Category: food and wine

Paris: Day three, meal three

April 13, 2023 • 12:15 pm

Winnie and I both were quite intoxicated after yesterday’s lunch, and she fell asleep on the bus home and dropped her Victor Hugo book three times during a five minute walk. I tried to stay awake but fell into a restive sleep interrupted with weird dreams. Today we were both off wine: no more two-bottle lunches! But I did have one glass of Rhone for lunch.  From now on, one bottle equals two servings.

Here are some photos of Paris before today’s lunch at Chez Monsieur, and then of the meal itself.

I snuck a picture of this guy on the Metro because he seemed to be the archetypal Frenchman with that huge beret and Sartre glasses. He’s missing only a Gauloises ciggie, but il est interdit de fumer dans le Metró.

I love these old brass door knockers:

Shadows and light from a railing:

The roof of the Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde. The building was built between 1757 and 1774. As Wikipedia notes, it was:

 originally the home of the royal Garde-Meuble, the office managing the furnishing of all royal properties. Following the French Revolution it became the Ministry of the French Navy, which occupied it until 2015. It was entirely renovated between 2015 and 2021. It now displays the restored 18th century apartments of Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, the King’s Intendant of the Garde-Meuble, as well the salons and chambers later used by the French Navy.

The renovation was finished under Macron, and here’s the new open-air roof. It was too early for us to visit the museum, but, more important, we had to attend to matters gustatory.

The nearby Smith & Son bookstore has long been a home for Anglophones, with a great selection of books in English. In one corner they have food for homesick Brits and Americans. You can see that these people from the diaspora long for Bird’s Custard and Betty Crocker cake mixes!

Pour your own hot chocolate nearby. But it is not good to drink hot chocolate before a big French lunch, so we didn’t even try. Winnie ate a free Edwart chocolate that they gave her, and found it so-so.

Right next store to Edwart on the Rue de Rivoli is Angelina’s, a very famous and beautiful parlor to drink thick hot chocolate and eat homemade pastries. I’ve been there once and loved it: the hot chocolate is to die for, and their Mont Blanc pastries are made from one of my favorite treats: candied chestnuts:

A Mont Blanc (or Mont-Blanc aux marrons) is a dessert of sweetened chestnut purée in the form of vermicelli, topped with whipped cream. It was created in nineteenth-century Paris. The name comes from Mont Blanc, as the dish resembles a snow-capped mountain.

There is always–ALWAYS–a long line of tourists in front of Angelina’s, but if you crave the best sweet snack in Paris, don’t be put off. The line moves fast and the Belle Epoque interior is the perfect place to sip and munch:

We passed on the chocolate and pastries as we were having a long walk before lunch, but went inside the store to see what was on offer(we rarely pass a food shop without a peek). Here are several pictures of the pastries, one showing the regular and a new mango Mont Blanc (skip the mango!).

Varied pastries:

And the two types of Mont Blancs. You want the one on the left, along with a big pot of pudding-like hot chocolate. I’ve posted photos of the restaurant’s inside and the chocolate in previous years (try Feb. 2021).

With an hour to kill before our noon lunch reservations, we window-shopped around the Place Vendôme.  Here’s a weirdly-named place:

Reflection portrait of Winnie and me:

Reflections on three mirrors affixed to the exterior wall of the Louis Vuitton store:

Les flics were everywhere today, with all their guns and riot gear. It was a general strike day today, but we didn’t see any trouble. (But there was trouble; see at bottom). Still, cops everywhere, some with machine guns:

Les gendarmes, including a woman.

Lunch was at Chez Monsieur, a place recommended by one of Winnie’s friends. It’s famous for its onion soup, blanquette de veau (veal stew), and steak tartare. We had two of the three.

The next two photos aren’t mine, but come from here and here. I forgot to take an outside picture, and the inside photo, showing the intimate interior and banquettes, was better than mine:

Interior: we sat on the banquettes to the right. It has an old zinc bar and lots of atmosphere. The food was terrific. (The menu is here.) It also has a classic old zinc bar, which you can see at left.

This was the only place we’ve eaten together in Paris where we were the only tourists; it was totally French. But just as we left an American came in who had lived in Paris for three decades; he said this was one of his favorite restaurants. If you come to Paris, put it on your list. (But remember, restaurants can go downhill!)

Neither of us having recovered fully from yesterday, we split an entrée: steak tartare, or “tartare de boeuf au couteau” (hand cut). It was fantastic, as Winnie said, “the hand cutting made all the difference”. It was served with greens and fries:

If you had told me when I was twenty that some day I would love a dish like this, I would have laughed at you. But it was fabulous! This is a half portion; it’s listed as a main course but we split it for the appetizer

The plat: the restaurant’s famous blanquette de veau, or veal stew, listed like this on the menu:

Blanquette de veau “Chez Monsieur” servie en cocotte

A “cocotte” is a covered pan (see below) but can also mean a high-class prostitute.  Our double portion (we each wanted it) was cooked in a luscious creamy sauce, just right for sopping up with bread, along with carrots, pearl onions, and potatoes:

My plate:

What was left in the cocotte after we had two heaping plates. We finished the entire cocotte but it was hard going as we were getting full. But, as I said, Winnie is a trencherman (trencherwoman?) and she not only finished this, but had dessert as well.

This was a splendid dish, and a classic of French cuisine. If you go there, get it, as portions of the other main courses aren’t all that large.

Winnie’s dessert: profiteroles stuffed with ice cream and served with a warm, thick chocolate syrup poured over the top.

We bought a bottle of water, which is against both of our principles, but the carafe d’eau (tap water) they brought us tasted bad. This is what we had: Chateldon, the oldest bottled water made, and pronounced as excellent by Louis XIV. It was very good, with a mineral tang and a slight sparkle. It’s bottled in the Auvergne.

Other stuff going on nearby: making crêpes suzettes, a laborious enterprise:

Slicing ham to make the entrée “Chiffonnade de jambon affiné de Parme de chez Franco Gulli, beurre demi-sel Au Bon Beurre”. These are thin strips of ham made from very thin slices.

I wanted to get an eclair for dessert, and not too far away was a fancy shop that sold what is reputed to be Paris’s best chocolate eclair, made in a shop at the spiffy Hotel Bristol. It had better be good for 15 euros! But I sprang for it, and it was excellent, loaded with Peruvian chocolate with a hint of cinnamon and other flavors.  It came in a fancy bag and a fancy box. The letters atop the eclair are made of hard chocolate.

One eclair in a box in a fancy bag:

A box with a fancy green tab that, when pulled, opened a drawer containing the eclair!

See above for the contents. Mine was half eaten before I thought to take a photo.

The eclair shop also had a pirate’s ship made ENTIRELY of chocolate except for the marble heads of the pirates at the bow. Even the cannons are chocolate. I wonder if anybody will eat this.

On the way back, cats: a bedroom shop with a kitty-embroidered pillow, and a cat poster:

And a shop that sold Chagall paintings—real ones. I can’t imagine the price!

We later found out that there was rioting in the streets today, which explains all the police. There were supposedly 400,000 people gathered near the Rue de Rivoli, and they set fire to the headquarters of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesey (LVMH) in the eighth.  There was also supposed to be a big gathering around the Bastille, where I’m staying, but we saw none of the riots—just the cops.

Tomorrow, one of my favorite bistros, famous for its ENORMOUS portions of cassoulet: L’Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes.

One person’s (excellent) take on the best Chicago eats

February 19, 2023 • 1:45 pm

I found this video while trawling YouTube, and of course I had to see what this person considered the five best eats in Chicago. (By “eats”, he means the peoples’ food, not haute cuisine, and he’s on the money.)

He’s pretty close to right in his selection, too: here’s his list:

1.) Portillo Chicago-style dog, “dragged through the garden”

2.) Al’s Italian Beef: order it “wet”, dipped in the jus, and either “hot” (hot giardiniera) or “sweet” (with sweet peppers). Mario’s Italian Lemonade is right across the street, but opens only in May. It’s fantastic. Eat your beef sandwich, and then cool off with a big glass of frozen lemonade, complete with seeds. There’s nothing better on a hot summer night.

3.) Giordano’s stuffed pizza (a must). There is no decent stuffed pizza outside of Chicago.

4.) Ricobene’s breaded steak sandwich (order with plenty of cheese and giardiniera)

5.) Carnitas Uruapan.  There are two in Chicago, and one is not far from me:on 55th Street on the Way to Midway Airport.  It’s totally authentic, and the one time I went I pigged out on carnitas chicharrones, tortillas, peppers, and other sides, and was the only non-Hispanic in the restaurant. In fact, I had trouble ordering since the waitress spoke little English.  A fantastic place, packed with locals.

I tell you, this guy has a fantastic palate.

Now the only one of these items I haven’t tried is the Ricobene’s sandwich, which has been rated the best sandwich in America. I found about this only recently, and believe me, I’ll be tucking into one within a few weeks.

And so yesterday I decided to hie myself to Ricobene’s for the vaunted sandwich (it’s near Chinatown, and I’ve driven by it a million times) But then I was late, and said, “Okay, I’ll settle for a stuffed pizza instead.” There’s a Giordano’s in Hyde Park, where I always take visitors who want unique Chicago pizza (I always bring some beer or good wine, too, as it’s BYOB). And so I got myself a medium stuffed “Edwardo’s Special”, and decided to take it home, where I had a bottle of good Bordeaux waiting.  Although this is the local pizza, it has to be eaten with a good nonlocal wine or a good non-IPA beer.

Below: my dinner last night. (Two to three pieces = one meal.) I’ll report on the Bordeaux tomorrow

Dinner last night

October 6, 2022 • 9:15 am

I am in Eastham on Cape Cod for 3 days, in a lovely house just a block from the sea. It was pouring last night, so walks on the beach were out, but we had a nice chat before the fire. My hosts are an old friend from Boston and his wife, who were just married in this house about a week ago. They are great folks, and prepared a fantastic welcome dinner.

We began with a dozen oysters (Wellfleeets, of course, since that town is right next door.) These were absolutely fresh and some of the best oysters I’ve ever had. With a few drops of lemon juice, they tasted like lemon-flavored sea. Oysters are the closest food I know of to the taste of the ocean.

My friend Brit spent a LONG time making this lasagna, prepared with pine nuts, ricotta, Reggiano, onions, spinach, homemade fresh tomato sauce (burro e pomodora), and noodles that he made himself on one of those hand-cranked noodle machine.  It was a fabulous dish, and must have taken an hour and a half to prepare from scratch .

Cynthia prepared this gorgeous salad with chopped romaine, feta cheese, black olives, tomatoes, and peppers.

To go with the meal: a bottle of Léoville Las Cases from 1990. 32 years old and at its peak, it was fantastic, velvety and with a very complex nose. It had been stored for years under proper conditions. A second growth from Saint-Julien, it is highly sought after, and old bottles like this are very expensive rarities.

The dinner, soon to be decimated by big appetites.

Dessert: Leftover wedding cake. This was a fancy one, originally made in the shape of a large cube, covered with fondant over layers of not-too-sweet ganache separating moist chocolate cake infused with raspberry. Below that is a picture of the entire cake at the wedding, provided by Cynthia:

This is not a cake on a pedestal, but the ENTIRE WEDDING CAKE, including the base with marbled frosting and an icing flower. You can see the gold leaf, and next to the cake is a stone painted by one of their friends.

After dinner, a 2011 vintage port from Taylor Fladgate. Full and rich, it was really too young to drink but was still complex, fat, and ripe. In ten years this will be a real winner, but we’ll sample the leftover wine tonight to see if it’s opened up.

Decanting the port:

Yum!

Antarctica, Day 11: Elephant Island, and back toward Chile through the Drake Passage

March 13, 2022 • 9:30 am

I’d recommend your reading my post of Nov. 24, 2019, when I was here before and had more time. It has more pictures of the surrounding region as well as photos from the Shackleton expedition.

As I noted in yesterday’s Hili dialogue, our ship spent an hour or so standing off Elephant Island, the island in the South Shetlands where, during the the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition, 22 of Shackleton’s men from the crushed ship Endurance sheltered for four months under two connected lifeboats. They waited 4.5 months for Shackleton and five other men to make the perilous but ultimately successful sea journey in an open boat to South Georgia Island. The journey, in a modified lifeboat dubbed the James Caird, took 17 days and covered 800 miles, or 1300 km. But there was more trouble to face: Wikipedia tells more:

Shackleton, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley crossed the island’s mountains to a whaling station on the north side. Here they organised the relief of three men left on the south side of the island and of the larger Elephant Island party. Ultimately, the entire Endurance crew returned home, without loss of life. After the First World War, in 1919, the James Caird was moved from South Georgia to England. Since 1922 it has been on regular display at Shackleton’s alma mater, school, Dulwich College.

(As you know, the remains of the Endurance were found a the bottom of the Weddell Sea jus about a week ago.)

Getting the men off the small spit of land shown below was no easy task, either.

Below: a map the ship’s own screen: at that time we were just north of Point Wild Beach, where Shackleton’s men bided their time hoping for rescue. It was on this narrow spit of land (see photos later today) where they spent 4.5 months, trying to keep warm and eating penguins several meals per day. I’m sure that nearly all of them thought they were going to die, particularly as nobody had shown up by the Antarctic winter. But then: rescue!

There was much work for the stranded men. Because the island had no natural source of shelter, they constructed a shack and wind blocks from their remaining two lifeboats and pieces of canvas tents. Blubber lamps were used for lighting. They hunted for penguins and seals, neither of which were plentiful in autumn or winter. Shackleton instructed Wild to depart with the crew for Deception Island if he did not return to rescue them by the beginning of summer, but after four and a half months, on August 30, 1916, the artist George Marston spotted a ship. The ship, with Shackleton on board, was the tug Yelcho, from Punta Arenas, Chile, commanded by Luis Pardo, which rescued all the men who had set out on the original expedition.

Because of rough seas, the low light of early morning, and our standing far offshore, the closer photos are taken with 30x zoom and thus are crappy. The earlier post has better ones.

Elephant Island in dire weather (not a rare condition!)

Point Wild. The men sheltered on the strip of land between the mountain at left and the hill at right. It was sufficiently above high tide that it didn’t get inundated. But it would surely be boring to be restricted to such a small bit of land for 4.5 months!

A telephoto shot of the penguins that swarm the point. Without these birds, Shackleton’s men would have died from starvation.

Here, though the misty and dark morning yesterday, is the statue of the tugboat captain Luis Pardo. The penguins seem to pay homage to it. After all, he took away the men who were killing and eating them!

The party of Shackleton’s men left on Elephant Island:

Pardo (1882-1935), the Chilean tugboat captain who braved the ice to save the men. Since it was Antarctic winter (the rescue was on August 30, 1916), there was a lot of ice to navigate, much less the roiling waters of the Drake Passage.  Wikipedia says of Pardo:

Pardo retired from the Navy in 1919. The British government authorized a large monetary award, which he turned down, stating that he was simply fulfilling a mission assigned to him by the Chilean Navy.

In 1930, he was appointed Chilean consul at Liverpool, where he served until 1934.  He died of bronchopneumonia on 21 February 1935, aged 52.

And Pardo’s rescue boat, the tug Yelcho (it was built in Scotland):

The prow of Yelcho is preserved in Puerto Williams, Chile, as a monument:

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition was a miserable failure, as it didn’t even begin its proposed journey: to entirely cross the Antarctic continent. But it was also a kind of success for Shackleton, who organized perhaps one of the greatest polar adventures in history: surviving the wreck of his boat, drifting with sea ice, landing on Elephant Island, taking a lifeboat 1000 km on the slim chance of actually reaching South Georgia, crossing the mountains of that treacherous island without equipment, and ultimately finding other humans men and organizing the rescue of his own crew. Not a life was lost, except of course those of the dogs they shot before leaving the Endurance, as well as the ship’s cat, Mrs. Chippy. But we won’t speak further of that.

To see the story of Mrs. Chippy, go here. All cat lovers should know this story. If you’re in Wellington, New Zealand, a cat-loving city, go see the grave of ship’s carpenter Harry McNeish, who was the staff of Mrs. Chippy before she was shot. (McNeish never forgave Shackleton for giving that order.) The New Zealand Antarctic Society had a bronze statue of Mrs. Chippy placed on McNeish’s grave:

Food: As I did on the last trip, I dined (breakfast yesterday morning) at a table overlooking Point Wild, the small spit off of Elephant Island where Shackleton’s men holed up for 4.5 months awaiting rescue. As our ship’s historian told us in a lecture, much of what they ate was penguin. Someone I know who ate penguin on one of Scott’s expeditions (an old man who told me this years ago) told me they taste like very fishy chicken.  Yech! At any rate, I contemplate, during breakfast, how happy the men would have been to see our ship appear, and how much they would have appreciated the breakfast I was eating. But they all made it back alive.

On this trip I’ve eschewed omelettes while others have chewed them), but decided to celebrate or mourn our early return by ordering one with mushrooms, ham, and peppers. They make it to order and deliver it hot to the table. It was good.

Point Wild on Elephant Island from the breakfast table.

Last night I had no lunch, but a hearty dinner: dumplings followed by a steak. But I was too full for dessert, and eschewed my usual milkshake.

Don’t worry—I removed the butter. (No comments about my diet, however!)

And here’s me an hour ago, watching MSNBC and the sea going by my cabin as I wrote this post.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

August 1, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s August! Summer is waning, and it’s Sunday, August 1, 2021: National Raspberry Cream Pie Day, a dessert I can’t say I’ve ever tried. But August is also these food months:

National Catfish Month
National Panini Month
National Peach Month
National Sandwich Month

It’s also Homemade Pie Day, Woman Astronomers Day, Sisters’ Day, American Family Day, Friendship Day, National Girlfriends Day, National KidsDay (yes, one word), Respect For Parents Day, World Lung Cancer Day, and, honoring specific locales, it’s Yorkshire Day in England and Swiss National Day. I’m not sure exactly what trait of the inhabitants of Yorkshire inspired the Monty Python “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch (someone inform me), but here are four of them competing to have had the most deprived upbringing:

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) is an animated drawing that, when you click on it, takes you to various sources of information about Turkana Boy, a skeleton of Homo ergaster from a boy 7-11 years old who lived 1.5-1.6 million years ago. (The connection with August 1 is uncertain, though the remains were discovered in August.) The skeleton (below), discovered in 1984 in Kenya, it constitutes the most complete set of early human remains ever found.

Turkana Boy, cast at the American Museum of Natural History

Wine of the Day:

I don’t remember buying this 2010 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, nor what I paid for it, but I buy all my wine from Vin Chicago, so at least I know where I got it. If you bought it now it would seem to cost about $50 per bottle, which at present is cheap for a ten year old Châteauneuf, but I remember the good old days when you could get a very good one for less than half that. (Good Rhone wines are my favorite reds, even better than Bordeaux, though I have little experience with good Burgundies.) Made from 90% Grenache and 10% Mourvedre, with scores of 95 from Robert Parker and 93 from Jeb Dunnuck—both with reliable palates that jibe with mine—I had it on a “meat day” ribeye steak (rare), heirloom tomatoes, and a baguette.

It was a very good example of the genre—not the best, mind you, but like encountering an old friend.  The “black olive” flavor I associate with Rhones was missing, but this was an almost off-dry wine with appealing flavors of raspberry jam. It is by no means over the hill at 11 years old and kept at suboptimal (70ºF) storage. It was so tasty that I drank more than my share, usually a tad less than half a bottle (I stretch a bottle out over three days, with a smallish glass the last day), and will finish it off tomorrow. Rhones rule!

News of the Day:

Three Jamaicans took all the medals in the women’s 100-meter dash, and the New York Times has a long photographic and graphic exposition of the race, showing how the running speed rises from zero, peaking at about 24 mph at roughly 50 meters, and declining by 3-4 mph at the finish. The winner was Elaine Thompson-Herah, 29, who also took the 100 m gold in the last Olympics; she set an Olympic record of 10.61 seconds—a bit behind the world record for this distance (10.49 seconds set in 1998 by Florence Griffith-Joyner).  Thompson-Herah’s top speed was 24.2 mph, considerably slower than the world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah, timed at between 68 and 75 mph.

And have you noticed all the tattoos on view during the Tokyo Olympics? I don’t ever remember seeing any tattooed athlete in previous games, but now everybody seems to be inked. The Associated Press has a series of photos of tattooed athletes, some of them over the top. (below)

It’s ironic because being tattooed makes you somewhat of a pariah in Japan: as the article notes, “Tattoos remain stigmatized in Japan, where those with them are commonly banned from beaches, gyms, pools and elsewhere around Japan.” Also in onsen, hot springs resorts. I believe the reason is that tattoos in Japan are associated with criminal gangs. Here’s one from the AP piece:

(From the AP): Adam Peaty, of Britain, swims the men’s 100-meter breaststroke at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Saturday, July 24, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

There has to be a physiological limit to the times of such races, because, after all, nobody can run it in 5 seconds, so, given human morphology and physiology, there’s a speed that cannot be exceeded. But we don’t know what it is.

(From ABC News): Elaine Thompson-Herah, center, of Jamaica, celebrates after winning the women’s 100-meter final with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, of Jamaica, second place, and Shericka Jackson, of Jamaica, third, at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, July 31, 2021.

You all know about the delta variant of Covid-19, and how it’s playing hob with the world’s desire to return to normalcy (there were just protests in France at proposed new lockdowns), but we’ve already talked about that. Wear your masks, plan for a booster (I assume all readers are vaccinated), and try to socially distance yourself, even if you are vaccinated.

In a NYT op-ed, authors Jon Haidt and Jean Twinge report  that loneliness among Generation Z young adults (those born after 1996) rose since 2012 in 36 out of 37 countries surveyed, and that depression is going up as well. Why? The authors blame smartphones, which reduce social interaction. Humans are social primates, and, deprived of one-on-one interaction, they suffer. The solution: keep kids away from their phones, like locking the devices up during the school day. I see this at the duckpond all the time: people ignore the wonderful things the ducks are doing because they’re so fixated on getting that one iPhone shot or selfie.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 612,918, an increase of 308 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 4,234,090, an increase of about 8,600 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on August 1 includes:

  • 1620 – Speedwell leaves Delfshaven to bring pilgrims to America by way of England.
  • 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
  • 1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force, although it remains legal in the possessions of the East India Company until the passage of the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.
  • 1893 – Henry Perky patents shredded wheat.

Here’s the patent, though the submission is dated August 2, 1895. What Perky did on this date in 1893 is patent a machine that could process cereal, possibly enabling the making of biscuits. After that I’ve put an amusing 1909 ad for shredded wheat touting its health advantages:

I guess the British equivalent, Weetbix, would be just as good for you:

The conventional wisdom is that that U.S. track and field star was snubbed by Hitler, as Owens (who won four gold medals in Berlin) was black. The Encyclopedia Brittanica, though, says that this is not true.  But Owens did foil Hitler’s plans for a German-dominated Olympics. Here’s Owens on the podium after the long jump:

From history.com: The gold, silver and bronze medal winners in the long jump competition salute from the victory stand at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. From left, Japan’s Naoto Tajima (bronze), American Jesse Owens (gold) who set an Olympic record in the event and Germany’s Luz Long (silver) giving a Nazi salute, August 8, 1936. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
  • 1944 – World War II: The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.

The largest organized resistance action during the war, this was the attempt of the Polish resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. After several months, the resistance lost. Here they are surrendering to the Germans on October 5, 1944; many were sent to POW camps. And then the Nazis proceeded to nearly obliterate the city.

  • 1965 – Frank Herbert‘s novel, Dune was published for the first time. It was named as the world’s best-selling science fiction novel in 2003.

A first edition and first printing of Dune with slipcover will cost you between $4000 and, if signed, $10,000.

  • 1966 – Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.

On autopsy Whitman was shown to have a serious malignant brain tumor, but medical experts have no consensus about whether the tumor prompted or contributed to the murders.

  • 1966 – Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

A “struggle session” during the Cultural Revolution. Look familiar?

Here’s one whole concert (there were two of them in one day):

Finnbogadóttir served from 1980-1996: here she is in 1995

Bezoek president IJsland, mevrouw Vigdis Finnbogadottir inspecteert met Koningin Beatrix erewacht op Rotterdam Airport
*19 september 1985

In his mid-20s, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, Lindow man died violently: (throat cut, strangled, and struck on the head—probably a ritual sacrifice. Here’s his freeze-dried body, which you can see in the British Museum:

Notables born on this day include:

Mocked by many biologists for being wrong about how evolution worked, Lamarck was nevertheless the first naturalist to propose a comprehensive theory of evolution. Where he went wrong is in assuming that the environment itself, or use and disuse of a feature, could change the hereditary material, giving rise to the characterization of “Lamarckism” as “the inheritance of acquired characteristics.” He could have been right, but he wasn’t, and, with the exception of a few epigenetic modifications that are inherited for a few generations, the change in the hereditary material comes first, via mutation, and those mutations that leave more copies come to predominate in the population. Darwin didn’t get genetics right either, and came close to Lamarck in some places, but he thought of natural selection and Lamarck didn’t.

  • 1770 – William Clark, American soldier, explorer, and politician, 4th Governor of Missouri Territory (d. 1838)
  • 1819 – Herman Melville, American novelist, short story writer, and poet (d. 1891)

Do you know what Melville looked like? Here’s a picture of him in 1861, ten years after he wrote Moby-Dick. He was a seaman from 1841-1844.

Here’s his obituary notice from the New York Times in 1891, misspelling the title of his famous book and leaving out the hyphen:

  • 1907 – Eric Shipton, Sri Lankan-English mountaineer and explorer (d. 1977)
  • 1931 – Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
  • 1936 – W. D. Hamilton, Egyptian born British biologist, psychologist, and academic (d. 2000)
  • 1942 – Jerry Garcia, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1995)

Those who decamped from life on August 1 include:

  • 30 BC – Mark Antony, Roman general and politician (b. 83 BC)
  • 1903 – Calamity Jane, American frontierswoman and scout (b. 1853)

The frontierswoman and scout’s real name was Martha Jane Cannary. She often wore men’s clothes, as below:

(From Wikipedia): Cabinet photograph captioned in the negative, Calamity Jane, Gen. Crook’s Scout. An early view of Calamity Jane wearing buckskins, with an ivory-gripped Colt Single Action Army revolver tucked in her hand-tooled holster, holding a Sharps rifle.
  • 1966 – Charles Whitman, American murderer (b. 1941) [See above]
  • 1977 – Francis Gary Powers, American captain and pilot (b. 1929)
  • 2007 – Tommy Makem, Irish singer-songwriter and banjo player (b. 1932)

Makem singing “Will You Go, Lassie Go?“:

  • 2015 – Cilla Black, English singer and actress (b. 1943)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there were troubles getting the Hili Dialogue today as the Internet and electricity are largely down in Dobrzyn again (there were storms). But phone wireless succeeded! Hili is, as usual, antitheist:

Hili: I see the Messiah.
Andrzej: What does he look like?
Hili: LIke the previous swindler.

In Polish:

Hili: Widzę mesjasza.
Ja: Jak wygląda?
Hili: Tak jak ten poprzedni oszust.

From David: A poem on Sean Hannity written by John Cleese:

Another superfluous sign from David:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Stephen Fry: be sure to enlarge the screen and turn the sound up (not too loud!) as a Tunisian’s swimmer’s family watches him win the gold in the 400m freestyle.

Two tweets from Ginger K.. First, an artwork made from willow rods:

This one comes with a famous video:

Tweets from Matthew. I assume the first one is true, so that all cats have webbed toes like this Sphynx. There’s also a reply:

Speaking of felids, this young bobcat needs to learn to be a bit more wary:

Translation from the Dutch: “Yes, then you are a boss.”

Cat wins! Cat wins!

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

July 28, 2021 • 6:30 am

Greetings on arriving at midweek: Wednesday, July 28, 2021: National Hamburger Day (again?) It’s also National Milk Chocolate Day, World Hepatitis Day, and World Nature Conservation Day. 

Wine of the Day: I see online that this 2016 chardonnay got a near perfect rating from my wine guru Robert Parker, though I probably bought it ($39) based on advice at the store. It’s the premium cuvée of Hartford Court chardonnay, and Parker says this:

Already in bottle, the 2016 Hartford Court Chardonnay Four Hearts Vineyard opens with lemon tart, pink grapefruit, pineapple and ripe apple notes with touches of nutmeg and croissant. Medium to full-bodied, rich and with a pleasantly oily texture, it delivers ripe tropical fruit flavors and a long, creamy finish.

Okay, well let’s try it with chicken and hoisin sauce, rice, and green beans.  And yes, it earned its rating, if for nothing else than its complexity. Any wine with a slight scent and flavor of grapefruit is a wine I like, but there was a lot going on here (though I didn’t detect Parker’s “croissant” flavor). Is it worth $39? If you like superb chardonnays, yes it is.

News of the Day:

Even if you’re vaccinated, it’s time to consider masking up again. The CDC reversed course and recommended that even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in areas where the dreaded delta variant of the virus is pervasive. Which parts? These parts:

The guidance on masks in indoor public places applies in parts of the U.S. with at least 50 new cases per 100,000 people in the last week. That includes 60 percent of U.S. counties, officials said. New case rates are particularly high in the South and Southwest, according to a CDC tracker. In Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida, every county has a high transmission rate.

Don’t worry, you’ll find out what your local rules are. This is all the fault of the eligible chowderheads who chose not to get vaccinated (there are 100 million of them out there). Joe Biden is considering requiring all federal workers to get vaccinated, which I think is an excellent move. Surely a lot of vaccination-resistant people work for the government, and they’ll have to choose between their job and their ignorance.

Simone Biles, the one true Olympic superstar this year, left the team competition after she performed (for her) a substandard vault. At first the news suggested that she might be injured, but that doesn’t seem to be the case; she’s now said to be having mental health issues. She’s also withdrawn from the individual all-around competition and might not compete in any individual events at the games (she was favored to win gold in three of those four events. The NYT says it’s “a matter of her mental health”.  The U.S. team, still game, persisted and won the team silver medal, with the Russians taking gold. I can surely sympathize with Biles: she’s the best gymnast in the world, and the pressure to keep on top in the Olympics must affect one’s head.

The New York Times has a 16-minute video about Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who was the real discoverer of pulsars in 1967, even as her Ph.D. advisor, Antony Hewish, repeatedly doubted her results. Nevertheless, when the paper was published, Hewish was first author Bell (her name at the time) was second, and there were three other authors. Hewish, along with Martin Ryle, got the Physics Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1974, and Bell was ignored (she later got a lot of accolades, though). This is one of the most egregious cases of a discoverer being ignored at Nobel Time, but Bell had the grace to say the following:

First, demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve. Secondly, it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. We hear of cases where a supervisor blames his student for a failure, but we know that it is largely the fault of the supervisor. It seems only fair to me that he should benefit from the successes, too. Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it – after all, I am in good company, am I not!

No, it does not demean Nobel Prizes a bit if they were given to research students: they are awarded for discoveries, not the position of the discoverer. At any rate, she is not nearly as kind to Hewish in the video. The video should make you angry at the sexism surrounding this incident (and pervasive in science at the time), but it’s also a well made and informative piece. Watch it.

Every year at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida, they hold a Hemingway Look-Alike contest, with elderly bearded chaps vying to look the most like Ernest Hemingway, who once frequented that bar. This year’s winner is 63-year-old Zach Taylor, an electrical and plumbing supply company owner from Georgia, who beat 136 other entrants on Sunday (previous winners judge each year’s contest).  Here’s a video of the winner and some entrants, though, compared to some of the competitors, I don’t think he looks a whole like like Hemingway. (h/t Jez)

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 611,128, an increase of 290 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 4,194,208, an increase of about 9,900 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on July 28 includes:

  • 1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.
  • 1821 – José de San Martín declares the independence of Peru from Spain.
  • 1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
  • 1914 – In the culmination of the July Crisis, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, igniting World War I.
  • 1917 – The Silent Parade takes place in New York City, in protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans.

The parade, which was indeed silent save for the beat of muffled drums, was organized by W. E. B. Dubois and instigated by lynchings and by the East St. Louis riots in May and July of that year. 8,000 to 15,000 blacks marched down Fifth Avenue.  Here’s an appropriately silent newsreel from the time:

  • 1932 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.

This was a group of 43,000 WWI veterans who were awarded cash certificates for their service, which couldn’t be redeemed until 1945. Because of the depression, they marched on Washington to demand early redemption.  Here is a photo of them camped in front of the Capitol, and then after Hoover’s order of eviction, which drove them away;

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/27/sports/olympics-tokyo-results-medals

Made around 625 A.D., and part of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial, the helmet was found as hundreds of rusted metal fragments, which were painstakingly reconstructed—twice. Here’s the latest reconstruction at the British Museum (you can see the bits that are original):

Here’s a replica showing what the helmet may have looked like. The artistic motifs were actually found in the fragments. The helmet was made from iron, leather, and bronze, but we don’t know who it belonged to, or who was part of the ship burial.

The plane struck the building after becoming lost in the fog. One of the injured was a badly burned woman who was transported down in an elevator, suffering a double accident (from Wikipedia):

Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver was thrown from her elevator car on the 80th floor and suffered severe burns. First aid workers placed her on another elevator car to transport her to the ground floor, but the cables supporting that elevator had been damaged in the incident, and it fell 75 stories, ending up in the basement. Oliver survived the fall but had a broken pelvis, back and neck when rescuers found her amongst the rubble. This remains the world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

Here’s a photo of the plane embedded in the building, which opened for business only two days after the collision:

I was there! And I got to hear the the Dead, The Band, and The Allman Brothers (I’ve since heard the last two again.

  • 2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.

Notables born on this day were few, and include:

  • 1844 – Gerard Manley Hopkins, English poet (d. 1889)
  • 1866 – Beatrix Potter, English children’s book writer and illustrator (d. 1943)

My favorite Beatrix Potter Book:

Those who rested in peace on July 28 include:

  • 1741 – Antonio Vivaldi, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1678)
  • 1750 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German organist and composer (b. 1685)
  • 1968 – Otto Hahn, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1879)
  • 1996 – Roger Tory Peterson, American ornithologist and academic (b. 1908)
  • 2004 – Francis Crick, English biologist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)

One of the smartest scientists of our era:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains Hili’s actions: “Hili has heard about a scapegoat but she didn’t get the meaning. She thinks it’s an exotic animal and she wants to see it.”

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m waiting for a scapegoat.
In Polish:
Ja: Co robisz?
Hili: Czekam na kozła ofiarnego.

From reader Pliny the in Between’s Far Corner Cafe, a smackdown between Popeye and God, both claiming that they am what they am:

Another superfluous sign from reader David:

From Jesus of the Day:

A tweet from reader Ken, with some explanation:

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, perhaps the most loathsome opportunist in the House of Representatives. She ran as a moderate in 2014, but fell in line behind Donald Trump in 2016, and burrowed ever deeper down the rabbit hole the longer Trump remained in office.

When Liz Cheney was stripped of her Republican leadership position for having the temerity to criticize Trump after the January 6th insurrection, Stefanik maneuvered to replace her as Republican Conference Chair. Here she is blaming the January 6th riot on, of all goddamn people, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

A tweet from Divy with a seacat’s passport. I’m not sure how authentic it is, but I’ve found it in a couple of places (that, of course, doesn’t establish authenticity):

From Barry. Why is an alpaca walking into a Chinese restaurant? It’s almost too cute to be real.

From Ginger K.:

Tweets from Matthew:

Is this a big cat, a small boy, or both?

A funny riposte to a biology tweet. (The humpbacked scaly bee fly is a dipteran with a characteristic hump-backed posture, and probably mimics a bumblebee.)

And this should make you skeptical of all those fantastically colored animals you see on the Internet. This is the Indian Giant Squirrel (also known as the Malabar Giant Squirrel), Ratufa indica. Other pictures of the species online aren’t nearly as colorful, and I suspect Avinash is right. But this could be an unusually bright individual. . . .

Thursday: Hili dialogue

July 15, 2021 • 6:30 am

Greetings on Thursday: July 15, 2021: National Tapioca Pudding Day.  It’s also Gummi Worm Day (I hate all things gummi), I Love Horses Day, Orange Chicken Day, National Give Something Away Day, and National Respect Canada Day.

Here are some questions that people who do not respect Canada posted on a tourism website. Don’t be like these people!

And in Kiribati it’s Elderly Men Day, a public holiday.

Wine of the Day: I found the bottle below languishing in my collection; it’s mostly a mixture of Grenache and Syrah, which promises some stuffing. Robert Parker scored it with a high 93, but said (probably in 2014), that it should be drunk in the next 4-6 years. I thus worried it could be over the hill. It’s also said to be a terrific value; the site gives a price at $15 but I’m sure I paid a fair amount less when I bought it.

After a rough day, all I wanted was a crispy baguette, some tasty cheese, some fresh tomatoes drizzled with olive oil, and a good bottle of red. I have the first three, and will essay the wine in about two hours.

It’s essayed and it’s terrific: juicy, fruity, and ripe. Age has tamed this puppy, and I’m guessing that it’s at its peak, with the tannin and “heat” tamed, and the fruit predominating: cherries and raspberries. If you can find this at around $10 bottle (not the 2013s, of course), look it up and, if it’s recommended, buy it. Côtes du Roussillon wines can be great values, for the mixture of Grenache and Syrah are found in southern Rhone wines, some of my favorites.

For the cheese, I looked up cheese ratings at Trader Joe’s (we have one now in Hyde Park) and saw that the #1 rated cheese on this site (and several others) was Old Amsterdam Premium Aged Gouda, so I bought a decent chunk. I had some the other day and it was fabulous, with a bit of gritty crunch like an aged Comté.  It’s about $12 per pound, so it ain’t cheap, but I can recommend it very highly. If you’re a cheese lover and have access to Trader Joe’s, try it (photo below):

Encomiums from the site: Add this Old Amsterdam Gouda to the list of “Things I Didn’t See Coming in 2021.” It’s been around for a bit but I finally gave it the time of day and, oh my God. This is the best cheese I’ve had in so long and it has secured the title of My All-Time Favorite Trader Joe’s Cheese. It’s a gouda cheese that is smooth with crunchy crystals, full of flavor, and an exquisite mix of savory and sweet. I seriously don’t know how I lived without this stuff.

Agreed on the cheese!

News of the Day:

I’ve written fairly often about (and posted tweets from) Iranian activist and journalist Masih Alinejad, and The New York Times reveals that Iran was hatching a plot to have her kidnapped after being lured to a third country. (Shades of Jamal Khashoggi!). Four Iranians (all in Iran) have been indicted, so there’s no chance of catching them, but one, charged with supporting the plot by collecting money for the scheme (but, oddly, not for not participating in the conspiracy), has been arrested in California.

An excerpt:

According to the indictment, in 2018, the Iranian government tried to pay relatives of Ms. Alinejad who live in Iran to invite her to travel to a third country, apparently for the purpose of having her arrested or detained and taken to Iran to be imprisoned. Her relatives did not accept the offer, the indictment said.

The Iranian government began plotting to abduct her from the United States as early as June of last year, the indictment said, with the goal of silencing her criticism of Iran’s human rights abuses, discrimination against women and use of arbitrary imprisonment and torture to target political opponents.

I am a huge admirer of this brave woman, who left Iran and has campaigned tirelessly and publicly for women’s rights and freedom in her natal country. She now works for the Voice of America Persian, and is a vocal opponent of Biden’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran, a bad business that I too oppose. You should support Masih’s work for women’s rights however you can.

(From the NYT). Masih. Photo by Cole Wilson for The New York Times

(h/t Debbie)

What do you do when you might have a gene for a fatal disease, like Huntington’s Disease, that doesn’t produce symptoms until later in your life, but you can get your DNA tested for it to see if you were going to be afflicted? If it’s a dominant gene, like that for Huntington’s, if one parent has it you have half a chance of getting it.  The New York Times discusses one woman facing this dilemma with that disease: Katharine Moser. Sadly, her tests showed that she carried the dominant gene, and although she shows no symptoms at 40, the long, slow, and horrible downhill progress of this disease is likely to start within a decade.

I often wonder if I’d get tested for the gene if I had parents with a dominant gene for a horrible disease. Moser, however, has coped pretty well, now living for the moment, abandoning her plans to have children (you can now get embryos tested for the gene before implantation, though), and retaining her sense of humor. Would you get tested if you had a parent with Huntington’s?

The Guardian has an article on the contentious topic of toilet roll orientation. Over or under? The most vociferous proponent of the aberrant “under” orientation is reader Diana MacPherson, but that’s a minority view. To quote the Guardian  (h/t Matthew):

There’s a decent chance you have strong feelings about toilet paper too. It’s a surprisingly fraught issue: there’s even a dedicated Wikipedia entry on “toilet paper orientation” that is more than 2,000 words long and contains 66 footnotes. When the writer of the popular “Ann Landers” advice column was asked her opinion on the subject in 1986, she replied “under” – an assertion so controversial that it generated a record-breaking 15,000 letters in response, along with several follow-up columns. “Would you believe I got more letters on the toilet paper issue than on the Persian Gulf war?” Landers (a pen name) complained in a 1992 column.

Landers’ opinion on the subject, to be clear, is very much the minority view. Surveys demonstrate that most people are very much Team Over – including Oprah Winfrey.

The common “over” orientation:

I’m a fan of that, too, though Diana will chew me out. But most important, cats LOVE the “over” orientation because they can unroll an entire roll of t.p. with their paws, which they can’t do in the “under” configuration.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 607,365, an increase of 284 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 4,075,592, an increase of about 8,800 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on July 15 includes

Here’s the famous “Battle on the Ice” scene (this battle was in 1242) from the movie Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein (musical score by Sergei Prokofiev):

  • 1741 – Aleksei Chirikov sights land in Southeast Alaska. He sends men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.
  • 1799 – The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign.
  • 1815 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon.

Napoleon was soon sent into exile on St. Helena, where he died in 1821.

Here’s Emerson in 1857, he is a huge hero for reader Laurie:

  • 1910 – In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer’s disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.
  • 2002 – “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

Lindh was released from prison in 2019.

  • 2006 – Twitter, later one of the largest social media platforms in the world, is launched.

The company, Ceiling Cat help us, was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, and here’s his original vision, with the caption from Wikipedia:

A sketch, c. 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network.

 

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s the beautiful Queen’s House in Greenwich, built between 1616 and 1635, said to be the first consciously designed classical building in England. It is a beaut:

Here’s the only Rembrandt rendering of a cat I could find: “Holy family with a cat“, an engraving from 1654. I’ve circled the cat:

 

  • 1919 – Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish British novelist and philosopher (d. 1999)
  • 1922 – Leon M. Lederman, American physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
  • 1926 – Raymond Gosling, English physicist and academic (d. 2015)

Gosling (below) worked with Rosalind Franklin to produce the critical crystallographic-structure data on DNA:

  • 1928 – Carl Woese, American microbiologist and biophysicist (d. 2012)
  • 1930 – Jacques Derrida, Algerian-French philosopher and academic (d. 2004)
One of the men who ruined academia
  • 1943 – Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Northern Irish astrophysicist, astronomer, and academic
  • 1946 – Linda Ronstadt, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
  • 1950 – Arianna Huffington, Greek-American journalist and publisher

Those who ceased to be on July 15 include:

Tom Thumb, whose real name was Charles Stratton, was a “little person” (WIkipedia says “dwarf,” but I think that’s out of fashion), who married another little person, Lavinia Warren, in a gala wedding that made the front pages in 1863.  Stratton died young of a stroke. Here’s the wedding photo with Wikipedia’s caption:

From Wikipedia: The Fairy Wedding group: Stratton and his bride Lavinia Warren, alongside her sister Minnie and George Washington Morrison Nutt (“Commodore Nutt”); entertainers associated with P.T. Barnum.

Chekhov, one of my favorite writers and perhaps the most gifted short story writer in history, died at only 44 of tuberculosis. Here’s his wife’s account of his final moments written by his wife Olga:

Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe (“I’m dying”). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor, and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: “It’s a long time since I drank champagne.” He drained it and lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child …

Here he is with another favorite Russian writer whom you will recognize. The photo was taken at Yalta in 1900.

  • 1940 – Robert Wadlow, American giant, 8″11′ 271 cm (b.1918)

Wadlow, standing 8 feet 11.1 inches high (2.72 m) and weighing 439 pounds at his death at 22 years old, was the tallest person in recorded history. He suffered from hypertrophy of the pituitary gland and apparently was still growing when he died. He wore size 37AA shoes.

Here he is pictured next to his “averaged sized” father.

  • 1948 – John J. Pershing, American general (b. 1860)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, I am lacking a Hili dialogue today and can’t get through to Malgorzata or Andrzej; I have heard through one of their friends that there are once again severe storms in Poland that have knocked out the power in the area, though Andrzej and Malgorzata, their house, and their cherry orchard are okay.  There may not be Hili dialogues for a few days!

Kulka had an anniversary!

Caption: Kulka celebrates the first anniversary of finding Paulina.

In Polish: Kulka obchodzi dziś pierwszą rocznicę znalezienia Pauliny.

From Facebook (h/t: Lenora)

Also from Facebook:

From the Not Another Science Cat page:

Speaking of Iran repressing women, here’s a tweet from reader Barry. The video apparently was taken during the raid. What kind of country makes it illegal for women to let their hair fly free?

Also from Barry. Can anybody identify this?

A tweet from reader Ken, who adds, “Newsmax host Rob Schmitt has some thoughts on vaccines. They are not very good thoughts (and, indeed, sound a lot like eugenics)”:

Tweets from Matthew. The first two are from the same site, but very different. First, a very savvy bird.

I found this video mesmerizing. At first I didn’t think the guys knew what they ere doing, but it turns out the machine operator is very clever! Be sure you watch the whole thing.

Everybody is called a “hero” these days, but here is the true story of a true hero.  You can read about his exploits here.