Category: Mietek

Saturday: Hili dialogue

November 28, 2020 • 6:30 am

Saturday is here already: due to the holiday, the week seems to have flown by. It’s November 28, 2020, and National French Toast Day (this is cultural appropriation in both name and object). I love French toast with sausages on the side and real maple syrup; my mom used to make it for me if I was a Good Boy. It’s also Turkey Leftover Day (this will go on for a week), Letter Writing Day (I can’t remember the last time I wrote a real letter, but we should do it more), and Red Planet Day, celebrating the launch of Mariner 4 in 1964, the first spacecraft to fly by Mars and give us close-up views of the planet.

News of the Day: I watched the news and read the NYT on Friday evening (as I write this), and it’s very grim. COVID-19 is making a huge comeback, and if I don’t miss my guess based on holiday travel data, in about two weeks we’ll see a huge spike.

Is there war impending in the Middle East? The top nuclear scientist of Iran, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated yesterday in his car, shot by gunmen along the road he was traveling. He’s long been identified by both the U.S. and Israel as a key figure in Iran’s supposed covert program for developing nuclear weapons, and Iran blamed both countries for the killing.  I doubt that there will be all-out war between Iran and Israel, but it’s unsettling, and I doubt Iran will do nothing in response.

Crikey, yesterday statues were defaced and toppled all over the U.S., and I’m not talking about Confederate statues, but those of respectable people. In Minneapolis, a statue of George Washington was toppled and defaced with the spray-painted words, “Genocidal maniac.” A statue of pioneers was also defaced. The Star-Tribune article mentions other vandalism that happened this week:

In Chicago, somebody tried to pull down a statue of President William McKinley in McKinley Park. The sculpture was also tagged with graffiti and the words “Land Back.” [JAC: This is the slogan for promoting giving land back to Native Americans.]

In Spokane, Wash., a statue of Abraham Lincoln was vandalized with red paint. In Portland, Ore., a monument in the city’s Lone Fir Cemetery, dedicated in 1903 to the veterans of the Civil War, Mexican, Spanish-American, and Indian wars, was tagged with anti-colonialism graffiti and its statue toppled and sprayed with red paint. Three people were arrested after protest-related vandalism damaging storefronts and spraying the words “Land Back” on buildings, Portland police said in a news release.

Here’s the photo of the toppled Washington in Minneapolis; you can read “Genocidal Maniac” on the left.  What genocide did Washington commit? And a “maniac”?

Photo: Shari Gross

I’ll pass along a reading recommendation from reader Ken. I’ve read the Brooks op-ed, which is good, but not yet the other one. The issue is distrust between the elites who determine what is “true”, and the others, who feel disenfranchised and empower themselves by embracing conspiracy theories. Ken’s note:

I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to read David Brooks opinion piece in yesterday’s NYT “The Rotting of the Republican Mind.”

It cites, and is largely based upon a longer piece from National Affairs by Jonathan Rauch, “The Constitution of Knowledge.” That essay deals in greater depth with the Right’s detachment from reality covered by Brooks’s piece, but, in the latter part, also addresses the problems caused on campus, and in the media, by the radical left. It is well worth the read.
And some good news from the site: Matthew’s new book, The Idea of the Brain, has been named one of the Time’s “Best Philosophy and Ideas Books of the Year 2020” and a Sunday Times Book of the Year. The announcement:

 

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 264,724, an increase of about 1,400 from yesterday’s figure.  The world death toll is 1,451,167, a big increase of about 11,600 over yesterday’s report. 

Stuff that happened on November 28 includes this:

  • 1520 – An expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan passes through the Strait of Magellan.
  • 1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence.

Here’s the marriage record. Shakespeare was 18, Anne Hathaway 26, and pregnant with their first child:

A photo of that first vote from the New Zealand Herald:

Heavily outnumbered by men, women turn out to an Auckland polling booth in November 1893 to vote in their first election after securing the right to vote. The overall turnout of female voters was unexpectedly high. Photo / File

What this means is that this was the election in which Kiwi women were first allowed to vote.

Here’s Duryea’s winning vehicle. Average speed: 5.4 miles per hour (a marathon runner does way better than that!):

  • 1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)

Lady Astor served until 1945; here’s a photo:

  • 1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.
  • 1941 – In Germany, Mufti of Palestine met Adolf Hitler in November-28-1941, whose agents had to convince themselves he is not “pure arab” in blood.  The nazi leader still refused to shake his hand or even drink coffee with him for considering Arabs inferior. They agreed on cooperation against Jews.

And here’s a photo of that meeting:

  • 1958 – First successful flight of SM-65 Atlas; the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family.
  • 1967 – The first pulsar (PSR B1919+21, in the constellation of Vulpecula) is discovered by two astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.
  • 1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison.
  • 1980 – Iran–Iraq War: Operation Morvarid: The bulk of the Iraqi Navy is destroyed by the Iranian Navy in the Persian Gulf. (Commemorated in Iran as Navy Day.)
  • 1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigns as leader of the Conservative Party and, therefore, as Prime Minister. She is succeeded in both positions by John Major.

Notables born on this day include:

Like many artists, Blake couldn’t draw cats. Here’s his “Tyger”:

  • 1820 – Friedrich Engels, German-English philosopher, economist, and journalist (d. 1895)
  • 1904 – Nancy Mitford, English journalist and author (d. 1973)
  • 1908 – Claude Lévi-Strauss, Belgian-French anthropologist and ethnologist (d. 2009)
  • 1929 – Berry Gordy, Jr., American songwriter and producer, founded Motown Records

Gordy, now 91, is still with us, and is responsible for much of the great soul music of the Sixties and Seventies.

  • 1962 – Jon Stewart, American comedian, actor, and television host
  • 1987 – Karen Gillan, Scottish actress

Those whose lives were obliterated on November 28 include:

Part of Bernini’s interior for St. Peter’s Basilica:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s baldachin, interior of St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. Ivor Clarke/Alamy
  • 1859 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian (b. 1783)
  • 1939 – James Naismith, Canadian-American physician and educator, created basketball (b. 1861)
  • 1954 – Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
  • 1960 – Richard Wright, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet (b. 1908)
  • 1976 – Rosalind Russell, American actress and singer (b. 1907)
  • 1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer (b. 1960)
  • 1994 – Jerry Rubin, American businessman and activist (b. 1938)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili finds a reason to go on living:

Hili: In spite of everything.
A: In spite of what?
Hili: In spite of everything I’m curious what will happen next.
In Polish:
Hili: Mimo wszystko.
Ja: Co mimo wszystko?
Hili: Mimo wszystko jestem ciekawa co będzie dalej.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek and Leon are on the prowl together (note that Mietek is now full grown!):

Leon:  Let’s go back, there is nothing for us here.

In Polish: Wracamy, nic tu po nas.

A meme from Divy:

An great early New Year’s meme from Bruce. Better early than never!

Posted by Seth Andrews on Facebook:

Screenshot of a tweet sent in by Smith Powell. This is a good one:

From reader Barry, two tweets showing Jordan Peterson. The first I don’t think shows that he’s a “grifter”, he simply hadn’t thought through the issue when he pronounced judgment.  The second is a bit reprehensible: a demonstration of confirmation bias by Peterson, who’s conversing with Matt Dillahunty.

Tweets from Matthew. This first one is indeed a stunning time-lapse photos. It also shows that the birds leave the tree in horizontal flight:

Here’s an Amazon comment on Matthew’s new book; the loon is apparently identified in the comment thread:

It wasn’t the cat!

Imagine what the staff had faced in the past!

Matthew channels Rudyard Kipling. Read about mosasaurs here.

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

November 14, 2020 • 6:30 am

Greet the Sabbath and get your shabbas goy in: it’s Saturday, November 14, 2020: both Pickle Appreciation Day and National Guacamole Day. It’s also National American Teddy Bear Day, World Diabetes Day, and Operating Room Nurse Day (a shout-out to those who helped in my recent hernia operation, including shaving my nether parts).

Today the Google Doodle (click on screenshot) goes to an animation celebrating the life of Maria Tallchief (1925-2011), a native American on one side (her father was from the Osage Nation), often considered America’s first star prima ballerina. It was on November 14, 1942, that Tallchief set out for New York City on her voyage to the Big Time. She danced first for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and then, after it was founded, for the New York City Ballet. Google has produced a nice video about her and the making of the Doodle.

News of the Day:

First, the good news. CNN reports an amazing hole in one by John Rahm at the Master’s. Rahm skipped the ball over the water, and it then took a tortuous course into the hole (see video below). When I wondered why he skipped the ball over the water, I found out that this was a practice round, and it’s a tradition to water-skip a ball at hole 16 during practice. (That sort of takes the shine off the achievement.)

Cloned kitten!: A Chinese man, bereft after the death of his cat “Garlic,” paid $35,000 to have a somatic cell from the late cat put into an egg, the egg implanted into a surrogate mother cat, and, mirabile dictu, they produced a seemingly normal kitten that was a genetic clone of Garlic:  (we shall see if it grows up okay). Although this is done fairly regularly with d*gs, it’s not done so often with cats. Meet Garlic 2.0 and its predecessor (there already appear to be some pattern differences):

Photo: Sinogene

In other news, Franco is still dead and Trump still hasn’t conceded the election. The President-Eject addressed reporters yesterday, but spoke mainly about the pandemic and the vaccine. He didn’t mention the election except very briefly (implying that it’s still undecided). And his team just lost two bids for election recounts, one (actually six separate suits) in Pennsylvania and the other in Michigan, where a judge proclaimed that Team Trump’s allegations of election fraud were unevidenced.

Here’s the NYT’s graph of newly reported Covid cases over time;  the 163,402 new cases reported on Thursday set a record.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 244,250, a big increase of about 1,400 from yesterday’s figure. The world death toll is 1,311,047, a big increase of about 10,200 over yesterday’s report.

Stuff that happened on November 14 includes:

The source was of the “Blue Nile”, and comprised three small springs in the Ethiopian town of Gish Abay.

The first American edition will cost you a cool $65,000:

  • 1886 – Friedrich Soennecken first developed the hole puncher, a type of office tool capable of punching small holes in paper.
  • 1889 – Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.

Bly’s real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran; here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “A publicity photograph taken by the New York World newspaper to promote Bly’s around-the-world voyage.”

Bridges’ attending the school, where of course she was met with much hatred and bigotry (and had to be escorted by U.S. Marshals), was the subject of Norman Rockwell’s famous 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With. During his presidency, Obama had the painting hung outside the Oval Office, despite the presence of the n-word on the wall below:

  • 1967 – American physicist Theodore Maiman is given a patent for his ruby laser systems, the world’s first laser.
  • 1995 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1797 – Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist and lawyer (d. 1875)
  • 1840 – Claude Monet, French painter (d. 1926)

Here’s Monet’s “Cat Sleeping on Bed” (1865):

The first Prime Minister of India, Nehru served for 18 years until his death. Here’s a photo of him with his daughter Indira (the first woman Prime Minister of India, later assassinated by her guards), and his grandsons Rajiv (assassinated in a separate incident), and Sanjay (killed in a plane crash).

Banting, who got the prize at 32 with James Macleod for the discovery of insulin, is still the youngest winner in Physiology or Medicine. He’s shown below (right) with his colleague Charles Best, co-discoverer who was snubbed at Prize time (Banting split his prize money with Best).

  • 1900 – Aaron Copland, American composer, conductor, and educator (d. 1990
  • 1906 – Louise Brooks, American actress and dancer (d. 1985)
  • 1954 – Condoleezza Rice, American political scientist, academic, and politician, 66th United States Secretary of State

Those who bought the farm on November 14 include:

  • 1716 – Gottfried Leibniz, German mathematician and philosopher (b. 1646)
  • 1915 – Booker T. Washington, American educator, essayist and historian (b. 1856)
  • 1997 – Eddie Arcaro, American jockey and sportscaster (b. 1916)
  • 2016 – Gwen Ifill, American television journalist (b. 1955)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili begins her annual cold-weather kvetching. November is a grim month, weatherwise, in Dobrzyn:

Hili: And once again, Autumn has left all this litter.
A: There is nothing to it, we’ll have to rake it all up before Winter.
In Polish:
Hili: I znów jesień naśmieciła.
Ja: Trudno, trzeba to będzie przed zimą zgrabić.

In nearby Włocławek, Mietek, no longer a tiny kitten, muses. The title is “An Autumn Reverie”:

In Polish: Jesienna zaduma

From Stash Krod:

From Gregory James:

From Su:

Just to remind you that Iran still oppresses everyone, but especially women. Sound up to hear the illegal singing.

Via Simon:

From reader Ken who says, “If this courageous whistleblower isn’t proof positive of massive voting fraud, I dunno what is.” Unbelievable!

Tweets from Matthew. First, a lovely flying fox. Don’t you just want to rub its tummy?

Thomas, the ship’s cat, snug in his hammock:

A musical and educational video. Be sure to turn the sound up:

Here’s the channel-billed cuckoo from Australia, Indonesia and New Guinea: the largest brood parasite in the world:

If you enlarge the drawing, you might be able to see the fish swimming to the left. There’s only one.

 

Monday: Hili dialogue (Leon exchange with Mietek)

October 12, 2020 • 6:30 am

Well, another damn work week is upon us, it being Monday, October 12, 2020. It’s National Pumpkin Pie Day, and if you’re a member of Costco, I recommend heading over there to pick up one of their 12-inch diameter pumpkin pies, made of quality ingredients and costing only $5.99. It’s very tasty, weighs nearly four pounds, and if you can’t finish it, it freezes well, too.

It’s Thanksgiving in Canada (I bet they’re giving thanks that they’re not Americans!), as well as National Gumbo Day, Pulled Pork Day, Columbus Day (see below; not to be mentioned further), Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Native American Day, and Freethought Day, celebrating the end of the Salem Witch trials in 1692.

News of the Day: The charade Senate confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett begins today at 9 a.m., lasting through Thursday.  I don’t even know what could possibly result in a negative vote, so it’s going to be softballs by Republicans and virtue-flaunting by Democrats, who have nothing to gain from their questions. Only an unearthed skeleton in the closet could create an “October surprise.”

Hypocrite Lindsey Graham, head of the Judiciary Committee, will be running the hearing. For a takedown of this sorry excuse for a Senator, see this article by Sidney Blumenthal in the Guardian. Suffice it to say that Blumenthal calls Graham “Trump’s poodle.  (h/t Jez).

Speaking of that, a misguided rabbi, writing at the New York Times, said that we shouldn’t be judging Amy Coney Barrett based on her religious beliefs.

A judge’s jurisprudence — as well as the propriety of such a nomination so close to an election — are worthy matters of debate, and they are appropriate reasons to oppose or support Judge Barrett’s nomination. But her faith is not.

But Rabbi Soleveichik doesn’t seem to realize that Senators won’t be opposing Barrett simply because she is a Christian, but because it seems likely, and so she has written, that her judicial opinions should align with her strong Christian beliefs. If she’s pre-decided cases based on the words of Jesus, we should know that

In a news analysis at the New York Times, David Sanger recounts Trump’s last-minute attempt to settle scores against political opponents like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. These include Trump ordering Secretary of State Pompeo to release more of Hillary Clinton’s emails  (h/t Woody). A quote:

[Trump] is making it clear that prosecutions, like vaccines for the coronavirus, are useless to him if they come after Nov. 3. He has declared, without evidence, that there is already plenty of proof that Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton, among others, were fueling the charges that his campaign had links to Russia — what he calls “the Russia hoax.” And he has pressured his secretary of state to agree to release more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails before the election, reprising a yearslong fixation despite having defeated her four years ago. [JAC: Pompeo is following orders]

Presidential historians say there is no case in modern times where the president has so plainly used his powers to take political opponents off the field — or has been so eager to replicate the behavior of strongmen.

He’s running scared, and striking out like a bull who’s faced the picador.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 214,604, an increase of about 400 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll remains at “1.0 million +”, with 3,943 deaths reported yesterday.

Stuff that happened on October 12 includes:

  • 1492 – Christopher Columbus’s first expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas.
  • 1692 – The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Province of Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phips.
  • 1773 – America’s first insane asylum opens.

This was Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia (where I went to college), originally known as “The Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds”. It was originally brutal:

Though the aim was noble, the practices were brutal by modern standards. Bleeding, bullying, blistering salves, and electrocution were all standard treatments. This was changed under the supervision of Dr. John Galt, who believed the mentally ill were entitled to dignity and could be reintegrated with society.

Galt also knew that just because the patients were crazy didn’t mean they weren’t witty. It is said that when hospital sponsor John D. Rockefeller strolled through the grounds and introduced himself to an inmate, the inmate replied, “Oh sure. And I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.” Thanks to a donation from Rockefeller, the hospital was moved about 3 miles west to Dunbar Farms, to accommodate its large patient population.

By the time I arrived there, some of the buildings had been converted to student dorms on the outskirts of town, which are in the photo below. All of us were scared to go near the real hospital.

 

  • 1792 – The first celebration of Columbus Day is held in New York City.
  • 1810 – The citizens of Munich hold the first Oktoberfest.
  • 1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools.

The words “under God” weren’t added until 1954.

  • 1915 – World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium.

Cavell was shot at only 49 despite international pleas for mercy. Here she is:

The toll?  2,735 New Zealand casualties, of whom 845 were killed.

Here’s one of the first iron lungs (they are no longer used). When I was a kid, and before polio vaccine was widespread, we were all afraid of winding up in one of these:

  • 1945 – World War II: Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor.

The movie “Hacksaw Ridge,” which is quite good, was made about Doss’s life, starring Andrew Garfield as Doss and directed by Mel Gibson (Garfield got an Oscar nomination for his performance). Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist, wouldn’t carry a gun, but became a medic and saved the lives of 75 men, dragging them to safety under heavy fire. If there is a CO hero who was a soldier, he’s mine.   Here’s a short video that shows some of the scenes from the movie and from Doss’s life, followed by a photo of Doss getting the Medal of Honor from Harry Truman:

Doss getting his Medal of Honor. Photo from Getty. Source.
  • 1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion.

Yes, he did, and I remember it. Here’s a rare video showing it:

  • 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, dies five days after he was beaten outside of Laramie.
  • 2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
  • 2019 – Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya becomes the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:40 in Vienna.

Here’s the last kilometer of the race showing Kipchoge’s victory:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1865 – Arthur Harden, English biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
  • 1875 – Aleister Crowley, English magician and author (d. 1947)
  • 1921 – Art Clokey, American animator, producer, screenwriter, and voice actor, created Gumby (d. 2010)
  • 1932 – Dick Gregory, American comedian, actor, and author (d. 2017)
  • 1970 – Kirk Cameron, American actor, screenwriter, and Christian evangelical/anti-evolution activist

We mustn’t forget Cameron and Ray Comfort’s famous “banana video”, with the principals forgetting that the commercial banana is a sterile triploid, bred by humans, not God:

Those who cashed in their chips on October 12 include:

  • 322 BC – Demosthenes, Athenian statesman, (b. 384 BC)
  • 1858 – Hiroshige, Japanese painter (b. 1797)
  • 1870 – Robert E. Lee, American general (b. 1807)
  • 1915 – Edith Cavell, English nurse (b. 1865)
  • 1924 – Anatole France, French journalist, novelist, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1844)
  • 1940 – Tom Mix, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1880)

Mix, of course, was a famous cowboy movie star, and helped popularize cowboy boots. Here’s a pair of his personal boots that were auctioned off for a lot of dosh. Note the hand tooling and extra-high heels. (This reminds me; it’s almost boot season.)

  • 1946 – Joseph Stilwell, American general (b. 1883)
  • 1969 – Sonja Henie, Norwegian figure skater and actress (b. 1912)
  • 1978 – Nancy Spungen, American figure of the 1970s punk rock scene (b. 1958)
  • 1997 – John Denver, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1943)
  • 1999 – Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player and coach (b. 1936)
  • 2003 – Bill Shoemaker, American jockey (b. 1931)
  • 2012 – James Coyne, Canadian lawyer and banker, 2nd Governor of the Bank of Canada (b. 1910) [JAC: I don’t know him but perhaps he’s a distant relative.]

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili begins her kvetching as the cold weather approaches.

Hili: The leaves on the trees are starting to change colors.
A: I like it.
Hili: I prefer spring.
In Polish:
Hili: Liście na drzewach zaczynają zmieniać kolory.
Ja: Ja to lubię.
Hili: Ja wolę wiosnę.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Mietek and Leon, BFFs, seem to be looking for mushrooms.

Leon:  You look at the left and I will look at the right side. They must be here somewhere.

In Polish: Ty patrz z prawej, ja z lewej. Muszą tu gdzieś być.

From Bruce:

From Nicole, a holiday decoration:

Another pandemic meme from Moto:

From Titania. I wonder if this is a real prom. I suspect so because everyone’s wearing masks. Still . .  .

From Barry. THIS is why I never feed bread to waterfowl and tell others they shouldn’t, either. This bird won’t ever fly because people fed him bread:

Also from Barry. There’s sound.

This woman may become mayor of Portland in the next election. She’s not as bad as her dress, but she’s not great, either. As cesar says, “Under Mao’s Cultural Revolution, several million people were murdered. Che was ruthless and vicious toward gays.” But of course the Portlanders don’t worry about that; they like revolutionaries. 

One from Simon:

Tweets from Matthew:

Well, I don’t think Hunter Biden really won the Nobel Prize this year, as he wasn’t with the organization, but even so, this is a gotcha moment:

What an excellent carver!

Now this is a tree! I’ve never seen one this big as gingkos weren’t introduced to America until much more recently:

Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

October 11, 2020 • 6:30 am

Happy Cat Sabbath: It’s Ceiling Cat’s Day, October 11, 2020: National Sausage Pizza Day, a comestible that clearly isn’t kosher. It’s also Southern Food Heritage Day, World Obesity Day, and Kraken Day, described this way:

Kraken Day, also known as Myths and Legends Day, is part of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, or Cephalopod Awareness Week, which takes place from October 8-12 each year.

Finally, in the U.S. it’s International Day of the Girl Child, International Newspaper Carrier Day (how many readers delivered papers?), and National Coming Out Day. 

News of the Day:

This happened yesterday (the CNN headline was “Trump delivers dark and divisive speech in first major appearance since Covid diagnosis“):

People wore masks, though the first thing Il Duce did when he appeared was to publicly peel off his mask, a clear signal; but there was no social distancing. Trump’s doctor (I don’t trust him) says he’s cleared to interact with people and is “no longer a transmission risk”, but still won’t say if he’s tested negative for the virus. And that surely means that he hasn’t tested negative.

The Washington Post reports that an after-midnight military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, featured the largest liquid-fueled, road-mobile nuclear missile anyone’s ever seen. Apparently it can carry several nuclear warheads that can be delivered inter-continentally, but the Great Leader says that it’s only for deterrence.  Here’s a photo, but I always wonder how experts can tell these are real missiles rather than dummies:

(from WaPo): This image made from video broadcast by North Korea’s KRT shows a military parade with what appears to be a possible new intercontinental ballistic missile at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (KRT via AP)

A strident atheist proclaims, “I’m ready for an atheist president”—in Cosmopolitan, of all places! (h/t Barry) An excerpt:

We may think of ourselves as “one nation, under God” (that lil phrase was only added to our pledge of allegiance in 1954, btw), but right now, nothing about our nation is feeling whole, one. Our insistence on religion as a unifying American principle feels just as outdated and illusory as the notion of civility in the White House. And when politicians wield their faith as a means to convince voters that they’re “good,” it strikes me as downright condescending.

Good news! LiveScience reports that, after Tasmanian devils disappeared from the Australian continent about 3,500 years ago, probably outcompeted by dingos, they’re back on the mainland again (see also National Geographic).

Aussie Ark, a wildlife nonprofit in Australia, has been breeding and studying Tasmanian devils for more than a decade, with the goal of eventually reintroducing devils into the wild once conditions were sustainable for their survival, according to the statement. For the recent release, Aussie Ark partnered with GWC and WildArk, another wildlife conservation nonprofit; they released 11 Tasmanian devils on Sept. 10. (h/t Sue)

The wild devils in Tasmania have been hit hard by a contagious face cancer, transmitted by bites from other devils, but the released population on the mainland is cancer-free, so there’s no chance that an expanded population will be afflicted by the disease. You go, o lovely fierce marsupials!

Tasmanian Devil (from Aussie Ark via Nat. Geog.)

The New York Times has a figure and a list of coronavirus cases in American colleges and universities. Right now the total is more than 178,000 cases at 1400+ colleges. Ohio State seems to hold the record, with 3,051 reported cases, but it has a huge enrollment—66,400 or so. The University of Wisconsin at Madison is only ten cases behind Ohio State (enrollment: 43,820), but clearly has a higher infection rate. The University of Chicago is on the low side, with 79 reported cases (enrollment: 14,467 counting grad students), and I hope it stays that way.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 214,184, an increase of about 600 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll remains at “1.0 million +”, with 4,646 deaths reported yesterday.

Stuff that happened on October 11 includes:

  • 1531 – Huldrych Zwingli is killed in battle with the Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland.
  • 1767 – Surveying for the Mason–Dixon line separating Maryland from Pennsylvania is completed.

Here’s the Mason-Dixon line [dark red] from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Surveyed to resolve a border dispute, it later became the informal line of demarcation between slave states in the South and free states in the North.

  • 1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest university, is inaugurated in Sydney.
  • 1906 – San Francisco sparks a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Japan by ordering segregated schools for Japanese students.
  • 1954 – In accord with the 1954 Geneva Conference, French troops complete their withdrawal from North Vietnam.
  • 1962 – The Second Vatican Council becomes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
  • 1968 – NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission.
  • 1976 – George Washington is posthumously promoted to the grade of General of the Armies.

That took long enough, and what was accomplished by it?

  • 1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.

Here’s an short interview with Sullivan that shows scenes from her space walk (trigger warning: d*g!)

  • 1991 – Prof. Anita Hill delivers her televised testimony concerning sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.

Hill, now 64, teaches at Brandeis University and a works as a lawyer with the Civil Rights and Employment Practice group of the plaintiffs’ law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll. And of course we all remember the tense standoff between her, Clarence Thomas, and the Senate.  Here’s Joe Biden, who gave Hill a hard time during the hearings, asking her to say “Long Dong Silver”. It didn’t matter, but I did and do believe that Hill was telling the truth.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1844 – Henry J. Heinz, American businessman, founded the H. J. Heinz Company (d. 1919)
  • 1918 – Jerome Robbins, American director, producer, and choreographer (d. 1998)
  • 1925 – Elmore Leonard, American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter (d. 2013)
  • 1937 – Bobby Charlton, English footballer and manager

There’s a good FIFA  video about Charlton, who played for Manchester United most of his career. You can see it on Youtube by clicking on the screenshot below (I can’t embed the video; it’s FIFA!):

  • 1946 – Daryl Hall, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
  • 1968 – Jane Krakowski, American actress and singer

Those who met their Just Reward on October 11 include:

  • 1779 – Casimir Pulaski, Polish-American general (b. 1745)
  • 1809 – Meriwether Lewis, American captain, explorer, and politician, 2nd Governor of Louisiana Territory (b. 1774)
  • 1940 – Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician and physicist (b. 1860)
  • 1961 – Chico Marx, American comedian (b. 1887)
  • 1963 – Jean Cocteau, French author, poet, and playwright (b. 1889)
  • 1965 – Dorothea Lange, American photographer and journalist (b. 1895)

Lange became well known for her photographs of people affected by the Great Depression, taken for the Farm Security Administration . Here’s one of them:

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili likes to be admired, but not out in the open, where there may be d*gs. Here she is down by the Vistula:

Hili: Open spaces make me anxious.
A: Why?
Hili: Everybody can see me
In Polish:
Hili: Otwarte przestrzenie budzą niepokój.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Wszyscy mnie widzą.

In nerby Wloclawek, Mietek the kitten is no longer a kitten. He’s an adult cat, and showing all the signs of it.

Mietek: What do you mean that I had dinner already?!!!

In Polish: Jak to, jadłem już kolację?!!!

A Halloween meme from Nicole:

From Jesus of the Day; time to rectify the deficit of penguins in STEM:

And speaking once again about flies (I have to hand it to Pence—he’s made flies great again!), here’s a cat/fly meme from The Cat House on the Kings:

From Titania. This statement might sound ridiculous, but in fact it is the sentiment of some of the Woke:

I’m highlighting the second tweet below (I can’t figure out how to embed a single tweet in a thread). It shows Trump making another ridiculous statement (at the end). I guess he hasn’t heard of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the first video also shows one of his unhinged moments.

A tweet from Barry. Notice how the beasts become bipedal before the hit. As Barry says, “That’s gotta hurt!”, but I’m not so sure:

From Simon, the first animation I’ve seen from The Lincoln Project. Sound up. A “Walk of Shame” usually refers to a college woman sneaking back to her dorm or sorority house after spending a night with a guy, wearing the same clothes she wore the previous evening.

A lovely carving by a talented carver:

This is the most enlightened society ever:

LOL, a climbing frame:

More than one scholar has written me in the past week saying I was right about denying that Arab scholars anticipated Darwin’s theory of evolution hundreds of years before The Origin. And here’s another one.

 

Sunday: Hili dialogue

September 6, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on the Christian cats’ Sabbath: Sunday, September 6, 2020: National Coffee Ice-Cream Day (they put an hyphen in “ice cream” for reasons unknown). It’s also Barbie Doll Day (the doll first went on sale on September 6, 1959) and Read a Book Day,

News of the Day: The horse Authentic won the Kentucky Derby yesterday, leading from beginning to end. It was the seventh fastest finish ever.

As I’m writing this on Saturday evening, Portland, Oregon is bracing for its 100th straight night of protests, which have gotten quite violent: several deaths, violence on many sides, and people arrested for felonious rioting. I wonder what the point is any more, and it’s dispiriting. Rochester, New York, is also predicted to have a rough night. I’ll update this Sunday morning,  Similar clashes, but without the shootings, are occurring in Rochester, New York, where people are reacting to the death of Daniel Prude.

SUNDAY UPDATE: ABC News reports that the protesting in Portland last night, which was violent, was declared a “riot”, with protestors reported throwing “fire bombs” at police.  Well, at least nobody was shot.  Protesting was also violent in Rochester, New York, with protestors throwing fireworks at cops and cops shooting pepper balls and tear gas at protestors.

After Fox news reporter Jennifer Griffin confirmed and extended the Atlantic report about Trump’s denigration of military people who died in action, she was defended by her colleagues at Fox. This really pissed off Trump, whose favorite source of news is the right-wing Fox, and he tweeted this:

The Boston Globe reports that 11 first-year Northeastern University students were sent packing without a refund of their tuition; they violated social-distancing requirements in their “dorm”: the Westin Hotel in Boston. They’ll be allowed to return in the Spring. Universities should take a similar hard line if they’re serious about avoiding pandmic outbreaks.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 188,409, 187,698, an increase of about 700 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 878,858, an increase of about 500 deaths from yesterday. It looks like the prediction of 200,000 deaths in the U.S., once considered shocking and unthinkable, will be surpassed soon, and the world total will go over a million. 

Stuff that happened on September 6 includes:

  • 1492 – Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.
  • 1522 – The Victoria returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition and the first known ship to circumnavigate the world.
  • 1628 – Puritans settle Salem which became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  • 1803 – British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.

Here’s Dalton’s table of atomic weights, with photo and caption taken from Science Photo Library:

John Dalton’s table of atomic weights and the symbols he used for a number of “elements”. Compiled in 1808, some of the 20 substances included in the table are compounds & not pure elements: lime, for example. Dalton calculated the weight of each substance relative to hydrogen, the lightest, ending his list with mercury, to which he had incorrectly assigned a greater atomic weight than for lead. Dalton’s view of each element consisting of a unique type of indivisible atom was consistent with contemporary observations & “laws” concerning the combination of elements to form compounds.
  • 1870 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.
  • 1962 – Archaeologist Peter Marsden discovers the first of the Blackfriars Ships dating back to the second century AD in the Blackfriars area of the banks of the River Thames in London.

Here’s a reconstruction of one of the ships to scale; it was a Roman cargo ship:

  • 1972 – Munich massacre: Nine Israeli athletes die (along with a German policeman) at the hands of the Palestinian “Black September” terrorist group after being taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games. Two other Israeli athletes were slain in the initial attack the previous day.
  • 1991 – The Russian parliament approves the name change of Leningrad back to Saint Petersburg. The change is effective October 1, 1991.
  • 1995 – Cal Ripken, Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles plays in his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking a record that had stood for 56 years.

Ripken eventually played 2,632 games, a record unlikely to be broken. (The first record was held, of course, by Iron Man Lou Gehrig.) Here’s a short video of Ripken’s record-breaking game:

  • 1997 – The Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales takes place in London. Well over a million people lined the streets and 2​1⁄2 billion watched around the world on television.
  • 2018 – Supreme Court of India decriminalised all consensual sex among adults in private, making homosexuality legal on the Indian lands.

Notables born on this day include:

Addams, a Chicago resident, was a pathbreaking social worker and sociologist, who built her famous Hull House in my town. This picture was taken in either 1924 or 1926. I didn’t know until today that she’d won the Nobel Prize:

  • 1888 – Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., American businessman and diplomat, 44th United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (d. 1969)
  • 1947 – Jane Curtin, American actress and comedian
  • 1980 – Kerry Katona, English singer and actress

Those who packed it in on September 6 include:

  • 1907 – Sully Prudhomme, French poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1839)
  • 1939 – Arthur Rackham, English illustrator (b. 1867). Here’s one of Rackham’s paintings: “Benevolent Cat” (1920):

  • 1972 – Perpetrator and victims of the Munich massacre
    • Luttif Afif, Palestinian terrorist (b. 1945)
    • David Mark Berger, American-Israeli weightlifter (b. 1944)
    • Ze’ev Friedman, Polish-Israeli weightlifter (b. 1944)
    • Yossef Gutfreund, Israeli wrestling judge (b. 1931)
    • Eliezer Halfin, Russian-Israeli wrestler (b. 1948)
    • Amitzur Shapira, Russian-Israeli runner and coach (b. 1932)
    • Kehat Shorr, Romanian shooting coach (b. 1919)
    • Mark Slavin, Israeli wrestler (b. 1954)
    • Andre Spitzer, Romanian-Israeli fencer and coach (b. 1945)
  • 1984 – Ernest Tubb, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1914)

Here’s Tubb, a pioneer of country music, singing his most famous song:

  • 2017 – Kate Millett, American feminist author and activist (b. 1934)
  • 2019 – Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean politician, 2nd President of Zimbabwe (b. 1924)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, being a Jewish cat, is having some angst:

Hili: I’m feeling melancholy today.
A: Why?
Do you have to have a reason?
In Polish:
Hili: Jestem dziś w melancholijnym nastroju.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: A trzeba mieć powód?

And, as fall comes along, Leon and Mietek are enjoying the future site of their country home, where Elzbieta and Andrzej the Second have planted a lovely garden:

From Merilee. I wish this were real!

Our Savior, from Divy:

From reader Charles. This is a real sign because a friend sent me a photo of it from South Africa.  What worries me is how many penguins got squashed before they put it up.

Actress Meggie Foster does Meghan (“Meggie”) Markle à la Sarah Cooper:

From Simon, who likes this account that makes science metaphors from videos:

From gravelinspector. Check out the photos and videos at the link.

 

Tweets from Matthew. He didn’t know what this was and neither did I till I looked it up. It is indeed a real bird, the smew (Mergellus albellus), and breeds in northern Eurasia. Females are brown and look nothing like these white males. Anyway, Matthew sent me the original tweet and I retweeted it.

Here’s Dr. Cobb at his most cynical (sound up).

And yes, Matthew: they do catch oysters:

What a fantastic picture! Did the camera stay mounted in one spot for a year?

Squid spawning. The Google translation of the Japanese is “The spawning of the squid is truly mysterious no matter how many times you look at it. I am impressed by the appearance of a squid that exceeds 80 centimeters passing in front of me and the effort to connect the next life. Scenes that can never be seen in everyday life are taken for granted in the sea.”

Flu avoidance during the last pandemic. Only the last panel gives an efficacious preventive measure:

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

September 2, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s our first Hump Day in September: Wednesday, September 2, 2020, and National “Grits for Breakfast” Day. Why the scare quotes, though? Don’t be scared of grits!

You either love grits with breakfast or you hate them, and I’m in the first class—the right class. You can’t beat a good Southern breakfast of grits, fried eggs, country ham with red-eye gravy, strong coffee, and biscuits. Yes, there must be biscuits, and you mush up your grits with the runny egg and gravy. Here’s a photo of breakfast at the best place to get it in the South, the Loveless Cafe outside of Nashville. There’s one woman there whose only job is to make biscuits, for which the place is justly famous. In fact, everything is just a side dish to the main course of biscuits. Here are two photos I took when, at my request, my hosts at Vanderbilt took me there for breakfast when I was lecturing there in 2012:

Sure good eatin’, I gare-un-tee!

The first course of biscuits! Homemade preserves, cherry, blackberry, and peach, comes alongside. As the biscuits arrive first, you have to be careful not too eat too many of them lest you have no appetite for the platter above:

It’s also World Coconut Day, National Blueberry Popsicle Day, and the 75th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day (or “VJ Day”), when World War II finally ended for the U.S. when the surrender documents were signed on the USS Missouri.

News of the Day: There’s a fair bit of news about Donald Trump’s mysterious visit to Walter Reed Hospital last November. It was reported by the White House as “the first part of a physical,” but the second part wasn’t completed, and there’s also a report that Pence was asked to stand by in case Trump had to be anesthetized for “a procedure.” That didn’t happen, apparently, but the state of the President’s health seems murky. Matthew says that videos like the one below may constitute evidence for “mini-strokes”, which, he adds, only the President has mentioned.

According to the Washington Post, a committee reporting to the mayor of Washington, D.C. has recommended wholesale renaming of buildings based on ideological impurities. To wit:

A committee reporting to D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has recommended renaming dozens of public schools, parks and government buildings in the nation’s capital, after studying the historical namesakes’ connections to slavery and oppression.

The honorees whom the committee says should not have public works named for them include presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson; Revolutionary leader Benjamin Franklin; inventor Alexander Graham Bell; and national anthem writer Francis Scott Key.

Here’s an article from yesterday’s New York Times by Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate and former director of the NIH, and Rajiv Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Click on it, but if you can’t read it, it’s about testing, and criticizes the CDC’s new guidelines that fewer asymptomatic people should be tested (I think those guidelines were forced on the CDC by the Trump administration).

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 184,564, an increase of about 1100 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 856,214 849,779, a big increase of about 6500 deaths from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on September 2 include:

  • 1666 – The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings, including Old St Paul’s Cathedral.
  • 1752 – Great Britain, along with its overseas possessions, adopts the Gregorian calendar.
  • 1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.
  • 1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred is awarded the first Eagle Scout award of the Boy Scouts of America.

Here’s Eldred (he also saved a child from drowning), the first of nearly two million Eagle Scouts:

Arthur Rose Eldred in 1912, shortly after receiving the Eagle award and his Bronze Honor medal for saving a life.

 

  • 1935 – The Labor Day Hurricane, the most intense hurricane to strike the United States, makes landfall at Long Key, Florida, killing at least 400.

This was the record in terms of the lowest pressure recorded in any US hurricane (892 mbar or 26.34 in Hg).

Here’s the Instrument of Surrender (click to enlarge):

The original cost estimate of the span was $250 million, so it cost more than 25 times the estimate.

Notables born on this day include:

She was the only queen who ever ruled Hawaii, and did so for only two years. Here she is on the throne:

  • 1946 – Billy Preston, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor (d. 2006)
  • 1948 – Terry Bradshaw, American football player, sportscaster, and actor
  • 1948 – Christa McAuliffe, American educator and astronaut (d. 1986)
  • 1964 – Keanu Reeves, Lebanese-Canadian actor, singer, and producer
  • 1966 – Salma Hayek, Mexican-American actress, director, and producer

Those whose metabolism ceased on September 2 include:

Here’s “Tiger Cat” by Rousseau.

 

  • 1964 – Alvin C. York, American colonel, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1887)
  • 1969 – Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese politician, 1st President of Vietnam (b. 1890)
  • 1973 – J. R. R. Tolkien, English novelist, short story writer, poet, and philologist (b. 1892)

Here’s Tolkien (photo from Tolkien Library):

  • 2005 – Bob Denver, American actor (b. 1935)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is avoiding Szaron and Kulka (who often visit) by sleeping in the guest room:

A: Are you sleeping here? On this hard bench?
Hili: Yes, because there are strange cats there.
A: They are not strange cats.
Hili: Everybody has his own definition.
In Polish:
Ja: Tu śpisz? Na tej twardej ławie?
Hili: Tak, bo tam są obce koty.
Ja: To nie są obce koty.
Hili: Każdy ma swoją definicję.

In nearby Wloclawek, Leon and Mietek cuddle and have a chat (their staff are both teachers, and school in Poland opened yesterday):

Leon: They went to school. Finally we have a moment of quiet.
In Polish: Poszli do szkoły? Wreszcie mamy odrobinę spokoju.

From Jesus of the Day: a real photo with the caption, “Meanwhile in Australia Angry Birds 2020 edition has started. View from a rear facing motorcycle helmet camera. Photo credit : Monique Newton.”

A cartoon sent by Woody. I’ve surely alluded to this before, but don’t remember posting a cartoon:

From Charles: A Mike Lukovich cartoon about the GOP Convention:

Singer Adele got accused big time of cultural appropriation when she wore her hair in “Bantu knots”—an African hairstyle—as well as a bikini top with the Jamaican flag on it. The occasion was the Notting Hill Carnival.

Here’s one of the Offended:

I’m on the side of Naomi Campbell (whose mother was born in Jamaica), Zoe Saldana, and Chelsea Handler, whose comments on Adele’s Instagram post are below. There’s no way that Adele is hurting anybody here, and she’s clearly appropriating black culture out of admiration. People really need to lighten up.

Tweets from Matthew: an excellent Beatles/beetles tweet:

Yesterday was the 81st anniversary of the start of WWII in Europe. Here’s a disturbing video of how the Nazis began their attack on Poland:

I didn’t look closely enough to see if the trig calculation is set up properly here, but I hope some reader will freeze the frame and let us know:

To see what the Tweeter means by “the film,” you’ll have to turn the sound up (sorry!):

And, like the awesome cat above, this Polish man nevertheless persisted:

Matthew said, “Wait until they come to the UK”, and helpfully provided a picture of UK outlets (below):

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Mietek monologue)

August 20, 2020 • 6:30 am

Well, we got through Wednesday, and now there’s only one day to the weekend (but does it mean anything any more?). Welcome to Thursday, August 20, 2020: National Chocolate Pecan Pie Day. While that’s an estimable pie, I prefer the version sans chocolate.

And I’ll be damned if it isn’t National Bacon Lover’s Day—again (it was also that day on August 18). The apostrophe, however, implies that only a single Bacon Lover is being feted, so perhaps there are “Bacon Lover’s Days” scattered throughout the year.  It’s also National Lemonade Day, National Radio Day, and World Mosquito Day, celebrating the day in 1897 when Ronald Ross discovered that malaria was transmitted from bird to bird via the bite of Anopheles mosquitoes (he extrapolated the work to humans). It was in fact Ross who declared this day World Mosquito Day.  For this discovery he won the Nobel Prize in 1902—the first Brit to win a Nobel Prize of any sort.

And it’s a Darwin Anniversary Day (see below).

News of the Day: Last night at the Democratic National Convention,  Kamala Harris accepted the nomination as Vice President, and Obama made an important speech, flagellating Trump not only to help Biden win but to reclaim Obama’s own legacy. A transcript of his 20-minute speech is here; I haven’t yet listened to it, but I’ve put the video below. (I’m at work now and listening to it. It’s great to hear a sane President again!) “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job—because he can’t.”

I’ve now heard it, and it was very good, hitting all the right notes. If ever anyone made a calm and rational case for dumping the idiot who sits in the White House, it’s Obama in this speech.

I’m now listening to Kamala Harris’s speech, which you can find here.

The protests continue against dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s apparently bogus election in Belarus. The EU, fed up, has rejected Lukashenko’s election and imposed financial sanctions on government officials deemed guilty of mistreating protestors and rigging the election.

Postalgate continues, despite Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s assurance that mail sorting machines were not being removed from post offices. Yet there are lots of photos of disassembled high-speed sorters being warehoused. On the news last night, some post office employees averred that the machines were in perfect working order when they were removed. This, to me, is a criminal offense and an attempt to subvert the upcoming election.

Speaking of subversion, NYT writer Thomas Friedman seriously worries that November’s election will spell the end of American democracy. I think he’s over the top here, but here’s what he says:

Here is a sentence I never in a million years thought that I would ever write or read: This November, for the first time in our history, the United States of America may not be able to conduct a free and fair election and, should President Trump be defeated by Joe Biden, have a legitimate and peaceful transfer of power.

Because if half the country thinks their votes were not fully counted due to deliberate sabotaging of the U.S. Postal Service by this administration, and if the other half are made to believe by the president that any mail-in vote for Biden was fraudulent, that would not result in just a disputed election — not another Bush v. Gore for the Supreme Court to sort out — that would be the end of American democracy as we know it. It also isn’t hyperbole to say it could sow the seeds of another Civil War.

The threat is real.

Perhaps, but not as real, in my view, as Friedman thinks it is.

There are two values for the length of a foot: the old foot,  the “international foot” defined as exactly 0.3048 of a meter, and the “survey foot”, an older length that’s used almost exclusively by surveyors. They differ by two parts in a million, but surveyors’ use of the old one has caused trouble. Now, as of January 1, 2023, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has decreed that only the international foot will be used.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 173,094, an increase of about 1,200 deaths over yesterday’s report. The world death toll now stands at 786,916, a big increase of about 6,600 deaths from yesterday.

Stuff that happened on August 20 includes:

Here’s the title page of that joint paper, whose publication prompted Darwin to assemble his data and publish The Origin a year later. You can read the entire paper here.

  • 1866 – President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
  • 1882 – Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia.
  • 1920 – The first commercial radio station, 8MK (now WWJ), begins operations in Detroit.
  • 1938 – Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.

It’s not clear that, given Rodriguez admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs, that his record should hold.

  • 1940 – In Mexico City, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramón Mercader. He dies the next day.

Here’s a picture of the desk at which Trotsky was sitting when his assassin struck. I took the photo in November, 2012. You should visit Trotsky’s compound if you’re in Mexico City, and also visit Frida Kahlo’s house and studio, just a few blocks away (rumor has it that Kahlo and Trotsky were lovers at one time).  The desk is said to be exactly as it was when Trotsky was attacked.

Here’s a 4-minute excerpt of that speech:

  • 1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
  • 1988 – Iran–Iraq War: A ceasefire is agreed after almost eight years of war.
  • 1998 – The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government’s approval.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1886 – Paul Tillich, German-American philosopher and theologian (d. 1965)
  • 1905 – Jack Teagarden, American singer-songwriter and trombonist (d. 1964)

Teagarden was one of only a handful of great jazz trombonists. Here’s he is with Satchmo in a great duet, “Old Rocking Chair”. Below are the YouTube notes, with the grocer’s apostrophe on “cats”:

These Cat’s knew the business they were in, entertainment. Here is Louis Armstrong on trumpet & vocal, Bobby Hackett, one of the best cornet players in the world, Jack Teagarden on trombone & vocals, Peanuts Hucko on clarinet with Marty Napoleon, piano, Arvell Shaw on bass & Cozy Cole on drums in New York,on December 30, 1957.This is the meaning of fun.

Want more of this great duo? Go here.

  • 1910 – Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect and furniture designer, designed the Gateway Arch (d. 1961)
  • 1941 – Slobodan Milošević, Serbian lawyer and politician, 1st President of Serbia (d. 2006)
  • 1944 – Rajiv Gandhi, Indian lawyer and politician, 6th Prime Minister of India (d. 1991)
  • 1974 – Amy Adams, American actress and singer

Those who conked out on August 20 include:

  • 1915 – Paul Ehrlich, German physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1854)
  • 1917 – Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1835)
  • 1961 – Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1882)
  • 2007 – Leona Helmsley, American businesswoman (b. 1920)
  • 2017 – Jerry Lewis, American actor and comedian (b. 1926)

Flaven!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hunting for “alien mice”. My query about this to Malgorzata met with this answer: “Not our mice from the garden. Our readers have two guesses: 1) she is saving our own mice; 2) she ate all our mice and needs some new ones.”

A: Where are you going?
Hili: I’m going to have a look to see whether some alien mice are hanging around.

In Polish:
Ja: Gdzie idziesz?
Hili: Zobaczę, czy nie kręcą się tu jakieś obce myszy.

Look! Kitten Mietek is all grown up, and helping drive the car!

Mietek: Now we will turn left.

In Polish: Teraz będziemy skręcać w lewo.

A cartoon by Tom Cheney from Nicole:

From Steve Pruett-Jones. The sign is real (I bet you’ve seen it before.)

A pygmy possum. It’s a real species, but the photo appears to have been doctored:

I tweeted (h/t to Luana for the Sarsour tweet):

From reader Barry, a slime mold overwhelms a plant. This is a plasmodial slime mold, which will reproduce by forming spores. They are considered protists, a paraphyletic group.

From Simon. I’ve long puzzled about how this video relates to science, but have come up dry. Readers are welcome to explain. But the cats are probably trained “circus cats”:

Tweets from Matthew. Hira Javaid is an oncology student at Oxford, and clearly is into cultural appropriation (which is a good thing):

Sound up to hear this crazy kitten:

Fox in the library!  How cool!

Barack is becoming more outspoken as November draws nigh. . .

Another lovely old picture that was originally in color: