Category: Hili Dialogue

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.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

May 23, 2021 • 5:30 am

It’s formally the beginning of the week, but Sunday, (e.g., today: May 23, 2021) is actually perceived as the tail end of the week. It’s National Taffy Day (I don’t like the stuff), as well as World Turtle Day, Lucky Penny Day, and World Crohn’s and Colitis Day. More on some readers’ turtles soon.

If you’re interested in Darwin, or how the woke are trying to bring him to heel and indict him for, among other things, inciting genocide, read the piece I wrote yesterday about an attempt to smear Darwin.

Wine of the Day: Port is usually reserved for the colder months, but I had this bottle hanging around and stood it up vertically a week ago to allow the sediment to fall. (There was a heavy sediment in this one; I lost about a glass through decanting.) And if you want a vintage-style port without paying $75 and holding it for 15 years, this is the one for you (I think I paid about $25 for this bottle). It was an absolutely spectacular wine, heavy with alcohol (18.5%) and deeply rich with flavor, with tons of ripe cherry fruit and no “heat”. It is a dark garnet color and slides down the throat like velvet. It is, literally, a lip-smacking wine. LBV Port is, of course, sweet, as it should be.

Port is still an underrated wine in the U.S., though the Brits know its worth. There are many types, with vintage at the top (and the best), but there are also many bargains like tawnies and these LBV styles. If you want a nice evening tipple with your book, see if you can get hold of this one. (For genuine vintage ports, Graham’s, also with a sweet profile, is my favorite.)

I expect this bottle, put under vacuum, will last me a week.

News of the Day:

It’s mercifully quiet this weekend so far; the cease-fire in Israel and Gaza is still holding. So, after the first piece, there’s some news without gravitas.

According to the Washington Post, Black Lives Matter has officially allied itself with Palestine:

Black Lives Matter, which has grown into a potent political force amid a national reckoning on race, has responded forcefully to the violence in the Mideast to extend its reach into foreign policy, pressing the Democratic Party to adopt a dramatically different approach to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Whatever the aftermath of the violence in the region, it has starkly changed the Israeli-Palestinian debate in the United States, shifting it for many liberals from a tangled dispute over ancient, often-confusing claims to the far more familiar turf of police brutality and racial conflict.

“We understand that the liberation of Black people in the United States is tied to the liberation of Black people all over the world, and tied to the liberation of oppressed people all over the world,” said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. “Being in solidarity with the Palestinian people is something that’s been part of our work as Black Lives Matter for almost as long as we’ve been an organization.”

There were no words about the oppression of women, Jews, gays, apostates and nonbelievers by the Palestinians, as those forms of oppression don’t matter. What a shame that the erstwhile alliance between African-Americans and Jews, important in the Civil Rights marches and activities of the Sixties, is a thing of the past.

Ok, now to the persiflage:

First, a number of candy companies are hopping mad because purveyors of “edibles” containing cannabis are making products resembling commercial candies. Take a look, for instance of real Skittles (above) and the dope-containing Skittles (below):

Or real Starburst Fruit Chews versus the kind that can get you baked:

This being America, lawsuits are underway.

America’s great gymnast Simone Biles landed a “Yurchenko double pike” in training and it’s amazing. If she lands it in competition in the Olympics, it will be a first. Have a look:

Another view:

More COVID news. The Guardian reports that well known Dutch scientist Elizabeth Bik is subject to a lawsuit by another “scientist” who published a shoddy study purporting to show that hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for the virus. She pointed out the paper’s errors online, and now the guy who published the paper, Dr Didier Raoult, has sued her for “harassment”:

The legal complaint alleges harassment over Bik exposing data errors on PubPeer, and extortion because she has a Patreon account where people can donate to her work. She has responded to Raoult’s calls on Twitter to declare who is funding her by sharing links to her Patreon.

This suit unconscionable. The Guardian adds:

The case, filed with the French state prosecutor by controversial infectious diseases physician Dr Didier Raoult, has prompted hundreds of scientists from across the world to publish an open letter calling for science whistleblowers to be protected.

You can sign a petition against the persecution of Bik’s rightful criticisms here.

he case, filed with the French state prosecutor by controversial infectious diseases physician Dr Didier Raoult, has prompted hundreds of scientists from across the world to publish an open letter calling for science whistleblowers to be protected

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 589,328, an increase of 578 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,469.436, an increase of about 10,500 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 23 includes:

  • 1430 – Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to raise the Siege of Compiègne.
  • 1533 – The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.
  • 1618 – The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitates the Thirty Years’ War.

Two men were defenestrated, but both survived the 70-foot (21-meter) drop out the window, most likely because they landed on a dung heap. Here’s a woodcut of that famous incident:

  • 1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London.

The rope broke on the first try, but they gave him no mercy and hanged him again. He was then gibbeted (see below):

  • 1844 – Declaration of the Báb the evening before the 23rd: A merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement that would later be brutally crushed by the Persian government. He is considered to be a forerunner of the Baháʼí Faith; Baháʼís celebrate the day as a holy day.
  • 1992 – Italy’s most prominent anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three body guards are killed by the Corleonesi clan with a half-ton bomb near Capaci, Sicily. His friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino will be assassinated less than two months later, making 1992 a turning point in the history of Italian Mafia prosecutions.

The explosion site: this is what happens when you go after the Mafia. Falcone was a brave man:

  • 1998 – The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with roughly 75% voting yes.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1707 – Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist (d. 1778)

Here’s Linnaeus’s country house in Sweden, which I photographed upon visiting Uppsala in 2006:

  • 1891 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish novelist, playwright, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
  • 1974 – Jewel, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actress, and poet

Those who found Eternal Rest on May 23 include:

  • 1701 – William Kidd, Scottish pirate (b. 1645)
  • 1906 – Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian director, playwright, and poet (b. 1828)
  • 1934 – Bonnie Parker, American criminal (b. 1910)
  • 1934 – Clyde Barrow, American criminal (b. 1909)

Bonnie and Clyde, before and after:

  • 1937 – John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company and Rockefeller University (b. 1839)
  • 1945 – Heinrich Himmler, German commander and politician, Reich Minister of the Interior (b. 1900)

When captured by the allies, SS head Himmler bit into a cyanide capsule and died within 15 minutes. The aftermath (sorry for so much death today!):

Here’s Nash; he and his wife were killed in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Little Kulka is taunting Hili.

Hili: Do not provoke me.
Kulka: And what would you do to me if I did?
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Nie prowokuj.
Kulka: A co mi zrobisz?
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

From Divy:

Cat linguistics via Brian Leiter:

From somewhere on Facebook:

A tweet from reader Ken, who adds this about the first tweet: “Among the multitude of things this woman doesn’t know diddly-squat about is the difference between gold stars and yellow badges. She appears to be getting her talking points directly from QAnon conspiracists.”

The second tweet is equally insane:

From Barry. You go, rat!

Tweets from Matthew. The first one sends you to the mother lode of optical illusions (143 of them!). Unfortunately, I don’t know what the one in the tweet represents. There is a Darwin Illusion (here), and I’ve put another one below.

Poor mismatched kitty!

Two tweets showing some unknown animal. Matthew first commented, “I have no fricking idea what this weirdo is except that it’s some kind of arthropod. There’s a linked vid in the next tweet which doesn’t help. But then he realized, as I guessed, that it was a soft-shelled turtle. It’s thus appropriate for Turtle Day. Look how fast it is!

I think this is that errant walrus in Wales that the Egg Man is trying to drive away:

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

May 22, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Cat Sabbath: May 22, 2021: National Vanilla Pudding Day. (That reminds me of Bill Cosby, who used to advertise Jell-O puddings but is now in jail.) It’s also Italian Beef Day (a sandwich best consumed in Chicago), United States National Maritime Day, Harvey Milk Day in California (see below), International Day for Biological Diversity, World Goth Day, and Canadian Immigrants Day.  

News of the Day:

Jerrold Nadler, a senior Jewish congressman and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, maintains in a NYT editorial that “Democrats have not changed their position on Israel.”  An excerpt

But the vast majority of Democrats are thoughtful and considerate, and recognize nuance in a conflict shaded by centuries of complexity, suffering and pain, and this has always been the case. We know that the only solution is one where both Jewish and Palestinian people have the right to self-determination and security. We support the humanity of both parties in the conflict as well as small-d democratic values. And we stand resolutely against attacks on Israel’s right to exist. Really, this moment reflects a coming out of the silent majority of American Jews whose values are both liberal and supportive of Israel, as a recent Pew study indicates.

As the most senior Jewish member in the House of Representatives, a longtime Congressional Progressive Caucus leader and the House member who represents the largest and most diverse Jewish population, I’m more familiar with this issue than most. The Democratic Party, of course, welcomes robust debate. However, the conversations I have had with a wide range of members of my party, including many of the 25 Jewish Democrats in the House as well as a number of progressives, reflect a reality that the headlines do not: On Israel, there exists a broad, mainstream consensus around a number of core principles.

Would that he were right, but I don’t quite buy it. Israel’s right to exist?  Did he also talk to members of the Squad? Bernie Sanders? One of my biggest sources of stress these past few weeks is watch the Democratic Left, almost predictably, move the needly slowly away from Israel’s right to exist toward Hamas, which denies that right. I still don’t quite understand it.

Speaking of which, have a look at Peter Savodnik’s new analysis (on Bari Weiss’s Substack site) of why America has suddenly become so much more anti-Semitic (click on screenshot):

An excerpt:

Over the past two decades, this obsession with identity has intensified and spread. Progressives are now incapable of talking about anything important without mentioning human beings’ immutable traits.

Any politics of identity was bad for the Jew. On the right, the identiarians said that the Jew lacked whiteness — it was a new version of the old Nazi claim about our impurity. On the left, the Jew was said to have too much.

In 2021, we are well-aware of the white-nationalist inanities. We have memorized the horrific footage from Charlottesville. We remember every Jew murdered in Pittsburgh and in Poway.

But their chants of “Jews Will Not Replace Us” are now being joined by the identitarians of the left, who wield vastly more capital and power, in government, in the media, in the universities, in Hollywood, and in Silicon Valley. (It’s curious that Rep. Rashida Tlaib has accused Israel of “forced population replacement.”) Together, they form a bleating chorus of grievances. Somehow their roster of The Hurt never includes the Jew.

How can you not want to read the answer to Michelle Goldberg’s title question in her new NYT op-ed (click on screenshot)?

And, surprisingly, her answer is “yes”, based not only on Hitchens’s work but mainly on a “compelling new podcast,” “The Turning: The Sisters Who Left,” about those who left Mother Teresa’s order.  An excerpt:

What makes “The Turning” unique is its focus on the internal life of the Missionaries of Charity. The former sisters describe an obsession with chastity so intense that any physical human contact or friendship was prohibited; according to Johnson, Mother Teresa even told them not to touch the babies they cared for more than necessary. They were expected to flog themselves regularly — a practice called “the discipline” — and were allowed to leave to visit their families only once every 10 years.

Joe Biden handed out the first Medal of Honor of his administration to a 94-year old Korean war vet who got out of his wheelchair and discarded his walker to stand up and receive America’s highest military award. I’m not a big fan of war, but somehow the story of Col. Ralph Puckett, Jr. tugged a bit at my heart. Here’s a photo (click on it to go to the story):

The Wall Street Journal has a mouthwatering article on some of Italy’s best white wines, which are not too expensive (the examples given range from $19-$30). The tasting notes make me want to explore this genre, about which I know almost nothing.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 588,846, an increase of about 700 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,458,946, an increase of about 12,900 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 22 include:

Fourteenth. As Wikipedia notes, the first certain appearance of the comet was in 240 BC from a Chinese record.

  • 1455 – Start of the Wars of the Roses: At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England.
  • 1804 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition officially begins as the Corps of Discovery departs from St. Charles, Missouri.
  • 1807 – A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason.
  • 1826 – HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage.

This is not the voyage that carried Charles Darwin, which was the second (and last) voyage of the ship. Here’s a view of the ship, which was much smaller than you think:

 

And here’s that patent:

  • 1960 – The Great Chilean earthquake, measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, hits southern Chile, becoming the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
  • 1964 – Lyndon B. Johnson launches the Great Society.
  • 1987 – First ever Rugby World Cup kicks off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand.
  • 1998 – A U.S. federal judge rules that U.S. Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the Lewinsky scandal involving President Bill Clinton.
  • 2002 – Civil rights movement: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murder of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

Here’s the white supremacist and Klansman (Klansperson?) Cherry, who died in a prison hospital in 2004:

  • 2010 – Inter Milan beat Bayern Munich 2–0 in the Uefa Champions League final in Madrid, Spain to become the first, and so far only, Italian team to win the historic treble (Serie A, Coppa Italia, Champions League).
  • 2017 – Twenty-two people are killed at an Ariana Grande concert in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.

Notables born on this day include:

I couldn’t have told you what Wagner looked like, so I looked him up. Here’s a photo:

Here’s a fine Cassatt: “Sara holding a cat” (ca. 1908):

Matthiessen remains the only person to have won a National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction. Here’s a brief remembrance:

  • 1930 – Harvey Milk, American lieutenant and politician (d. 1978)
  • 1942 – Ted Kaczynski, American academic and mathematician turned anarchist and serial murderer (Unabomber)

Those who croaked on May 22 include:

  • 1802 – Martha Washington, First, First Lady of the United States (b. 1731)
  • 1885 – Victor Hugo, French novelist, poet, and playwright (b. 1802)
  • 1967 – Langston Hughes, American poet, social activist, novelist, and playwright (b. 1902)

Hughes was one of the black writers I read when I decided to read early 20th-century black literature and nonfiction as the pandemic started. Here’s his portrait by Gordon Parks:

  • 1997 – Alfred Hershey, American biochemist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1908)
  • 2010 – Martin Gardner, American mathematician, cryptographer, and author (b. 1914)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Paulina is stalking all cats with her camera:

Hili: I thought that Paulina was hunting for Kulka.
Szaron: For her every cat is tempting.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Myślałam, że Paulina poluje na Kulkę.
Szaron: Każdy kot ją kusi.

And Leon and Mitek have an exchange:

Leon: Oatmeal for breakfast? Are we converting to vegetarianism?

In Polish: Owies na śniadanie? Przechodzimy na wegetarianizm?

From Woody; a most excellent meme:

From Jean:

From SMBC via Ginger K:

From Titania. I’m not sure exactly what this Lego kit is, or what it’s supposed to demonstrate:

From Simon, who I hope doesn’t carry cats in his maw! Poor kitty!

Tweets from Matthew. If I posted this before, well, here it is again.

And a second and related tweet:

Sadly, this was yesterday, and we won’t be alive to see its recurrence:

The discovery of drinkable cow excrement (the first one is clocks):

Darwin was often depressed and lugubrious, as he was 153 years ago yesterday.

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 21, 2021 • 6:30 am

Bottom o’ the week to you: it’s Friday, May 21, 2021: National Strawberries and Cream Days. But it’s only one day, not “days”! It’s also International Tea Day, Endangered Species Day (the photo shows a dinosaur skeleton!), National Bike to Work Day, National Waiters and Waitresses Day, National Pizza Party Day,  Saint Helena Day (celebrating the discovery of Saint Helena in 1502), and World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

Posting will be light today as I have a dentist’s appointment AND we have a horrible situation in the duck pond with drake attacks and a shunned duckling. Please bear with me—and have pity on me.

News of the day:

There’s finally been a cease-fire in the fight between Gaza and Israel. It began at 7 pm yesterday Eastern US time (2 a.m. Israeli time). The peace was apparently brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and the U.N., with pressure from the U.S. But the old grievances remain, and now there’s internecine hatred between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. One errant Hamas rocket, and the fighting starts all over gain (also true for Israeli airstrikes, but I have more trust in Israeli restraint. But let’s just hope that, for the nonce, the fighting stops. One thing is for sure: it will resume again. I worry that all the aid to Palestine that will start flowing from the West will be used, as it has been before, to buy rockets.

Here’s HuffPost’s invidious headline, blaming the lack of a cease fire on Israel, when in fact both sides had to agree, and the cease-fire was brokered. This HuffPost rag is beneath contempt.

Over at the Washington Post, columnist Joe Waldman says that Biden isn’t really more radical than he has been: perhaps just a few ticks to the left:

Even now, Biden would argue that he’s basically sticking to this approach. The key difference is that as president he has the ability to push further on those same ideals. You can even make the case that he is not pushing much further than before but his movements are more visible because he can set the agenda.

After all, the truth is that the current agenda he’s setting isn’t all that radical. It’s a few steps to the left of where Obama was, and more ambitious than what Biden advocated for as a senator, but nothing in it expresses any different values from the ones Democrats have long held. He doesn’t want to seize the means of production and throw every billionaire into a reeducation camp; he just wants to beef up union protections and bump up the top tax rate by a few points.

The GOP claim that Biden is a secret leftist tells us only that Republicans, too, have the same basic ideals they’ve long had. They’ll surely be passionately opposed to the administration’s new plan to invigorate IRS enforcement, for instance, which could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue.

The BBC reports on “the unluckiest swan” that has now become lucky. It’s a swan in Cambridgeshire that was watched by Rob Adamson, a lovely guy who saw that its nest was about to be flooded. (The pair’s nesting attempts had failed for ten years.) He built a predator-proof floating platform, put the nest and its eggs on it and, mirabile dictu, all eight eggs hatched! A few photos are below (h/t Jez; photos by Rob Adamson and Jones boatyard).

The floating nest platform,

Adamson had previously hand-reared an abandoned cygnet named Sid:

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 588,153, an increase of about 650 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,446,039, an increase of about 13,100 over yesterday’s total.:

Stuff that happened on May 21 includes:

  • 1703 – Daniel Defoe is imprisoned on charges of seditious libel.
  • 1856 – Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.

Darwin kvetched on this day (h/t Matthew)

The scandal of the decade, and at the U of C! Here are Leopold and Loeb’s mug shots (Leopold is at the top). Loeb was murdered in prison in 1936, while Leopold was released in 1958 and died in Puerto Rico in 1971.

You can still see Lindbergh’s plane, “The Spirit of St. Louis”, at the National Air and Space Museum in northern Virginia. I highly recommend a visit:

  • 1936 – Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover’s severed genitals in her handbag. Her story soon becomes one of Japan’s most notorious scandals.

You can see this portrayed in the movie “In the Realm of the Senses.” Here’s a portrait of Abe:

Here’s a re-creation of that incident; the Wikipedia caption is this: “A re-creation of the Slotin incident. The inside hemisphere with the thumb-hole next to the demonstrator’s hand is beryllium (replacing the uranium tamper of the same size in a Fat Man bomb). There is an external larger metal sphere of aluminium under it (replacing the pusher sphere in this bomb’s design). The plutonium “demon core” was inside the spheres at the time of the accident and is not visible, but its dimensions are comparable with the two small half-spheres shown resting nearby.”

Here’s the damage below. Toth was in a psychiatric hospital for two years and then was deported to Australia, where he died in 2012:

Here’s Johnny Carson’s final farewell in his very last show (sans guests):

  • 2011 – Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on this date.
  • 2017 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performed their final show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1799 – Mary Anning, English paleontologist (d. 1847)

Here’s Anning and her dog Tray, painted five years before her death:

A wonderful painting, “Cat“, by Rousseau:

  • 1904 – Fats Waller, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1943)
  • 1936 – Günter Blobel, Polish-American biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
  • 1951 – Al Franken, American actor, screenwriter, and politician

Those who were no more on May 21 include:

Once again I urge you to read the best cat poem ever, “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry“, by Smart, written while he was incarcerated for lunacy. It’s part of a longer poem, “Jubilate Agno.”

Addams in 1914; you can still visit her social-work “settlement house”, Hull House, in Chicago:

  • 1935 – Hugo de Vries, Dutch botanist and geneticist (b. 1848)
  • 1991 – Rajiv Gandhi, Indian politician, 6th Prime Minister of India (b. 1944)
  • 2000 – John Gielgud, English actor (b. 1904)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili knows that Paulina often buys cat treats for Hili.

Paulina: What are you thinking about?
Hili: About your yesterday’s shopping.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Paulina: O czym myślisz?
Hili: O twoich wczorajszych zakupach.

Here’s little Kulka up in a tree:

From Bruce:

A meme from Jesus of the Day:

And another from the same source:

From Simon: I haven’t read this paper yet, but here you go!

Seriously? Flying a Nazi flag at the border of Israel? Don’t forget the mayhem caused by putting a cartoon of Muhammad on the cover of Charlie Hebdo!

One more gem from London:

From Ziya Tong; no translation needed!

Tweets from Matthew: a NYT obituary of the accomplished and much-beloved biologist Dave Wake of Berkeley.  See Greg’s obituary of Wake here.

I concur completely!

I’ve been to Wales only once, to see Dylan Thomas’s roost in Laugharne. I need to get there more often, especially to see stuff like this:

Has anybody read the “Duck Tales” bandit?

Yesterday was World Bee Day—a UN holiday! If you’re not a fan of bees, you should bee:

Thursday: Hili dialogue and Mietek monologue

May 20, 2021 • 6:30 am

The weekend is fast approahing: it’s Thursday, May 20, 2021: National Quiche Lorraine Day. It’s also Hummus Day, Pick Strawberries Day, Flower Day, International Red Sneakers Day (?), National Apértif Day (make mine a green Chartreuse), National Rescue Dog Day, as well as Josephine Baker Day (an honor from the NAACP), World Bee Day, and World Metrology Day (note that it’s not “Meteorology”; today’s holiday has to do with weights and measures, not weather, as you can see below).

Perhaps you didn’t know that Baker had a pet cheetah named Chiquita that she walked on a leash. See?:

News of the Day:

Four thousand five hundred and twenty-nine. That was yesterday’s death toll from Covid in India, the highest death toll for any single day in any single country during the pandemic. That’s about one person every twenty seconds, and that is surely an underestimate of the toll.

Lock Him Up Department: The office of New York’s attorney general announced that it’s launched a criminal probe into the Trump organization’s business practices, expanding what was previously a civil investigation. This is separate from the Manhattan D.A.’s own criminal probe, which has been going on for four years. Trump, of course, has decried the investigations as “witch hunts,” but will we someday see the Orange Man in an orange jumpsuit? An excerpt:

[Attorney General Letitia James’s]disclosure of a widening investigation is not necessarily an indication that she is planning to bring criminal charges. In New York, if that were to happen, the state attorney general can do so through a county district attorney, like Vance, or with a referral from Gov. Andrew Cuomo or a state agency.

James’ civil investigation and Vance’s criminal probe had overlapped in some areas, including examining whether Trump or his businesses manipulated the value of assets — inflating them in some cases and minimizing them in others — to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.

Vance’s investigation also included a look at hush-money payments paid to women on Trump’s behalf and the propriety of tax write-offs the Trump Organization claimed on millions of dollars in consulting fees it paid, including money that went to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.

Here’s the NYT’s “live” section on the Israel/Palestine crisis. Is something missing here?

Here’s an Atlantic science article you’ll want to read. Where did your butthole come from (in an evolutionary sense)? Click on the screenshot to read (h/t Paul):

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 587,499, an increase of about 700 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,432,963, an increase of about 13,000 over yesterday’s total.:

Stuff that happened on May 20 include:

  • 325 – The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church.
  • 1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovers the sea route to India when he arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.
  • 1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.

Here’s the map from that atlas. Not too bad for 1570, eh? South America is a bit pudgy, but otherwise it’s passable:

  • 1609 – Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.
  • 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. The style hasn’t changed much in 150 years!

Here’s that patent:

How long is a meter? Wikipedia says this:

The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth’s circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar (the actual bar used was changed in 1889). In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. The current definition was adopted in 1983 and modified slightly in 2002 to clarify that the metre is a measure of proper length.

  • 1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.
  • 1891 – History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype kinetoscope.
  • 1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.

Here’s a video of Earhart leaving Newfoundland in her Lockheed Vega:

Here are suitcases I photographed eight years ago in Auschwitz; they were taken from arrivals, who were promptly gassed. Note the carefully written addresses and Star of David. I recommend everyone visit Auschwitz at least once in their lives. You will never be the same afterwards.

Here’s a YouTube video of the explosion. God lord!

Both Wilson and Penzias received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.

  • 1980 – In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejects, by 60% of the vote, a government proposal to move towards independence from Canada.

I wonder if the vote would be close to this today.

And here’s the Wikipedia history of how the kilogram was defined:

The kilogram was originally defined in 1795 as the mass of one litre of water. This definition was simple yet difficult to use in practice. However, even modern, superceding definitions of a kilogram are accurate to within 30 ppm of the mass of one litre of water. In 1799, the platinum Kilogramme des Archives replaced it as the standard of mass. In 1889, a cylinder of platinum-iridium, the International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK) became the standard of the unit of mass for the metric system, and remained so until 2019. The kilogram was the last of the SI units to be defined by a physical artefact.

The kilogram is now defined in terms of the second and the metre, based on fixed fundamental constants of nature. This allows a properly-equipped metrology laboratory to calibrate a mass measurement instrument such as a Kibble balance as the primary standard to determine an exact kilogram mass, although the IPK and other precision kilogram masses remain in use as secondary standards for all ordinary purposes.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1806 – John Stuart Mill, English economist, civil servant, and philosopher (d. 1873)
  • 1908 – James Stewart, American actor (d. 1997)
  • 1944 – Joe Cocker, English singer-songwriter (d. 2014)

Here’s Cocker’s famous performance “With a Little Help from My Friends” at Woodstock in 1969. Remember when John Belushi imitated him when they were standing next to each other?

Imitation:

  • 1946 – Cher, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress

Cher is 75 today.

  • 1958 – Ron Reagan, American journalist and radio host

Here’s Ron Reagan’s famous ad for the Freedom from Religion Foundation:

Those whose neurons ceased firing on May 20 include:

  • 1506 – Christopher Columbus, Italian explorer, discovered the Americas (b. 1451)
  • 1896 – Clara Schumann, German pianist and composer (b. 1819)
  • 1989 – Gilda Radner, American actress and comedian (b. 1946)

Gilda was fantastic, and it’s terribly sad that she died so young. Here’s her skit of The Judy Miller Show from Saturday Night Live:

  • 2002 – Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist, biologist, and academic (b. 1941)
  • 2012 – Robin Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1949)
  • 2013 – Ray Manzarek, American singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer (b. 1939)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Paulina continues to stalk the kitties with her camera:

Hili: I was missing you.
Paulina: Really?
Hili: Yes, nobody took my pictures for 10 minutes.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Brakowało mi ciebie.
Paulina: Naprawdę?
Hili: Tak, od dziesięciu minut nikt mi nie robił zdjęć.

And we have a Mitek monologue, but the statement is cryptic:

Mietek: VIgilance is an attitude.

In Polish: Czujność to podstawa

A meme from Pyers, though I don’t know why physicists fall into the “playing with mice” category.

From Woody. Hisses, anyone? Yes, there are some cat lovers who would pay half a buck for a hiss!

From Nicole:

From Frank, an example of interspecies bonding. Grania would have loved this;

A tweet from Luana. Do we even have a chance against the Russkies?

From Ginger K., a lovely diagram of how the solar system moves about:

Tweets from Matthew, and this one is personal.  Drosophila workers used to get all their fly bottles as used milk bottles, often with dairy emblems on them. They’re no longer used, but I still keep some like this for sentimental reasons.

What a lovely honorary cat!

Yes, goslings are adorable, cute, and sweet, but they grow up into those big aggressive honkers!

One of the many craneflies that mimic wasps. The second tweet shows it flying around the base of a banana tree:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

May 19, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a humpish day: Wednesday, May 19, 2021: National Devils Food Cake Day. It’s also World Inflammatory Bowel Disease Day, Malcolm X Day (his birthday in 1925), and Hepatitis Testing Day.

News of the Day:

The Democratic Party is slowly turning, as I thought it might, from support of Israel to support of Palestine. Although I may be wrong, I don’t think so. We’ll discuss this later today.

If this headline from the South Bend Tribune doesn’t prompt you to read the article, you are incurious! Do read it; it’s a fascinating piece of biology. (Click on screenshot to get to article; h/t Jean):

A defendant in North Dakota, convicted of trying to run over seven Native American children in his S.U.V., was convicted of one crime in court, and, before being taken into custody, cut his own throat with a plastic instrument and died in the courtroom. Fortunately, the jury had left the courtroom, but the judge and bailiffs were there.

Darwin’s Arch, a formation in the Galapagos, has collapsed. It was, of course, entropy (erosion). Here’s what it used to look like:

His arch may collapse, but his theory stands strong!

There will be no real news today, i.e. stuff about international affairs, which I find depressing. We have Alternative (but not fake) news.

Finally, what happened to Sinead O’Connor after she tore up a photo of the pope on Saturday Night Live in 1992? Already a renegade, this gesture made her career go down the toilet (it’s just the Pope, for crying out loud!). Her life has since been unsettled, as a fascinating New York Times profile reveals. She was physically abused as a child, spent six years in and out of mental-health facilities, and has now converted to Islam (her new name is Shuhada Sadaqat. And she’s written a new memoir (out June 1) called Rememberings—the excuse for the profile.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 586,824, an increase of about 1,000 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,419,984, an increase of about 15,300 over yesterday’s total.:

Stuff that happened on May 19 includes:

  • 1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona’s two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).
  • 1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.
  • 1743 – Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
  • 1780 – New England’s Dark Day, an unusual darkening of the day sky, was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada.

This is attributed to smoke from forest fires.

Atatürk is sort of a hero of mine for secularizing Turkey and instituting many reforms, but I suppose they’ll one day find that he was irreparably immoral. At any rate, here he is in 1925:

Here’s that salacious rendition, with Monroe introduced by Peter Lawford:

I’d highly recommend you reading this letter by Dr. King;you can find it here.

  • 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is held at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, with an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion.

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s Melba, one of the most renowned singers of her day, also gave the name to the dessert Peach Melba, as well as to Melba Toast. Here she is in 1907:

Notice that the Turkish War of Independence began on Atatürk’s birthday.

  • 1914 – Max Perutz, Austrian-English biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2002)
  • 1925 – Pol Pot, Cambodian general and politician, 29th Prime Minister of Cambodia (d. 1998)
  • 1925 – Malcolm X, American minister and activist (d. 1965)

Here’s Malcolm X on television in 1965, the year he was assassinated (he was only 39).

Those who became the Dearly Departed on May 19 include:

  • 1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England (1533–1536); second wife of Henry VIII of England (b. c. 1501)
  • 1795 – James Boswell, Scottish biographer (b. 1740)
  • 1935 – T. E. Lawrence, British colonel and archaeologist (b. 1888)

Another one of my heroes: a man of both thought and action, tortured though he was:

Here’s “Cloud’s Hill”, the cottage he inhabited while working for the RAF under a pseudonym. He was on the way home when he died in a motorcycle crash. I visited the place and took this photo in 2006.

  • 1971 – Ogden Nash, American poet (b. 1902)
  • 1994 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American journalist, 37th First Lady of the United States (b. 1929)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron and Hili have their portraits taken:

Hili: They are taking our photos.
Szaron: I see it.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Fotografują nas.
Szaron: Widzę.

And we have a Mietek monologue!  Malgorzata says that Mitek is referring to a special brand of Polish woo: Sylwoterapia – therapy by trees and forest, a branch of pseudomedicine.

Mietek: A bit of tree therapy will not do any harm.

In Polish: Odrobina sylwoterapii nie zaszkodzi

Several readers sent me this very clever xkcd cartoon, which is a pretty good explanation of Muller’s ratchet, an explanation for the inevitable mutational/drift degeneration of chromosomes that can’t recombine out their bad alleles, and thus perhaps a stimulus for the evolution of recombination (sex and crossing-over of chromosomes).  Reader Rick notes that if you hover your mouse over the original cartoon, a secret message appears.

This is true; see the article by George Will here.

From Stephen: Soylent green is PEOPLE!

Titania’s comment about Shania Twain is very clever, if I get what she’s trying to say here:

A tweet from Simon showing a very clever billboard:

A tweet from Orli. The explicit politicization of scientific research is beginning.

Tweets from Matthew. Here’s an OCD cat:

A lovely Scottish rainbow:

Excellent life advice!

Here’s a tweet that puts history into perspective:

Yes, everything is terrible—except for this rodent having a feast.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 18, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Tuesday, May 18, 2021: National Cheese Souffle Day.  It’s also I Love Reese’s Day (their peanut butter cups are one of America’s finest commercial candies), International Museum Day, World AIDS Vaccine Day, National Stress Awareness Day, and Dinosaur Day.

In honor of Dinosaur Day, here’s a greeting to Matthew featuring his favorite flavor of dinosaur, a stegosaur:

Posting may be light today as I have errands outside the University.

News of the Day:

According to the NYT, Joe Biden has finally called for a cease-fire in the battle between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. He did this in a phone call to Netanyahu.  I wonder if he also called representatives of Hamas? But never mind; whether a cease-fire works, and it’s badly needed, will depend on each side ceasing to attack the other. In the meantime, Israel continues to target Hamas’s network of underground tunnels.

Have a look at Bret Stephens’s column on the dispute, “If the left got its wish for Israel,” assuming that the agenda of “progressive” Democrats were fulfilled. It’s stuff like this that puts the kibosh on my hopes for a two-state solution:

. . . a Hamas administration in the West Bank wouldn’t take long to duplicate the formula that paid such dividends for it in Gaza: the complete militarization of the territory, putting every Israeli at immediate risk of rocket attack.

In this it would be greatly assisted by Iran, especially if rising oil prices and the potential lifting of economic sanctions as part of a new nuclear deal replenish Tehran’s coffers and its appetite for regional adventures. Jordan, too, would be at risk if a radical Palestinian state turns its sights on a fractious Hashemite regime.

And what about peace? A Hamas government would likely renege on any agreement with a Jewish state that does not honor the “right of return” of the descendants of Palestinian refugees. Anti-Zionist groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace would make the Palestinian case in the United States while the Tucker Carlson wing of the Republican Party would call for sharp restrictions on immigration.

As for Israelis, they would eventually emerge from the morass, at a terrible cost in blood, because they have no other choice. When they did, they could be sure the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would be quick to denounce them for having the temerity to survive.

I vaguely recalled that Peter Yarrow, of the famed folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary, had been convicted of child molestation, but didn’t know that President Jimmy Carter, of all people, surreptitiously pardoned Yarrow, who served only a few months in jail, for molesting a 14 year old girl. According to the Washington Post, thia was “perhaps the only [pardon] in U.S. history wiping away a conviction for a sexual offense against a child. (Yarrow, now 83, is still alive.) Now another putative victim appeared just a few months ago.

A tiger that had  been missing in Houston for a week was finally found and given a good home at a sanctuary. From the video below it appears to be a young cat, and was illegally owned (or taken care of) from a city resident who has been arrested.

According to the BBC, a croquet match has decided how a river’s name should be pronounced. The River Nene flows through both Northamptonshire, where it’s called the “Nen”,  Cambridgeshire, where it’s pronounced “Neen”. Northampton won a croquet match, and so both areas have to call the river the “Nen.” (h/t: Jez)

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 585,897, an increase of 613 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,405,658, an increase of about 11,300 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 18 include:

  • 1096 – First Crusade: Around 800 Jews are massacred in Worms, Germany
  • 1756 – The Seven Years’ War begins when Great Britain declares war on France.
  • 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.
  • 1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.

Here’s a photo taken of Lincoln in 1860 which, coincidentally, happens to have been snapped by Matthew Brady, born on this day in 1822 (see below):

Sadly, no photos exist of Homer Plessy, an “octaroon” (one eighth-black) who, as the Rosa Parks of his day, boarded a whites-only train car and was expelled. The case went up to the Supreme Court, where Plessy lost.

There are arguments about whether this was really the first full-length Indian film (the cameraman was British and the film processed in London), but you can judge. There are no videos I could find, but here’s a poster for the movie at the time it came out (May 25, 1912 in the Times of India):

Ah, Sister Aimee. If you don’t know about her and her phony disappearance, as well as her many followers, read at least the Wikipedia bio. Here she is in full splendor at her L.A. temple:

Here’s Cochran in her F86, talking to her pal Chuck Yeager, who also broke the sound barrier, but bearing a penis:

Jackie Cochran in the cockpit of the Canadair F-86 with Chuck Yeager. (Photo courtesy Air Force Flight Test Center History Office)

Here’s a photo of the eruption taken at 8:32 a.m. on that day:

  • 1994 – Israeli troops finish withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, ceding the area to the Palestinian National Authority to govern.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1048 – Omar Khayyám, Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet (d. 1131)
  • 1822 – Mathew Brady, American photographer and journalist (d. 1896)

Here’s another Brady photo, and you surely recognize the subject:

Here’s Russell at Trinity College in 1893:

  • 1912 – Perry Como, American singer and television host (d. 2001)
  • 1944 – W. G. Sebald, German novelist, essayist, and poet (d. 2001)

Those who crossed the Great Divide on May 18 include:

  • 1909 – George Meredith, English novelist and poet (b. 1828)
  • 1911 – Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer and conductor (b. 1860)

Here’s Mahler’s grave in the Ginzing Cemetery in Vienna:

  • 1995 – Elizabeth Montgomery, American actress (b. 1933)
  • 2015 – Raymond Gosling, English physicist and academic (b. 1926)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are having an unpleasant chinwag (they are getting along much better now, though):

Szaron: Did you hear that the starlings have chicks already?
Hili: Yes, but all the nests are inaccessible.
(Photo Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Szaron: Słyszałaś, że szpaki mają już pisklęta?
Hili: Tak, ale wszystkie gniazda są niedostępne.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

From Facebook:

From reader John, some great advice:

From Jesus of the Day: I think this Scout has a case for defamation:

Stephen Fry is going to be on “The Simpsons”:

From reader Barry, who says, “This cat is too weird for me. I don’t think I would enjoy its company. It’s too high-strung.”  I disagree; I love this cat!

Tweets from Matthew. This one will warm your heart.

A 20-shilling ticket to see Dylan (and boo him if you were so inclined):

What a fantastic creature!

Just a worn-out chair:

If squirrels were religious, their god would be an enormous acorn, existing outside of space and time.

What’s the problem with this cat?