We’re at the start of another week, but at the end of January: it’s Monday, January 29, 2008, and National Corn Chip Day. In the midlands, it’s Kansas Day, celebrating the day when that state was admitted to the Union in 1861. Posting may be light today as I don’t have much to say.

On this day in 1845, Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven” was published in the Evening Mirror in New York; it was the first of his published works to bear his name. On January 29 1886, Karl Benz (yes, that Benz) received a patent for the first successful automobile powered by gasoline. In 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame opened with its first inductees, and a powerful crew they were: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner. I wonder how they’d fare in today’s game.  In 1967, according to Wikipedia, “The ‘ultimate high’ of the hippie era, the Mantra-Rock Dance, took place in San Francisco and features Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg.” Sadly, I don’t remember this at all, but here’s the poster:

Sixteen years ago, George W. Bush gave the State of the Union address, naming regimes that sponsored terrorism as the “Axis of evil”; they included Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Here’s an event I remember well: on January 29, 2009, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was removed from office for multiple instances of corruption. He was jailed in 2012, and will serve at least 12 years before he’s eligible for parole. Blagojevich is the fourth Illinois governor to go to prison, all in my lifetime and two while I was living here.

Notables born on this day include Emanuel Swedenborg (1688), Anton Chekhov (1860), W. C. Fields (1880), Abdus Salam (1926; he was the first Muslim and first Pakistani to get a Nobel Prize in science, which he shared with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg), Germaine Greer (1939), Oprah Winfrey (1954, not our next President), and Heather Graham (1970).  Those who expired on January 29 include Edward Lear (1888), H. L. Mencken (1956), Fritz Kreisler (1962), Alan Ladd (1964), Margaret Truman (2008), Colleen McCullough (2015), and Rod McKuen (2015).

Ladd, born in 1913, starred in lots of movies, including the Western “Shane”.  Here he is in Greece (left) with my father on the Acropolis (Parthenon in the background), probably in 1956. We were all living there then, and (as I’ve mentioned before), my father helped get Army jeeps and fuel for the movie “Boy on a Dolphin“, also starring Sophia Loren.  More on my father later today:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili can’t even. . .

Hili: I can’t find words.

A: Did you look for them?

Hili: Not really.

Hili: Nie znajduję słów.
Ja: A szukałaś?
Hili: Nie specjalnie.

Leon: I’m sniffing big game.

His little footprints:

And it was so sunny in Winnipeg yesterday that Gus had to shield his eyes while sleeping on the Katzenbaum:

Here are tweets unearthed by Grania:

pic.twitter.com/drybjqKeRi

— Ben Sixsmith (@BDSixsmith) January 28, 2018

Look at the size of these bat skulls!

British bats on my fingers. In descending order: common pipistrelle, brown long eared bat and natterer's bat. pic.twitter.com/BdHMLsMMdX

— Beth Windle (@WindleBeth) January 27, 2018

Here, as Grania said, is a “super-cute robot that looks like WALL-E. Life is imitating art here.”

🐜🤖 Meet Zebro. These autonomous swarm robots could soon be working together to help find earthquake survivors (developed by @TUDelft) 🐜🤖 pic.twitter.com/3SIgCOjZtx

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) January 28, 2018

Here’s Pixar’s Wall-E:

A tweet found by Matthew: look at that lady’s soccer skills! UPDATE: A reader notes a correction here; “The artist should be identified as Maria Nilda Pereira Passos.  In an interview last weekend on Brazilian television, she revealed her age to be 54.”

Just found out my 67 year old great aunt is better than sissoko at football pic.twitter.com/HUho9EKiHi

— Bailey Kontor (@Baileykontor) January 26, 2018

Various bits by Jerry & Grania

Greetings from a very cold Europe!

It's so cold outside that the ghost that haunted the house froze to death pic.twitter.com/pwYST9CpOJ

— Faces in Things (@FacesPics) December 27, 2017

Jerry’s sad because today is already the 5th day of Koynezaa (it ends tomorrow on my birthday), and greetings have been few on the ground and presents nonexistent! Do remember this six day holiday that celebrates The Wonder that is Coyne! For my birthday, instead of extorting readers or Facebook friends to donate to my favorite charity, I simply ask them to give fusses to a stray cat (or, if you really want to make me happy, adopt one).

