Category: Leon monologue

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 21, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Wednesday, August 21, 2019, and National Sweet Tea Day. That refers to sweetened ice tea, of course—the perfect accompaniment to southern barbecue, and a drink called “the table wine of the South.” It’s also National Senior Citizens Day (do I get a present?) and Poet’s Day. Again I’m flummoxed by the apostrophe: are they celebrating only one poet? If so, which poet? The word “Poet’s” should have either no apostrophe or an apostrophe after the “s”.

Stuff that happened on August 21 include:

  • 1770 – James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.
  • 1791 – A Vodou ceremony, led by Dutty Boukman, turns into a violent slave rebellion, beginning the Haitian Revolution.

This revolution was successful, and led to the foundation of Haiti as an independent state—the only one founded after a slave revolt, with whites and former slaves ruling the new state. But there were unsuccessful revolts, too:

  • 1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, which will claim the lives of 55 to 65 whites and about twice that number of blacks.
  • 1888 – The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.
  • 1897 – Oldsmobile, an American automobile manufacturer and marque, is founded.
  • 1911 – The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincenzo Perugia, a Louvre employee.

Here’s the blank spot where the painting resided before the theft. It took two years before it was recovered, and the thieving handyman, Perugia, spent only 7 months in jail (his photo below):

  • 1945 – Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

This is a sad story; it took Daghlian 25 days to die. You can see a picture of his blistered and burned hand after the accident here.

  • 1959 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii’s admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day
  • 1961 – American country music singer Patsy Cline returns to record producer Owen Bradley’s studio in Nashville, Tennessee to record her vocals to Willie Nelson’s “Crazy”, which would become her signature song.

Indeed; what a great song! And how many people know that Willie Nelson wrote it? Here’s a recording of her singing it live at the Grand Ole Opry:

  • 1961 – Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit (in America), “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes.
  • 2000 – Tiger Woods, American professional golfer, wins the 82nd PGA Championship and becomes the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in a calendar year.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1872 – Aubrey Beardsley, English author and illustrator (d. 1898)
  • 1936 – Wilt Chamberlain, American basketball player and coach (d. 1999)
  • 1938 – Kenny Rogers, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor
  • 1967 – Charb, French journalist and cartoonist (d. 2015)
  • 1986 – Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter

Beardsley, a fop and an eccentric, was also a terrific artist. He died at only 25 of tuberculosis. Here’s one of his drawings, “The Black Cat” (1894-1895):


And Beardsley at about the same time, about 23 years old.

Those who went six feet under on August 21 include:

  • 1940 – Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist and politician, founded the Red Army (b. 1879)
  • 1971 – George Jackson, American activist and author, co-founded the Black Guerrilla Family (b. 1941)
  • 1974 – Buford Pusser, American police officer (b. 1937)
  • 1995 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-American astrophysicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1910)

Buford Pusser, who as a fighting sheriff sustained seven stabbings and eight shootings by criminals out to get him, finally died in a car crash, and many suspect it was a murder:

Pusser

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is scared by something she saw outside.

Hili: It can be an illusion.
A: It’s possible; our senses sometimes mislead us.
In Polish:
Hili: To może być złudzenie.
Ja: Możliwe, nasze zmysły czasami wprowadzają nas w błąd.

And Leon, lingering nearby in his home-to-be, waits for rain.

Leon: I’m waiting like a parasol mushroom waits for drizzle. (That’s a Polish expression that roughly means “I’m dying for rain.”)

In Polish: Czekam jak Kania dżdżu.

This is a good one. If you don’t know at least one Yiddish word in each row, it’s time to brush up!

From Merilee. I guess it isn’t just cats that medieval artists had trouble painting. And, like cats, horses got human faces.

Another one from Jesus of the Day, making a virtue of necessity:

On December 3 of last year, Grania sent me two tweets with “alternative nativity scenes”. The first is from the artist who creates the Oatmeal cartoon:

And one from Star Trek:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1069683558225076224

It’s pretty clear what this is, but some folks actually think it’s a rabbit.

From Nilou. The mystery deepened when it was discovered that some of the skeletons had DNA from the Mediterranean region:

From reader gravelinspector: a tweet that’s weird in many different ways:

And three tweets from Dr. Cobb. How lovely to have tame badgers around, though I still prefer my ducks:

Matthew calls this one “the future”. Oy vey if it is!

This is truly stunning. Slug sex!

But wait! There’s more!

Sunday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 11, 2019 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a lovely Sunday (in Chicago): August 11, 2019. It’s National Panini Day (you can’t eat one if you’re not Italian, for making it a “national”—i.e., U.S. day—is pure cultural appropriation). It’s also Ingersoll Day, celebrating “The Great Agnostic” (actually an atheist), born on this day in 1833, and Presidential Joke Day, celebrating humorous quips made by U.S. Presidents (the date was picked by Reagan’s infamous “we begin bombing” remark in 1984; see below). As our current President is a joke, I think he wins.

But oh to have these days back! Obama wasn’t perfect as President, but he was a decent human being, not an authoritarian jerk. Here are some of his quips:

Stuff that happened on this day include:

  • 1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.
  • 1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

Read more about that homer here. As most baseball mavens know, Ruth hit 714 homers in his career, a lifetime record that was unsurpassed until Hank Aaron hit his last and 755th homer in 2007.

  • 1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
  • 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
  • 1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
  • 1984 – “We begin bombing in five minutes“: United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.

Here’s that joke, which was recorded. It put the Soviet Union on alert status, but that was quickly rescinded.

Notables born on this day include:

Ah, the Great Agnostic: a fine man and an unparalleled speaker—the Hitchens of his time. There’s a long page of his quotations here, and his picture is below.  Here’s a quotation, not on that page, that I love to use in my talks:

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”

  • 1905 – Erwin Chargaff, Austrian-American biochemist and academic (d. 2002)

Chargaff discovered that in DNA, the number of A bases equalled the number of T bases, and the number of Cs equaled the number of Gs. This was a clue to Watson and Crick that, in the double helix, adenines paired with thymines and cytosines with guanines. Chargaff, however, didn’t win a Nobel for this key discovery.

  • 1933 – Jerry Falwell, American minister and television host (d. 2007)
  • 1950 – Steve Wozniak, American computer scientist and programmer, co-founded Apple Inc.
  • 1953 – Hulk Hogan, American wrestler

Those who met their Maker (nature) on this day include:

Here’s a fine portrait by Memling, painted about 1485 and probably part of a tryptych, “Portrait of a Young Man Praying”:

 

  • 1596 – Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William Shakespeare (b. 1585)
  • 1890 – John Henry Newman, English cardinal and theologian (b. 1801)
  • 1919 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Carnegie Steel Company and Carnegie Hall (b. 1835)
  • 1937 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (b. 1862)
  • 1956 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)
  • 2002 – Galen Rowell, American photographer and mountaineer (b. 1940)
  • 2014 – Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (b. 1951)
  • 2018 – V S Naipaul, British writer (b. 1932)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is on Andrzej’s lap, but tells him not to get too complacent about it:

Hili:: A cat lying on his human gives the human an illusion of a battle won.
A: Actually, you are right.
In Polish:
Hili: Kot leżąc na człowieku daje mu złudzenie wygranej bitwy.
A: Właściwie masz rację.

And nearby, in the site of his future home, Leon observes the birds:

Leon: Why are the swallows flying round and round?
In Polish: Czemu te jaskółki tak latają w kółko?

A gif by Ollie Engstrom. Recognize it?

Reader Gregory found this post, apparently a humorous ad for a sign company:

 

From the Facebook page “Jesus of the Day”:

Grania sent me this tweet on January 25 of this year:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1088694637051695105

From Gethyn. Good luck with this job, pal!

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1159948393655013376

Two cat tweets from Heather Hastie. The first is a cat surprise.:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1157736092394762246

. . . and the other a cat decoy: a frustrating iPad video:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1157678818309681154

I found this one; though I don’t formally follow any site, I do look at some of them, including this one, started by the brave Iranian feminist Masih Alinejad

And the silence of the clams:

Three from Matthew. The first is a famous Yosemite “firefall”, or, in this case, a “rainbowfall”. Be sure to play the video.

https://twitter.com/michaelgalanin/status/1159943822895472640?s=11

This is what happens when an idiot missed his exit and decides to go back and try again:

https://twitter.com/metpolsgt/status/1160243375272071168?s=11

Yes, this big cat is now extinct east of the Rockies. How ineffably sad!

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 11, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Thursday, July 11, 2019, and it was a hot one in Chicago yesterday, with a high of 95° F (35° C). The ducks survived.

It’s National Blueberry Muffin Day: my favorite muffin, but I was shocked to learn that there are 400 calories in a Starbuck’s blueberry muffin (I never buy the overpriced baked goods at Starbucks, but I’ll take that as a widely-consumed exemplar—and those muffins are smaller than many). That’s already one-sixth of the calories required daily by an average bloke, and the equivalent of 8.3 tablespoons of sugar. So it goes.

But it’s also Free Slurpee Day at participating stores of the 7-Eleven chain in North America (check yours), and also World Population Day, designed to call attention to population issues like family planning. Do you know, by the way, the current population of humans on Earth? The world population clock, which you can access by clicking on the link below, just gave this figure (retrieved at about 5:35 a.m. today; watch how fast it ticks!).  I remember when “3 billion” was the conventional figure.

 

 

Stuff that happened on July 11 includes:

  • 1576 – Martin Frobisher sights Greenland.
  • 1789 – Jacques Necker is dismissed as France’s Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille.
  • 1804 – A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
  • 1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kōkichi Mikimoto.
  • 1895 – Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrate movie film technology to scientists.
  • 1914 – Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.
  • 1921 – Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.
  • 1924 – Eric Liddell won the gold medal in 400m at the 1924 Paris Olympics, after refusing to run in the heats for 100m, his favoured distance, on the Sunday.

That was portrayed in the famous movie Chariots of Fire. Here’s the real Liddell:

Eric Liddell at the British Empire versus United States of America (Relays) meet held at Stamford Bridge, London on Sat 19 July 1924

And the remarkably similar movie Liddell, played by Ian Charleson. The movie won the 1981 Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

  • 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States.
  • 1972 – The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1767 – John Quincy Adams, American lawyer and politician, 6th President of the United States (d. 1848)
  • 1897 – Bull Connor, American police officer (d. 1973)
  • 1899 – E. B. White, American essayist and journalist (d. 1985)
  • 1920 – Yul Brynner, Russian actor and dancer (d. 1985) [JAC: real name Yuliy Borisovich Briner]
  • 1930 – Harold Bloom, American literary critic
  • 1956 – Sela Ward, American actress
  • 1967 – Jhumpa Lahiri, Indian American novelist and short story writer
  • 1975 – Lil’ Kim, American rapper and producer

Those who “passed” on this day include:

  • 1937 – George Gershwin, American pianist, songwriter, and composer (b. 1898)
  • 1966 – Delmore Schwartz, American poet and short story writer (b. 1913)
  • 1989 – Laurence Olivier, English actor, director, and producer (b. 1907)
  • 2007 – Lady Bird Johnson, American beautification activist; 43rd First Lady of the United States (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is licking her chops:

Hili: A whole swarm of birds.
A: They are unavailable.
Hili: I can dream, can’t I?
In Polish:
Hili: Cała chmara ptaków.
Ja: Są niedostępne.
Hili: Ale pozwalają pomarzyć.
And Leon is frequenting the beautiful garden at his future home:
Leon: You can come out. It stopped raining.
In Polish: Możecie wyjść, nie pada.
Reader Simon, who was in Washington, D.C., sent a photo and a note:

Anyhow saw the sign below yesterday in the National Gallery of Art Statue Garden. No sign of any ducks though! Ceiling Cat bless those who think about how ducklings must get in and out of basins with high walls. But can ducks read?

Shared with me on Facebook from Everything Gardening:

Mark Sturtevant sent this from “Tastefully Offensive on Instagram“:

One more from FB:

This tweet portrays part of a pretty amazing film, and quite enlightened given that it was made in 1943 (excuse the tweeter’s misspelling):

I found another tweet sent by Grania deep in my inbox (we have a few more, too). Here it is:

 

Two tweets from Nilou. The first shows a phenomenon I find remarkable: the ability of some birds to keep their head rock-steady even though their bodies are moved about. That ability, of course, is adaptive, helping the bird focus on something important:

And a night heron using bread to lure fish. If that isn’t tool using, I don’t know what is:

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. In the first one, she asks us to note Mr. Lumpy’s egg handling at the end:

A kitten that sucks its thumb, even though kittens don’t have thumbs:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1148668564636917760

Tweets from Matthew. The first one puts the first “out of Africa” migration of “modern” Homo sapiens as early as 210,000 years, when the conventional wisdom was about 60,000 years. That’s a substantial difference, but these first migrants probably died out without issue. See the paper below, which I’ll post about shortly, and the appended note by Chris Stringer, an author on the Nature paper:

Here’s the paper, which is available freely using the legal Unpaywall app (click on screenshot):

I posted this yesterday, but some readers doubted whether it was true. It seems to be.

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 6, 2019 • 7:00 am

It’s Saturday, July 6, 2019, and today I head back to Oahu for one day, then to take the redeye back to Chicago. It’s National Fried Chicken Day, too, celebrating one of America’s great contributions to gastronomy (yes, I know that they fry chicken in other lands). Look for fried-chicken promotions in your area.

And that includes Australia. As Wikipedia notes,

In 2018 KFC’s Australian operations offered the chance to win free fried chicken for a year. The contest was entered by making social-media posts stating reasons why the entrant deserved the prize. The winning entry was by a 19-year-old who, together with her friend, got the KFC corporate logotype tattooed on her foot.

Here are those tattoos from news.com.au.  Sadly, even a year’s worth of chicken fades away, but a tattoo is forever:

Reader Jon informs us of this:

The Tour de France starts Saturday by the Town Hall on the Grand Place in Brussels to honor Belgian cyclist Eddie Merckx. [JAC: Merckx, born in 1945, is still with us, and is widely regarded as the best competitive cyclist ever. He won five Tours de France.] It’s the fiftieth anniversary of his first of five Tour victories. This year’s Tour is also the 100th anniversary of the iconic yellow jersey which was added in 1919 at the end of World War 1. If you missed last year’s Tour, here are some highlights.

Things that happened on July 6 include this stuff:

  • 1189 – Richard I “the Lionheart” accedes to the English throne.
  • 1415 – Jan Hus is condemned as a heretic and then burned at the stake.
  • 1483 – Richard III is crowned King of England. [He reigned for just two years.]
  • 1535 – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.
  • 1885 – Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.
  • 1917 – World War I: Arabian troops led by T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and Auda ibu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt.

Here’s the scene from the movie, one of my favorite films:

And here is the real Auda, the Howeitat sheikh:

(From Wikipedia) Photograph of Auda abu Tayi, probably taken by G. Eric Matson (1888-1977).Tabuk, Hejaz 1921
  • 1933 – The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game is played in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The American League defeated the National League 4–2.
  • 1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the “Secret Annexe” above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
  • 1957 – Althea Gibson wins the Wimbledon championships, becoming the first black athlete to do so.
  • 1957 – John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles.

Notables born on this day include:

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

Here is Chagall’s “The Cat Transformed into a Woman“, (c.1928-31/1937), described by The Tate Gallery:

An illustration to one of The Fables of La Fontaine, the story of a man who so adored his cat that he was able to turn her into a woman and married her the same day. He thought, poor fool, that his wife was now a woman in every respect; but when mice appeared, she still gave chase. As we say in England, ‘a leopard cannot change its spots.’

  • 1907 – Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter and educator (d. 1954)

Here’s La Kahlo, another favorite of mine, holding a monkey and ignoring her cat:

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

Those who passed away on July 6 include:

  • 1415 – Jan Hus, Czech priest, philosopher, and reformer (b. 1369)
  • 1535 – Thomas More, English lawyer and politician, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (b. 1478)
  • 1614 – Man Singh I, Rajput Raja of Amer (b. 1550)
  • 1835 – John Marshall, American captain and politician, 4th United States Secretary of State (b. 1755) [They don’t mention that he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court!]
  • 1893 – Guy de Maupassant, French short story writer, novelist, and poet (b. 1850)
  • 1916 – Odilon Redon, French painter and illustrator (b. 1840)
  • 1959 – George Grosz, German painter and illustrator (b. 1893)
  • 1971 – Louis Armstrong, American singer and trumpet player (b. 1901)
  • 1998 – Roy Rogers, American cowboy, actor, and singer (b. 1911)
  • 2003 – Buddy Ebsen, American actor, singer, and dancer (b. 1908)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is savoring rodential comestibles:

Hili: The mouse I ate here is history now.
A: Yes, sometimes we feel the taste of the past.
In Polish:
Hili: Ta mysz, którą tu zjadłam jest już historią.
Ja: Tak, czasem czujemy smak przeszłości.

And nearby on the site of his future home, Leon shows an uncharacteristic tenderness toward mice:

Leon: And the little mice are getting wet?
In Polish: A te myszki tak tam mokną?

From Facebook:

A tweet from ex-Musli Yasmine Mohammed. Be sure to watch the video on the tweet she references; it is very sad.

From Nilou, a tweet from science writer Philip Ball:

Reader Barry says, “This is not the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

https://twitter.com/YougleFact/status/1146637305865809920

Three tweets from Heather Hastie:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1146863418470817794

This is a true albino (look at the pink eyes), and I hope it’ll be okay.

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1146808832347086848

Mr. Lumpy got hurt! Someone should let me know if he gets better.

Tweets from Matthew. The first one is from Matthew himself, and his email note said “All this one kilometer down.”

In an unprecedented act of duplication, I am putting this tweet up two days in a row because it’s so awesome:

Two more tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one shows how dogs were domesticated, except that the ancestor was the gray wolf and not the red fox:

As Matthew points out, this is an insect (see here):

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

July 4, 2019 • 7:00 am

It’s Thursday, July 4, 2019: Independence Day in the U.S., and a national holiday (see below). Appropriately, it’s National Barbecue Day, so go whole hog and dig inunless you’re a vegetarian. If you’re Norwegian, today you’ll be celebrating the birthday of Queen Sonja, a day when the Norwegian State Flag is flown ubiquitously.

I’ll be celebrating today with snorkeling, as we’re now in the Kona area, home of four or five excellent snorkeling spots. So far I’ve snorkeled every day for the past two days.

A lot of stuff happened on July 4 besides the adoption of our Declaration of Independence. Here are some events:

  • 1776 – American Revolution: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress. [This is why today is “Independence Day”].
  • 1802 – At West Point, New York, the United States Military Academy opens.
  • 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the U.S. people.

And this is one of the most poignant and remarkable coincidences I know of:

  • 1826 – Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, dies the same day as John Adams, second president of the United States, on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence.

But wait—there’s lots more!

  • 1845 – Henry David Thoreau moves into a small cabin on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau’s account of his two years there, Walden, will become a touchstone of the environmental movement.
  • 1855 – The first edition of Walt Whitman’s book of poems, Leaves of Grass, is published In Brooklyn.
  • 1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.
  • 1910 – African-American boxer Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in a heavyweight boxing match, sparking race riots across the United States.

If you haven’t seen Ken Burns’s biographical program on Johnson, by all means do. Here’s a summary of the fight, which took place in Reno in 110-degree heat (that’s 43°C)!

  • 1918 – Bolsheviks kill Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date).
  • 1939 – Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, informs a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself “The luckiest man on the face of the earth”, then announces his retirement from major league baseball.

Here’s a video of that poignant moment with Shirley Povich recounting it (Gehrig’s ownwords are at the end). The great Iron Horse of the Yankees died on June 2, 1941.

  • 1946 – After 381 years of near-continuous colonial rule by various powers, the Philippines attains full independence from the United States.
  • 1947 – The “Indian Independence Bill” is presented before the British House of Commons, proposing the independence of the Provinces of British India into two sovereign countries: India and Pakistan.
  • 1951 – William Shockley announces the invention of the junction transistor.
  • 1960 – Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, almost ten and a half months later (see Flag Acts (United States)).
  • 1976 – Israeli commandos raid Entebbe airport in Uganda, rescuing all but four of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by Palestinian terrorists.
  • 2012 – The discovery of particles consistent with the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider is announced at CERN.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1790 – George Everest, Welsh geographer and surveyor (d. 1866)
  • 1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1864)
  • 1816 – Hiram Walker, American businessman, founded Canadian club whiskey (d. 1899)
  • 1872 – Calvin Coolidge, American lawyer and politician, 30th President of the United States (d. 1933)
  • 1883 – Rube Goldberg, American sculptor, cartoonist, and engineer (d. 1970)

Rube Goldberg is America’s equivalent of W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944): both cartoonists envisioned elaborate and funny devices to accomplish mundane tasks. Here’s one of each:

Goldberg (a reminder to mail a letter):

As you walk past cobbler shop, hook (A) strikes suspended boot (B), causing it to kick football (C) through goal posts (D). Football drops into basket (E) and string (F) tilts sprinkling can (G), causing water to soak coat tails (H). As coat shrinks, cord (I) opens door (J) of cage, allowing bird (K) to walk out on perch (L) and grab worm (M), which is attached to string (N). This pulls down window shade (O), on which is written, “YOU SAP, MAIL THAT LETTER.”

Robinson (removing a wart):

  • 1905 – Lionel Trilling, American critic, essayist, short story writer, and educator (d. 1975)
  • 1918 – Eppie Lederer,  [“Ann Landers’] American journalist and radio host (d. 2002)
  • 1927 – Neil Simon, American playwright and screenwriter (d. 2018)
  • 1937 – Queen Sonja of Norway
  • 1951 – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, American lawyer and politician, 6th Lieutenant Governor of Maryland
  • 1962 – Pam Shriver, American tennis player and sportscaster

Those who passed away on July 4 include:

  • 1826 – John Adams, American lawyer and politician, 2nd President of the United States (b. 1735)
  • 1826 – Thomas Jefferson, American architect, lawyer, and politician, 3rd President of the United States (b. 1743)
  • 2002 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American general (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili becomes the Anti Pinker:

A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: About the Enlightenment.
A: And?
Hili: I have a feeling that it is disappearing.
In Polish:
Ja: O czym myślisz?
Hili: O Oświeceniu.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Mam wrażenie, że zanika.
And Leon is on guard:
Leon: I’m watching the surroundings. Not a mouse will slink by.
In Polish: Mam oko na okolicę, teraz żadna mysz się nie prześlizgnie.

A gif I made, just for fun, so I could watch the First Flights over and over:

Speaking of which, here’s a cartoon I’m sure I’ve posted before. My ducks are now contemplating this issue:

Also from Facebook, something surely Photoshopped but still nice. Bonus points if you know the song:

From Nilou. Designating the “Naughty Penguin of the Month” and “Good Penguin of the Month” and then describing their transgressions or accomplishments, is a work of marketing genius! Good job, National Aquarium of New Zealand! Here are a few of the winners and losers.

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. Heather loves hedgehogs (that sounds like a t.v. series), but why this one is displayed with strawberries mystifies me.

Okay, I don’t know about all of this aerodynamics, but it’s interesting to attach a camera to a helicopter blade:

Tweets from Matthew, who often finds capybara tweets. Well, the caption of this tweet is exaggerated (read Better Angels of Our Nature), but the cat is helpful:

A compliant mountain goat shares its enclosure:

I guess the ticks don’t drown when the crock immerses itself, but crikey, look at the size of those things!

And, for the Fourth of July, Matthew sent this tweet for a dish that sounds a bit, well, dicey. The “red” comes from bacon, and bacon is not red! Matthew’s email header for this tweet was “!!!!!!”

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

June 26, 2019 • 7:00 am

Greetings on Wednesday, June 26 2019, the first Hump Day of Summer.

It’s National Chocolate Pudding Day, a comestible once endorsed by Bill Cosby,  It’s also International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, World Refrigeration Day, and, in Hamelin, Germany, Ratcatcher’s Day.

A lot of stuff happened on June 26, including three advances in gay rights:

  • 1483 – Richard III becomes King of England.
  • 1541 – Francisco Pizarro is assassinated in Lima by the son of his former companion and later antagonist, Diego de Almagro the younger. Almagro is later caught and executed.
  • 1917 – World War I: The American Expeditionary Forces begin to arrive in France. They will first enter combat four months later.
  • 1948 – William Shockley files the original patent for the grown-junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
  • 1953 – Lavrentiy Beria, head of MVD, is arrested by Nikita Khrushchev and other members of the Politburo.
  • 1959 – Swedish boxer Ingemar Johansson becomes world champion of heavy weight boxing, by defeating American Floyd Patterson on technical knockout after two minutes and three seconds in the third round at Yankee Stadium.
  • 1974 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
  • 1977 – Elvis Presley held his final concert in Indianapolis, Indiana at Market Square Arena
  • 2000 – The Human Genome Project announces the completion of a “rough draft” sequence.
  • 2000 – Pope John Paul II reveals the third secret of Fátima.
  • 2003 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
  • 2013 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
  • 2015 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1819 – Abner Doubleday, American general (d. 1893)
  • 1892 – Pearl S. Buck, American novelist, essayist, short story writer Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1973)
  • 1898 – Chesty Puller, US general (d. 1971)

I used to play poker with a Marine general who was friends with Chesty Puller, regarded as “the Marine’s Marine.” But I never learned how Puller got his nickname (his real name was Lewis Burwell Puller).  Apparently Puller didn’t, either. As one site notes,

Some say Puller got his famous nickname because of his big, thrust-out chest; the myth was that the original had been shot away and the new chest was a steel plate. Others state that “chesty” was an old Marine expression meaning cocky. The following letter shows that Puller himself was not sure of how he came by it. . .

Here’s Chesty, looking exactly as a Marine general should look:

More born on this day:

  • 1903 – Big Bill Broonzy, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1958)
  • 1904 – Peter Lorre, Slovak-American actor and singer (d. 1964)
  • 1974 – Derek Jeter, American baseball player
  • 1976 – Dave Rubin, American political commentator

Derek Jeter was a great hitter, with a lifetime average of .310, and he’s a sure Hall-of-Famer, but it was his defensive performance at shortstop that always thrilled me. I love those impossible throws from deep in the infield. Here’s a few of his stellar moments:

Those who died on June 26 include:

  • 1541 – Francisco Pizarro, Spanish explorer and politician, Governor of New Castile (b. c. 1471)
  • 1793 – Gilbert White, English ornithologist and ecologist (b. 1720)
  • 1957 – Malcolm Lowry, English novelist and poet (b. 1909)
  • 1993 – Roy Campanella, American baseball player and coach (b. 1921)
  • 2003 – Strom Thurmond, American general, lawyer, and politician, 103rd Governor of South Carolina (b. 1902)
  • 2012 – Nora Ephron, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1941)
  • 2014 – Howard Baker, American lawyer, politician, and diplomat, 12th White House Chief of Staff (b. 1925)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is stopping to smell the flowers.

Hili: They are starting to wither but they still smell.
A: Do you like this smell?
Hili: No, I prefer the fragrance of mice.
In Polish:
Hili: Zaczynają przekwitać, ale nadal pachną.
Ja: Lubisz ten zapach?
Hili: Nie, wolę zapach myszy.

Summer is passing and they still haven’t started putting up the new home of Leon and his staff near Dobrzyn. In the meantime,  the Dark Tabby is amusing himself in the already-completed garden of his incipient house.

Leon: Attention! Aliens are attacking!

In Polish: Uwaga,obcy atakują!

Two chuckles from Facebook:

A tweet from Nilou: a fuzzy condor chick goes for a popsicle:

Two more from the Lost Tweets of Grania. This kitten passes the mirror test:

Amazing nature. Notice how the parasites make the tentacles move, calling attention to them:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1114579669901123584

Three tweets from Heather Hastie. Heather has kindly offered to fill the kitten-tweet niche left behind by Grania:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1142565870029484037

What a useful kitten!

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1142598649437966336

A mighty cat!

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1142415588519763973

Tweets from Matthew. Translation of this one: “This is my little godchild Abraxas, whom I visited yesterday in the Wildtierhilfe (Wild animal rescue orgnization) Schäfer and was also allowed to hold.”

https://twitter.com/FrauFabelhaft/status/1139413141203251200

Ferrets aren’t claustrophobic and at one time, as I recall, were used to clean the tubes in nuclear reactors, running through them dragging a balled-up rag behind them:

Amazing but true! But WHY?

https://twitter.com/TerrifyingPixs/status/1142301193747628032

A nice trick; the explanation is in the thread:

 

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

May 27, 2019 • 7:00 am

It’s Monday, May 27, 2019, and tomorrow I’ll be heading back home tomorrow to resume my work, now including Duck Duties. Posting will be light today as I finish my  R&R.

In the U.S. it’s Memorial Day, a national holiday honoring fallen members of the armed forces, but ducks don’t stop eating on holidays.

It’s also National Italian Beef Day, a sandwich for which Chicago is justifiably renowned. I get mine “hot and wet”, local jargon for “garnished with hot giardiniera (pickled vegetables) and dipped in the beef juice”. Here’s a classic Italian beef: hot and wet.

May 27 was a fairly busy day in history. In 1703, Tsar Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg, which once again bears that name (it was Leningrad for a long time). On May 27, 1927, the last Ford Model T was made and the company began retooling its plants to produce the Model A. Here is the difference:’

On this day in 1933, Walt Disney released the cartoon Three Little Pigs, famous for its hit song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Here it is:

On this day in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge, linking San Francisco to Marin County, California, opened to pedestrian traffic. Vehicle traffic began crossing the next day. From Wikipedia:

The bridge-opening celebration began on May 27, 1937, and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed either on foot or on roller skates. On opening day, Mayor Angelo Rossi and other officials rode the ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge in a motorcade past three ceremonial “barriers”, the last a blockade of beauty queens who required Joseph Strauss to present the bridge to the Highway District before allowing him to pass.

On this day in 1940, the Nazis shot 99 British prisoners of war in the infamous Le Paradis massacre. Two Brits survived and lived  to testify against the SS commander who ordered the shooting, who was hanged in 1949. Exactly two years later, SS Commander Reinhard Heydrich was fatally wounded in an attack by Czech partisans. In reprisal, the Germans completely destroyed the villages of  Lidice and Ležáky, which were razed; all males over age 16 were killed and everyone else was sent to  concentration camps to die.

On this day in 1967, according to Wikipedia, “Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.” Finally, on this day three years ago, Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and meet some survivors of the bombing.

Notables born on this day include Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794), Julia Ward Howe (1819), Wild Bill Hickok (1837), Georges Rouault (1871), Dashiell Hammett (1894), Vincent Price (1911), Henry Kissinger (1923), and Ramsey Lewis (1935).

Those who croaked on May 27 include John Calvin (1564), Niccolò Paganini (1840), Robert Koch (1910, Nobel Laureate), Robert Ripley (1949), Jawaharlal Nehru (1964), and Gregg Allman (2017).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows unusual solicitude for Cyrus:

Hili: We have to wait for Cyrus.
Andrzej: He will catch up.
Hili: Yes, but his feelings will be hurt if he has to run after us.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy zaczekać na Cyrusa.
Ja: Dogoni nas.
Hili: Tak, ale może mu być przykro, że musi nas gonić.

And Leon and Elzbieta are out for a hike in the woods (Elzbieta is doing most of the hiking).

Leon: You see, mother, what an attractive walk I came up with for your day?
Leon: Widzisz matka,jaki atrakcyjny spacer wymyśliłem z okazji twego święta?!

Two Judeo-Christian memes from Facebook:

And a lovely Jesus clock:

A tweet from Nilou. Spoiler: they all make it up the stairs. (n.b.: it’s not “duck chicks” but “ducklings”.)

https://twitter.com/planetpng/status/1099482498847961094

From reader Paul we have an epic battle between rhinoceros beetles. Look at that final flip!

From Gethyn: a ship’s cat doing what a ship’s cat does:

From reader Barry we have some synchronized howling. I swear that at one point they’re howling in harmony!

Tweets from Grania. Well, ducks sometimes do stand on one foot, even without flamingos.

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1132320737790795781

This cat needs to brush up on its hunting:

A beautiful octopus and a superfluous apostrophe:

https://twitter.com/MichaelGalanin/status/1132340046269505536

Tweets from Matthew. It’s a good year for kakapos, though of course some chicks didn’t make it. But here’s the good news:

A lovely French building from the Dordogne. Why is it so high, though? Were there floods?

Bithorax is a “homeotic” developmental mutation in Drosophila that adds extra bits of the fly’s thorax to its body, sometimes producing an extra pair of wings, as you can see below.  E. B. Lewis was born on May 20, 1918, and won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for this work, which marks the founding of “evo devo”: the field concerned with how evolution molds development. Read more about his work here.