Category: Hili Dialogue

Monday: Hili dialogue

May 17, 2021 • 6:30 am

Top o’ the week to you, as it’s Monday, May 17, 2021: National Cherry Cobbler Day. It’s also National Walnut Day, Income Tax Day (pay up!), International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia, National Mushroom Hunting Day, Pinot Grigio Day, World Hypertension Day, and World Information Society Day.

News of the Day:

Well cut off my legs and call me Shorty! China has just landed its own rover on Mars; I had no idea they were trying to do this. The Rover, named Zhurong, is said to resemble Perseverance, and here’s a photo:

According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel shared intelligence information with the U.S. about Hamas activities in the building that also housed Al-Jazeera and the Associated Press in Gaza. The building was bombed with sufficient warning to enable all to evacuate, so there were no casualties. An excerpt:

Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.

Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden’s phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action.

“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a senior diplomatic source said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”

The Hamas operations in the building are said to have involved military intelligence and weapons manufacturing as well as an Islamic Jihad office. Now how did the AP and Al-Jazeera not know about that? And now that they do, why are they still arguing (as Jen Psaki implied) that Israel was trying to destroy journalism? It’s ridiculous to think that Israel would bomb the building with that end.

Oy! In case you thought Bill Gates was a paragon of philanthropy and rectitude, think again, or at least read the accusations against him in a NYT article about his divorce from his wife Melinda. He was apparently a wannabee philanderer, a close buddy of Jeffrey Epstein who met Epstein repeatedly (this is apparently  what precipitated Melinda’s divorce proceedings), and deficient in how Gates handled a sexual harassment claim against his money manager. I guess this is tabloid stuff, but it shows that nobody is perfect and that people are complex and multidimensional.

Dick Van Dyke is now 95 years old (can you believe it?), but he’s still active and eager to get back on the stage. Here’s a photo:
Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 585,572, an increase of 610 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,394,311, an increase of about 9,600 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 17 includes:

    • 1536 – Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s marriage is annulled.

I can’t seem to find a picture of this horse.

A first edition of this book will cost between 30,000 and $100,000:

This mechanism, shown as found and in a reconstruction, was used to predict astronomical phenomena like eclipses decades in advance. It dates roughly to 70 BC.  Here’s the original as found:

And a reconstruction:

    • 1915 – The last British Liberal Party government (led by H. H. Asquith) falls.
    • 1939 – The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the United States’ first televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City.

Here’s a report of that first televised game with a few scenes:

    • 1954 – The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

Here’s the beginning of the hearings. Remember this?

    • 1984 – Prince Charles calls a proposed addition to the National Gallery, London, a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”, sparking controversies on the proper role of the Royal Family and the course of modern architecture.

And here’s that first same-sex marriage (see caption):

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1749 – Edward Jenner, English physician and microbiologist (d. 1823)
    • 1866 – Erik Satie, French pianist and composer (d. 1925)

Here’s Satie, who was born in Normandy:

    • 1903 – Cool Papa Bell, American baseball player and manager (d. 1991)
    • 1918 – Birgit Nilsson, Swedish operatic soprano (d. 2005)
    • 1936 – Dennis Hopper, American actor and director (d. 2010)

Those who cashed in their chips on May 17 include:

Here’s a fine Botticelli (“The Birth of Fluffy,” I believe) that I found on the Internet:

    • 2012 – Donna Summer, American singer-songwriter (b. 1948)

As a student at Rockefeller University, where Edelman won his Prize, I used to play touch football with my fellow first-year grad students against the Edelman Lab (we called them “The Edelman Boys”). They played rough and, as I recall, a bit dirty!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes the rounds of the property:

Hili: We have a guest.
A: Where?
Hili: There is a lizard on the rock over there, but I don’t know whether it’s male or female.
In Polish:
Hili: Mamy gościa.
Ja: Gdzie?
Hili: Tam siedzi na kamieniu jaszczurka, ale nie wiem, czy to samiec, czy samica.

Little Kulka is having a whale of a time climbing:

From Facebook:

I lost the email from the person who sent me this, who said it was a judgment call if I used it, but I decided to:

No need to police our culture, for that’s Titania’s job. To wit:

A tweet from Frank. Kitten wrestling, and not a fake sport like human professional wrestling.

Tweets from Matthew. For this one he wrote me, “This would be you if you had a cat.” Well, I wouldn’t quite be that extreme. . .

Wally the Walrus got lost and is tootling around Wales. I was afraid for him, but at least he seems to be getting plenty of noms:

Vonnegut couldn’t have been righter! So it goes.

Beautiful turtle and tortoise shells, and the second tweet gives a key:

I do worry that this sculpture will be interpreted as “Sieg Heiling Cats” and get canceled:

Sunday: Hili dialogue

May 16, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Sunday, May 16, 2021: National Barbecue Day, one of America’s finest food holidays. It’s also World Baking Day, National Coquilles St. Jacques Day, National Mimosa Day, National Sea Monkey Day (brine shrimp; did you order them from comic books like I did?), Love a Tree Day, and Stepmother’s Day (only one stepmother is apparently being honored given the position of the apostrophe).

Wine of the Day: A seven-year-old Napa Valley Cabernet, which I see set me back about $30, a price I never thought I’d pay for a wine when I was younger. It was dark, rich, and dense, with the classic California cab notes of eucalyptus and herbs. I had it with pasta with “gravy”, as Tony Soprano would say, and it improved greatly over the hour I had it open. I expect that it will be better tomorrow, and has several years to go before its apogee. It was very good but not fantastic. Is it worth the money? Ask me tomorrow. By the way, there’s a good article in the NYT about the relationship between price and quality in wine. Best values: $15-$20.

News of the Day:

The CDC has removed its mask mandate for those who are fully vaccinated, though there’s nowhere I know of that would ask for proof, and both stores and states/cities are still wavering  Two-thirds of Americans still haven’t been fully vaccinated, but 56% of adults have received at least one shot, which is pretty good. Things are still confusing, though: Starbucks kept its mandate and then reversed course 24 hours later.

The “progressive” left joined in criticizing Israel in the House of Representatives yesterday, as the American left in general is withdrawing support from Israel and transferring it to Palestine (see below).  Israel also, after giving ample warning, leveled a building containing the offices of Al Jazeera and the AP (no journalists were injured), but allegedly did contain offices used by Hamas (see here).

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 585,281, an increase of 604 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,384,698, an increase of about 12,000 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 16 includes:

She remained in custody until executed in 1587.

  • 1770 – The 14-year-old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste, who later becomes king of France.
  • 1842 – The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri, with 100 pioneers.
  • 1866 – The United States Congress establishes the nickel. 

Here’s the first nickel. They were considered ugly, and banks would not accept more than 20 at a time:

  • 1868 – The United States Senate fails to convict President Andrew Johnson by one vote.
  • 1888 – Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.

Here’s Tesla, who died several years after injuries sustained after being struck by a taxicab:

 

  • 1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later.
  • 1929 – In Hollywood, the first Academy Awards ceremony takes place.
  • 1943 – The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.

Here’s an iconic photo of the Jews in Warsaw surrendering to the Germans. Certainly most of these were sent to camps and killed:

And from Wikipedia: “A man leaps to his death from the top story window of an apartment block to avoid capture. 23-25 Niska Street.”:

  • 1951 – The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
  • 1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s Fonda’s famous “I’ll be there” soliloquy as Tom Joad in the movie The Grapes of Wrath (1940):

  • 1919 – Liberace, American pianist and entertainer (d. 1987)
  • 1929 – Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist, and feminist (d. 2012)
  • 1966 – Janet Jackson, American singer-songwriter, producer, dancer, and actress

Those who “fell asleep” on May 16 include:

  • 1830 – Joseph Fourier, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1768)
  • 1953 – Django Reinhardt, Belgian guitarist and composer (b. 1910)

The great Reinhardt, who played jazz guitar with only two fingers on the fretboard (he injured his hand in a fire), accompanied by the equally great Stéphane Grappelli:

  • 1957 – Eliot Ness, American federal agent (b. 1903)
  • 1984 – Andy Kaufman, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter (b. 1949)
  • 2019 – I. M. Pei, Chinese-American architect (b. 1917) 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili smells an alien creature:

Hili: Somebody was here.
A: But who was it?
Hili: An intruder.
In Polish:
Hili: Ktoś tu był.
Ja: Ale kto?
Hili: Jakiś intruz.

Here’s little Kulka up in the trees (photo by Paulina):

x

Matthew found this article on Twitter and adds that he doesn’t know the “date, source, or veracity”. Still, given the nature of Mt. Athos, it’s possible. Also, there’s some verification at Storypick, which says that the story appeared in an Athens newspaper on the 29th of October, 1938. Further story at Boldsky. Still, it’s hard to imagine.

 

A meme from Bruce:

From Nicole, and relevant to yesterday’s post on Caturday felids:

Apparently AOC has finally become an expert on geopolitics (top vs. bottom).

Reader Gethyn, no slouch himself at Welsh poetry, sent a wonderful rendition of a famous poem by Dylan Thomas. I don’t know who the speaker is, so please enlighten me.

From Barry, the world’s most pampered iguana becomes an “influencer” (lord how I despise that word!):

Tweets from Matthew.

The answer is “an onion”!

Try this one (answer below it):

As Matthew said about the sweet video below, “This will warm the cockles of your heart, although why the hell he has to work at 89 I dunno…”  Maybe he likes the job!

This is me, since I just heard that Paris restaurants are opening at the end of May:

I didn’t get this at first, but Matthew told me it’s sort of a British usage, with “may” meaning “you are allowed to” or “you are permitted to”:

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 15, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Cat Sabbath: Saturday, May 15, 2021: National Chocolate Chip Day. It’s also World Whisky Day, International Day of Families, Peace Officers Memorial Day, Astronomy Day, Bring Flowers to Someone Day, Straw Hat Day, Plant a Lemon Tree Day, and, best of all, International Conscientious Objectors Day. Remember, the Sabbath was made for cats, not cats for the Sabbath.