Today’s Google Doodle in India celebrates the 113th birthday of Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, or, in the beautiful and local Kannada script, ಕುಪ್ಪಳಿ ವೆಂಕಟಪ್ಪ ಪುಟ್ಟಪ್ಪ. Also known as Kuvempu, Wikipedia describes Puttapa as “an Indian Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Critic and Thinker. He is widely regarded as the greatest Kannada Poet of the 20th century. He is the first among Kannada writers to be decorated with the prestigious Dnyanpith Award.”  Poetry is a big deal in India—much bigger than in America—and great poets are widely celebrated. Here’s the Doodle.

Kannada, by the way, is the local language of Karnataka, which includes Bangalore. There are so many languages in India that many people from different areas communicate in English or Hindi, but often locals in some areas don’t speak Hindi well.

A cat zinger from the official Downing Street Mouser.

For those of you lucky enough to still be off work, you'll be generally unaware what day it is and will be spending a lot of time laying around and eating. Congratulations, you've become a cat

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) December 28, 2017

In nearby Wloclawek, Leon is sad as he didn’t get any presents, which is weird because Hiroko kindly sent him (and Hili) some “cat’s snacks” from Japan, as well as some dog treats for Cyrus. When I asked Malgorzata why Leon was sad when he had gotten presents, she responded, “You didn’t notice the word ‘today’. Leon got presents every day during the holiday. Now, when the holiday is over, he is complaining.”

Leon: What, no presents today?!!!

And in Winnipeg we have a special Christmas Gus photo. As his staff notes:

Gus demonstrates the latest thing in cat toys. (There is a pile of half a dozen toy mice just outside the picture frame…)

Here’s sweet story from The Dodo about a hero vet who looks after animals who have “fallen on hard times“.

This surgeon comforted an orphaned wombat in the middle of the night ❤️ https://t.co/UhgLqw1Bis pic.twitter.com/Moxs9c9YlR

— The Dodo (@dodo) December 28, 2017

And from Poland the inscrutable couple are having an ineffable conversation. I think.

Hili: What’s the time?
Cyrus: Nine o’clock.
Hili: You are just guessing.

In Polish:

Hili: Która może być godzina?
Cyrus: Dziewiąta.
Hili: Zgadujesz.

Hat-tip: Matthew

Good morning on Tuesday, November 21, 2017. I am back in Chicago for about three weeks until the three-week Jerry Coyne ” Ganapati All India Tour” takes place, but I’ll need the rest. Today is National Cranberry Day, a food once eaten only on Thanksgiving but now the basis of a tasty beverage. It’s also a UN holiday: World Television Day.

Oh, and I want to recommend a movie I watcned on the Houston-Chicago leg of my flight: “Fences” (2016), a terrific saga of a black family in 1950s Pittsburgh, with the screenplay by August Wilson (who first wrote it as a Pulitzer-Prize winning play) and directed by and starring Denzel Washington as the hard-ass paterfamilias and Viola Davis as his wife. The film got a 94% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars (Davis won in the last category). What stood out for me in the screenplay was the superb dialogue. It is a Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) Movie Recommendation™. I’d never even heard of it until I saw it on the entertainment menu on my flight.

On this day in 1676, the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer gave the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light, which was about 75% of the correct value. On November 21, 1877, Thomas Edison announced the invention of the phonograph. In 1905, Einstein’s paper giving the famous formula, E = mc², was published in the journal Annalen der Physik. I seem to remember digging out that paper and showing the formula, which wasn’t exactly E = mc² but a verbal equivalent, but I can’t be arsed to look up my post. On this day in 1920 it was “Bloody Sunday” in Dublin, an event orchestrated by Michael Collins’s IRA that wound up killing 32 people. In 1953, the British Natural History Museum formally announced that the Piltdown Man skull was a hoax. On this day in 1977, according to Wikipedia, “Minister of Internal Affairs Allan Highet announces that the national anthems of New Zealand shall be the traditional anthem “God Save the Queen” and “God Defend New Zealand”. I guess He did, on both counts. Is there any other country with two national anthems?

