind.
It supports the empirical observation that the creator is always more complex than his/her creation, and that hence creationism is inevitably false.
The way Edison gets credit for other people’s inventions really needles me.
Me too. Especially the phonograph needle. 😎
F.B. Morse too. He basically stole the idea of the telegraph.
Me too, but why? I think I don’t mind sharp movers picking up an idea and running with it. What I do mind is when they lie and claim it as their own.
Sub
I just read about Bonhoeffer on Wikipedia. He was indeed incredibly courageous. His name should be remembered.
+ 1
Exactly which system did Faulkner envision living in where he was not at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel with two cents? Perhaps he was thinking that the Soviet system with its internal passports would limit itinerancy? Humbug.
Faulkner was a pretentious, self important windbag. He is complaining that while going about his business [as he sees it] of composing poetry & prose in the back room he has to stop that work to do the job he was paid for: dealing with the petty [to him] concerns of customers at the post office counter.
And a fantastic novelist!
He wrote Literature though. His screenplays are succinct & disciplined – his Lit isn’t.
No, I would hardly call his novels succint, but I love most of them.
Raven colours: I have been told (by an Inuk named “Raven”) that in Inuit aesthetics, black is regarded as “all colours” because it can, in cases like raven feathers, produce diffraction colours of all sorts. So there really is a “rainbow in the raven” after all.