Category: Hili Dialogue

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

April 29, 2021 • 6:30 am

Grease the new day (as a friend used to say)! It’s Thursday, April 29, 2021: National Shrimp Scampi Day (that’s a dish I’ve never had). It’s also National Zipper Day (this convenient fastener was patented on this day in 1913) and Viral Video Day.  In honor of the last day, here are the 25 most viral videos of 2020. #2, near the end, is the best!

Finally, it’s two UN holidays: Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare and International Dance Day (UNESCO).

Wine of the Day: To drink with my big pot of turkey chili, which should last a few days, I’ve chosen one of my favorite genres of red wine: Rioja! This one, ten years from vintage was about $25.

The experts’ ratings look good, and I’m writing this on Wednesday before I’ve cracked the bottle.

2 hours later (Wednesday), very good again, but not a world-beater. Juicy with ripe cherry fruit, well balanced, but nothing to mark it as a superb wine. I’ll drink another two glasses tonight and see if it improves.

News of the Day:

Joe Biden gave his first speech to Congress last evening, proposing sweeping reforms. Hold your thoughts on that, as we’ll have a discussion post later.

The Supreme Court is considering an important free-speech case in which a high school cheerleader, not chosen to be part of the elite “varsity squad”, ranted and cursed the school on social media. What she said:

“F— school, f— softball, f— cheer, f— everything,” 14-year-old Brandi Levy typed into Snapchat one spring Saturday. Like all “snaps” posted to a Snapchat “story,” this one sent to about 250 “friends” was to disappear within 24 hours, before everyone returned to Pennsylvania’s Mahanoy Area High School on Monday.

Levy was suspended from her junior varsity squad for a year, whereupon her parents filed suit in federal court, and it’s gone all the way up to the Supremes. I think they’re likely to rule in her favor, as Levy’s “speech” was on social media, so why should she be punished for her private free speech? This is not harassment, bullying, or any other form of speech prohibited by the First Amendment. But it’s not a trivial case:

“This is the most momentous case in more than five decades involving student speech,” said Justin Driver, a Yale law professor and author of “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind.”

The Court may be conservative, but if it rules in Levy’s favor in this case, I think it will have ruled properly. This kind of incident will become increasingly frequent as speech is disseminated on social media.

The feds searched Rudy Giluiani’s home and office yesterday,  acting on a federal warrant. As the New York Times reports,

The federal authorities have largely focused on whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the time were helping Mr. Giuliani search for damaging information on Mr. Trump’s political rivals, including Mr. Biden, who was then a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan and the F.B.I. had sought for months to secure search warrants for Mr. Giuliani’s phones and electronic devices.

Reader Ken, who knows his law, told me this:

To secure such warrants, the government would have had to establish, to a federal magistrate’s satisfaction, fresh probable cause to believe that the search would yield evidence of a crime. The agents reportedly seized Giuliani’s computers and electronic devices.

. . . The search of a lawyer’s premises (not to mention the premises of a lawyer for a former US President) is a big friggin’ deal. See section 9-13.430 of the US Justice Department Manual. Main Justice has to sign off on it, and the government had to be convinced that Giuliani couldn’t be trusted to turn over the materials sought in response to a subpoena.

On a sadder note, astronaut Michael Collins, who stayed in the command module during the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, and who helped ensure tht the lunar module containing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin docked properly before their return to Earth, died yesterday at 90 of cancer. He wrote extensively about his journal (they trained for six years for the mission), and memorial tweets show some of his writing:

This is a touching photo and caption:

There are two big vertebrate genome papers in Nature. One paper reports complete genome sequences of 16 vertebrate species in the 8 major lineages, and the other reports a complete sequence for the playtpus and partial sequence of one echidna species, both monotremes—egg-laying mammals. I have yet to read either paper but wanted to call them to your attention. (h/t: Matthew)

Stuff that happened on April 29 includes:

  • 1429 – Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orléans.
  • 1770 – James Cook arrives in Australia at Botany Bay, which he names.
  • 1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People’s Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public.
  • 1916 – Easter Rising: After six days of fighting, Irish rebel leaders surrender to British forces in Dublin, bringing the Easter Rising to an end.

Here’s a 6½-minute BBC video summarizing the Easter Rising:

  • 1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Hitler and Braun both commit suicide the following day.
  • 1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops.
  • 1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.

Here’s a short video about Ali’s refusal of induction. He had applied for conscientious objector status but was refused. After a trial, he was sentenced to five years in jail but remained free until the Supreme Court overturned that decision on the grounds that the refusal of CO status was not accompanied by a reason.

  • 1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
  • 1970 – Vietnam War: United States and South Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia to hunt Viet Cong.

The invasion of Cambodia energized all of us in college, leading to widespread protests and, at Kent State, to the shooting of unarmed students.

  • 1974 – Watergate scandal: United States President Richard Nixon announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal.
  • 1992 – Riots in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 63 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.

This was the first time video was taken of a brutal police beating of a suspect. You can see it below, and yet the officers were acquitted. This would never stand today:

  • 2015 – A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1854 – Henri Poincaré, French mathematician, physicist, and engineer (d. 1912)
  • 1893 – Harold Urey, American chemist and astronomer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
  • 1899 – Duke Ellington, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1974)

There aren’t a lot of videos of Ellington’s band, particularly in its best years—the early forties. This one, of his signature tune “Take the A Train” (written by Billy Strayhorn), was made in 1943. I prefer the all-instrumental version. I’m reading a biography of Ellington now.

  • 1929 – Walter Kempowski, German author and academic (d. 2007)
  • 1933 – Willie Nelson, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
  • 1945 – Brian Charlesworth, English biologist, geneticist, and academic

My colleague and former chairman of my department, Brian is now retired but still very active at Edinburgh. He was a great colleague (we wrote some papers together) and an excellent chair:

  • 1954 – Jerry Seinfeld, American comedian, actor, and producer
  • 1957 – Daniel Day-Lewis, British-Irish actor
  • 1970 – Andre Agassi, American tennis player
  • 1970 – Uma Thurman, American actress

Those who went to their Just Reward on April 29 include:

Don’t ask me to explain Wittgenstein’s philosophy; that’s above my pay grade. But I can show you a photo:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is concerned with enforcing the rules. As Malgozata notes,

This old sign says: “It’s forbidden to dump tires under the penalty of shooting your brains out”. It’s written in a “slangy” language. We found it many years ago on a dump outside a closed, abandoned and ruined factory.
A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I’m checking to see whether people are breaking bans.
In Polish:

Ja: Na co patrzysz?
Hili: Sprawdzam, czy ludzie nie łamią zakazów.

And we have a Leon monologue!

Leon: “What kind of wonder of nature is this?”

In Polish: A coż to za cud natury?

Leon:

Here’s little Kulka:

A meme from Bruce:

From Facebook via Mark: the Jean-Paul Sartre Parking Garage. But how can you pay if you don’t exist?

