Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 12, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Ceiling Cat’s Day: Sunday, August 12, 2018, and a day for napping, eating, and lying in the sun. It’s National Julienne Fries Day, which on account of their thinness are a perversion of fries (or chips). In the UK it’s the “Glorious Twelfth,” marking the opening of the Red Grouse shooting season—a bird better left unshot.

Today’s Google Doodle is a gif that celebrates the life and work of Cantinflas, the stage name of the actor, producer, and screenwriter Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes, who starred in innumerable movies and plays in Mexico and the US (he won a Golden Globe for his performance in Around the World in Eighty Days.) Cantinflas was born on this day in 1911 and died in 1993. The gif shows the variety of his role:

On this day in 1851, Isaac Singer was given a patent for his sewing machine. The rest is history. And on August 12, 1865, Joseph Lister performed his first antiseptic treatment of a patient—a boy with a compound fracture of the leg—and found that the fracture healed without infection. The rest is history. On this day in 1883, the very last quagga died at a zoo in Amsterdam.  Once thought to be a distinct species, the quagga is now formally recognized as a subspecies of the Plains Zebra, with the quagga’s designation being Equus quagga quagga. Here’s one in the London Zoo, photographed in 1870: the only picture of a living quagga:

On August 12, 1914, World War I further expanded as the UK declared war on Austria-Hungary, with the countries of the British Empire following along. On this day in 1950, in the Bloody Gulch Massacre, North Korean soldiers massacred 75 American prisoners of war, a Geneva Convention no-no. On this day in 1953, according to Wikipedia, occurred “the first testing of a real thermonuclear weapon (not test devices): The Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of “RDS-6s” (Joe 4), the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb.” On August 12, 1990, the famous T. rex fossil “Sue”, now in Chicago’s Field Museum, was discovered in South Dakota by Sue Hendrickson.  Finally, on this day in 1994, Major League Baseball players went on strike, resulting in the cancellation of the rest of the season and of the 1994 World Series.

Notables born on this day include Helena Blavatsky (1831), Klara Hitler (1860, Adolf’s mom), Christy Mathewson (1880), Erwin Schrödinger (1887, Nobel Laureate), Cantinflas (1911; see above), Norris and Ross McWhirter of Guinness World Record Fame (1925, twins), Buck Owens (1929) and mountaineer Rick Ridgeway (1949).

Here’s a clip of Cantinflas in a Mexican movie (English subtitles) in which he discusses his indolence and justifies it with theology:

 

Those who died on August 12 include Charles Martel (1295), William Blake (1827), William Jackson Hooker (1865), Thomas Mann (1955), Ian Fleming (1964), Henry Fonda (1982), William Shockley (1989, Nobel Laureate and miscreant), John Cage (1992), Les Paul (2009), and Lauren Bacall (2014).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili learns some natural history:

Hili: Are there wild kangaroos in Poland?
A: No.
Hili: Maybe it was a hare.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy w Polsce są dzikie kangury?
Ja: Nie ma.
Hili: Może to był zając.
Leon: Don’t you think that the greenery highlights the color of my eyes?
Tweets from Grania. She says this probably isn’t humility, but misplaced altruism:

All I can say is: Good Lord!

A nice political cartoon:
More on the Canada/Saudi Arabia squabble later today:

IT FOUND WALDO!

There’s nothing more romantic or mesmerizing than fireflies on a summer night:

From Heather Hastie:  triple turtle rescue! (sound and video on). This is what our trash causes in the oceans.  What nice divers!

A cat plays fetch:

I found this creepy tweet, but wanted to throw it in here as it appears to be the Charles Manson of Nature [UPDATE: see comments below; this appears to be a bogus report, as I should have guessed!]

Finally, a cartoon sent from Heather Hastie which shares my take on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (see my post yesterday), and throws in Bernie Sanders—for whom I voted in the primaries—to boot.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Another lionized Democrat cozying up to anti-Semites

August 11, 2018 • 2:15 pm

Well, my headline may be a tad exaggerated, but I’m pretty sure that the subject of this post is not friendly to Jews (she’s made some remarkably ill informed comments about Palestine). Read on.

Many Democrats have been excited about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the young Hispanic activist (she’s 28) won the Democratic primary for a House seat in New York, gaining a big upset victory over the incumbent. She’s a Democratic Socialist, but my take on her is that she’s not particularly bright and is espousing views that, while they may win her a seat in the House, won’t advance the Democratic platform. In fact, her election may give Democrats an even worse image.

I say that because Ocasio-Cortez has cozied up to some odious characters. Here she is headlining the Universal Muslim Association of America meeting with our favorite sharia-lover and FOF (Friend of Farrakhan), Linda Sarsour (click on screenshot):

From an interview on a Leftist website (click on screenshot):

An excerpt:

 

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to talk about the travel ban, but Linda Sarsour is with us, director of the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change. You supported Alexandria. This is a remarkable moment.

LINDA SARSOUR: I mean, in light of such horrible news yesterday with the travel ban and the Muslim ban, Alexandria is the hope that we’ve been waiting for. She is a young woman of color. She’s Puerto Rican. She’s a Socialist, just like me. We are both card-carrying DSA members. And she’s pro-Palestine, and she’s unapologetic. And the movement right now is elated, because this is what you’re going to see, Amy, in this election season. It’s a new day, a new generation. And Alexandria is what represents us and our values.

. . . [Ocasio-Cortez] was outraised almost 10 to one. And it’s not about money. It’s about the grassroots organizing. It’s about building power on the ground. It’s about getting voters who have been ignored and marginalized to the polls. And that’s exactly what Alexandria did. She’s charismatic. She’s young. And she was also very progressive, unapologetically progressive—tuition-free college, Medicare for all, pro-Palestine, even in the recent Great Return March putting her voice out there while she was campaigning, not afraid of any opposition that was going to come her way. And that’s the new kind of folks that are going to win. So, no Democrat is going to hold their seat for too long. And a lot of Alexandrias are coming this 2018 and 2020.

You can read about the “Great return march” in Wikipedia. It is, in short a call for the “right of return” that would destroy Israel as a state:

On 30 March 2018, a six-week campaign composed of a series of protests was launched at the Gaza Strip, near the Gaza-Israel border. Called by Palestinian organizers the “Great March of Return” (Arabic: “مسیرة العودة الكبري”‎), the protests demand that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to the land they were displaced from in what is now Israel.

With a friend like Linda Sarsour, and an endorsement from same, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t need enemies! You know what “Pro-Palestine” is code for, too.  But of course it pays, electoral-wise, to be friendlier to Muslims than to Jews, for Democrats, especially those on the extreme Left, see Jews as oppressors and Muslims as the oppressed.

Finally, there’s this, in which Ocasio-Cortez touts Ilhan Omar, a Somali woman in the Minnesota state legislature.

https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1028123094857261057

The tweet on the right?

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/269488770066313216

Another:

Just keep it up, Democrats—a party once friendly to the Jews, now siding with regressive elements of Islam. You want four more years of Trump in 2020? Just keep cozying up to people like Sarsour and Ilhan Omar.

 

h/t: Grania

Steven Pinker on Bill Maher

August 11, 2018 • 11:00 am

Steve Pinker appeared on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” show last night, and here’s a seven-minute clip of their chat. (I immediately noticed that PInker was wearing a blue suit, which I’ve never seen—he usually wears black—and is also sporting his cowboy boots.)

You may already be familiar with the indices of progress limned by Pinker here, but Maher also gives a list of bad things about the world (emphasizing “nukes and pollution), asking Pinker to respond, which he does at 4:45 and 5:30.  Unfortunately, Maher dominates the conversation here—not the behavior of a good host—and I can’t find any videos in which the conversation continues.

Here’s the “overtime” panel consisting of Pinker , Rep. Seth Moulton (Democrat, Massachusetts), MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, political commentator and comedian D.L. Hughley, and LA Times political editor Christina Bellantoni; they all answer audience questions. O’Donnell is asked to respond to the plaint that MSNBC is “just a liberal version of Fox News.” Maher interrupts Pinker again when Steve tries to point out how Democratic policies have worked.

NYT puts in request for information about Brett Kavanaugh’s wife

August 11, 2018 • 10:00 am

Here we may have another example of the New York Times‘s double standards comparable to their having hired Sarah Jeong while firing Quinn Norton for the same acts committed by Jeong (nasty and bigoted statements on Twitter).

In this short article (click on screenshot to read it), two of the paper’s investigative reporters explain why they put in a freedom-of-information request for records on the wife of Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative whom Trump has nominated to the Supreme Court. Like all on the Left, I’m upset but not surprised at what Trump did, and also scared at how this will skew the law regressively rightwards for decades. But there’s not much we can do about it.

The Times asked the state of Maryland for records on Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, who is the town manager of Chevy Chase, Maryland. That request yielded 85 pages of emails, none of which provided the “smoking gun” that, I suspect, the Times was looking for.

And that may be the rub. It’s perfectly fine—indeed, appropriate—for a newspaper to dig into the background of a Supreme Court nominee, and even his spouse. But did they do the digging on the wives or husbands of liberal nominees like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Sonia Sotomayor (she’s now divorced), or, for that matter, Anthony Kennedy? If they didn’t, then it looks as if they’re going after conservative justices (and by proxy, Trump) but going easy on liberal ones.  I don’t know if this is the case, but there may be a reason why the Times had to explain what it did in this article. This is an unusual admission that the Times justifies with this statement:

And yet, we recognized before submitting the request that this was a possible outcome. We often file public records requests that yield no newsworthy information.

But when it comes to reporting on a potential Supreme Court justice, we had to try.

Of course it was the potential justice’s wife at issue, not the nominee himself.

The readers’ comments on the piece are almost all negative, pointing out the possible hypocrisy of the Times. It’s up to the paper to clarify whether vetting the spouses of Supreme Court nominees has been their standard procedure.

Here are some of the readers’ comments, most of them measured and not anti-press:

Meanwhile, the Times has announced that it’s sent Bari Weiss to Australia, which I see as nothing other than an exile to get her away from the New York writers who have demonized her for criticizing the Regressive Left. Her new job?

  • Bari Weiss of Opinion will head over after Thanksgiving. She will be writing about Australia’s role in the world, politics and feminism, and also working on partnerships and events.

Seriously? They needed her voice in New York—in America. Calling out the excesses of the American Left is what Weiss was good at. It’s just one more step in the paper’s move to Control Leftism.

h/t: cesar

Caturday felid trifecta: Woman sings the “no balls” song to her neutered cat; leopard cubs, Simon’s cat encounters a UFO,

August 11, 2018 • 9:00 am

Reader Amy found this song on the internet. I doubt that the song about neutering consoled this cute tom kitten!

My foster kitten PeeWee recently got neutered, so I sang him a little ditty I wrote about how he has no balls anymore.

 

Heather Hastie sent this video of a mother leopard (Panthera pardus) and her cubs, which she simply labels “Gorgeous!”:

You can see more photos of the cubs here; I’ll show three:

Reader Michael called my attention to a new Simon’s Cat video, “UFO”. It explains how the mysterious alien “crop circles” originate.

The new “sketches” format is described by Michael: “the idea is ‘back to basics’ simple, short line drawings with one idea per story.”

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 11, 2018 • 7:45 am

Reader Tony Eales from Australia sends some camouflaged beasties and a brightly colored spider. His notes are indented.

Some camouflage.

A Brisbane Two-tailed Spider, Tamopsis brisbanensis, on a mangrove tree trunk. These are very hard to spot. They have a leg span of around 3 or 4 cm. I believe the one in the photograph has some securely wrapped prey in front of it on the bark but even this is well camouflaged. I found this video of a slightly different species of Two-tailed spider catching prey:  https://youtu.be/6uo1rPHxlRI

I’ve sent a Flat-headed Leafhopper (Ledromorpha planirostris) nymph as a spot the before, but I saw another one just recently. I’ve attached a long shot, a close up and the reveal.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from camouflage, I found another species of Peacock Jumping Spider. This one is Maratus nigromaculatus.

I’ve also included a picture of one of our really common and colourful bugs. It is a male Cotton Harlequin Bug (Tectocoris diophthalmus). Females are orange with iridescent green blotches, and the nymphs are iridescent dark blue with red patches. They love hibiscus, especially the tree-sized ones we have around here called Cotton Trees (Hibiscus tiliaceus).

And lastly a katydid genus Polichne. There’s a lot of undescribed and hard to distinguish species in this genera.

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 11, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Saturday! August 11, 2018 is the date, and it’s a Yuppie Food Day: National Panini Day.

Today’s big news is that PHOEBE (the runt duckling still in the pond) FLEW!!! Yesterday Anna observed Phoebe effortlessly flying over the lily pads to get to where the food was being dispensed. Usually a flight like this is followed the next day by emigration, so I’m not sure if Phoebe will be there for this morning’s feeding. But it’s still good news, as I want her to be healthy enough to leave and join her fellow fowl.  Honey, of course, is still molting, and will be with us for a while until her flight feathers grow in. As I recall, she left last year at the end of August. I hope she returns, but, as always, my ducks are on temporary loan from the Universe.

On this day in 3114 BC. according to Wikipedia, “the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya, [began].” On August 11, 1858, three men made the first ascent of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps. The deadly North Face of the mountain, however—also known as the “White Spider”—wasn’t climbed until 80 years later. Here’s the mountain showing the North Face:

On August 11, 1929, Babe Ruth became the first major-league baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career, poling a four-bagger at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio. Babe’s lifetime total was 714, putting him in third place behind Barry Bonds (762) and Hank Aaron (755). On this day in 1965, the Watts race riots began in Los Angeles after a black woman driver was pulled over, got into a fight with police, and the (false) rumor spread that the cops had injured a pregnant woman.  On this day in 1972, the last U.S. ground combat unit left South Vietnam. What a stupid war, and a useless waste of lives! Finally, on August 11, 1984, Ronald Reagan, running for re-election, quipped “We begin bombing in five minutes” as a voice test into an NPR microphone.  His full quote was, according to Wikipedia, this one:

My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

The joke was a parody of the opening line of that day’s speech:

My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you that today I signed legislation that will allow student religious groups to begin enjoying a right they’ve too long been denied — the freedom to meet in public high schools during nonschool hours, just as other student groups are allowed to do.

His quip wasn’t broadcast, but it leaked, resulting in the Soviet Army being put on alert for 30 minutes.

Notables born on August 11 include The Great Agnostic, Robert G. Ingersoll (1833), Alex Haley (1921), Jerry Falwell (1933, buried in a matchbox), Steve Wozniak (1950), and Hulk Hogan (1953). Those who died on this day include Hans Memling (1494), Hamnet Shakespeare (Shakespeare’s son, born 1585, died 1596), John Henry Newman (1890), Edith Wharton (1937), Jackson Pollock (1956), photographer and mountaineer Galen Rowell (2002), and Robin Williams (2014).  A few memoria for those having anniversaries today.

Ingersoll:

Memling, “Virgin with Child between St. James and St. Dominic (painted 1488-1490):

And one of Galen Rowell’s mountain photos. He’s my favorite mountain photographer, and was also a great climber and great writer (read In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods to see all three skills on tap). This was taken with Kodachrome before the days of Photoshopping, so I think the image is unmanipulated. It looks like the Sierra Nevada near Rowell’s home in Bishop, California:

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s words are a bit obscure, as is often the case lately. Malgorzata explains: “If you buy something and it disappears almost immediately, you have to go out and buy it again. It’s not worth the bother. Distasteful cat food lasts for ages but tasty sausages just disappear. Of course, as Hili rightly says, this is an alternative logic.”

A: Buying cat sausages is pointless. You eat them immediately.
Hili: This must be some alternative logic.
in Polish:
Ja: Nie ma senstu kupowanie ci tych kocich kiełbasek, od razu je zjadasz.
Hili: To chyba jakaś alternatywna logika.

And nearby, with their new home almost finished, Leon and Elzbieta go for a hike:

Leon: Go, go, I’m protecting the rear.

Some tweets from Grania:

It’s ships all the way down!

https://twitter.com/NateLanxon/status/1027314148810604547

This anniversary was two days ago, but it’s still worth seeing the letter. I imagine it’s worth a lot, but it’s probably in the National Archives or the Nixon Library:

All you can say to this is “OMG, where did the gull get that?”

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1027787206134562816

It’s a narrow talent, but a deep one:

Meatball cat (turn sound on):

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1027721751306940417

Wonderful mother cat brings a fish to her kittens:

From Matthew; why we say “dead as a dodo”:

This is amazing! WHO’S a good boy?

https://twitter.com/m_yosry2012/status/1027859184853889024

From Heather Hastie, a case that is NOT affirmative consent: