Yes, it’s Friday, October 11, and National Sausage Pizza Day. (My view is that, among American pizzas, the Chicago deep-dish sausage pizza at Uno’s or Malnati’s, with homemade sausage and fresh garlic, is the best.) Try one!:
It’s also Southern Food Heritage Day, International Day of the Girl Child, National Coming Out Day, General Pulaski Memorial Day (an American holiday for a Polish hero of the American Revolution), and Kraken Day (aka “Myths and Legends” Day).
In the last two days, the Nobel Prizes were awarded for literature and for peace. In literature, the prize for last year (which was postponed) went to Olga Tokarczuk, and for this year to Peter Handke. Handke’s prize was controversial because he was a fan of the war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, and delivered a eulogy at his funeral. Tokarczuk won last year’s Booker Prize for her vignette novel Flights, which I must read.
This year’s Peace Prize, announced this morning, went to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for helping end his nation’s two-decade war with Eritrea.
Stuff that happened on October 11 includes:
- 1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest university, is inaugurated in Sydney.
- 1906 – San Francisco sparks a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Japan by ordering segregated schools for Japanese students.
- 1910 – Piloted by Arch Hoxsey, Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane.
And here’s a 4-minute Library of Congress video of that flight, taken the year after Roosevelt finished his second term as President. He was always a brave man, and in this case the pilot even does stunts, swooping down toward the ground.
- 1972 – A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam.
- 1976 – George Washington is posthumously promoted to the grade of General of the Armies. [JAC: The promotion took effect on July 4, 1976—our 200th anniversary.]
- 1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
- 1991 – Prof. Anita Hill delivers her televised testimony concerning sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination
Notables born on this day include:
- 1844 – Henry J. Heinz, American businessman, founded the H. J. Heinz Company (d. 1919)
The first Heinz “Tomato Catsup” was bottled in 1876, and the name was changed (as on the post-1948 bottle below) to “Ketchup”, as it remains today. Heinz also remains the best commercial ketchup:
More people born on this day:
- 1884 – Eleanor Roosevelt, American humanitarian and politician, 39th First Lady of the United States (d. 1962)
- 1905 – Fred Trump, American real estate entrepreneur (d. 1999)
Yes, that’s the Donald’s father:
- 1918 – Jerome Robbins, American director, producer, and choreographer (d. 1998)
- 1946 – Daryl Hall, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
- 1968 – Jane Krakowski, American actress and singer
- 1989 – Michelle Wie, American golfer
Daryl Hall is an excellent singer and songwriter, and also collects cowboy boots. He co-wrote, with John Oates and Sara Hall, the song “You Make my Dreams“, which, because of its infectious beat, I consider the best rock song ever to dance to. Here’s a smoking version from “Live at Daryl’s House”, with great accompaniment and organ solos by Booker T. Jones and lead vocals by Mayer Hawthorne. This proves that old dudes can still rock.
Those who passed on on October 11 include:
- 1779 – Casimir Pulaski, Polish-American general (b. 1745)
- 1809 – Meriwether Lewis, American captain, explorer, and politician, 2nd Governor of Louisiana Territory (b. 1774)
- 1940 – Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician and physicist (b. 1860)
- 1961 – Chico Marx, American comedian (b. 1887)
- 1963 – Jean Cocteau, French author, poet, and playwright (b. 1889)
- 1965 – Dorothea Lange, American photographer and journalist (b. 1895)
- 1991 – Redd Foxx, American actor and comedian (b. 1922)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, all is well for Hili:
A: What is civilization?Hili: When a satiated cat is going on a lazy hunt.
Ja: Co to jest cywilizacja?
Hili: Kiedy syty kot idzie na leniwe polowanie.
From the ICanHasCheezburger? site:
Sent by reader Ken:
From Stash Krod:
A tweet from Pinker, which I’ll put up for both my self-aggrandizement and because Steve has a theory (which is his) on why Nature published the egregious piece by Nathaniel Comfort that I criticized yesterday:
Unlike past anti-scientism rants in lit/cult/pol mags, this is in Nature. Why? Sci eds often outsource commentary on sci & soc to the clique of historians of sci, who historicize everything & hate sci's claim to objectivity & realism. https://t.co/1DYq8kuG4R @Evolutionistrue
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) October 10, 2019
Two tweets from Heather Hastie. Cats and mirrors are often big fun.
Fucking Keith, he's only been to the gym once.
📹: https://t.co/NkDgw7NVjI pic.twitter.com/cUaTTl8qaK
— Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) September 30, 2019
A good response to a pro-Trumper:
like fish in a barrel pic.twitter.com/4Tvqg4N30X
— shauna (@goldengateblond) September 29, 2019
Tweets from Matthew. If you follow the links, you can track an individual bird. Here’s a stalwart heron:
Harper, an adult female Great Blue Heron tagged with a GPS transmitter, flew nonstop 38.6 hours over open ocean on her southern migration. Follow her on https://t.co/s879m2WvjL. Instructions: https://t.co/ox6slvrxqu. pic.twitter.com/nS1EJaku2R
— Judy Freshwater Polak (@jfpolak) October 9, 2019
More migration: this is a LOT of butterflies:
In case you missed it…
This radar image with a green, yellow, and red wave washing across Oklahoma captures the mass migration of Monarch butterflies and dragonflies being carried by a north wind behind a cold front passing through central Oklahoma on October 5. pic.twitter.com/dnqhBNxtBx
— National Weather Service (@NWS) October 10, 2019
This must be an unusual landing for a toad since the poster singled it out:
Reviewing toad jumping videos recorded in class yesterday, check out this landing! There's definitely a brief handstand happening here. pic.twitter.com/56lxgckVH0
— Dr. Emily Kane (@KaneLabUL) October 10, 2019
From Swift: “Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite them,
and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.”
A larva within a larva: Microplitis demolitor parasitoid inside its host. Look closely to see the head of the parasitoid. pic.twitter.com/bBWzTKU5Zt
— Jena Ann Johnson (@JenaAnnJohnson) October 9, 2019
I’d feel the same way Dr. Nicholls would, believe me!
AWESOME CAREER-WIN MOMENT! This is a 99 million year old dinosaur feather preserved in amber… IN MY RUDDY HAND 😱🤓🦖@OriginalGCG @NatSciNMS pic.twitter.com/jC1YmxFNkF
— Dr Emma Louise Nicholls (@Dr_EmmaNicholls) October 9, 2019
Wow, I’d never seen Trump’s dad. He looks like a very bad taxidermy job.
“Would you buy a used car (lot) from this man?”
If I ever somehow got to travel back in time and meet a young Fred Trump I think I would have a MORAL DUTY to bump him off.
HA! Kinda like that dude in Stephen King’s Dead Zone.
The death of Meriwether Lewis is covered at Wikipedia. You decide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meriwether_Lewis
Not suicide then.
Didn’t read that bit closely enough. That’s just a claim from a now lost letter.
As you were.
I think it’s an open question that we may never know. Jefferson and others at the time seem to believe the suicide idea. So did Ambrose in his book and he also covered all the problems Lewis was having mentally. Behaving strangely and not able to finish his writings from the trip. It was a sad ending to a great explorer.
The video of Roosevelt taking an airplane ride in 1910 reminds me of a picture my grandfather always had hanging in his airport office years ago. It was a photo, around 1910 of Lincoln Beachey sitting in his plane. Early pioneer in aviation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Beachey
Cool guy. Died, as he lived, in a plane doing a stunt.
The Live at Daryl’s House videos have some real gems. Check out the session with Joe Walsh performing Life’s Been Good for some extra rocking.
Pinker criticizes Comfort for historicizing everything. I must have missed something in my many decades of studying history that until right now I have never come across the term “historicize.” I had to look up its meaning. At Dictionary.com the word is defined as “to interpret something as a product of historical development.” Assuming that Comfort historicizes everything, what is inherently wrong with that since, in particular, this is what historians do? Perhaps unintentionally, Pinker can give the reader of the tweet the impression that those who historicize, i.e., historians, somehow reject objectivity and realism in the areas of science. This, of course, is untrue for most historians and I cannot believe that Pinker intended to say this since he asserted that Comfort belongs to a clique, but by making the connection between historicizing and the rejection of objectivity and realism, he does a disservice to historians. In other words, the tweet is poorly worded.
I think Pinker is using historicize more specifically than that. From the Wikipedia entry on Historicism:
“The approach varies from individualist theories of knowledge such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of traditions.”
“many post-structuralists have used historicism to describe the opinion that all questions must be settled within the cultural and social context in which they are raised.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism
The late Karl Popper wrote a book in 1957 called ‘The Poverty of Historicism’. It was dedicated: “In memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.”
That’s what historicism is all about. The book’s still quite a good read, by the way.
Since it seems that historicism has its foundations in German philosophy, I will quote here from the German Wikipedia on this term:
“Historicism is a term for approaches to the philosophy of history according to which historical processes are clearly defined and predictable by social science laws. Such positions in modernity can be traced back to Hegel and historical materialism. (Marx/Engels) In addition to Marxist and Neo-Marxist theorists, Benedetto Croce is particularly worthy of mention.
In Karl Popper’s writings on social theory, historicism is a misbelief that entails the danger of a closed world view and a manipulation of social processes towards an allegedly scientifically established future.”
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historizismus
Sauce on the top of pizza? What kind of sorcery is this?
Over very much of Africa including Ethiopian Ahmed Ali:
” Abiy is a devout Evangelical Pentecostal
Christian of the Full Gospel Believers’
Church. ” from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiy_Ahmed and
of about a year ago thus:
http://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/11/24/god-wants-ethiopians-to-prosper so, likely, we shall all be hearing
about how .more. religion causes .more. peace
to break out.
Here, too, this next presidential election cycle.
Blue
However as re some other, more fortunate
girls and women than are Africa’s ones,
there is, then, Ms Warren’s one – liner
that I am thinking she may ‘ve had practiced
and readied vis – à – vis … …
her Trumpian opponent:
http://www.newser.com/story/281603/warrens-gay-marriage-line-goes-viral.html.
Blue
Shep Smith has suddenly stepped down from Fox News almost immediately after AG Barr paid Rupert Murdoch a visit. Smith has been known to make the occasional criticism of the party leader and is therefore no longer fit for state TV.
I was wondering how long he’d last. Longer than I expected.
I have a policy, which is becoming increasingly difficult to follow, of not buying products marketed on the basis of what they don’t contain. I had no idea, however, that the practice went back so far — i.e. the Ketchup ‘free of benzoate of soda’!
I noticed a label the other day that said, no XYZ, where XYZ was some acronym I can’t recall. Neither did I have any idea what it was. I wondered if the producers actually had something important to show us, or if they just wanted to show they were watching out for nasties for us.
They seem to stopped doing this more recently, but avocados used to be proudly labelled ‘No Cholesterol’! Being of plant origin, this was not surprising. I’m glad they’ve stopped using that label, so that I can now buy without compromising my principles!
Yes. I was glad to see there’s no gluten in water.
There used to be a snack stall at Adelaide Airport that advertised ‘organic water’! I regret that I did not get a photograph of it. My thoughts about ‘organic water’ tend toward the possibility that it would be highly contaminated and perhaps a good source of Escherichia coli or other pathogenic bacteria?
C. botulinum is made with carbon, so it could be found there too. Chlorine is not made of carbon, so we don’t need no stinkin’ chlorine.
And we certainly don’t want any ‘chemicals’ in water (albeit that water is dihydro-monoxide’). Worth checking out that website if you’re not already familiar with it!
Stay safe out there. 😎
With much of Africa rabidly evangelically
christian including this day’s Ethiopian
Nobel Peace Prize winner as well as muslim,
in my opinion ( especially IF I were, there
as well as within very many other joints,
pregnant and did not want to be ), a trio
of Nobel prize winners .should have been.
thus before all of ’em died:
for chemistry, it should ‘ve gone to this man =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Djerassi
and for PEACE across the GLOBE, to these TWO women =
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger and
( Ms Sanger’s sponsor ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_McCormick
because, BAR NONE, thus:
THE GREATEST INVENTION
OVER ALL of TIME
OVER ALL of THE WORLD is … …
… … chemical birth control.
UNTIL it, girls and women from the ages of their menarche through full – on menopause were
only … … sentenced. Unlike … … any other of the World’s individual human beings. Ever.
Blue