Category: Leon monologue

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

September 14, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Caturday, September 14, 2019, and I trust all of us got past Friday the 13th without trouble. It’s National Cream-Filled Donut Day (make the “Creme”, because hardly any donuts use real cream), Eat a Hoagie Day, German Language Day, and, in the UK, National Quiet Day (but every day is quiet day there!)

In honor of German Language Day, here’s a German proverb I made up when I was learning German; it’s very profound. (I hope I can still write German):

“Ein Kind mit einer Brezel findet schnell Freunde.”

(A child with a pretzel quickly makes friends.)

Stuff that happened on September 14 include:

  • 1741 – George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah.
  • 1752 – The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).
  • 1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Grande Armée enters Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city.
  • 1901 – U.S. President William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.

McKinley was shot on September 6 by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, but it took the President a week to die. Here’s the hospital room in Buffalo where he was operated on. There were no antibiotics in those days, which would have saved him, and so he died of gangrene.

  • 1944 – World War II: Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.
  • 1969 – The US Selective Service selects September 14 as the First Draft Lottery date.

I was number 3, which began the long tale of my service as a conscientious objector and then my freedom after I took the government to court for drafting me and several thousand other guys in violation of the law.

Here’s one of the miracles for which she was canonized. (They’re always remissions of diseases that can have spontaneous remission.)

  • 1994 – The Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.
  • 2007 – Financial crisis of 2007–2008: The Northern Rock bank experiences the first bank run in the United Kingdom in 150 years.

Matt Ridley was in charge!

  • 2015 – The first observation of gravitational waves was made, announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016.

Three Nobel Prizes were awarded for this achievement, and only two years afterwards. Nobody has gotten a Nobel Prize for the Human Genome Project or for the use of CRISPR in genetic engineering.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1804 – John Gould, English ornithologist and illustrator (d. 1881)

Gould played an important role in Darwin’s evolutionary thinking, for he identified the birds that Darwin had collected in the Galapagos, and about whose identity Darwin was confused, as a group of finches. (Darwin thought they were wrens and mockingbirds.) Here’s Gould:

John Gould. Studio photograph, 1860s.

Sanger founded the first birth control clinic in America, and founded the groups that became Planned Parenthood. She was, however, opposed to abortion (she favored contraception), and also was big on eugenics, saying that the unfit should be either sterilized or prevented from procreating. Her legacy was mixed, but overall on the positive side. Here she is:

  • 1930 – Allan Bloom, American philosopher and academic (d. 1992)
  • 1934 – Kate Millett, American author and activist (d. 2017)
  • 1983 – Amy Winehouse, English singer-songwriter (d. 2011)

Reader Simon and I share an admiration for Amy (well, at least her music). Here are two of her most famous songs, “Rehab” and “Back to Black”, performed live at the Isle of Wight in 2007. I don’t know who her backup singers/dancers are, but they’re terrific:

Those who expired on September 14 include:

  • 1638 – John Harvard, English-American minister and philanthropist (b. 1607)
  • 1715 – Dom Pérignon, French monk and priest (b. 1638)
  • 1836 – Aaron Burr, American colonel and politician, 3rd Vice President of the United States (b. 1756)
  • 1851 – James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist, short story writer, and historian (b. 1789)
  • 1901 – William McKinley, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 25th President of the United States (b. 1843)
  • 1927 – Isadora Duncan, American-Russian dancer and choreographer (b. 1877)
  • 1982 – Grace Kelly, American-Monacan actress; Princess of Monaco (b. 1929)
  • 2003 – Garrett Hardin, American ecologist and author (b. 1915)
  • 2009 – Patrick Swayze, American actor, singer, and dancer (b. 1952)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a joke:

Hili: A mouse was running around here yesterday.
A: And?
Hili: It escaped into the burrow.
A: That’s good.
Hili: That depends on who it’s good for.
In Polish:
Hili: Wczoraj biegła tu mysz.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Uciekła do nory.
Ja: To dobrze.
Hili: Jak dla kogo.

And nearby, Leon, the Dark Tabby Leon has found himself a fine perch:

Leon: One should always aim high!

In Polish: Zawsze należy mierzyć wysoko!

Here’s are two panoramic photos of downtown Chicago taken yesterday on a Chicago Architecture Foundation cruise. Here’s a view from just out in the harbor. I highly recommend the Architecture Foundation cruise if you love nice buildings, for Chicago is the world’s epicenter for skyscrapers and massive buildings.

This was taken on the State Street bridge across the Chicago River:

My friend Moto (a retired vet) posted this on his Facebook page:

From Amazing Things, enjoy some Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum), one of the most stupendous biological sights on the planet. If you live in the U.S. (or elsewhere), you must see these. The biggest one known has a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 8.8 meters (nearly 29 feet)!

From Jesus of the Day. According to Sean Carroll’s new book, the cat is already both inside and outside.

Grania sent me this tweet on April 7. I may have posted it before, but so what?

From Gethyn, a great combination of the single- and double-slit experiments and Schrödinger’s cat:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. First, the world’s laziest d*g:

. . . via lawyer Ann German, with Ann’s response:

Four tweets from Matthew. Look at this beautiful octopus!

I’m not sure whether the cat likes this relationship, but it’s still sweet:

I’m not sure what the bottom of this poster means, but perhaps a reader can enlighten us:

Last but not least, I LOVE this firefighter:

https://twitter.com/awwwwcats/status/1172223744074571776?s=11

Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 30, 2019 • 6:30 am

Is it already Friday? Yes, it’s August 30, 2019: the penultimate day of the month, and exactly one week since I was sliced open and manipulated with huge robotical surgical arms. (I’m healing nicely, thank you.)

Here’s Matthew’s report on the status of Britain’s constitutional crisis. He proffers just a tweet:

It’s National Toasted Marshmallow Day (I like mine burnt to a crisp), as well as International Day of the Disappeared, National Holistic Pet Day (what is that?), and National Slinky Day. Speaking of which, here’s a video of the famous “Slinky fall”, with an explanation of how this counterintuitive phenomenon works:

Not a lot happened on this day in history; the few events worth noting include these:

Presumably many of you have read Steve Gould’s book on the fauna, Wonderful Life. Though its thesis needs revision (many of the Burgess Shall fauna now are thought to reside in groups still represented by living species), it still was a remarkable find and an engaging book. Go see the Burgess Shall Fossil Gallery at The Burgess Shale site. Here’s Opabinia regalis (and a reconstruction), described as “a primitive arthropod with five eyes and a long ‘nozzle’ with claws”:

  • 1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, which along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

Lenin’s injuries probably contributed to the stroke that killed him six years later. Kaplan was executed with a bullet to the head on September 3.

This is the status of the hotline today:

In 2007, the Moscow–Washington hotline was upgraded; a dedicated computer network links Moscow and Washington. The new system started operations on January 1, 2008.[4] It continues to use the two satellite links but a fiber optic cable replaced the old back-up cable. Commercial software is used for both chat and email: chat to coordinate operations, and email for actual messages. Transmission is nearly instantaneous.

  • 1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
  • 1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
  • 1992 – The 11-day Ruby Ridge standoff ends with Randy Weaver surrendering to federal authorities.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1716 – Capability Brown, British landscape architect (d. 1783)
  • 1720 – Samuel Whitbread, English brewer and politician, founded Whitbread (d. 1796)
  • 1797 – Mary Shelley, English novelist and playwright (d. 1851)
  • 1871 – Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-English physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1937)
  • 1884 – Theodor Svedberg, Swedish chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
  • 1893 – Huey Long, American lawyer and politician, 40th Governor of Louisiana (d. 1935)

Long, a demagogue who could be considered the Donald Trump of Louisiana. His life is fascinating, and here is pushing a populist message (note the Louisiana accent). He was assassinated in 1935 at age 42.

