Welcome to the beginning of the “work” week: Monday February 12, 2024, and National Biscotti Day, good for dunking in lattes or cappuccinos.
Most important, it’s DARWIN DAY, marking the day he was born in 1809 (Abe Lincoln was born on exactly the same day). Here are a few Darwinish images sent by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior:
Here’s Charles Darwin in 1842 (age 33) and his oldest son William Erasmus Darwin:
The only known photo of Darwin on horseback. Note the top hat! From Darwin Online, the page in Darwin online with the complete set of Darwin photos, here (published with permission of John van Whye). And the caption:
c.1866 Darwin on his cob Tommy in front of Down House, by Leonard Darwin. Sometimes dated to 1866 (when Tommy was acquired) or 1867 and very often to 1868, based on the annotation on the verso of the copy in CUL. No contemporary evidence has been seen for any of these dates. However Darwin looks much more like his 1866 photographs here. Darwin was still riding Tommy in 1870. Exhibited at Christ’s College in 1909, lent by W.E. Darwin. Not published during 19th century.
Click to enlarge:
The first phylogeny (family tree of organisms): Darwin’s first sketch that one lineage may divide produce other lineages (we now know this occurs via speciation, but at that time (about 1837) it reflects Darwin’s musings–“I think”) that all living forms descended from one original one. This was in one of his notebooks. I always get the chills when I see this.
The effects of his great 1859 book still redound upon the planet:
Darwin tee-shirt (I don’t have one but want it!):
It’s also International Epilepsy Day, National Freedom to Marry Day, Oatmeal Monday, Shrove Monday, Cream Bun Day (in Iceland), NAACP Day, National Plum Pudding Day (cultural appropriation), Georgia Day, and the UN holiday Red Hand Day.
Here’s a short video about Icelandic Cream Buns, which are pretty much like creampuffs. They’re served today, which in Iceland is called is ” Bolludagur”, or “Bun Day”. A short film. Can I have some?
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 12 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The IDF rescued two hostages, alive!, in a targeted attack in Rafah:
In a complex overnight operation, Israeli special forces rescued two hostages from Hamas captivity in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip early Monday, marking the first successful extraction of captives held by the terror group in months.
The Israel Defense Forces said that Fernando Marman, 61, and Louis Har, 70, were in good condition after being rescued, following an operation that involved battles with Hamas terrorists and massive Israeli airstrikes in Rafah.
The pair had been abducted from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on the morning of October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in a murderous rampage in southern Israel.
A photo of the no-longer hostages from the Times of Israel:
*The Kansas City Chiefs won the Superbowl, and of course Taylor Swift was there to support her boo:
The Kansas City Chiefs won their third Super Bowl title in the last five seasons by beating the San Francisco 49ers in overtime, 25-22, on Sunday. While some N.F.L. players go their entire career without winning a championship, one of Kansas City’s newcomers came away a winner in their 13th game.
Taylor Swift, who has been dating Travis Kelce, Kansas City’s star tight end, changed the N.F.L. conversation all season, attracting a new audience for the league and inspiring strong emotions (both positive and negative) among fans. And, as expected, she was at the stadium and cheering on Mr. Kelce and the Chiefs in their come-from-behind win.
You can see a video of the highlights on YouTube here (the NFL has blocked embedding).
*I’m starting to worry whether Trump has some mental illness beyond narcissistic personality disorder. He’s now put his metatarsals deeper into his mouth, saying that it’s okay for Russia to attack our NATO allies if they don’t contribute to supporting NATO:
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?,’” Trump said during a rally at Coastal Carolina University. “I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”
Trump’s remarks come as the GOP is debating whether to provide additional foreign aid to Ukraine, which is fighting a war with Russia after being invaded by Moscow in 2022. The Senate is considering legislation that would give $60 billion to Ukraine. House Republicans, however, have echoed Trump’s skepticism about doing so.
Trump has long been a fierce critic of U.S. participation in the alliance, frequently hammering European countries on their share of defense spending, and appeared to be referring to indirect funding as part of participation in the alliance.
Since 2006, each NATO member has had a guideline of spending at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense spending by 2024. NATO countries were already increasing their funding substantially before Trump’s presidency, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. More than half have met or come close to that goal as of 2023, and many member countries have increased their spending in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump has previously suggested that he threatened not to protect NATO allies from a Russian attack. During a 2022 event at the Heritage Foundation, the former president recounted a meeting where he told fellow foreign leaders that he may not follow NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause if other countries did not spend more for their own defense.
A great way to make allies! Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends: Trump could well be the next President of the United States. I don’t know if our Republic can take four more years of his insanity. I only hope that somehow he’ll be convicted of a crime before November that would bar him from office, but the chances of that are very slim. \
*As the U.S. ramps up its criticism of Israel, apparently favoring the idea that Hamas could take over Gaza again, Israel is planning the promised corridor of escape of civilians from Rafah, a city where many Hamas leaders are holed up.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that his government was working on a plan to evacuate people from the city of Rafah in southern Gaza ahead of an expected ground offensive there against Hamas, as allies voiced concern about the ground assault.
Mr. Netanyahu, in excerpts from an interview with ABC News, said that he agreed with U.S. officials that “safe passage” must be provided to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have taken shelter in Rafah. He said, without giving specifics, that Israel was “working out a detailed plan” to move Gazans to areas north of Rafah.
“Victory is within reach,” Mr. Netanyahu said, a phrase he has used several times in the past week. “We are going to get the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, which is the last bastion,” he said, adding, “We are going to do this while providing safe passage for the civilian population.”
Mr. Netanyahu and his government have faced increasing criticism from allies, including the United States, about an anticipated ground invasion of Rafah.
More than half of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are now sheltering in the city, many of them after Israel’s military told them to flee south to avoid the war farther north. Many are exhausted, hungry and running out of options after months of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 27,000, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Aid groups, the secretary general of the United Nations and officials from the Biden administration have all warned that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be disastrous, and that the people there have nowhere to go.
Israel has been discussing plans to send troops to Rafah for weeks, despite a growing demand from world leaders that it declare a cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu last week publicly rejected Hamas’s latest offer for a pause in fighting that would allow hostages held by the militants to be released, but Israeli officials have signaled that their government was still open to negotiation. The Biden administration has said that negotiations will continue in the days ahead.
As an alternative to Rafah, I mentioned this the other day:
At FDD, Seth Frantzman says this:
For some commentators, the humanitarian issue of overcrowding in the city by Gazans who fled fighting elsewhere is very important. However, it’s not clear why so many people fled to Rafah when they could also go to the humanitarian zone in Gaza near the coast, called Al-Mawasi. Hamas benefits from having a large number of internally displaced people in Rafah that it can use as human shields.
Malgorzata, who wants me to emphasize that she is by no means an expert, gave me her opinion that if the IDF takes Rafah, the war will in effect be over.
*Ever since special counsel Robert Hur published his long report on Biden and His Top Secret papers, the entire media has been abuzz with discussion of Biden’s age. He’s 81, and my own view is that he shouldn’t be running, as he’s gone visibly downhill since the beginning of his term. On the other hand, friends I argue with say he’s fine. I think they’re blind. But of course I’ll vote for him because the unknowns of Biden’s health are less worrisome than the known insanity of Donald Trump. Still, I’d rather have a younger Democrat running. Apparently NYT op-ed writer David French would, too, as you can see in his new column, “Yes, Biden’s age matters.“
Democratic partisans may be furious that the special counsel was so blunt about Biden’s memory. But willfulness and intent are necessary elements of the underlying crimes, so Hur had to explore Biden’s mental state, and include illustrative details.
Witnesses are frequently instructed to say “I don’t remember” when they don’t recall all relevant facts completely and accurately. I’ve taken countless depositions in my career, and “I don’t remember” is one of the most common answers I’ve heard. In such cases, I do not presume this person is incapable of remembering. By including the details of Biden’s memory lapses, however, Hur demonstrated that the president’s responses were well outside the norm. That does not mean that every embarrassing detail in the report was appropriate to include. But including some details was necessary to support its legal conclusions.
Of course, none of this means that Trump is a better candidate for the presidency than Biden. But “better than Trump” is the lowest bar imaginable. Trump is a corrupt and confused 77-year-old who’s facing trial on dozens of felony counts in four separate criminal cases and has recently been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
But I can know that Biden would be far better than Trump and still be concerned that he’s not up to the challenge of governing for four more years. “Better than Trump” doesn’t mean that he’d continue to respond to profound foreign and domestic challenges with clarity and energy. “Better than Trump” doesn’t mean we can count on him finishing a second term. “Better than Trump” doesn’t even necessarily mean that he can beat Trump in November.
Compounding the problem for Biden, age is not a challenge that improves with time. It’s likely that Biden’s memory and energy are better now than they’ll be next year, not to mention four years from now. Moreover, millions upon millions of Americans have direct experience with the challenge of advanced age — either as their own minds and bodies ultimately slow down or as they watch it happen to friends and relatives. That same experience makes Americans immune to political spin on the issue. No matter how powerful your rhetoric, you can’t browbeat Americans out of a concern as obvious and relatable as the fact that age matters.
French notes, correctly, that Biden’s record is good so far, but as well as emphasizing that, he has to keep making the case that his verbal slips and gaffes are inconsequential. I’m not sure he has to do that if he keeps compiling a decent record, but French thinks otherwise:
. . .If the prospect of Biden making this case fills you with alarm — if you’re concerned that he can’t do so consistently and repeatedly on the campaign trail without triggering a cascade of mistakes and gaffes that compound the problem — then it’s time to ponder a different course of action. Should Biden step aside?
Not only is this suggestion tremendously delicate — as we saw in the news conference on Thursday, Biden is now quite angry and defiant — it would also trigger a cascading set of chaotic consequences for the Democratic Party. The party would have to jump-start a primary season, fight through a series of divisive state contests and then coalesce again, all while Trump and the G.O.P. prepare for the general election, raising money and lobbing rhetorical grenades at the divided Democrats.
The Democrats obviously want to avoid such an outcome. But Biden’s polling numbers are grim. Yes, there are good reasons to think that his support might be at a low ebb, and that continued good economic news, combined with continued Republican dysfunction, could be enough to lift him past Trump. But it should be deeply concerning that Biden’s single greatest weakness is the one that he cannot alter: his age.
Everything I read about Biden and Trump these days scares the bejeezus out of me that Trump will win come November. That will be a big day of mourning for many of us.
*In honor of Darwin Day, perhaps, the Guardian reports that we now have the first list of Darwin’s personal library books (h/t Phil):
Details of Charles Darwin’s vast personal library, from a paper on epileptic guinea pigs to the Elizabeth Gaskell novel he adored, are being published in their entirety for the first time.
The project has involved nearly two decades of painstaking, detective-like work to track down the thousands of books, journals, pamphlets and articles in the naturalist’s library.
John van Wyhe, the academic who has led the “overwhelming” endeavour, said it showed the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.
“It also shows how insanely eclectic Darwin was,” Van Wyhe said. “There is this vast sea of things which might be an American or German news clipping about a duck or invasive grasshoppers. That’s been the fun part, not the formal books but the other things … all of which pool together to make the theories and publications we all know.”
The 300-page catalogue published by Darwin Online details 7,400 titles across 13,000 items including journals, pamphlets and reviews.
Some of the books date back to Darwin’s school days such as Oliver Goldsmith’s A history of England (1821), which he won as a prize, or his headmaster’s textbook on ancient geography.
Researchers have at times used auction records to piece together stories.
For example, an auction sales record reveals that Darwin had a copy of an 1826 article by the ornithologist John James Audubon, “Account of the habits of the Turkey Buzzard (Vultura aura), particularly with the view of exploding the opinion generally entertained of its extraordinary power of smelling”.
In 2019, a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1880 novel Wives and Daughters appeared at auction. A note in it records: “This book was a great favourite of Charles Darwin’s and the last book to be read aloud to him.”
Previous lists of what was in Darwin’s library only covered around 15% what was actually in it, said van Wyhe.
The new list shows Darwin had volumes on a dizzying array of subjects including biology, geology, philosophy, psychology, religion, farming, art, history and travel.
More than half the works are in English and the rest in languages including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Danish.
One of the items is a German periodical containing the first known photograph of bacteria.
Other papers in the library have titles such as “The anatomy of a four-legged chicken”, “Epileptic guinea-pigs” and “The hateful or Colorado grasshopper”.
And the link provided by John:
An introduction to the reconstructed Darwin Library and link to the complete catalogue is here.
There are also photographs of the library as it was when Darwin worked in Downe. Here’s John’s FB post:
*And from the WSJ, a new relationship test: peeling an orange for your sweetie!
A tip for all the lovers out there: If your beloved asks you to bring them a peeled orange, do it.
The orange-peel test, as seen in videos swarming social media, aims to determine whether a romantic partner is willing to perform tiny acts of service, even if the other person is perfectly capable of peeling their own orange.
It’s one of several love litmus tests gaining traction online, as TikTok users and Instagrammers post videos of their partners’ passes and fails. Far from scientific—or even fair—these tests give people bragging rights, and the latest way to put every aspect of life online for approval.
The videos typically begin when a woman (the tester is almost always female; the tested, male) asks her boyfriend for an orange: peeled, please. His response, ideally, is “Yes, dear.” He stops whatever he’s doing, even if he’s deep in work or running out in a hurry, and soon presents ready-to-eat citrus. (Clementines count.) Sometimes he’ll arrange the wedges in a fun shape like a sun or face, or say something like, “a Cutie for my cutie.”
In the bird test, someone notices, say, a bird out the window and bids his or her partner to come look. Failing to spring to the beloved’s side suggests, according to the online peanut gallery, not caring about small things that matter to the other person.
Then there’s the ketchup challenge: One person purposely spills some ketchup on a counter, and asks his or her partner to clean it up. Results are mixed. Some partners stand there in disbelief at the pooling ketchup, others clean it up in a flurry of paper towels.
Flaunting relationship status online is a tale as old as Facebook.
These new tests let people humblebrag, as few men fail to peel an orange or look at a bird. Sharing them reassures the poster—and everyone else on TikTok—that she is correctly adored.
These new tests let people humblebrag, as few men fail to peel an orange or look at a bird. Sharing them reassures the poster—and everyone else on TikTok—that she is correctly adored.
Here’s one test I found on Tik Tok. The dude fails. The relationship is doomed.
@shelbyywilfong failed attempt. #fyp
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is appalled by the behavior of humans she sees as she surveys the world.
A: What do you see there?Hili: Artificial intelligence.
Ja: Co tam widzisz?Hili: Sztuczną inteligencję.
*******************
Here’s a bittersweet pictures sent in by reader Sue, who found it on the “Astronomy Picture of the Day” website on Saturday. It’s of the now defunct-Mars helicopter Ingenuity, photographing its own broken rotor blades. The explanation:
Explanation: On January 18, 2024, during its 72nd flight in the thin Martian atmosphere, autonomous Mars Helicopter Ingenuity rose to an altitude of 12 meters (40 feet) and hovered for 4.5 seconds above the Red Planet. Ingenuity’s 72nd landing was a rough one though. During descent it lost contact with the Perseverance rover about 1 meter above the Martian surface. Ingenuity was able to transmit this image after contact was re-established, showing the shadow of one of its rotor blades likely damaged during landing. And so, after wildly exceeding expectations during over 1,000 days of exploring Mars, the history-making Ingenuity has ended its flight operations. Nicknamed Ginny, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021. Before launch, a small piece of material from the lower-left wing of the Wright Brothers Flyer 1, the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on planet Earth, was fixed to the underside of Ingenuity’s solar panel.
This was a brave little ‘copter, and I still regard its construction and superb performance on Mars, as one of the triumps of Homo sapiens.
From Patty. I’m right will Illinois!
From the indicated source. I really like this painting:
Nothing from Masih today. But the Brown students’ hunger strike ended on the eighth day with no progress. I guess they weren’t serious about fasting unto death. The purpose, to get the University to disinvest the school’s endowment from companies “which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine.” Read more from the WSJ.
The Brown University hunger strike is over.
The students ended the strike after protesting during the Brown Corporation meeting today.
Their demands went unmet. pic.twitter.com/Jr9asqgAP4
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) February 10, 2024
From Luana: this society removed a poster by Muslim authors asserting that exegesis of the Qur’an shows that Islam is not really a “religion of peace.” We knew that, of course, but perhaps the poster was simply deemed inappropriate for the Society. Or perhaps not.
Thank you for raising this. We have removed this poster from our presentation schedule and it has been removed from Whova. We will be evaluating our review processes. https://t.co/iJqFMHZWaJ
— Society for Personality and Social Psychology (@SPSPnews) February 9, 2024
From Roz; How the mighty have fallen!
Dad: I don't want a cat
Dad and the cat 6 months later: pic.twitter.com/3VepyfJYUD
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 9, 2024
This is a weird bird but it’s real! And listen to it!
Skier meets a Capercaillie pic.twitter.com/QCOFxpr7eV
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 11, 2024
From Barry. Look at the size of this cat!
Size of this Siberian tiger
pic.twitter.com/cSoWCnuvws— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 11, 2024
From Malcolm. Clearly this is the cat’s first time at the cinema:
First time at the cinema pic.twitter.com/5fl8kiQkNB
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) February 6, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a Czech woman who died in Auschwitz at about 39 years of age.
12 February 1905 | A Czech Jewish woman, Greta Gelbkopfová, was born in Prague.
She was deported to #Auschwitz from the #Theresienstadt ghetto on 23 October 1944. She did not survive. pic.twitter.com/PmCgccqow1
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) February 12, 2024
One tweet from Dr. Cobb: a whole new class of RNA-based organisms (or whatever you’d call them) found living in the human gut microbiome, called “viroids”. Paper is here. Are they alive? It’s a judgment call.
The world is full of amazing things. Hiding in the human microbiome is a crazy new class of "viroids", small virus-like parasites–perhaps the first not found in a eukaryotes. 1/3https://t.co/fpJX8MVsKY pic.twitter.com/O5BEZEXqvh
— Mark Peifer (@peiferlabunc) January 21, 2024
Wives and Daughters is a charming book! She died before writing the final chapter, but the ending is easy to guess. In fact, most of Mrs Gaskell’s (she was always referred to as such, but when she became more widely appreciated in the last 40 years, she became known by her full name) work is worth reading. It is sad, perhaps, that she wrote with a quiet and observant wit, undoubtedly deformed by the position in which she found herself—an intelligent woman at a time when that was an oxymoron. I would also recommend North and South and Mary Barton.
Curious note: when I qualified, my first job was to work for Sir Arnold Elton, a urologist, at Northwick Park Hospital. NPH was a grand brutalist edifice, with a research wing, and two medical wings forming a Mercedes-Benz style tower block (famous for its paternoster). Each wing had its wards named after poets, novelists and scientists respectively, arranged alphabetically from the ground up. My ward, being on the seventh floor of the novelists, was Gaskell! There was a picture of Cranford in the sister’s office. I believe all that has been changed in order to be more diverse. Pity.
I think everyone is getting that viroid paper – very slow, but give it tome it’ll work.
49 pages. Andrew Z. Fire – yes, that one.
lol. I hope ‘tome’ was deliberate.
You are STARTING to worry about Trumps mental fitness! His lies, gaffes, treasonous outbursts and vile slurs have been out there for years and are clearly getting worse. They just don’t get talked about as much as Biden perceived frailty.
Can we please have an upper age limit on running for federal office. No standing for an election after your 65th birthday or something. And an age cap/term limit on the Supreme Court while we are at it.
What happens now if a Supreme Court member is too old to function? Can they be replaced?
It’s imaginary so we can make up our own rules – one idea that has been floated is that the supreme court members are appointed to an 18 year term. Each president gets a nomination every two years. That way nominations broadly follow the political leanings of the country. The pool of qualified nominees could be prescreened by a non-partisan body (as occurs, for example, in the UK). This may be impractical in the US, since SC members are not required to be lawyers/judges before their appointment. In the event of death, retirement or impeachment there could be a nominee to complete the term. This avoids the RBG “let’s hang on forever” scenario. Also if it’s term limited and you appoint someone who is 50 you know they will be done when they are 68. You could put in a max age for nomination I guess. Might need language to assure that the senate approval moves with appropriate speed. But there is nothing that can’t be solved.
“They just don’t get talked about as much as Biden perceived frailty.”
Seriously, Simon?! We have been “treated” to nearly nonstop coverage of Trump’s lies, gaffes, outbursts, and slurs for over eight years. Such coverage has been the primary business model of our dying legacy media.
Thank you for your commitment to this daily news. It is always my first read and always informative.
Really good news about the rescue of the two Israeli hostages, it provides optimism that more will be rescued unharmed and also helps the IDF campaign which seems to have been losing some support at home in Israel. I believe they, the IDF must continue to destroy hamas in Gaza completely along with all their infrastructure.
Btw the Brown students were really committed, they managed a whole week, pathetic children!
I commiserate with the voters of the USA with the difficulty of the selection of a new President, talk about “Hobsons Choice”
On this day:
1404 – The Italian professor Galeazzo di Santa Sophie performed the first post-mortem autopsy for the purposes of teaching and demonstration at the Heiligen–Geist Spital in Vienna.
1502 – Isabella I issues an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity.
1593 – Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
1689 – The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication.
1733 – Georgia Day: Englishman James Oglethorpe founds Georgia, the 13th colony of the Thirteen Colonies, by settling at Savannah.
1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.
1909 – New Zealand’s worst maritime disaster of the 20th century happens when the SS Penguin, an inter-island ferry, sinks and explodes at the entrance to Wellington Harbour.
1924 – George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” received its premiere in a concert titled “An Experiment in Modern Music”, in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.
1946 – African American United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes. The incident later galvanizes the civil rights movement and partially inspires Orson Welles’ film Touch of Evil.
1961 – The Soviet Union launches Venera 1 towards Venus.
1965 – Malcolm X visits Smethwick near Birmingham following the racially-charged 1964 United Kingdom general election.
1974 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union.
1983 – One hundred women protest in Lahore, Pakistan against military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s proposed Law of Evidence. The women were tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into lock-up. The women were successful in repealing the law.
1990 – Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian history when she becomes Premier of Western Australia.
1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger is abducted from New Strand Shopping Centre by two ten-year-old boys, who later torture and murder him.
1994 – Four thieves break into the National Gallery of Norway and steal Edvard Munch’s iconic painting The Scream.
1999 – United States President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2001 – NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
2002 – The trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begins at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He dies four years later before its conclusion.
2004 – The city of San Francisco begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.
2019 – The country known as the Republic of Macedonia renames itself the Republic of North Macedonia in accordance with the Prespa agreement, settling a long-standing naming dispute with Greece.
Births:
1637 – Jan Swammerdam, Dutch biologist and zoologist (d. 1680).
1809 – Charles Darwin, English geologist and theorist (d. 1882).
1809 – Abraham Lincoln, American lawyer and statesman, 16th President of the United States (d. 1865).
1870 – Marie Lloyd, English actress and singer (d. 1922).
1877 – Louis Renault, French engineer and businessman, co-founded Renault (d. 1944).
1881 – Anna Pavlova, Russian-English ballerina and actress (d. 1931).
1884 – Marie Vassilieff, Russian-French painter (d. 1957).
1914 – Hanna Neumann, German-Canadian mathematician (d. 1971).
1915 – Olivia Hooker, American sailor (d. 2018). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1923 – Franco Zeffirelli, Italian director, producer, and politician (d. 2019).
1926 – Charles Van Doren, American academic (d. 2019). [And TV quiz show cheat.]
1934 – Annette Crosbie, Scottish actress.
1938 – Judy Blume, American author and educator.
1939 – Ray Manzarek, American singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer (d. 2013).
1942 – Ehud Barak, Israeli general and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Israel.
1948 – Nicholas Soames, English politician, Minister of State for the Armed Forces. [Grandson of Winston Churchill. One of his lovers compared sex with Soames to having “a large wardrobe fall on top of you with the key still in the lock”. Apologies for the mental image!]
1950 – Steve Hackett, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.
1956 – Brian Robertson, Scottish musician and songwriter.
1965 – Brett Kavanaugh, American lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
1980 – Christina Ricci, American actress and producer.
Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject. (Hannah Arendt):
1554 – Lord Guildford Dudley, English son of Jane Dudley, Duchess of Northumberland (b. 1536; executed).
1554 – Lady Jane Grey, de facto monarch of England and Ireland for nine days (b. 1537; executed).
1624 – George Heriot, Scottish goldsmith and philanthropist, founded George Heriot’s School (b. 1563).
1804 – Immanuel Kant, German anthropologist, philosopher, and academic (b. 1724).
1894 – Hans von Bülow, German pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1830).
1929 – Lillie Langtry, English singer and actress (b. 1853).
1935 – Auguste Escoffier, French chef and author (b. 1846).
1949 – Hassan al-Banna, Egyptian educator, founded the Muslim Brotherhood (b. 1906).
1975 – Carl Lutz, Swiss vice-consul to Hungary during WWII, credited with saving over 62,000 Jews (b. 1895).
1979 – Jean Renoir, French actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1894).
1984 – Anna Anderson, Polish-American woman, who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (b. 1896).
2000 – Charles M. Schulz, American cartoonist, created Peanuts (b. 1922).
2007 – Peggy Gilbert, American saxophonist and bandleader (b. 1905).
2014 – Sid Caesar, American actor and comedian (b. 1922).
2015 – Steve Strange, Welsh singer (b. 1959).
2017 – Al Jarreau, American singer (b. 1940).
2017 – Anna Marguerite McCann, first female American underwater archaeologist (b. 1933).
2019 – Gordon Banks, English footballer (b. 1937).
2022 – Ivan Reitman, Slovak-Canadian actor, director, and producer (b. 1946).
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Olivia Juliette Hooker (born on this day in 1915, died November 21, 2018) was an American psychologist and professor. She was a survivor of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, and the first African-American woman to enter the U.S. Coast Guard. During World War II, she became a member of the United States Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, earning the rank of Yeoman Second Class during her service. She served in the Coast Guard until her unit was disbanded in mid-1946. Hooker then used her G.I. Bill to obtain her master’s degree in psychological service and went on earn her PhD in clinical psychology. In 1973, she helped form the American Psychological Association’s Division 33: IDD/ASD, which is dedicated to “advancing psychological research, professional education, and clinical services that increase quality of life in individuals with IDD/ASD across the life course.”
She joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary at age 95 and served as an auxiliarist in Yonkers, New York.
In 2008, she starred as herself in the documentary Before They Die! and was said to be involved in many aspects of its inception .
Hooker received the American Psychological Association Presidential Citation in 2011.
In 2012, she was inducted into the New York State Senate Veterans’ Hall of Fame.
On February 9, 2015, Kirsten Gillibrand spoke in Congress to “pay tribute” to Hooker. In the same year, the Olivia Hooker Dining Facility on the Staten Island coast guard facility was named in her honor. A training facility at the Coast Guard’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. was also named after her that same year.
On May 20, 2015, President Barack Obama recognized Hooker’s Coast Guard service and legacy while in attendance at the 134th Commencement of the United States Coast Guard Academy.
On September 18, 2016, at the age of 101, Dr. Hooker, alongside Jonathan Galente received the first ever Manhattan Psychological Association (MPA) Anne Anastasi Award for being a “pioneering psychology teacher, researcher and practitioner”.
On November 11, 2018, Google honored her by telling her story as part of a Google Doodle for the Veterans Day holiday.
Hooker died of natural causes in her home in White Plains, New York on November 21, 2018, at the age of 103.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Hooker
The wikipedia writeup on NEAR Shoemaker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAR_Shoemaker ) is pretty good and contains several links and pointers to other detailed writeups by NASA and the experimenters themselves. This was a very difficult engineering achievement which some of the post-mission accounts beautifully demonstrate.
I missed this birthday – Bagpuss is 50! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-68257883
“I’m not sure he has to do that if he keeps compiling a decent record, but French thinks otherwise.”
I keep facepalming at the failure of the Democrats to remember and act on this basic principle of politics: perception is reality. Biden has indeed done well as President and is largely competent to continue to serve as President, if only because he’s surrounded himself with a good staff. Nonetheless, none of that matters if the public perceives him to be frail and demented. To paraphrase the Ragin’ Cajun, the Dems need a Patrick Mahomes of a salesman (Buttigieg?) to take control of Biden’s PR campaign and save the day for him.
Re Darwin, if you’ve not read it already, a fabulous book to check out is “To The Edge of the World,” by Harry Thompson. Originally published in the UK under the title “This Thing of Darkness,” the book chronicles in novel form the trip of the Beagle, but the main character is really Robert Fitzroy, captain of the Beagle. Fitzroy was a renowned captain, beloved by his crew, who always covered for him when he suffered from one of his (as we know now) bipolar episodes. Hence the name This Thing of Darkness. Author Harry Thompson, a successful BBC producer, also suffered from bipolar disorder and was fascinated by Fitzroy. Sadly Thompson died a few months after the book was published, so never saw it reach success. I’ll leave it there, but it’s a wonderful, moving book, and well worth a read.
Seconded! I created the (not so good) Wikipedia article about the book some years ago.
“The Brown University
hunger strikediet is over.” Fixed that for everyone.Thanks DrB.
Ronald Reagan, for example, then 79 and in the middle of his second presidential term, gave some version of the “I don’t recall” or “I can’t remember” answer 88 times during his one-day deposition in the Iran-Contra case.
At the time, I thought the major US political parties would have learned their lesson about nominating alter kockers to the highest office in the land. But apparently memories are short among the political class, even when there’s no easy age-related mental deterioration to explain it.
Fantastic news regarding the two rescued hostages.
Israel needs to liberate Rafah. I feel like the Israeli leadership and the IDF are threading a needle. They need to get rid of the remaining four Hamas battalions before international support for an Israeli victory disintegrates. (And, yes, I do think that most of the world wants Hamas gone. The problem is that many civilians are at risk. Israel and the world cannot allow this aspect of Hamas’s strategy to succeed.)
Darwin was quite the reader! I love seeing those pictures. One of history’s greatest scientists, he was an incredible observer and experimentalist and a tremendous—and brave—intellect. He understood the maelstrom that he was unleashing when he published the Origin in 1859.
I don’t subscribe to the NY Times. Can someone enlighten me as to why the Times thinks that the invasion of Rafah will be a “disaster”? How can what is almost certain to be an Israeli victory be cast as a disaster? The raid on Dieppe in 1942 was a disaster — the attack failed utterly and the Second Canadian Division ceased to exist as a fighting force for two years. Until quite late into the afternoon of D-Day, Gen. Eisenhower was worried that the landings might prove to be a disaster on a far grander scale; so much had gone wrong. The encirclement of the German Army in the Falaise Pocket was a disaster (for the Germans.)
But how is the (hoped-for) destruction of the last redoubt of Hamas in Rafah likely to be a disaster by any stretch of the imagination? Are “[a]id groups, the secretary general of the United Nations and officials from the Biden administration” warning about it really rooting for Hamas?
One bit of optimism: Time has been supposedly running out for the IDF for four months now as world support for Israel progressively leaks away. Balderdash. Most of the chattering classes have been hostile to Israel literally since Day 1. (And that’s true whether Day 1 is 7 Oct 2023 or 14 May 1948.) Yet Israel fights on, doing the dirty work of getting rid of, this time, Hamas. Going back to the Second World War, (our last “good war”), the town of Caen was supposed to be taken on D-Day. It held out for two months. Israel has time.
Re: Biden. I’d prefer a drooling and incoherent Biden to Trump, but I’m partial to Ross Douthat’s suggestion that Biden announce his intention to not run just prior to the nominating convention. That allows him to sidestep what amounts to an obligation to endorse Harris. He can just let his convention delegates choose at the convention.
I’ll admit that as a Canadian I don’t fully understand the ramifications this might have. I can’t dismiss the possibility that Douthat is encouraging the Dems to self-destruct. Still, this is essentially how Canadian parties choose leaders, so the idea isn’t without precedent. And it would sure make for an interesting convention!
ANYTHING but Kamala. And Trump of course.
Douthat is an annoying turd as I see it, but he’s right on this one.
D.A.
NYC
I just noticed a good book for Darwin day:
Darwin : a very short introduction
Jonathan Howard
Oxford “Very Short Introductions” series
… there’s one on Evolution, … there’s one on Biogeography… Human Evolution…
I agree with the claim that Trump is afflicted by various psychological problems and is not fit to be president of the US. But I disagree that Trumps insistence that other NATO member pull their weight in NATO is sign of a deranged mind.
Jerry, give me one reason why a country like Germany does not have a functioning army (in other words: has not invested enough money to have a modern, well-equipped army). Just one, please.
I agree with your point, Peter. I should also say that the minor leftist opposition party in Canada has always had as its platform that Canada should withdraw from NATO (and the mutual US-Canada air-defence agreement NORAD), so letting Europe fend for itself is not exactly purely a right-wing MAGA position. And Canada has de facto withdrawn from NATO since the 1960s in any case, through German-style atrophy. The truth is that Germany like most countries on the continent has always been less worried about communist take-over than the Americans were and it was an open secret that if the Warsaw Pact had invaded, the West German Army would have collapsed, requiring a British/French/U.S. nuclear response or capitulation. Now, there is enthusiasm for communism only in Western Europe. Why should America now care if Russia takes Germany, if Germany doesn’t? Donald Trump is just saying the quiet part out loud.
Perhaps the best reason for Germany not to be armed is that it was always said that NATO had three roles: To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. Germany has been a trouble-maker in Europe for most of its time in existence since the Revolutions of 1848. I’m not so sure we want the Prussians in the former East Germany to become militarized.
David Frum alleges Canada spends more on the “indigenous industry” than on defense. Beyond usual Canadian welfare transferences.
I don’t know whether this is true, Leslie you’d know better than I, but amazing if it is.
D.A.
NYC
Mr. Frum may be right, in broad strokes. From the current Canadian government estimates (rounded):
Dept. of National Defence: $24 billion
Dept. of Veterans Affairs: 6 billion (pensions & special health benefits)
—————
Dept. of Indigenous Services: $40 billion
Dept. of Crown-Indigenous Relations: 6 billion
Large sums have to be set aside into the future to pay out Court awards from the perpetual lawsuits launched by the indigenous industry against Canada’s sovereignty, citing grievances over past and current policies. The estimates for direct indigenous spending (above) include the amounts paid out in the current year for past awards and settlements through the two indigenous-oriented agencies.
This direct spending does not include the cost of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the federal and provincial criminal justice systems which are disproportionally devoted to indigenous crime. (The Mounties are the sole law-enforcement agency in the vast rural and remote reaches of Canada where many indigenous people live.) There was a horrific multiple killing of an entire family in rural Manitoba just today. Also not included is the cost of urban drug-addicted homelessness and street crime which, in Canada, is substantially an indigenous issue and falls on municipal and provincial governments.
https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/planned-government-spending/government-expenditure-plan-main-estimates/2022-23-estimates.html
thank you.
D
I’ll start with three reasons: Stuttgart, Ramstein, Wiesbaden. (For the uninitiated: US European Command headquarters, US Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa headquarters, US Army Europe and Africa headquarters, respectively.)
If the Germans had a functioning military, then they might not have remained so amenable to their role as a central hub for forward-deployed US forces. So, yes, while the Germans have been sucking at the security teat of the United States for a very long time and plowing the dollars saved into their welfare system, the United States has had its own reasons for either encouraging or ignoring this dependency of our German [junior] partner. Same goes for Japan. But should the United States come to a reckoning over its own profligate spending and the stark decline of its defense-related industrial base, well, things could get very interesting in the world.
The European part of NATO should be able to defend itself against Russia. Obviously, most European countries, individually taken, could not successfully defend themselves against Russia. But together, and without major help of the US, they should be able to do so. It’s a simple question of population size and wealth. The European part of NATO at least matches Russia in both. Already the combined population of Germany and Poland (84 + 38 = 122 million) comes fairly close to matching the Russian population (147 million).
I’m not saying that Europe and the US should not be allies.
Dumb assed orange peel test. That’s EXACTLY the type of (the many) little tests and riddles women put men through as a filtering device.
And the reason why – it is my theory – autistic men do so poorly with women generally. They often don’t “get” such trials and don’t realize not jumping through the hoops – or peeling the orange – is fatal to their mating prospects.
I’m not autistic (just a dude) but it took me some years to work out this cheat code to dating.
D.A.
NYC
The capercaillie seems to be saying, “I see that you fell.”