Sunday: Hili Dialogue

July 15, 2018 • 6:45 am

It’s Ceiling Cat’s Day: Sunday, July 15 in the Year of Our Ceiling Cat 2018. And, for crying out loud, it’s National Gummy Worms Day, an execrable comestible if ever there was one. But most important, it’s the World Cup Final, with France playing Croatia at 10 am Chicago time. (France is favored.) Google has a Doodle showing the world enjoying the game; click on the screenshot to see it:

Finally, Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) is down with a nasty cold, wheezing like a bellows, so posting may be light today as I watch the game and rest.

On July 15, 1099, during the First Crusade, Christian soldiers seized the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after a difficult siege; the Church is one of the purported places where Jesus’s tomb lies.  On this day in 1799, a French soldier serving under Napoleon dug up the Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian village of Rosetta. With the same inscription written in three languages—hieroglyphic Egyptian, demotic Egyptian, and ancient Greek—the stone (now reposing in the British Museum) was vital in helping linguists decipher hieroglyphics. Here’s what it looks like (click to enlarge):

On this day in 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was disbanded after over 350 years. Nobody expected that!  Exactly four years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson gave an address at Harvard’s divinity school which, according to Wikipedia, discount[ed] Biblical miracles and declar[ed] Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.”  And they’re still reacting that way, but get even more outraged if you maintain, as I do, that the evidence for a historical person on which Jesus was based is thin.  On this day in 2003, AOL Time Warner disbanded Netscape and established The Mozilla Foundation. Finally, exactly 12 years ago Twitter was launched, enabling everybody to weigh in on everything, launching innumerable and inconsequential internet battles, having a marginally positive effect on spreading non-fake news, and, most important, helping spread cat memes throughout the planet.

Notables born on July 15 include Inigo Jones (1573), Rembrandt (1606), Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867), Iris Murdoch (1919), Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921; Nobel Laureate for devising a way to synthesize small proteins), Carl Woese (1928), Jacques Derrida (1930; much worse than Twitter), Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943), Linda Rondstadt (1946), and Diane Kruger (1976). Those who expired on this day include General Tom Thumb (1883), Anton Chekhov (1904), Hermann Emil Fischer (1919; Nobel Laureate), and General John J. Pershing (1948).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is practicing obscurantism, but, as one might expect, it has something to do with food. Malgorzata explains:

Hili’s heard a new word “imponderables” and she liked it. She thought it means “important”, “indispensable”. You know cats: they have a mind of their own and Hili likes to brag about her superior intellect. So when Andrzej was supposed to go shopping she wanted to remind him about “imponderables”.

Hili: Let’s not forget about imponderables.
A: Which ones?
Hili: The most important ones.
A: Most important for whom?
Hili: For me.

In Polish:
Hili: Nie zapominajmy o imponderabiliach.
Ja: Których?
Hili: Tych najważniejszych.
Ja: Dla kogo najważniejszych?
Hili: Dla mnie.

A tweet from Grania, who notes something I missed in yesterday’s post. As she said, “A tweet pointing out an inconsistency in trans activism: either trans women are women or they are not. You can’t claim that they are for the purposes of bathroom usage and being assigned prisons and then claim they are a special “sui generis” class when it comes to being cast in a movie.”

Now Scarlet Johansson was to play a trans man before she was forced to resign from that role in the movie “Rub and Tug,” but the point is the same, because the same opporobrium would have come down on a cis male actor who wanted to play that role. You can’t say a trans man is both a “genuine man” and in a “special class of man.”

Also from Grania, an Official baby raven at the Tower of London:

Tweets from Matthew:

Wild pig and young. How many teats does that mom have?

Please be sure to watch this lovely story of a whale rescue. Who can say that the whale didn’t feel gratitude? As Matthew said, the world would be a better place if it had the Dodo Philosophy, and I agree:

Be sure to watch the beetle step delicately over moss:

This is a form of mimicry new to me: a beetle can reverse its elytra (wing covers) to become a bee mimic when necessary!

The tailless whip scorpion from yesterday lets its babies go:

A disturbing display in a bookstore:

I’d love an office like this!

The Trump protests continue in the UK, but do they do more than express outrage?

From Heather Hastie, an Egyptian tomb throne:

More evidence that modern pop/rock sucks

July 14, 2018 • 11:00 am

This is why modern pop music sucks so bad: a song this execrable can nevertheless get a lot of press and become a hit. You can send me all the songs you want to tell me that music as good as that of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Band, Motown, and so on still exist, but just aren’t as noticed, but I’ve yet to be convinced. Rock and pop are dead, expired: they sing with the choir invisible.

The song at issue today is Ariana Grande Latte’s “God is a Woman,” a song that, to use the parlance, just “dropped.”  It’s not the paean to feminism that you might expect, but rather a paean to women’s sexuality, which makes them gods. (Or rather, Grande Latte is so good at sex that she makes men believe she’s god.) As Rolling Stone noted,

The video for the tune features Grande sitting atop the world, manipulating clouds and space as she intertwines sexuality and spirituality themes. “God Is a Woman” closes out with Grande taking God’s place and Eve taking Adam’s in the Michelangelo fresco “The Creation of Adam.”

“You, you love it how I move you/ You love it how I touch you, my one,” she sings. “When all is said and done/ You will believe God is a woman.” The song also features a mid-song Pulp Fiction-inspired monologue delivered by Madonna.

The lyrics are in the second video, and oy, do they suck! 

What is wrong with this song? The tune is forgettable, the words are lame, and it’s heavily autotuned (see the two-part Forbes piece, “Ariana Grande can’t sing as well as you think she can” (part 1, part 2). Twenty years from now it will be forgotten, and you’ll never hear it played as an “oldie.”

I suppose the video, with its hypersexualized songstress, is marginally entertaining, but that’s about it.  The issue is, as Forbes notes, that Grande Latte really does have a good voice, so it doesn’t need to be autotuned, which just puts in the bin with every other singer who’s autotuning the hell out of their music, producing a vocally (and musically) homogeneous musical blancmange. And, of course, the song itself resembles what comes out of the south end of a bull facing north.

HuffPo, of course, since it suffers from a deficit of taste—as well as a worship of certain specified idols like Samantha Bee and Grande Latte—has gone over the top in extolling this tripe:

For a more informed series of opinions on why rock music is dead, musician Rick Beato and his colleagues have made three videos worth hearing, “What killed rock and roll?“, “Top 20 songs today vs. 1998: Better or worse?“, and “Is rock music dead?”  And check out my much-commented-on post, “In what world is THIS good music?“.

 

Caturday felids: Cat reviews books, cat maze, toilet roll toys for cats, and (lagniappe) a human-faced cat

July 14, 2018 • 9:00 am

Over at Book Riot, Emily Poulson has a post in which her cat Sylvia reviews books. Here are three of the reviews:

 

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A couple made a complicated maze for their cat, and, amazingly, the cat found its way out with very little trouble. I count only 53 seconds! At the end you get to see a cat’s-eye view.  You can find everything on the Internet!

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if you’re bored and have some empty cardboard toilet rolls (who doesn’t?), here are seven things you can make with them to amuse your cat.

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Lagniappe: this cat does look like a human, but I’m not convinced that it’s a real cat rather than a montage job. What do you think?

h/t: Su, Tom, Tim G.

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 14, 2018 • 7:30 am

Reader Anne-Marie Cournoyer in Montreal sent some photos from around her house and her feeding station, “Le Cafe Sauvage” (motto: “Do not eat the customers.” Her noted and IDs are indented:

Mourning Dove – Zenaida macroura: a very nice couple I must say.

Red-winged Blackbird – Agelaius phoeniceus: Behind our house there is a cycling path. And some males have been chasing and attacking cyclists inadvertently venturing too close to their nests.

And a female red-winged feeding the young one. 

A proud Common Grackle – Quiscalus quiscula:

An American Robin – Turdus migratorius holding his meal to take-out…

Photos from nearby:

These photos I took at the Récréoparc de la ville de Ste-Catherine on the south-shore. An ideal stop for migratory birds.

Some photos of a Double-crested Cormorant – Phalacrocorax auritus. A happy fisher! I was amazed by the look of his wet feathered body: part bird, part fish!

A sunbathing monsieur Siffleux (groundhog) – Marmota monax.

A Song Sparrow – Melospiza melodia. That is my best guess. I may be wrong with the name, but what a lovely song! 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

July 14, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s the weekend: Saturday, July 14, 2018, which also happens to be Bastille Day in France. It’s also National Grand Marnier Day (in honor of France?), a drink that’s a great accompaniment to a fine Cuban cigar. It is still warm in Chicago, but won’t equal yesterday’s steambath of a day: today’s high will be around 77° F (25°C). Yesterday the high was in the mid-90s, with high humidity. Even the ducks lost their appetite.

On this day in 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille prison, even though it had but seven inmates. It was the signal that set off the French Revolution. On July 14, 1865, Edward Whymper and his party made the first ascent of the Matterhorn, with four of the party of seven dying on the descent after a rope broke. Here’s a famous picture of the accident: by Gustave Doré:

On July 14, 1881, Sheriff Pat Garrett shot the outlaw Billy the Kid in New Mexico. The Kid, who had killed eight people, was just 21.  Here’s the only known authenticated picture of Billy, a ferrotype:

On this day in 1933, two things changed in Nazi Germany: the government banned all political parties except the Nazi Party, and the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was passed, calling for the forced sterilization of those deemed “mentally defective.” That quickly led to the execution of those people, and then others.  On July 14, 1960, Jane Goodall arrived at the Gombe Stream Reserve in what is today Tanzania to begin her studies of wild chimpanzees.  Finally, on this day in 1976, Canada abolished capital punishment.

Very few notables were either born or died on July 14. The former include Gustav Klimt (1862), Woody Guthrie (1912), Ingmar Bergman (1918) and Jerry Rubin (1938). Those who died on this day include Billy the Kid (1881; see above). Klimt was an ailurophile, as seen below:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili thinks she’s getting insufficient petting from Elzbieta:

Elżbieta: You like being petted.
Hili: Yes, but I’m still not satisfied.
In Polish:
Elżbieta: Lubisz jak cię głaszczą.
Hili: Tak, ale nie jestem jeszcze usatysfakcjonowana.

A tweet from reader Barry, who claims that this is “a candidate for my all time favorite cat video.” Close!

https://twitter.com/shit_reviews/status/1017776792046919682

Tweets from Matthew: a tailless whip scorpion and her hitchhiking family:

Genet release!

https://twitter.com/WildliferSteph/status/1017683633715470337

Deer begin practicing their male-male competition for mates when very young:

I was unaware of this, but it’s odious if true. Read the editorial from the now unemployed Liz Spayd here.

But what was so big?

More Buster Keaton, a great favorite of Dr. Cobb:

Be sure to see the video at the free Facebook link. Gulls go a long way for a snack!

I like this pair:

https://twitter.com/jjvincent/status/1017363560928890880

Spot the bat!:

From Grania: More anti-Trump protests in the UK:

And the Germans get in on the act:

But the famous anti-SJW troll Godfrey Elfwick has a snarky (but true) remark:

https://twitter.com/RealElfwick/status/1017693433731960839

Friday: Duck report

July 13, 2018 • 2:45 pm

It’s a steamy Friday, and the ducks are wilted, napping on their island. Their appetites even seem to have flagged, though they may just be foraging on their own. All eight ducklings are in good nick, and their wings are getting large; they even flap them just to test them out. It won’t be long now, and I wish dearly that I could see a duck’s first flight. That’s not likely, but I’m enjoying my last few weeks with them.

Here are a few pictures taken yesterday and today.

This is what I encountered yesterday morning after whistling. They all swam toward me in a line, with Honey bringing up the rear. I suspect Honey’s following position helps her keep a better eye on her brood.

Mealworm and duck pellet time. You can pick Honey out because of her whiter tail (top), but I swear that she’s not much larger than her offspring now.

Mom with her mottled bill. The black triangle at junction of the left side of her bill and her face is a distinguishing mark:

Mom watching her young ‘uns dabble and preen:

The Good Mother Duck. I think she looks fine—not too skinny since I’ve been feeding her up.

Spot the hen! I’m wondering if Honey hasn’t started her molt already, as that looks like a primary feather on the island behind her, and her wings look shorter. Birdy readers, what do you think?

Finally, feeding time in this morning’s darkness. Turtles abound, cleaning up the uneaten mealworms and pellets, so nothing is wasted. Can you spot Honey here?

And remember, on May 22 the ducklings looked like this: