Category: Mietek

Tuesday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

December 29, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s Tuesday, the Cruelest day: December 29, 2020: the fifth day of Coynezaa, the fifth day of Christmas, and the fourth day of Kwanzaa (United States). It’s not a food holiday but the end of one: National “Get on the Scales Day”. (Hili is going to the vet soon as she’s gotten too fat.) It’s also National Pepper Pot Day, celebrating a soup that in its authentic version has tripe in it. I’ve tried tripe at least twice, and couldn’t abide it either time. I will not try it again.

Wine of the Day: This lovely Argentinian Torrontés, drunk with chicken, was a bit old for this grape, and I could tell that oxidation was beginning to set in. But it was still a decent tipple, smelling for all the world like candied grapefruit peel. Torrontés can be a great white wine when you find a good specimen, and it’s not at all expensive. Just drink it fairly young.

News of the Day:

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted 322-87 to override Trump’s veto of the defense spending bill (note: this is not the pandemic relief bill!). If the Senate also votes to override, which is not certain, it would be the first time Congress had repudiated a veto.  One of his big objections to the bill was its call to change the name of military bases named after Confederate generals.

By now most Americans know that Trump gave in and signed the pandemic relief bill on Sunday. Yesterday the House passed a bill increasing the checks given to many Americans from the $600 specified in the original bill to $2000.  But this won’t happen until the Senate also approves the measure, and it’s not clear when this will happen.

This is a dog-bites-man story from Saudi Arabia, which seems to get much less flak than Israel despite its much more oppressive behavior. Right now the murderous ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who probably gave the go-ahead for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is busy cracking down on protests and anti-theocratic activism. Yesterday a Saudi court sentenced Loujain al-Hathloul, 31 years old and a well known women’s rights activist, to six years in prison.  (al-Hathoul was an influential figure in campaigning for, and winning, Saudi women’s right to drive.) The charge was “terrorism-related” according to her family, but prosecutors presented no evidence for terrorism or anything like it. She was prosecuted solely for activism. Given that she’s already been in prison for several years, and that some of the sentence was suspended—prosecutors wanted twenty years!—she could be out in six months.  Her sister alleges that she was tortured after being arrested and jailed in 2018.

Here’s a short video report:

 

Aunt Becky is out of jail, having served two months for the CollegeGate scandal.

Reader Christopher informs us that not only the Guardian has horoscopes, but also Canada’s Globe and Mail. Click if you want your prognostication for 2001:

But it’s just harmless fun, right?—even though people spend billions of dollars a year consulting these fraudulent people and their pages, and it buttresses faith and superstition.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 335,141, an increase of about 1,900 above yesterday’s figure, and about 1.3 deaths per minute. The world death toll is 1,783,597, an increase of about 10,100 over yesterday’s total and representing about 7 deaths per minute from Covid-19—one every 9 seconds.

Stuff that happened on December 29 includes:

Here’s the site of Becket’s killing, carried out by four knights after Becket pissed off King Henry. The caption is from Wikipedia:

Sculpture and altar marking the spot of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom, Canterbury Cathedral. The sculpture by Giles Blomfeld represents the knights’ four swords (two metal swords with reddened tips and their two shadows).
  • 1845 – In accordance with International Boundary delimitation, the United States annexes the Republic of Texas, following the manifest destiny doctrine. The Republic of Texas, which had been independent since the Texas Revolution of 1836, is thereupon admitted as the 28th U.S. state.
  • 1890 – Wounded Knee Massacre on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 300 Lakota are killed by the United States 7th Cavalry Regiment.

A picture of the dead Native Americans being put in a common grave:

A signed British first edition of this book will run you about $138,700. Here’s one:

  • 1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.
  • 1940 – World War II: In the Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe fire-bombs London, England, killing almost 200 civilians.
  • 1989 – Czech writer, philosopher and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.
  • 2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

The language, one of the Sámi languages, was spoken in only three villages of the Kola Peninsula in Russia.  Here’s an introduction to the 10 Sámi languages. There’s another that has only two native speakers.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1800 – Charles Goodyear, American chemist and engineer (d. 1860)
  • 1808 – Andrew Johnson, American general and politician, 17th President of the United States (d. 1875)
  • 1809 – William Ewart Gladstone, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1898)
  • 1876 – Pablo Casals, Catalan cellist and conductor (d. 1973)
  • 1936 – Mary Tyler Moore, American actress and producer (d. 2017)

Here’s Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) doing a number of the Dick Van Dyke Show. She was criticized for wearing Capri pants on the show (back then, women in sitcoms wore dresses), but she started a fashion.

  • 1943 – Rick Danko, Canadian singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer (d. 1999)
  • 1947 – Ted Danson, American actor and producer

Those who took the Big Nap on December 29 include:

  • 1170 – Thomas Becket, English archbishop and saint (b. 1118)
  • 1894 – Christina Rossetti, English poet and hymn-writer (b. 1830)

Rossetti in her late twenties:

by (George) Herbert Watkins, albumen print, late 1850s
  • 1926 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and author (b. 1875)
  • 1986 – Harold Macmillan, English captain and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
  • 2004 – Julius Axelrod, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is again wheedling for noms (like hobbits, many Poles do eat “second breakfasts”):

Hili: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
A: And then?
Hili: And then the second breakfast.
In Polish:
Hili: Śniadanie to najważniejszy posiłek dnia.
Ja: A potem?
Hili: A potem drugie śniadanie.

Little Kulka, hated by Hili, licks her paw:

And in nearby Wloclawek, housemates Leon and Mietek differ about the holidays. Mietek loves them, but Leon clearly doesn’t:

Leon: Such a hassle this holidays is!
In Polish: Zawracanie głowy z tymi świętami.

 

From Divy. Can you name the television game show that inspired this cartoon?

From Irena:

From Jesus of the Day: it’s all in the jingle bell, I guess.

From Matthew Cobb as well as Barry.  Richard issued the tweet below and got tons of pushback. There were jocular comments but a lot of stuff that, were I to receive it, would seem hurtful. I didn’t understand it; my view is that of Barry, who said this:

I don’t understand why this has been getting so much traction on Twitter or why people are so bothered by it. As this person tweeted: “Are people so churlish not to see that Richard Dawkins was creating a funny image to make a point about how he thinks spiders are under-appreciated?”

That’s true, and if you want to see all the people who made fun of this tweet, go over and have a look. I can attribute it only to the nastiness that Twitter evokes, and to the fact that people have a mysterious animus against Dawkins.

Tweets from Matthew. First, the world’s most beautiful duck:

I used to have an aquarium full of hissers as a grad student, and would horrify visitor by making them hiss:

This is a good person. (Sound up.)

A brilliant new Canadian sport:

Do read this article. It describes a genetic condition in which the fingerprints aren’t formed (they don’t mention toeprints). There are no bad medical side effects, but there are severe social side effects: these poor people can’t use smartphones and can’t get passports or driver’s licenses.

A map of the rabbits of North America. I’m guessing that a lot of the cottontail “species,” which live in geographic isolation from others, don’t really deserve the status of distinct species.

I broke my own rule and criticized this anti-athiest post on Twitter, but the best response is, “This isn’t atheism’s job. It’s just non-belief in gods, for crying out loud!”

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 28, 2020 • 6:30 am

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

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

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

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

News of the Day:

First (h/t Matthew), this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff that happened on December 28 includes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notables born on this day include:

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

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

  • 1979 – Noomi Rapace, Swedish actress

Those who became forever quiescent on December 28 include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mietek: Is the holiday over yet?

In Polish: Już po świętach?

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

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

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

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

Shoot me now. From Bryn Mawr:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 24, 2020 • 6:30 am

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

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

News of the Day:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff that happened on December 24 include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notables born on this day include:

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

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

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

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

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

Son:

Patton père:

Fauci turns 80 today!

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

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

Those who expired on December 24 include:

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,  Hili questions scripture:

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

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

Mietek: Oy, and all this is for me?

In Polish: Ojej, to wszystko dla mnie?!

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

We saw a video of this the other day:

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

And an early Merry Christmas to you!

Tuesday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 22, 2020 • 6:30 am

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

News of the Day:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff that happened on December 22 include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notables born on this day include:

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

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

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

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

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

Those who found Eternal Rest on December 22 include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mietek: I will check whether this is edible.

In Polish: Sprawdzę, czy to jest jadalne.

A meme from Bruce:

From Nicole:

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 21, 2020 • 6:30 am

Christmas week and Coynezaa week are at hand! It’s Monday, December 21, 2021: four shopping days to either holiday.

The Winter Solstice began at 4:02 a.m. Chicago time, and it’s now the shortest day of the year. Further, tonight is The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which will be visible in the night sky given that it’s clear. Today’s Google Doodle celebrates this Conjunction (click on screenshot):

As NASA reports,

What makes this year’s spectacle so rare, then? It’s been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night, as it will for 2020, allowing nearly everyone around the world to witness this “great conjunction.”

The closest alignment will appear just a tenth of a degree apart and last for a few days. On the 21st, they will appear so close that a pinkie finger at arm’s length will easily cover both planets in the sky. The planets will be easy to see with the unaided eye by looking toward the southwest just after sunset.

From our vantage point on Earth the huge gas giants will appear very close together, but they will remain hundreds of millions of miles apart in space. And while the conjunction is happening on the same day as the winter solstice, the timing is merely a coincidence, based on the orbits of the planets and the tilt of the Earth.

The NASA site will tell you where and how to look for this rare event. You should definitely see this if you can, as one thing’s for sure: you won’t be around for the next one. Find an unobstructed view in the southwest (if you’re in the US) an hour after sunset, and you should see this:

It’s also National Fried Shrimp Day (not kosher!). National Hamburger Day, National Kiwi Fruit Day (a friend calls them “gorilla balls”), Anne and Samantha Day (read the link), Crossword Puzzle Day (see below), Yule (the first day of winter) and São Tomé Day

News of the Day:

On January 12, before Biden gets a chance to stay her execution, Lisa Montgomery will be executed in federal prison for a 2004 murder. If you want to see  a bunch of circumstances mitigating against her execution, read this NYT article about how Montgomery was sexually and physically abused, tortured, and traumatized during much of her early life.  At the very least she should not be killed (she also suffers from bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder, psychosis, traumatic brain injury and most likely fetal alcohol syndrome). And her lawyers didn’t adequately represent her. Nevertheless, I doubt Trump will lift a finger to stop the lethal injection.

The Senate finally approved a $900 billion stimulus package for coronavirus, including loans for small businesses, checks for individuals (you can get up to $600), money for cultural institutions and for vaccine distribution—you name it. It was bipartisan, but the Democrats didn’t get what they wanted. That will come in a month when Joe Biden is President (thank Ceiling Cat!)

As the Moderna mRNA vaccine wends its way throughout the U.S., travelers are wending their way home for Christmas. Yes, I understand the impulse, but some California ICUs are already operating at nearly 300% of capacity and we don’t need yet another wave of infections. I wish people could just stay home—just this once. And many countries have stopped allowing flights from Britain to land because of the new extra-infectious mutant strain in the UK.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 317,800, an increase of about 1,500 from yesterday’s figure. The world death toll is 1,701,085, an increase of about 7,500 over yesterday’s report.

Stuff that happened on December 21 includes:

  • AD 69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian emperor of Rome, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors.
  • 1620 – Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
  • 1879 – World premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • 1913 – Arthur Wynne‘s “word-cross”, the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.

Here’s a re-creation of that puzzle. Can you solve it? Note that there are no “up” and “down” categories but pairs of numbers.

Disillusioned, the firebrand socialist (a hero of Hitchens, I believe), left Russia in 1923 and published a book about her stay there. Here she is on a streetcar in 1917:

Here’s a trailer for the movie. Can you name all the dwarfs? I can, but there used to always be two I forgot:

The heart, from a female donor, actually functioned perfectly, but Washkansky died from pneumonia contracted after getting immunosuppressive drugs.

  • 1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.
  • 1988 – The first flight of Antonov An-225 Mriya, the largest aircraft in the world.

Only one of these planes was built, designed to carry cargo. Wikipedia notes this: “The airlifter holds the absolute world record for an airlifted single-item payload of 189,980 kg (418,830 lb), and an airlifted total payload of 253,820 kg (559,580 lb). It has also transported a payload of 247,000 kg (545,000 lb) on a commercial flight.  Here’s the behemoth, and look at all those wheels!

 

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1550 – Man Singh I, Mughal noble (d. 1614)[8]
  • 1795 – Jack Russell, English priest, hunter, and dog breeder (d. 1883)
  • 1804 – Benjamin Disraeli, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1881)
  • 1866 – Maud Gonne, Irish nationalist and political activist (d. 1953)

Gonne was also an actress and a feminist, and well known for having been the love object of William Butler Yeats, who proposed to her four times (she turned him down every time) and wrote several famous poems inspired by her.


Two great geneticists were born on this day, one year apart (the first two below):

Wright almost made it to 100. I corresponded with him in his last years, and then, after his death, collaborated with two colleagues on two papers (1997, 2000) that dismantled what he saw as his greatest achievement, the “shifting balance theory of evolution”, a theory that was deeply flawed and no longer has much influence. Wright would have been furious, but fortunately he never saw them. He did send me a reprint of his article on evolution in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Muller had a colorful life: he worked with T. H. Morgan in the “Fly Room”, tried to kill himself with sleeping pills in 1932, and then and went to the Soviet Union to do genetics between 1933 and 1936, where he became disillusioned with Lysenkoism and then moved to Edinburgh. He also never had a real academic job until after he won the Nobel Prize, which he got for showing that X-rays caused mutations. Indiana University then hired him. Muller was an absolutely brilliant geneticist but a difficult colleague, the kind who demanded constant credit for his work—perhaps the result of being unrecognized when younger.  Here he is looking at Drosophila—with an eye loupe!

  • 1937 – Jane Fonda, American actress, producer, and activist
  • 1940 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 1993)
  • 1959 – Florence Griffith Joyner, American sprinter and actress (d. 1998)
  • 1969 – Julie Delpy, French model, actress, director, and screenwriter

If you’ve seen the “Before Trilogy“, you’ll know this actress, shown here with her co-star Ethan Hawke.

  • 1977 – Emmanuel Macron, President of France

Those who found their Heavenly Abode on December 21 include:

Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at 44 while eating a chocolate bar and reading the Princeton alumni magazine. He’s one of my literary heroes, though he couldn’t spell worth a damn (his editor Max Perkins corrected any errors). Gatsby is the book everyone reads, but I love Tender is the Night. When I read Fitzgerald’s first book—This Side of Paradise—as a teenager, I decided to go to Princeton (that’s where the book is set, and where Fitzgerald went to college), but my parents told me they didn’t have enough money to send me there. I wound up at William & Mary, which was probably better for me.  Here are Fitz and Zelda in 1921:

  • 2009 – Edwin G. Krebs, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a wise statement, informed by the Polish past:

Hili: How did humans create gods?
A: By looking for the best model of secret police.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak człowiek stworzył bogów?
Ja: Szukając najlepszego modelu tajnej policji.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon has a task:

Elzbieta: Find the angel!

In Polish: Znajdź aniołka.

And young Mietek is sleeping, saying this as he dozes off:

Mietek: Just until the holidays. . . .

In Polish: Byle do świąt…

Little Kulka is still wearing her jacket to prevent her licking her wounds after she was spayed.  She hates it! It will be removed on Wednesday.

From Facebook:

From Bruce:

Here’s a festive coffee mug for the holidays from Jesus of the Day:

More of Titania’s predictions come true:

Now Helen Keller is privileged?? What does it take to be unprivileged?

Tweets from Matthew. Yes, ’tis the season of cats and trees:

A lovely photo from 1959:

Don’t forget the Great Conjunction tonight. Here’s why it’s happening:

Such stealth!

Wonderful pictures, wonderfully restored and looking quite au courant:

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 19, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a Sabbath that Ceiling Cat made for all cats (mind you, cats weren’t made for the Sabbath): December 19, 2020. There are only 6 shopping days left until Coynezaa, which begins on Christmas Day.. It’s National Oatmeal Muffin Day, the kind of muffin you eat when you’re one of those who equates food and medicine. It’s also National Hard Candy Day, Holly Day, and Saint Nicholas Day, or “The Feast of Saint Nicholas”, in Eastern Orthodox countries.

News of the Day:

A few days ago, the Congress, in a rare show of bipartisanship between the House and Senate, seemed ready to pass a pandemic relief bill. Well, that fell apart yesterday, and both House and Senate passed a two-day extension of the deadline.  If nothing’s passed by Sunday night, the government shuts down.

One would expect a physician specializing in hospice and palliative care would have something useful to say about death, but don’t expect that from Dr. B. J. Miller’s piece in the New York Times, “What is death?”  Although Miller starts off all right trying to define death as a clinical phenomenon, he soon goes off the rails:

For revelation of the mysteries of an afterlife, or of the forces that kicked off this wondrous circus in the first place, we might look to religion. What is described above is plainly observable science. Yet science doesn’t do the question justice. It won’t tell us why,or what’s behind its laws. The body houses more than we can express; you are more than your body. Becoming a blade of grass is a sweetness that doesn’t compensate for all the heartache death connotes.

No, religion can pretend to know what happens to our “souls” (which we don’t have), but can’t tell us jack squat.  Miller goes on to try to make the best of death, which for most of us is something we don’t want. It’s not that bad!

We do have fuller ways of knowing. Who doubts that imagination and intuition and love hold power and capacity beyond what language can describe? You are a person with consciousness and emotions and ties. You live on in those you’ve touched, in hearts and minds. You affect people. Just remember those who’ve died before you. There’s your immortality. There, in you, they live. Maybe this force wanes over time, but it is never nothing.

Well, as Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.”

Our mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is in big trouble. In February, 2019, a dozen Chicago cops broke into the wrong house while executing a warrant. They cuffed and abused a naked woman (Anjanette Young, a social worker) who was completely innocent and told the cops forty times that they had the wrong address. There is video that completely corroborates Young’s claims. At first Hurhonor Lightfoot said she didn’t know about the case or the video until last week. In fact, she knew about the case for over a year, and says she “forgot.” Why didn’t she check before mouthing off? In the meantime, the city had stonewalled Young about giving her the video, finally handing it over but prohibiting its sharing. It’s now all over the news (see here, for instance). Young is going to get a big settlement, I’ll bet, but this could conceivably spell the end for Lightfoot as mayor. She’d done some good stuff, but is too authoritarian.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 313,740, a big increase of about 2,800 from yesterday’s figure, with deaths occurred at about 2 per minute. The world death toll is 1,683,309, a huge increase of about 12,800 over yesterday’s report—about 8.9 people dying per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 19 includes:

  • 1606 – The ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery depart England carrying settlers who founded, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.
  • 1777 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington’s Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

It was a rough winter. Ten soldiers died per day of starvation, disease, and cold. But Washington hung in there, one of the few men who stayed the whole time, and fixed things so the men left revitalized and ready to fight come Spring. The soldiers grew to love their general, but now his name is being removed from a high school in San Francisco.

Look at this beautiful car!

  • 1924 – German serial killer Fritz Haarmann is sentenced to death for a series of murders.

Haarmann, tried for killing 27 boys and young men. He was convicted and guillotined:

  • 1956 – Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

Although Adams (below) may have killed 150 patients by injecting them with drugs, he got off pretty much scot-free, sustaining only a £240 fine for  forging prescriptions, making false statements on cremation forms, and violating the Dangerous Drugs Act. He eventually practiced medicine again, and died after a fall in 1983. Oy!

  • 1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.
  • 1983 – The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It had been stolen before, too, but found thanks to Pickles:

On 20 March 1966, four months before the 1966 FIFA World Cup in England, the trophy was stolen during a public exhibition at Westminster Central Hall.  It was found just seven days later wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of a suburban garden hedge on Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, South London, by a black and white mongrel dog named Pickles

Here’s Pickles, who got a silver medal for his find. His owner got £5,000 pounds, with which he bought a house:

Pickles
  • 1998 – President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached.
  • 2001 – A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl, Mongolia.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1910 – Jean Genet, French novelist, playwright, and poet (d. 1986)
  • 1915 – Édith Piaf, French singer-songwriter and actress (d. 1963)

Here’s Piaf in 1960, toward the end of her career (she died of alcoholism at 47). This is her most famous song:

  • 1924 – Cicely Tyson, American actress
  • 1940 – Phil Ochs, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1976)
  • 1944 – Richard Leakey, Kenyan paleontologist and politician
  • 1963 – Jennifer Beals, American model and actress
  • 1972 – Alyssa Milano, American actress and television personality
  • 1980 – Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor and producer

Those who took up occupancy on a cloud on December 19 include:

Here’s the only undisputed likeness of Emily (and her sisters). Wikipedia caption: “The three Brontë sisters, in an 1834 painting by their brother Branwell Brontë. From left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte. (Branwell used to be between Emily and Charlotte, but subsequently painted himself out.)”  Branwell wasn’t such a great artist, but hey. . .  I’ve circled the author of Wuthering Heights.  Emily died of tuberculosis at thirty. 

  • 1915 – Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist (b. 1864)
  • 1953 – Robert Andrews Millikan, American physicist and eugenicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)
  • 1997 – Jimmy Rogers, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1924)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili gives a book review. Malgorzata’s explanation:

A few days ago Andrzej wrote a review of the newly published Polish translation of Richard Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox, and Hili is commenting on the book.

Her take:

Hili: Wrangham misses the key role of cats in the domestication of humans.
A: Big cats or small cats?
Hili: Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about.
In Polish:
Hili: Wrangham pomija kluczową rolę kotów w udomowieniu człowieka.
Ja: Małych czy wielkich?
Hili: Nie udawaj, że nie wiesz o czym mówię.

And the newly-neutered Kulka is back on the beat, demanding fusses.

Caption: Morning greeting. Kulka believes that every morning has to start with a few minutes of intensive contact.

In Polish: Codziennne poranne powitanie. Kulka uważa, że ranek musi się zacząć od kilku minut intensywnego kontaktu.

And in Wloclawek, Mietek tells Elzbieta he needs a siesta:

Mietek: Time for an afternoon nap.

In Polish: Pora na popołudniową drzemkę.

From Charles: a clowder of cats that’s also a coven:

From Su:

From Jesus of the Day. The only proper reaction is “Oy, gewalt!”

From reader Barry, who is learning that treehoppers and planthoppers are the weirdest insects going:

Tweets from Matthew. Translation of Hebrew in this one: “Hurry to make the final arrangements before Shabbat” (Sabbath). Everything has to be done before sundown on Friday:

Here’s a heartwarmer:

I assume this painting is real, and if so the caption is sheer genius:

A nasty Jewish fowl. The Hebrew caption, translated by Google, reads: “Where it is forbidden to put a duck. They bite very hard.” But that’s a goose!

Two lovely videos of the same bobcat. Sound up.

A tweet showing the tweeter, presented in a quiz by his students:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

December 15, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a chilly Tuesday, December 15, 2020: National Lemon Cupcake Day as well as National Gingerbread Latte Day, a drink that, like anchovy pizza, has degraded the human palate. It’s also National Cupcake Day, International Tea Day, Zamenhof Day for the (International Esperanto Community), and Bill of Rights Day, celebrating the day in 1791 when Virginia ratified the first ten amendments to the Constitution, meeting the quorum that made them law. But it’s also Cat Herders’ Day, giving me the chance to show once again the very best commercial ever made (this was shown during a Superbowl):

It’s the ninth anniversary of the death of Christopher Hitchens, too (see below).

Wine of the day:  Yesterday I cooked myself a small strip steak (very rare, of course) and had it with rice,  fresh tomatoes and green peppers, washing it all down with this Coteaux du Languedoc. a little-known red wine that, like this bottle, can be excellent and not too expensive.  At ten years old, this one showed very well and, I expect, could improve for another few years.

News of the day:

Letter of the day: I awoke this morning to find this email from “Chaos G”, as well as several other emails of this ilk. You can’t win with science and religion, for this chowderhead tells me that everyone knew all along they were incompatible:

Hey Dumb Ass,

Just saw your article regarding war between science and Religion.  Of course, there is a war between the 2, there always has been.  Where has your dumb ass been?  You need to find something better to do…

Kvetch of the week: As the New Woke Times converges to Huffington Post, we see its editorial pages increasingly filled with personal “feels” like this ridiculous animation, floating the idea that the writer, longing mightily for the pre-covid times, nevertheless suggests that maybe our pandemic lockdown is the more desirable state. Oy! (click on screenshot). And get the bit in the title, “Also, I think I’m losing my mind.” That is ripped right from the pages of HuffPost.

Yesterday the Electoral College officially made Joe Biden the next President of the U.S., and Kamala Harris the next Vice-President. The electoral vote for Biden was, as I predicted before anyone else, 306, well over the 270 needed to win. Where is my kudos?

Will Trump now concede? In late November he said he’d leave office if Biden won the Electoral College vote, as did a lot of his advisors, but some Trump administration officials are now backing off. The Washington Post writes about one of them:

By Monday morning, [yesterday] White House senior adviser Stephen Miller suggested the challenges could continue until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“The only date in the Constitution is Jan. 20,” Miller told Fox News. “So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election.”

Right the wrong my furry tuchas! Trump is toast. But he keeps beating the drum, as he did yesterday:

The coronavirus vaccine has made its way across the country, and shots are already being administered. New York got the first one yesterday, and Illinois will see the jabs begin tomorrow. What’s sad is to think about all those people in the ICU, dying at a rate of one a minute, who can’t be helped as, elsewhere in the same hospitals, people are being immunized. Still, I tweeted this:

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 301,006, an increase of about 1,700 from yesterday’s figure. America passed 300,000 total dead yesterday, and the deaths occurred at a rate of 1.2 per minute. The world death toll is 1,630,029, an increase of about 9,800 over yesterday’s report—about 6.8 people dying per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 15 includes:

This may be Sitting Bull, but there’s some controversy about the identity of the subject:

Here’s a video of the jubilation at the time:

Here’s the list of the highest-grossing films adjusted to 2019 dollars (from Wikipedia):

  • 1941 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv.
  • 1944 – World War II: a single-engine UC-64A Norseman aeroplane carrying United States Army Air Forces Major Glenn Miller is lost in a flight over the English Channel.
  • 1961 – Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.

Here’s the phony passport that Eichmann, under the name “Ricardo Klement”, entered Argentina in 1950. The Mossad, in a daring operation, nabbed him ten years later and brought him to Israel:

  • 1965 – Project Gemini: Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7.
  • 1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-II.
  • 1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People’s Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
  • 1981 – A suicide car bombing targeting the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, levels the embassy and kills 61 people, including Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon. The attack is considered the first modern suicide bombing.
  • 2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 spent to stabilize it, without fixing its famous lean.

It’s now supposed to be stable for another 300 years. The angle of lean is only 4 degrees, but it looks bigger, doesn’t it?

Notables born on this day include:

  • AD 37 – Nero, Roman emperor (d. 68)
  • 1859 – L. L. Zamenhof, Polish linguist and ophthalmologist, created Esperanto (d. 1917) [see above]
  • 1860 – Niels Ryberg Finsen, Faroese-Danish physician and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1904
  • 1892 – J. Paul Getty, American-English businessman and art collector, founded Getty Oil (d. 1976)
  • 1916 – Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand-English physicist and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
  • 1919 – Max Yasgur, American dairy farmer and host of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair (d. 1973)

Here’s Yasgur with the debris of Woodstock:

Max and Miriam Yasgur on their land after the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. (Photo By Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)
  • 1923 – Freeman Dyson, English-American physicist and mathematician (d. 2020)
  • 1981 – Michelle Dockery, English actress

Who doesn’t love Lady Mary?

Credit: Carnival Films

Those who entered oblivion on December 15 include:

Vermeer of course drew no cats, but he was one of the greatest painters of all time. Here’s “The Geographer” (1668-69):

  • 1683 – Izaak Walton, English author (b. 1593)
  • 1890 – Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota tribal chief (b. 1831)
  • 1943 – Fats Waller, American singer-songwriter and pianist (b. 1904)
  • 1944 – Glenn Miller, American bandleader and composer (b. 1904)
  • 1958 – Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian-Swiss physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1900)
  • 1966 – Walt Disney, American animator, director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (b. 1901)
  • 2009 – Oral Roberts, American evangelist, founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (b. 1918)
  • 2011 – Christopher Hitchens, English-American essayist, literary critic, and journalist (b. 1949)

This is my favorite Hitchens video, and you must watch it if you haven’t. It’s his 2006 defense of free speech at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Debating Club. The topic? “Be it resolved: Freedom of speech includes the freedom to hate.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili insults Andrzej:

Hili: People are ignoramuses.
A: That’s true, but why are you saying this?
Hili: Exactly: even you didn’t know this.
In Polish:
Hili: Ludzie są ignorantami.
Ja: To prawda, ale dlaczego to mówisz?
Hili: No właśnie, nawet tego nie wiesz.

And in nearby Wloclawek, teenager Mietek faces the week:

Mietek: A busy Monday.

In Polish: Pracowity poniedziałek

From Bruce. This is a most excellent meme, because I have this problem constantly. I finally put my spatula in a deeper drawer:

From Michael, some really, really bad ancient pictures of cats. When will they ever learn?

And a Christmas cat meme from Barb:

A tweet from Titania. Et tu, Hogarth? Hogarth??

From cesar. Why did the cat swat the horse?

Tweets from Matthew. Sound up for sure on this one, as their disputation is hilarious.

And another tweet from the same source:

I like some of these names!

All right; now I have to go to Switzerland and take this ride: