Sorry for the late posting. This morning I tried to reintegrate Honey’s other duckling with the brood—after it had been viciously pecked by Dorothy yesterday, but it didn’t work this morning. It was lying on its side in the mud when it tried to join the brood, so I rescued it again. I cleaned it up, dried it, and fed it, and it’s doing surprisingly well. I had to spend the night with it last night and so again got no sleep (2 nights out of three) and am a wreck (see photo below). Hili will be late and truncated today, and perhaps tomorrow, as I don’t know how long I have to take care of this duckling until we can get it rehabbed. If you know someone who can do a good job with this baby, let me know. It’s quite vigorous but I don’t want to traumatize it for a third time by sticking it back in Botany Pond.
The end of the week already? Well, yes, it’s Friday May 7, 2021: National Lamb Day (and not for petting them. . . ). It’s also National Cosmopolitan Day (the drink) Be Best Day (promoted by Melania Tr*mp), International Space Day, International Tuba Day, and No Pants Day, in which you’re supposed to doff your trews. It’s in both the U.S. and Canada; here’s a scene from the Montreal subway:
News of the Day:
The standard model of physics has now been cast into doubt, as I reported before. This week Nature magazine reports
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 578,804, an increase of 701 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,257,603, an increase of about 14,600 over yesterday’s total.
Stuff that happened on May 7 includes:
- 1664 – Louis XIV of France begins construction of the Palace of Versailles.
- 1718 – The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville.
- 1824 – World premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. The performance is conducted by Michael Umlauf under the composer’s supervision.
- 1846 – The Cambridge Chronicle, America’s oldest surviving weekly newspaper, is published for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 1895 – In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector—a primitive radio receiver. In some parts of the former Soviet Union the anniversary of this day is celebrated as Radio Day.
- 1915 – World War I: German submarine U-20 sinks RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turns many former pro-Germans in the United States against the German Empire.
- 1940 – World War II: The Norway Debate in the British House of Commons begins, and leads to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill three days later.
- 1952 – The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer.
- 1960 – Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
- 1986 – Canadian Patrick Morrow becomes the first person to climb each of the Seven Summits.
- 1994 – Edvard Munch‘s painting The Scream is recovered undamaged after being stolen from the National Gallery of Norway in February.
- 2000 – Vladimir Putin is inaugurated as president of Russia.
- 2004 – American businessman Nick Berg is beheaded by Islamic militants. The act is recorded on videotape and released on the Internet.
Notables born on this day include:
- 1711 – David Hume, Scottish economist, historian, and philosopher (d. 1776)
- 1812 – Robert Browning, English poet and playwright (d. 1889)
- 1833 – Johannes Brahms, German pianist and composer (d. 1897)
- 1840 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer and educator (d. 1893)
- 1861 – Rabindranath Tagore, Indian author and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1941)
- 1901 – Gary Cooper, American actor (d. 1961)
- 1919 – Eva Perón, Argentinian actress, 25th First Lady of Argentina (d. 1952)
- 1933 – Johnny Unitas, American football player and sportscaster (d. 2002)
- 1936 – Jimmy Ruffin, American soul singer (d. 2014)
Those who reached their demise on May 7 include:
- 1825 – Antonio Salieri, Italian composer and conductor (b. 1750)
- 2000 – Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., American captain, actor, and producer (b. 1909)
Meanwhile, back in Dobrzyn,
From Rick who got it from a post by Phil Plait. All these spheres are the same color! (Credit: David Novick)
Just to prove it, here’s the same picture without the stripes going across the balls:
From Bruce:
Emma Newman put up a video, “Operation Mallard” about her dad, who happened to love mallards! It’s a brilliant story.
No tweets today, sorry!
Jerry, you are a beautiful human being for taking care of that baby duckling! I’d rescued two baby ducklings many, many years ago when they became separated from their family during a terrible storm. I tried to reintegrate them with their family, but the mother wanted nothing to do with them and even attacked them as if they weren’t her own. So I raised them myself. I fed them soft scrambled eggs and they grew faster and larger than their siblings outdoors. They would follow me around the neighborhood like I was the mama duck when I took them for walks. People driving by would almost get into accidents because they stared at us instead of keeping their eyes on the road. Haha! It was comical!
Please be careful of people claiming to be rehabbers. A couple of people offered to take the babies off my hands, but they looked at them as if they were going to be a tasty dinner that evening. So I checked with local vets and wildlife preserves and eventually found a rehabber. If you’d like, I will contact a couple of rehabbers in the south suburbs of Illinois and see if they can recommend someone.
Thank you SO much for caring for this duckling! You’re doing the right thing by not trying to place the baby back out there.
Hi Irena,
Willowbrook Wildlife Sanctuary, a very good place, has agreed to take the baby, and so it will be transported there tomorrow morning for rehab. No danger of them being a shoddy operation.
Sadly, I live in a small flat and couldn’t raise a duck, much as I’d like to!
Is this Bob??
I doubt it but only on the basis that it doesn’t act like bob.
Poor little (nameless?) duckling – and poor PCC(E), too!
No HILI?
I hesitate to add to your burden right now, but Hili seems to have been truncated to the point that there’s no actual Hili.
I forgot Hili. I’ll add it to a separate post.
Hili will think you prefer ducks!! 😄
Dude was deaf and couldn’t keep the beat. Some supervision. 🙁
Yup! According to Classic FM,
https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/guides/deaf-hearing-loss-composing/
“Dude was deaf ” in 1824, but
Opus 127: String Quartet No. 12 in E♭ major (1825)
Opus 130: String Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major (1825)
Opus 131: String Quartet No. 14 in C♯ minor (1826)
Opus 132: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor (1825)
Opus 133: Große Fuge in B♭ major (1825; originally the finale to Op. 130; it also exists in a piano four-hands transcription, Op. 134)
Opus 135: String Quartet No. 16 in F major (1826)
All after 1824, nothing ever better than that, IMHO of course, except possibly the absolute very best of Bach (the father of course).
Since then, Mahler has come closer than anyone else, this being far more controversial, I’m sure.
Very subjective of course, and by a fan of much jazz, quite apart from George Harrison, Roger Waters etc. So I’m (only) slightly more than an old fuddy-duddy.
In other news, one of the (alleged) Capitol insurrectionists has an interesting defence: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/07/fox-news-capitol-attack-january-foxitis
Worst new defense since the lawyers for Ethan Couch (the kid who killed four in a drunk-driving accident) tried “affluenza.” Damn near makes Dan White’s “Twinkie Defense” seem credible by comparison.
Affluenza seems to have worked for Couch judging by the leniency he was shown. First time I ever heard about Twinkie bars was in connection with Reagan during his presidency, though I’m damned if I can remember what that connection actually was…!
Offhand, I don’t recall any connection between Twinkies and the Gipper; jellybeans were his thing.
And Taxi Driver, John Hinckley’s.
To be fair, the Standard Model hasn’t REALLY been cast into more doubt than already applied. It’s known that it cannot be a complete picture of particle physics – it doesn’t describe gravity (i.e. the graviton), nor whatever comprises “dark matter” or “dark energy” (the latter may be a property of space itself). Now, though, the predicted magnetic moment of the muon differs from the moment that’s been measured (by a very small amount). As I understand it, the measurement value mismatch hasn’t reached 5 sigma* statistical significance yet, which is the (very strict!) criterion by which particle physicists consider something a trustworthy finding (it’s way different from medical science, in which .05 p-value is considered “significant”). It’s just at 4.2, which is already pretty impressive to me.
There’s also a mis-match in the rate at which electrons versus muons are produced in certain collisions in the LHC, as compared with theoretical predictions…there should be a one-to-one ratio of electrons versus muons, but it’s not coming out even (if I understand it correctly…I may have that flipped). That hasn’t quite reached the same level of significance (though the likelihood ratio would be worthy of a pharmaceutical patent already in medical science) but it’s unexpected and intriguing.
It IS all quite exciting because these findings MAY point the way toward HOW the Standard Model needs to be updated. The fact that, prior to this, everything, including the Higgs Boson, matched the Standard Model pretty much perfectly has actually been a bit of a bummer for physicists (and for excited and deeply interested non-physicists like me).
*About one chance in three million or so that it could happen by sheer chance.
Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog (Backreaction) has been following this and recently discussed
this problem.
I love her blog and her YouTube channel! (The blog has the advantage of getting a more interesting mix of comments, I think).
If you like Sabine’s videos (and blog), you might like Brady Haran’s videos on Sixty Symbols (YouTube) among others.
Yes; and one can only dream that the media could use phrases such as:
‘… will likely give scientists ideas for bringing the already extraordinarily comprehensive standard model of particle physics to an even better approximation to the truth, not merely accurate to within 1 part in 10,000,000,000″
A person must get a certain amount of sleep in order to operate or function properly. So, take some time to sleep. That is all I got.
I’m so happy to hear the sanctuary has agreed to take the little beauty. Will you keep us posted on her progress? Also, I hope you are able to catch up on sleep.
No complaints here – ducklings over postings, any day of the week.
Those half-assed (heh) Canadians. They should’ve celebrated the day right and combined the celebration of no pants day with tuba day!!
I thought it was a day for commandos for a worrying moment…
Do North Americans not have trousers?! Or are they all mouth &…?!
As an unembarrassed Canuck, it does look to me more like 1½ – assed.
NY subway might have been closer to 2½.
Sad to hear about another duckling estranged from its family. You are a wonderful person Jerry to look after another creature like that. Well done mate. I am glad the duckling is going to a place where it can grow into adulthood. All the best.
Good on you PCC (E). I took home a little sparrow fledgling last year who was hopping about 8th Ave soon to be mashed under stilettos and looked after him for 3 days. Lots of work, hand feeding, etc. But I knew we were in trouble on the last day when he didn’t wake me up chirping in the morning. The little guy had died and I was so sad. But I’m glad I at least gave him a shot.
D.A.
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/