Category: Leon

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 27, 2020 • 6:30 am

Well, here we are back the start of the week:  n = n + 1 on Monday, July 27, 2020. Is anyone dispirited like me, or is everyone ebullient? If so, why? At least we have lots of cat pictures today: all of the Polish cats including Hili, Szaron, Leon, and the tiny new kitten Kulka.

Foodimentary says that it’s National Scotch Day, though I’m not sure Scotch is a food, but make mine a well-aged Springbank. It’s also National Creme Brulée Day (another overrated dessert in the flan family), National Chicken Finger Day (I’ve never had one), and Bagpipe Appreciation Day. In North Korea it’s Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War, marking the signing of the Korean Armistice agreement in 1953 (we’re still technically at war with the DPRK), and in the US it’s National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day.

News of the Day: There are renewed calls to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as it’s named after a Confederate general and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Normally I’d favor the renaming (one suggestion is to rename it the John Lewis Bridge), but the old name is so imbued with history that I think it should stay. The bridge is the site of “Bloody Sunday”—actually three Sundays in 1965 on which civil rights activists tried to march from Selma to Montgomery and were attacked by police. It was the sight of that police brutality that helped propel passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The contrast between the segregationism embodied in the bridge’s name and its role in furthering civil rights suggests that the name should stay not as a memorial to the Confederacy, but to the great struggle for civil rights.

And there was this: John Lewis’s body ferried in a caisson over the bridge where, 55 years ago, police fractured his skull with a billy club.

The name is important here. If it’s renamed, the letters should nevertheless stay.

Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he will not vote to confirm any new Supreme Court nominees unless they vow to overturn Roe v. Wade. Although there are no Court openings in the offing, there are rumors that Clarence Thomas could retire, and of course there’s always RBG’s health.  But what about not voting on a President’s nominees in an election year, a Republican strategy that killed Obama’s nominee? Mitch McConnell pulls a 180:

Although no vacancy is imminent, White House officials and some top Republicans have privately discussed the possibility that Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative appointed by George H.W. Bush, could retire.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked then-President Barack Obama from making an election-year appointment to the Supreme Court in 2016. He denied Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, a confirmation hearing, saying the next president should make the choice.

But McConnell has said he would push through a Trump nominee this year, should an opening occur. The difference from 2016, he maintains, is that now the same political party controls the White House and Senate.

How is that relevant?

The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is finally getting canceled, including in this piece in the Washington Post, which says that the novel is still “reinforcing and normalizing a culture of oppression.” But what are the truths about white people that, according to author Errin Haines, the novel tells? That white folks are all racist, imbued with privilege, perpetrators of systemic racism, and unwilling to lift a finger to help people of color. This is a shameful piece of propaganda by the Post.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 146,754, an increase of about 400 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 648,465, an increase of about 4400 deaths from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on July 27 include:

  • 1299 – According to Edward Gibbon, Osman I invades the territory of Nicomedia for the first time, usually considered to be the founding day of the Ottoman state.
  • 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 “enemies of the Revolution”.
  • 1866 – The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully completed, stretching from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.

It still amazes me that several thousand miles of cable can be strung between continents without breaking it. But it was done. Here’s a painting of the landing of the cable:

(From Wikipedia): Landing of the Atlantic Cable of 1866, Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, by Robert Charles Dudley, 1866.

According to this biography, which I read recently, van Gogh did not shoot himself, but was shot by a rowdy kid in his village. Read the appendix to see the evidence, which I found pretty convincing.

  • 1919 – The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period.

The riots began when a group of black men entered a segregated area of the 29th Street Beach. Things mushroomed from there. Here are two pictures from Wikipedia with its captions:

A fifth picture from the series ; an African American man assaulted with stones during the Chicago Race Riot.[34] A subsequent 6th[1] and 7th[2] pictures show the arrival of police officers and the victim.
A white gang looking for African Americans during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. This and a subsequent picture at The Crisis Magazine 1919 Vol 18 No. 6 is part of a series of the Chicago race riots of 1919.

Banting, along with John Macleod, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1923. Charles Best, who co-discovered the hormone, should also have been honored but wasn’t. Best did give him half of his share of the Prize.

  • 1953 – Cessation of hostilities is achieved in the Korean War when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice.
  • 1974 – Watergate scandal: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.
  • 1987 – RMS Titanic Inc. begins the first expedited salvage of wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

Some of the artifacts have been auctioned off, including this one, which looks to me like a teapot:

Most of us remember that Richard Jewell was falsely accused of the bombing, which killed one person. Later it was found that Eric Rudolph did the deed, along with other bombings, and Rudolph is serving four consecutive life sentences in a Supermax prison.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1768 – Charlotte Corday, French assassin of Jean-Paul Marat (d. 1793)
  • 1870 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian (d. 1953)
  • 1881 – Hans Fischer, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1945)
  • 1905 – Leo Durocher, American baseball player and manager (d. 1991)
  • 1939 – William Eggleston, American photographer and academic

Eggleston, who owns 300 Leica cameras, was a master at color landscape photography, though the landscapes are urban, like this one:

Here’s a 7.5-minute video of A-Rod’s career highlights. He’s not in the Hall of Fame, perhaps because he used performance-enhancing steroids for a time and was suspended from baseball for a year.

Those who conked on July 27 include:

  • 1946 – Gertrude Stein, American novelist, poet, and playwright (b. 1874)
  • 1980 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iranian king (b. 1919)
  • 2003 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, comedian, television personality, and businessman (b. 1903)
  • 2017 – Sam Shepard, American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director (b.1943)

Here’s Shepard in Terrence Malick’s great film “Days of Heaven” (1978), one of the most beautiful movies ever photographed. This is the scene where locusts take over the farm:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, outside, sees Szaron, inside, napping on her blanket:

Hili: What will it come to?
A: I don’t understand.
Hili: This cultural appropriation.
In Polish:
Hili: Dokąd to dojdzie?
Ja: Nie rozumiem.
Hili: To kulturowe zawłaszczenie.

Upstairs, Paulina plays with the new kittten Kulka, who apparently is now a permanent resident:

Caption: Lady with a fast escaping kitten.

In Polish: Dama z szybko uciekającym małym kotem.

When I was told that Kulka was a fearless kitten, and climbed the lilac bush up to the second floor of the house, I demanded pictures. Paulina obliged with these four.  Kulka weights only half a kilo (one pound!):

Caption: Photos taken by Paulina (on order from Chicago). (In Polish: Zdjęcia zrobione przez Paulinę [na zamówienie z Chicago]). 

And nearby, Leon bewails the new week:

Leon: Monday again?

In Polish: Znów poniedziałek?

A groaner from Bruce:

Two from Jesus of the Day:

From Simon: the world’s best dad:

https://twitter.com/xavierkatana/status/1287378913149296640?s=20

Tweets from Matthew. First, Duckling Rush Hour at Marsh Farm:

. . . and an adorable kitten breakfast. Sound up to hear the good mews:

A tweet from Matthew showing how Gosling, Wilkins, and Franklin took the photos that helped show that DNA was a double helix. Condoms and paper clips are essential.

More examples of cancel culture. And they didn’t even include Rebecca Tuvel:

Another tweet from Matthew showing a durable Frenchwoman:

Okay, what are these rabbits doing? Mating? Fighting? Or playing?

A monument to Donald Trump in Northern Ireland:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 15, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a pandemic Hump Day: Wednesday, July 15, 2020: National Tapioca Pudding Day. It’s also Orange Chicken Day (cultural appropriation), I Love Horses Day, and National Respect Canada Day (Canada don’t get no respect, sheesh!) It’s also Saint Swithun’s Day, and, as the legend goes, “According to tradition, if it rains on Saint Swithun’s bridge (Winchester) on his feast day (15 July) it will continue for forty days.”

And, if you’re an American, your income taxes are due today, thanks to the three-month pandemic extension.

News of the Day: Liberal Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized—again—this time for an infection. If you’re like me, you’re feeling like a bad person for hoping that she hangs on until at least November (assuming that the lame-duck Senate won’t confirm a Trump appointee), because although you don’t want her to die, you especially don’t want her to die in the next six months.

With Trump against him, Jeff Sessions was soundly defeated in the Republican primary race for the Senate seat from Alabama.

As the Washington Redskins football team gets a new name, and rightly so, the offended aren’t appeased. Now the “Texas Rangers” name has to go too, because they are claimed to have oppressed minorities in the past. See the op-ed at the increasingly unreadable Washington Post.

The Trump administration has ditched its plans to force foreign college students to go home if their universities  (like Harvard) plan only online classes this fall.

With 132 deaths yesterday, Florida broke its record for the most deaths in a single day. The state will likely close down again. And so should Disney World.

In an op-ed in today’s NYT, a professor of public health at Tulane calls for a comprehensive (re)shutdown of America lest we face a very deadly resurgence of the virus this fall and winter.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 136,356, an increase of about 1000 deaths over yesterday’s report (thanks, Florida!). The world death toll now stands at 578,912, an increase of about 6,200 from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on July 15 include:

With the same inscription in ancient Greek, hieroglyphics, and Demotic script, the stone was essential in helping decipher hieroglyphics (photo below; it resides in the British Museum):

No, it’s still here as this Monty Python skit shows (part 2 is here):

  • 1838 – Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.
  • 1910 – In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer’s disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.
  • 1975 – Space Race: Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets.
  • 2002 – “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and to possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

Here’s Lindh, with the Wikipedia caption: “Lindh photographed after being transported to Camp Rhino.” After a bit more than 16 years in prison, he was released in May, 2019:

And the anniversary of mass futile arguing, shaming, and name-calling:

  • 2006 – Twitter, later one of the largest social media platforms in the world, is launched.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1573 – Inigo Jones, English architect, designed the Queen’s House (d. 1652)
  • 1606 – Rembrandt, Dutch painter and etcher (d. 1669)
  • 1919 – Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish British novelist and philosopher (d. 1999)
  • 1922 – Leon M. Lederman, American physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
  • 1928 – Carl Woese, American microbiologist and biophysicist (d. 2012)
  • 1930 – Jacques Derrida, Algerian-French philosopher and academic, obscurantist and corroder of modern discourse (d. 2004)
  • 1943 – Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Northern Irish astrophysicist, astronomer, and academic
  • 1946 – Linda Ronstadt, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress

Here’s the only Rembrandt I could find with a cat, “Virgin and Child with Cat” (1564). Can you spot the kitty? (In my view, Rembrandt was the greatest painter of all time.)

Those who expired on July 15 include:

Checkhov, a very great writer, died at only 44 of tuberculosis. Here he is with the venerable Tolstoy in Yalta (1900). What talent in this picture!:

 

  • 1929 – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Austrian author, poet, and playwright (b. 1874)
  • 1948 – John J. Pershing, American general (b. 1860)
  • 1997 – Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer, founded Versace (b. 1946)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej advises Hili to not be optimistic (remember, the far-right President won re-election the other day):

Hili: What does the future look like?
A: Rather dark until the dawn.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak się przedstawia przyszłość?
Ja: Do świtu raczej mrocznie.

In Wloclawek, Leon is helping his staff drive.

Leon:  Shall I put it in fourth gear?

In Polish: Leon: Włożyć czwórkę?

A true meme from Merilee:

From reader Charles:

Once again, Titania is way ahead of her time!

From Barry: Pandemic information and Monty Python pandemic lagniappe:

Tweets from Matthew. This one is grim:

Matthew says that this is the UK’s biggest gay newspaper.  Matthew also noted: “Indeed. It is not the Onion. The argument is that trans men can get it (obviously) and – get this – that because operated transwomen have reconstructed vaginas they should get smear tests… ”

It’s important that you know this, and it does seem credible.

Translation: “Which of you ate the salami?” It isn’t hard to guess.

This antlion “adult: looks like a jewel, says Dr. Cobb. Antlions are in the order Neuroptera along with lacewings, and are famous for their predatory larvae, not these flying adults.

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 6, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Monday, July 6, 2020, a back-to-work day and National Fried Chicken Day. I love fried chicken; please give me some now! But it’s a mess to make at home, what with oil sputtering everywhere, and I haven’t been to Harold’s, our local pullet emporium, for about six months. It’s also International Kissing Day, but only if the person you’re kissing is Covid-19 negative.

Here’s the best fried chicken in the land, at Stroud’s in Fairway, Kansas:

News of the day: Going over to the New York Times this morning to see the latest news, I was greatly put off by the even-woker-than-usual content of the paper—especially the op-eds. Here’s a sample of the madness. The Cancel Culture is in full swing. And of course the Washington Monument should go down, too, along with re-naming everything containing “Washington” and “Jefferson.”

I truly don’t know how much longer I can stand reading the Times (the Washington Post, to which I recently subscribed, is also obnoxiously woke), but what’s the alternative?

Moving on, the Washington Post reports that, for the 27th day in a row, “The rolling seven-day average for daily new cases in the United States reached a high for the 27th day in a row, climbing past 48,000 on Sunday.” And the news is even grimmer, with one expert saying that it looks like we’ve made little progress in stamping out the virus:

“We’re right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak,” former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “The difference now is that we really had one epicenter of spread when New York was going through its hardship, now we really have four major epicenters of spread: Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida, and Arizona. And Florida looks to be in the worst shape.”

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 129,938, an increase of about 250 deaths over yesterday’s report.  The world death toll now stands at 534,096, an increase of about 4200 from yesterday.

I’m famous! Nothing like a retweet by Steve Pinker to bump up the traffic on WEIT. More important, Pinker truly deserved a hearty defense against the Woke. (I’m allowed a bit of braggadocio now and then.)

Stuff that happened on July 6 includes:

  • 1348 – Pope Clement VI issues a papal bull protecting the Jews accused of having caused the Black Death.
  • 1535 – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.
  • 1854 – In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the United States Republican Party is held.
  • 1892 – Three thousand eight hundred striking steelworkers engage in a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike, leaving ten dead and dozens wounded.
  • 1917 – World War I: Arabian troops led by T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and Auda ibu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt.

Auda! He is a river to his people! Played by Anthony Quinn in the movie, here’s the brave Auda for real:

I’ve visited this annex (it’s hard now, with tickets in huge demand), but if you’re in Amsterdam, plan and order tickets well in advance to see the house and annex. Here’s a 4.5-minute video tour of the hiding place:

This was long before Rosa Parks. Although Robinson was acquitted, it was pretty much the end of his Army career, and he wasn’t allowed to see action overseas (which was good for baseball).

  • 1957 – Althea Gibson wins the Wimbledon championships, becoming the first black athlete to do so.
  • 1957 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles. 

Lennon was in the Quarry Men “skiffle group” and was introduced to Paul that evening, who sang a few songs with the group. The rest is history.

  • 2003 – The 70-metre Yevpatoria Planetary Radar sends a METI message (Cosmic Call 2) to five stars: Hip 4872, HD 245409, 55 Cancri (HD 75732), HD 10307 and 47 Ursae Majoris (HD 95128). The messages will arrive to these stars in 2036, 2040, 2044, and 2049, respectively.

Notables born on this day include:

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

Here’s Chagall’s “A Cat Transformed Into a Woman“, ca. 1928-1931:

The Cat Transformed into a Woman c.1928-31-1947 Marc Chagall 1887-1985 Presented by Lady Clerk 1947 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05759
  • 1907 – Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter and educator (d. 1954)

Kahlo’s “Self Portrait” from 1940:

  • 1912 – Heinrich Harrer, Austrian geographer and mountaineer (d. 2006)

Do read Harrer’s great book Seven Years in Tibet. 

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

Those who arrived at their terminus on July 6 include:

  • 1415 – Jan Hus, Czech priest, philosopher, and reformer (b. 1369)
  • 1916 – Odilon Redon, French painter and illustrator (b. 1840)

and here is “Bazon, the Artist’s Cat” by Redon:

 

  • 1959 – George Grosz, German painter and illustrator (b. 1893)
  • 1971 – Louis Armstrong, American singer and trumpet player (b. 1901)
  • 1998 – Roy Rogers, American cowboy, actor, and singer (b. 1911)
  • 2009 – Robert McNamara, American businessman and politician, 8th United States Secretary of Defense (b. 1916)
  • 2019 – João Gilberto, Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist, pioneer of bossa nova music style (b. 1931)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s shirking her editorial duties (or perhaps Andrzej wanted to give her a tummy rub).

A: Do you have a moment?
Hili: No, I’m very busy now.
In Polish:
Ja: Masz chwilę czasu?
Hili: Nie, jestem teraz bardzo zajęta.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon and Mietek snuggle up. A basket o’ tabbies!

But Mietek wins!

From Charles, a Mike Lukovich cartoon:

. . . and a New Yorker cartoon from Merilee: the simple joys of quarantine:

From Jesus of the Day:

Reader Barry sent a tweet from Matthew, which is technically correct though “living fossils” are generally taken to mean “a living species which looks almost exactly like an ancient species”. Anyway, it’s a crinoid—an echinoderm.

A tweet from Gethyn. What is this thing? Where can I get one?

From Julian; wouldn’t it be lovely to see this front page?

From Simon, a most excellent sand sculpture:

Tweets from Matthew. First, one of his beloved optical illusions:

Bible power (not!):

A biological tweet referring to a Dean Martin song:

I don’t know what this dad is on about, but he really wants his daughter to wear pants!

Friday: Hili dialogue

July 3, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning at the end of the work week, a term that barely has meaning any more. It’s Friday, July 3, 2020, National Chocolate Wafer Day. It’s a holiday for most Americans, or at least a day off, because Independence Day, tomorrow, falls on a Saturday. It’s also National Eat Beans Day, National Fried Clam Day (yum!), Stay Out of the Sun Day (hard to do at Botany Pond), and, according to Wikipedia, “The start of the Dog Days according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac but not according to established meaning in most European cultures.” Why are there no Cat Days??

News of the day:  Things are, as Rodney Dangerfield said, “rough”. From David Brooks’s new column in the New York Times, which attributes America’s problems, quoting Damon Linker, to “a refusal on the part of lots of Americans to think in terms of the social whole — of what’s best for the community, of the common or public.” I concur.

From Brooks:

We Americans enter the July 4 weekend of 2020 humiliated as almost never before. We had one collective project this year and that was to crush Covid-19, and we failed.

On Wednesday, we had about 50,000 new positive tests, a record. Other nations are beating the disease while our infection lines shoot upward as sharply as they did in March.

This failure will lead to other failures. A third of Americans show signs of clinical anxiety or depression, according to the Census Bureau. Suspected drug overdose deaths surged by 42 percent in May. Small businesses, colleges and community hubs will close.

At least Americans are not in denial about the nation’s turmoil of the last three months. According to a Pew survey, 71 percent of Americans are angry about the state of the country right now and 66 percent are fearful. Only 17 percent are proud.

The data on clinical anxiety and depression, on top of all the coronavirus news, is also depressing.

And, as Brooks implies, the U.S. set another record with new coronavirus cases, passing the 50,000 mark per day to reach 55,000. This is the sixth time a record has been set in nine days.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 128,824,  an increase of 721 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 520,214—an increase of about 4100 from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on July 3 include:

  • 1767 – Pitcairn Island is discovered by Midshipman Robert Pitcairn on an expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret.
  • 1819 – The Bank for Savings in the City of New-York, the first savings bank in the United States, opens.
  • 1844 – The last pair of great auks is killed.

Here’s one specimen of a bird we’ll never see again (caption from Wikipedia: “Specimen No. 8 and replica egg in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow”.  The birds were 75-85 cm (30-33 inches) tall.

  • 1863 – American Civil War: The final day of the Battle of Gettysburg culminates with Pickett’s Charge.
  • 1884 – Dow Jones & Company publishes its first stock average.
  • 1886 – Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the first purpose-built automobile.

Yes, here’s the first “purpose-built” car:

Here’s a photo and then a video of the “Great Reunion: with a bunch of old geezers. The clip appears to be from Ken Burns’s “Civil War” movie.

It is this ship, the SS United States, that my family and I took to England on our voyage to Greece in 1955.  Army officers traveled in style, then, but we also had to cart a household’s worth of goods.

  • 1996 – British Prime Minister John Major announced the Stone of Scone would be returned to Scotland.
  • 2013 – Egyptian coup d’état: President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi is overthrown by the military after four days of protests all over the country calling for Morsi’s resignation, to which he did not respond. President of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt Adly Mansour is declared acting president.

Notables born on this day include:

When I was a kid, every Fourth of July I used to watch the great movie, “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” starring James Cagney as George M. Cohan. Here’s a 7-minute documentary about Cohan from the PBS Series “Broadway.”

  • 1883 – Franz Kafka, Czech-Austrian author (d. 1924)
  • 1908 – M. F. K. Fisher, American author (d. 1992)
  • 1937 – Tom Stoppard, Czech-English playwright and screenwriter

Solipsism: Here’s Tom Stoppard and I at the Hay Festival in England in 2010. We were on a panel together and then had a discussion about evolution while smoking Stoppard’s cigarettes. I had to borrow the jacket from a friend, geneticist Steve Jones, as I was pressed into service at the last minute.

  • 1962 – Tom Cruise, American actor and producer
  • 1971 – Julian Assange, Australian journalist, publisher, and activist, founded WikiLeaks
  • 1993 – Don Drysdale, American baseball player and sportscaster (b. 1936)

Those who started The Big Sleep on July 3 include:

  • 1904 – Theodor Herzl, Austrian journalist and playwright (b. 1860)
  • 1971 – Jim Morrison, American singer-songwriter (b. 1943)
  • 1986 – Rudy Vallée, American singer, saxophonist, and actor (b. 1901)
  • 1993 – Don Drysdale, American baseball player and sportscaster (b. 1936)
  • 2012 – Andy Griffith, American actor, singer, and producer (b. 1926)

Meawhile in Dobrzyn, Hili repeats, I’m told, “the words repeated by Centaur from the Harry Potter books.”

Hili: Mars is exceptionally bright today.
A: You have been reading Harry Potter again.
In Polish:
Hili: Mars jest dziś niezwykle jasny.
Ja: Znowu czytałaś Harrego Pottera.

And, in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek and Leon are going to visit the site of their future home, but once again the reconstruction of that wooden house has been delayed, perhaps indefinitely.

Caption: “Everybody travels as they wish.”

In Polish: Każdy podróżuje tak, jak lubi.

A meme from reader Blue:

Two cartoons from reader Charles; the first is by Mike Luckovich:

Titania speaks for the woke:

Tweets from Matthew. The first one shows a bird I love, but also one I’ve never seen:

You can find this stowaway cat at the Bangor Humane Society:

A completely unknown organism. Do you have any idea what it is? Perhaps it’s a member of a new phylum.

Matthew adds re the following tweet: “This could have made Kent State look like kindergarten.” Indeed. Crowd control with BAYONETS?

As expected from physics, but still striking:

https://twitter.com/zonephyslcs/status/1278531560271015936?s=11

I saw stuff like this in Antarctica, and I want to go back SO BADLY!

Another one of Matthew’s beloved optical illusions:

 

Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

June 19, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s the end of the work week, but does anybody know that it’s a Friday (June 19, 2020)? Well, it’s National Martini Day, so help yourself to a Friday libation (shaken, not stirred).  It is of course Juneteenth, and here’s a brief history of the holiday from Wikipedia:

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth), also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Cel-Liberation Day, is an American holiday celebrated annually on June 19. It commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union general Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas, that all previously enslaved people in Texas were free. Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two and a half years earlier, and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent.

Celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. It spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, it was eclipsed by the struggle for postwar civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African American freedom and arts. By the 21st century, Juneteenth was celebrated in most major cities across the United States. Activists are campaigning for the United States Congress to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday. Juneteenth is recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in 47 of the 50 U.S. states.

There’s a special Google Doodle on Juneteeth (and if you click on it you’ll go to the video below the screenshot):

The YouTube notes for the video:

Today’s video Google Doodle, illustrated by Los Angeles-based guest artist Loveis Wise and narrated by actor and activist LeVar Burton, honors the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth. Short for “June Nineteenth,” Juneteenth marks the true end of chattel slavery across the United States — which didn’t actually occur until 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. . . Go behind-the-scenes of the Doodle: https://youtu.be/ipodBEnW9Hk

Finally, it’s National Eat an Oreo Day, National Flip Flop Day, Ugliest Dog Day, Garfield the Cat Day (see below), and a superfluous holiday this year: Work at Home Father’s Day.  Here’s Scamp, voted the World’s Ugliest Dog last year:

News of the Day:

The big news, of course, is the Supreme Court overturning Trump’s attempt to dismantle the DACA plan. This heartening decision is said by some to be a possible bump for Trump, who can now use the decision to fire up his base (only 30% of Republicans approve what the court did), but I don’t care: what’s right is right, and the Court should not make decisions about what will or will not help re-elect a President. Trump will one day be gone (hopefully in November), but the law is forever. (Well, almost . . . )

Meanwhile, coronavirus infections are spiking in several states, prompting states like California to enact mandatory mask-wearing laws. But conservatives are pushing back on these laws.

And, it finally happened: all the op-eds on the  front page are either woke or along with the Party line. I suspect we’ll see very few  contrarian or heterodox op-eds there in the future after the editorial-page editor was fired over the Tom Cotton kerfuffle.  A screenshot of today’s page:

 

Today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 118,458, an increase of about 700 over yesterday’s report.  The world death toll now stands at 453,878, an increase of about 5,000 from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on June 19 includes:

  • 325 – The original Nicene Creed is adopted at the First Council of Nicaea.
  • 1846 – The first officially recorded, organized baseball game is played under Alexander Cartwright’s rules on Hoboken, New Jersey’s Elysian Fields with the New York Base Ball Club defeating the Knickerbockers 23–1. Cartwright umpired.
  • 1862 – The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories, nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford.
  • 1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom. The anniversary is still officially celebrated in Texas and 41 other contiguous states as Juneteenth.
  • 1953 – Cold War: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.
  • 1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate.
  • 1978 – Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.
  • 1991 – The Soviet occupation of Hungary ends.
  • 2012 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy for fear of extradition to the US after publication of previously classified documents including footage of civilian killings by the US army.

Assange is now in prison in London, with his next hearing in September.

  • 2018 – The 10,000,000th United States Patent is issued.

Here’s that patent (click on screenshot to see the whole schmear):

Notables born on this day include:

Moe, like his brothers, changed their names because Jewish names (his was Moses Harry Horowitz) were verboten in American film. Here’s Moe and Larry in their last picture, made in 1974 (“Larry Fine”‘s real name was Larry Feinberg). Both died the next year.

  • 1903 – Lou Gehrig, American baseball player (d. 1941)

Here’s part of the Iron Horse’s touching farewell speech in 1939 at Yankee Stadium, made after he was diagnosed with ALS (the full text is here). He was only 36, and died on June 2, 1941.  His nickname came from his endurance; until Cal Ripken, Jr. broke the record, Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games was considered untouchable (Ripken’s number was 2,632). Gehrig’s uniform number, 4, was the first number to be retired in major league baseball (this means that no Yankee player can ever wear that number again).

  • 1910 – Abe Fortas, American lawyer and jurist (d. 1982)
  • 1919 – Pauline Kael, American film critic (d. 2001)
  • 1945 – Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician, Nobel Prize laureate
  • 1947 – Salman Rushdie, Indian-English novelist and essayist

Those who began pushing up daisies on June 19 include:

  • 1953 – Ethel Rosenberg, American spy (b. 1915)
  • 1953 – Julius Rosenberg, American spy (b. 1918)
  • 2013 – Slim Whitman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1923)
  • 2017 – Otto Warmbier, American college student detained in North Korea (b. 1994)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili was caught lying on freshly-washed laundry:

A: Hili: This is a clean towel.
Hili: And I am a clean cat.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, to jest czysty ręcznik.
Hili: A ja jestem czystym kotem.
Nearby, at his (and Mietek’s) future home, Leon is kvetching:
Leon: The meadow is wet again.
In Polish: Znów mokra łąka

From Jesus of the Day. How indeed?!

Two memes from Bruce Thiel:

From Dom we have a tweet reporting a paper on a fruit-eating frog. If true, this would be a one-off, since no frog is known to eat fruit. Greg Mayer cites the Journal of Zoology article and say it “looks legit.” As far as I know (I may be wrong), all frogs eat other animals, which can include small rodents and invertebrates.

From reader Barry, who says “aliens live below us”:

 

Tweets from Matthew. Re the first one; I remember these ludicrous prognostications. Are we there yet? Nope!

Okay, somebody tell me how storm petrels manage to do this (sound up, please):

Neither Matthew nor I had any idea that measles came from rinderpest in cattle. Rinderpest has been vanquished from the planet, but its relative measles is still with us:

Look at this amazing beast! The caption has been translated from Spanish:

The people on Twitter are debating whether this video shows lunacy in Serbia or Russia, but it’s clearly lunacy as people fight for water that’s been poured over the relic of a saint’s foot. UGH!

Matthew says this comes from Saint James’s Park yesterday morning. The “thousands of geese” seems a bit exaggerated, but it is a sight nonetheless!

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 23, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Saturday, May 23, 2020: National Taffy Day, a mediocre confection that’s death to those with fillings. It’s also World Turtle Day,  Declaration of the Báb Day for those of the Bahá’í faith, and Red Nose Day.

News of the Day: Things are opening up in much of the U.S. (but not Chicago), and Memorial Day Weekend will see crowds in many places—and perhaps a resurgence of the pandemic.  Meanwhile, there’s an article by Timothy Egan in today’s New York Times titled “Bill Gates is the Most Interesting Man in the World.” Despite excoriation from conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxers, and other loons, he is one of the world’s great philanthropists, and a model of how a billionaire  should respond during the pandemic.

The official death toll for the pandemic stands at 96,370 in the U.S. and about 338,000 worldwide. We’ll break 100,000 in a day or two, one of the estimates that people poo-pooed because it seemed too high.

Here are the results of the poll from two days ago on whether the plea bargain for Lori Laughlin and Massimo Giannulli was appropriate:

The result? Most people thought the punishment (two months in jail for Loughlin and five for Giannulli, plus community service and fines) was too light:

Stuff that happened on May 23 includes:

  • 1430 – Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to raise the Siege of Compiègne.
  • 1498 – Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy.
  • 1533 – The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.

She was one of Henry’s wives that wasn’t executed; Henry spurned her because he became enamored of Ann Boleyn and because Catherine failed to produce a male heir (that was, of course, due to the wrong sperm from Henry hiself.)

  • 1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London.

After one unsuccessful attempt to hang him (the rope broke), Kidd was successfully executed, gibbeted, and hung over the Thames for three years. Here’s a drawing of his fate:

  • 1829 – Accordion patent granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna, Austrian Empire.
  • 1844 – Declaration of the Báb the evening before the 23rd: A merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement that would later be brutally crushed by the Persian government. He is considered to be a forerunner of the Bahá’í Faith; Bahá’ís celebrate the day as a holy day.
  • 1934 – Infamous American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

Here’s a short video documentary of the ambush and its aftermath, as well as a photograph of the notorious pair. The parts leading up to the ambush itself are re-enactments:

  • 1945 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel, commits suicide while in Allied custody.
  • 1998 – The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with roughly 75% voting yes.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1707 – Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist (d. 1778)
  • 1883 – Douglas Fairbanks, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1939)
  • 1891 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish novelist, playwright, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
  • 1910 – Artie Shaw, American clarinet player, composer, and bandleader (d. 2004)
  • 1925 – Joshua Lederberg, American biologist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2008)
  • 1951 – Anatoly Karpov, Russian chess player
  • 1974 – Jewel, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actress, and poet

If you have 45 minutes to spare and like big band jazz (I do!), here’s a video about Shaw’s band, featuring many greats.

Those who made their final exit on May 23 include:

  • 1701 – William Kidd, Scottish pirate (b. 1645) [see above]
  • 1868 – Kit Carson, American general (b. 1809)
  • 1906 – Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian director, playwright, and poet (b. 1828)
  • 1934 – Clyde Barrow, American criminal (b. 1909) (and of course Bonnie Parker)
  • 1937 – John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company and Rockefeller University (b. 1839)
  • 1945 – Heinrich Himmler, German commander and politician, Reich Minister of the Interior (b. 1900)
  • 2002 – Sam Snead, American golfer and journalist (b. 1912)
  • 2015 – Anne Meara, American actress, comedian and playwright (b. 1929)
  • 2017 – Roger Moore, English actor (b. 1927)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is not finding a proper meal outside (she needs a mouse):

Hili: Grass, a tulip, dandelions and no meat.
A: Enjoy what you have.
Hili: Hypocrite.
In Polish:
Hili: Trawa, tulipan, mlecze, żadnego mięsa.
Ja: Ciesz się tym co masz.
Hili: Hipokryta.

And the handsome Szaron, who now at least can coexist with Hili:

To complete the roster of Polish cats, here are Leon and Mietek. It’s possible that their new home (close to Dobrzyn) will finally be built:

From Laurie Ann, who posted it on my Facebook page.

From Jesus of the Day:

From Bad Cat Clothing:

Two double tweets from Simon. In the first two, Sarah Cooper does the very best lip-synching of Trump’s moronic remarks. Each of his gaffes tops the last one!

WTF? Bringing the country back with . . . Asians? And a recap of the per capita:

Tweets from Matthew. Cat turns off owner’s alarm clock—among other perfidies. This is the worst morning cat ever! (Sound up, please.)

This is very good!:

Now here’s a biological problem:

A science geek gets excited over a fly (as did I). It’s a beautiful metallic color, and what’s with the alternating rows of ommatidia (the “unit” of a compound eye)?

Good Lord, I had no idea! Watch the linked video to learn about the “Cannonball Run”:

Answer: I don’t cut my sandwiches!

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 2, 2020 • 6:45 am

It’s May 2, 2020, perhaps one day from D-Day (Duckling Day).  I’d dearly love to see the ducklings jump, but there’s only a narrow window for that, and I’d have to be on the spot. I will try, checking the nests every half hour or so starting tomorrow. Fingers crossed that all the babies make it safely to the pond!

It’s National Chocolate Mousse Day, as well as National Truffle Day, World Tuna Day, National Homebrew Day, Astronomy Day, and International Scurvy Awareness Day.

News of the Day: It’s dire, of course. The reported death toll from coronavirus in the U.S. stands at 65,605, but, as Andrew Sullivan noted yesterday, this is likely to be a severe underestimate (he posits that the ultimate toll may be,  as Fauci estimated in March, between 100,000 and 200,000). Worldwide, the reported death toll now stands at about 239,000. As I feared, the pandemic is beginning to ravage India.

Anthony Fauci has been blocked by the White House from testifying before Congress. CNN reports:

“The Appropriations Committee sought Dr. Anthony Fauci as a witness at next week’s Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing on COVID-19 response. We have been informed by an administration official that the White House has blocked Dr. Fauci from testifying,” House Appropriations Committee spokesman Evan Hollander said in a statement Friday.

The New York Times has a sad, heartbreaking story of long-time couples dying of coronavirus within days of each other. Finally, Kim Jong-un appears to have reappeared at a factory opening, but the report has not been confirmed.

Stuff that happened on May 2 includes:

  • 1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.
  • 1559 – John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the nascent Scottish Reformation.
  • 1611 – The King James Version of the Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker.

Here’s that first translation. I still like this version the best, although of course our take is heavily affected by the group of translators, or “God’s Secretaries” (an excellent book, by the way):

  • 1920 – The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis.
  • 1945 – World War II: A death march from Dachau to the Austrian border is halted by the segregated, all-Nisei 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army in southern Bavaria, saving several hundred prisoners.
  • 1952 – A De Havilland Comet makes the first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers, from London to Johannesburg.

Here’s a Pathé video of that first trip; there were a lot of stops back then!

Here’s Shishapangma; it’s the big mountain at the extreme left:

  • 1986 – Chernobyl disaster: The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster.
  • 2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.
  • 2011 – Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI’s most wanted man, is killed by the United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
  • 2012 – A pastel version of The Scream, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, sells for $120 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for a work of art at auction.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1729 – Catherine the Great of Russia (d. 1796)
  • 1860 – Theodor Herzl, Austro-Hungarian Zionist philosopher, journalist and author (d. 1904)
  • 1892 – Manfred von Richthofen, German captain and pilot (d. 1918)
  • 1895 – Lorenz Hart, American playwright and lyricist (d. 1943)
  • 1903 – Benjamin Spock, American rower, pediatrician, and author (d. 1998)
  • 1921 – B. B. Lal, Indian archaeologist
  • 1921 – Satyajit Ray, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1992)
  • 1946 – Lesley Gore, American singer-songwriter (d. 2015)
  • 1969 – Brian Lara, Trinidadian cricketer
  • 1975 – David Beckham, English footballer, coach, and model

Here’s a short documentary of the life of Brian Lara, one of the best cricket players of history.  Can you spot the cat?

Those who handed in their dinner pails on May 2 include:

  • 1519 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect (b. 1452)
  • 1957 – Joseph McCarthy, American captain, lawyer, judge, and politician (b. 1908)
  • 1972 – J. Edgar Hoover, American 1st director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (b. 1895)
  • 2011 – Osama bin Laden, Saudi Arabian terrorist, founder of Al-Qaeda (b. 1957)
  • 2014 – Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., American actor (b. 1918)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cherry orchard is in glorious full bloom, and Hili and her staff are enjoying their walkies:

Hili: This are the best walks during a year.
A: I think so too.
In Polish:
Hili: To są najlepsze spacery w roku.
Ja: Też tak uważam.
And, nearby at their future home, Leon and his stepbrother sidekick Mietek are trying to prognosticate.  As always, one has to guess who’s speaking, but I suspect that it’s Leon, as he’s older and wiser.
Leon: Let’s look deep into the future now.
In Polish: Spójrzmy teraz głęboko w przyszłość.

From Pradeep:

From reader Barry:

A Facebook meme. If you don’t get it, you’re too young (go here).

Titania addresses the pandemic, but this tweet doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Tweets from Matthew. He loves Laurel and Hardy, and here Laurel, despite his promises, gets into Big Mischief:

Cat on a hot tin roof! Fortunately, it was rescued:

Needy ducks don’t want their staff to go away. The playful mallard (the domestic variety “Pekin”) in the second video is a drake, as you can tell from its inability to quack properly:

Two denizens of the American Southwest: tumbleweed and tornadoes:

More documentation of humanity as a virus for animals. Sadly, when the pandemic’s over, these lovely animals will retreat to their refuge: