Category: Hili Dialogue

Sunday: Hili dialogue

May 30, 2021 • 6:30 am

We’re nearly at month’s end: it’s Sunday, May 30, 2021: National Mint Julep Day.  Wouldn’t one of these taste good right now—or at leastlater in the day? (Especially when made with one of my favorite bourbons, shown in the background.)

It’s also Indianapolis 500 Day, though the race will actually be run tomorrow), World MS Day, Water a Flower Day, and Neighbor Day (won’t you be my neighbor?) By the way, the 2018 documentary about Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is an excellent movie and well worth seeing. Check out the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s the trailer:

News of the Day:

I can’t believe that the biggest item on the NBC News last evening was the death of Gavin MacLeod at 90.  MacLeod played Captain Merrill Stubing  of “The Love Boat”—of television’s ghastlier shows, God’s waiting room for D-list stars. He also played part of the news team in a much better show, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. Still. . . . slow news day.

As a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, I thought that CO status (formally I-O) no longer applied these days, since one sought that status when there was government conscription. And the draft is gone.  But one can still become a conscientious objector if you’re contracted for military service, as the New York Times reports with respect to a Marine pilot who decided he was a CO. And the difficulty of getting that status is about the same as it was in my day. If you are granted I-O status because you have a sincere objection to killing, you’re allowed to leave the military.

Matthew is bummed out because his favorite team, Manchester City, lost the Champions League title yesterday by a score of 1-0, with Chelsea getting the single goal. You may tender your sympathies to Dr. Cobb in the comments below.

Can employers require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID? My gut reaction is “yes, they should be able to, as a means of ensuring that the workplace stay healthy.” After all, public school children must be vaccinated against several diseases to go into the classroom (there are exceptions for children with, get this, “religious objections”). Yet 117 employees of a Houston hospital have sued their employer, objecting to its mandatory-vaccination requirement. However, the grounds for the suit sound wonky:

The complaint, filed in state court, says Houston Methodist’s vaccine mandate violates a set of medical ethics standards known as the Nuremberg Code, which was designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects without consent. The code was created after World War II in response to the medical atrocities Nazis committed against prisoners in concentration camps.

“Methodist Hospital is forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment,” the complaint states. It adds that the mandate “requires the employee to subject themselves to medical experimentation as a prerequisite to feeding their families.” Elsewhere, it falsely characterizes the coronavirus vaccines as an “experimental COVID-19 mRNA gene modification injection.”

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 593,920, an increase of 457 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,549,576, an increase of about 10,900 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 30 includes:

  • AD 70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall. The Romans build a circumvallation, cutting down all trees within fifteen kilometres.
  • 1431 – Hundred Years’ War: In Rouen, France, the 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by an English-dominated tribunal. The Roman Catholic Church remembers this day as the celebration of Saint Joan of Arc.
  • 1588 – The last ship of the Spanish Armada sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel.

That must have been something to see: 130 ships sailed from Spain; a third failed to return.  Here’s one painting of the battle (artist not given)::

  • 1842 – John Francis attempts to murder Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill in London with Prince Albert.

Victoria was assaulted four times with intent to murder her, but escaped every time.

Here’s Hart’s mugshot at the Yuma Territorial Prison, where she served three years:

Here’s Harroun’s Marmon Wasp, which won the race with an average speed of about 75 miles per hour. It’s preserved in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.

After the war, Mengele lived in Brazil, successfully hiding until 1979, when he died of a stroke. Here’s a selection of HungarianJews at Auschwitz/Birkenau in 1944, selections that he supervised. The losers, of course, were immediately gassed. The survivors died more slowly

  • 1958 – Memorial Day: The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War respectively, are buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
  • 1972 – In Ben Gurion Airport (at the time: Lod Airport), Israel, members of the Japanese Red Army carry out the Lod Airport massacre, killing 24 people and injuring 78 others.
  • 2012 – Former Liberian president Charles Taylor is sentenced to 50 years in prison for his role in atrocities committed during the Sierra Leone Civil War.

Taylor (below) was convicted of 11 war crimes, including rape and sexual slavery. He’s serving a life sentence in Durham, England:

  • 2020 – The Crew Dragon Demo-2 launches from the Kennedy Space Center, becoming the first crewed orbital spacecraft to launch from the United States since 2011.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1909 – Benny Goodman, American clarinet player, songwriter, and bandleader (d. 1986)

Here’s Goodman doing his famous “Sing, Sing, Sing” with his band in 1937 (from the film “Hollywood Hotel”. Gene Krupa’s on the drums. (This is only a small part of the song.):

  • 1912 – Julius Axelrod, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
  • 1964 – Wynonna Judd, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress

Those who donned their halos on May 30 include:

  • 1431 – Joan of Arc, French martyr and saint (b. 1412)
  • 1911 – Milton Bradley, American businessman, founded the Milton Bradley Company (b. 1836)
  • 1960 – Boris Pasternak, Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1890)
  • 2000 – Tex Beneke, American saxophonist and bandleader (b. 1914)

Beneke, who played sax in Glenn Miller’s band, performs his most famous song, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” in the movie “Sun Valley Seranade” (1941). Look at that geeky outfit! There’s a cameo here by Milton Berle.

  • 2015 – Beau Biden, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 44th Attorney General of Delaware (b. 1969)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili hustles to her victuals (she’s fed by both Paulina and Malgorzata, which accounts for her widening girth):

Paulina: The meal is served.
Hili: I’m running.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Paulina: Podano do stołu.
Hili: Już biegnę.

From Facebook, an oldie but a goodie:

From Meanwhile in Canada, via Reese:

From Facebook; you’ll have to be of a certain age to get it:

A reader sent me this chart from reddit that surprised me, though I’m not quite sure why. It compares the salaries of elementary school teachers and cops in various U.S. states.

Time to revisit My Stealthy Freedom to see real misogyny in action—in Iran, where women are forbidden to sing. This is what happened to one who did:

x

Tweets from Matthew: This is a spider (count the legs) that imitates an ant. Note the fake “eyes” and the white patch that makes the spider look as if it had a separate head and thorax (spiders don’t: they have a fused “cephalothorax”).

A tweet from Matthew himself. I would have thought he would have bought himself a stegosaur:

The sound of a galaxy:

Angry lamp burns the grass:

A comic from 115 years ago, and one of my favorite strips of all time (and one of Matthew’s): Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McKay.

This is absolutely adorable!

And a bodega cat. I’d totally take that shopping basket!

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 29, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s Cat Sabbath again: Saturday, May 29, 2021, and it’s National Biscuit Day, a celebration of one of America’s finest indigenous foodstuffs (I’m talking about Southern fluffy biscuits here, not the British equivalent of our “cookies”). It’s also International Coq au Vin Day, International Jazz Day, Paper Clip Day (they were patented in 1867 but not widely used until the 1890s), and World Digestive Health Day.  It’s Oak Apple Day (or “Restoration Day”) in England, celebrating (?) the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660.

News of the Day:

The damn Republicans used the veto option to block an independent investigation of the Capitol invasion on January 6. What do they have to lose? It’s obvious: an objective evaluation of the President’s role in the issue, and of the GOP’s role in supporting Trump’s claim that the election was stolen. The Senate needed 60 votes to overcome the filibuster rule and launch the investigation, but only 6 Republicans defected from their party, making the vote on the investigation 54-35 (11 Senators, clearly including some Democrats, did not vote). From the NYT:

The six Republican senators who voted to advance debate on the commission included Ms. Collins, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Ms. Murkowski, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. All but Mr. Portman had voted at an impeachment trial in February to find Mr. Trump guilty of inciting the insurrection.

A seventh Republican, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, missed the vote — one of 11 senators to do so — but said he would have voted to advance debate on the commission.

An unworkable Middle East peace proposal is offered by former Israeli Vice Prime Minister (and past peace negotiator) Tzipi Livni in her NYT op-ed, “There is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” I wish! Livni at least says that we’ll get nowhere by trying to deal with Hamas, but good luck with that! Her solution is anodyne:

The cease-fire in Gaza provides a window of time we must use to change the long-term reality. An essential decision is to return to the vision of two states for two people, to strengthen the pragmatic forces and weaken the extremists and end the terror.

Well, yes, two states are the goal, but who gets East Jerusalem, or Area C of the West Bank? If we want any reasonable chance of peace, Hamas, whose goal is to eliminate Israel, cannot be part of the process. Well, that ain’t gonna happen. And that means that there’s no viable two-state solution, a conclusion that, when I came to it yesterday, broke my heart.

This is unbelievable but, if you believe the Guardian, true. I’ll give the report verbatim (h/t Jez):

In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.

The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine.

Here’s the messed-up t.v. report. No wonder he died: he was 400 years old!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 593,583, an increase of 486 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,538,764, an increase of about 12,400 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 29 include:

  • 1660 – English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
  • 1886 – The pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.

Here’s that ad:

The kola nut, from an evergreen tree (below) is no longer used in making any cola beverages:

(From Wikiipedia) Kola nut – pod with half shell removed to reveal prismatic seeds inside their white testa), and fresh seeds (whole without testa on the left and, on the right, split into cotyledons).
  • 1913 – Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring receives its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.
  • 1919 – Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin
  • 1931 – Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, is executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini.

A tweet showing Schiurru, looking as if he was beat up during interrogation:

Matthew sent this tweet appropriate to the day. Translated, it says, “79 years ago, on May 29, 1942, the 8th German ordinance required Jews in the occupied zone to wear the yellow star. Compulsory from June 7, the stars were distributed to the police station by the French police against a textile point on the ration card.”

The men!

  • 1985 – Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
  • 1990 – The Russian parliament elects Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
  • 1999 – Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1736 – Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, 1st Governor of Virginia (d. 1799)
  • 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, poet, and playwright (d. 1936)

Here’s Chesterton, looking pretty much like I thought he would:

  • 1903 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, singer, and producer (d. 2003)
  • 1914 – Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese-Indian mountaineer (d. 1986)
  • 1917 – John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)
  • 1932 – Paul R. Ehrlich, American biologist and author

Ehrlich is 89 today. Remember his prediction in The Population Bomb (1968) that overpopulation would lead to mass famine in the 1970s?

  • 1955 – John Hinckley Jr., American attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan

Those who checked out on May 29 include:

  • 1829 – Humphry Davy, English-Swiss chemist and academic (b. 1778)
  • 1911 – W. S. Gilbert, English playwright and poet (b. 1836)

Gilbert is on the left, Sullivan on the right:

Fanny Brice, the original Funny Girl,  in the 1910s or 1920s. She was Jewish and her real name was Fania Borach:

Fanny Brice – c. 1915-1925 – Ziegfeld by Alfred Cheney Johnston. Restored by Nick and jane for Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans Website: http://www.doctormacro.com/index.html. Enjoy!
  • 1972 – Moe Berg, American baseball player, coach, and spy (b. 1902)

Berg, a mediocre catcher at best, but one of the rare Jewish baseball players, was nevertheless a fascinating man. From Wikipedia:

Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player and was better known for being “the brainiest guy in baseball.” Casey Stengel once described Berg as “the strangest man ever to play baseball”.

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the Nazi German nuclear program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS’s successor, the Central Intelligence Agency. By the mid-1950s, he was unemployed. During the last two decades of his life, he had no work and lived with various siblings.

  • 1979 – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, and screenwriter, co-founder of United Artists (b. 1892)
  • 1998 – Barry Goldwater, American general, activist, and politician (b. 1909)
  • 2010 – Dennis Hopper, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1936)
  • 2012 – Doc Watson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1923)

Here’s Doc singing one of his famous songs, “Tennessee Stud”:

  • 2017 – Manuel Noriega, Panamanian general and politician, Military Leader of Panama (b. 1934)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili gets asked if she wants a cat sausage. The answer is obvious.

Paulina: Do you want a sausage?
Hili: Mhm.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Paulina: Chcesz taką kiełbaskę?
Hili: Mhm.

From Bruce, a mockery of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “gold star” comparison of masking with the Holocaust:

 

This meme came from Divy, who found it on Facebook.

The “two ark solution,” from Diana MacPherson. But why where only dinosaurian reptiles on the doomed ark? Why were the turtles and gators with the mammals?

From Abigail Shrier, showing truckling to the anti-Israel Palestinians. You can’t just send out a letter condemning anti-Semitism any more (h/t: Orli):

Mushbrain Marjorie Taylor Greene puts on her “really bad Mexican accent” in an accusation that the Democratic party is in collusion with the Mexican drug cartels. It’s amazing that she was elected, but then again, this is America.

Tweets from Matthew. The first is an unconscionable waste of government money:

The gangland areas of Chicago in the old days. Click on this link to see an enlarged map.

The cat’s knee, with extra bones for lagniappe!

Cryptic octopus reveals itself:

Colorized century-old photos from Egypt:

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 28, 2021 • 6:30 am

The Memorial Day weekend officially kicks off today, May 28, 2021, with Monday being an official holiday in the U.S. And hooray—it’s National Brisket Day, which must be celebrated in Texas with a BBQ brisket. It’s also International Hamburger Day, Amnesty International Day (see below), Menstrual Hygiene Day, and National Heat Awareness Day. 

Wine of the Day (below): This puppy probably cost me a bit south of $20, and Vacqueyras is not a wine I often drink outside of France, where it’s relatively inexpensive in restaurants. (I don’t buy expensive wine in French restaurants.) As it was highly rated by my erstwhile go-to critic, Robert Parker and others, I was eager to try it, and had it with a chicken breast, steamed rice, and fresh tomatoes drizzled with olive oil.

It’ a blend of 80% Grenache with 20% Syrah, made from vines 80-100 years old, with the juice aged for two years in concrete tanks. The wine smelled strongly of cherries, and, as the reviews note, is redolent of ripe fruit. It’s not a particularly gutsy wine, so I wouldn’t have it with steak, but it’s a great accompaniment for anything that calls for a racy and elegant red. Verdict: worth the money.

News of the Day:

The New York Times reports that, slowly but surely, the Taliban is taking over Afghanistan as U.S. troops pull out. Rural outposts of the Afghan military are surrendering, and provincial capitals are surrounded. Afghanistan will not be a good place to live for a very long time.

The Detroit Metro Times reports the rectification of a very shoddy conviction: Gilbert Lee Poole, Jr.  spent 32 years in prison for murder based on a supposed match between tooth marks on the victim and Poole’s teeth. It turns out that tooth-mark matching is pretty lousy at identifying criminals. It was DNA evidence from blood at the crime scne that exonerated Poole. How do you give a man 32 years of his life back?  (h/t: Ken)

Yesterday’s HuffPost Personal section had an especially interesting article about stuff you really need to know. Click on the screenshot. (Note: TMI!)

Wanna buy a whole town? Nipton, California, population 25 and 80 acres in size, is for sale for $2,750,000. I don’t know who would want that ragtag collection of trailer parks, general stores and The Hotel California, all in the middle of nowhere, sitting right on the border with Nevada. What would you do with such a town? However, the Wikipedia entry for Nipton is interesting.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 592,938, an increase of about 496 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,526,317, an increase of about 12,700 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 28 includes:

  • 585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by the Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of Halys, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

This story may be true, but nobody has any idea how Thales predicted the eclipse.

  • 1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn valid.
  • 1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port.)
  • 1830 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which denies Native Americans their land rights and forcibly relocates them.
  • 1892 – In San Francisco, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.

Here’s Muir with Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. The Scottish conservationist lived in Yosemite Valley for two years.

They were identical quintuplets, and two of them are still alive. Here’s a video from when they were young:

  • 1936 – Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication.
  • 1937 – Volkswagen, the German automobile manufacturer is founded.

A prototype from 1935. Comissioned by Adolf Hitler, this was the best-selling car in history:

  • 1948 – Daniel François Malan is elected as Prime Minister of South Africa. He later goes on to implement Apartheid.
  • 1987 – A West German pilot, Mathias Rust, who was 18 years old, evades Soviet Union air defences and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

Here’s a tweet about that with video:

Here’s the restored version, and though I lived in Milan for over a month, the work was under restoration when I visited:

  • 2002 – The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City.

Notables born on this day include:

Agassiz, who worked at Harvard (ironically, its Museum of Comparative Zoology is named after him) was a staunch opponent of Darwin, a creationist who never gave in. Here’s a portrait:

  • 1888 – Jim Thorpe, American decathlete, football player, and coach (d. 1953)
  • 1908 – Ian Fleming, English journalist and author, created James Bond (d. 1964)

Here’s a short video interview and biography of Ian Fleming, who explains the origin of the name “James Bond”:

  • 1912 – Patrick White, Australian novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
  • 1944 – Rudy Giuliani, American lawyer and politician, 107th mayor of New York City
  • 1945 – Patch Adams, American physician and author, founded the Gesundheit! Institute
  • 1947 – Leland Sklar, American singer-songwriter and bass player
  • 1968 – Kylie Minogue, Australian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
  • 1985 – Carey Mulligan, English actress and singer

I first saw Carey Mulligan in the 2009 movie “An Education,” in which she was stunning. She went on to star in one of my favorite recent movies (2010), “Never Let Me Go,” based on the eponymous Ishiguro movie. I love both the movie and the book, though others don’t appreciate them as much as I do.  Here’s the trailer for the movie.

Those who ascended to their cloud on May 28 include:

  • 1843 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (b. 1758)
  • 1849 – Anne Brontë, English novelist and poet (b. 1820)
  • 1971 – Audie Murphy, American soldier and actor, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1925)
  • 2014 – Maya Angelou, American memoirist and poet (b. 1928)

Angelou getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2011:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains, “One often hears that the world is developing/moving forward. But Hili is happy for the moment so she decided to stand still where she is.”

Hili: The world goes forward.
Paulina: And you?
Hili: I’m standing still for the moment.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Świat idzie do przodu.
Paulina: A ty?
Hili: A ja chwilowo stoję.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

From Bruce. I cannot guarantee this is a real screenshot of a t.v. report:

A meme from Nicole. I believe the emblem has something to do with the cars lighting.

From Fat Cat Art:

I get included in an anti-Semitic list of Jewish atheists trying to cash in on the Godless Book Market!

From Titania: The Spanish postal service goes woke, but in a curious way: making the darkest stamp the least valuable. Titania has a wry take on this, but there’s a real fracas going on in Spain about it, as described in The Washington Post.

From Simon: Rechavi’s usual academic take on nonacademic matters, in this case parkour. Simon asks, “I wonder how much blood we are not seeing?

Tweets from Matthew. First, jumping spiders become Honorary Cats:

An earlier livestream of a cat giving birth; you can rewind the link to see the action:

Matthew doesn’t understand this, but then I don’t understand cricket. What crappy defense: the first baseman should have had his foot on the  bag for the throw from third, and then someone should have covered first base when the first baseman tried to chase down the runner.

Oy! They’re turning Down House (Darwin’s home), once a fantastic and understated place to visit, into a theme park. NO!

Vulgar slang from the 18th century. I like “dog booby”.

Thursday: Hili dialogue

May 27, 2021 • 6:30 am

Memorial Day weekend is nigh: it’s Thursday, May 27, 2021: National Grape Popsicle Day. It’s also Red Nose Day, a holiday that seems to have disappeared, and Cellophane Tape Day.

News of the Day:

I was surprised to learn that Covid is a serious problem in Japan, a country where, you’d think, they’d take serious action against serious problems. Yet only 2% of Japanese have been vaccinated against the virus I1/20th the proportion of the U.S.), and some big-city health systems are seriously strained. With the already-postponed Olympics about to begin, most Japanese people are against holding the games this summer, the U.S. State Department has warned Americans not to travel to Japan, a major Japanese newspaper (itself a sponsor of the Games) has called for their further postponement, and Japanese medical authorities say they’re not equipped to handle an Olympic-fueled outbreak. Nevertheless, Japan will invest over $15 billion in the Games, and to them the dosh outweighs the risk.

According to the evening news, this is the 61st mass shooting in the U.S. this year. This time an apparently disaffected worker in a rail yard, using multiple guns, killed 8 people before he took his own life (he also burned down his house before the shooting. As the shootings mount and states continue to relax gun laws, I can only imagine what the rest of the world—the civilized part—thinks about America’s gun mania.

Yes, Bret Stephens is a conservative, but that doesn’t mean you should write off everything he says. In light of the American “progressive” Left’s increasing anti-Semitism, which I predict will hurt the Democrats, Stephens’s new column, “Anti-Zionism isn’t Anti-Semitism? Someone didn’t get the memo,” is worth a read.  An excerpt:

But if there’s been a massive online campaign of progressive allyship with Jews, I’ve missed it. If corporate executives have sent out workplace memos expressing concern for the safety of Jewish employees, I’ve missed it. If academic associations have issued public letters denouncing the use of anti-Semitic tropes by pro-Palestinian activists, I’ve missed them.

It’s a curious silence. In the land of inclusiveness, Jews are denied inclusion.

Palestine is far more of an apartheid state than is Israel, and those who characterize the Israeli government as “right wing” blithely ignore the fact that the Palestinian government is far more right wing. In Palestine there are no LGBTQ rights, women are deeply oppressed, Jews are not allowed to live or buy property, Palestinian gays seek refuge in Israel, abortion is illegal, and religious fanaticism is rife. Why is that not “right wing”, and why don’t we ever hear of Hamas described as “right wing”? Because, I guess, the U.S. press didn’t get the memo.

Two new studies reported in the NYT contain good news: it looks as if cells with a “memory” of coronavirus persist in the bone marrow for a long time: possibly a lifetime. The bottom line is this:

Together, the studies suggest that most people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who were later immunized will not need boosters. Vaccinated people who were never infected most likely will need the shots, however, as will a minority who were infected but did not produce a robust immune response.

The article is detailed, and you’ll want to read it if you’re interested in the science behind this conclusion.

All during the pandemic, authorities I trusted argued that there was no way that the coronavirus could have been released from a Chinese lab. Now, it seems, that theory has become a bit more credible. In fact, it’s become credible to the extent that Joe Biden, who was leaving the investigation of that possibility to the WHO, has now ordered a government investigation of the possibility. (The alternative, of course, was transmission via an animal vector.) I don’t know the evidence, and have no dog in this fight, but the reversal of the administration is curious.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 591,593, an increase of about 522 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,513,651, an increase of about 12,800 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 27 includes:

  • 1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
  • 1919 – The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.

This flight was not nonstop (Alcock and Brown did that two weeks later), but was made in a flying boat; here’s its photo:  (Lindbergh, of course, was famous because his 1927 crossing was solo.)

The Model T is to the left, the Model A to the right:

Here’s the cartoon; the song is starts at 1:56:

  • 1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.
  • 1942 – World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later.

The results of Heyrich’s assassination are notorious; as Wikipedia says: “Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; all men and boys over the age of 16 were shot, and all but a handful of the women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.” Heydrich, pictures below, was a main architect of the Holocaust:

  • 1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.
  • 2016 – Barack Obama is the first president of United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1819 – Julia Ward Howe, American poet and songwriter (d. 1910)
  • 1837 – Wild Bill Hickok, American police officer (d. 1876)

Here’s Hickock in 1869. Many of his exploits were fictitious:

I could find no Roualt paintings that included cats, but here’s a nice 1911 painting of his: “Clown Tragique”:

  • 1911 – Hubert Humphrey, American journalist and politician, 38th Vice President of the United States (d. 1978)
  • 1912 – Sam Snead, American golfer and sportscaster (d. 2002)
  • 1923 – Henry Kissinger, German-American political scientist and politician, 56th United States Secretary of State, Nobel Prize laureate

Those who hied themselves below ground on May 27 include:

  • 1564 – John Calvin, French pastor and theologian (b. 1509)
  • 1840 – Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1782)
  • 1910 – Robert Koch, German physician and microbiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1843)
  • 2017 – Gregg Allman, American musician, singer and songwriter (b. 1947)

What a loss to music! Although my favorite Gregg Allman performance is “One Way Out,” this acoustic version of “Melissa” is also excellent, and the song was written by Gregg. There’s also a great solo by Dickie Betts.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the interfeline animosity in Dobrzyn has settled down, but Hili still likes to cut loose once in a while:

Szaron: Don’t even think about it.
Hili: I will just scare Kulka a bit.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Szaron: Nawet o tym nie myśl!
Hili: Tylko trochę Kulkę wystraszę.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

From Bruce. If you don’t get this, you’re too young!

From Nicole:

From Jesus of the Day. I’m hoping that this photograph is real; I think it is:

Titania shows us wokeness infecting the pages of Nature. An ad like this would probably be illegal in the U.S.:

Tweets from Matthew. How the deuce did this fox get into a washing machine? Was it dirty?

The world’s most helpful ferret:

A man in a hurry:

This is, in fact, true to some extent, but doesn’t hold in rural or semirural areas:

Speaking of foxes (which are Honorary Cats®), what a delight to find this in your garden!

Matthew and I both think this mouse probably has toxoplasmosis, a parasite that makes the mouse behave in a way to facilitate its getting eaten, whereupon it undergoes the next stage of its life cycle inside the cat:

What a cool video!:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

May 26, 2021 • 6:30 am

It is a humpish sort of day, suitable for camels or Quasimodo: it’s May 26 2021: National Blueberry Cheesecake Day (make mine either plain or cherry, though). But it’s also National Cherry Dessert Day, Paper Airplane Day, Sally Ride Day (honoring her birthday on this day in 1951), World Redhead Day, and, in Australia, National Sorry Day, a day of apology for the mistreatment of indigenous people.

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) is an animated swing-dancing game celebrating the famed Savoy Ballroom, in which you can test your rhythm, individually or in a two-person game, for four swing songs. I haven’t played the game, so no guarantees.

This video explains the video, the Savoy Ballroom, and the game:

News of the Day:

According to the Washington Post, Manhattan’s district attorney has convened a grand jury to evaluate the  possibility of criminal charges against Donald Trump and his business associates.

The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case ­— during the duration of its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Generally, special grand juries such as this one are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely.

The move indicates that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It suggests, too, that Vance believes he has found evidence of a crime — if not by Trump then by someone potentially close to him or by his company.

Is anybody betting that the Orange Man will be wearing an orange onesie in jail? Remember, there is no Presidential pardon for state charges, even if Biden had the unlikely inclination to intervene.

More about grand juries from the AP: Madison Smith, a Kansas woman who accused a man of raping her convened her own grand jury when local prosecutors declined to bring rape charges. It turns out that, at least in Kansas, citizens can impanel a grand jury if they present a petition signed by hundreds of citizens. Smith was persistent and succeeded:

The process of seeking a grand jury wasn’t easy. Smith had to stand in a parking lot telling her story over and over again to strangers to collect hundreds of signatures, and then do it again when the first petition was rejected on a technicality.

The accused had already pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and was given two years’ probation. I believe that, at least in Kansas (a few other states have such procedures), this is the first time the citizen-impaneling procedure has been used in a case of sexual assault.

Down in Texas, the state legislature just approved a bill that allows anyone over 21 to buy and carry a handgun in pubic places without a permit and without training. The governor says he’ll sign the bill.

From the BBC, an article titled, “Miss, what’s a duck?” reveals the deep and sad ignorance of British children who get little exposure to nature. Here’s part of the sad report:

When school teacher Kim Leathley took her class on a trip to the local aquarium, she was asked an unusual question.

“Miss? What’s that?” said a nine-year-old boy, pointing towards the waves, as they walked along Blackpool promenade.

It turned out he’d never seen the sea before.

A surprise, given the school is in the middle of Blackpool and only a few streets from the seafront.

Other teachers have had similar experiences over the years on school trips outside the city, she explains. A 10-year-old once asked what a duck was, while a pupil – spotting cows in the field – said: “Look at those horses.”

Speaking of ducks (and we should), a California man was arrested for firing his gun to protect his pet duck. According to the BBC, the man fired into the air as a dog leapt his fence went after his duck. The duck survived, but with a broken leg. In my view, that man should get a medal, not a charge of reckless endangerment!  (h/t: Matthew)

Over at the Atlantic, Matti Friedman has an article about how Americans’ attempts to see commonalities between themselves and Israel has distorted our view of what’s happening. Read “Israel’s Problems are not like America’s.”

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 590,628, an increase of about 700 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,500,840, an increase of about 12,650 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 26 includes:

  • 1293 – An earthquake strikes Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan, killing about 23,000.
  • 1857 – Dred Scott is emancipated by the Blow family, his original owners.

Scott had lost a Supreme Court case, 7-2, which said that African-Americans had no right to citizenship in the U.S. Sadly, after he was freed, he died about 15 months later of tuberculosis. A photo:

Here are the final resting places in St. Petersburg of the Tsar and his family, shot by the Bolsheviks. I took this in 2011. Nicholas’s resting place is to the left in the center.

A first edition, first printing of this puppy will run you around $40,000 U.S.:

  • 1923 – The first 24 Hours of Le Mans was held and has since been run annually in June.
  • 1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.

Here are some model Ts on Ford’s famous assembly line:

It was successful. Here are some British troops lined up on the Dunkirk beaches, awaiting evacuation:

Here’s Abbey Road Two Studio, where most of the tracks of Sgt. Pepper (54 years old today) were recorded:

  • 1998 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules in New Jersey v. New York that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.
  • 1998 – The first “National Sorry Day” was held in Australia, and reconciliation events were held nationally, and attended by over a million people.

Notables born on this day include:

Lange was most famous for her images of the Great Depression in the U.S. Here are two of them. First, a family moves with its belongings:

A family in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, are forced to leave their home during the Great Depression, June 1938. Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Getty Images

“Migrant mother” (1936), perhaps her most famous image:

  • 1907 – John Wayne, American actor, director, and producer (d. 1979)
  • 1920 – Peggy Lee, American singer-songwriter and actress (d. 2002)

Here’s Lee singing “Why Don’t You Do Right” with the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1943. I love this video! Her singing is lovely and understated, and Goodman plays some sweet licorice stick.

  • 1926 – Miles Davis, American trumpet player, composer, and bandleader (d. 1991)
  • 1928 – Jack Kevorkian, American pathologist, author, and assisted suicide activist (d. 2011)
  • 1940 – Levon Helm, American singer-songwriter, drummer, producer, and actor (d. 2012)
  • 1948 – Stevie Nicks, American singer-songwriter

Here’s the best Stevie Nicks video ever, recorded spontaneously as she was being made up for a Rolling Stone shoot. Voilà: “Wild Heart.” This may be the best spontaneous rock song ever, and is infinitely better than the recorded version. You won’t regret listening to this.

  • 1949 – Jeremy Corbyn, British journalist and politician
  • 1951 – Sally Ride, American physicist and astronaut, founded Sally Ride Science (d. 2012)

Those who went belly up on May 26 include:

Here’s one of Riis’s photos. Wikipedia caption: “Bandit’s Roost (1888) by Jacob Riis, from How the Other Half Lives. This image is Bandit’s Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City.” Would you walk down this street? Talk about “Gangs of New York”!

  • 1943 – Edsel Ford, American businessman (b. 1893)
  • 1976 – Martin Heidegger, German philosopher and academic (b. 1889)
  • 2008 – Sydney Pollack, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1934)
  • 2010 – Art Linkletter, Canadian-American radio and television host (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili doesn’t understand the prevalence of annoying insects (has she considered evolution?):

Hili: I can find no justification.
Paulina: What for?
Hili: Neither for mosquitos nor for any flies.
(Picture: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Nie znajduję żadnego usprawiedliwienia.
Paulina: Dla kogo?
Hili: Ani dla komarów, ani dla innych muszek.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

Little Kulka is intense, as usual:

A meme from Bruce:

From Nicole, a plaint that I’ve sometimes had:

A bad joke from Jesus of the Day:

From Titania. Shoot me NOW!

Tweets from Matthew. The first is a science experiment: “How ducklings’ feet sound on different floors.” Awesome!

If they start opening beers we’re all doomed:

I don’t think these ducks are particularly spoiled, do you?

A nice optical illusion, and no, it does not expand! Click on it to enlarge the picture.

ARRESTED!???? This guy deserves a medal!

This really is excellent even if it is the New Woke Times. Excellent graphics:

There are more pictures in this thread of quail walking alongside a gopher snake. Matthew’s take: “I reckon they are ensuring it leaves. Safety in numbers and intimidating to snake.”

 

:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 25, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on the cruelest of all weekdays: Tuesday, and May 25, 2021, to boot. It’s also National Wine Day and Geek Pride Day. as well as International Missing Children’s Day and  National Missing Children’s Day (United States), as well as National Tap Dance Day and, in honor of Douglas Adams, Towel Day.  

And it’s another Three Bun Day, as I saw three Eastern Cottontails on my walk to work. They don’t live very long, but nor are they aware of their mortality.

Wine of the Day: This bottle from Domaine Hippolyte Reverdy may be the first Sancerre I’ve had (it’s a French appellation with most whites made from sauvignon blanc). It’s not a wine I look for, and can’t remember buying this one, though I have $30 written on the bottle, so that’s what I paid. Was it worth it? I don’t think so. It’s a decent specimen of sauvignon blanc, redolent of citrus and apple, but one can do better: equally good sauvignon blancs are available for $20 or less. You win some, you lose some. . .

Drunk with fettucine alfredo; a slight touch of sweetness would have improved the pairing.

News of the Day:

In an op-ed at the NYT, mercifully free of politics, Salman Rusdie’s thesis is “The stories we love make us who we are.” An exponent of magical realism, at least in his best book, Midnight’s Children, Rushdie says this:

This is the beauty of the wonder tale and its descendant, fiction: that one can simultaneously know that the story is a work of imagination, which is to say untrue, and believe it to contain profound truth. The boundary between the magical and the real, at such moments, ceases to exist.

In his paean to “wonder tales,” one of Rushdie’s favorite novels is also in my pantheon of the greats:

When, as a college student, I first read Günter Grass’s great novel “The Tin Drum,” I was unable to finish it. It languished on a shelf for fully 10 years before I gave it a second chance, whereupon it became one of my favorite novels of all time: one of the books I would say that I love. It is an interesting question to ask oneself: Which are the books that you truly love? Try it. The answer will tell you a lot about who you presently are.

Well, you can take issue with his thesis, but not with the claim that The Tin Drum is one of the best novels of our time.

A fossil fruit, 52 million years old, has been discovered , a tomatillo found in South America.  (h/t Nicole) It shows this:

Delicate fossil remains of tomatillos found in Patagonia, Argentina, show that this branch of the economically important family that also includes potatoes, peppers, tobacco, petunias and tomatoes existed 52 million years ago, long before the dates previously ascribed to these species, according to an international team of scientists.

(From GeeologyIn.com: The new fossil groundcherry Physalis infinemundi from Laguna del Hunco in Patagonia, Argentina, 52 million years old. This specimen displays the characteristic papery, lobed husk and details of the venation. Credit: Ignacio Escapa, Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio

According to the Guardian, the body of a missing Catalonian man was found inside the leg of a large dinosaur statue. What a way to go, too: a police spokesperson explained the tragedy this way:  “It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone, which he’d dropped. It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn’t get out.” (h/t: Matthew Cobb)

And another strange story, this time from the BBC: Criminal trapped by a photo of Stilton cheese!  Carl Stewart, 39, posted this photo on an encrypted messaging service, which was decryptic by the police:

His finger and palm prints from the photos were sufficient to get him indicted for conspiracy to supply heroin, cocaine, ketamine and MDMA, as well as for transferring criminal property.  He’s now in jail for over 13 years because he broadcast his love of Stilton cheese! (h/t: Jez)

From the Times of Israel, Blake Ezra has a good piece about the distortions of the media (and by others, including celebrities) about the recent battles in the Middle East: “I’m fed up.” Ricky Gervais’s comment about Hollywood celebrities in the piece is appropriate.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 589,926, an increase of 410 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,488,194, an increase of about 9,600 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 25 includes:

Can you imagine the relief of those people who no longer had to eat annelids?

Wilde moved to France the day he was released from prison and never came back to Britain. Here’s his tomb in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, photographed by me three years ago. A plexiglas barrier surrounds Jacob Epstein’s superb tomb, as people would cover the sculpture with lipstick by kissing it (you can see some kiss marks in the photo):

Here I am honoring Scopes at his gravesite in Paducah, Kentucky. The Discovery Institute excoriated me for publishing this picture, saying that I was honoring a man who taught eugenics and racism. But he didn’t: he taught human evolution for one day as a substitute teacher (the other stuff was in the textbook he used for that day, but didn’t teach):

  • 1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  • 1955 – First ascent of Mount Kangchenjunga: On the British Kangchenjunga expedition led by Charles Evans, Joe Brown and George Band reach the summit of the third-highest mountain in the world (8,586 meters); Norman Hardie and Tony Streather join them the following day.

I went to Darjeeling in India largely to see Kanchenjunga from Tiger Hill, the prime viewing spot. For four days the mountain was invisible, socked in by clouds, and then, the day before we left, I climbed Tiger Hill with my camera and tripod an got a morning view of Kanchenjunga that looked like this:

Here’s Kennedy’s pronouncement exactly sixty years ago today:

  • 1977 – Star Wars (retroactively titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is released in theaters.
  • 1978 – The first of a series of bombings orchestrated by the Unabomber detonates at Northwestern University resulting in minor injuries.
  • 1986 – The Hands Across America event takes place.

Remember this? Well, a continuous chain of linked human hands wasn’t achieved, though 6.5 million people participated, but it was sort of successful. From Wikipedia:

In order to allow the maximum number of people to participate, the path linked major cities and meandered back and forth within the cities. Just as there were sections where the “line” was six to ten people deep, there were also undoubtedly many breaks in the chain. However, enough people participated that if an average of all the participants had been taken and spread evenly along the route standing four feet (1.2 m) apart, an unbroken chain across the 48 contiguous states would have been able to be formed.

Here’s Weihenmayer on the summit:

  • 2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
  • 2012 – The SpaceX Dragon becomes the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station
  • 2018 – Ireland votes to repeal the Eighth Amendment of their constitution that prohibits abortion in all but a few cases, choosing to replace it with the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
  • 2020 – George Floyd, a black man, is murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest when he is restrained in a prone position face-down on the ground for more than nine minutes, provoking protests across the United States and around the world

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1803 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet and philosopher (d. 1882)
  • 1878 – Bill Robinson, American actor and dancer (d. 1949)

Robinson, a superb tap dancer, was invariably relegated to the “subservient black man” roles. Here he is doing a dance on a staircase:

  • 1889 – Igor Sikorsky, Russian-American aircraft designer, founded Sikorsky Aircraft (d. 1972)
  • 1929 – Beverly Sills, American soprano and actress (d. 2007)
  • 1944 – Frank Oz, English-born American puppeteer, filmmaker, and actor
  • 1969 – Anne Heche, American actress

Those who exited this life on May 25 were few, and include:

  • 1954 – Robert Capa, Hungarian photographer and journalist (b. 1913)

Capa was the only photographer to land with U.S. troops on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Here’s one of the eleven photos he took of the landing:

  • 2003 – Sloan Wilson, American author and poet (b. 1920)

Author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Wilson was the father of biologist David Sloan Wilson.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there is some joy this day, at least from Paulina:

Paulina: At last some good news from the world.
Hili: You must be joking again.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Paulina: Nareszcie jakieś dobre wiadomości ze świata.
Hili: Chyba znowu żartujesz.

And Szaron’s hiding in the space where firewood is stored:

A meme from Nicole:

I posted this several years ago on Facebook:

From Bruce, a grilled chicken:

One of many odious tweets by a working BBC journalist. People are demanding she be fired, but I won’t join that mob.

From Barry; nice try, but no cigar. . .

Tweets from Matthew. Learn this trick, for some day it may save your life:

One excerpt:

While the familiar munching and slurping of the dinner table are innocuous enough to most, those with misophonia – literally a hatred of sound – can find them profoundly irritating, to the point that they become disgusted, anxious, angry and even violent.

Does anyone here have misphonia?

I didn’t know there was a Duck of the Day site. Fortunately, Matthew is following it:

Below: the average distance traveled by swifts was 570 km per day, but they often went much farther: the record was 830 km per day (roughly 500 miles) over nine days!

Now THIS is a gorgeous beetle:

A failed prediction from Mechanix Illustrated:

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

May 24, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Monday, May 24, 2021: National Escargot Day. It is a Three Bun Day, which means that I saw three cottontail rabbits on my way to work. This augurs a good day: 12 rabbits’ feet!

It’s also Asparagus Day, Brother’s Day (only one brother being celebrated?), and, in Canada, Victoria Day and its related holiday in Quebec, National Patriots’ Day (Journée nationale des patriotes). And Bob Dylan turns 80 today! (See below.)

News of the Day:

“Defund the police” was always a dubious slogan, unless qualified with strict specifications on where the money would go to compensate for reduced policing or to add extra social value. And, sure enough, this headline has appeared in The New Woke Times (click on screenshot):

The cause, of course, is a rise in violent crime. A quote:

. . . more cops is what Los Angeles is getting.

A year after streets echoed with calls to “defund” law enforcement and city leaders embraced the message by agreeing to take $150 million away from the Los Angeles Police Department, or about 8 percent of the department’s budget, the city last week agreed to increase the police budget to allow the department to hire about 250 officers. The increase essentially restores the cuts that followed the protests.

The BBC reports that John Kelly, an ultamarathoner, just set a record in the grueling Pennine Way race, a 260-mile route that “runs down the spine of Britain from the Scottish Borders’ Kirk Yetholm to Edale in Derbyshire’s Peak District.”They add that a fit hiker would take over two weeks to hike the route, but Kelly did it in just 58 hours and four minutes. And he had only two 10-minute naps along the way!

Speaking of ultramarathons, the NYT reports a mass death: 21 runners in a Chinese ultramarathon, including one of their best athletes, died when cold weather and freezing rain inundated a 62-mile mountain race. Many of the runners were clad only in short and tee-shirts.

The Associated Press has collected some depressing and hair-raising stories about how the pandemic has affected the lives of Indians, while the medical system breaks down. Here’s just one of several stories:

The Amrohi Family, Gurgaon

At the Amrohi apartment, the former ambassador’s family was calling his medical school classmates for help. One eventually arranged a bed at a nearby hospital.

It was April 26. The brutal north Indian summer was coming on. Temperatures that day reached nearly 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

His wife, Yamini, and their adult son Anupam put him into the family’s compact SUV.

They arrived about 7:30 p.m. and parked in front of the main doors, thinking Ashok would be rushed inside. They were wrong. Admission paperwork had to be completed first, and the staff was swamped.

So they waited.

Anupam stood in line while Yamini stayed in the car with Ashok, who was breathing bottled oxygen. She blasted the air-conditioning, trying to keep him cool.

An hour passed. Two hours. Someone came to swab Ashok for a coronavirus test. It came back positive. His breathing had grown difficult.

“I went thrice to the hospital reception for help. I begged, pleaded and shouted at the officials,” she said. “But nobody budged.”

At one point, their daughter called from London, where she lives with her family. With everyone on a video call, their four-year-old grandson asked to talk to Ashok.

“I love you, Poppy,” he said.

Ashok pulled off his oxygen mask: “Hello. Poppy loves you too.”

Three hours.

Four hours.

Anupam returned regularly to the car to check on his father.

“It’s almost done,” he would tell him each time. “Everything is going to be alright. Please stay with us!”

Five hours.

A little after midnight, Ashok grew agitated, pulling off the oxygen mask and gasping. His chest heaved. Then he went still.

“In a second he was no more,” Yamini said. “He was dead in my arms.”

Yamini went to the reception desk: “You are murderers,” she told them.

The story continues later in the article.

And a BBC report describes a deadly “black fungus” disease that strikes some people in India who have recovered from Covid, mostly males with underlying conditions like diabetes. It is a fulminating infection caused by a common soil fungus and must be treated with long-term doses of antifungal agents.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 589,517, an increase of 563 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,478,596, an increase of about 9,000 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 24 includes:

  • 1487 – The ten-year-old Lambert Simnel is crowned in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland, with the name of Edward VI in a bid to threaten King Henry VII’s reign.
  • 1607 – One hundred English settlers disembark in Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America.
  • 1626 – Peter Minuit buys Manhattan.

Yes, the island was a bargain: it went for 60 guilders, a trifling amount now worth about $1,143. The sellers were Lenape Native Americans.

  • 1683 – The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opens as the world’s first university museum.
  • 1813 – South American independence leader Simón Bolívar enters Mérida, leading the invasion of Venezuela, and is proclaimed El Libertador (“The Liberator”).
  • 1844 – Samuel Morse sends the message “What hath God wrought” (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Morse in 1840; the man knew his Bible:

  • 1883 – The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
  • 1930 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

Here’s Johnson  in her Gypsy Moth plane in 1930. The flight took her six days. Sadly, she died after running out of fuel over the Thames Estuary in 1941 and, parachuting safely into the water, died of extreme cold.

  • 1935 – The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies 2–1 at Crosley Field.
  • 1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

Here’s Sikorsky in his first helicopter:

A second attempt succeeded in August of that same year. If you’re in Mexico City, do visit Trotsky’s house, or rather fortress, which he built to stave off attacks. He knew Stalin was going to go after him. In 2012 I visited it (Frida Kahlo’s house is just a few blocks away); here’s the desk where Trotsky was sitting when an assassin put an ice axe into his head. It’s said to be just as he left it.

  • 1956 – The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland.
  • 1976 – The Judgment of Paris takes place in France, launching California as a worldwide force in the production of quality wine.
  • 1991 – Israel conducts Operation Solomon, evacuating Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
  • 1999 – The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.
  • 2019 – Under pressure over her handling of Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May announces her resignation as Leader of the Conservative Party, effective as of June 7.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1819 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (d. 1901)
  • 1938 – Tommy Chong, Canadian-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
  • 1941 – Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, artist, writer, and producer; Nobel Prize laureate

Dylan is 80 today! How could time have passed so quickly? Here’s a photo I have in my office of Dylan with a certain young lady (his significant other at the time) who went on to achieve her own renown:

 

  • 1960 – Kristin Scott Thomas, English actress

Those who lost their lives on May 24 include:

  • 1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (b. 1473)
  • 1879 – William Lloyd Garrison, American journalist and activist (b. 1805)
  • 1974 – Duke Ellington, American pianist and composer (b. 1899)

I’ve almost finished reading my biography of Duke. Here’s one of my favorites from the Blanton-Webster version of his band (1939-1940): “Cotton Tail.” I put it up in honor of the three bunnies I saw this morning. And yes, this one swings! The sax solo made Ben Webster famous. (And this will wake you up, so keep the sound down if folks are sleeping!).

  • 1996 – Joseph Mitchell, American journalist and author (b. 1908)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Paulina have a chat.

Hili: How does the writing of your masters theses go?
Paulina: It’s going well but sometimes I need a break.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Jak ci idzie pisanie pracy magisterskiej?
Paulina: Dobrze, ale czasem muszę odpocząć.

And Mietek has a moment of rapture:

Mietek: The wind in my hair.

In Polish: Wiatr we włosach

From Science Humor:

From Bruce:

From Meriliee. I do this, too, sticking one foot out from under the covers at night:

I made a tweet!

From reader Ken, who comments, “This man was at one time the National Security Advisor of the United States of America.”

 

Tweets from Matthew:

I think this cat’s just harassed:

This is a gynandromorph (half male, half female) ant of the ant species Pheidole noda, with sexual traits split straight down the middle. I suspect that the side with the wing is male, because only males or females who are destined to be queens have wings. Look at the difference between the male and female morphology!

Fun history and art fact (lovely paintings, too):

Everybody says this photo is wrong, but they can’t quite say why. Are the measurements wrong? Are they using different scales? You tell me! The guy certainly looks more than a foot and eight inches taller than the woman.