  • 1918 – Ted Williams, American baseball player and manager (d. 2002)
  • 1930 – Warren Buffett, American businessman and philanthropist

Those who passed away on August 30 include:

  • 1940 – J. J. Thomson, English physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)
  • 2013 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1939)
  • 2015 – Wes Craven, American director, producer, screenwriter, and actor (b. 1939)
  • 2015 – Oliver Sacks, English-American neurologist, author, and academic (b. 1933)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Gosia, the former upstairs tenant, has returned for a visit, but Hili is wary to take her proffered “cat sausage”:

Gosia: Why are you so hesitant?
Hili: We are living in times when anything can turn out to be bogus.
In Polish:.

From Amazing Things (photo by @sasikumar_ksk [IG])

Reader Ken Kukec sent a diagram labeled “Current circumstances as a literary Venn Diagram”. But the diagram leaves out one novel.

Grania sent me this tweet on March 22 of this year, adding “very sweet.”

From Gethyn. This rescue of this beat-up old alley cat, and his transformation into a sleek and loving house moggie, should warm your heart:

From Paul, a kestrel keeping its head rock steady while its body is buffeted about. Many birds can do this, and it’s amazing:

From Heather Hastie via Ann German. I swear, Mr. Lumpy is the world’s most spoiled badger. A peanut butter barm cake!! (No wonder his bum is so big.)

Tweets from Matthew. A beekeeper with a tender heart:

Is this a joke, or a toy intended for sadistic children?

This woman has an eagle eye for fraudulently photoshopped pictures like this. And these are from a paper in the prestigious journal Nature (you can find it here). Let us see what happens!

This hognose snake fakes death as good as a mallard does:

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 22, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Thursday, April 22, 2019, and tomorrow at 10 a.m. I get gutted like a pig (well, bored into like a clam). It’s National Pecan Torte Day, brought to you by the desperate folks at Big Pecan, and also National Eat a Peach Day (not named after the Allman Brothers album), as well as National Bao Day, and National Burger Day in the UK, where eating a burger constitutes cultural appropriation from Americans. Finally, it’s Take Your Cat to the Vet Day.

I just received a swell book on cowboy boots from Amazon; it was sent by a reader who gave his first name, but if it’s you, please identify yourself so I can thank you properly (I need a name for that!).

Stuff that happened on August 22 includes:

Richard III’s skeleton, in case you forgot, was discovered under a parking lot in Leicester. Here it is, showing his spinal scoliosis:


And his skull, which was bashed in; these are the wounds that killed him:

For a nice 9-minute video of how they identified him, go here.

  • 1780 – James Cook’s ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).
  • 1849 – The first air raid in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice.
  • 1902 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile.
  • 1922 – Michael Collins, Commander-in-chief of the Irish Free State Army, is shot dead in an ambush during the Irish Civil War.

Here’s Collins’s body in Cork Hospital right after he was killed by a shot to the head. (Good touch, making him hold a cross.)

Here’s a short documentary about Collins’s death told by those who were there (you can see a longer documentary here).

And the death of Collins (played by Liam Neeson) in the 1996 movie “Michael Collins”:

  • 1989 – Nolan Ryan strikes out Rickey Henderson to become the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts.

Here’s that strikeout:

  • 2003 – Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Courtbuilding.
  • 2004 – Versions of The Scream and Madonna, two paintings by Edvard Munch, are stolen at gunpoint from a museum in Oslo, Norway.
  • 2007 – The Texas Rangers defeat the Baltimore Orioles 30–3, the most runs scored by a team in modern Major League Baseball history.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1862 – Claude Debussy, French pianist and composer (d. 1918)
  • 1880 – George Herriman, American cartoonist (d. 1944)

Herriman, creator of Krazy Kat (the best comic ever) is a big favorite of Matthew and me. Here’s a tweet in honor of his birthday, sent by Dr. Cobb:

  • 1893 – Dorothy Parker, American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist (d. 1967)
  • 1902 – Leni Riefenstahl, German actress, film director and propagandist (d. 2003)
  • 1915 – David Dellinger, American activist (d. 2004)
  • 1920 – Ray Bradbury, American science fiction writer and screenwriter (d. 2012)
  • 1935 – Annie Proulx, American novelist, short story writer, and journalist
  • 1939 – Carl Yastrzemski, American baseball player

Those who took the Dirt Nap on this day include:

  • 1485 – Richard III of England (b. 1452)
  • 1922 – Michael Collins, Irish rebel, counter-intelligence and military tactician, and politician; 2nd Irish Minister of Finance (b. 1890)
  • 1967 – Gregory Goodwin Pincus, American biologist and academic, co-created the birth-control pill (b. 1903)
  • 1989 – Huey P. Newton, American activist, co-founded the Black Panther Party (b. 1942)
  • 1991 – Colleen Dewhurst, Canadian-American actress (b. 1924)
  • 2007 – Grace Paley, American short story writer and poet (b. 1922)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is scouting outside the kitchen window:

And nearby, at the site of his future home, Leon tries to stay dry:

Leon: Hush! I’m hiding here from the rain.
In Polish: Ciiii, tu się skryłem przed deszczem.

Here’s a famished frog. That cricket is down the gullet in about a quarter of a second.

From Moto:

Grania sent me this tweet on December 5 of last year. She always loved friendships between different species of animals:

A tweet from reader Barry. Be sure to turn the sound up.

https://twitter.com/surethingbrosef/status/1162901784219856897

Hillary’s “throwing shade” on The Donald. It’s pretty funny, too:

Also from Barry, the instantiation of Isaiah’s prophesy:

Tweets from Matthew Cobb. In this first one, he links us to a nice 9-minute piece he did for the BBC (don’t forget Matthew’s book, Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris in 1944.

A robber fly (these things are wicked!):

https://twitter.com/kevinlmyers/status/1163789201122443264

Just when you think Trump can’t get any crazier. . .

Smiling Victorians! But I don’t recall a picture of Queen Victoria herself ever smiling:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 21, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Wednesday, August 21, 2019, and National Sweet Tea Day. That refers to sweetened ice tea, of course—the perfect accompaniment to southern barbecue, and a drink called “the table wine of the South.” It’s also National Senior Citizens Day (do I get a present?) and Poet’s Day. Again I’m flummoxed by the apostrophe: are they celebrating only one poet? If so, which poet? The word “Poet’s” should have either no apostrophe or an apostrophe after the “s”.

Stuff that happened on August 21 include:

  • 1770 – James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.
  • 1791 – A Vodou ceremony, led by Dutty Boukman, turns into a violent slave rebellion, beginning the Haitian Revolution.

This revolution was successful, and led to the foundation of Haiti as an independent state—the only one founded after a slave revolt, with whites and former slaves ruling the new state. But there were unsuccessful revolts, too:

  • 1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, which will claim the lives of 55 to 65 whites and about twice that number of blacks.
  • 1888 – The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.
  • 1897 – Oldsmobile, an American automobile manufacturer and marque, is founded.
  • 1911 – The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincenzo Perugia, a Louvre employee.

Here’s the blank spot where the painting resided before the theft. It took two years before it was recovered, and the thieving handyman, Perugia, spent only 7 months in jail (his photo below):

  • 1945 – Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

This is a sad story; it took Daghlian 25 days to die. You can see a picture of his blistered and burned hand after the accident here.

  • 1959 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii’s admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day
  • 1961 – American country music singer Patsy Cline returns to record producer Owen Bradley’s studio in Nashville, Tennessee to record her vocals to Willie Nelson’s “Crazy”, which would become her signature song.

Indeed; what a great song! And how many people know that Willie Nelson wrote it? Here’s a recording of her singing it live at the Grand Ole Opry:

  • 1961 – Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit (in America), “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes.
  • 2000 – Tiger Woods, American professional golfer, wins the 82nd PGA Championship and becomes the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in a calendar year.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1872 – Aubrey Beardsley, English author and illustrator (d. 1898)
  • 1936 – Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player and coach (d. 1999)
  • 1938 – Kenny Rogers, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
  • 1967 – Charb, French journalist and cartoonist (d. 2015)
  • 1986 – Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter

Beardsley, a fop and an eccentric, was also a terrific artist. He died at only 25 of tuberculosis. Here’s one of his drawings, “The Black Cat” (1894-1895):


And Beardsley at about the same time, about 23 years old.

