Category: Mietek monologue

Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

June 27, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Sunday, June 27, 2021: National Orange Blossom Day. While it celebrates the flower, the “Orange Blossom” is also a drink made with gin, vermouth, and fresh orange juice. It’s also National Indian Pudding Day (the best pudding ever; try it!), National Bingo Day, National Ice Cream Cake Day, Helen Keller Day (celebrating her birth on this day in 1880), Industrial Workers of the World Day, National HIV Testing Day, National PTSD Awareness Day, and, a bit north, Canadian Multiculturalism Day.

Today’s Google Doodle is a gif that honors Tommy Kono (1930-2016), a medalist in three Olympics who set world records in four different body weight classes (click on screenshot):

News of the Day:

It’s more than five months since Joe Biden moved into the White House, and there is still not a sign of a cat in their home.

According to the Washington Post, an engineer warned in 2018 that the Florida condo which collapsed last week was an accident waiting to happen. (h/t: Randy)

The engineer, Frank P. Morabito, said in a structural survey report that waterproofing had failed below the pool deck and entrance drive, allowing damaging leaks.

“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” Morabito wrote. He said a “major error” had been made in the construction of the building, when waterproofing was laid on a flat slab rather than a sloped surface, to allow water to run off.

There were other problems too. But it’s premature to diagnose the cause or causes: it could even have been a sinkhole. At any rate, four people are dead, they have found other body parts in the wreckage, but no more survivors have turned up.  159 people remain unaccounted for, and it was heartbreaking to see the friends and relatives on last night’s news waiting an agonizing wait, hoping against hope that a “miracle” could happen but knowing in their hearts that things look grim.

A sad chapter in Canadian history has become even sadder with the discovery of the unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous “First Nations” children who likely died in the care of “residential schools” designed to take the Indigenous culture out of the children. Doesn’t this sound familiar?

From the 1880s through the 1990s, the Canadian government forcibly removed at least 150,000 ​Indigenous children like Mr. Thomas from their homes and sent ​them t​o residential schools ​designed to sever them from their culture and assimilate them into Western ways — a system that a ​National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 ​called “cultural genocide.” At the schools, which were mostly run by the Catholic Church, sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence were commonplace. Thousands of children went missing.

Abuse, sheer indifference, and racism on this scale is unthinkable, and yet it happened;  I’m sure many families lost their children and didn’t even know about it.

And an op-ed from the NYT: “What Jewish students need from University leaders right now.” It recounts the epidemic of demonization, abuse, and physical attacks on Jewish students in American colleges. Remember, these are nearly all American Jews, not Israelis. Of course all students are free to criticize Jews, Israel, and so on, but it’s not beyond a school’s mission to state that the kind of bullying and racism mentioned above seriously impedes the school’s mission to teach. I never thought I’d see the day when a wave of anti-Semitism swept over America.

Insanity of the week:  Reader Ginger K. reports, via the Philly Voice, that a bunch of loons invaded a Home Depot in Pennsylvania to have an exorcism for dead trees made into lumber. What were they trying to excorcise? Tree sprites?:

A police report from Dickson City in Lackawanna County raised eyebrows this week for its bizarre description of an incident that happened Monday.

“3:26pm: Commerce Blvd. @ Home Depot for disorderly people having an exorcism in the lumber isle (sic) for the dead trees,” authorities wrote. “They were escorted out of the building.”

A call placed to Dickson City police elicited a chuckle from one officer.

“There were two people hanging out in the lumber department doing their little exorcism thing,” the officer said. “Some people at the store started picking up that something was happening that was not necessarily normal. Police were called to the store and they were escorted out of the building.”

Here’s your apartheid nation: Israel brought 35 children from diverse places, including the West Bank and Gaza, as well as  to their hospitals for free treatment for heart disease. Of course the Israel haters will call this the medical equivalent of “pinkwashing.” But why would they treat their enemies for free? Could it be they have a sense of ethics? Nawww. . . .this is Israel, the most evilest country in the world.

“It is our mission to bring children from developing countries and places where they can’t get or can’t afford life-saving treatments. Over half of the children whose lives are being saved in Israel are from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Doctors in Israel volunteer their time to conduct the heart surgeries,” Tamar Shapira, deputy executive director of SACH [Save a Child’s Heart] told The Algemeiner in an interview. “For us they are little ambassadors. We tell a different story of Israel which is not political.”

Founded 25 years ago and backed by South African-born philanthropist Morris Kahn, SACH has saved the lives of more than 5,800 children, the group says, with Israeli doctors providing open-heart surgery, life-saving catheterization and other care to children from 62 countries.

h/t: Malgorzata

The NYT reports that the Manhattan district attorney has informed the Trump organization that it could face criminal charges as early as next week. The DA has been building a case for a while against the chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, but the announcement that the organization itself could face charges is new, and involves financial improprieties including failure to report emoluments. What I don’t understand (I’m not a lawyer) is how they can charge a company and yet Trump himself may not face any criminal charges. What happens if the company is convicted? Does it go to jail? Or just get fined? I’m still curious about whether the Orange Man will one day be wearing an orange jump suit.

It rained like hell in Chicago yesterday; we face chances of rain daily for a week. And Seattle may break its all-time heat record of 108°F (42.2°C) as the Pacific Northwest and Idaho face an unprecedented heat wave. Let’s hope that Stephen Barnard stays cool.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 603,500, an increase of 307 deaths over yesterday’s figure.  The reported world death toll is now 3,933,756,,, an increase of about 7,700 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on June 27 includes:

  • 1743 – In the Battle of Dettingen, George II becomes the last reigning British monarch to participate in a battle.
  • 1844 – Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, are killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail.
  • 1898 – The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.

The 37-foot “gaff rigged” oyster boat in which Slocum sailed around the world: “the Spray”. It took him three years and two months:

Here are the city’s Jews being rounded up, and the second photo shows some of the 8,000 Jews sent by train to the camps. Of these, nearly 80% died en route, and their bodies are being thrown out of the train. Before the pogram, in 1930, there were nearly 36,000 Jews living in Iași.  Now there are 300-600.

  • 1950 – The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War.
  • 1954 – The FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turns violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game.

I couldn’t find a good video of this violent match, but highlights are below:

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked the plane to Uganda, where the hijackers were supported by the odious dictator Idi Amin. The hijackers let the non-Israeli passengers go, but kept the Israelis under guard. After diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation failed, commandos of the Israeli Defense Forces plotted an elaborate scheme to rescue the hostages.

Wikipedia’s “Operation Entebbe” article has all the details. It was a very successful rescue:

The entire operation lasted 53 minutes – of which the assault lasted only 30 minutes. All seven hijackers present, and between 33 and 45 Ugandan soldiers, were killed. Eleven Soviet-built MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter planes of the Uganda Army Air Force were destroyed on the ground at Entebbe Airport. Out of the 106 hostages, three were killed, one was left in Uganda (74-year-old Dora Bloch), and approximately 10 were wounded. The 102 rescued hostages were flown to Israel via Nairobi, Kenya, shortly after the raid.

Here are the happy survivors returning to Israel:

(From Wikipedia): Rescued passengers welcomed at Ben Gurion Airport

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1869 – Emma Goldman, Lithuanian-Canadian philosopher and activist (d. 1940)

Here’s Goldman, a great orator, preaching at Peter Kropotkin’s funeral procession in 1921.

From Wikipedia: Here, Emma Goldman delivers a eulogy at Peter Kropotkin’s funeral procession. Immediately in front of Goldman stands her lifelong comrade Alexander Berkman. Kropotkin’s funeral was the occasion of the last great demonstration of anarchists in Moscow—tens of thousands of people poured into the streets to pay their respects.
  • 1869 – Hans Spemann, German embryologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1941)
  • 1880 – Helen Keller, American author, academic, and activist (d. 1968) [see above]
  • 1913 – Willie Mosconi, American pool player (d. 1993)

Here are some trick shots by Willie Mosconi:

  • 1930 – Ross Perot, American businessman and politician (d. 2019)
  • 1975 – Tobey Maguire, American actor

Those who croaked on June 27 include:

  • 1839 – Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire (b. 1780)
  • 1957 – Hermann Buhl, Austrian soldier and mountaineer (b. 1924)

Buhl was perhaps the greatest mountaineer of his time, and one of the best of all time. His solo ascent of Nanga Parbat is an unmatched achievement; Wikipedia says this:

1953 German–Austrian Nanga Parbat expedition – First ascent of Nanga Parbat, 8126 m (26,660 ft) (solo and without bottled oxygen). On the way back from the summit he was forced to stand erect on a rock ledge for the entire night at 8000 m altitude, in order to survive until the following morning. [JAC: 31 men had died on that mountain before Buhl was the first to reach the summit.]

Here’s Buhl, frostbitten, after 41 hours on the mountain alone. It’s an iconic photo of an iconic climber. He died at age 31 when he stepped through a cornice on Chogolisa and fell 900 feet. His body is still in the ice.

And here’s Nanga Parbat, also called “the killer mountain”:

  • 1989 – A. J. Ayer, English philosopher and academic (b. 1910)
  • 2001 – Jack Lemmon, American actor (b. 1925)
  • 2005 – Shelby Foote, American historian and author (b. 1917)

Foote, a prominent presence in Ken Burns’s film “The Civil War”, has recently been severely criticized for his “lost cause” sympathies for the Confederacy and his patronizing attitude towards blacks.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains today’s Hili dialogue: “Hili’s face shows a bit of disgust and a bit of resignation. History taught her that humans can behave in disgusting ways (and often do it) and that one Polish cat cannot change it, hence—resignation and acknowledgement of the futility of her struggles.”

This is a wonderful portrait of Hili, taken by Andrzej.

Hili: I’m drawing conclusions from history.
A: I can see it.
In Polish:
Hili: Wyciągam wnioski z historii.
Ja: Właśnie widzę.

And Mietek is weary of riding in the car.

Mietek: Traveling is exhausting.

In Polish: Podróże są męczące

From Nicole:

From Bruce:

From Jesus of the Day, an adorable attempt at camouflage:

From Ginger K., a classic rock picture:

Tweets from Matthew. I love these enhanced and colorized old films, which really bring the past back to life:

As Matthew notes, “Pics of horse in France that visits patients in palliative care to cheer them up.” Have a look at the article for more photos.  The horse is said to be able to detect tumors and cancers, and stops by the rooms of only those so afflicted:

A cute but dumb idea:

If Duncan is the black cat, it looks as if he both starts and finishes stuff:

Sandworm mimic!

I haven’t read this paper, but the researchers use modern DNA from 26 populations to show a rapid evolution of virus-interacting-proteins (VIPs) that occurred 25,000 years ago, suggesting a coronavirus epidemic in East Asia at that time.

My pet skunk did exactly these threat behaviors when he was a baby. Below is a rescue skunk that will be released, so he’s not “descented”.

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

June 17, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Thursday, June 17, 2021: National Apple Strudel Day, a cultural appropriation from Austria.  It’s World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, World Croc[odile] Day, National Eat Your Vegetables Day (didn’t we just have that?), and Global Garbage Man Day (surely there are Garbage Women too!).

News of the Day:

We’ve finally passed the mark of 600,000 deaths in the U.S. due to Covid-19 (see below). I remember when a mark of 200,000 seemed unimaginable, but we’re now three times higher than that. According to the CDC, though,  only 44% of Americans have been fully vaccinated.  But the range among states is wide: at the top is Vermont, with about 63% of the population fully vaccinated; at the bottom is Mississippi with only 28.5%.

As I predicted (that was a no-brainer), the Putin-Biden summit did not appear to be going well, at least in terms of agreements. Putin denied that the big hacker attacks in the U.S. came from Russia, and Biden pressed an unimpressed Putin on Russia’s human rights record and Navalny’s imprisonment. All Biden could say was, “I did what I came to do.” I was nonplussed by all the news describing the summit as “historic” when, at least for now, there’s little evidence that anything was accomplished.

Trump asserts that he’s writing a memoir, “the book of all books,” he calls it, but the Guardian reports that reputable publishers are unlikely to bite, especially because Trump was only a one-term President. Trump says he’s already had two offers from publishers but turned them both down. The Guardian adds:

On Tuesday, Politico reported that senior figures at Penguin Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster said they would not touch a Trump book.

“It would be too hard to get a book that was factually accurate, actually,” one was quoted as saying. “That would be the problem. If he can’t even admit that he lost the election, then how do you publish that?”

(h/t Eli)

The Senate unanimously passed legislation making Juneteenth (June 19) a federal holiday, “Juneteenth National Independence Day”. As I write this on Wednesday evening, the House is expected to approve the bill as well, and of course Biden will sign it into law. Earlier on Wednesday, our own governor, J. B. Pritzker, signed a bill making Juneteenth an Illinois state holiday. By now you should know what the date commemorates, but if you don’t know, go here. It’s a celebration of emancipation from slavery, announced in Texas on this date in 1865, three years after Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Botanical News: A rare “corpse flower” has bloomed, albeit briefly, in Poland. From the Associated Press:

The endangered Sumatran Titan arum, a giant foul-smelling blossom also known as the corpse flower, went into a rare, short bloom at a botanical garden in Warsaw, drawing crowds who waited for hours to see it.

The extraordinary flower, which emits a dead-body odor to attract pollinating insects that feed on flesh, bloomed Sunday. It was already withering early Monday. Those wishing to avoid the smell and crowds could watch it on live video from the Warsaw University Botanical Gardens.

Hundreds, if not thousands, lined up long into the night Sunday and Monday morning at the conservatory just to be able to pass by the flower and take a picture.

Here’s a video of the same species blooming in Cornwall. It’s amazing!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 600,024, an increase of 332 deaths over yesterday’s figure. We’ve finally passed the 600,000 mark.  The reported world death toll is now 3,849,345, an increase of about 10,500 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on June 17 includes:

And the world’s most beautiful mausoleum (and building):

Photo from Wikipedia
  • 1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.
  • 1767 – Samuel Wallis, a British sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.
  • 1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

Here’s part of it before it was sent to the U.S.

1878 World Fair in Paris, Park of the Champ-de-Mars, (Photo by Léon et Lévy/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

Nash was being escorted by train to the penitentiary, but was killed in the assault (Pretty Boy Floyd was one of the assailants). Here’s the scene outside the station soon after the attack:

  • 1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is executed in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison.

As Wikipedia notes, “The “hysterical behaviour” by spectators was so scandalous that French President Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions. Executions by guillotine continued out of public view until the last such execution, of Hamida Djandoubi on September 10, 1977.” You can see photos of the trial and the guillotine here.

  • 1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.[6]
  • 1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8–1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord’s Prayer in public schools.
  • 1967 – Nuclear weapons testing: China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon.
  • 1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee during an attempt by members of the administration of President Richard M. Nixon to illegally wiretap the political opposition as part of a broader campaign to subvert the democratic process.
  • 1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct.

The last aged male, between 9 and 13 years old, died at the Walt Disney World resort. Here’s a photo:

Here’s the classification (with numbers) in a South African Identity document during apartheid:

Remember watching that ride on television? Here’s a news report with video:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1882 – Igor Stravinsky, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1971)
  • 1898 – M. C. Escher, Dutch illustrator (d. 1972)

Here’s a self-portrait of Escher followed by a photograph:

  • 1920 – François Jacob, French biologist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2013)
  • 1943 – Newt Gingrich, American historian and politician, 58th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
  • 1943 – Barry Manilow, American singer-songwriter and producer
  • 1980 – Venus Williams, American tennis player

Those who reaped their heavenly reward on June 17 include:

There is one picture of a cat and kitten by Edward Burne-Jones (below), but I can’t establish that he really painted it. I doubt it!

  • 1986 – Kate Smith, American singer (b. 1907)
  • 2008 – Cyd Charisse, American actress and dancer (b. 1922)
  • 2012 – Rodney King, American victim of police brutality (b. 1965)

This was captured on video (below, note that it’s distressing), something that is more common these days, for video is powerful evidence:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again supervising the gardening:

A: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m waiting for you to start weeding the vegetable patch.
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, czekam aż się zabierzesz za pielenie warzywnika.

And a rare Mietek monologue; he queries Elzbieta as if he was an impatient child:

Mietek: Is it far yet?

In Polish: Daleko jeszcze?

From Bruce:

From Nicole:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Titania, who must have read the bird article I discussed yesterday:

From reader Ken (via the GOP Twitter feed), who describes this as “Republican self parody”:

Another urban duck-saving story from Jean. I can’t get enough of these, but only when they have a happy ending:

A 45-year-old rock photo sent by Ginger K.

Tweets from Matthew. This is not likely to be evolved mimicry, but who knows? Predators could avoid the whole concatenation of eggs since it resembles a snake, and laying in such a pattern might then be adaptive.

A double treat: science combined with a clever parody of a Dean Martin song:

In honor of Stan Laurel, even though his birthday was yesterday:

One of Matthew’s beloved optical illusions. I’m sure I’ve posted it before, but it’s well worth seeing again. Be sure to turn the sound up and watch the whole thing.

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

May 24, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Monday, May 24, 2021: National Escargot Day. It is a Three Bun Day, which means that I saw three cottontail rabbits on my way to work. This augurs a good day: 12 rabbits’ feet!

It’s also Asparagus Day, Brother’s Day (only one brother being celebrated?), and, in Canada, Victoria Day and its related holiday in Quebec, National Patriots’ Day (Journée nationale des patriotes). And Bob Dylan turns 80 today! (See below.)

News of the Day:

“Defund the police” was always a dubious slogan, unless qualified with strict specifications on where the money would go to compensate for reduced policing or to add extra social value. And, sure enough, this headline has appeared in The New Woke Times (click on screenshot):

The cause, of course, is a rise in violent crime. A quote:

. . . more cops is what Los Angeles is getting.

A year after streets echoed with calls to “defund” law enforcement and city leaders embraced the message by agreeing to take $150 million away from the Los Angeles Police Department, or about 8 percent of the department’s budget, the city last week agreed to increase the police budget to allow the department to hire about 250 officers. The increase essentially restores the cuts that followed the protests.

The BBC reports that John Kelly, an ultamarathoner, just set a record in the grueling Pennine Way race, a 260-mile route that “runs down the spine of Britain from the Scottish Borders’ Kirk Yetholm to Edale in Derbyshire’s Peak District.”They add that a fit hiker would take over two weeks to hike the route, but Kelly did it in just 58 hours and four minutes. And he had only two 10-minute naps along the way!

Speaking of ultramarathons, the NYT reports a mass death: 21 runners in a Chinese ultramarathon, including one of their best athletes, died when cold weather and freezing rain inundated a 62-mile mountain race. Many of the runners were clad only in short and tee-shirts.

The Associated Press has collected some depressing and hair-raising stories about how the pandemic has affected the lives of Indians, while the medical system breaks down. Here’s just one of several stories:

The Amrohi Family, Gurgaon

At the Amrohi apartment, the former ambassador’s family was calling his medical school classmates for help. One eventually arranged a bed at a nearby hospital.

It was April 26. The brutal north Indian summer was coming on. Temperatures that day reached nearly 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

His wife, Yamini, and their adult son Anupam put him into the family’s compact SUV.

They arrived about 7:30 p.m. and parked in front of the main doors, thinking Ashok would be rushed inside. They were wrong. Admission paperwork had to be completed first, and the staff was swamped.

So they waited.

Anupam stood in line while Yamini stayed in the car with Ashok, who was breathing bottled oxygen. She blasted the air-conditioning, trying to keep him cool.

An hour passed. Two hours. Someone came to swab Ashok for a coronavirus test. It came back positive. His breathing had grown difficult.

“I went thrice to the hospital reception for help. I begged, pleaded and shouted at the officials,” she said. “But nobody budged.”

At one point, their daughter called from London, where she lives with her family. With everyone on a video call, their four-year-old grandson asked to talk to Ashok.

“I love you, Poppy,” he said.

Ashok pulled off his oxygen mask: “Hello. Poppy loves you too.”

Three hours.

Four hours.

Anupam returned regularly to the car to check on his father.

“It’s almost done,” he would tell him each time. “Everything is going to be alright. Please stay with us!”

Five hours.

A little after midnight, Ashok grew agitated, pulling off the oxygen mask and gasping. His chest heaved. Then he went still.

“In a second he was no more,” Yamini said. “He was dead in my arms.”

Yamini went to the reception desk: “You are murderers,” she told them.

The story continues later in the article.

And a BBC report describes a deadly “black fungus” disease that strikes some people in India who have recovered from Covid, mostly males with underlying conditions like diabetes. It is a fulminating infection caused by a common soil fungus and must be treated with long-term doses of antifungal agents.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 589,517, an increase of 563 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,478,596, an increase of about 9,000 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 24 includes:

  • 1487 – The ten-year-old Lambert Simnel is crowned in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland, with the name of Edward VI in a bid to threaten King Henry VII’s reign.
  • 1607 – One hundred English settlers disembark in Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America.
  • 1626 – Peter Minuit buys Manhattan.

Yes, the island was a bargain: it went for 60 guilders, a trifling amount now worth about $1,143. The sellers were Lenape Native Americans.

  • 1683 – The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opens as the world’s first university museum.
  • 1813 – South American independence leader Simón Bolívar enters Mérida, leading the invasion of Venezuela, and is proclaimed El Libertador (“The Liberator”).
  • 1844 – Samuel Morse sends the message “What hath God wrought” (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Morse in 1840; the man knew his Bible:

  • 1883 – The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
  • 1930 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

Here’s Johnson  in her Gypsy Moth plane in 1930. The flight took her six days. Sadly, she died after running out of fuel over the Thames Estuary in 1941 and, parachuting safely into the water, died of extreme cold.

  • 1935 – The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies 2–1 at Crosley Field.
  • 1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

Here’s Sikorsky in his first helicopter:

A second attempt succeeded in August of that same year. If you’re in Mexico City, do visit Trotsky’s house, or rather fortress, which he built to stave off attacks. He knew Stalin was going to go after him. In 2012 I visited it (Frida Kahlo’s house is just a few blocks away); here’s the desk where Trotsky was sitting when an assassin put an ice axe into his head. It’s said to be just as he left it.

  • 1956 – The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland.
  • 1976 – The Judgment of Paris takes place in France, launching California as a worldwide force in the production of quality wine.
  • 1991 – Israel conducts Operation Solomon, evacuating Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
  • 1999 – The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.
  • 2019 – Under pressure over her handling of Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May announces her resignation as Leader of the Conservative Party, effective as of June 7.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1819 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (d. 1901)
  • 1938 – Tommy Chong, Canadian-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
  • 1941 – Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, artist, writer, and producer; Nobel Prize laureate

Dylan is 80 today! How could time have passed so quickly? Here’s a photo I have in my office of Dylan with a certain young lady (his significant other at the time) who went on to achieve her own renown:

 

  • 1960 – Kristin Scott Thomas, English actress

Those who lost their lives on May 24 include:

  • 1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (b. 1473)
  • 1879 – William Lloyd Garrison, American journalist and activist (b. 1805)
  • 1974 – Duke Ellington, American pianist and composer (b. 1899)

I’ve almost finished reading my biography of Duke. Here’s one of my favorites from the Blanton-Webster version of his band (1939-1940): “Cotton Tail.” I put it up in honor of the three bunnies I saw this morning. And yes, this one swings! The sax solo made Ben Webster famous. (And this will wake you up, so keep the sound down if folks are sleeping!).

  • 1996 – Joseph Mitchell, American journalist and author (b. 1908)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Paulina have a chat.

Hili: How does the writing of your masters theses go?
Paulina: It’s going well but sometimes I need a break.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Jak ci idzie pisanie pracy magisterskiej?
Paulina: Dobrze, ale czasem muszę odpocząć.

And Mietek has a moment of rapture:

Mietek: The wind in my hair.

In Polish: Wiatr we włosach

From Science Humor:

From Bruce:

From Meriliee. I do this, too, sticking one foot out from under the covers at night:

I made a tweet!

From reader Ken, who comments, “This man was at one time the National Security Advisor of the United States of America.”

 

Tweets from Matthew:

I think this cat’s just harassed:

This is a gynandromorph (half male, half female) ant of the ant species Pheidole noda, with sexual traits split straight down the middle. I suspect that the side with the wing is male, because only males or females who are destined to be queens have wings. Look at the difference between the male and female morphology!

Fun history and art fact (lovely paintings, too):

Everybody says this photo is wrong, but they can’t quite say why. Are the measurements wrong? Are they using different scales? You tell me! The guy certainly looks more than a foot and eight inches taller than the woman.

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

May 19, 2021 • 6:30 am

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

News of the Day:

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

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

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

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

His arch may collapse, but his theory stands strong!

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

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

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

Stuff that happened on May 19 includes:

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

This is attributed to smoke from forest fires.

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

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

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

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

Notables born on this day include:

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

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

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

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

Those who became the Dearly Departed on May 19 include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Polish: Odrobina sylwoterapii nie zaszkodzi

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

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

From Stephen: Soylent green is PEOPLE!

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

A tweet from Simon showing a very clever billboard:

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

Tweets from Matthew. Here’s an OCD cat:

A lovely Scottish rainbow:

Excellent life advice!

Here’s a tweet that puts history into perspective:

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

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 28, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Monday, December 28, 2020, the Fourth Day of Coynezaa. I think it will be a good day because I not only saw TWO cottontail rabbits on my way to work (total: 8 rabbits’ feet), but also ate two Southern biscuits with butter and Tiptree “Little Scarlet” Strawberry Jam for breakfast. (That was James Bond’s favorite jam:

In From Russia With Love we read that James Bond’s favourite meal of the day is breakfast and that it always remains the same; after two large cups of coffee brewed in a Chemex coffee maker he eats a boiled egg followed by wholewheat toast with Jersey butter and a choice of Tiptree “Little Scarlet” strawberry jam, Cooper’s Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather Honey from Fortnum and Mason.

I have to say that this isn’t a very substantial breakfast to support all of Bond’s secret-agent activities.

Also, it’s National Boxed Chocolates Day. And if I don’t miss my guess, two pounds of my favorite commercial chocolates—from See’s Candies—will be arriving on the last day of Coynezaa. It’s also National Card Playing Day, Call a Friend Day, and Pledge of Allegiance Day, and adopted by Congress on this day in 1942 as an attestation of fealty. The words “under God” were added only in 1954, largely at the urging of President Eisenhower, who wanted to affirm that we weren’t a godless nation like the Soviet Union.

News of the Day:

First (h/t Matthew), this:

A pilot in southern Germany took to the sky just before Christmas to celebrate the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine. Using a Diamond DA-20 Katana the pilot drew a 70 kilometer long syringe 5,000 feet in the air.

And a provocative headline from the BBC (h/t Jez); click on the screenshot:

This has nothing to do with transsexuals; it’s about the Boy Scouts having decided to accept girls:

A recruitment drive by the Boy Scouts of America is proving “highly damaging” to the Girl Scouts, lawyers acting for the latter organisation say.

The “infringement” meant many parents mistakenly signed their daughters up for Boy Scouts, thinking it was Girl Scouts, lawyers said.

In response, the Boy Scouts accused the Girl Scouts of starting a “ground war”.

The Boy Scouts dropped the word “boy” from its recruitment programme, and opened up to female members, in 2018.

It said at the time that it was renaming the Boy Scouts programme Scouts BSA as it prepared to allow girls to join.

But the Girl Scouts said the change would erode their brand, calling the move “uniquely damaging” to them, filing an initial lawsuit in November 2018 against trademark infringement.

According to the Guardian, a rare white (leucistic) kiwi named Manukura has died in New Zealand after surgery to remove an unfertilized egg that she couldn’t pass. This species, the North Island Brown Kiwi, lays the biggest eggs relative to its body size of any bird in the world. Individuals can live up to 35 year in captivity, so her life was cut really short. (h/t: Julian)

Does anyone recognize this “French doctor” arriving in Gaza to help the beleaguered Palestinians? Israel had no record of a French doctor passing into Gaza, and you’ll see why.  If you watched “Grey’s Anatomy”, you’ll recognize her. Palestinian propaganda, which often uses fake photos, really messed this one up. It’s Izzy! The Center has 750,000 Facebook followers.

Surprisingly, Trump came to his senses yesterday and signed the pandemic relief bill, so the government won’t shut down tonight. Does he like to scare people or what? The House is going to convene today to try to override Trump’s veto of the big defense spending bill. If they succeed (a 2/3 majority vote is required), the Senate will vote on Tuesday.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 333,242, an increase of about 1,200 from yesterday’s figure. The world death toll is 1,773,407, an increase of about 7,400 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on December 28 includes:

  • 1065 – Edward the Confessor’s Romanesque monastic church at Westminster Abbey is consecrated.
  • 1795 – Construction of Yonge Street, formerly recognized as the longest street in the world, begins in York, Upper Canada (present-day Toronto).

In fact, the longest street in the world is still, as this article notes, “up for grabs.”

  • 1832 – John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.
  • 1836 – Spain recognizes the independence of Mexico with the signing of the Santa María–Calatrava Treaty.
  • 1879 – Tay Bridge disaster: The central part of the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom collapses as a train passes over it, killing 75.

Actually, as Wikipedia notes itself, the 75 dead may be too high, though there were at least 59—everyone on board.

William McGonagall, the world’s best bad poet, wrote an ode to this disaster which you can read here. Here’s the last verse:

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
Here’s the bridge before it collapsed (wind facilitated it, and the bridge wasn’t designed taking wind into account):
  • 1895 – The Lumière brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines.
  • 1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays

Here’s Röntgen’s first “medical X-ray”: of his wife’s hand:

  • 1918 – Constance Markievicz, while detained in Holloway prison, became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons.

A feminist and Irish revolutionary, Markievicz was jailed for participating in the 1916 Easter Rising. She was released in 1917 as part of a general amnesty. Here she is trying out a Colt Revolver (picture from Wikipedia:

  • 1958 – “Greatest Game Ever Played”: Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the first ever National Football League sudden death overtime game at New York’s Yankee Stadium.

Here’s a short video of the game’s highlights:

  • 1973 – The United States Endangered Species Act is signed into law by Pres. Richard Nixon.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1856 – Woodrow Wilson, American historian and politician, 28th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1924)
  • 1882 – Arthur Eddington, English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician (d. 1944)
  • 1903 – John von Neumann, Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist (d. 1957)
  • 1922 – Stan Lee, American publisher, producer, and actor (d. 2018)
  • 1944 – Kary Mullis, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2019)
  • 1946 – Edgar Winter, American singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer
  • 1954 – Denzel Washington, American actor, director, and producer
  • 1978 – Chris Coyne, Australian footballer and manager

I don’t know from Chris Coyne, but perhaps he’s related to me.

  • 1979 – Noomi Rapace, Swedish actress

Those who became forever quiescent on December 28 include:

  • 1503 – Piero the Unfortunate, Italian ruler (b. 1471)
  • 1937 – Maurice Ravel, French pianist and composer (b. 1875)
  • 1983 – Dennis Wilson, American drummer, songwriter, and producer (b. 1944)
  • 1993 – William L. Shirer, American journalist and historian (b. 1904)
  • 2004 – Susan Sontag, American novelist, essayist, critic, and playwright (b. 1933)

I have to confess that I’ve never read anything by Sontag, and I’m not sure if that makes me culturally illiterate.

  • 2016 – Debbie Reynolds, American actress, singer and dancer (b. 1932)

As you remember, her daughter, Carrie Fisher, died one day before Reynolds. As Wikipedia noted:

The day after Fisher’s death, her mother Debbie Reynolds suffered a stroke at the home of son Todd, where the family was planning Fisher’s burial arrangements. She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she died later that afternoon.  According to Todd Fisher, Reynolds had said, “I want to be with Carrie” immediately prior to suffering the stroke.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili once again expresses her hatred of sweet little Kulka:

Hili: You have a new task.
A: What is it?
Hili: To teach Kulka not to come into this room.
In Polish:
Hili: Masz nowe zadanie.
Ja: Jakie?
Hili: Musisz nauczyć Kulkę, żeby nie wchodziła do tego pokoju.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek is disappointed, for he loves the fuss of Christmas:

Mietek: Is the holiday over yet?

In Polish: Już po świętach?

A cartoon sent by Jean; I can’t make out the artist.

From Amy T., a Sherman’s Lagoon cartoon on free will:

From Jesus of the Day, a kid after my own heart.

Yes, Bryn Mawr, too, a school loosely associated with the execrable and strike-prone Haverford College. Here’s a tweet from the demonized CHS, and I’ve put a picture below it from the linked article:

Shoot me now. From Bryn Mawr:

A tweet from reader Barry. The man who made a dining table for raccoons is a man to be admired. What a brunch! (Sound up.)

Tweets from Matthew, who is ANGRY: over 400 of his countrymen snuck out of a Swiss village rather than be quarantined.

Recipe for a gorilla tummyache. If you’re a Yank and don’t know what squash is, it’s basically a concentrated fruit drink syrup meant to be heavily diluted with water (see below). He got the squash by escaping into a staff room. What the staff were doing with five liters of blackcurrent squash remains a mystery.

Ten to one this guy claimed he sat on a candycane during the holidays and it went up his butt (that’s what they always say). You can see the list of stuff that doctors removed here; items in the rectum are particularly numerous.

A lovely astronomy photo. Either the Sun is too big or Mercury is too small:

And this is stunning, beating the previous record by a factor of 15! Somehow that seed retained some capacity to revive for all that time; one would have to say it was alive for 32,000 years.

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 24, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s December 24, 2020, with one shopping day left before Christmas and The First Day of Coynezaa. And oh, dear lord, it’s National Eggnog Day, the world’s most cloying and unappetizing of alcoholic beverages (note that West Point’s Eggnog Riot of 1826 took place on this day). It’s also Last-Minute Shoppers’ Day and, of course, Christmas Eve, with these national variants:

Here’s the traditional multi-dish Polish feast for Wigilia. I wish I were there (I would eschew the fish dishes, but let me at the borscht, pierogi, and desserts!):

News of the Day:

Crikey, what a mess! The President-Eject has just issued a new batch of 26 federal pardons, many to his pals like Charles Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law’s dad), as well as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, Jr. It’s gonna get worse—I’m betting he’ll try to pardon himself before January 20.

But wait! There’s more! Trump tweeted this, threatening the stimulus-recovery bill (the temporary stopgap measure expires in two days).

But wait! There’s STILL more! Trump did veto a defense-spending bill on the grounds that it mandates the renaming of military bases named after Confederate generals. This, too, has thrown the Congress—and especially Republicans—into turmoil.  The bill did pass Congress with a veto-proof majority, but will Republicans now stand with Trump and refuse to override his veto? This is all good for Democrats, especially in the two Senate races in Georgia, but nixing the stimulus-recovery bill would be dreadful for Americans. There’s still some drama left in the next month.

Yesterday I saw on the news that Trump hasn’t been seen in public for ten days. Now this: the Sore Loser leaves town. Will he be back for the inauguration of Biden?

Despite warnings of all the experts to stay put during the Christmas holidays, nearly 85 million Americans are expected to drive or fly over the next two weeks. With the vaccine only beginning to find its way into our arms, you know what that means.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 326,413, a substantial increase of about 3,400 from yesterday’s figure and roughly 2.4 deaths a minute. The world death toll is 1,739,816, a big increase of about 13,700 over yesterday’s report and the equivalent of about 9.5 deaths per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 24 include:

  • 1737 – The Marathas defeat the combined forces of the Mughal Empire, Rajputs of Jaipur, Nizam of Hyderabad, Nawab of Awadh and Nawab of Bengal in the Battle of Bhopal.
  • 1777 – Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is discovered by James Cook.

This island, part of the nation of Kiribati, has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world (388 km² or 150 mi². At least one of our readers has been fishing there. Here’s an aerial view:

  • 1814 – Representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States sign the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
  • 1818 – The first performance of “Silent Night” takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.

The music was by Franz Xaver Gruber, a local schoolteacher, with lyrics by Joseph Mohr, a priest

  • 1826 – The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy begins that night, wrapping up the following morning.
  • 1865 – Jonathan Shank and Barry Ownby form The Ku Klux Klan.

Here’s the Anti-Defamation League’s list of currently active Klan chapters. They are a waning organization!

  • 1871 – The opera Aida premieres in Cairo, Egypt.
  • 1906 – Radio: Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio broadcast; consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech.
  • 1914 – World War I: The “Christmas truce” begins.

Yes, these did happen, with Brits and Germans fraternizing over the holidays; indeed, some of them even played soccer. Here’s a photo with the Wikipedia caption:

British and German troops meeting in no man’s land during the unofficial truce (British troops from the Northumberland Hussars, 7th Division, Bridoux–Rouge Banc Sector)
  • 1943 – World War II: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Supreme Allied Commander for the Invasion of Normandy.
  • 1968 – Apollo program: The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed ten lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures.
  • 1980 – Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge, in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom, an incident called “Britain’s Roswell“.

There are scientific explanations of these lights, involving stars, lighthouses, and falling stars, but we don’t know which are responsible (the lighthouse is a good candidate).

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1809 – Kit Carson, American general (d. 1868)
  • 1868 – Emanuel Lasker, German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher (d. 1941)

Lasker was World Chess Champion for 27 years. Here he is in Berlin in 1933, 12 years after he no longer reigned:

  • 1907 – I. F. Stone, American journalist and author (d. 1989)
  • 1922 – Ava Gardner, American actress (d. 1990)

Here’s the Gardner in the wonderful movie “Night of the Iguana” (1964), also starring Deborah Kerr (seen here) and Richard Burton. Gardner was 42 at the time.

George the Fourth wasn’t the real Patton (i.e., the WWII general George S. Patton, Jr.), but, like his dad he still became a major general in the U.S. Army. And by God, did he look like his dad!

Son:

Patton père:

Fauci turns 80 today!

  • 1962 – Kate Spade, American fashion designer (d. 2018)
  • 1960 – Carol Vorderman, English television host

I suspect that, as a stripling much taken by Vorderman’s brains and beauty, I wasn’t alone. I wonder if British adolescents shared my smitten-ness.  In 2014, Vorderman was named an ambassador to the Royal Air Force Air Cadets, and became an “honorary group captain”.

Those who expired on December 24 include:

  • 1524 – Vasco da Gama, Portuguese explorer and politician, Governor of Portuguese India (b. 1469)
  • 1873 – Johns Hopkins, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1795)
  • 1914 – John Muir, Scottish-American geologist, botanist, and author, founded Sierra Club (b. 1838)
  • 1994 – John Boswell, American historian, author, and academic (b. 1947)

John, know to us as “Jeb”, lived across the dorm hall from me sophomore year at William and Mary, and was already, as one known to have big brains, destined for great things. He went on to become a Yale professor specializing in religion and homosexuality (he was gay), made a big mark in academia, and, tragically, died of AIDS at only 47 (here’s his obituary in the New York Times). A photo:

  • 1997 – Toshiro Mifune, Chinese-Japanese actor and producer (b. 1920)

Here’s a montage of some of Mifune’s roles:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,  Hili questions scripture:

Hili: Is it true that in the beginning was a word?
A: Probably not.
Hili: I doubt it too.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy to prawda, że na początku było słowo?
Ja: Raczej nie.
Hili: Też tak myślę.

And in nearby Wloclawek, young Mietek thinks the Christmas festivities and decorations are celebrating him. Well, he can’t help it, for he’s a cat.

Mietek: Oy, and all this is for me?

In Polish: Ojej, to wszystko dla mnie?!

Little Kulka, who was just neutered, finally had her anti-licking jacket removed yesterday. She hated it, but now is free and bouncing around with joy. Here’s Paulina with Kulka before the jacket was removed:

From Facebook. Does Sir Patrick really knit and wear Santa jammies?

Also from Facebook. The termites are everywhere! (Jen Silverman was amazed that her post got half a million likes.)

From Facebook, and I hope this is a real photo, because that’s an awful big foot!

 

A tweet from reader Barry, who replaces Titania McGrath today:

I didn’t know that “essential workers” include liquor store clerks and bankers! Yes, this is unfair.

I’ve known about this for a while, and always wondered if it was painful for the mother:

I retweeted a tweet from Matthew, and of course I was right about the calendar:

Tweets from Matthew. 3 pennies per sprout! That’s a bargain—if you like that vile vegetable.

We saw a video of this the other day:

I’d enlarge this so you can see the complex shape of the spermatophore, which emerges at the end (presumably a female picks it up):

And an early Merry Christmas to you!

Tuesday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 22, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on the cruelest day: Tuesday, December 22, 2020. But cheer up: we have two vaccines now, it’s only three days until Christmas and the beginning of Coynezaa, most people will have a week’s break until the New Year, and most Americans will have a $600 stimulus check to defray those holiday expenses. It’s also National Date Nut Bread Day, which nobody eats any more, National Cookie Exchange Day (I got some but didn’t have any to exchange), and, in India, it’s National Mathematics Day.

News of the Day:

The big news for science buffs is the closest conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn since the 13th century!  For many, like those in Chicago, it was too cloudy to see anything. But, And, as I’d hoped, a reader sent in photos. These are from Terry Platt, and you can make out Saturn’s rings in its shape! Terry’s caption is indented, and please click on the photos to enlarge them.

The weather is bad today, but I got some quite nice shots of Jupiter and Saturn last evening (20th). Here’s a moderately wide shot with a nice old oak tree framing the pair, plus a closer shot to show the disks of the planets with Jupiter’s moon Callisto a little up and left of Jupiter. Taken with a Nikon D7200 + telephoto lens.

But damn NBC News, anyway! They finished their final piece of the evening on the conjunction by asking whether that could have been the star of Bethlehem (was there even a conjunction at the purported time of Jesus’s birth?). They said astronomers don’t think so, but in these dark times we can always use a little added light. And then Harry smith said, “Behold” showed the conjunction behind a CROSS on top of a church. We can’t get rid of these Christian myths! To see this juxtaposition, go here and then go about 20 minutes in.

BEHOLD! (Thanks to NBC News for the image. . . )

There’s been a big cheating scandal at West Point: 73 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy were accused of cheating on a remotely-given calculus exam. Most admitted they did it:

After an investigation by an honors committee made up of trained cadets, two cases were dropped for lack of evidence and four were dropped because the cadets resigned, Ophardt said. Of the remaining 67 cases, 55 cadets have admitted cheating and have been enrolled in a six-month rehabilitation program focused on ethics. They will be on probation for the rest of their time at the academy. Three more cadets admitted cheating but weren’t eligible for the rehabilitation program.

The evening news characterized this by saying “the honor code is working well.” Yes, I suppose so since the miscreants admitted they cheated, but this is West Point, in the business of turning out military officers. Why weren’t the 55 booted out of the Academy?

Joe Biden got his first injection of the coronavirus vaccine yesterday—on live television. Here’s Joe’s Jab. He was a good boy and didn’t flinch or cry!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 319,762, an increase of about 2,000 from yesterday’s figure and roughly 1.4 deaths a minute. The world death toll is 1,710,967, an increase of about 9,900 over yesterday’s report and the equivalent of about 6.9 deaths per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 22 include:

  • 1807 – The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.
  • 1808 – Ludwig van Beethoven conducts and performs in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sixth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto (performed by Beethoven himself) and Choral Fantasy (with Beethoven at the piano).
  • 1885 – Itō Hirobumi, a samurai, becomes the first Prime Minister of Japan.

Here’s Hirobumi, who was assassinated in 1909 by an advocate for Korean independence:

  • 1894 – The Dreyfus affair begins in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason.
  • 1944 – World War II: Battle of the Bulge: German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium, prompting the famous one word reply by General Anthony McAuliffe: “Nuts!”

As I’ve said before, when I was a teenager in Germany, with my father, an Army officer, stationed in Heidelberg he drove the family especially to Bastogne so he cold see where McAuliffe said “nuts”! He admired the man’s persistence!

This is being re-enacted now in the U.S., except the books are not by Mao but by Robin DiAngelo. And “re-education” courses are springing up in dozens of U.S. colleges.

  • 1984 – “Subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz shoots four would-be muggers on a 2 express train in Manhattan section of New York, United States.

Goetz, a folk hero to many, served eight months in prison as well as probation for five years and also paid a $5,000 fine. A civil suit saddled him with $42 million dollars as well, but he couldn’t pay it, and declared bankruptcy.

His photo is below; as PopSugar reports, he’s in the same place but playing with squirrels. 

Goetz chose not to be a part of the Netflix docuseries, but a snippet at the end of the episode notes that as of 2017, he was still living in the same apartment on 14th Street as he was back in the 1980s. He has run for public office twice in recent years and currently spends his time advocating for legal marijuana and playing with squirrels. Trial by Media even mentions that Goetz still rides the New York City subways regularly.

  • 1989 – Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

Here’s a news clip of the re-opening. Freedom!

  • 1990 – Lech Wałęsa is elected President of Poland.
  • 2001 – Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.

Reid, shown below along with his explosive shoes, was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences plus 110 years with no possibility of parole. He’s also serving them in the Florence Supermax prison—the worst place to be incarcerated in America.  Have a look at his prison mates at the Wikipedia article on the prison.

  • 2010 – The repeal of the Don’t ask, don’t tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, is signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1639 – Jean Racine, French poet and playwright (d. 1699)
  • 1858 – Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer and educator (d. 1924)
  • 1912 – Lady Bird Johnson, American beautification activist; 38th First Lady of the United States (d. 2007)
  • 1945 – Diane Sawyer, American journalist

Here’s Sawyer with Nixon in 1972, when she was about 27. Sawyer worked at the Nixon White House, initially writing press releases and then working her way up to Staff Assistant to Nixon.

  • 1949 – Maurice Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2003)

Of the three Bee Gees and their brother Andy Gibb, only Barry Gibb (now “Sir Barry) is still alive. Robin (below), Maurice’s fraternal twin, is gone, and yet they were only a week older than I.

  • 1949 – Robin Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2012)
  • 1962 – Ralph Fiennes, English actor
  • 1970 – Ted Cruz, American lawyer and politician

Those who found Eternal Rest on December 22 include:

  • 1880 – George Eliot, English novelist and poet (b. 1819)
  • 1940 – Nathanael West, American author and screenwriter (b. 1903)
  • 1942 – Franz Boas, German-American anthropologist and linguist (b. 1858)
  • 1943 – Beatrix Potter, English children’s book writer and illustrator (b. 1866)

You can’t get better than this illustration from Potter. Tom Kitten AND ducks!

Tom Kitten, Moppet and Mittens with the Puddle-ducks
  • 1989 – Samuel Beckett, Irish author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
  • 1995 – Butterfly McQueen, American actress and dancer (b. 1911)
  • 2014 – Joe Cocker, English singer-songwriter (b. 1944)
  • 2019 – Ram Dass, American spiritual teacher and author (b. 1931) [

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili mourns how technological progress has reduced the thrill of hunting.

A: There already is the first restaurant serving meat produced in a lab.
Hili: That is cruel.
In Polish:
Ja: Jest już pierwsza restauracja z mięsem produkowanym w laboratorium.
Hili: To okrutne.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek’s getting ready for Christmas:

Mietek: I will check whether this is edible.

In Polish: Sprawdzę, czy to jest jadalne.

A meme from Bruce:

From Nicole:

And, speaking of Jesus, this is from Jesus of the Day:

 

A tweet from Jez in the UK, who adds this:

I don’t know if the Thomas the Tank Engine books made it across to the US (Ringo Starr narrated the later popular TV adaptation for quite a while). Given that no trains, trucks, or planes can travel from the UK to France at the moment this tweet of the illustration from one of the original books is quite apt! And we haven’t even got started on the mess that will be Brexit…

Julia Galef on her favorite letter not just from Charles Darwin, but from any scientist. It shows Darwin’s graciousness in responding to critics. As to that critic’s claim that Darwin couldn’t show that the change that produced “macroevolution” was gradual, well, that’s true: Darwin didn’t have a fossil record worth speaking of. Now, though, we have direct fossil evidence of macroevolution: fish evolving into amphibians, amphibians into reptiles, reptiles into birds on one hand and mammals on the other, and so on.  As for Darwin being underrated for his intellectual honesty, I don’t agree: every Darwin scholar and maven knows about that virtue.

Matthew sent me the tweet, I explained it while retweeting it:

Tweets from Matthew. Sound up to hear these deer enjoying a hearty wallow in the mud:

The rescue ducks at Marsh Farm are being moved. Listen to them quack! And how they love their water!

I think the little specks are Jupiter’s moons, right?

Click on the photo to see the cat-eaten bit: