It’s the weekend, and Sabbath for all Jewish humans and animals (like my ducks): it’s July 25, 2020, and National Hot Fudge Sundae Day. May I recommend Margie’s Candies in Chicago (menu here)? Here’s their famous turtle sundae, which comes with a generous pour-your-own pitcher of their luscious homemade hot fudge. Composition: “two scoops of ice cream (flavors of your choice), caramel, a side of fudge, whipped cream, a wafer cookie, peanuts, a cherry, and a turtle (the candy) on top.”
It’s also National Culinarians Day, National Wine and Cheese Day, and National Day of the American Cowboy. It’s also the 100th birthday of Rosalind Franklin (she died of cancer in 1958); Matthew has promised us a short piece on her and her work for later today.
News of the Day: Some good news: yesterday, by a 5-4 vote (with Roberts again joining the liberals), the Supreme Court rejected the application of a Nevada church to be exempt from pandemic restrictions and attendance limits. Hang in there, RBG!
According to CNN, the pandemic has driven ice cream sales up and deodorant and soap sales down, meaning people are getting fat and smelly. The good news is that few people are nearby to see the increased girth or sniff the odiferous bodies.
Big news: a line of undergarments called “Namastay put” has been ditched after an offended woman said that the name was cultural appropriation. But the offended one wasn’t placated, for the company neither acknowledges nor apologized for its transgression. These days, it’s not enough to get what you want; you must also humiliate your enemy.
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 145,376, an increase of about 1100 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 637,159, an increase of about 4000 deaths from yesterday.
Stuff that happened on July 25 includes:
- 1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.
- 1788 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550).
- 1797 – Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).
- 1853 – Joaquin Murrieta, the famous California bandit known as the “Robin Hood of El Dorado”, is killed.
- 1898 – In the Puerto Rican Campaign, the United States seizes Puerto Rico from Spain.
- 1909 – Louis Blériot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from Calais to Dover, England, United Kingdom in 37 minutes.
Here are two photos from Wikipedia: Blériot starting the engines and then landing in Dover:
- 1956 – Forty-five miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog and sinks the next day, killing 51.
A photo from Wikipedia, captioned “Harry Trask’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Andrea Doria minutes before she sank.”
- 1965 – Bob Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music.
Here’s the moment in which he “went electric”. You can hear the boos and objections:
- 1976 – Viking program: Viking 1 takes the famous Face on Mars photo.
Of course you’ll want to see that photo, which excited everyone (aliens!), but later photos (below) showed that it was an artifact of poor resolution. There is no “face”:
- 1978 – Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF.
Here’s Brown then and now (she’s 42 today):
- 1984 – Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
- 2000 – Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashes at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 people.
- 2010 – WikiLeaks publishes classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history.
- 2019 – National extreme heat records set this day in the UK, Belgium and Germany during the July 2019 European heat wave.
Here are the maximum temperatures in Europe (Celsius) on July 25 of last year. Look at Northern France!
Notables born on this day include two great artists:
- 1844 – Thomas Eakins, American painter, sculptor, and photographer (d. 1916)
Here’s Eakins’s “The Agnew Clinic” (1889):
- 1870 – Maxfield Parrish, American painter and illustrator (d. 1966)
I love Parrish. Here’s a great illustration for Collier’s: “The Lantern Bearers”:
- 1894 – Walter Brennan, American actor (d. 1974)
- 1902 – Eric Hoffer, American philosopher and author (d. 1983)
- 1906 – Johnny Hodges, American saxophonist and clarinet player (d. 1970)
- 1920 – Rosalind Franklin, English biophysicist, chemist, and academic (d. 1958) [see above]
- 1935 – Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi Arabian businessman (d. 2017)
- 1948 – Steve Goodman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1984)
Here’s my favorite Steve Goodman song (written by Mike Smith), “The Dutchman”:
- 1954 – Walter Payton, American football player and race car driver (d. 1999)
Those who went to God on July 25 were few, and include these two:
- 1834 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English philosopher, poet, and critic (b. 1772)
- 2008 – Randy Pausch, American computer scientist and educator (b. 1960)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains Hili’s exchange with Andrzej:
Hili asks a question about the sense/meaning of doing one thing instead of something else. It’s a question equally “deep” as the question, “What’s the meaning of life?” As there is no good answer to such questions, Andrzej’s answer is another way of saying: “Give me a break!”
Hili: What is the sense of sitting in this place and not in any other?A: It depends on whether you look at this question from a philosophical perspective or a theological one.
Hili: Jaki jest sens siedzenia w tym miejscu, a nie w innym?Ja: To zależy, czy spojrzymy na tę kwestię z filozoficznego punktu widzenia, czy z teologicznego.
From Facebook. Get it?
The Great Agnostic had a whiskey named after him! Note the Ingersollian prose on the label (h/t: Gregory James): Given that Ingersoll had publicly pronounced against the production and consumption of whiskey, this label is shrouded in mystery.
A meme from reader Bruce:
I tweeted, but the original official Olympics-site tweet was deleted. Matthew sent me both a screenshot of what they took down and Joanne Bell’s righteously angry tweet.
The Olympics account deleted their tweet, but I affix a screenshot. https://t.co/xWxNcibO9N pic.twitter.com/9E0qT0dGyh
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 24, 2020
I hadn’t heard Trump talking about his cognition test (he did FANTASTIC, of course), but here’s Sarah Cooper mouthing his words:
How to person woman man camera tv (with captions) pic.twitter.com/YP8USHTxaX
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) July 24, 2020
From Simon, a tweet about writing new academic courses. He noted, “My postdoc advisor taught gross anatomy to med students. Always said year to year changes were essentially zero.”
Preparing a new course Vs. giving the same course for 20 years pic.twitter.com/c8HwYhVoGa
— Oded Rechavi 🦉 (@OdedRechavi) July 24, 2020
From reader Barry, who said, “How is this not child abuse?” Note, it is, but it’s in the name of JEEEBUS.
https://twitter.com/ForumAtheist/status/1286594323207913475
Tweets from Matthew. (Note: I am not vouching for the veracity of the assertion below.)
The green area has more water than the red area https://t.co/WSaFDY7Gic #maps pic.twitter.com/zWOyrd6zge
— Wonderful Maps (@wonderfulmaps) July 24, 2020
I love this irascible moose! Anyone with a mower like that deserves to have it stomped by a moose.
https://twitter.com/naturelslit/status/1286551421333118976?s=11
This is a brilliant insight:
https://twitter.com/imtheq/status/1286026505840099332?s=11
Duckling season’s a little late in Saskatchewan:
Duckling season continue 🙂 pic.twitter.com/fKgaEKnVtk
— Janet Hill (@Saskajanet) July 24, 2020
And some Trump-mocking to finish:
Trump aces the cognitive test, by Barry Blitt in @NewYorker pic.twitter.com/HWzYQb4owu
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) July 24, 2020
Good day to you all! Sorry for the lack of kitten updates. My kitten is still in “quarantine” in one of the rooms of my house, as his nasal infection hasn’t completely cleared up and roundworm was found in his stool sample. He has two more days of roundworm treatments to go and, once those are done, I’m going to let him into the house proper.
I’m growing increasingly concerned about how my older cat will handle meeting the kitten. Over the first two or three days after I brought the kitten into the house, my older cat expressed mere curiosity, and surprisingly little at that, but he seems to be growing angrier. He hissed at the door to the kitten’s old room two days ago. Last night, after I moved the kitten to a room upstairs, my older cat sniffed around the original quarantine room in the basement and then looked at me and gave me a growl and a hiss before walking away. I can only remember a couple of times over the years when my older cat has hissed, and both were at adult stray cats who came to the deck window. He had never hissed at me before last night; in fact, he rarely vocalizes at all. So, it seems he’s becoming increasingly annoyed by the kitten’s presence, and I’m worried that keeping the kitten in quarantine for two more days will only make their introduction less likely to be successful, though there’s nothing I can do about the timing.
If anyone has any advice on how to handle the current situation, please let me know! As I said, I can’t let the kitten out of quarantine until he finishes his roundworm treatment, which will be two days from now. I’m just worried that the chances of my older cat accepting him are growing slimmer as the days pass.
This has been your kitten update. Be well and stay safe!
My experience had been that kittens roll well with the hostility. They seem to say to the offended one “see me, I’m cute and can run and jump fast & etc.” and pretty soon (couple days to a week) they’re good friends. I’ve also found the less interference on my part, the easier it is for them.
Great times are ahead for you. Have fun.
Thanks, boudiccadylis! I hope you’re right. I’m worried that my older cat feels like his territory is being taken over. I also have concerns about the kitten’s claws, as my older cat was declawed (not by me!). I hope he doesn’t feel threatened, but I don’t think he will because he’s a big ol’ guy and the kitten is about ten weeks old.
Hopefully, before you know it they’ll be snuggled up like Szaron and Kulka!
#ThoughtsAndPrayers 😛
Re Svetlana Savitskaya , first woman to walk in space: very foolishly, NASA announced several weeks in advance the crew and schedule for the Space Shuttle flight that would see Sally Ride become the first woman to make two trips to space, and Kathy Sullivan become the first woman to conduct a spacewalk. Ride and Sullivan were bitterly disappointed, and correctly predicted that the USSR would quickly relaunch Savitskaya to achieve both records before they could.
The meme from Bruce reminded me of the following joke:
John: Mum, I don’t want to go to school today.
Mother: You say that every day, but you still have to go!
John: But I’ve got a headache, and my tummy hurts.
Mother: You say that every day, too. You still have to go!
John: But WHY do I have to go, mum?
Mother: Because you’re the head teacher, John!
Re extreme temperature – Scotland is cooool.
Re Loch Ness – more than 750 feet deep.
I must have pareidolia bad. I still see a face on that Martian mesa.
If’n you like The Lantern Bearers & you’re ever here in New Britain, Ct, stop by the Museum of American Art & see the original & more.
My first and favorite Steve Goodman song is “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”.
Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550).
Love this symphony. I’m always struck by how Mozart’s late symphonies merge almost imperceptibly into Beethoven’s early ones. Like passing a baton.
Not quite. Early Beethoven’s style is much closer to Haydn than the Moz. Anyway I think No. 38 is one up on No. 40.
His 37th is unreal.
I can’t hear mention of the Andrea Doria without thinking of that Seinfeld episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M9b8zZtoPQ
I looked at the twitter thread regarding freshwater in Loch Ness vs England and Wales. Several people dispute the assertion in the image, suggesting that it is only true if you ignore water in rivers in England and Wales, taking only lakes. Of course, that’s where most of the water is. There aren’t any very big lakes in England and Wales, AFAIK.
It appears to be the case that Loch Ness contains more water than all of the lakes in England and Wales combined: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-50510670
Hm. Maybe. I would like to see some quantitative evidence. There are a lot of lakes in England and Wales, if you include artificial reservoirs.
But if Loch Ness is called upon to top up shortages elsewhere, where will Nessie have room to swim?
The Scottish government makes the same claim, but is presumably keeping its plans for Nessie a secret in case it needs to unleash her as part of the independence campaign: https://www.environment.gov.scot/our-environment/water/scotland-s-freshwater/
Thanks for the Steve Goodman and the Dutchman clip. Beautiful!
Re: Here’s Eakins’s “The Agnew Clinic,”
Put on an effing mask!
Speaking of Steve Goodman, after John Prine died from COVID-19 a little while back, I went on a Prine listening binge. Came across a recording of a live performance where he tells the story of how he got discovered.
Kris Kristofferson was playing a week-long gig in Chicago. Steve Goodman had hired on to open for him. Every night, backstage after the show, Kristofferson would tell Goodman how great he was, and every night, Goodman would tell him, if you think I’m good, you should go see my good buddy John Prine.
Finally, on Kristofferson’s last night in town, Goodman brought him over to the tiny club across town where Prine was playing. The joint had closed for the night already, but they pulled a couple chairs off from atop a table so Goodman and Kristofferson could sit down. Prine took his guitar back out of its case and played three tunes.
After hearing them, Krisstofferson told Goodman and Prine they had to come with him to his next gig in New York (playing at The Bitter End, I think). Within 24 hours of arriving in Manhattan, both Goodman and Prine had recording contracts of their own.
Prine said of Goodman and Kristofferson, not only were they crucial to his career, they were two of the nicest, most decent fellas he’d ever met.
Caramba! The M/S Stockholm is yet extant! I had no idea. And what a career she’s had, per Wikipedia.
I well remember learning of the collision with the Andrea Doria at the time, particularly the LIFE magazine piece about it. (At age 6, I was into boats, you see.)
By 10yrs later my interests had shifted to cars, and it was probably a couple decades after that that I learned that the Chrysler Norseman show car was on the Andrea Doria en route back from Ghia, who had built it for Chrysler. It’s a great pity since the Norseman was quite handsome, particularly for Chrysler at that time. Designed by then-freshly-ex-Packard stylist Dick Teague, it was a handsome fastback that just might have re-kindled interest in fastbacks. The roofline is keenly similar to the AMC Marlin that he also designed about a decade later.
Just read the three dissenting opinions in the Calvary Chapel case, complaining that Nevada churches are being treated more stringently than Nevada casinos. They come across like speeches from the old Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, or like Harold Hill railing against shooting pool in The Music Man.
Did you pick up on the Keyser Soze reference in the Sarah Cooper video? Brilliant!
I think I was getting there. The problem is I saw an analysis somewhere,and they pointed out he looks like he listed the objects in a part of his view.
His psychologist niece, who says he is so multiply afflicted that she can’t easily diagnose him except to say the he is a ‘not high functioning sociopath’ (too many enablers), claims he talks about the dementia test as if he failed it. [Colbert Show]
Worst Lying US President Ever (TM).
When I heard Trump say that on the news I knew IMMEDIATELY Sarah would do one of her bits on it.
Ta -DAH!
I so love that woman.
Its getting so I can’t listen to him without thinking: “Is this Sarah-worthy?”
“How’d she put this one together?”
Biden should EMPLOY her.
D.
“How’d she put this one together?”
I love her set ups. Often a second character asking questions, or just reacting. Also, the gestures she throws in to reveal tRump’s inner world. What a treasure she is!