Category: awards and honors

Guinness records: 2023

November 19, 2023 • 1:30 pm

Here are the Guinness records set this year (so far).  The ones that really get me are these:

Solving a Rubk’s cube blindfolded (the first one)
Juggling 7 objects on a unicycle
Basketball shot made backwards
World’s largest pizza
Longest underwater kiss (4 minutes, 6 seconds!)
Shortest living dog (3.6 inches!)
Most skips in one minute (374)
Most dogs in a conga line (14!)
Fastest mile run while skipping rope (5 minutes, 52 seconds)
Most consecutive items caught by a d*g (27)
Oldest living chicken (20 years, 272 days)
Fastest time to identify all national flage (3 min, 23 seconds)
Tallest rideable unicycle: 31 feet, 10 inches!)
Oldest living dog: (30 years, 243 days)
Longest beard on a living person (8 feet, 3 inches)

Of course the big lesson is that people will do all kinds of bizarre stuff in the effort to set a record. Note the huge numbers of records set by Asians!

Fat Bear Week: Vote!

October 6, 2023 • 9:30 am

If you didn’t vote yet in Fat Bear week, you’ve missed two rounds of voting, both involving choosing the fattest bear in each of two pairs. Here are the results so far, with Bears 806 Spring Cub., 901, 128, and 164 winning their rounds (you can read about each of the bears here).

Today, starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time (noon Eastern time and 11 a.m. Chicago time), you can vote for two more matches on the Fat Bear Contest site linked above. All you have to do is tap on your favorite bear of each of the two pairs, enter your email address, and press “enter”. Remember, though, that it’s 1½ hours until the games begin!

Here are the matchups. Both of the bears I voted for made it through!

CONTEST #1

CONTEST #2

You can read about all the bears here. I won’t tell you how to vote, of course, but would like to point out that 806 Spring Cub, a first year, has had a tough life so far. Further, 480 Otis has already won more Fat Bear Titles than any other ursid, while 901, a mom, had a tough go last year, having reared THREE cubs, lost a lot of weight, and then lost one of the three cubs.  How sad!

There will be another chance to vote on Monday, and then on Tuesday there’s the final matchup, with the winner again determined by popular vote.

Jailed Iranian activist wins Nobel Peace Price

October 6, 2023 • 8:15 am

Crikey, I forgot about the Nobel Peace Prize. But I’m delighted to announce that it couldn’t have been given to a better person. The recipient this year is an Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned for ten years for running “a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty”.  The Nobel committee made no bones about its opposition to the despotic Iranian regime, a despotism that’s particularly cruel to women, and which I highlight daily with a tweet from Masih Alinejad.

Here’s the committee’s announcement, also showing the the “Woman Life Freedom” mantra that’s become the mantra of anti-regime activists. The announcement also recognizes the “hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women.”  You can’t get more explicit than that.

More on the recipient from the Nobel committee. The second sentence is telling.

Narges Mohammadi is a woman, a human rights advocate, and a freedom fighter. Her brave struggle for freedom of expression and the right of independence has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime in Iran has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

Narges Mohammadi is still in prison.

A photo from the NYT announcement:

You can also vote at the site: something I’ve never seen in a Nobel announcement. That, of course, will send a message to Iran:

 

A bit from the NYT:

The closely watched announcement, made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, comes after women-led protests in Iran that convulsed the country following the death in police custody of a 22-year-old who had been arrested by the country’s morality police.

Hundreds were killed in the ensuing government crackdown, including at least 44 minors, while around 20,000 Iranians were arrested, the United Nations calculated.

“This year’s peace prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” the committee said. “The motto adopted by the demonstrators — ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ — suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi.”

There were 351 candidates for the prize this year, according to the Nobel committee, the second highest number ever. Ms. Mohammadi joins 137 laureates named since the prize’s inception in 1901, a list that includes President Barack Obama; Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk; and Mother Teresa.

The committee has been known to make surprise picks, but speculation about this year’s prize had focused on activists for women’s rights — including Ms. Mohammadi and Mahbouba Seraj of Afghanistan — and on climate change and the war in Ukraine.

. . .The closely watched announcement, made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, comes after women-led protests in Iran that convulsed the country following the death in police custody of a 22-year-old who had been arrested by the country’s morality police.

Hundreds were killed in the ensuing government crackdown, including at least 44 minors, while around 20,000 Iranians were arrested, the United Nations calculated.

“This year’s peace prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women,” the committee said. “The motto adopted by the demonstrators — ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ — suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi.”