The Piltdown Man hoax was debunked by scientists, but is still used by creationists to demonstrate how “science can be fooled”. If you want to see a decent documentary on it, and the persistent question “who perpetrated this hoax?”, see this 43-minute job:

Notables born on this day include Voltaire (1694), René Magritte (1898), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902), Coleman Hawkins (1904), Stan Musial (1920; I once saw him play), Dr. John (1940), Goldie Hawn (1945), and Björk (1965). Deaths were sparese on this day: those who died on November 21 include physics Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam (1998).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has abandoned philosophy to return to her most important concern:

A: Why did you close your eyes?

Hili: I’m imagining what I’m going to see on this plate when I open them.

Ja: Czemu masz zamknięte oczy?
Hili: Wyobrażam sobie co zobaczę na tym talerzu jak je otworzę.

It’s turned cold around Dobrzyn, and even Leon, who hikes in the snow, finds it too chilly for his liking:

Leon: I think it’s too cold for walks.

It’s a good thing Gus reads so many languages. Otherwise he might not have known this was a cat bed. 🙂

Yes, it’s Monday again, September 11, 2017, and thus the infamous “9/11″—the 16th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. And it’s another chilly and overcast day in Dobrzyn. Hili was out all night, but this morning we found her warmly ensconced in her “nest” (a blanket formed into a cup) on the veranda. It’s National Hot Cross Buns Day, a food rarely seen in America, and one I’ve eaten only overseas.

I am heading to Gdansk (Danzig) early tomorrow morning to give a talk, and posting will be very light after today (I return to Warsaw on Friday). Grania will be handling the Hili dialogues.

On September 11, 1296, during the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Scots, led by William “FREEDOM!” Wallace and Andrew Moray, defeated a much larger English force at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Moray was killed in the fighting and in 1305 Wallace was captured and executed—you know the grisly details.  On this day in 1609, Henry Hudson discovered the island of Manhattan, inhabited by Native Americans. In 1857, September 11 marked the end of the four-day Mountain Meadows Massacre in which Mormons, with the help of Native Americans, killed 120 people in a wagon train heading for California. Only 17 people were spared, all children younger than seven. On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende was removed from power by a coup led by Augusto Pinochet, with Allende committing suicide with a rifle.

On this day in 1985, Peter Rose broke Ty Cobb’s career record of hits in baseball,  getting his 4,192nd hit—a single against the San Diego Padres. It is likely that Rose used “corked bats” (bats hollowed out and replaced with cork to make them lighter) in pursuit of this record.  His total was 4,256 hits, but he was later ruled ineligible for the Hall of Fame because of his betting on baseball, and also went to prison for tax evasion. Here’s his record-breaking hit:

Finally, on this day in 2015, four Americans were killed on an attack of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, an event that was to dog the future campaigns of Hillary Clinton, who at the time was Secretary of State.

Notables born in this day include Carl Zeiss (1816), O. Henry (1862), D. H. Lawrence (1885), Mickey Hart (1943), Leo Kottke (1945) and Moby (1965; what happened to him?). Those who died on this day include four heads of state: Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1948), Jan Smuts (1950), Nikita Khrushchev (1971), and Salvador Allende (1973; see above), as well as Lorne Greene and Peter Tosh (both 1987). Finally on this day in 2001, 3996 people died in the terrorist attacks in New York, with another 6,000 people injured. Those are too many people to list here, but spare a thought for them and their families.

Meanwhile here in Dobrzyn, Hili has sniffed out something suspicious:

Hili: Could something be hiding here?

A: I doubt it.

Hili: Still, you have to check everything.

Hili: Czy tam mogło się coś schować?
Ja: Wątpię.
Hili: Trzeba jednak wszystko sprawdzać.

Nearby, Leon is thinking Deep Thoughts:

Leon: I have to think through a few things.

In Polish: “Muszę przemyśleć parę spraw.”

Out in Winnipeg, yesterday was “Gusday,” the day when he gets special fusses and extra ‘nip:

Gus: “I do believe that I smell catnip.”

Reader Charleen sent a catpuccino:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/903327840820744193

Found by Matthew Cobb, a case of art imitating life. Could you bear to drink one of these?

3D Latte Art from Reissue Cafe pic.twitter.com/FBju3Bz4IJ

— 日本 (@AestheticsJapan) September 11, 2017

Once again I’ve stolen a tw**t from Heather Hastie’s daily compendium. This one shows a smart cat who’s learned exactly what to do to cop a cuddle:

https://twitter.com/planetepics/status/906822811452411904

And reader jsp sent this vet’s sign, which conveys a profound truth:

Here we are at Monday again: August 14, 2017, and it’s one week till the big solar eclipse. It won’t be total in Chicago (though it will  be downstate), but it’ll be pretty good, and I hope it’s not cloudy that day. If you live in the U.S. and want to see how the eclipse will look from where you live, go here.  Here’s what the near-totality will look like in Chicago (it also gives time lapse views, so you can know when to start looking):

August 14 is National Creamsicle Day, a favorite treat of my youth (it’s a bar of vanilla ice on a stick, but covered by what seems to be orange sherbet). I don’t know if they even make them any more, but given that they’re still the subject of a holiday, I expect they do. It’s also Independence Day in Pakistan, celebrating the Partition that occurred on midnight of that day (the midnight spanning the 14th and 15th).

On this day in 1935,  Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, a blatant act of socialism (which some seem to forget), creating a government pension for all people who had worked. On August 14, 1945, Japan accepted the allied terms of surrender (it was August 15 in Japan), and the formal surrender took place September 2 on the U.S. battleship Missouri. Here’s a photo of the formal surrender:

Exactly two years later, Pakistan became independent from the British Empire. On August 14, 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show opened in London, starting the longest run of any motion picture in history. In 1980, Lech Wałęsa led the famous strike at the shipyards in Gdańsk, Poland—a place I’ll visit on my trip in September (the city, not the shipyards).

Notables born on this day include John Galsworthy (1867), Lina Wertmüller (1928), David Crosby (1941), Steve Martin (1945), Gary Larson (1950), Emannuelle Béart (1963), Halle Berry (1966), and Tim Tebow (1987). Those who died on this day include William Randolph Hearst (1951) and Bertolt Brecht (1956). All biologists (and many others) love Larson’s cartoons, and it’s very sad that he hung up his pen. Here’s one of my favorites; feel free to insert yours below (you can see many cat cartoons here):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili senses the onset of winter, a season she hates:

Hili: I can imagine that.

A: What can you imagine?

Hili: Winter and snow.

A: But you prefer summer.

Hili: Yes, imagination spoils all pleasure.

Hili; Mogę to sobie wyobrazić.
Ja: Co takiego?
Hili: Zimę i śnieg.
Ja: Ale ty wolisz lato.
Hili: Tak, wyobraźnia psuje całą przyjemność.

Leon: How many changes there have been here!

Yesterday it was hot in Winnipeg, and Gus was snoozing outdoors in the heat:

Finally, Matthew Cobb sent a tw**t showing a video of a rare but beautiful leucistic (not albino) moose in Sweden. I hope the hunters leave it alone!

MOOSE NEWSFLASH: Rare white moose spotted in Sweden https://t.co/7xFciJq2T6 via @BBCWorld / Be safe, you beautiful moose! #LLAP

— Kathryn Brusco (@KathrynBruscoBk) August 13, 2017

Good morning on a rainy Chicago Saturday; it’s July 22, 2017, and National Penuche Day. What’s that, you ask? It’s “a fudge-like candy made from brown sugar, butter, and milk, using no flavorings except for vanilla. Penuche often has a tannish color, and is lighter than regular fudge. It is formed by the caramelization of brown sugar, thus its flavor is said to be reminiscent of caramel. Nuts, especially pecans, are often added to penuche for texture, especially in the making of penuche candies.” Also this: “It is primarily a regional food, found in New England and some places in the Southern United States, though in the latter it goes by different names, usually ‘brown sugar fudge candy’”. Oy, my kishkes! I’ve never had the stuff; have you?

According to Wikipedia, it’s also Pi Approximation Day, because the fraction 22/7 (not the American way of writing today’s date, is “a common approximation of π, which is accurate to two decimal places and dates from Archimedes.”

On this day in 1893,  Katharine Lee Bates wrote the unofficial U.S. national anthem,  “America the Beautiful” after admiring the view from atop Pikes Peak in Colorado. It’s a much better song than “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which strikes me as dreadful.  On July 22, 1933,  Aviator Wiley Post returned to New York City after finishing the first solo flight around the world. It took him seven days, 18 hours and 49 minutes. In 1942, the Holocaust formally began with the removal of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, many of whom went to Auschwitz. On this day in 1983, martial law in Poland was revoked. And exactly six years ago today, Anders Breivik committed two terrorist attacks in Norway: a bomb blast in Oslo, killing 8 and injuring 209, and the second an attack at a youth camp on the island of Utøya, killing 69 and injuring 110.

Notables born on this day include Emma Lazarus (1849), Edward Hopper (1882), Bob Dole (1923), Tom Robbins (1932) and Don Henley (1947). Here’s a famous painting by Hopper with a later addition by someone from the Hopper School:

Those who died on July 22 include John Dillinger (1934; shot down by The Law in Chicago) and Carl Sandburg (1967; it’s the 50th anniversary of his death). In honor of Sandburg’s deathiversary, here’s his well known poem “Fog” (and this one’s for real):

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Hili: It’s said that a French intellectual can think for many hours without a break.

A: So they say.

Hili: I’ll better go to sleep because I’m already tired with thinking.

Hili: Podobno francuski intelektualista potrafi myśleć wiele godzin bez przerwy.
Ja: Tak mówią.
Hili: To ja się raczej prześpię, bo już jestem zmęczona tym myśleniem.

Nearby, Leon is doing Important Cat Stuff again:

Leon: I have to take care of a lot of feline things before nightfall.

Finally, we have a new picture of Gus; staff member Taskin explains:

The caption I give it, “Look up, look waaaaaay up,” is a reference to a Canadian children’s show that folks of my generation may remember. 🙂

If you want to see the reference it’s here. Start about 1:20 the critical moment is about 1:45. Funny how slow this show moves compared to current shows. I loved it as a kid, though.

Good morning! It’s Friday again, July 21, 2017, and I’ve survived my cortisone shot (it wasn’t too bad). If the pain in my shoulder doesn’t abate in a week, it’s physical therapy for Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus). Still, it’s curable and I’ll live. It’s National Crème Brûlée Day, a dessert I find tasty but insubstantial.

News today: Richard Dawkins was de-platformed in Berkeley for a scheduled book talk. I’ll post in detail about this soon.

On July 21, 1861, at the First Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, the Confederates and Union engaged in the first major battle of the Civil War. When it was over, the Confederates had won.

On this day in 1865 in Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in a duel about poker and the theft of Hickock’s watch. Wikipedia notes that this “is regarded as the first western showdown”. Hickock himself was shot in the head (from behind) while playing poker in 1876, supposedly holding the “dead man’s hand“, shown below:

An anniversary for evolutionary biology: on July 21, 1925, John Scopes, a high-school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was convicted of violating the state’s Butler act for teaching human evolution as a substitute teacher in a biology class. The judge fined him $100, but the verdict was set aside on appeal because juries and not judges were supposed to levy fines over $50.

And a banner day in space exploration: on this day in 1969, at 02:56 UTC (GMT), Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. I watched this live on television, and I’ll never forget the excitement and awe we all felt. The video below shows some highlights of the Apollo 11 mission, including Armstrong’s famous quote. It was a brave crew that undertook this landing, for they didn’t really know if the module would take off again.

Finally, on this day in 1983, thermometers recorded the world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location. On that day at Vostok Station, Antarctica, the mercury hit a low of −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F).

Notables born on this day were Ernest Hemingway (1899, committed suicide in 1961), Garry Trudeau and Cat Stevens (Yusaf Islam; both born in 1948), and Robin Williams (1951, also a suicide—in 2014). Those who died on July 21 include Robert Burns (1796), the Great Agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll (1899; he was of course really an atheist), Basil Rathbone (1967; I didn’t know he was from South Africa), astronaut Alan Shepherd (1998), and E. L. Doctorow (2015). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being petulant:

A: Aren’t you going with us to the river?

Hili: I will wait for you here, under the acacia.

A: Why?

Hili: Because I decided to.

Ja: Nie idziesz z nami nad rzekę?
Hili: Poczekam tu na was pod akacją.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Bo tak postanowiłam.

And, roaming the grounds of his future home, Leon’s beginning to have doubts about his move.

Leon: I’m not sure Whether I want to become a country cat. The species “couch cat” seems more agreeable.

A Gus picture from this afternoon. He is snoozing in the shade while I have my tea. He’s such nice company.