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Issue #463 - 16th February 2018
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| Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
oenophile [alt. œnophile, enophile] |
Friday 16th February - Cartographer & astronomer Georg Joachim Rheticus born, 1514. Explorer Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada died, 1579. The Battle of Torrington, the last major battle of the first English Civil War, 1646. Engraver Giambattista Bodoni born, 1740. Physician Richard Mead died, 1754. The Studebaker Brothers wagon company, later a car maker, was founded, 1852. Computer game designer & co-founder of Sierra Entertainment Roberta Williams born, 1953. Ward Christensen's CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System), the first public dial-up BBS, went online in Chicago, 1978. Writer Angela Carter died, 1992. Saturday 17th February - Roman emperor Jovian died, possibly assassinated, 364. Myles Standish was appointed the first military commander of the North American Plymouth Colony, 1621. Composer Arcangelo Corelli born, 1653. The independence of the Orange Free State was recognised by the United Kingdom, 1854. Artist John Martin died, 1854. Explorer Isabelle Eberhardt born, 1877. Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to study cloud cover, 1959. Mountaineer Alison Hargreaves born, 1962. Singer-songwriter Mindy McCready died, 2013. Random Acts of Kindness Day in the USA. Sunday 18th February - During the Sixth Crusade, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, peacefully regained Jerusalem, Nazareth & Bethlehem, 1229. Artist Fra Angelico died, 1455. Mary I of England born, 1516. Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, last direct descendent of the Medici line, died, 1743. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published, 1885. Paediatrician Hans Asperger born, 1906. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a "father of the atomic bomb", died, 1967. Environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill born, 1974. FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union, 2001. Konudagur (Woman's Day) in Iceland. Monday 19th February - Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus born, 1473. The stratovolcano Huaynaputina in Peru underwent the most violent eruption in South American recorded history, 1600. Japanese shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, known as "the dog shōgun", died, 1709. Actor David Garrick born, 1717. The first rescuers reached the Donner Party, 1847. Composer Robert Fuchs died, 1927. Nobel laureate biochemist Tim Hunt born, 1943. Ezra Pound won the inaugural Bollingen Prize in poetry, 1949. Writer Harper Lee died, 2016. Tuesday 20th February - Norway pawned Orkney and Shetland to Scotland in lieu of a dowry for Margaret of Denmark, 1472. Mayan leader Tecun Uman died, probably slain by a Spanish conquistador, 1524. Artist Jan de Baen born, 1633. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City opened, 1872. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass died, 1895. Photographer Ansel Adams born, 1902. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, aboard Friendship 7, 1962. Actress Lili Taylor born, 1967. Journalist & film critic Gene Siskel died, 1999. World Day of Social Justice. Wednesday 21st February - Botanist Hieronymus Bock died, 1554. Mikhail I was elected Tsar of Russia by a national assembly, 1613. Composer Léo Delibes born, 1836. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, 1848. Poet Justinus Kerner died, 1862. Super-centenarian Jeanne Calment born, 1875. Gerald Holtom designed the CND logo, also known as the Peace Symbol - ☮, 1958. Actress Ellen Page born, 1987. Seismologist Inge Lehmann died, 1993. International Mother Language Day (UNESCO). Thursday 22nd February - Robert II became the first Stuart king of Scotland, 1371. Hungarian king Ladislaus the Posthumous born, 1440. Explorer Amerigo Vespucci died, 1512. Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published, 1632. Occultist Catherine Monvoisin, "La Voisin", executed for witchcraft, 1680. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer born, 1788. Tightrope walker Charles Blondin died, 1897. Actress Drew Barrymore born, 1975. The United States ice hockey team defeated the Soviet Union team 4-3 at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, dubbed the Miracle on Ice, 1980.
This week, Galileo:Wine is sunlight held together by water.
A selection of quotations from films with a common actor or actress. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films starring Ellen Page:
- Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.
- My life is full because I know I am loved.
- Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Meow. Here, Jonesy.
- I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
- - Now if you two don't mind, I'm going to bed before either of you come up with another clever idea to get us killed - or worse, expelled.
- She needs to sort out her priorities!
- - We work together as a team!
- Best defense is a good offense.
-- X-Men: The Last Stand [2006]- Can I use the facilities? Because being pregnant makes me pee like Seabiscuit!
-- Juno [2007]- They say we only use a fraction of our brain's true potential. Now that's when we're awake. When we're asleep, we can do almost anything.
-- Inception [2010]- Why is it that self-righteousness always goes hand-in-hand with resistance movements?
-- The East [2013]- I kind of think happiness is over-rated. People spend their whole lives chasing it, like it's the most important thing in the world. Happy people are kind of arrogant.
-- Super [2010]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- CRYPTOCURRENCY... Although it has been around for a few years, cryptocurrency is really hitting the news this year, for a number of reasons. The currency exists solely online; it has no physical commodity, like coins or notes, and no centralised governance, like a bank or state. All usage is recorded on a chain of networked computers, and new money is generated (or 'mined') through complex mathematical algorithms. While the concept frees users from state oversight, it has also become a go-to currency for illegal use, including the viruses reported on last year which encrypted computer systems and demanded a ransom to unlock them. Because mining cryptocurrency takes a lot of computing power, mining data centres have been set up around the world, and because warehouses full of running computers generate a lot of heat, some of the biggest are in Iceland, where cold air is plentiful and geothermally-generated electricity is cheap. Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson, spokesman for the Icelandic energy firm HS Orka has calculated that this year cryptocurrency-mining centres will use more than half of the electricity generated in the country and, if growth continues, Iceland will be unable to generate enough electricity to cope. ● Iceland's energy firms are not the only people bothered by the rise in cryptocurrency. SETI, the search for extra-terrestrial life, uses the high performance graphics programming units (GPUs) in computers to scan radio signals across a wide range of frequencies, but thanks to the demand for GPUs from cryptocurrency miners they are in short supply for SETI researchers. ● Of course, you do not have to network lots of desktop computers together to mine cyptocurrency. Engineers at a Russian government-run nuclear weapons research laboratory southeast of Moscow were recently arrested after it was discovered that they had been using the lab's mainframe computer to mine digital currency. They were caught when they tried connecting the top secret computer to the Internet... ● Last year it was reported that malware had been planted on some websites to run Monero (one variety of cryptocurrency) mining software on the computers of people visiting the sites, slowing their computers to a crawl in the process. Now the Salon.com news website is asking visitors to its site who have an ad-blocker enabled to let them run the mining software as an alternative funding source to viewing ads.
- IT'S (PROBABLY NOT) THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT... On this issue's cover date an asteroid up to 40m (131') across is set to pass Earth at less than a fifth of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Asteroid 2018 CB was only discovered on the 4th February and its closest approach will be 43,300 miles (69,685 km), at 22:27 GMT. ● Just when we thought he had crawled back into his bunker, Nibiru prophet David Meade has announced that it will be here this year - because in May the modern state of Israel will celebrate its 70th anniversary as an independent nation. Meade also reckons that North Korea will become a global power in March, sparking a short period of world peace before the great tribulation and the end of the world. ● Climate change deniers are presumably rejoicing that researchers at the University of California in San Diego are claiming that they have found a way track the 11-year cycle of the Sun and are predicting that a mini ice age, similar to the one in the 17th century, which saw the Thames and part of the Baltic Sea freeze over, will start before 2050. ● With a stunning lack of a sense of irony the Flat Earth Society has declared that last week's launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and footage of a Tesla sports car in space above the non-flat Earth was faked, and anyone who does not question its authenticity is giving in to "blind belief"...
- ANIMALS... Scientists at Vienna's Technische Universität have created a computer simulation of a brain. A human brain would be far too complex though, so they simulated the brain of the nematode C. elegans, a tiny worm whose brain has only 302 neurons, making it ideal for simulation. They have studied how the brain reacts to stimulus such as touch, and trained it to balance a (virtual) pole at the end of its (virtual) tail. Their research will help with the comparison between organic and artifical intelligence learning systems. ● This issue is being written on St Valentine's Day, and conservationists in Bolivia searching for a mate for Romeo, a childless 10-year-old Sehuencas water frog, who may be the last of his species, have roped in a dating website to help publicise their search. The site gave him a profile with the description that he is "looking for my Juliet". ● A species of crayfish has mutated to be all-female and reproduce by self-cloning. The crayfish, Procambarus virginalis, is threatening other species and has been banned from sale in the European Union. The mutation has been tracked back to a single crayfish bought in a German pet shop in the 1990s; with a single specimen able to produce hundreds of offspring at a time, they spread to other pet suppliers and into the wild. ● Doctors in California treating a boy with an abscess in his elbow discovered a "darkly-colored, foreign object" in it, which was found to be a 4mm- (just over 1/8")-long chequered periwinkle snail. A snail egg had become implanted in his elbow when he grazed his arm while playing near a tidal pool, and the hatched snail had survived by sealing moisture in its shell. The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) believes that it is the only case of its kind in recorded medical history.
- CRIME... a couple in Enderby, Leicestershire, have been fined for converting a garage into a "secret" house, hidden behind a fence and a fake garage door. They were fined for converting the garage without proper planning permission, failure to observe a previous order to restore it, creating a separate access point straight onto the busy B4114 dual carriageway and blocking off-road parking space. An application for retrospective planning permission was turned down. ● A clerk at the Joint Admission and Metriculation Board in Nigeria, which collects examination fees, has been suspended after claiming that a snake had eaten 36 million naira (£72,050; $100,750) in cash that had been audited as missing. The clerk had then claimed that her housemaid and a work colleague had confessed to using the snake to "spiritually" steal the cash. Social media in Nigeria responded as expected, with a Twitter account @NigeriaSnake gaining 7,000 followers in a few days, people posting spoof photos of snakes and the Economic and the Nigerian Financial Crimes Commission posting a picture of an eagle - Nigeria's national symbol - crushing a snake, captioned "#TheEagle shows no mercy for money-swallowing snake(s)". ● A 22-year-old suspected drug dealer arrested in Essex was thought to have swallowed several packets of drugs to stop police officers finding them, so he was put into custody until the evidence passed through. At the time of reporting (February 9th) he had been holding out - and refusing food - for 22 days. The Police have received repeated extended detention orders against him, as he will be free to go once he, er, goes, but he is choosing not to, so the only person preventing his release is the prisoner himself. He has also refused to be seen by a doctor. Essex police were keeping people updated on the suspect via Twitter, although as the longest-recorded period of constipation was 75 days, it could take some time...
- TECH... In the last issue we reported on Voyager 1's image of Earth taken from 3.75 billion miles (6.04 billion km) away, called Pale Blue Dot. It was the most distant photograph taken from Earth, a record that has now been broken. In December last year the New Horizons probe took a routine image of a star cluster from the Kuiper Belt - the ring of objects containing dwarf planets, comets and other objects at the edge of the Solar System - to calibrate its camera, a scheduled task which just happened to take place 3.9 billion miles (6.28 billion km) from Earth. ● Norwegian chefs at the Winter Olympics in Peongchang, South Korea, were ordering food supplies for the 109 Norwegian competitors, from local suppliers. They needed 1,500 eggs, and turned to Google Translate to make out their order. Unfortunately Google Translate made a mistake and they were sent 15,000 eggs. Fortunately for their competitors' diets they were able to return the 13,500 unwanted eggs. ● Physicists at the University of Oxford have won a science photography prize for imaging a single strontium atom flourescing as it was held in a laser trap, using a standard digital camera with a 30s-second exposure.
IN BRIEF: Rare Byzantine mosaic discovered in Israel during excavations to reconstruct Crusaders-era bridge. ● Bunch of about 50 balloons get caught on overhead train power lines in Billericay, Essex; disrupt service for 2 hours before engineers managed to clear them. ● Scientists discover that some cells continue to function, some even becoming more active, after death. ● Swedish archaeologists discover Stone Age human skulls that had been mounted on spikes with animal skulls placed around them. ● YouGov poll of who Brits think should be invited to the wedding of Prince Harry & Meghan Markle shows just 4% of respondents want to see Kim Kardashian & Kanye West there, 11% Vladimir Putin, 18% Tony & Cherie Blair and 21% Donald Trump; poll topped by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (90%), Barack & Michelle Obama (73%) and David Attenborough (70%). ● Boy climbs into crane grab arcade machine in Florida, has to be rescued by firefighters. ● Winter Olympics' curling gets unlikely fan in Mr T who tweets "I am really Pumped watching the Winter Olympics. I am watching events I never though I would watch before, like curling. You heard me, curling Fool!" ● Woman makes realistic-looking life-size cake models of her daughters to mark their first birthday. ● Olympics security guard eject Kim Jong-un lookalike dancing in front of North Korean cheerleaders at ice hockey match. ● Large ice block filmed landing on London street after falling from plane. ● Sainsbury's supermarket caught pricing near identical Valentine's cards - one "For My Husband", the other "For My Wife" differently, accused of charging women more. ● baby chicken born with 4 legs; baby goat born with single 'cyclops' eye.
BBC to broadcast new "live" Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) magazine-style show later this year. Black Panther is highest-rated live-action superhero film of all time on aggregate review site Rotten Tomatoes. The The, Franz Ferdinand, Friendly Fires to play Festival No. 6 in Portmeiron, September. Exhibition marking 50th anniversary of The Beatles' trip to India opens in Liverpool. Johnny Hallyday's children contesting his will. Mary J. Blige, Ellen Page, Robert Sheehan to star in Netflix series The Umbrella Academy based on graphic novels by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way. Jack White predicts new wave of rock music "brewing". Original Smashing Pumpkins bassist D'Arcy Wretzky declines to rejoin band for reunion. Kings of Leon, Fall Out Boy, Kendrick Lamar, Panic! at the Disco to headline Reading + Leeds festival. Final Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy film, Fifty Shades Freed mauled by critics even more than first two films. Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff & D.B. Weiss to develop "series" of Star Wars franchise films for Disney, probably to be released starting in early/mid 2020s. Sebastian Barry named new Laureate for Irish fiction. Original manuscripts for J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren and Lúthien to be put on display in Oxford. Glenn Tipton, guitarist with Judas Priest, retiring from touring following early-onset Parkinson's disease diagnosis, will be replaced on upcoming tour by Andy Sneap. Organisers of July's Truck Festival, headlined by Friendly Fires, George Ezra, De La Soul, issue ban list - prohibited items include fireworks, selfie sticks and... almost-universally-despised columnist Katie Hopkins. SuRie chosen to represent UK in Eurovision Song Contest [Our prediction: within bottom four]. Rickie Martin to receive international icon award at British LGBT Awards in May. Kylie Minogue to play smaller venues in London, Manchester, as part of European tour. Howard Stern to pay tribute to David Bowie with covers retrospective including Garbage, Lisa Loeb, Dawes. Sir Elton John reschedules two Las Vegas shows citing "scheduling conflict"; shows would have clashed with wedding of Prince Harry & Megan Markle. Victoria Beckham dismisses rumours of reunited Spice Girls tour. Cult 1971-1988 BBC music show The Old Grey Whistle Test returning for one-off live special on February 23rd. Quincy Jones slams The Beatles & Michael Jackson. US judge dismisses copyright claim against Taylor Swift, saying the lyric "haters gonna hate" is too banal, too brief, unoriginal and lacking in creativity to be protected under the Copyright Act. Paul King, David Heyman director & producer of Paddington films, reportedly teaming with writer Simon Rich (Inside Out) for third big screen version of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Cornbury Festival to have female-centric line-up headlined by Alanis Morissette, with Amy Macdonald, Nina Nesbitt, Pixie Lott, Mavis Staples & PP Arnold.
Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (The Theory of Everything, Sicario, Arrival soundtracks, 48), actor Reg E. Cathey (House of Cards, The Wire, 59), politician Morgan Tsvangirai (former Prime Minister & main opposition leader in Zimbabwe, 65), Internet activist & lyricist for The Grateful Dead John Perry Barlow (The Well, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 70), singer Vic Damone ("On the Street Where You Live", "My Heart Cries For You", 89), Sir Lawrence Byford (former Chief Inspector of Constabulary who authored report critical of West Yorkshire Police's handling of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, 92).
The Peace Symbol ☮ turns 60 this week. here is a BBC News article from its 50th anniversary in 2008 about its origin and meaning.- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7292252.stm
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:2, 21, 22, 26, 29, 48[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.
Little Jennifer's uncle had been invited to lunch, and was sitting at the table with Little Jennifer while her parents were in the kitchen getting the meal ready. He smiled at his niece and asked "Do you know what we're having for lunch, Little Jennifer?"
Little Jennifer looked thoughtful, then answered, "Goat."
"Goat?" Her uncle looked surprised. "That's unusual. Are you sure?"
"Oh yes," Little Jennifer smiled, as only Little Jennifer could. "This morning at breakfast Mummy said to Daddy 'Don't forget we're having the old goat for lunch today.'"
^ ...end of line