There were 351 candidates for the prize this year, according to the Nobel committee, the second highest number ever. Ms. Mohammadi joins 137 laureates named since the prize’s inception in 1901, a list that includes President Barack Obama; Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk; and Mother Teresa.

The committee has been known to make surprise picks, but speculation about this year’s prize had focused on activists for women’s rights — including Ms. Mohammadi and Mahbouba Seraj of Afghanistan — and on climate change and the war in Ukraine.

Finally Masih has the news on her site:

Will they let Mohammadi out of jail for this? I doubt it, though if they do they may deport her, as the Soviet Union did with Nobelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. But Iran can’t harbor somebody who will continue to organize opposition to the government. At least they can’t kill her now. . . .

 

The Nobel Prize in Literature: we have a winner!

October 5, 2023 • 8:06 am

Yesterday we had a “Guess the Nobel Laureate” for the Literature Prize alone. And although there were 61 guesses, only a single person guessed the winner (see below). Norwegian writer Jon Fosse nabbed the Prize, along with nearly a million bucks. The Nobel Prize announcement is here, and includes this:

Jon Fosse was born 1959 in Haugesund on the Norwegian west coast. His immense œuvre written in Nynorsk and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations. While he is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognized for his prose. His debut novel Raudt, svart 1983, as rebellious as it was emotionally raw, broached the theme of suicide and, in many ways, set the tone for his later work.

The NYT implies that DIVERSITY had a role in this choice, though it’s not evident how that worked (bolding is mine):

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to the Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”

Fosse’s work has long been lauded throughout continental Europe, but he has recently found a growing audience in the English-speaking world. By receiving what is widely seen as the most prestigious prize in literature, the author (whose name is pronounced Yune FOSS-eh, according to his translator) joins a list of laureates including Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro and Annie Ernaux.

Critics have long compared Fosse’s sparse plays to the work of two previous Nobel laureates: Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. And he had long been tipped to win. In 2013, British bookmakers temporarily suspended betting on the prize after a flurry of bets on Fosse’s winning. In the end, the action proved unnecessary, as Alice Munro, the Canadian short story writer, took the award.

Along the prestige and a huge boost in book sales, Fosse receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $991,000.

In recent years, the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, has tried to increase the diversity of considered authors after facing criticism that only 17 Nobel laureates had been women, and that the vast majority were from Europe or North America. The choice of Fosse is likely to be interpreted as step back from those efforts.

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UPDATE:  Read the first comment below. I may have read this bit wrong; what it might be saying is that the Academy is not giving in to wokeness, which is good. Thus the bit below about them choosing an old white male becomes irrelevant. But Rushdie is still the author who deserves the Prize on merit alone.  Of course taste in literature is somewhat subjective, and I haven’t read Fosse, but Rusdie deserved the Prize a long time ago, and for Midnight’s Children alone.

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But Fosse is not only European and an old white male, but a very white male:

So what’s all the palaver of choosing him as winner given that he represents what the Academy has criticized?

In my view, it was Rusdie’s turn to win, purely on the grounds of merit (I admit I haven’t read Fosse). And if you’re a diversity mongerer, Rushdie is, after all, is a Writer of Color, having been born in Mumbai, India.  But I can’t get over the feeling that the Swedish Academy is resisting giving Rushdie the prize because it will cause extremist Muslims to riot. Remember, there was a fatwa on his book The Satanic Verses.

Regardless, the ethnicity or gender of a writer shouldn’t matter when considering who should win. The Prize should be based on merit (literary quality), and merit alone

The lucky winner of our contest is Douglas Swartzendruber.  If you’re Douglas, email me so I can get details about sending you the free book.

Guess the Nobel Prize for Literature

October 4, 2023 • 2:48 pm

The readers here have proven really bad at guessing who will win Nobel Prizes, with my contests involving several fields never having a winner. So I’ll make it easy for you.  Just make a SINGLE GUESS about who’s going to get the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, and put it in the comments below. You get only one try and can name only one person.

The Prize itself will be announced at noon BST tomorrow (6 a.m. Chicago time), so I’m closing the contest as of 4 a.m. Chicago time (5 a.m. US Eastern time) tomorrow, and no entries will be valid after that.

There’s got to be a winner for this one, as there are several obvious candidates. But often the Swedish Academy gives the prize to a dark horse, so don’t be so sure.

THE FIRST PERSON TO GUESS CORRECTLY WINS. This means that before you put down your guess, see if anybody else has it before you. If so, choose someone else, because you can’t win

The prize. . . . well, it’s not like winning Powerball. You can have a mint paperback copy of either Why Evolution is True or Faith Versus Fact sent to you (your choice), autographed if you wish (and to whomever you want), and with a cat drawn in it (suggestions for cats considered).

Good luck, and if nobody wins I’m going to be very disappointed.

Podcast: Ricky Gervais gets the Richard Dawkins award, and the two chat for an hour

June 27, 2023 • 9:15 am

I have to tend rooftop ducks this morning, so posting may be a bit light. As always, I do my best, but ten ducklings and their mom need food and water.

Although I generally avoid watching long videos, I watched this one and highly recommend it.  The occasion was Ricky Gervais getting the 2019 Richard Dawkins Award, bestowed yearly by the Center for Inquiry. I’m not sure why it was posted four years later, but I found it on Dawkins’s Poetry of Reality Substack site along with these brief notes. (UPDATE: I just found that there is a three-year-old video that’s a tad different, with a pre-introduction introduction by CFI President Robyn Blumner. Both videos are otherwise the same.)

The inaugural episode of #ThePoetryOfReality is finally here! Join me & Ricky Gervais, actor, writer, irreverent comedian & poignant tragedian. CFI gave him the 2019 Richard Dawkins Award. Then I had an on-stage conversation with him & Richard Wiseman, psychologist, comedian & conjuror.

Lots of laughs, lots to think about. See for yourself.

Here’s what the award is given for:

The Center for Inquiry presents the Richard Dawkins Award annually to a distinguished individual from the worlds of science, scholarship, education or entertainment, who publicly proclaims the values of secularism and rationalism, upholding scientific truth wherever it may lead.

It has been awarded each year since 2003 and was originally given by the Atheist Alliance of America in coordination with Richard Dawkins and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (RDFRS). Since 2019, the award has been given exclusively by the Center for Inquiry of which RDFRS is a part. Richard Dawkins must approve the recipient and bestows the award with a personal tribute to the awardee.

The video comprises a really good (and funny) introduction by Dawkins, and then a rousing discussion by Dawkins and Gervais, moderated by an equally lively Richard Wiseman.  Gervais is quick and adept with the impromptu humor, but there’s also some serious discussion of science and atheism. It’s a good package.

Note that Gervais has a beer to quaff during the discussion, an amenity that should be offered to more discussants. It’s a good lubricant for conversation—not that Gervais needs one!

Gervais is a hero of mine: he’s eloquent, funny, and a superb screenwriter and actor (if you haven’t seen “After Life”, do so).  And he doesn’t much care what people think of him. As someone who got that award a while back, I’m really humbled to be in his company—and the company of other recipients, many of whom are also personal heroes, like Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.

Richard’s introduction goes from 1:33 to 11:39, and the rest of the 74-minute video is the discussion. There’s also a brief private intro and outro by Dawkins.  I was surprised at how young the audience was!

The segments (from YouTube). The links go to the right places, but I recommend watching it all.

00:00:00 Prologue
00:01:26 Introduction
00:12:13 Start of Discussion
00:08:04 The Reward Of Living A Good Life And Ricky’s Belief In Kindness
00:12:32 Ricky Gervais: Confronting Evil With Humor
00:17:07 Fear Of Eternity, Not Death
00:20:41 Analogies And Crocodiles
00:26:46 Cloning Mammoths: An Ethical Dilemma
00:31:19 Atheism Perception And Personal Boundaries
00:37:00 The Debate On The Existence Of God And The Category Mistake
00:40:16 The Importance Of Honesty And Bravery In Comedy
00:45:11 Author’s Thoughts On Their Books And Most Original Contribution
00:50:34 The Differences Between The Us And Uk Versions Of The Office

The 2022 Golden Steve Awards

April 2, 2023 • 9:30 am

Each year my nephew Steven, a huge movie buff and critic, presents his own personal list of nominees for the best movies, actors, and scores: the “Golden Steves.” I announced his nominations on March 4, and today we have the WINNERS.

First,  his humble introduction to the awards and the criteria for nomination.

Presenting…the 2022 Golden Steve Awards.

Far and away the most coveted of motion picture accolades, Golden Steves are frequently described as the Oscars without the politics. Impervious to bribery, immune to ballyhoo, unswayed by sentiment, and riddled with integrity, this committee of one might be termed in all accuracy “fair-mindedness incarnate.” Over 200 of the year’s most acclaimed features were screened prior to the compilation of this ballot. First, some caveats:

1) Owing to a lifelong suspicion of prime numbers, each category comprises six nominees, not five.

2) A film can be nominated in only one of the following categories: Best Animated Feature, Best Non-Fiction Film, Best Foreign Language Film. Placement is determined by the Board of Governors. Said film remains eligible in all other fields.

3) This list is in no way connected with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a fact that should be apparent from its acumen. Please look elsewhere for Oscar analysis.

And now, the worthy honorees:

I’ll list the give nominees and winners in the seven categories I listed a month ago, adding “Best Animated Feature”. At the Golden Steves site, though, you’ll see winners in 12 categories.

And he told me this, which he’s quite proud of:

“I went rogue this year — zero overlap with the Academy!”

Click below to see all the nominees and winners; again I’ll include eight categories. The winners of the Golden Steves are in bold. My own comments are flush left.

Best Picture

Aftersun
Benediction
EO
The Fabelmans
Return to Seoul
Saint Omer

I saw two of these: “EO”, which I find overrated, and “The Fabelmans”, which I also find overrated. I haven’t seen any of the others, though the absence of “Tár” and “The Banishees of Inisherin” is mystifying. Remember, though that these nominations are not to be taken lightly. It’s best if you see them all.

Best Director

Davy Chou, Return to Seoul
Terence Davies, Benediction
Alice Diop, Saint Omer
Jerzy Skolimowski, EO
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Charlotte Wells, Aftersun

Didn’t see the movie so I missed this performance.

Best Actor

Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Caleb Landry Jones, Nitram
Jack Lowden, Benediction
Paul Mescal, Aftersun
Bill Nighy, Living
Mark Rylance, The Outfit

I saw only Farrell in “Banshees,” which was excellent, but missed the other peformances.

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Tar
Danielle Deadwyler, Till
Rebecca Hall, Resurrection
Vicky Krieps, Corsage
Park Ji-min, Return to Seoul
Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie

Saw only Blanchett, whose performance was great.

Best Supporting Actor

Paul Dano, The Fabelmans
Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway
Anthony Hopkins, Armageddon Time
Alex Lutz, Vortex
Matthew Maher, Funny Pages
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

I saw Dano’s and Quan’s performances (though I didn’t watch all of that vastly overrated film “Everything Everywhere All at Once”); missed the others.

Best Supporting Actress

Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Judy Davis, Nitram
Dolly de Leon, Triangle of Sadness
Nina Hoss, Tar
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Guslagie Malanda, Saint Omer

Saw Condon’s, Hoss’s, and Hsu’s performances.

Best Non-Fiction Film

All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen)
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
Bad Axe (David Siev)
Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgan)
Three Minutes: A Lengthening (Bianca Stigter)
Young Plato (Declan McGrath, Neasa Ni Chianain)

Sadly, I missed all of these,

I’m adding this category because I did see the winner, and it’s a gorgeous animation. Don’t miss “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”!

Best Animated Feature

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson)
Mad God (Phil Tippett)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer Camp)
My Father’s Dragon (Nora Twomey)
The Sea Beast (Chris Williams)

Feel free to comment on his choices. If you have a beef or question like “why on earth did you nominate this?, put it in the comments, and I’ll ask him to answer.

I will add that Steven’s taste in films is very good (i.e., he’s clued me in to many good movies I’ve missed), so you might look in on the nominees above.

Finally, below is a photo of Steven tucking into a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli in NYC when I took him on a Lower East Side Jewish Eating Tour in 2010. He would have won the award for Best Deli Lunch except he chose a beer as Best Accompanying Beverage, while the real winner should be Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic—a celery-flavored soft drink that’s the PERFECT match to corned beef or pastrami sandwiches. (Notice that I have one at lower right.)

ZeFrank’s True Facts Animal Awards

March 27, 2023 • 1:00 pm

There will be no more braining today, as once again I got about two hours of sleep. But believe me, these ZeFrank Animal awards (an 11-minute episode) are better than anything I could produce. As always, I do my best.

The winners (I’ve added some links if you want to read more about the behaviors):

Springtails (good jumpers)
Brachycephalus toads (can’t jump very well)
Leiopelma frogs (can’t jump well, either)
Marmot (?): best “clown shoes” call
Meerkat (gravid)
Greater Sage-Grouse (can’t get a mate)
Leaf beetles and tortoise beetle (keep their own feces and past molts to use as shields)
Leaf beetles in the genus Neoclamisus that are great fecal mimics
Skipper caterpillars that flip their poop far away from their bodies
Glass-winged sharpshooters (leafhoppers) that pee at high speeds with an anal stylus
Asiatic honeybees that repel invading hornets by plastering feces around their nest entrances.

As you see, ZeFrank has a thing for animal excretion.