News of the Day:

The trouble in Israel continues, and has been strongly exacerbated by the internecine violence between Israeli Jews and Arabs, as well as threats from Jordan and Lebanon:

By Friday evening, Israel faced furious demonstrations in at least 60 places across the West Bank and new protests just across the borders with Jordan and Lebanon, all atop the vigilante violence between Arabs and Jews within Israel, and the continuing battle with Gaza militants.

From Salon via reader Charles. The indictment they’re preparing from would come from Manhattan. but how many of you think Trump will really be indicted? (One can hope.)

BUT, there’s this:

But the report also noted an “obscure clause” in Florida law regarding interstate extradition that gives Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close Republican ally of the former president who is reportedly considering his own 2024 presidential bid, to intervene or investigate “the situation and circumstances of the person” in question “and whether the person ought to be surrendered” to law enforcement in a different state.

No thank you article of the day. (This is connected with religion, of course.) The best way to deal with death, for me at least, is to know you’re gonna die but then don’t dwell on it. Don’t do what  Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble tells you to do—ponder it constantly, keeping skull mementos around!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 584,725, an increase of 610 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,372,845, an increase of about 13,000 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 15 include:

  • 1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest; she is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

Boleyn was executed by beheading four days later.

Do you know Kepler’s Third Law? Neither did I—you can read about it here.

  • 1817 – Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Here’s the hospital, still in use as a hospital and clinic.

  • 1911 – In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
  • 1940 – World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.
  • 1940 – Richard and Maurice McDonald open the first McDonald’s restaurant.

Here’s that first McDonald’s no longer operating. But I still remember when a burger, fries, and a shake were each 15¢. Buy ’em by the bag!

This streak is still unbroken and probably will remain so. In second place is Wee Willie Keeler, who hit safely in 45 consecutive games in 1896-1897. Pete Rose, with 44, is in third place.

It’s still going on!

Cresson, still the only female PM France has ever had:

  • 2004 – Arsenal F.C. go an entire league campaign unbeaten in the English Premier League, joining Preston North End F.C with the right to claim the title “The Invincibles“.

Notables born on this day include:

Among the 14 kids of this polymath was his most famous offspring, Rabindranath Tagore.

Author of the Oz books:

  • 1859 – Pierre Curie, French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1906)
  • 1891 – Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist and playwright (d. 1940)

Do read his The Master and Margarita, one of the great novels of our time. A satire of Soviet society, it was published by his wife—26 years after his death. And the greatness of this novel is one thing that Adam Gopnik and I do agree on! Bulgakov:

  • 1902 – Richard J. Daley, American lawyer and politician, 48th Mayor of Chicago (d. 1976)
  • 1915 – Paul Samuelson, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2009)
  • 1923 – Richard Avedon, American sailor and photographer (d. 2004).

He was a great fashion photographer but I like his portraits like this one:

  • 1930 – Jasper Johns, American painter and sculptor
  • 1981 – Jamie-Lynn Sigler, American actress and singer
  • 1987 – Andy Murray, Scottish tennis player

Those who passed away on May 15 include

The only authenticated portrait of Dickinson, taken in 1846 or 1847, when she was but 16 or 17.  But there’s another one likely to be her as well.

 

“Cat Studies” by Edward Hopper:

  • 2007 – Jerry Falwell, American pastor, founded Liberty University (b. 1933)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron enjoy the sun and engage in some persiflage:

Hili: I’m worried about the information from the stock exchange.
Szaron: Which one?
Hili: In Shanghai.
In Polish:
Hili: Niepokoją mnie informacje z giełdy.
Szaron: Z której?
Hili: W Szanghaju.

Kulka and Szaron, photos by Paulina:

From Divy:

From Nicole (NSFW?):

Two tweets from Barry. Look at this frog!

Barry says, “I just love the nod. Sound up.”  I don’t understand where Bucky is going to be brought if he doesn’t snore.  I can’t make out the words. The “beefs”?

Tweets from Matthew. For sure this woman hasn’t bathed a cat!

Is that a serious question? If it fits, he sits!

A gorgeous Flower Hat Jellyfish:

First swim for the ducklings. Given their peeping, I think they’re a bit distressed. (Sound up.)

I don’t think I like the image of the Emeritus Professor:

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 14, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Friday the Fourteenth (of May), 2021, and it’s National Buttermilk Biscuit Day, the quintessence of American baked goods. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a Southern breakfast of country ham, fried eggs, grits, homemade preserves, red-eye gravy, and tons of freshly-baked biscuits. Here, in Nashville, Tennessee, is where to get the best breakfast in America.

It’s also International Dylan Thomas Day (celebrating the reading of his voice play Under Milk Wood on May 14, 1953, in New York City), and Dance Like a Chicken Day. Not much of a day for celebrations, is it?

News of the Day:

The fighting in the Middle East, both the Israel/Gaza conflict and the nascent civil war within Israel between Israeli and Arab Jews, continues with no sign of abating. Hamas rockets number over 2,000 now, while Israel ground forces are shelling Gaza. For a while yesterday there were reports that Israeli troops had entered Gaza, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. 12,000 Israeli reservists have been called up to deal with the intra-Israel fighting, which is brutal and reprehensible on all sides.

On Thurday the CDC advised that Americans who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus may go maskless in most places. The caveats:

The new advice comes with caveats. Even vaccinated individuals must cover their faces and physically distance when going to doctors, hospitals or long-term care facilities like nursing homes; when traveling by bus, plane, train or other modes of public transportation, or while in transportation hubs like airports and bus stations; and when in prisons, jails or homeless shelters.

However, due to vaccine hesitancy the pace of vaccination has waned—it’s down 38% from what it was in mid-April, and that’s only a month ago.

Here’s an amazing story as reported by the Guardian. A man paralyzed from the neck down had two small computer chips implanted in the left side of his brain, which controls the right hand. He’s then asked to imagine that he’s writing sentences with his right hand. The electrodes and AI decode the impulses, producing his ability to write 18 words a minute on a computer, and with 94% accuracy. Here’s the paper in Nature reporting this. (h/t Jez)

David Brooks’s new NYT column, called “This is how wokeness ends“, which is curiously unconvincing. While applauding the equality aims of “wokeness,” as do many of us, he decries its increasing reliance on a specialized discourse aimed at academics.  This, he says, will defang the movement, though it’s not sure how. Read his column, but here’s are two excepts (he refers to an article by Rod Dreher on fulminating wokeness):

I’m less alarmed by all of this because I have more confidence than Dreher and many other conservatives in the American establishment’s ability to co-opt and water down every radical progressive ideology. In the 1960s, left-wing radicals wanted to overthrow capitalism. We ended up with Whole Foods. The co-optation of wokeness seems to be happening right now.

. . .Corporations and other establishment organizations co-opt almost unconsciously. They send ambitious young people powerful signals about what level of dissent will be tolerated while embracing dissident values as a form of marketing. By taking what was dangerous and aestheticizing it, they turn it into a product or a brand. Pretty soon key concepts like “privilege” are reduced to empty catchphrases floating everywhere.

The economist and cultural observer Tyler Cowen expects wokeness in this sense won’t disappear. Writing for Bloomberg last week, he predicted it would become something more like the Unitarian Church — “broadly admired but commanding only a modicum of passion and commitment.”

This would be fine with me. As I say, there are (at least) two elements to wokeness. One focuses on concrete benefits for the disadvantaged — reparations, more diverse hiring, more equitable housing and economic policies. The other instigates savage word wars among the highly advantaged. If we can have more of the former and less of the latter, we’ll all be better off.

Amen!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 583,990 an increase of 622 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,359,869, an increase of about 13,300 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 14 includes:

From Wikipedia:

On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of Jenner’s gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of the St. George’s Medical School library (now in Tooting). Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner’s first paper on vaccination.

You can read about Blossom the cow here.

  • 1800 – The 6th United States Congress recesses, and the process of moving the U.S. Government from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., begins the following day.
  • 1804 – William Clark and 42 men depart from Camp Dubois to join Meriwether Lewis at St. Charles, Missouri, marking the beginning of the Lewis and Clark Expedition‘s historic journey up the Missouri River.

A banner day for evolution, as indicated in this tweet from Matthew:

  • 1870 – The first game of rugby in New Zealand is played in Nelson between Nelson College and the Nelson Rugby Football Club.

I couldn’t find a photo of the Nelson Rugby club, but here’s one showing “Scotland’s first rugby team. . . for the 1st international, v. England in Edinburgh, 1871″

The judge dismissed the case. Here’s Spofford:

  • 1939 – Lina Medina becomes the youngest confirmed mother in medical history at the age of five.

FIVE YEARS OLD! Well, it seems to be pretty credible: a case of precocious puberty. Medina gave birth through Caesarian as her pelvis was too small, and the baby survived. Here’s a photo of mother and child (see more here):

  • 1948 – Israel is declared to be an independent state and a provisional government is established. Immediately after the declaration, Israel is attacked by the neighboring Arab states, triggering the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

For those like Anita Sarkeesian who claims that Israel is not an independent state: take note of the above.

  • 1961 – Civil rights movement: A white mob twice attacks a Freedom Riders bus near Anniston, Alabama, before fire-bombing the bus and attacking the civil rights protesters who flee the burning vehicle.

Notables born on this day include:

Here is “Six Studies of a Cat” by Gainsborough, painted 1763-1769, chalk on paper:

  • 1897 – Sidney Bechet, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer (d. 1959)
  • 1897 – Ed Ricketts, American biologist and ecologist (d. 1948)
  • 1936 – Bobby Darin, American singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1973)

Here’s Darin singing my favorite of his songs, originally a French number.

  • 1952 – David Byrne, Scottish singer-songwriter, producer, and actor

Those who departed this life (or any life) on May 14 include:

  • 1847 – Fanny Mendelssohn, German pianist and composer (b. 1805)
  • 1912 – August Strindberg, Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist (b. 1849)
  • 1940 – Emma Goldman, Lithuanian author and activist (b. 1869)
  • 1959 – Sidney Bechet, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer (b. 1897)
  • 1987 – Rita Hayworth, American actress and dancer (b. 1918)

The other day I showed a great video of Hayworth dancing the “Shorty George” with Fred Astaire. Here’s a slower number, “Sway with Me” with the same partner:

 

  • 1995 – Christian B. Anfinsen, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)
  • 1998 – Frank Sinatra, American singer and actor (b. 1915)
  • 2015 – B.B. King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1925)
  • 2018 – Tom Wolfe, American author (b. 1931)

Wolfe wrote some great stuff, but came a cropper when he tried to take down Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky simultaneously (my review of that debacle is here).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are having a micoraggression:

Hili: What are you doing?
Szaron: I’m doing exercises in microaggression in the fresh air.
In Polish:
Hili: Co ty robisz?
Szaron: Ćwiczę mikroagresję na wolnym powietrzu.

The cherry trees are blooming in the orchard, and Kulka enjoys the flowers;

The picture below is from Facebook. This isn’t a genuine old painting but a modern one; one source says this:

There’s an image that’s been shared on social media dozens of times over the past few years. The image depicts a shoeless samurai walking a cat wearing armor. The samurai has a helmet with cat ears, and the image appears to be very old, perhaps dating back to Medieval Japan.

In reality, the painting is the creation of Japanese artist Tetsuya Noguchi, who often depicts samurai in unusual, comic situations. He has also mastered traditional techniques to create highly-detailed armor that would not be out of place in a museum.

From Meanwhile in Canada. I’ll have what they’re having.

From Bruce:

From Not Another Science Cat Page:

A tweet from Teen Vogue. This is the stuff that the magazine, now one of the Wokest of the Woke, is feeding its readers:

From Barry, who thinks this deep-sea squid looks like a teaser for a Pixar movie:

On this day in science. It’s amazing that no Nobel Prize was ever given for the discovery of messenger RNA. Note Matthew’s paper about the issue.

Now THIS is what the Internet is best at!

A paper on how the morphology of snake fangs is adapted to the nature of their prey.

A great footballer. For more video on the Barca midfielder, see the video below this tweet.

Spot the nightjar:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

May 13, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Thursday, May 13, 2021: National Apple Pie Day, and you can’t get more American than that. It’s also National Fruit Cocktail Day, World Cocktail Day, International Hummus Day, Cough Drop Day, and Tulip Day. 

News of the Day:

The violence continues to flare in Israel and Palestine, and now a sort of civil war has erupted in Israel, with Israeli Arabs attacking Israeli Jews and vice versa. Drivers are getting beat up on both sides, and it’s disgusting. From the NYT:

One of the most chilling incidents occurred in Bat Yam, a seaside suburb south of Tel Aviv, where dozens of Jewish extremists took turns beating and kicking an Arab motorcycle driver, even as his body lay motionless on the floor.

Another occurred in Acre, a northern coastal town, where an Arab mob beat a Jewish man with sticks and rocks, also leaving him in a critical condition.

Another 130 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza last night.

The New York Times more or less replaced Bari Weiss with an Israel hater, Peter Beinart, who believes in a “one-state” solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. In a new column, he pushes the ludicrous “right of return” of Palestinians, which would inundate Israelis with over a million hostile Palestinians and lead to a mass genocide. This is wht the New York Times has become these days.  Here’s a paragraph from Beinart’s latest, which just makes me laugh and sad at the same time. The man is an arrant idiot:

Perhaps American Jewish leaders fear that facing the crimes committed at Israel’s birth will leave Jews vulnerable. Once the Nakba [return] taboo is lifted, Palestinians will feel emboldened to seek revenge. But more often than not, honestly confronting the past has the opposite effect.

Yeah, right. Has Beinart seen what’s going on now in Israel between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews?

In a move that I consider boneheaded, Chicago’s tree House Animal Society has released 1,000 feral cats into Chicago’s streets to control rats. This has been since 2012, and they claim that the cats are spayed or neutered, and property owners take care of the moggies. I don’t believe them.

If you’re into mountain-climbing, you’ll want to read this NYT article on people who claim to have climbed all 14 8000-meter peaks in the world. It turns out that perhaps none of the 44 people making that claim have succeeded, mainly because a fair number of those mountains have “summits” that are virtually unattainable, so climbers often stop 5-20 meters below the high point.

Reader Jez called my attention to a pretty good Guardian column in which, celebrating their 200th anniversary, they list the best and worst typos that ever appeared in the paper.

The house in which most of James Joyce’s novelette “The Dead” takes place—a story I consider the finest piece of writing in English—is set to be renovated and become a hostel. This is a TRAVESTY!

It was in the upstairs rooms of the [15] Usher’s Island house that Joyce’s great-aunts ran, for a time, a small musical school. Their annual get-together each Jan. 6 — the Roman Catholic feast of the Epiphany, also known in Ireland as “Women’s Christmas” — was the model for “The Dead’s” haunted dinner party, which confronts Gabriel Conroy, Joyce’s fictional avatar, with the swooning mysteries of love and mortality.

The house was also a setting for John Huston’s 1987 movie adaptation of the story, his Oscar-nominated swan song.

A petition opposing this monstrous act has been signed by the likes of Edna O’Brien, Anne Enright, Sally Rooney, John Banville, Pat McCabe and Eoin McNamee. Other non-Irish signers were Richard Ford, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Tobias Wolff and Ian McEwan.  Here is 15 Usher’s Island:

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 583,210 an increase of 629 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,346,556, an increase of about 13,800 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 13 includes:

  • 1846 – Mexican–American War: The United States declares war on the Federal Republic of Mexico following a dispute over the American annexation of the Republic of Texas and a Mexican military incursion.
  • 1888 – With the passage of the Lei Áurea (“Golden Law”), Empire of Brazil abolishes slavery.
  • 1917 – Three children report the first apparition of Our Lady of Fátima in Fátima, Portugal.

Here are the three children who saw the apparition, as well as a newspaper report showing people gazing at the Sun to see the supposed Virgin:

(From Wikipedia): Lúcia dos Santos (left) with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 1917
(From Wikipedia): Page from Ilustração Portuguesa, 29 October 1917, showing the people looking at the Sun during the Fátima apparitions attributed to the Virgin Mary
  • 1958 – Ben Carlin becomes the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000 kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey.

Here’s Carlin’s vehicle, “Half Safe”, arriving in Denmark in 1951:

  • 1985 – Police bombed MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia, killing six adults and five children, and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.
  • 1995 – Alison Hargreaves, a 33-year-old British mother, becomes the first woman to conquer Everest without oxygen or the help of sherpas.

Here’s Hargreaves, who died in a tragic fall after reaching the top of K2 at 33. Her son also died in a mountaineering accident on Nanga Parbat.

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s a Braque etching, “Black Cat”:

He caused this. Religion poisons everything, including, literally, 918 people below.

  • 1940 – Bruce Chatwin, English author (d. 1989)
  • 1950 – Manning Marable, American author and academic (d. 2011)

Marable, whose work was handled by my own editor, won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Malcolm X (he died shortly thereafter of sarcodosis). Do read the book, it’s terrific.

  • 1950 – Stevie Wonder, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer
  • 1961 – Dennis Rodman, American basketball player, wrestler, and actor
  • 1986 – Lena Dunham, American actress, director, and screenwriter

Those who were potted like plants on this day include:

  • 1884 – Cyrus McCormick, American businessman, co-founded the International Harvester Company (b. 1809)
  • 1916 – Sholem Aleichem, Ukrainian-American author and playwright (b. 1859)

Aleichem, whose stories about Tevye the Dairyman, led to the famous musical Fiddler on the Roof:

Now THIS (Nansen) is a Viking! He won the Nobel for peace for helping create the “stateless passport” to allow displaced people to cross borders:

  • 1961 – Gary Cooper, American actor (b. 1901)
  • 1977 – Mickey Spillane, American mobster (b. 1934)
  • 2018 – Margot Kidder, Canadian-American actress (b. 1948)
  • 2019 – Doris Day, American singer and actress (b. 1922)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sets out on a journey whose destination and purpose are unclear.

Hili: We are going southwest.
Szaron: But what for?
Hili: To secure our sphere of influence.
In Polish:
Hili: Idziemy na południowy zachód.
Szaron: Ale po co?
Hili: Żeby zabezpieczyć naszą strefę wpływów.

Here’s a photo of Szaron:

From Bruce:

A wedding invitation from Nicole. Is a child served like veal?

From Jesus of the Day:

Anita Sarkeesian is back with more stupid. I don’t think she has the slightest idea what she’s talking about, but wants to take the ideologically popular position.

Tweets from Matthew. There are lots of videos of this diligent and agile red squirrel. Note that in the third tweet below, it’s got nesting material in its mouth.

Here’s a biological difference between the sexes. Lesson: have similar rather than disparate sex chromosomes:

This should freak you out good and proper.

A very dreadful statue of Darwin:

I agree with Matthew here. Living wage! (Matthew notes, “I am a Brit and I endorse this message.”

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

May 12, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Wednesday, May 12, 2021: National Nutty Fudge Day. It’s also International Nurses Day, National Root Canal Appreciation Day, National Numeracy Day, and Day of the Finnish Identity (are we all allowed to identify as Finns today?)

Posting may be light today as I’m quite low about the events of the world. As always, I do my best.

News of the Day:

The violence in Israel and Gaza continues to escalate, with more than 500 rockets fired at Israel, and Israel retaliating, it claims, only against military targets, including Hamas officials and those involved in Hamas-fired missiles. The Washington Post reports this on Tuesday evening:

By Tuesday night, 30 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli airstrikes, including 10 children, and 203 others were wounded, according to Gaza health officials. One airstrike toppled a tower that houses the offices of several Hamas officials.

UPDATE Wednesday morning: The NYT adds this. Things are very grim.

ASHKELON, Israel — The worst fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in seven years intensified on Tuesday night, as Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hamas offices in Gaza City and militants in Gaza fired rockets at the metropolis of Tel Aviv, the southern city of Ashkelon and Israel’s main airport.

In Gaza, at least 35 Palestinians, including 10 children, had been killed by Tuesday night, and 203 others were wounded, according to health officials. In Israel, five people were killed in strikes on Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Lod, and at least 100 were wounded, according to medical officials.

Away from the military conflict, a wave of civil unrest spread across Arab neighborhoods as Palestinian citizens of Israel expressed fury at the killings in Gaza and longstanding complaints of discrimination inside Israel itself.

There goes any hope for a two-state solution, which became an impossible dream in the last few years.

According to the NYT, the positive drug test produced by the Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit was, the horses’s trainer claimed due to an antifungal ointment used to treat Medina Spirit for dermatitis. They are running other tests, and if the colt fails again, his Kentucky Derby win will be taken away and given to the second-place horse. Curiously, though, Medina Spirit will be allowed to race in the second of the Triple Crown races, the Preakness, on Saturday.

Airline passengers are becoming increasingly unruly, and at an exponential pace. Since February, the FAA has received 1300 “unruly passenger” reports, with four people facing nearly $70,000 in fines. Compare the 1300 reports to the 142 in all of 2019, 159 in 2018, and only 91 in 2017. The increase is due to resistance to pandemic precautions by the airlines, which has angered passengers. Lock ’em up!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 582, 362, an increase of 619 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,332,764, a big increase of about 14,000 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 12 was very sparse, including this::

  • 1551 – National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru.
  • 1932 – Ten weeks after his abduction, Charles Jr., the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, is found dead near Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs’ home.

This was one of the biggest stories of that era; here’s the headline after the infant was found dead. Bruno Hauptmann was convicted of the crime, but many still doubt whether he did it.

  • 1937 – The Duke and Duchess of York are crowned as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Westminster Abbey.
  • 2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Fidel, Carter and Rosalynn in Cuba; note that Jimmy is wearing a Cuban style shirt.

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s Lear in 1887 holding his cat Foss, who was about to jump off his lap:

  • 1820 – Florence Nightingale, Italian-English nurse, social reformer, and statistician (d. 1910)

Here’s Nightingale at about 40:

  • 1889 – Otto Frank, German-Swiss businessman and Holocaust survivor; father of diarist Anne Frank (d. 1980)
  • 1907 – Katharine Hepburn, American actress (d. 2003)

Hepburn’s yearbook photo from Bryn Mawr College when she was 21:

Look at these headlines when she won her prize! This would never stand today. A “wife”!

  • 1925 – Yogi Berra, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 2015)
  • 1928 – Burt Bacharach, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer
  • 1937 – George Carlin, American comedian, actor, and author (d. 2008)

Here’s a great half-hour by Carlin on religion, which he despised. It’s very good:

  • 1948 – Steve Winwood, English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
  • 1966 – Deborah Kara Unger, Canadian actress

Those who met Cerberus on May 12 include:

  • 1700 – John Dryden, English poet, playwright, and critic (b. 1631)
  • 1925 – Amy Lowell, American poet and critic (b. 1874)
  • 2001 – Perry Como, American singer and television host (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is worried that the 1930s are going to repeat themselves:

Hili: A new era is coming.
A: How does it look?
Hili: I have a feeling I’ve seen it somewhere before.
In Poish:
Hili: Idzie nowa era.
Ja: Jak wygląda?
Hili: Mam wrażenie, że już ją gdzieś widziałam.

Szaron licking little Kulka (photo by Paulina):

From Divy:

From Thomas:

From Bruce:

Israel’s “Iron Dome” intercepts Hamas rockets, with an explanation below. To read more about the system, go here.

Tweets from Matthew. I don’t quite get the advantage of this: it’s easy to mix but you’re left with a messy countertop:

Two Tik-Tok tweets. Matthew sez: “Two more brilliant Tik Tok vids, the second from a couple of years back. Damn, there are some talented people out there with too much time on their hands!”

A fabulous nature photograph:

And a fabulous astronomy photo taken from the Moon:

The world’s chillest rodent (and the largest) enjoys a good soak in a hot tub. What other mammal can compare? Matthew and I both love capybaras.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 11, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Tuesday, May 11, 2020: National “Eat What You Want” Day. But why the scare quotes? Are we supposed to want only healthy food like carrots and broccoli? On the bad-food side, though, it’s Hostess CupCake Day (a staple of my school lunches, and first sold on this day in 1919).  I also liked Twinkies, but my favorite were the marshmallow-and-coconut covered Sno-Balls. I wonder if they still make these:

News of the Day:

Hamas fired more than 50 rockets into Israel in the last two days; Israel responded with airstrikes. This is a complicated situation, but there’s no excuse for firing rocket at civilians. The odd thing is that the Palestinian rockets were aimed at Jerusalem for the first time in seven years, and Palestinians themselves could have been killed. Nevertheless, they applauded the attacks.

A survey of mainstream media shows a fair amount of venues that don’t even mention in the headlines the instigating Gaza rocket attacks. Here’s one from the Washington Post:

I would call that blatantly dishonest journalism. “Palestinian officials say”: only one side quoted. This kind of biased reporting is reprehensible. The situation overall seems unresolvable.

Ever eaten a banana peel? Probably not, but if you have the curiosity (I don’t), the New York Times offers a number of recipes for the inedible peel, including some from Nigella Lawson.

The travails of the rich: The Guardian reveals that Gwynnie (see screenshot below),driven to distraction by the quarantine (and apparently not distracted by her millions), broke down in a big way:

In the latest celebrity attempt to prove they had it just as hard as normal people in the pandemic, Gwyneth Paltrow has admitted she was driven to extremes during quarantine.

Things got dark. She admitted to drinking as many as two cocktails a night during lockdown (quinoa-based whiskey cocktails, of course); and even sometimes eating bread and pasta – shock, horror!

OMG! Bread—and PASTA!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 581,669, an increase of 650 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,318,777, an increase of about 11,300 over yesterday’s total.

Today is a thin day in history. Stuff that happened on May 11 include:

  • 868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book.

Here’s the frontispiece of that book, which was blockprinted from carved wooden templates, not made from movable type like the Gutenberg Bible:

After a trial, the odious Eichmann was hanged in Israel in 1962, but I oppose that, as I oppose all capital punishment. Here he is in prison in Israel in 1961.

  • 1963 – Racist bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, disrupt nonviolence in the Birmingham campaign and precipitate a crisis involving federal troops.  

In 1964 Norman Rockwell exemplified the whole tenor of the era with this one painting, “The problem we all live with.” It is a great painting; note that the n-word is written on the wall, which we wouldn’t see in any modern rendition. This painting appeared on the cover of Look magazine:

  • 1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

The Battle of the Titans:

  • 2010 – David Cameron takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats form the country’s first coalition government since the Second World War.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1888 – Irving Berlin, Belarusian-American pianist and composer (d. 1989)
  • 1894 – Martha Graham, American dancer and choreographer (d. 1991)
  • 1904 – Salvador Dalí, Spanish artist (d. 1989)
  • 1924 – Antony Hewish, English astronomer and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
  • 1941 – Eric Burdon, English musician

Here’s Burdon with one of the worst songs ever recorded:

Those who shuffled off this mortal coil on May 11 include:

  • 1927 – Juan Gris, Spanish painter and sculptor (b. 1887)
  • 1979 – Lester Flatt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1914)

Here’s flat with Earl Scruggs performing “Earl’s Breakdown”. This should wake you up!

  • 1981 – Bob Marley, Jamaican singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1945)

And here’s Marley doing “Stand Up, Get Up” in Munich in 1980, the year before he died of melanoma.

  • 2001 – Douglas Adams, English novelist and screenwriter (b. 1952)
  • 2020 – Jerry Stiller, American comedian, actor (b. 1927) 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is being nice to Hili:

Szaron: It’s nice to see you.
Hili: Really?
In Polish:
Szaron: Miło cię widzieć.
Hili: Naprawdę?

Here is little Kulka having a lie-down:

A meme from Nicole:

From Lenora:

From Pradeep. Not only is there a gun, but there are bowling pins and ducks!

A tweet showing Ricky Gervais saying goodbye to his dog at the vet’s (it’s a television scene, but still so sad):

From Dom, who says he too can’t stop laughing at this.

Sent by Luana, and it seems pretty accurate:

Tweets from Matthew. An incompetent cat (almost an oxymoron):

A magpie teases a fox. Corvids just can’t resist pulling tails:

Just think of how many amazing adaptations occur on such small scales that we don’t see them. Here’s one. Read the thread to understand the adaptation:

Yes, but how many mated?

Sophie Scholl’s last words before, at 21, she was decapitated by the Nazis for being part of the White Rose resiistance. I believe Scholl spoke these on the way to the guillotine.

This is most likely the guillotine on which the Scholls and hundreds of others were executed by the Nazis:

A guillotine found in a Bavarian museum’s storage area is believed to have been used to execute thousands of people during the Nazi era. Credit…Walter Haberland/Bayerisches National Museum, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

From an excellent movie about the White Rose resistance; the final scene.  This always distresses me, but I watch it nonetheless. There’s no gore but it’s ineffably sad as she says goodby to her brother and her comrade before a perfunctory sentence and execution.