Note to readers: I am preparing for a trip that begins in less than two weeks and will last about two weeks: I am lecturing on an alumni trip (a cruise) that stops at Tenerife, Morocco, Gibraltar, Spain, and Portugal. What this means is that I’ll be busy getting ready for that for a while (writing lectures, packing all over again), and then will be occupied much of the time till May 5. Posting, then, will be light for about a month. Bear with me, though I’m already concerned at the drop in readership. As always, I do my best.
Good morning on a Caturday: it’s April 9, 2022, and National Chinese Almond Cookie Day. This is a genuine Chinese foodstuff, so don’t go looking for fortunes inside. It’s also National Gin and Tonic Day, Day of the Finnish Language, and Vimy Ridge Day in Canada.
Stuff that happened on April 9 includes:
- 1682 – Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovers the mouth of the Mississippi River, claims it for France and names it Louisiana.
- 1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.
And here it is! Amazon says this about the recording:
In 1857, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph, the first device that could record sound waves as they passed through the air. It was intended only for visual study of the recording and could not play back the sound. The recording medium was a sheet of soot-coated paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder carried on a threaded rod. A stylus, attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, traced a line through the soot, creating a graphic record of the motions of the diaphragm as it was minutely propelled back and forth by the audio-frequency variations in air pressure.
Now, tell us how they figured out how to play the recording back!
- 1865 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war.
- 1939 – African-American singer Marian Anderson gives a concert at the Lincoln Memorial after being denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Anderson was denied the use of the hall because she was black, and Washington D.C. was segregated, then. But with the intercession of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who resigned from the DAR) and the help of President Franklin D., a concert was given. Sadly, most of it wasn’t recorded, so the concert video below is largely a man introducing her and then we see only a few excerpts of Anderson’s performance:
Here’s a longer recording with no video; it has some of the spirituals she sang:
- 1940 – Vidkun Quisling seizes power in Norway.
His last name, of course, became a synonym for “traitor”, but you may not know that for a while after his execution, there was a verb “to quisle”, meaning “to commit treason.” One could engage in quisling.
- 1945 – Execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, anti-Nazi dissident and spy, by the Nazi regime.
The circumstances of Bonhoeffer’s execution are unclear. He was certainly stripped naked and hanged, but some think he was tortured beforehand by being repeatedly half-hanged and then cut down. This video gives the history behind his conviction and execution. If I were to name one theologian whom I most admire, it would be Bonhoeffer.
- 1947 – The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws. The riders wanted enforcement of the United States Supreme Court‘s 1946 Irene Morgan decision that banned racial segregation in interstate travel.
Here’s a photo from the Wikipedia article of the some participants (another site identifies them, and Wikipedia says all the names are “main leaders”). I love the unity between blacks and whites in these early days, putting the lie to Hannah Nikole-Jones’s claim that black civil rights leaders always went it alone.
- 1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States’ first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the “Mercury Seven“..
My dad managed to get me a color photo of all the astronauts with their autographs. It’s now vanished, and I wonder if it would be worth anything now.
- 1992 – A U.S. Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of drug and racketeering charges. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Notables born on this day include:
- 1821 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet and critic (d. 1867)
Here’s Baudelaire’s own copy of the first edition of “THe Fl
- 1830 – Eadweard Muybridge, English photographer and cinematographer (d. 1904)
The man who proved, with the photo below, that when horses trot there’s a moment when all four feet are off the ground (my emphasis below):
- 1865 – Charles Proteus Steinmetz, Polish-American mathematician and engineer (d. 1923)
- 1898 – Paul Robeson, American singer, actor, and activist (d. 1976)
What a voice—one of the best of our time. And those low notes—they’d make the floor vibrate! This song, an old spiritual, is one of my two favorites of Robeson; the other being “Old Man River,” which you can see him singing here (do watch it).
- 1926 – Hugh Hefner, American publisher, founded Playboy Enterprises (d. 2017)
- 1928 – Tom Lehrer, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and mathematician
Here’s an excellent old Tom Lehrer song that’s especially relevant now:
- 1965 – Paulina Porizkova, Czech-born Swedish-American model and actress
- 1990 – Kristen Stewart, American actress
- 2000 – Jackie Evancho, American singer
I first wrote about Jackie Evancho in August, 2010, when she was just ten but already an amazing singer. She went on to finish second on “America’s Got Talent” that year and now is doing okay, but, as some readers predicted, hasn’t yet turned into a classical-music superstar. But listen to her audition for that show when she was just ten, singing my favorite aria (she leaves out a hard bit near the end).
Those who found eternal rest on April 9 include:
- 1553 – François Rabelais, French monk and scholar (b. 1494)
- 1882 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet and painter (b. 1828)
- 1926 – Zip the Pinhead, American freak show performer (b. 1857)
Zip, who lived a long time for someone with microcephaly and was, of course, the inspiration for Bill Griffith’s comic “Zippy the Pinhead”:
- 1945 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor and theologian (b. 1906)
Here’s a scene of Bonhoeffer’s hanging from the movie “Bonheoffer: Agent of Grace.”
- 1959 – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, designed the Price Tower and Fallingwater (b. 1867)
- 1976 – Phil Ochs, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1940)
This song, written by Ochs was an anthem for the antiwar movement of the Sixties, and it’s one of the better protest songs. He hanged himself at 36.
- 1988 – Brook Benton, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1931)
*Here’s the banner headline from today’s New York Times, about the effect of that heinous Russian attack on a train station in Kramatorsk that killed at least 50 people, including five children.
And the news headlines:
Residents of southeastern Ukraine continued to stream out of the region on Saturday, propelled by fears of a renewed Russian assault. The evacuations came a day after a missile strike on a train station that Ukrainian leaders and their Western allies have attributed to Russia killed at least 50 people.
In Kramatorsk, the site of the missile attack, Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko said that evacuation buses would start running Saturday to neighboring cities, like Sloviansk, where trains would ferry residents further away. More than 6,600 people managed to evacuate from besieged cities in the region on Friday — a record number for the week — according to the country’s deputy prime minister.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in his nightly address that the attack in Kramatorsk should be investigated by a war-crimes tribunal. He added that he had discussed the possibility with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, who visited Kyiv on Friday. “We expect a firm, global response to this war crime,” he said.
Yes, sanctions will be tightened, but that haven’t deterred the Ogre. And you’ll never see Putin in the dock, as he’ll never leave Russia for a country where he could be arrested.
*Also at the NYT, Ezra Klein interviews Fiiona Hill—who “served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council under Donald Trump and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Barack Obama and George W. Bush”—on the Ukrainan/Russian war. The audio is here, and there’s a transcript here.
EZRA KLEIN: . . . . .Do you think that’s true that perception has changed, that there’s now a view that Ukraine can win? And do you think that it is actually true?
FIONA HILL: Look, I think it depends on how we define winning, right? I mean, you think about Finland, for example, that won the Winter War against the Soviet Union in 1940, when there was an effort very similar to what’s happening in Ukraine to reincorporate them back into the Soviet Union, having won their independence already with the collapse of the Russian Empire.
And the Finns won, in terms of their independence and their freedom, but at great cost, pretty heavy casualties — although they actually wreaked havoc on the Soviet military, on the Red Army, through guerrilla warfare, and the kind of resistance that we’re sort of seeing now. But they lost a huge swathe of their territory in Karelia, and I think there’s obviously a case to be made here, which is — as we’re looking very closely at what the Russians are attempting to do, if they’re going to basically carve off the East and the South.
You can make a case that the Ukrainians will win their independence and sovereignty, which honestly they had up until Feb. 24, with the obviously notable exception of the annexation of Crimea and what was already going on, a hot war in Donbas that had been going on since 2014 — but now, rewinning it again, as the Finns had to do in the 1940s, but at great cost.
*PEN America’s definition of book-banning iin schools is this:
A book ban. . . is when a piece of literature once accessible to students is no longer available or is restricted as a result of challenges from parents, community members, administrators or actions from lawmakers about its content.
*The Wall Street Journal reports that PEN has done a comprehensive survey of such banning, and it’s on the rise:
A study from PEN America, a literary and advocacy group, identified 1,145 books that were removed across 86 school districts in 26 states between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022. The policies affect 2,899 schools and more than two million enrolled students, according to the report, released Thursday.
This is the first such report detailing the breadth of book bans across the U.S. created by PEN America, and the authors said it showed a surge in bans.
The study cited growing political pressure from national organizations, governors and lawmakers in states like Texas, South Carolina and Georgia. Efforts across the U.S. to pull books from library shelves and alter school curricula have often followed directives from state elected officials or challenges from parents.
As you can guess, most banning efforts come from the Right, and the PEN study linked to above is quite interesting to look over. You might, for example, have a look at the section called “What kind of stories are being banned?“
*Up in Michigan (you know that title?), four men accused of a plot to kidnap and kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer have,to everyone’s surprise, not been convicted on any of the ten charges. Well, two were found innocent of all charges while there was a hung jury for the other two men, who remain in custody and may be tried again.
Prosecutors said the group was steeped in anti-government extremism and furious over Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions. There was evidence of a crudely built “shoot house” to practice going in and out of her vacation home, and a night ride by Croft, Fox and covert operatives to check the property.
But defense lawyers portrayed the men as credulous weekend warriors, often stoned on marijuana and prone to big, wild talk. They said FBI agents and informants tricked and cajoled the men into targeting the governor.
This was despite the fact that two more of the defendants decided to plead guily and testify for the governmen, no doubt expecting a lighter sentence. I bet they wish now they’d pleaded “not guilty!
*In his new Substack column, “Who is looking out for gay kids?“, Andrew Sullivan takes a DEEP DIVE into what is actually taught about sexuality to kids in grade school. Examining textbooks, videos, and teachers’ manuals, Sullivan discovers that a main theme is that sex is not binary, and that “boy” and “girl” are taught as just two of many genders, not differing from any other “gender”. Not so, of course: there’s biological sex. It’s worth a read, and here’s a quote:
It seems to me that any books that teach kids to be compassionate and accepting, and aware of different ways of being human, are a positive thing. I don’t doubt the good intentions behind them. Having some materials for a genuinely trans child is a good thing. But teaching all public school kids under the age of eight that their body has no reference to their sex is a huge development — and news to most American parents. And encouraging toddlers to pick pronouns like “ze” and “tree” is not exactly what parents send their kids to public school for.
These teaching materials aim to be inclusive of the tiny minority of trans children — but they do this by essentially universalizing the very rare experience of being transgender, and suggesting that everyone’s gender is completely independent of biological sex, and trumps it in any conflict. The only way to help trans kids feel better about themselves, this argument goes, is to tell the lie that their experience is everybody’s experience. We are all varieties of trans people now, choosing our sex and performing our gender.
But, of course, we’re not all varieties of trans; the overwhelming majority of humans, including gay humans, experience sex and gender as completely compatible — when they think about them at all. And our species is sexually dimorphic. When pushed to defend the idea that humans are not a binary sexual species, critical theorists lean on the “univariate fallacy.” That argues that any single exception to a rule completely demolishes the rule. If there are any exceptions to every human being male or female, even if they are a tiny percentage of the whole, then there is no sex binary.
He’s also worried that most kids who are gay (and the vast majority of kids with gender dysphoria turn out to be gay after puberty) will be convinced before puberty that they’re actually members of the other sex, and will take irreversible biological steps.
At some point, gay men need to face down those who deny the biological differences in the human body that make homosexuality possible. If there is no sex binary, there is no homosexuality. We are not some third sex; we are one of two sexes: men.
Have a look; it’s a good read and a topic not often discussed because it’s taboo.
*In another Substack column, Freddie deBoer bemoans the decision of San Francisco’s public schools prohibiting 8th graders from taking algebra, and this “makes it difficult to complete calculus in high school.” This rule is, of course, being enacted in the name of “equity”—to keep high achievers from achieving—but is completely misguided, says Boer, for the rich kids will get their algebra and calculus elsewhere. And it also hurts the poorer but calculus-ready kids:
Rich parents can always send their kids to private schools that will teach advanced material, or they can send their kids to the public schools and supplement their learning there with for-profit classes or tutoring in higher-level mathematics. One way or the other, rich kids are not going to be denied that instruction, especially in the Bay Area. Cutting out algebra, and in doing so making calculus a much less pragmatically achievable goal, is a perfect scenario for leaving poorer kids behind! And this is such a glaringly obvious dynamic that I’m amazed it’s being ignored, even in the realm of “equity” education in which I have such little faith. What is the theory here? Yes, you can keep some portion of your more talented students from taking algebra and in doing so pulling away from your struggling students. But your struggling students won’t just be competing with the students who you can exclude from algebra in this way, and won’t even really close the gap with them anyway. Meanwhile your not-rich more-talented students will either get access to the instruction they need in college, in which case you’ve merely delayed their advantage, or they’ll be permanently behind their peers who get instruction at the appropriate age. It’s madness.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is ordering Andrzej about:
Hili: Prepare breakfast, I will come in a moment.A: OK, I will call you when breakfast is ready.
Hili: Przygotuj śniadanie, ja zaraz przyjdę.Ja: Dobrze, zawołam cię jak wszystko będzie gotowe.
From Merilee, a really weird message. I have no further information about this.
An exchange about the evolution and domestication of cats:
From Bruce: a third cat meme:
Well, one does expect God to be profound:
Every birth is nonconsensual.
— #GodStandsWithUkraine (@TheTweetOfGod) April 5, 2022
From Barry, who has found my DREAM JOB. The description at boingboing shows that you have to manage a gift shop, deal with snailmail, and monitor penguins! It’s at Port Lockroy Base on Wiencke Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, which harbors the southernmost working post office in the world. We steamed by the base in 2019, and although some inhabitants were supposed to come aboard bringing us some postcards to mail, the bay was too iced in (see my post here).
Dream of waking up & seeing Antarctica in all its glory? Penguins plodding around, the sun peeping over snow topped mountains. A job like no other. Join us & help protect Antarctica's heritage & conserve its precious environment. Apply by 25 April. https://t.co/NPSf6dKLdi pic.twitter.com/GmJYIq5w1m
— UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (@AntarcticHT) April 4, 2022
Ginger K. introduces us to a new word:
— Julian (@justaguyok50) April 6, 2022
Tweets from Matthew, the first from his friend, the geneticist Adam Rutherford. You can try this at home if you have helium and inhale it for a short time:
My daughter thought it would add gravitas to my book How To Argue With A Racist if I read it after inhaling helium. pic.twitter.com/GI4FZ9XntA
— Dr Adam Rutherford (@AdamRutherford) April 8, 2022
Kitteh is not pleased:
التعايش ❤🤣 pic.twitter.com/uw43Rnh8b8
— Error 404 (@Error4019082820) April 7, 2022
These are amazing animals (watch toward the end). I ate one once in a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, and it was mighty tasty, too (I’m ashamed to write that but the laws of physics compelled me):
What you see here is a Pacific razor clam, a bivalve mollusc in the genus Siliqua
Its burrowing using its foot, to elude predation, and to also remain anchored in unstable ocean conditions
The interesting end of this video is not related to digging 1/🧵pic.twitter.com/ONwuUdSNpK
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) April 6, 2022
Matthew’s watching Magic Twitter these days, and sent this video. Be sure to watch to the end!
Ever seen a four-sided card? pic.twitter.com/pM8uQWA76S
— Pete Firman (@petefirman) March 23, 2022
And a lovely two-minute video of insect eyes. The mantis eyes, with their seemingly mobile “pseudopupil” will freak you out:
「昆虫の眼」
INSECT EYES
写真：法師人響（@tritomini）
動画・編集：平井文彦#TokyoBugBoys pic.twitter.com/gQ4QcnvO8K— FUMIHIKO HIRAI🐝昆虫スローの人 (@uta_31) April 6, 2022
1. Never heard that Ochs tune – its really good – goes places – strong melody – lyrics strong.
2. The phonograph device and Muybridge stories feature in James Burke’s old but, IMHO still excellent, Connections.
The horse in the Muybridge sequence is moving at a canter, not a trot. When a horse trots, two opposite feet are always in contact with the ground.
L
Right, Linda. And now you got me thinking about my diagonals!🐴
Yes, it’s a canter, but there is also a moment of suspension at the trot.
howtodressage.com/the-horses-paces/create-expression-trot/
Muybridge proved suspension at the canter; what fascinates me is that he used a line of a dozen or more cameras that were tripped sequentially to obtain his photos.
Sorry, the link doesn’t work and I don’t get the edit option. To see the picture, just add https:// at the front.
Thanks for the link, Joan.
“Now, tell us how they figured out how to play the recording back!”
I haven’t looked into specifics of how they did it, but as an electrical engineer I can give you the gist of how it would be done.
Convert the 3 dimensional spiral inscription into a two dimensional mathematical representation which would consists of a sequence of numbers representing the deviation of the squiggly line above and below ‘zero’, at precise increments in time. (Say 100 microseconds between measurements of the deviation from zero, or a 10 kHz sample rate.)
Ten seconds of audio recording at a 10 kHz sample rate would yield a record of 100,000 measurements. Getting that string of numbers would have been the hard part.
Once you have the string of numbers it would simply be a matter of scaling all of the numbers by some multiplicative factor, and rounding off the remainders so that one had a string of integers scaled appropriately for a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) which one intends to use in reproducing the sound. For example, scaling the numbers to between -127 and +127 for an eight bit DAC.
As the name implies, a DAC produces an analog voltage level on its output which corresponds to the magnitude of the digital number presented to the DAC as an input.
So we feed the string of 100,000 numbers to the DAC input at a rate of once every 100 microseconds and the output of the DAC is a voltage waveform which is (fairly) isomorphic to the squiggly line scratched in soot on the drum. This DAC output voltage signal can then be fed into an amplifier which drives a speaker and out comes a reproduction of that original sound which was recorded on the drum.
I’ve glossed over some bits (no pun intended) but in a nutshell, that is what the process would be.
I would be interested to know what happened in the Whitmer attempted kidnapping case. One thing I did here is that there were 12 FBI agents who infiltrated the group and that they outnumbered the supposed criminals. If so, that does sound a bit much.
I also don’t know the details, but from little I’ve read the defense was able to put doubt in the jurors minds that the defendants were capable of carrying out their plot without some steering from the agents. When there is doubt, we have to fall back to the axiom that it is better for the guilty to go free than for the innocent to be convicted.
I agree. Although attempted kidnapping is obviously a crime, in cases where the perpetrators are mostly just talking about doing it don’t seem to quite rise to that level. How far did these guys go in putting their plan in motion? They planned to blow up a bridge but did they plant any explosives? I’m guessing they did not.
How does being too stupid to carry out your conspiracy make it any less a conspiracy? I’m worried that if Trumpists can use ignorance or stupidity as a defense then we’re all doomed.
Under the general federal conspiracy statute, all that’s required for conviction is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that two or more persons reach an agreement to commit a particular crime. There are specific conspiracy statutes that require not only that the conspirators reach such an agreement, but also that one or more of the conspirators take a substantial step toward accomplishing the conspiracy’s goal. (Such a substantial step would be, for example, securing weapons or a getaway vehicle for use in a bank robbery.)
Wow, Jerry! Those are all places I’d like to go, and that sounds like an amazing trip!
And because the Daughters of the American Revolution was about as hidebound an institution as was to be found in US society. One doesn’t hear nearly as much about it these days, but back then, the DAR drew a lot of water around town, especially if that town was Washington, DC.
Back in the 1950s, my Aunt Irma was a secretary who managed to hook her executive boss into marriage. Changed her name to Louise, since Irma was “low class”. Then she decided she needed to join the DAR, at that time a big deal in Cincinnati society. So she did the genealogy to find a Revolutionary War ancestor. She found one, who turned to have been a horse thief and a deserter. So she quietly withdrew her application.
Good story, Bob — and one that I suspect wouldn’t have been so rare in those days, particularly in the Queen City.
“A book ban. . . is when a piece of literature once accessible to students is no longer available or is restricted as a result of challenges from parents, community members, administrators or actions from lawmakers about its content.”
This good definition needs to go much further.
The latest noise I picked up centers on Tintin.
… S’all I can say at this point – of course, right? Frikkin’ Tintin.
We can get “childrens’ ” books on ATVs, guns, the Bible (has anyone READ this? To KIDS?!), and more, including video games – yes, at the public library – but I’m not foaming at the mouth or even interested in banning them. They ALL potentially have utility – nobody knows which do, or could know which will.
The problem, IMHO, originates with who is taking responsibility to _raise_ children. Banning books (only “books”?) appears to me to be originating from parents interpreting books as instruction manuals.
Whew – that was good to get out of my system.
Algebra — If it were not for right-wing education saboteurs and left-wing do-gooders, children might stand a chance of getting an education in this country. Arguing about whether to start Algebra in grade 8 or 9 is a bogus argument, since teaching algebra starts as soon as children enter Kindergarten.
It’s not every villain who achieves such a level of infamy that their name becomes both noun and present participle.
One of my favorite Robeson moments came when he sang the great Wobblies’ union ballad “Joe Hill” for Scottish coal miners:
I share your enjoyment of Paul Robeson singing “Deep River”. But I’ve eventually settled into thinking of his “There is a Balm in Gilead” as my favorite.
https://youtu.be/okl2XbTM7xM
Just saw this: Bill Maher tears it up over Cancel Culture and comedy.
I needed that – as a person who concluded Jada should hold the two of them up by the scruff of their necks and both apologize.
There is a great documentary about Port Lockroy (*trigger warning for very sad scene of penguin fratricide) that made me want to go work there too. Or at least, someday, send a post card from there. It’s called Penguin Post Office.
In honor of the day, let me be the first to say
PERKELE!
Lol, I think my translation of your exclamation got my comment moderated! Perkele, indeed!
One of my favorite Ochs tunes is “Draft Dodger Rag.”
When I got called up for my pre-induction physical in the Fall of 1972, I tried to warble any applicable verse as we moved from station to station around the big convention hall. Didn’t do any good — I went in classified 1-A, came out classified 1-A, too.
Jerry, anymore news of Honey? Could she be nesting on the far side of the building, the side away from the pond?
I’m curious about Honey news too. I wish there was at least a sighting of her elsewhere so we’d all know she was ok.
I don’t comment very often, and so I may look like I’m a part of the problem of falling readership. However, the daily Hili dialogue is very important to me. The second thing every morning is reading it. The first thing is Wordle. My kids (they’re in their fifties) and my sister and I have a message thread just to report our results each morning. Then, it’s Hili dialogue for me.
Tom Lehrer (94 years old today) of course wrote many other great songs, including the Elements song and my all time favorite, The Vatican Rag.
Here’s a link to something of an homage to the Elements song that some friends and I produced, both of which are based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s Modern Major General. Perhaps some of this site’s chess fans will enjoy this!
Delightful!
Request : put youtube links like this :
Watch this video : https://youtu.be/Lu9pWvQhf28
… that way, the link cones through email, I (or someone else) click it and my OS Does The Right Thing.
Otherwise, I (or someone else) has to wrangle the link out … its weird, but I have to
[ 1 ] copy the post or reply out of email into a browser by finger tip
[ 2 ] find the comment with the video in it
[ 3 ] hope the browser pulls it from YouTube (it did ok this time)
That’s all on top of not being able to see or read or click the link from email because the font becomes too small and the place where a video or link should be is just a white void.
Thanks, apologies if I sound hectoring – its just facts of life with these Space Age Supercomputers.
Many thanks, I did not realize this! I appreciate the info and comment.
Appreciate the consideration –
You know my comment weighed on my conscience – telling people what to do, which is actually just how I do it, due to my own trappings. I don’t mean to sound this way!
But I think the general point stands – there are different ways to put videos in this comment section, each with different results. It is unfortunate that I picked on this one to “let loose” on a ling standing problem (for me ):
Not being able to interpret, etc. videos posted by commenters. I picked one that meets various guidelines – i.e. [ Chicago gangster accent] “da roolz” – and offered it. Hopefully other readers might know what I mean.
Thanks for that – very enjoyable!
As it happens I’ve actually played against three of those mentioned – in simultaneous displays naturally: Hort, Short & Miles. Managed to draw against Miles; the less said about the other games the better!
Glad you liked it!
That’s cool that you played against the “law firm” of Hort, Short, and Miles, and drew against Tony. I’ve never played against any of them in the song. The most I can say is that I’ve seen several of them in tournaments: Korchnoi in London, Browne in L.A. back in the day, and several others like Reshevsky and Benko at the 1971 U.S. Open in Ventura, and the U.S. Championship in Pasadena. Oh, and Spassky and Euwe when they visited the Paul Masson tournament in Northern California back in 1979!
Hi Larry,
Looks like you were into chess before me! Although I learned the moves at about 12, I didn’t play competitive chess until aged 22, about the time of Fischer-Spassky.
I played the simul against Hort in 1977, shortly after he’d played in the candidates.
I don’t have the game score, but I remember thinking I was doing OK up to move 24, when he shattered my illusions with a move that forced mate in 2.
I liked the bloke, though, he seemed a friendly character.
Yes, I joined the USCF in 1969 at the age of 14, right before the Fischer boom took off. I became a master in 1985 or so, and now in my retirement I am giving chess lessons and maintaining a chess blog. Still love the game!
Hort does seem to be decent guy. He will occasionally write up his reminiscences for chessbase.com, interesting stories about his life and career.
Those two defendants will still get their sentences reduced based on their cooperation. Under section 5K1.1 of the US Sentencing Guidelines, all that’s required for a sentence reduction is that a cooperating defendant “has provided substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense[.]” (emphasis added) The reduction does NOT depend on the prosecution’s securing a conviction. Were the sentence reduction dependent upon a guilty verdict, it would not only be morally repugnant, but would also subject the cooperating witnesses to devastating cross-examination by defense counsel through impeachment regarding the witnesses’ interest in the trial’s outcome.
I found the juxtaposition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Phil Ochs profoundly tragic.
The story about San Francisco banning eighth-graders from taking algebra suggests that somebody read Kurt Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergeron” and didn’t realize that it’s satire.
The insect eyes video was excellent. Though I’m not as interested in insect eyes as I am at what, actually, they see. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
My late husband was a champion Razor Clam digger at our LI home on the bay. You have to dig fast to get hold of them. He called them the only “Sporting clam”, which fought back by disappearing quickly. They are delicious fried with bread crumbs but also when used as ceviche, marinated in lime juice and onion and eaten raw. Razor: meaning the old fashioned kind with one sided blade.