Those who went six feet under on August 21 include:

  • 1940 – Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist and politician, founded the Red Army (b. 1879)
  • 1971 – George Jackson, American activist and author, co-founded the Black Guerrilla Family (b. 1941)
  • 1974 – Buford Pusser, American police officer (b. 1937)
  • 1995 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-American astrophysicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1910)

Buford Pusser, who as a fighting sheriff sustained seven stabbings and eight shootings by criminals out to get him, finally died in a car crash, and many suspect it was a murder:

Pusser

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is scared by something she saw outside.

Hili: It can be an illusion.
A: It’s possible; our senses sometimes mislead us.
In Polish:
Hili: To może być złudzenie.
Ja: Możliwe, nasze zmysły czasami wprowadzają nas w błąd.

And Leon, lingering nearby in his home-to-be, waits for rain.

Leon: I’m waiting like a parasol mushroom waits for drizzle. (That’s a Polish expression that roughly means “I’m dying for rain.”)

In Polish: Czekam jak Kania dżdżu.

This is a good one. If you don’t know at least one Yiddish word in each row, it’s time to brush up!

From Merilee. I guess it isn’t just cats that medieval artists had trouble painting. And, like cats, horses got human faces.

Another one from Jesus of the Day, making a virtue of necessity:

On December 3 of last year, Grania sent me two tweets with “alternative nativity scenes”. The first is from the artist who creates the Oatmeal cartoon:

And one from Star Trek:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1069683558225076224

It’s pretty clear what this is, but some folks actually think it’s a rabbit.

From Nilou. The mystery deepened when it was discovered that some of the skeletons had DNA from the Mediterranean region:

From reader gravelinspector: a tweet that’s weird in many different ways:

And three tweets from Dr. Cobb. How lovely to have tame badgers around, though I still prefer my ducks:

Matthew calls this one “the future”. Oy vey if it is!

This is truly stunning. Slug sex!

But wait! There’s more!

Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 11, 2019 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a lovely Sunday (in Chicago): August 11, 2019. It’s National Panini Day (you can’t eat one if you’re not Italian, for making it a “national”—i.e., U.S. day—is pure cultural appropriation). It’s also Ingersoll Day, celebrating “The Great Agnostic” (actually an atheist), born on this day in 1833, and Presidential Joke Day, celebrating humorous quips made by U.S. Presidents (the date was picked by Reagan’s infamous “we begin bombing” remark in 1984; see below). As our current President is a joke, I think he wins.

But oh to have these days back! Obama wasn’t perfect as President, but he was a decent human being, not an authoritarian jerk. Here are some of his quips:

Stuff that happened on this day include:

  • 1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.
  • 1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

Read more about that homer here. As most baseball mavens know, Ruth hit 714 homers in his career, a lifetime record that was unsurpassed until Hank Aaron hit his last and 755th homer in 2007.

  • 1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
  • 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
  • 1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
  • 1984 – “We begin bombing in five minutes“: United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.

Here’s that joke, which was recorded. It put the Soviet Union on alert status, but that was quickly rescinded.

Notables born on this day include:

Ah, the Great Agnostic: a fine man and an unparalleled speaker—the Hitchens of his time. There’s a long page of his quotations here, and his picture is below.  Here’s a quotation, not on that page, that I love to use in my talks:

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”

  • 1905 – Erwin Chargaff, Austrian-American biochemist and academic (d. 2002)

Chargaff discovered that in DNA, the number of A bases equalled the number of T bases, and the number of Cs equaled the number of Gs. This was a clue to Watson and Crick that, in the double helix, adenines paired with thymines and cytosines with guanines. Chargaff, however, didn’t win a Nobel for this key discovery.

  • 1933 – Jerry Falwell, American minister and television host (d. 2007)
  • 1950 – Steve Wozniak, American computer scientist and programmer, co-founded Apple Inc.
  • 1953 – Hulk Hogan, American wrestler

Those who met their Maker (nature) on this day include:

Here’s a fine portrait by Memling, painted about 1485 and probably part of a tryptych, “Portrait of a Young Man Praying”:

 

  • 1596 – Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William Shakespeare (b. 1585)
  • 1890 – John Henry Newman, English cardinal and theologian (b. 1801)
  • 1919 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Carnegie Steel Company and Carnegie Hall (b. 1835)
  • 1937 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (b. 1862)
  • 1956 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)
  • 2002 – Galen Rowell, American photographer and mountaineer (b. 1940)
  • 2014 – Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (b. 1951)
  • 2018 – V S Naipaul, British writer (b. 1932)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is on Andrzej’s lap, but tells him not to get too complacent about it:

Hili:: A cat lying on his human gives the human an illusion of a battle won.
A: Actually, you are right.
In Polish:
Hili: Kot leżąc na człowieku daje mu złudzenie wygranej bitwy.
A: Właściwie masz rację.

And nearby, in the site of his future home, Leon observes the birds:

Leon: Why are the swallows flying round and round?
In Polish: Czemu te jaskółki tak latają w kółko?

A gif by Ollie Engstrom. Recognize it?

Reader Gregory found this post, apparently a humorous ad for a sign company:

 

From the Facebook page “Jesus of the Day”:

Grania sent me this tweet on January 25 of this year:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1088694637051695105

From Gethyn. Good luck with this job, pal!

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1159948393655013376

Two cat tweets from Heather Hastie. The first is a cat surprise.:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1157736092394762246

. . . and the other a cat decoy: a frustrating iPad video:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1157678818309681154

I found this one; though I don’t formally follow any site, I do look at some of them, including this one, started by the brave Iranian feminist Masih Alinejad

And the silence of the clams:

Three from Matthew. The first is a famous Yosemite “firefall”, or, in this case, a “rainbowfall”. Be sure to play the video.

https://twitter.com/michaelgalanin/status/1159943822895472640?s=11

This is what happens when an idiot missed his exit and decides to go back and try again:

https://twitter.com/metpolsgt/status/1160243375272071168?s=11

Yes, this big cat is now extinct east of the Rockies. How ineffably sad!

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 11, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Thursday, July 11, 2019, and it was a hot one in Chicago yesterday, with a high of 95° F (35° C). The ducks survived.

It’s National Blueberry Muffin Day: my favorite muffin, but I was shocked to learn that there are 400 calories in a Starbuck’s blueberry muffin (I never buy the overpriced baked goods at Starbucks, but I’ll take that as a widely-consumed exemplar—and those muffins are smaller than many). That’s already one-sixth of the calories required daily by an average bloke, and the equivalent of 8.3 tablespoons of sugar. So it goes.

But it’s also Free Slurpee Day at participating stores of the 7-Eleven chain in North America (check yours), and also World Population Day, designed to call attention to population issues like family planning. Do you know, by the way, the current population of humans on Earth? The world population clock, which you can access by clicking on the link below, just gave this figure (retrieved at about 5:35 a.m. today; watch how fast it ticks!).  I remember when “3 billion” was the conventional figure.

 

 

Stuff that happened on July 11 includes:

  • 1576 – Martin Frobisher sights Greenland.
  • 1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille.
  • 1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
  • 1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kōkichi Mikimoto.
  • 1895 – Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists.
  • 1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.
  • 1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.
  • 1924 – Eric Liddell won the gold medal in 400m at the 1924 Paris Olympics, after refusing to run in the heats for 100m, his favoured distance, on the Sunday.

That was portrayed in the famous movie Chariots of Fire. Here’s the real Liddell:

Eric Liddell at the British Empire versus United States of America (Relays) meet held at Stamford Bridge, London on Sat 19 July 1924

And the remarkably similar movie Liddell, played by Ian Charleson. The movie won the 1981 Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

  • 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States.
  • 1972 – The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1767 – John Quincy Adams, American lawyer and politician, 6th President of the United States (d. 1848)
  • 1897 – Bull Connor, American police officer (d. 1973)
  • 1899 – E. B. White, American essayist and journalist (d. 1985)
  • 1920 – Yul Brynner, Russian actor and dancer (d. 1985) [JAC: real name Yuliy Borisovich Briner]
  • 1930 – Harold Bloom, American literary critic
  • 1956 – Sela Ward, American actress
  • 1967 – Jhumpa Lahiri, Indian American novelist and short story writer
  • 1975 – Lil’ Kim, American rapper and producer

Those who “passed” on this day include:

  • 1937 – George Gershwin, American pianist, songwriter, and composer (b. 1898)
  • 1966 – Delmore Schwartz, American poet and short story writer (b. 1913)
  • 1989 – Laurence Olivier, English actor, director, and producer (b. 1907)
  • 2007 – Lady Bird Johnson, American beautification activist; 43rd First Lady of the United States (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is licking her chops:

Hili: A whole swarm of birds.
A: They are unavailable.
Hili: I can dream, can’t I?
In Polish:
Hili: Cała chmara ptaków.
Ja: Są niedostępne.
Hili: Ale pozwalają pomarzyć.
And Leon is frequenting the beautiful garden at his future home:
Leon: You can come out. It stopped raining.
In Polish: Możecie wyjść, nie pada.
Reader Simon, who was in Washington, D.C., sent a photo and a note:

Anyhow saw the sign below yesterday in the National Gallery of Art Statue Garden. No sign of any ducks though! Ceiling Cat bless those who think about how ducklings must get in and out of basins with high walls. But can ducks read?

Shared with me on Facebook from Everything Gardening:

Mark Sturtevant sent this from “Tastefully Offensive on Instagram“:

One more from FB:

This tweet portrays part of a pretty amazing film, and quite enlightened given that it was made in 1943 (excuse the tweeter’s misspelling):

I found another tweet sent by Grania deep in my inbox (we have a few more, too). Here it is:

 

Two tweets from Nilou. The first shows a phenomenon I find remarkable: the ability of some birds to keep their head rock-steady even though their bodies are moved about. That ability, of course, is adaptive, helping the bird focus on something important:

And a night heron using bread to lure fish. If that isn’t tool using, I don’t know what is:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. In the first one, she asks us to note Mr. Lumpy’s egg handling at the end:

A kitten that sucks its thumb, even though kittens don’t have thumbs:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1148668564636917760

Tweets from Matthew. The first one puts the first “out of Africa” migration of “modern” Homo sapiens as early as 210,000 years, when the conventional wisdom was about 60,000 years. That’s a substantial difference, but these first migrants probably died out without issue. See the paper below, which I’ll post about shortly, and the appended note by Chris Stringer, an author on the Nature paper:

Here’s the paper, which is available freely using the legal Unpaywall app (click on screenshot):

I posted this yesterday, but some readers doubted whether it was true. It seems to be.

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 6, 2019 • 7:00 am

It’s Saturday, July 6, 2019, and today I head back to Oahu for one day, then to take the redeye back to Chicago. It’s National Fried Chicken Day, too, celebrating one of America’s great contributions to gastronomy (yes, I know that they fry chicken in other lands). Look for fried-chicken promotions in your area.

And that includes Australia. As Wikipedia notes,

In 2018 KFC’s Australian operations offered the chance to win free fried chicken for a year. The contest was entered by making social-media posts stating reasons why the entrant deserved the prize. The winning entry was by a 19-year-old who, together with her friend, got the KFC corporate logotype tattooed on her foot.

Here are those tattoos from news.com.au.  Sadly, even a year’s worth of chicken fades away, but a tattoo is forever:

Reader Jon informs us of this:

The Tour de France starts Saturday by the Town Hall on the Grand Place in Brussels to honor Belgian cyclist Eddie Merckx. [JAC: Merckx, born in 1945, is still with us, and is widely regarded as the best competitive cyclist ever. He won five Tours de France.] It’s the fiftieth anniversary of his first of five Tour victories. This year’s Tour is also the 100th anniversary of the iconic yellow jersey which was added in 1919 at the end of World War 1. If you missed last year’s Tour, here are some highlights.

Things that happened on July 6 include this stuff:

  • 1189 – Richard I “the Lionheart” accedes to the English throne.
  • 1415 – Jan Hus is condemned as a heretic and then burned at the stake.
  • 1483 – Richard III is crowned King of England. [He reigned for just two years.]
  • 1535 – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.
  • 1885 – Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.
  • 1917 – World War I: Arabian troops led by T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and Auda ibu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt.

Here’s the scene from the movie, one of my favorite films:

And here is the real Auda, the Howeitat sheikh:

(From Wikipedia) Photograph of Auda abu Tayi, probably taken by G. Eric Matson (1888-1977).Tabuk, Hejaz 1921
  • 1933 – The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game is played in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The American League defeated the National League 4–2.
  • 1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the “Secret Annexe” above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
  • 1957 – Althea Gibson wins the Wimbledon championships, becoming the first black athlete to do so.
  • 1957 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1747 – John Paul Jones, Scottish-American captain (d. 1792)
  • 1887 – Marc Chagall, Belarusian-French painter and poet (d. 1985)

Here is Chagall’s “The Cat Transformed into a Woman“, (c.1928-31/1937), described by The Tate Gallery:

An illustration to one of The Fables of La Fontaine, the story of a man who so adored his cat that he was able to turn her into a woman and married her the same day. He thought, poor fool, that his wife was now a woman in every respect; but when mice appeared, she still gave chase. As we say in England, ‘a leopard cannot change its spots.’

  • 1907 – Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter and educator (d. 1954)

Here’s La Kahlo, another favorite of mine, holding a monkey and ignoring her cat:

  • 1921 – Nancy Reagan, American actress and activist, 42nd First Lady of the United States (d. 2016)
  • 1925 – Bill Haley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Bill Haley & His Comets) (d. 1981)
  • 1946 – George W. Bush, American businessman and politician, 43rd President of the United States

Those who passed away on July 6 include:

  • 1415 – Jan Hus, Czech priest, philosopher, and reformer (b. 1369)
  • 1535 – Thomas More, English lawyer and politician, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (b. 1478)
  • 1614 – Man Singh I, Rajput Raja of Amer (b. 1550)
  • 1835 – John Marshall, American captain and politician, 4th United States Secretary of State (b. 1755) [They don’t mention that he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court!]
  • 1893 – Guy de Maupassant, French short story writer, novelist, and poet (b. 1850)
  • 1916 – Odilon Redon, French painter and illustrator (b. 1840)
  • 1959 – George Grosz, German painter and illustrator (b. 1893)
  • 1971 – Louis Armstrong, American singer and trumpet player (b. 1901)
  • 1998 – Roy Rogers, American cowboy, actor, and singer (b. 1911)
  • 2003 – Buddy Ebsen, American actor, singer, and dancer (b. 1908)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is savoring rodential comestibles:

Hili: The mouse I ate here is history now.
A: Yes, sometimes we feel the taste of the past.
In Polish:
Hili: Ta mysz, którą tu zjadłam jest już historią.
Ja: Tak, czasem czujemy smak przeszłości.

And nearby on the site of his future home, Leon shows an uncharacteristic tenderness toward mice:

Leon: And the little mice are getting wet?
In Polish: A te myszki tak tam mokną?

From Facebook:

A tweet from ex-Musli Yasmine Mohammed. Be sure to watch the video on the tweet she references; it is very sad.

From Nilou, a tweet from science writer Philip Ball:

Reader Barry says, “This is not the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

https://twitter.com/YougleFact/status/1146637305865809920

Three tweets from Heather Hastie:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1146863418470817794

This is a true albino (look at the pink eyes), and I hope it’ll be okay.

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1146808832347086848

Mr. Lumpy got hurt! Someone should let me know if he gets better.

Tweets from Matthew. The first one is from Matthew himself, and his email note said “All this one kilometer down.”

In an unprecedented act of duplication, I am putting this tweet up two days in a row because it’s so awesome:

Two more tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one shows how dogs were domesticated, except that the ancestor was the gray wolf and not the red fox:

As Matthew points out, this is an insect (see here):