From Su: A duck trying to connect with the Beyond:

Tulsi Gabbard, who surely counts as a woman of color, here decries the increasing racialization of America, using the Hawaiian conception of “aloha”:

From Facebook. It’s time to do our occasional check-in with Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad. Here’s her reaction (yes, it’s on Fox News) to Iran being chosen to be a member of the UN Commission on Women’s Rights. (The UN is such a joke these days!):

Tweets from Matthew. I believe I’ve posted about Ricky Gervais adopting a foster tabby that he named “Pickles”, but here’s a tweet and some new video:

From the University of Chicago! Two days ago the temperature was about 82°F (28°C), and it was glorious. But they should have included a photo of Botany Pond with the ducks!

Donkeys run free after a winter of being cooped up. Sound up so you can hear as well as see their joy:

This link would make good background music while you’re working; it’s almost like working in the jungle:

This looks to me like a very small slug getting a drink (and getting engulfed by a water drop):

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 28, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s a hump day: Wednesday, April 28, 2021: National Blueberry Pie Day. It’s a great pie, with the best specimen to be had at Helen’s, in Machias, Maine (have a look at the photos here). It’s also Stop Food Waste Day, Denim Day, (not celebrating jeans, but denigrating rape excuses; read the link) Great Poetry Reading Day, International Guide Dog Day, and, in Canada, National Day of Mourning, commemorating “workers who have been killed, injured or suffered illness due to workplace related hazards and occupational exposures.”

I saw no rabbits on my way to work, which means that this day will not go well.

And reader Rick found a “Thought for Today” from someone who died exactly six years ago:

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

There is a rumor going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. -Terry Pratchett, novelist (28 Apr 1948-2015)

News of the Day:

The CDC now says that any fully vaccinated American can go maskless outdoors, even in small groups of people that include the unvaccinated. Masks are recommended only in big outdoor groups, and always when indoors, even when you’re vaccinated.  Given that the chances that, if fully vaccinated, your chances of being an asymptomatic carrier are virtually zero, it seems to me that the vaccinated don’t need to wear masks at all except, perhaps, in large indoor crowds, the CDC seems hyper-cautious. Still, I do what they say.

The Washington Post has a pretty funny article about Richard Barnett, the guy who stormed the Capitol and put his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. He apparently left a note that said, ““Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.” Except the lawyers defending Barnett says that the note actually read, ““Hey Nancy Bigo was here biatd.” Biatd???? Either the guy can’t spell or “Biatd” is really “Biatch”, a kind of slang. This apparently makes a difference to his attorneys!

Reuters reports that a New York City man, Jarrod Powell, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder, and that as a “hate crime”, after the horrific beating of  Yao Pan Ma, a 61-year old Asian man. Isn’t it relevant, though, that the assailant was black, something that Reuters doesn’t mention? Doesn’t that bear on whether the act reflected white supremacy? ABC7 News reports this:

Ma’s wife was at the event but was too upset it speak. Instead, community activist Karlin Chan passed along her message.

“The Ma family understands this is the act of a single depraved individual and has nothing to do with the community of Harlem at large,” Chan said.

I’m horrified at what’s going on in India with the coronavirus: it’s the world’s largest dumpster fire. And although I predicted it, I take no joy in that. This New York Times article gives the view from Delhi (my favorite city in a country I love), where the positivity rate is an astonishing 36% (the paper reports that it was only 3% a month ago). Look at this horrifying photo:

(From the NYT). A mass cremation of those who died from Covid-19 at a crematorium in New Delhi on Monday. Photograph by Atul Loke

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 573,001, an increase of 696 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,150, 786, an increase of about 15,100 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on April 28 includes:

  • 1253 – Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, propounds Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō for the very first time and declares it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.
  • 1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.
  • 1869 – Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay ten miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched.

The railroad’s western section was built largely by Chinese laborers. Here’s a photo of some of them:

Here’s an original ferrotype of Billy the Kid (the only photo I could find of him save a questionable one I’ve presented before); he was shot dead at 21:

After he and Petacci were shot, their bodies were hung upside down in public: here’s a photo from Wikipedia with the caption, “The corpse of Mussolini (second from left) next to Petacci (middle) and other executed fascists in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, 1945″. Their bodies were further defiled and beaten, and there’s a photo of them in the morgue, which you can see here, but it’s very gruesome. 

  • 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

But of course Heyerdahl was wrong: Polynesia was not settled by people from South America, but from Southeast Asia.

Here’s the original raft at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo:

  • 1970 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon formally authorizes American combat troops to take part in the Cambodian campaign.
  • 1973 – The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, recorded in Abbey Road Studios goes to number one on the US Billboard chart, beginning a record-breaking 741-week chart run.
  • 1986 – High levels of radiation resulting from the Chernobyl disaster are detected at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, leading Soviet authorities to publicly announce the accident.
  • 1988 – Near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle “C.B.” Lansing is blown out of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and falls to her death when part of the plane’s fuselage rips open in mid-flight.

It”s amazing that nobody else was killed, though a few were injured. Here’s what the plane looked like when it landed:

  • 2004 – CBS News released evidence of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. The photographs show rape and abuse from the American troops over Iraqi detainees.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1878 – Lionel Barrymore, American actor and director (d. 1954)
  • 1906 – Kurt Gödel, Czech-American mathematician, philosopher, and academic (d. 1978)

Here’s Gödel, who, like many philosophers, was an eccentric. In his later life he’d eat only food that was prepared by his wife. When she was hospitalized for 6 months, he refused to eat and died of starvation, weighing only 65 pounds when he died!

Schindler, who of course helped rescue Jews during WWII, died destitute, having spent his fortune saving people. He is the only member of the Nazi Party (he had to join to be credible) to be honored with the designation Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem.  Here is the hero:

  • 1916 – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian businessman, created Lamborghini (d. 1993)
  • 1926 – Harper Lee, American novelist (d. 2016)

Lee wrote only one real book, To Kill a Mockingbird, but it as a classic, now in the process of being erased. A later manuscript was published, Go Set a Watchman, but is was poorly reviewed and it’s not clear that Lee was compos mentis when she agreed to its publication. Here’s her photo from the dust jacket of her famous first novel:

  • 1937 – Saddam Hussein, Iraqi general and politician, 5th President of Iraq (d. 2006)
  • 1948 – Terry Pratchett, English journalist, author, and screenwriter (d. 2015)
  • 1950 – Jay Leno, American comedian, talk show host, and producer
  • 1960 – Elena Kagan, American lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
  • 1974 – Penélope Cruz, Spanish actress and producer

Those who “passed” on April 28 include:

  • 1903 – Josiah Willard Gibbs, American scientist (b. 1839)[14]
  • 1945 – Benito Mussolini, Italian journalist and politician, 27th Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1883)
  • 1992 – Francis Bacon, Irish painter (b. 1909)

This is probably Bacon’s most famous painting: Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953.

Here’s Velázquez’s original:

  • 2013 – Paulo Vanzolini, Brazilian singer-songwriter and zoologist (b. 1924)

As I said, Vanzolini was both a herepetologist and a famous writer of sambas; I met him when he’d come to Harvard to work with curator of herpetology Ernest Williams.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili must not be hunting very successfully:

Hili: Sparrows tell conspiracy theories to each other.
A: On what subject?
Hili: Some baloney about cats.
In Polish:
Hili: Wróble opowiadają sobie spiskowe teorie.
Ja: Na jaki temat?
Hili: Jakieś bzdury o kotach.

Hili and Szaron are getting along better these days. Here’s a photo with the caption “Rapprochement”:

In Polish: Zbliżenia

From Facebook:

From Nicole. I may have posted this before, but internalize the warning!

From Jesus of the Day. There’s no question about what I would do!

From Barry: a rooster who appears to pass out from crowing (hypoxia?)

Another from Barry. Checkmate, creationists! This site appears to be a spoof of creationist arguments, but it could have been a site that makes creationist arguments. The two purposes give very similar results!

From Luana. Rufo is a conservative, but the thread after this tweet thread gives a number of anecdotes involving woke education that you can check. The ones I recognize seem accurate:

Tweets from Matthew. I found this first one very soothing at 4 a.m. after three hours of tossing and turning:

From the 1860s! And the underwater painting is very lovely:

I’d be excited to see this, too. Be sure to enlarge the video in the first tweet:

This is the first observation of sponge trails suggesting that the animals (yes, they’re animals) are mobile. See the original paper here.

I like Matthew’s comment on this. The deep sea is about as unknown to us as is Mars.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 27, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s that cruelest day of the week again: Tuesday, April 27, 2021: another Two Bun Day as there were two rabbits grazing in the grass together on my way to work. It’s National Prime Rib Day; we sometimes used to get roast beef for Sunday dinner when I was a kid, but I don’t think I’ve eaten it in years.  It’s also National Devil Dog Day (a snack pictured below), Marine Mammal Rescue Day, and Babe Ruth Day (the day in 1947 when, ill with cancer, he said farewell to Yankee Stadium).

A Devil Dog, first confected by the N.E. Drake Baking Company. It consists of two oval pieces of devil’s food cake sandwiched with “cream” (lord knows what’s in it that stuff):

And here’s the Bambino’s short farewell speech, given with a raspy voice (he had throat cancer):

News of the Day:

The results of the new census are out, and there will be some reshuffling of Congressional seats. CNN reports:

The US Census Bureau announced Monday that the total population of the United States has topped 331 million people. The Census results found that Texas will gain two seats and Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will each gain one seat in Congress.

California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will all lose congressional seats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

The new numbers represented a decrease in population growth when compared to growth between 2000 and 2010.

The numbers highlight what experts had expected: Political power in the country is shifting from states in the Midwest and Northeast to states in the South and West.

You do the math: will this likely increase the number of Republican seats in Congress? I have no idea, but it looks like it.

There’s another cancellation attempt by employees of a publisher. This time it’s Simon & Schuster, set to publish, in 2023 the memoirs of ex-VP Mike Pence, for which he was paid several million bucks. According to the Guardian, an unknown number of S&S employees signed a petition objecting on the grounds that “legitizes bigotry. To wit:

By choosing to publish Mike Pence, Simon & Schuster is generating wealth for a central figure of a presidency that unequivocally advocated for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and violence. This is not a difference of opinions; this is legitimizing bigotry. . . People will look back on this one day, and see that through our complicity, we chose to be on what is clearly the wrong side of justice.

Good god, what rhetoric! Publishing the memoirs of an admittedly odious VP is “being on the wrong side of justice”? What about the history he has to impart, at least from his point of view? But S&S President Jonathan Karp basically told the protestors to get stuffed; read his excellent statement at the Guardian (h/t: Ginger K.)

The Supreme Court has agreed to take a Second-Amendment gun case involving New York’s severe restrictions on carrying guns in public (you need to apply for a license showing “proper cause”, and that’s hard to get in the state). If the conservative court overturns the New York law, watch out! The city will be full of Loren Boebarts packing Glocks.

Read the WSJ about a big battle in a Nebraska field over the right to be called “Josh Swain”. It was, of course engineered on the internet. After one of the two Josh Swains who showed up won a battle of rock, paper, and scissors, 70 other “Josh”s (not Swains), who came from all over America, duked it out with foam pool noodles to win the title of “The Josh”. That prize was nabbed by a 4 year old. Over a thousand people went to this godforsaken place to attend the contest, and JoshFight fans donated more than $10,000 for charity. This is what the Internet was made for.

Here’s the contest for the title of the “Real Josh Swain”:

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 5722,237, an increase of 706 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,135,602, an increase of about 12,900 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on April 27 includes:

  • 711 – Islamic conquest of Hispania: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus).
  • 1667 – Blind and impoverished, John Milton sells Paradise Lost to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers’ Register.

The greatest literary bargain in history.

The U.S. wanted a MiG to see how it worked, as it was tough in combat to U.S. planes. And they got one: “Early in the morning on September 21, 1953, Lieutenant No Kum-Sok flew a MiG-15bis, bort number ‘Red 2057’, of the 2nd Regiment, Korean People’s Air Force, from Sunan Air Base, just outside Pyongyang, North Korea and landed before 10:00 a.m. at Kimpo Air Base in South Korea.” Num-Sok was unaware of the reward and was simply defecting. He was advised by the U.S. to decline the money in return for a free education in the U.S. at the college of his choice. Here’s his MiG, repainted in the U.S. Air Force logo. Among the U.S. pilots who test-flew it was Chuck Yeager.

Here’s inventor Bill English with his first mouse, which used two metal wheels at a 90-degree angle. It was a great idea, and has hardly changed since it was introduced. Yes, it uses lasers and is more sophisticated, but the principle is the same.

  • 1992 – Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history.
  • 2007 – Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great south of Jerusalem.

This is supposed to be his tomb, but it appears that scholars dispute it:

Notables born on this day include:

Whymper was the first to ascend the Matterhorn, but four climbers in the party died when an old rope they were using broke. Here’s Gustav Doré’s famous depiction of the tragedy:

Here’s Lantz with the most famous character he created. Originally voiced by Mel Blanc, Woody Woodpecker was replaced by several other voice actors, though Blanc’s characteristic laugh was still used for Woody”

  • 1927 – Coretta Scott King, African-American activist and author (d. 2006)
  • 1969 – Cory Booker, African-American lawyer and politician

Those who evinced their mortality on April 27 include:

  • 1521 – Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese sailor and explorer (b. 1480)
  • 1882 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet and philosopher (b. 1803).

And condolences to the reader who is our biggest Emerson fan, Laurie Ann Sindoni-Jones from London.

Emerson (not Laurie)
  • 1965 – Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (b. 1908)
  • 2007 – Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor (b. 1927)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Kulka defers to the Princess:

Kulka: You have a very high status in this garden.
Hili: Yes and I try to maintain it.
In Polish:
Kulka: Masz bardzo wysoki status w tym ogrodzie.
Hili: Tak i próbuję go utrzymać.

Little Kulka on the windowsill, announcing that she wants to be let in:

A very sweet meme from Cats Without Gods:

Reader Lynne sent me an alternative sign to the one from Hyde Park I posted two days ago; this one appeared online as nobody would dare post it on their lawn:

And, in response to my asking whether conservatives post such signs, here’s a pretty odious one sent in by Larry, who notes,

“The sign was in a front yard in my neighborhood in Thousand Oaks, CA. We are about 40 miles northwest of L.A. I noticed a Q flag on their house, and then the sign which from a distance resembles the “Love is Love” type sign. Taken in by this mimicry (Batesian? Aposematic? Mullerian?), we casually walked past it and I took the picture.”

And a cartoon from Stash Krod:

Reader Paul sent me this tweet, and added: “James Wong is an ethnobiologist and was interviewed recently by Channel 4 in the UK. His assertion that it’s racist to talk about ‘native’ plants is really interesting because it seems to be projecting Critical Race Theory onto what should be an objective, scientific issue. (I guess CRT enthusiasts would deny that objective, scientific truths exist.) It seems to me that he’s objecting to more than just the terminology.”

From Ginger K.: Four lovely domino patterns:

From reader Ben (and Matthew): This one reminds us of how many insects there are:

More tweets from Matthew. Sometimes crows pull tails for fun, but this time there’s a food reward:

The second tweet has to be a duck, though I don’t know what species.

Talk about dispersal!

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

April 26, 2021 • 6:30 am

Back to another damn week: it’s Monday, April 26, 2021 and National Pretzel Day. I’ll take the big soft ones with mustard, please. It’s also Audubon Day (he was born on this day in 1785, World Intellectual Property Day, National Help a Horse Day, and Hug an Australian Day (but only if you’re both vaccinated).

Posting will be light today as I have several things I must attend to, some of them duck related

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) honors the British developmental biologist Anne McLaren, born on this day in 1927 (died 2007). Along with John Biggers, she was the first to successfully achieve in vitro fertilization in mice, which led, in the hands of later researchers. to using the same method in humans. It’s now a common way to deal with infertility.

The Barolo I reported opening and tasting yesterday, which turned out to be so-so, has improved markedly after a day in the bottle under vacuum. It’s actually quite tasty now, though not of course the equivalent of a $70 Barolo. Still, it’s one of the few reds I’ve had that has palpably improved a day after opening.

News of the Day:

Here is some remarkable video, taken from the Mars rover Perseverance, of the tiny helicopter Ingenuity’s third flight—another great success. According to NASA,

The helicopter took off at 4:31 a.m. EDT (1:31 a.m. PDT), or 12:33 p.m. local Mars time, rising 16 feet (5 meters) – the same altitude as its second flight. Then it zipped downrange 164 feet (50 meters), just over half the length of a football field, reaching a top speed of 6.6 feet per second (2 meters per second).

It then came back and settled happily where it started, as you see below:

More good news. Biden just finished his first 100 days in office and his report card—his approval rating—was pretty good, much better than Trump’s at the same time but still not as good as Obama’s. His overall rating is 54%, which CNN deems a bit below average for postwar Presidents, and yet I think Biden’s done a much better job at this point than, say, Obama.

The lower rating, I believe, reflects a greater division in the country, with Republicans determined to dislike Biden no matter what: the overall aprproval rating is 96% among Democrats and just 10% among Republicans. Take the average of those two figures, assuming a 50/50 party split in the US, and you get 53%—almost spot on.  Among different areas, the ratings were highest for Biden’s handling of the pandemic (64% approval) and the economy (52% approval). The lowest ratings were for his handling of immigration (37% approval) and gun violence (42% approval).

Here are the Oscar winners in the “Big Six” categories with the NYT reviews:

Best Picture “Nomadland”

Best Director Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland”

Best Actor Anthony Hopkins, “The Father”

Best Actress Frances McDormand, “Nomadland”

Best Supporting Actor Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah”

Best Supporting Actress Yuh-Jung Youn, “Minari”

Sadly, the Indonesian military has found the wreckage of the submarine that went missing with a crew of 53. It’s resting 3,000 feet below the surface, and is in three pieces. Clearly, nobody survived.

But more news! The President of the European Commission just announced that fully vaccinated Americans will be able to travel to the EU this summer. Exact dates for entry haven’t been announced, and I won’t want to go in the summer, but come fall . . .  well, I hope the restaurants in Paris are open. And there’s Poland, where my surrogate family and beloved Hili await, along with two cats I haven’t yet met.

India set yet another world record for Covid infections, with 349,691 new cases reported on Saturday, the fourth daily world record in a row. Reports of what’s going on there, with sick people being turned away from hospitals to die in the street, are heart-rending.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 571,573, an increase of 707 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,123,697, an increase of about 9,400 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on April 26 includes this:

  • 1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown).

Once again, here’s Shakespeare’s baptismal record, which I’ve outlined:

Here’s Booth, who was cornered by the cavalry in a barn that was then lit on fire. He was shot through the spine in the barn, and died 3 hours later after uttering, “Tell my mother that I died for my country.” He was 26.

The Picasso work painted the same year:

  • 1956 – SS Ideal X, the world’s first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey, for Houston, Texas.
  • 1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.
  • 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world’s first human open fetal surgery.

“Open” fetal surgery, as opposed to other methods like endoscopic fetal surgery, involves opening the uterus and operating on the fetus directly. It’s amazing that this can be done, but it’s true. Wikipedia describes the first successful operation is described this way: “The fetus in question had a congenital hydronephrosis, a blockage in the urinary tract that caused the kidney to dangerously extend. To correct this a vesicostomy was performed by placing a catheter in the fetus to allow the urine to be released normally. The blockage itself was removed surgically after birth.”

  • 1986 – The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
  • 1989 – The deadliest known tornado strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless.
  • 2018 – American comedian Bill Cosby is found guilty of sexual assault.
  • 2019 – Marvel Studios‘ blockbuster film, Avengers: Endgame, is released, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing the previous box office record of Avatar.

Can this be true? Highest-grossing film of all time? Why not The Last Picture Show?  (Don’t answer; I already know.) The gross: $2.8 billion!

Notables born on this day include:

This is described as a photo of Audubon by Matthew Brady. Below is his painting of mallards from The Birds of America

Now Delacroix could draw cats. Here’s his 1830-1831 picture “A Young Tiger Playing With Its Mother” (“Jeune tigre jouant avec sa mère”).

Here’s Ma Rainey and her band, which you can see depicted in the movie “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”. I rated it “very good but not great.”

  • 1889 – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher and academic (d. 1951)
  • 1894 – Rudolf Hess, Egyptian-German politician (d. 1987)
  • 1918 – Fanny Blankers-Koen, Dutch sprinter and long jumper (d. 2004)

Blankers-Koen won four track and field gold medals (one in a relay) in the 1948 Olympics in London; she was 30. Here are all four of her performances.

  • 1933– Carol Burnett, American actress, singer, and producer
  • 1970 – Melania Trump, Slovene-American model; 47th First Lady of the United States

Those who began their Dirt Nap on April 26 include:

  • 1865 – John Wilkes Booth, American actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln (b. 1838)
  • 1951 – Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist and academic (b. 1868)
  • 1976 – Sidney Franklin, American bullfighter (b. 1903)

Franklin, praised by Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon, was not only an American bullfighter, but a Jewish bullfighter, perhaps the only one in history. Here’s a photo:

  • 1984 – Count Basie, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (b. 1904)

The Duke and the Count: the two best jazz bandleaders of their time. Here’s the Count with “Basie Boogie”:

  • 1989 – Lucille Ball, American model, actress, comedian, and producer (b. 1911)
  • 1999 – Jill Dando, English journalist and television personality (b. 1961)
  • 2013 – George Jones, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1931)

George Jones’s song “He Stopped Loving Her Today” was mentioned by most country greats interviewed by Ken Burns as the “most classic country song”. Here he is performing it live.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains Hili’s thoughts: “Hili is looking at the world and marvels over human folly. She finds most of it in the mass media.”

Hili: A mountain of improbability.
A: Where?
Hili: Mainly in the media.
In Polish:
Hili: Góra nieprawdopodobieństwa.
Ja: Gdzie?
Hili: Głównie w mediach.

And it’s been a long time since we had a Leon monologue, but here’s a new one:

Leon: Are we going to sleep?

In Polish: Idziemy spać?

Here’s little Kulka in a formal pose:

A cartoon from Stash Krod:

Another animal conundrum (compare it to where a giraffe should wear its tie); from Mark:

From Cole & Marmalade:

Titania McGrath finds that Newton is getting canceled because he benefited from colonialism:

Tweets from Matthew. Alternatively, perhaps they think geese can read.

A full minute of a chicken chasing a dog:

Some of these are very good; have a look at all the submissions. The second one below the first tweet is my favorite:

No human could remain intact at this depth. Cephalopods are amazing:

A fortuitous photo of the Sun. Do you know what McCarthy captured?

A good one:

Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 25, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s the Sabbath that was made for man (and woman): Sunday, April 25, 2021: National Zucchini Bread Day. I disdain any bread or pastry made with vegetables, with the exception of carrot cake, which I love—but only if it has cream cheese frosting. Why not TURNIP BREAD or BRUSSELS SPROUTS BREAD, for crying out loud? As you see, I’m peevish today.

It’s also a Two Bun Day—that is, I saw two Eastern Cottontails on my way to work this morning, which means it’s a propitious day, graced as it is with eight lucky rabbits’ feet, and still on the rabbits. There seems to be a bunny explosion in Hyde Park this year, perhaps because the pandemic kept people indoors.

It’s Anzac Day, celebrated mostly in Oz and New Zealand, but a tip of the hat to my friends there (see below); National Crayola Day (do they still have “burnt umber”); National Plumber’s Day; National Telephone Day; Parental Alienation Awareness Day; and Red Hat Society Day. Finally, it’s National DNA Day, celebrating the publication in Nature of the DNA-structure papers by Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin on this day in 1953.

Best of all, it’s World Penguin Day.

Here’s a photo of a chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarcticus) I took in Antarctica in November of 2019.  Will I get to return this winter? Fingers crossed for me!

From Matthew, also in honor of the day, we have Benedict Cumberbatch striving—and failing—to pronounce the word “penguin” (he says “pengwing” and “pengling”) on the Graham Norton Show.. And the tweet came from Matthew’s own University:

Wine of the Day:

I can’t remember when I bought this, but the advertisement for it from my customary wine store shows a price of $23.75, which is way on the low side for a Barolo. At that price, despite the hype in the ad, you can’t expect a top-notch specimen of Barolo.  And so what I got was a wine with a terrific nose, with the classic “road tar” scent of Barolo, but very little follow-through. It was quite thin and, while okay, it was just ok. The blurb says it will open up over several days, so I drank about a quarter of the bottle, vacuum-pumped it, and we’ll see if it improves this evening.

I had it with a baguette, fresh tomatoes drizzled in good Italian olive oil (which I mopped up with the bread), and my go-to favorite for good cheese, which you can buy at Costco for a great price. If you go to Costco, pick up a 2-pound brick of the two-year old Tillamook Sharp Cheddar.  You won’t be sorry! You can divide it into several hunks and freeze the ones you want later, as it freezes very well (in fact, freezing makes it more appealing, as it makes it slightly granular).

News of the Day:

A closely followed Congressional election in Louisiana, meant to fill the seat of Democrat Cedric Richmond, who left his seat to join the Biden administration as an advisor, has been filled—but not in a way Progressive Democrats wanted. “Establishment” Democrat Troy Carter won the Democratic runoff election over Karen Carter Peterson, a “progressive” Democrat (I dislike the use of “progressive” as a synonym for “far-ish left”). Both were state senators and both are African-Americans. Peterson outspent Carter, but still won 56% to 44%.  There were no Republican candidates. The district is solidly Democrat and majority black, and suggests that “progressives” can’t automatically count on the votes of African Americans as they try to “primary” other Democrats in the midterm elections.

Joe Biden has officially termed the mass killings and death marches of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, which occurred in 1915 and 1916, as a “genocide.” Historians estimate that a million or more Armenians died during this atrocity. There is simply no longer any doubt that this took place, though Turkey has denied it for a century and even at the time took steps to hide the murders. Biden’s gesture is an admirable stand for human rights, and of course endangers the U.S. relationship with our NATO ally Turkey. But Turkey’s odious President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is ruining his great country with his religiously-based autocracy, deserves no coddling. He’s declared that Biden has neither the historical nor moral authority Read the Wikipedia article to learn the sordid details. Here’s a photo labeled “The corpses of Armenians beside a road, a common sight along deportation route.”

The missing Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala-402  has been declared “sunk”, as investigators found an oil slick and debris at the site north of Bali where the ship disappeared. Fifty-three crew are likely dead, probably crushed when the sub broke up. I was heartened that the international community came together to try to save the sailors’ lives, but it appears that the rescue mission is now a recovery mission.

The New York Times has a story on the whiteness of fhe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, the organization that bestows the Oscars. Click below to read the story, which is chock-full of demographic analysis demonstrating inequity.

But how do you determine a member’s race? This footnote is at the bottom of the article:

Notes: In this story people of European, Middle Eastern and North African descent are identified as white. People of Far Eastern, Southeast Asian or Indian subcontinent origin are identified as Asian. Latino could be of any race and broadly refers to people from Latin America. People of mixed race were classified by the non-white part of their background.

This is what we’ve come to? I guess the criteria for race are malleable depending on the NYT’s ideological purpose. I thought Palestinians like Rashida Tlaib counted as a person of color, but the NYT seems to do that only when it’s ideologically convenient. And now we’re back to the “one drop” rule for nonwhites?

India set another world record for new Covid-19 infections yesterday, with more than 350,000 cases reported. This brings the three-day total to over a million people.  Yesterday, the NBC Evening News reported what we already knew: India has a dire shortage of oxygen, with special trains and flights trying to bring in a supply as people die in droves. This being India, there’s an active black market in Covid shots and the palliative Remdesivir, with prices for a single shot going for up to $1000 US—a huge amount in that country.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 571,471, an increase of 718 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now a 3,114,272, an increase of about 12,800 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on April 25 includes:

According to Wikipedia, the large crowd was disappointed:

The crowd, however, was dissatisfied with the guillotine. They felt it was too swift and “clinically effective” to provide proper entertainment, as compared to previous execution methods, such as hanging, death-by-sword, or breaking at the wheel. The public even called out “Bring back our wooden gallows!”

As Pinker has argued, we’ve come a long way since then.

  • 1792 – “La Marseillaise” (the French national anthem) is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
  • 1859 – British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal.

An engraving from the time:

  • 1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States declares war on Spain.
  • 1915 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli begins: The invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli Peninsula by British, French, Indian, Newfoundland, Australian and New Zealand troops, begins with landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles.

This was of course a slaughter of the Allied troops, and the entire Gallipoli campaign was a failure. Here’s the final scene from the movie “Gallipoli” (starring Mel Gibson), giving an idea what it must have been like. The soldiers going over the top knew they were doomed:

This is the entire paper:

  • 1954 – The first practical solar cell is publicly demonstrated by Bell Telephone Laboratories.
  • 1961 – Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.
  • 2007 – Boris Yeltsin’s funeral: The first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1599 – Oliver Cromwell, English general and politician, Lord Protector of Great Britain (d. 1658)
  • 1900 – Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian-Swiss-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)

Here’s the colorful and irascible Pauli, supposedly the coiner of the phrase “Not even wrong“:

Wolfgang Pauli (Prof.ETH).Foto: Bettina, Zürich F.Portr.1042

 

  • 1908 – Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (d. 1965)
  • 1917 – Ella Fitzgerald, American singer (d. 1996)
  • 1924 – Paulo Vanzolini, Brazilian singer-songwriter and zoologist (d. 2013)

Now Vanzolini was an interesting character. He was a herpetologist but was more famous, at least in Brazil, for writing sambas, many of which became standards. I met him because he used to spend long stints at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology working with his friend (and one of my grad-school mentors) Ernest Williams, another herpetologist. Here’s Vanzolini in 2011:

  • 1932 – Meadowlark Lemon, African-American basketball player and minister (d. 2015)
  • 1940 – Al Pacino, American actor and director

Because of his signature mannerisms and unusual voice, Pacino is a common subject of celebrity impressionists. Here are ten people imitating him; I think Kevin Spacey does the best job.

Cruyff was one of the best, but was also a lifelong smoker and died at 68 of lung cancer. (I’m always amazed at how many great footballers, playing a game that requires stamina, were heavy smokers or drinkers. One of the tipplers was George Best.)

  • 1961 – Dinesh D’Souza, Indian-American journalist and author
  • 1969 – Renée Zellweger, American actress and producer

Those whose life petered out on April 25 include:

  • 1690 – David Teniers the Younger, Flemish painter and educator (b. 1610)

I couldn’t find cat paintings by David Teniers the Younger, but his brother Abraham is credit with many animal paintings featuring cats and monkeys. Here’s Abraham’s “Barbershop with monkeys and cats”:

 

Herriman is a cartoonist much beloved by Matthew and me, for he drew the fantastic strip Krazy Kat. Here’s a self-portrait of Herriman from 1922, showing the Kat and other characters like Offisa Pupp and Ignatz the mouse:

  • 2009 – Bea Arthur, American actress and singer (b. 1922)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a chat with Szaron

Do you see anything interesting out there?
Szaron: No.
Hili: Neither do I.
In Polish:
Hili: Widzisz tam coś ciekawego?
Szaron: Nie.
Hili: Ja też nie.
The mirabelle plum tree is in glorious bloom in Dobrzyn, and inspires little Kulka to go climbing:

A meme from Bruce:

From Jesus of the Day:

The cartoon below appeared on Facebook, and though I usually won’t post Far Side cartoons, as Larson has asked that people don’t do that, I couldn’t resist this one time:

Tweets from Matthew: This first one is part of a series of four, but after the first you can skip to the last one to see the link to the full story, which is here (in three parts). Do read it if you have time.

A tweet from Gethyn, also sent by Dom and several others. Not impossible, but what the hell is going on here?

A tweet from Barry, who hopes the television wasn’t damaged:

From Frank: a sheepdog herding ducklings from voice commands!

More tweets from Matthew.  This first one assumes a new meaning when you realize that the woman was wearing it, as Matthew said, “at an anti lockdown anti vaxx demo in London today” [yesterday when you read this]. She was trying to make the point that her “oppression” due to her antiscience views was equivalent to the oppression of the Jews during the war. Bad move!

Nikolai Vavilov is a sort of hero to many geneticists because he died for defying the charlatan Lysenko and standing up for how genetics really works.

I would be delighted to have a bear visit my yard!

Saturday: Hili dialogue

April 24, 2021 • 6:30 am

What? It’s Saturday again? That means I must come up with a Caturday felid. If you want to keep reading this feature, do let me know (a comment under today’s post will suffice), as I’ve contemplated deep-sixing it

. It’s April 24, 2021: National-Pigs-in-a-Blanket Day. Here’s a photo of this once-popular American appetizer, which is one appetizer I’m not keen on!

It’s also National Go Birding Day, Eeyore’s Birthday (my spirit animal!), World Day for Laboratory Animals, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, Independent Bookstore Day, Save the Frogs Day, and World Veterinary Day.

Eeyore (and also me):

Yesterday’s Google Doodle celebrated the Spanish “ñ” with the tilde, as it was Spanish Language Day. C|Net gives a bit more information.

Friday’s Doodle, which celebrates UN Spanish Language Day, shows a highly stylized version of the company’s logo framed by a giant Ñ, also known as an eñe (pronounced EN-yay).  Not only is it the only letter with a true Spanish origin, it’s also become a symbol for Hispanic heritage.

Click on the screenshot to see where the Doodle links.

News of the Day:

The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a nonpartisan organization that tracks how good federal legislators are at getting bills introduced and passed, has ranked all members of the U.S. House of Representatives and of the Senate in terms of their legislative “effectiveness score”. (They’re also separated by party.) Have a look at the lists. The most effective legislators—after all, their job is to get bills passed—are often not the big names you’ve heard about. For Republic Senators, Marco Rubio and Roger Wicker are the most productive, while for Democrats the top two are Gary Peters and Jeff Merkley. For Representatives, the top two Democrats are Nita Lowey and Peter DeFazio, and the top two Republicans are Michael McCaul and Christopher Smith.  (Read this article to see how scores are determined.)

I was amused to see that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be good at tweeting and promoting herself, but she’s lousy at lawmaking, as she’s eleventh from the bottom among all 218 Democratic Representatives. (Nancy Pelosi is even lower, but her job is running the House, not so much making laws.)

From the Guardian, we learn of yet another bizarre effect of climate change. Because of melting polar ice caps, the Earth’s axis of rotation is shifting over time:

The scientists found the direction of polar drift shifted from southward to eastward in 1995 and that the average speed of drift from 1995 to 2020 was 17 times faster than from 1981 to 1995.

Since 1980, the position of the poles has moved about 4 metres in distance.

“The accelerated decline [in water stored on land] resulting from glacial ice melting is the main driver of the rapid polar drift after the 1990s,” concluded the team, led by Shanshan Deng, from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The downside? There isn’t one connected with the tilting, really, but the redistribution of water on Earth is just one more reminder of how humans are messing stuff up.

Also from the Guardian, we have the very first time that meteorites striking Earth have been traced back to their source. In 2018, a 6-ton asteroid broke up over the Kalahari, resulting in 21 fragments found in the desert. Using telescopic tracking, astronomers think it likely that the asteroid came from Vesta, a 525 km-wide asteroid about 233 million km from Earth. The fragments that hit Earth were probably from the larger asteroid, which was ejected after a collision of an astronomical body with Vesta about 22 million years ago (h/t: Jez)

Once again the ACLU disappoints. Look at this tweet from the Ohio branch:

Let’s ignore the fact that Ma’Khia Bryant was actually 16, not 15, and look at the details of the case, in which she was shot just as she was about to plunge a knife into another girl, and after the cop had told her to drop the knife. This is NOT a George Floyd style case in which a cop behaved reprehensibly and dangerously. It’s a case in which a cop tried to save the life of someone being attacked. Bodycam video released by the police supports this exculpatory story, just as video supports the murderous actions of Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. It’s very sad what’s happening to the ACLU, once an organization I admired to the point of idolatry. It now sees itself as promoting social justice, not defending civil liberties. But as a reader points out below, the comments on the ACLU’s tweet are almost uniformly negative—some quite scathing.

Back to Covid: the NYT tells us that the “excess death rate” in the U.S.—the death rate above what is expected—was the highest last year ever seen since data were recorded beginning around 1900, and even higher than that seen with the 1918 flu pandemic. Here are the data. The baseline is the expectation, with deviations above and below that in orange and gray, respectively:

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 570,746, an increase of 711 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now a 3,101,486, an increase of about 14,200 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on April 24 includes:

  • 1183 BC – Traditional reckoning of the Fall of Troy marking the end of the legendary Trojan War, given by chief librarian of the Library of Alexandria Erastothenes, among others.
  • 1704 – The first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, is published.

And here’s the first edition of the first newspaper:

  • 1800 – The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”.
  • 1895 – Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts aboard the sloop “Spray”.

He succeeded in his 37-foot oyster boat The Spray, though it took him three years to get home. He navigated entirely by dead reckoning, without a chronometer. Here’s his boat:

Check the link; this was the first experiment to demonstrate that the energy in electrons was quantized.

Here’s the wreckage of Dublin’s General Post Office after the rising. 16 rebels were executed and 485 people were killed. Ireland did not gain independence until December, 1922.

This is one of the great adventure stories of all time. Shackleton made it to South Georgia, an island where there was a whaling station, and he helped organize the rescue of all his men. Everyone survived.  Here’s a book that you should read about it. Here’s the crew of the Endurance before the ship was broken up by the pack ice:

Here’s Churchill after being knighted (by the present Queen!). I couldn’t find a photo of his being tapped with the sword. And I thought one didn’t shake hands with the Queen.

The Hubble is still chugging away and getting data after 31 years! Here’s a view of it in orbit, taken by a space shuttle sent up to service it. There have been five such missions, and the telescope may last another twenty years. It was a great investment!

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1815 – Anthony Trollope, English novelist, essayist, and short story writer (d. 1882).

Trollope produced literature that imparted knowledge to us! We learn that some of the personality types present in universities depicted in his novels can still be recognized today!

I couldn’t find any cat paintings by Willem, but I found a photo of his wife Elaine, also an accomplished painter, holding a cat:

  • 1906 – William Joyce, American-born Irish-British Nazi propaganda broadcaster (d. 1946)

Joyce was executed in 1946 for treason—the last person to be put to death in the UK for this crime.

Babs! I love her! Here’s her rendition of “My Man” from Funny Girl (1968), which she sings after having just been dumped by Nicky Arnstein (she’s playing Fanny Brice). What a voice!

Those who cashed in their chips on April 24 include:

  • 1731 – Daniel Defoe, English journalist, novelist, and spy (b. 1660)
  • 1947 – Willa Cather, American novelist, short story writer, and poet (b. 1873)
  • 1974 – Bud Abbott, American comedian and producer (b. 1895)
  • 2004 – Estée Lauder, American businesswoman, co-founded Estée Lauder Companies (b. 1906)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili isn’t luring baby Kulka, and for nefarious purposes. (They’re actually getting along much better now, which is good because I still suspect they’re related.)

Kulka: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m waiting for you to come closer.
In Polish:
Kulka: Co robisz?
Hili: Czekam aż podejdziesz bliżej.

And here is little Kukla disporting herself in the yard:

From Bruce, who suspects that this may be a photoshop. I get at least one of these calls every day:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Divy:

From Titania. This shows how pathetic the UN has become.

A tweet from Barry. I have NO idea what this is about except a guy trying to get a fledgling parrot to float on a pad in a swimming pool.

Tweets from Matthew. A trebuchet is an ancient catapult that uses a long arm to hurl a projectile. Here a dog has learned how to use it to play “auto fetch”.

Matthew is fluent in French, but still had an epiphany:

Then he discovered his epiphany was wrong; we don’t know the origin of “Bordeaux.” This link gives some theories.

Live and learn for biologists. If you are referring to several species of a genus that you don’t identify, you say something like Drosophila spp.

What a great place to get vaccinated!

Crypsis:

I may have posted this reently, but can’t be arsed to look it up. Besides, it’s funny enough to be seen twice.

Friday: Hili dialogue

April 23, 2021 • 7:00 am

End of the week again! It’s Friday, April 23, 2021: National Picnic Day. It’s also National Cherry Cheesecake Day, German Beer Day, World Book Day, UN English Language Day, UN Spanish Language Day, Lover’s Day,  National Lost Dog Awareness Day, and World Laboratory Day. Hili is half an hour late today as I’ve been doing ducky things.

News of the Day:

If you watched the launch of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and its crew of four, you’ll have seen that it was a big success, with nothing going wrong. The crew is now in orbit, heading for the ISS, and the first stage has landed successfully on the recovery barge. You can review the launch, orbiting, and recovery here, just scroll back until the launch and then watch for about ten minutes: that’s about how long the whole process took. I’m still amazed and stupefied that humans can actually do something like this—imagine all the things that have to work properly to get four astronauts from Florida to an orbiting space station.

The New York Times has a “Springtime Politics Quiz,” with 14 questions and three choices of answers for each. I’m sad to say that I got only 8 out of 14 right. Clearly I haven’t been paying sufficient attention to domestic politics.

Cat bites man Department:  Of all things, an African serval (Leptailurus serval) ) bit a fireman trying to extinguish a house fire in—get this—FELIDA, Washington. Firehouse reports:

Firefighters got the fire under control within 25 minutes, but at least one encountered the serval, a savannah wild cat native to Sub-Saharan Africa, and suffered a minor injury from a bite to the fingers.

Officials estimated the cat weighed 60 to 70 pounds, though the cats typically only weigh up to 40 pounds in the wild.

With the fire out, the firefighters decided to close up the house with the cat inside until the homeowner and animal control officers could contain it. It was later captured safely.

Fire district officials said the serval was “unharmed, just a little freaked out.”

Here’s a photo of the cat after capture:

Reader Loren, who sent me this report, notes that it’s legal to own a serval in Felida.

And more animal news from the BBC via reader Jez: A tiny ungulate, a Lesser Mouse-Deer (Tragulus kanchil) , also called the Lesser Malay Chevrotain, was recently born in Bristol. This species is the smallest known hoofed mammal:

A tiny mouse deer, born during lockdown at Bristol Zoo, is only 20cm (8ins) tall to its shoulder, the height of a pencil.

The lesser Malayan mouse deer was born to first-time mother Brienne and father Jorah almost a month ago.

Its sex is not yet known however it is only the second mouse deer to be born at the zoo in the last decade.

Mouse deer are native to South East Asia and when fully grown the infant will weigh about 3lb (1.5kg).

Here’s a BBC photo of the baby. Isn’t it cute?

Credit: Bristol Zoo Gardens

Here’s a video of an adult of the species. THEY’RE DEER THAT ARE SMALLER THAN CATS!

Not long ago, Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote a piece in the New Yorker about the amazing paucity of Covid deaths in India, and gave a number of speculations why this was the case. Well, it ain’t the case any longer. As I’ve reported several times, the virus is exploding in India, and yesterday the country set a new record for covid cases in any country: nearly 315,000 new cases reported in a single day.  And that must be an underestimate. Things are grim:

As the health system breaks down, there are fears that law and order may follow: Oxygen tankers are traveling under police guard to fend off looters. The black market trade in medical equipment has soared. Vaccines were stolen Thursday from a hospital warehouse in Haryana – but then the thief returned them hours later, with a note of apology. Police say the thief may have intended to steal anti-viral drugs, which are also in short supply.

People are stockpiling oxygen tanks at home, figuring there’s no use in even trying to get into a hospital anymore.

Social media are full of desperate pleas from Indians seeking hospital beds, oxygen, anti-viral drugs, vaccines. One longtime journalist live-tweeted his declining oxygen levels until he died.

Here is one of those live tweets by the dying journalist, and the sad resolution:

The links above are heartbreaking. Why the big outbreak given that few have been vaccinated, even now? Perhaps it’s a new variant.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 569l,869, an increase of 719 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now at 3,087,230, an increase of about 13,300 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on April 23 include:

  • 1516 – The Munich Reinheitsgebot (regarding the ingredients of beer) takes effect in all of Bavaria.

It still holds generally; Wikpedia says this: “Modern versions of the law have contained significant exceptions for different types of beer (such as top-fermented beers), for export beers, and for different regions. The basic law now declares that only malted grains, hops, water and yeast are permitted.”

The school is still doing business, and is still rigorous: “Its curriculum follows that of the 18th century Latin school movement, which holds the classics to be the basis of an educated mind. Four years of Latin are mandatory for all pupils who enter the school in the 7th grade, three years for those who enter in the 9th grade.”

  • 1914 – First baseball game at Wrigley Field, then known as Weeghman Park, in Chicago.
  • 1927 – Cardiff City defeat Arsenal in the FA Cup Final, the only time it has been won by a team not based in England.
  • 1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler‘s designated successor, Hermann Göring, sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich. Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels advise Hitler that the telegram is treasonous.

Göring surrendered to American troops (if the Germans got him back, they would have shot him), was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to hang, and then committed suicide the night before his scheduled execution by swallowing a postassium cyanide capsule. Here’s his body:

  • 1968 – Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
  • 1985 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.

The lesson: don’t monkey with a popular and well-established brand.

Here’s that very first YouTube video:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1621 – William Penn, English admiral and politician (d. 1670)
  • 1813 – Stephen A. Douglas, American educator and politician, 7th Illinois Secretary of State (d. 1861)
  • 1858 – Max Planck, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1947)

Here’s a brief video biography of Planck:

  • 1901 – E. B. Ford, English biologist and geneticist (d. 1988)

Ford (photo below) was influential but a twit and a HUGE misogynist. I’m told by those who took his classes that he would not answer questions asked by women when they raised their hands. And here’s a possibly apocryphal anecdote from Wikipedia:

Professor Ford would come into first year biology lectures at Oxford University – which were quite large, with about 150 students, and address the mixed group “good morning gentlemen”, ignoring the ladies, who even at that time were maybe 30% of student numbers – they are now 48%. The students thought that was amusing, and decided that, for one lecture in 1965, no men would attend. So he walked in to the lecture theatre with about 50 women sitting there waiting attentively, but no men. He put his notes on the lectern and looked up. “Oh dear, nobody here today I see, might as well go home”! Picked up his notes and walked out. (This story is also told of Arthur Quiller Couch, and has to be treated as apocryphal)(It is not apocryphal – I was there, but will verify with other Agriculture students 1964-67, Jon Cook}.

  • 1928 – Shirley Temple, American actress, singer, dancer, and diplomat (d. 2014)
  • 1936 – Roy Orbison, American singer-songwriter (d. 1988)
  • 1954 – Michael Moore, American director, producer, and activist
  • 1968 – Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist, Oklahoma City bombing co-perpetrator (d. 2001)

Those who cashed in their chips on April 23 include:

Here is the baptismal record of Shakespeare, still in existence. I’ve outlined what I think is the name.

And here’s the burial record; again, I’ve outlined what looks like his name:

  • 1850 – William Wordsworth, English poet and author (b. 1770)
  • 1915 – Rupert Brooke, English poet (b. 1887)
  • 1992 – Satyajit Ray, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1921)

Ray was a very great director, but not to everyone’s taste (if you love India, as I do, you’ll be more likely to appreciate him). Here’s one of his very short films (12-minutes) called “Two”. It was made in 1964 and has no words in it.

  • 1998 – James Earl Ray, American assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. (b. 1928)
  • 2007 – Boris Yeltsin, Russian politician, 1st President of Russia (b. 1931)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili quotes Spinoza; the phrase means, “God is nature.”  Oxford Reference says this: “The slogan of Spinoza’s pantheism: the view that god and nature are interchangeable, or that there is no distinction between the creator and the creation.”

Hili: Did Spinoza have a cat?
A: Why do you ask?
Hili: I wonder about him saying “Deus sive natura”.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy Spinoza miał kota?
Ja: Dlaczego pytasz?
Hili: Zastanawiam się nad tym jego powiedzeniem Deus sive natura.

Kulka and Szaron are playing outside:

From The English Language Police (a site you should join):

From Bruce. As an unruly child, I was sometimes taken out in public on a leash, and I tell you—it still traumatizes me.

From Jean:

Here are graphs showing the increased frequency of attention to race by the New York Times; the trend holds for both whites and blacks:

From Gregory, who alerted me to an entire Twitter site devoted to bodega cats. Can you spot the moggy in this first tweet?

 

Tweets from Matthew. Anyone who owns a cat knows this behavior:

Matthew, a nonbeliever, nevertheless sent two religious tweets. The first one was posted in honor of the Feast of St. Anselm two days ago:

Matthew also sent this famous Biblical tale of God overreacting to mockery. When I told Matthew that this shows God at his worst, he responded, “No, it shows HE LOVES THE BALD AND RIGHTEOUS.”

Lol, for behold: Matthew himself is somewhat depilated.

Ah, I haven’t taken a train from Union Station (a classic on its own) for ages:

Seen any springtails lately? I doubt it!