It’s Sunday, July 26, 2020, and we slowly wend our way towards August. Make my bed soon, for I’m weary wi’ hunting and fain wald lie down.
It’s National Bagelfest, though there’s not much to celebrate in the U.S. since decent bagels are rarer than truths from the mouth of Trump. Abjure those donut-shaped pillows of air that Americans call bagels and head for Montreal, where the genuine item is still to be had. Finally, it’s Esperanto Day, celebrating a language I tried to learn as a kid and am now glad I didn’t, as it’s proved to be useless.
Here are a couple of photos of my largesse in Montreal in March, 2016: these bagels are boiled in water with honey and then baked in a wood-fired over. Note that there are no goyische cinnamon-raisin bagels on the menu:
You call that a bagel? Now this is a bagel!
News of the Day: The good news: there are 10.5 million mallards in the U.S. They are in no danger of extinction. Now for the bad news.
Protests have revived in the U.S., and some of them have become violent. The NYT reports that there was violence in Portland (this is the norm there), Seattle (where a riot was declared), and Texas, where one man was shot and killed. The police aren’t immune from creating some of this violence.
On top of the raging pandemic in America (on Friday, 18 states set single-day records for new cases), we also have a hurricane that made landfall in Texas,
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 146,314, an increase of about 1000 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 644,090, a big increase of about 7000 deaths from yesterday.
Stuff that happened on July 26 includes:
- 1745 – The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.
- 1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom.
- 1861 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.
- 1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal at Bayreuth.
- 1918 – Emmy Noether‘s paper, which became known as Noether’s theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy.
Here’s the first page of Noether’s famous paper. Her real name was Amelie Emmy Noether, but she used her middle name in science papers.
- 1944 – World War II: The Red Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.
- 1947 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.
- 1953– Cold War: Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution. The movement took the name of the date: 26th of July Movement
Castro went to prison for two years for the attack; here he is back then in police custody:
- 1963 – Syncom 2, the world’s first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.
- 1971 – Apollo program: Launch of Apollo 15 on the first Apollo “J-Mission”, and first use of a Lunar Roving Vehicle.
- 1990 – The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.
- 2016 – Hillary Clinton becomes the first female nominee for President of the United States by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
We will not speak of this; I lost several hundred dollars betting, with some confidence, that Trump could not win the Presidency.
- 2016 – Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.
Here’s a cool movie taken from inside the plane, which is quite sophisticated:
Due to glitches, the flight lasted from March 2015 to July, 2016
Notables born on this day include:
- 1856 – George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1950)
- 1874 – Serge Koussevitzky, Russian-American bassist, composer, and conductor (d. 1951)
- 1894 – Aldous Huxley, English novelist and philosopher (d. 1963)
- 1928 – Elliott Erwitt, French-American photographer and director
Here’s a famoous image by Erwitt:
- 1938 – Bobby Hebb, American singer-songwriter (d. 2010)
- 1943 – Mick Jagger, English singer-songwriter, producer, and actor
- 1956 – Dorothy Hamill, American figure skater
- 1959 – Kevin Spacey, American actor and director
- 1964 – Sandra Bullock, American actress and producer
I love this video of Bullock on the Jonathan Ross show, singing along to “Rapper’s Delight”. She’s 55 today.
- 1973 – Kate Beckinsale, English actress
Those who abjured life on July 26 include:
- 1926 – Robert Todd Lincoln, American lawyer and politician, 35th United States Secretary of War, son of Abraham Lincoln (b. 1843)
Here’s Robert Todd Lincoln, and I have to say that there is virtually no resemblance to his dad:
- 1934 – Winsor McCay, American cartoonist, animator, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1871)
McCay is one of my favorite cartoonists, having produced two surrealist strips, “Little Nemo” and “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend”. Here’s a strip from the former:
- 1952 – Eva Perón, Argentinian politician, 25th First Lady of Argentina (b. 1919)
- 1971 – Diane Arbus, American photographer and academic (b. 1923)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is inspecting the state of the cherries. The harvest will begin within a few days, and I won’t be there to have fresh cherry pie. (However, many kg of cherries have been frozen awaiting my arrival some day.)
Hili: There are still a lot of pink cherries.A: Yes, we have to give them a few more days.
Hili: Ciągle jest jeszcze sporo jasnych wiśni.Ja: Tak, trzeba jeszcze dać im kilka dni.
Here’s a fortune I got in a fortune cookie yesterday. There’s a misspelling in the first line, but, beyond that, somebody’s trying to rub it in.
From Charles, a Bruce Tinsley cartoon:
A meme from Bruce:
Two tweets from reader Barry. This is TRUTH/
Indeed. pic.twitter.com/BtztYFC7gU
— GasMan 💉🇳🇿 (@GasmaNZ) July 24, 2020
Tweets from Matthew: A beautiful midnight sunset in Norway.
Senja, Northern Norway at midnight last night!
I’ve never experienced a sunset like it 🤯 pic.twitter.com/UB3l9otcml
— Matt Robinson (@Astromackem) July 25, 2020
A tweet from Matthew himself. This is very grim and sad, but it’s nature (not that that makes it more comfortable).
Fucking dinosaurs. https://t.co/jJcwPjg5hb
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) July 25, 2020
Another klepto cat, this one stealing laundry (the link at bottom goes to a longer article):
"I had no idea that my angel was also a petty thief" 😹 https://t.co/OKc2w0m7Oy
— The Dodo (@dodo) July 25, 2020
This is a good one:
PG Wodehouse – Thank You, Jeeves
12A Wodehouse – Jeeves Briefly Sees a Boob
15 Wodehouse – Jeeves 2: Judgment Day
18 Wodehouse – Fuck Off, Jeeves— Rick Burin (@rickburin) July 23, 2020
All morning? Hell, it’s the best thing I’ve seen all week:
Qantas’ final 747 is heading for the plane graveyard in the Mojave Desert, but not before drawing a kangaroo in the sky.
This is the best thing you’ll see this morning. #Qantas pic.twitter.com/o2bH0Leicu
— Craig Bratt (@craigybratt) July 22, 2020
Get a load of these frisky stoats:
Stoats playing in the front garden this morning. 😁 #playtime pic.twitter.com/KMyPiGtdb5
— Highland Boundary (@HighlandBndry) July 21, 2020
I think Wiki needs to update Sandra’s age, unless the lady has opted to stay 55 for a couple of extra years.
Wikipedia has her age as 56, and hasn’t been edited in the past few days so the mistake may have been our host’s.
I thought the person’s age in Wikipedia updated automatically based on date of birth.
You and Lord Randall bring your umbrellas, man; it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Eels boiled in brew will do that to a person. Bob Dylan’s inspired re-working of Lord Randal is glorious.
Hell, boss, bagels are like pizza and sex — when they’re good, they’re great, but even when they’re bad, they’re still kinda good.
Reckon those Jeeves & Bertie Wooster novels come in NC-17 Wodehouse only in the Yank editions?
Adding the the malaise we now have the armed black militia known as NFAC, one of whom accidentally shot three of their own in Louisville. I worry something like this could kick off a full-frontal shitfest of semiautomatic gunfire between the two overly armed but under educated gun nuts on both sides of the political and racial spectrum. Not that I don’t see why NFAC exists, seeing as there have been so many far right white militias threatening people for their “protection” but to my mind this isn’t the solution. It’s a case of “anything you can do, I can do dumber”.
Who would do this kind of stuff? I’d have to guess we’re talking about a small handful of nut cases.
Since we cannot go to Montreal for the bagel, PLEASE will some enterprising bagel maker bring the Montreal bagel to us.
Kitten news!
Kitty comes out of quarantine tomorrow. I’m wondering about the best way to introduce him and my older cat. Do I just let him out and they’ll meet up and we’ll see what happens? Or do I leave kitty in a carrier so they can meet through the cage door? I’m worried about doing that latter because kitty would have nowhere to run and hide if my older cat started hissing or something.
Advice needed. Thanks in advance!
I would put the kitten in a separate room and let the big cat smell him from behind the door. I wouldn’t put them together for a couple of days. I would also let the kitten sleep on a towel or blanket and after a day, let the big cat smell his scent on that blanket. I would finally let the kitten out after a few days.
They may never be friends, but they will probably get used to each other.
I disagree. Cat has known and scented kitten since kitten came into the house. So in my opinion the initial intros are over and the games begin. I’d put them both in a large area that I could observe and not interfere unless true injury occurs. I would have a working squirt bottle, more for my comfort than theres. Unless this is an incredibly timid kitten it’ll show you how to survive in an iffy situation.
I think Jackson Galaxy, aka the Cat Daddy, aka the cat whisperer has a video on the yootoobes about that. Good luck!
Not sure if this will work with cats, but it did work with my d*gs and cats. I rubbed a towel all over the incumbent d*g and then transferred her scent to the newcoming kittens. We also made sure to let the oldest resident d*g know that the kittens were special and stood with the kittens in our arms so she would see.
Thanks for your help, everyone! We decided to just let him out of the room and into the house. It’s a very big house and the first thing that happened was older cat (who I will refer to as OC from now on) saw kitten (who will be known as K) and they stared at each other from about twenty feet away, while OC hissed and growled. This lasted for four or five minutes, and then K went to explore other places. They locked eyes from afar a few more times, with no hissing or growling. K is still exploring the house now, while OC is asleep in his usual afternoon sunny spot. They haven’t come close to actual interaction yet. All seems well…for now.
Thank you for the piece about Emma Noether. A lot more can be found about Noether and her times at Wikipedia.
How awful that storks et al do that! Nature, she’s a bitch!
Birds get a lot of credit for their parenting but there are plenty who make some horrific choices. Some owls and raptors will feed only the biggest, loudest babies and let the weakest die. Some birds who practice nest parasitism remove and destroy eggs or young, or their babies kill their adoptive parents’ young. Of course some species of shark babies eat their siblings in utero, predatory insects eat their siblings if given the chance, and it doesn’t pay to be a step-child in lion society…nature is cruel.
Better she risk all of her brood dying?
I wonder if it were known this was likely to happen, the less fortunate nestlings could be removed and hand-reared, then released in areas that are trying to boost numbers, like the UK is. But yes, of course you point out correctly the cruel calculation a wild animal must do: one baby is better than none.
Unfortunately, yes. Fewer eggs could be laid but there’s the risk of some not being viable.
Nature knows best.
Yes, you’re right of course, but we can bitch about it.
Apropos the light path of the last Qantas 747, it’s not just a kangaroo. It’s the Qantas logo. Kudos to the pilots for some skilful flying, and also to Qantas management for letting them do it.
My question was why the plane has to return to the US to “die”? Surely Australia has enough desert of its own for a plane graveyard? 🙂
To my knowledge Noether’s theorems also leads to explanations for how the internal symmetries of quantum fields gives conserved “charges”, here taking discrete values (such as in electron charge). The time symmetry – energy conservation outcome is a bit trickier I believe.
Last Friday the BOSS galaxy survey released its stage IV data analysis that increase the precision of the current inflationary hot big bang cosmology down to 1 %. Most central is perhaps that space flatness becomes so apparent that they see vacuum energy at 8 sigma. But notably in the context here, their summary paper ends with a note on the problem of the value of the vacuum energy and they describe it as perhaps ‘not set by fundamental physics’.
The simplest of the two listed possibilities is Weinberg’s selection bias discovery (“anthropic multiverse”), which would accordingly set universal parameter values among examples of Noether’s laws. I think that makes our selected site physicist Sean Carroll happy. Carroll has to my knowledge long argued for the value of Weinberg’s theory.
[Emmy Noether is one of my science heroes. Partly because she fought hard to work and publish at the time, partly because I was so happy after being led to her work predicting how the laws of nature come about.]
I, for one, welcome our Galactic OverBOSS.
I was at a conference (actually two) devoted, in part, to symmetries in factual science and mathematics many years ago. A philosopher of physics pointed out, although Noether did not prove them, a symmetry is *equivalent* to a conservation law. (In the sense of equivalent familiar to students of elementary logic.) I cannot vouch for the accuracy here.
I think our old friend Vic Stenger also has a similar bit at least about gauge symmetry somewhere.