Category: Kukla

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

July 29, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s Hump Day, except we had the hump in February and everything’s been downhill since then. It’s July 29, 2020:  National Lasagna Day. It’s also National Chicken Wing Day and International Tiger Day. 

Here, have a tiger (from One Green Planet):

 

News of the day: Take my word for it—the news is all bad. First, a 63-year-old woman, swimming 20 yards offshore in southern Maine, was fatally bitten by a great white shark—only the second shark attack in that state since 1837.

Trump continues to lie about the coronavirus, sharing a video touting the use of hydroxychloroquine as a palliative for the virus, a video which was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  He also claimed that large portions of the country were “corona free.” I’d like to know where they are so I can travel there.

There’s a rise in viral infections in parts of Europe as well, including Spain, Germany, and Belgium.

The discovery of what appears to be van Gogh’s last painting (not “Wheatfield with Crows”) casts doubt on the recent hypothesis that he didn’t shoot himself but was shot by two young ruffians. Read the details here. Here’s the painting: “Tree Roots”:

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 149,767, an increase of about 1300 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at,659,273, an increase of about 6700 deaths from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on July 29 includes:

  • 1565 – The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, Scotland.
  • 1567 – The infant James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.
  • 1818 – French physicist Augustin Fresnel submits his prizewinning “Memoir on the Diffraction of Light”, precisely accounting for the limited extent to which light spreads into shadows, and thereby demolishing the oldest objection to the wave theory of light.
  • 1836 – Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.
  • 1921 – Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
  • 1948 – Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad: After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, open in London.
  • 1973 – Greeks vote to abolish the monarchy, beginning the first period of the Metapolitefsi.
  • 1976 – In New York City, David Berkowitz (a.k.a. the “Son of Sam”) kills one person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of attacks.

Berkowitz who killed six and wounded seven, is serving three consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences in the Attica Supermax Prison. Amazingly, he was eligible for parole in 2003, though he’ll never get out. Here he is:

Al Aaronson/NY Daily News/Getty

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1805 – Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian and philosopher (d. 1859)
  • 1869 – Booth Tarkington, American novelist and dramatist (d. 1946)
  • 1883 – Benito Mussolini, Italian fascist revolutionary and politician, 27th Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1945)
  • 1898 – Isidor Isaac Rabi, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1988)
  • 1905 – Clara Bow, American actress (d. 1965)

Here’s “the It girl,” the biggest sex symbol of the Roaring Twenties:

Those who started playing the harp on July 29 include:

See above for some news of van Gogh. Here’s one of my favorite of his paintings: “Noon, Rest from Work” (a copy from Millet):

. . . and the original:

 

 

  • 1974 – Cass Elliot, American singer (b. 1941)
  • 1979 – Herbert Marcuse, German sociologist and philosopher (b. 1898)
  • 1994 – Dorothy Hodgkin, Egyptian-English biochemist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1910)

Here are two headlines from British papers when she won the Prize.  How things have changed! Crikey, as if “wife” were her distinguishing characteristic. Would they have said, “Nobel prize for a husband from Oxford”?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili read the news today, oh boy:

Hili: Did you read the morning papers?
A: Yes.
Hili: Irritating. Bad news and bad journalism.
In Polish:
Hili: Czytałeś już poranną prasę?
Ja: Tak.
Hili: Irytujące, Złe wiadomości i złe dziennikarstwo.

And you get a treat today: six photos of the new kitten Kulka, who still weighs less than half a kilo (one pound). And she looks pretty much like baby Hili did.

Caption:  This little monster is everywhere. (In Polish: Ten mały potwór jest wszędzie.)

Kulka and Szaron

And Hili as a kitten:

An exchange from reader Bruce:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Bad Cat Clothing, a handy fix:

A tweet from Titania:

A tweet from Simon:

From cesar: Nikole Hannah-Jones better decide whether The 1619 Project is history or not history:

From reader Barry. This is adorable; does anybody know the lizard species?

From reader Ken, who says, “Way to stay classy, Donald!” Indeed.

Tweets from Matthew. Eleven? I had 23 this year!

Ducks 1, Pigeon -10:

Two antlion larvae making their cocoons.

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 27, 2020 • 6:30 am

Well, here we are back the start of the week:  n = n + 1 on Monday, July 27, 2020. Is anyone dispirited like me, or is everyone ebullient? If so, why? At least we have lots of cat pictures today: all of the Polish cats including Hili, Szaron, Leon, and the tiny new kitten Kulka.

Foodimentary says that it’s National Scotch Day, though I’m not sure Scotch is a food, but make mine a well-aged Springbank. It’s also National Creme Brulée Day (another overrated dessert in the flan family), National Chicken Finger Day (I’ve never had one), and Bagpipe Appreciation Day. In North Korea it’s Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War, marking the signing of the Korean Armistice agreement in 1953 (we’re still technically at war with the DPRK), and in the US it’s National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day.

News of the Day: There are renewed calls to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as it’s named after a Confederate general and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Normally I’d favor the renaming (one suggestion is to rename it the John Lewis Bridge), but the old name is so imbued with history that I think it should stay. The bridge is the site of “Bloody Sunday”—actually three Sundays in 1965 on which civil rights activists tried to march from Selma to Montgomery and were attacked by police. It was the sight of that police brutality that helped propel passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The contrast between the segregationism embodied in the bridge’s name and its role in furthering civil rights suggests that the name should stay not as a memorial to the Confederacy, but to the great struggle for civil rights.

And there was this: John Lewis’s body ferried in a caisson over the bridge where, 55 years ago, police fractured his skull with a billy club.

The name is important here. If it’s renamed, the letters should nevertheless stay.

Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he will not vote to confirm any new Supreme Court nominees unless they vow to overturn Roe v. Wade. Although there are no Court openings in the offing, there are rumors that Clarence Thomas could retire, and of course there’s always RBG’s health.  But what about not voting on a President’s nominees in an election year, a Republican strategy that killed Obama’s nominee? Mitch McConnell pulls a 180:

Although no vacancy is imminent, White House officials and some top Republicans have privately discussed the possibility that Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative appointed by George H.W. Bush, could retire.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked then-President Barack Obama from making an election-year appointment to the Supreme Court in 2016. He denied Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, a confirmation hearing, saying the next president should make the choice.

But McConnell has said he would push through a Trump nominee this year, should an opening occur. The difference from 2016, he maintains, is that now the same political party controls the White House and Senate.

How is that relevant?

The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is finally getting canceled, including in this piece in the Washington Post, which says that the novel is still “reinforcing and normalizing a culture of oppression.” But what are the truths about white people that, according to author Errin Haines, the novel tells? That white folks are all racist, imbued with privilege, perpetrators of systemic racism, and unwilling to lift a finger to help people of color. This is a shameful piece of propaganda by the Post.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 146,754, an increase of about 400 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 648,465, an increase of about 4400 deaths from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on July 27 include:

  • 1299 – According to Edward Gibbon, Osman I invades the territory of Nicomedia for the first time, usually considered to be the founding day of the Ottoman state.
  • 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 “enemies of the Revolution”.
  • 1866 – The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully completed, stretching from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.

It still amazes me that several thousand miles of cable can be strung between continents without breaking it. But it was done. Here’s a painting of the landing of the cable:

(From Wikipedia): Landing of the Atlantic Cable of 1866, Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, by Robert Charles Dudley, 1866.

According to this biography, which I read recently, van Gogh did not shoot himself, but was shot by a rowdy kid in his village. Read the appendix to see the evidence, which I found pretty convincing.

  • 1919 – The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.

The riots began when a group of black men entered a segregated area of the 29th Street Beach. Things mushroomed from there. Here are two pictures from Wikipedia with its captions:

A fifth picture from the series ; an African American man assaulted with stones during the Chicago Race Riot.[34] A subsequent 6th[1] and 7th[2] pictures show the arrival of police officers and the victim.
A white gang looking for African Americans during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. This and a subsequent picture at The Crisis Magazine 1919 Vol 18 No. 6 is part of a series of the Chicago race riots of 1919.

Banting, along with John Macleod, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1923. Charles Best, who co-discovered the hormone, should also have been honored but wasn’t. Best did give him half of his share of the Prize.

  • 1953 – Cessation of hostilities is achieved in the Korean War when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.
  • 1974 – Watergate scandal: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.
  • 1987 – RMS Titanic Inc. begins the first expedited salvage of wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

Some of the artifacts have been auctioned off, including this one, which looks to me like a teapot:

Most of us remember that Richard Jewell was falsely accused of the bombing, which killed one person. Later it was found that Eric Rudolph did the deed, along with other bombings, and Rudolph is serving four consecutive life sentences in a Supermax prison.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1768 – Charlotte Corday, French assassin of Jean-Paul Marat (d. 1793)
  • 1870 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian (d. 1953)
  • 1881 – Hans Fischer, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1945)
  • 1905 – Leo Durocher, American baseball player and manager (d. 1991)
  • 1939 – William Eggleston, American photographer and academic

Eggleston, who owns 300 Leica cameras, was a master at color landscape photography, though the landscapes are urban, like this one:

Here’s a 7.5-minute video of A-Rod’s career highlights. He’s not in the Hall of Fame, perhaps because he used performance-enhancing steroids for a time and was suspended from baseball for a year.

Those who conked on July 27 include:

  • 1946 – Gertrude Stein, American novelist, poet, and playwright (b. 1874)
  • 1980 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iranian king (b. 1919)
  • 2003 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, comedian, television personality, and businessman (b. 1903)
  • 2017 – Sam Shepard, American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director (b.1943)

Here’s Shepard in Terrence Malick’s great film “Days of Heaven” (1978), one of the most beautiful movies ever photographed. This is the scene where locusts take over the farm:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, outside, sees Szaron, inside, napping on her blanket:

Hili: What will it come to?
A: I don’t understand.
Hili: This cultural appropriation.
In Polish:
Hili: Dokąd to dojdzie?
Ja: Nie rozumiem.
Hili: To kulturowe zawłaszczenie.

Upstairs, Paulina plays with the new kittten Kulka, who apparently is now a permanent resident:

Caption: Lady with a fast escaping kitten.

In Polish: Dama z szybko uciekającym małym kotem.

When I was told that Kulka was a fearless kitten, and climbed the lilac bush up to the second floor of the house, I demanded pictures. Paulina obliged with these four.  Kulka weights only half a kilo (one pound!):

Caption: Photos taken by Paulina (on order from Chicago). (In Polish: Zdjęcia zrobione przez Paulinę [na zamówienie z Chicago]). 

And nearby, Leon bewails the new week:

Leon: Monday again?

In Polish: Znów poniedziałek?

A groaner from Bruce:

Two from Jesus of the Day:

From Simon: the world’s best dad:

https://twitter.com/xavierkatana/status/1287378913149296640?s=20

Tweets from Matthew. First, Duckling Rush Hour at Marsh Farm:

. . . and an adorable kitten breakfast. Sound up to hear the good mews:

A tweet from Matthew showing how Gosling, Wilkins, and Franklin took the photos that helped show that DNA was a double helix. Condoms and paper clips are essential.

More examples of cancel culture. And they didn’t even include Rebecca Tuvel:

Another tweet from Matthew showing a durable Frenchwoman:

Okay, what are these rabbits doing? Mating? Fighting? Or playing?

A monument to Donald Trump in Northern Ireland:

Saturday: Hili dialogue

July 25, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s the weekend, and Sabbath for all Jewish humans and animals (like my ducks): it’s July 25, 2020, and National Hot Fudge Sundae Day. May I recommend Margie’s Candies in Chicago (menu here)? Here’s their famous turtle sundae, which comes with a generous pour-your-own pitcher of their luscious homemade hot fudge. Composition: “two scoops of ice cream (flavors of your choice), caramel, a side of fudge, whipped cream, a wafer cookie, peanuts, a cherry, and a turtle (the candy) on top.”

It’s also National Culinarians Day, National Wine and Cheese Day, and National Day of the American Cowboy. It’s also the 100th birthday of Rosalind Franklin (she died of cancer in 1958); Matthew has promised us a short piece on her and her work for later today.

News of the Day: Some good news: yesterday, by a 5-4 vote (with Roberts again joining the liberals), the Supreme Court rejected the application of a Nevada church to be exempt from pandemic restrictions and attendance limits. Hang in there, RBG!

According to CNN, the pandemic has driven ice cream sales up and deodorant and soap sales down, meaning people are getting fat and smelly. The good news is that few people are nearby to see the increased girth or sniff the odiferous bodies.

Big news: a line of undergarments called “Namastay put” has been ditched after an offended woman said that the name was cultural appropriation. But the offended one wasn’t placated, for the company neither acknowledges nor apologized for its transgression. These days, it’s not enough to get what you want; you must also humiliate your enemy.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 145,376, an increase of about 1100 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 637,159, an increase of about 4000 deaths from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on July 25 includes:

  • 1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned king of England (James I of England), bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would occur in 1707.
  • 1788 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K550).
  • 1797 – Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).
  • 1853 – Joaquin Murrieta, the famous California bandit known as the “Robin Hood of El Dorado”, is killed.
  • 1898 – In the Puerto Rican Campaign, the United States seizes Puerto Rico from Spain.
  • 1909 – Louis Blériot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from Calais to Dover, England, United Kingdom in 37 minutes.

Here are two photos from Wikipedia: Blériot starting the engines and then landing in Dover:

  • 1956 – Forty-five miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog and sinks the next day, killing 51.

A photo from Wikipedia, captioned “Harry Trask’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Andrea Doria minutes before she sank.”

  • 1965 – Bob Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music.

Here’s the moment in which he “went electric”. You can hear the boos and objections:

Of course you’ll want to see that photo, which excited everyone (aliens!), but later photos (below) showed that it was an artifact of poor resolution. There is no “face”:

Here’s Brown then and now (she’s 42 today):

  • 1984 – Salyut 7 cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
  • 2000 – Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashes at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 people.
  • 2010 – WikiLeaks publishes classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history.
  • 2019 – National extreme heat records set this day in the UK, Belgium and Germany during the July 2019 European heat wave.

Here are the maximum temperatures in Europe (Celsius) on July 25 of last year. Look at Northern France!

Notables born on this day include two great artists:

  • 1844 – Thomas Eakins, American painter, sculptor, and photographer (d. 1916)

Here’s Eakins’s “The Agnew Clinic” (1889):

I love Parrish. Here’s a great illustration for Collier’s: “The Lantern Bearers”:

  • 1894 – Walter Brennan, American actor (d. 1974)
  • 1902 – Eric Hoffer, American philosopher and author (d. 1983)
  • 1906 – Johnny Hodges, American saxophonist and clarinet player (d. 1970)
  • 1920 – Rosalind Franklin, English biophysicist, chemist, and academic (d. 1958) [see above]
  • 1935 – Adnan Khashoggi, Saudi Arabian businessman (d. 2017)
  • 1948 – Steve Goodman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1984)

Here’s my favorite Steve Goodman song (written by Mike Smith), “The Dutchman”:

  • 1954 – Walter Payton, American football player and race car driver (d. 1999)

Those who went to God on July 25 were few, and include these two:

  • 1834 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English philosopher, poet, and critic (b. 1772)
  • 2008 – Randy Pausch, American computer scientist and educator (b. 1960)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains Hili’s exchange with Andrzej:

Hili asks a question about the sense/meaning of doing one thing instead of something else. It’s a question equally “deep” as the question, “What’s the meaning of life?” As there is no good answer to such questions, Andrzej’s answer is another way of saying: “Give me a break!”

Hili: What is the sense of sitting in this place and not in any other?
A: It depends on whether you look at this question from a philosophical perspective or a theological one.
In Polish:
Hili: Jaki jest sens siedzenia w tym miejscu, a nie w innym?
Ja: To zależy, czy spojrzymy na tę kwestię z filozoficznego punktu widzenia, czy z teologicznego.
Kulka, the new kitten, is now sleeping and cuddling with Szaron upstairs. It’s still not clear if Kulka’s original owners will reclaim her, but I hope not. LOOK AT THAT SWEET PICTURE (taken by Paulina):

 

From Facebook. Get it?

The Great Agnostic had a whiskey named after him! Note the Ingersollian prose on the label (h/t: Gregory James): Given that Ingersoll had publicly pronounced against the production and consumption of whiskey, this label is shrouded in mystery.

A meme from reader Bruce:

I tweeted, but the original official Olympics-site tweet was deleted. Matthew sent me both a screenshot of what they took down and Joanne Bell’s righteously angry tweet.

I hadn’t heard Trump talking about his cognition test (he did FANTASTIC, of course), but here’s Sarah Cooper mouthing his words:

From Simon, a tweet about writing new academic courses. He noted, “My postdoc advisor taught gross anatomy to med students. Always said year to year changes were essentially zero.”

From reader Barry, who said, “How is this not child abuse?” Note, it is, but it’s in the name of JEEEBUS.

https://twitter.com/ForumAtheist/status/1286594323207913475

Tweets from Matthew. (Note: I am not vouching for the veracity of the assertion below.)

I love this irascible moose! Anyone with a mower like that deserves to have it stomped by a moose.

https://twitter.com/naturelslit/status/1286551421333118976?s=11

This is a brilliant insight:

https://twitter.com/imtheq/status/1286026505840099332?s=11

Duckling season’s a little late in Saskatchewan:

And some Trump-mocking to finish: