It seems as if we just entered September, and now it’s the last day of the month: Monday, September 30, 2019. It’s National Mulled Cider Day (I like it straight, but a bit fermented), as well as Extra Virgin Olive Oil Day, Chewing Gum Day, and International Podcast Day. The rainy weather is turning positively hot today, with a predicted high temperature of 85° F (29° C). We’ve been duckless for nearly three days, so I’m hoping that a few, including Honey, will return to say farewell.
Most important, it’s International Blasphemy Day, celebrating the day in 2005 when a Danish Newspaper published these cartoons (see Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy): note that these cartoons are reproduced in Wikipedia, despite the cowardice of many other outlets, including a Yale University Press book about the cartoons, who refused to show them:
I’m an equal opportunity blasphemer, so here’s some shade on Jesus—one of the best Jesus cartoons ever because it’s TRUE:
Feel free to blaspheme in the comments.
News of the Day: Here’s someone I won’t be voting for (click on screenshot):
Stuff that happened on September 30 includes:
- 1520 – Suleiman the Magnificent is proclaimed sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
- 1791 – The first performance of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute takes place two months before his death.
- 1888 – Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.
- 1927 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.
- 1938 – Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, whereby Germany annexes the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
- 1939 – NBC broadcasts the first televised American football game.
- 1941 – World War II: The Babi Yar massacre comes to an end.
- 1947 – The 1947 World Series is the first to be televised, to include an African-American player, to exceed $2 million in receipts, to see a pinch-hit home run, and to have six umpires on the field.
- 1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel.
- 1962 – James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying racial segregation rules.
- 1972 – Roberto Clemente records the 3,000th and final hit of his career.
Clemente was a very great player, and I saw him play for the Pittsburgh Pirates several times. He also engaged in tons of charity work in the off-season, and in fact was killed in a plane crash in 1972 while bringing aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He was only 38. Here’s an 8-minute video by Major League Baseball recounting his career:
- 1994 – Aldwych tube station (originally Strand Station) of the London Underground closes after eighty-eight years in service.
- 2005 – Controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in a Danish newspaper.
- 2016 – Two paintings with a combined value of $100 million are recovered after having been stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in 2002.
This is an other error in Wikipedia, as the link says this about the two stolen paintings:
In 2002, two paintings were stolen from the museum, Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Two Dutchmen were convicted for the theft to four-and-a-half-year sentences, but the paintings were not immediately recovered. The museum offered a reward of €100,000 for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. The FBI Art Crime Team listed the robbery on their Top Ten Art Crimes list, and estimates the combined value of the paintings at US$30 million. In September 2016, both paintings were discovered by the Guardia di Finanza in Naples, Italy. The two artworks were found in a “relatively good state”, according to the Van Gogh Museum.
These are not terrific specimens of Van Gogh; they are early works before he formed his characteristic style. The $30 million (or $100 million) shows what the Van Gogh name can do to a so-so painting.
Notables born on this day include:
- 1882 – Hans Geiger, German physicist and academic (d. 1945)
- 1915 – Lester Maddox, American businessman and politician, 75th Governor of Georgia (d. 2003)
- 1917 – Buddy Rich, American drummer, bandleader, and actor (d. 1987)
- 1924 – Truman Capote, American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter (d. 1984)
- 1928 – Elie Wiesel, Romanian-American author, academic, and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2016)
- 1935 – Johnny Mathis, American singer and actor
- 1943 – Marilyn McCoo, American singer
- 1961 – Gary Coyne, Australian rugby league player
- 1980 – Martina Hingis, Czechoslovakia-born Swiss tennis player
Those who checked out on September 30 include:
- 1990 – Patrick White, Australian novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)
- 2003 – Robert Kardashian, American lawyer and businessman (b. 1944)
- 2012 – Barry Commoner, American biologist, academic, and politician (b. 1917)
- 2017 – Monty Hall, American game show host (b. 1921)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is on Sarah’s bed, something the cat almost never does with me. I’m very jealous!
Sarah: Are you staying here for the night?Hili: I’ll have to think about it.
Sarah: Zostajesz tu na noc?
Hili: Muszę pomyśleć.
From Amazing Things via @ Pink Alberta. What are these birds?
Via Beth:
From The Purrfect Feline page. It may be organized crime, but is the cat stealing ice???
A tweet from reader Barry, who says, “I love how the cat interferes as a human would: “Hey, stop that! Don’t you be hitting my buddy!”
https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1178022142933377024
Two tweets from Heather Hastie. In this first one, she says the dog jumps like a cat. But I don’t know if a cat would jump this way:
this dog is cooler than i'll ever be
(thepetcollective) pic.twitter.com/VVEiiDu0OM— Humor And Animals (@humorandanimals) September 17, 2019
I’m dreaming that something like this will happen to me when I’m in Antarctica next month:
Please be aware that, under maritime law, your vessel may be subject to safety inspection at any time.
📹: Imgur user RogerG pic.twitter.com/hc54bo84u2
— Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) September 19, 2019
Tweets from Matthew. The first one mocks the “why are railroad tracks X feet wide today?” tweet that took many people in, including me:
A history lesson for people who think that history doesn't matter:
Why were tweets (and text mesages) first set as 140 characters long? Well, back in Roman times, before paper was invented, people sent messages by writing them on the side of a horse. They soon found that the max— Tom Freeman (@SnoozeInBrief) September 28, 2019
Ah, those medieval stonemasons were wags!
⚠️🚨 X-rated post-watershed #medieval image of a rude bishop, All Saints, Hereford. Now visible from the gallery, then invisible in a high dark corner. Imagine the craftsmen tittering knowingly from the pews below during service 😆 pic.twitter.com/NiyCjc54qG
— Posy Hill (@PosyHill1) September 26, 2019
The answer is in the thread. You won’t guess correctly!
Can you guess which animal these eggs came from?? pic.twitter.com/A0g62YWEUT
— Dr Jess French (@Zoologist_Jess) September 28, 2019
Speaking of eggs, Matthew wonders why the lynx didn’t eat the egg:
Check it out! Lynx kill site where the grouse was carrying an egg! pic.twitter.com/U0wRO1gzYD
— Michael Peers (@MJLPeers) September 23, 2019
Regarding the Danish cartoons — since images of the prophet are not allowed, I presume that no one knows what he looked like. Therefore how can anyone be offended by the cartoons? They could be images of anyone!
Please enlighten me!
There is nothing in the Qur’an forbidding images of living beings, only in the Hadiths – the Hadiths vary according to which branch of the cult one is referring to. For example in Iran there’s a lot of ‘graven images’ today including fake postcards of Mo up for sale & nobody bats an eyelid.
Muhammad is ‘said’ to have sat for a portrait commissioned by the king of the Sasanian empire* Kavadh II – presumably prior to Mo conquering that Empire. I don’t know if it is ‘said’ that this image survives down to today. Trying to find out the truth of such claims is impossible as Islam has been even busier than the Christians in retrofitting events into their canon. One can see this on Wiki today to such an extent as I wouldn’t trust it as an info source re Islam.
That said it isn’t completely true that there’s no Mo images in Islam, but it is highly likely they are all after the fact, idealised & not created as a portrait using the living subject. Most of these, but not all, have a veiled face or are just an outline of Mo or a representational flame. Pics of Mo’s face are nearly all in books & not on open display – they are presumably all equally as realistic as those of the mythical Jesus.
* Present day Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatif, Qatar, UAE, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Armenia, Georgia, Republic of Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Yemen & Pakistan
Speaking of baseball, some younger viewers might wonder how could the World Series start at this time. More than a few years ago there were no endless playoffs. The teams with the best record in the National League and American League would go to the World Series. The Yankees would win and everyone goes home. Just kidding.
I have to congratulate you Americans for your flawless record in the World Series. The rest of the world doesn’t seem to put up much of a fight.
Chalk it up to “American exceptionalism,” mate. 🙂
We don’t care. We have our own sports at which we are unbeatable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyQBSMeIhM
mainly because no other nationality is moronic enough to try it.
Looks like lotsa “agony of defeat,” not much “thrill of victory.”
They have ambulances and paramedic crews at the bottom of the hill – people mash themselves up pretty badly every time.
…And notice the almost total absence of female contestants. I think that says a lot about the whole shebang. 🙂 Blokes showing off by snapping their spines – it’s a popular British pastime.
No septuagenarians either. 😎
I don’t think people who play competitive cheese-rolling live that long…
No “Old-Timers’ Day” games, huh?
Coming from a country that venerates cheese, I feel it is a crime to treat one that way. But maybe it is just bad cheese they make there?
Bollocks Pierluiig – you are a PhD so why don’t you research before comparing your Swiss veneration of cheese with my country – the UK? I am extremely annoyed by your off hand remark.
It is a “Double Gloucester” 9lb round cheese encased in wood that is rolled down Cooper’s Hill – the winner of the race gets to take it home. This hill run dates back 200 years & it used to be just for people from the local village, for whom that sizeable amount of cheese was a great prize.
Double Gloucester in the round form is the traditional version [non-commercial] & it has been made in Gloucestershire since the 16th Century – it has a deep yellow colour due to the breed of cow eating the Lady’s Bedstraw flower [Galium verum.] It is a highly valued firm & savoury cheese.
While Switzerland more-or-less sat out WWII the UK went bankrupt & lost nearly everything [We had food rationing until MIDNIGHT 4th JULY 1954!] – so to feed everyone here during WWII the government stupidly ‘rationalised’ & centralised the dairy industry to increase production & we lost a lot of small producers who were given the choice of going out of business or conforming to the production of one type of hard ‘government cheese.’
Since the ’50s we have built up our cheese cottage industry & today we have around double the number of named cheeses as the Swiss. High quality cheeses.
Go & sneer at some other nation mate.
P.S. I’m Irish born & I have no real idea why I’m defending Britain, but I live here & they have me brainwashed I guess.
@Pierluigi Looking back on my comment, I now think I overreacted & I apologise! i.e. I’m sorry my old cuckoo clock – enjoy your fondue mixed bathing & exciting Swiss night life.
Yes, the world has been quite small in baseball, although we have imported many players from various close by countries. Also, there are a couple of teams from a country just north of here.
Japan plays a pretty fair brand of the American pastime, too.
I’ve often heard it said by some that the WS should at least involve the Japanese leagues somehow, which are apparently also very good. (I’m no baseball fan, just interested in international stuff.)
On the other hand, the US (well, plus Toronto) leagues are full of Dominicans and Cubans and Mexicans and so on, so …
That was the case in ’47, with the Yankees prevailing in a “subway series” against the Brooklyn Dodgers (which is the only team it could have been, since, as the OP states, there was a black ballplayer on the field).
Loved the Jesus cartoon – spot on!
Yeah, so simple, so true. What’s going on with believers? I doubt we’ll ever know.
Wasn’t it an eskimo (inuit) who killed a missionary, because he taught him that those ignorant are innocent and blessed, and going to heavens, but those in the know, having learned about the gospels, but disbelieving, would go to hell?
Why didn’t you shut up? I was going to heaven and now you condemned me to hell!
“The answer is in the thread.” Uh, where’s that? Ditto for the tweet from Heather. I don’t see anything like that.
They’re snail eggs. It does mention it in the thread.
THE YELLOW/GREEN EGGS: The answer is in the Twitter thread the third comment down [I won’t say here as people might want to guess the answer]
I don’t know what you mean by this John, the two HH tweets nor JAC commentary on them, do not mention any thread.
I don’t seeit in the tgread, ut a guess: great tinamou?
The d*g springing through the gate was demonstrating Parkour for the Course.
I was reading a book on the colonization of North America that quoted an Indian (Huron or Algonquin) as saying something like “Why would a God make so many rules that we can’t follow?”
I just saw this on twitter from the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Hilariously stupid, lame, self pitying, vicious, an expression of a death sentence, pathetic, and illogical and much more…
https://twitter.com/pid_gov/status/1177615563843129353?s=20
That is some grand-scale religious tone-policing.
And he forgot to append the tweet with ‘otherwise we may well kill you in fanatical, ochlocratic fashion’.
+1
He should have stuck to cricket.
Then he could have flashed outside his off stump, tickled one into the slips, or started his run-up with two short legs and one behind, and no-one would have batted an eyelid.
Happy New Year, boychick.
Not entirely sure how I feel about a day celebrating the posting of the Danish cartoons. I admire the idea of a national day celebrating the right to criticise religion, but something about tying it to this one specific instance of blasphemy makes me uneasy.
I remember the Nautilus. It “…was decommissioned in 1980 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982. The submarine has been preserved as a museum ship at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut, where the vessel receives around 250,000 visitors per year.”
That carving is wood, not stone. And I use the word “wood” advisedly…
Where are those lovely birds??? That might give a clue. If in the US, probably indigo buntings, but it would be nice to have a close up.
I think you have it correctly.
My guess as well, but not sure.
CLUES: It’s the Himalayas – one species with bright blue males. They fly & hang around in substantial flocks in the hundreds. Insectivores. The first letter of their name is a letter of the alphabet as are all the other letters. 🙂
Looks like a kind of Thrush?
It is indeed family Turdidae, genus Grandala.
Re. Lester Maddox, I was fascinated when I came across this interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-8WNL5bspg
It’s presumably iconic – I’d never seen it, nor heard of Maddox, or Jim Brown for that matter, before.
Fascinating to hear that racists and their apologists use the same rhetorical tactics whatever the era.
Randy Newman wrote a song inspired by this show. The redneck narrator of his tune is so clueless he takes Dick Cavett to be “a smart-ass New York Jew”:
I’m not surprised it inspired Randy Newman to write(quite an angry song too). It’s a riveting interview.
I was impressed by Jim Brown’s conduct throughout; he served up a lesson in how to persuade an audience through sheer dignity and moral presence. It’s an approach I wish the modern, progressive left would take on-board a little.
Disappointed to discover that Brown’s now a Trump supporter, but what can you do? People are funny creatures.
Jim Brown was the greatest running back in NFL history. (But then, I’m biased; I grew up a Cleveland Browns fan, and got to see Brown play when I was a kid.) Brown retired at the peak of his athletic career to make Hollywood movies. He was one of the original Dirty Dozen.
Brown had a reputation for militancy in those days. He was one of the professional athletes (along with Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and others) who stood up in support of Muhammad Ali after the latter was stripped of his title and denied a boxing license for refusing draft induction during the Vietnam War.
No one was more surprised than I to find Brown in Donald Trump’s Oval Office with Kanye West. But Brown always pushed a message of black economic empowerment — he founded the Black Industrial and Economic Union all the way back in his playing days — so maybe that was his justification. I suspect he regrets his participation in that fiasco now.
Okay, I didn’t know that – I’d been led to believe that was an outright supporter of Trump’s as opposed to someone who simply went to the WH.
On his brilliance as a player, well I’ll take your word for it. I cannot make head nor tails of the NFL and American football in general, and have absolutely no conception of what a good player would be.
Back in those days Brown also had a reputation for beating up women he went out with. Maybe not well known because that stuff did not make the news so much back then.
I’m surprised he did not knock that Maddox out on the TV show. Would have been a nice touch.
“…through sheer dignity and moral presence.” Love that description.
And guess what, it applied to Barack and Michelle Obama. What a pity much of their experience…hmmm…it’s hard to say in a word…I’ll just summarize, everything Trump and his Admin. stands for is the antithesis of dignity and morality…the antithesis of Obama’s Presidency. (I have a lot of complaints about BO, don’t get me wrong, but now the comparison is beyond ludicrous.) One of the most depressing aspects of Trump’s executive orders are simple Obama revenge shit. Going after all his climate initiatives, Paris, the Iran dealy, and now opening new “Butteremails” investigations, oh the corruption continues and ripens. It’s so fucking apparent though. Hopefully (and polls are trending this way) the majority of Americans aren’t stone-dumb to this fuckery.
I very much appreciate your including the great Roberto Clemente today. He was my boyhood hero (along with Jean Beliveau). Turns out that I chose well, even if by accident, for Clemente’s character was at least as elevated as his athletic ability. A few years ago, I was on a baseball panel in Pittsburgh with some Pirates who had been Clemente’s team-mates. They all venerated him as both man and player.
I ALWAYS sat in the right field seats at Three Rivers Stadium to watch the great one play. Best childhood memory was getting his autograph, I think I was the happiest 11 year old on the planet!
The first of those Mohammmeds remind me of Captain Haddock from Tintin …
I can understand as to why Dr Coyne did not
include Mr James Dean upon the check – out –
on – this – date registry: Mr Dean is likely
not the throb of Dr Coyne’s heart as he soooo
was o’this then seven – year – old !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dean
O my ! We Girls o’th’ Countryside ? !
We thought, then, this man — Mr Dean — just
The Loveliest Specimen of Male Pulchritude !
Yeah: I was only seven years old when His Darlingest
was killed. Ya’ think I was n’t noticin’
at that age ? Wull then, think a g a i n !
Blue
I’m sure it just skipped Jerry’s searching efforts as he’s an uber-busy man. But for such a beautiful and talented man to die in a car at 24. Complete and utter tragedy. Thanks for bringing it to light Blue.
You just called Hili “the cat”
There might be your first clue
Try “light of my life”
Amy Klobuchar’s anaticide was inadvertent. The bird “appeared to perish.” 🙂
And she promised not to spend 200+ days on the golf course. “This is good news for the American people and ducks,” she added.
I’d vote for her!
cr
Right on!
Gotta vote for whomever Democrats nominate, simple as that. Really, it’s as simple as that. And I predict the “D” voters who took a break in 2016 won’t make the same mistake in 2020.
Yes, I agree 100%, the kill was really accidental and she does not only own up to jt, and regrets it, but undertook measures (not playing golf) to prevent such accidents from occurring again.
She should be recommended for her honesty and determination to prevent recurrence.
Jerry, you would vote for her, if she became the candidate, would you?