|
Issue #539 - 8th November 2019
|
| Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
anagapesis |
Friday 8th November - French countess Matilda of Béthune died, 1263. Oxford University's Bodleian Library opened to the public, 1602. Astronomer Edmond Halley born, 1656. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, 1895. Singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt born, 1949. Artist and illustrator Norman Rockwell died, 1978. Saturday 9th November - Poet Jami died, 1492. William of Orange captured Exeter during the Glorious Revolution, 1688. Gail Borden, inventor of condensed milk, born, 1801. The body of Mary Jane Kelly, considered the final victim of Jack the Ripper, was discovered, 1888. Actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr born, 1914. Writer Stieg Larsson died, 2004. Sunday 10th November - The Netherlands ceded New Netherland to England under the Treaty of Westminster, 1674. Illustrator William Hogarth born, 1697. Shawnee tribal leader Cornstalk murdered by militiamen, 1777. Henry Morton Stanley located missing missionary and explorer Dr David Livingstone in Ujiji, Tanzania, greeting him with "Dr Livingstone, I presume?", 1871. Screenwriter Debra Hill born, 1950. Actress Mary Millar died, 2008. Monday 11th November - Physician, alchemist and astrologer Paracelsus born, 1493. The Mayflower Compact was signed, 1620. Highwayman Joseph Blake hanged, 1724. Writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky born, 1821. Washington was admitted as the 42nd state of the United States, 1889. Voice actress Mary Kay Bergman died, 1999. Remembrance Day in the U.K. and Commonwealth, and observations of the end of World War I in various countries. Tuesday 12th November - Danish-English king Cnut the Great died, 1035. Plymouth became the first town to be incorporated by the English Parliament, 1439. Playwright Ben Travers born, 1886. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened, 1936. Actress Radha Mitchell born, 1973. Comic book legend Stan Lee died, 2018. World Pneumonia Day. Wednesday 13th November - King Malcolm III of Scotland was killed at the Battle of Alnwick, 1093. Royalist forces failed to capture London at the Battle of Turnham Green in the English Civil War, 1642. Dorothea Erxleben, Germany's first female medical doctor, born, 1715. The Montgomery Bus Boycott ended as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Alabama's bus segregation laws illegal, 1956. Writer Stephen Baxter born, 1957. Chemical technician and activist Karen Silkwood died, 1974. Sadie Hawkings Day in the U.S. World Kindness Day. Thursday 14th November - Nell Gwynn, mistress of King Charles II of England, died, 1687. Steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton born, 1765. James Bruce discovered what he considered the source of the Nile, 1770. Composer Aaron Copland born, 1900. Theodore Maiman was granted a patent for the first laser system, 1967. Actress Charlotte Coleman died, 2001.
This week, Norman Phelps:Compassion for the suffering of others is not weakness. Acting from compassion when those around you do not takes more courage and strength of character than going along with everyone else's cruelty.
A selection of quotations from films directed by the same person. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films directed by Alfred Hitchcock:
- My oath of celibacy is on record, Captain.
- - Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease.
- Hey! I got a social disease!- Only grown-up men are scared of women.
- A closed mind is the worst defense against the supernatural... If it happens to you, you're liable to have that shut door in your mind ripped right off its hinges!
- I won't resort to threats, Mr. Harley. I merely tell you the future of your planet is at stake.
- - It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?
- Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.
-- Psycho [1960]- Maybe one of us ought to try to row. Where to? What for?
-- Lifeboat [1944]- - On Mondays and Wednesdays I work for the Travelers' Aid at the airport.
- Helping travelers?
- No, misdirecting them.
-- The Birds [1963]- Every man's ready to get married when the right girl comes along.
-- Rear Window [1954]- Nobody commits a murder just for the experiment of committing it. Nobody except us.
-- Rope [1948]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Beleagured luxury car maker Aston Martin (shares down 71% on last year) have teamed up with motorcycle manufacturer Brough Superior to create the AMB 001, a luxury 180-horsepower motorcycle, its first two-wheeled vehicle. The bike will be handbuilt in Toulouse, France, with "Stirling Green and Lime Essence" paint and a hand-stitched leather seat. It will retail for €108,000 (£92,877; $120,000), but there is one small catch. It is not street legal, so can only be ridden on tracks.
- David Brennan, 23, was being chased by police as he drove a stolen mini on the M54 at speeds up to 137mph (220km/h) when he was eventually stopped by "tactical contact" - pursuing police cars were deliberately crashed into the mini to bring it to a halt, at which point Brennan jumped back into the rear seat and told officers that he was a passenger and the driver had run off. Unfortunately for him not only had the pursuing officers seen his acrobatics, but police cars have video cameras which had captured it. On October 31 he was jailed for 18 months for dangerous driving and driving while disqualified, and banned from driving for a further three years.
- A rail passenger at the Metro-North New Rochelle station, 25 miles (40km) north of New York City saw some large suspicious packages on the platform, and used a dedicated intercom system to report them to police, who discovered that the 6'- (1.8m)-tall boxes actually contained machinery for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's new Help Point System, which passengers can use to more easily report suspicious packages to the police...
- Rescued elephants, many of whom suffer from arthritis, at the Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Centre in the northern Indian city of Mathura are getting a little help as overnight temperatures threaten to fall below freezing. Women in a nearby village have been knitting extra-extra-extra-large pyjama-like clothes for them to cover their necks, backs and legs. The centre's founder, Kartick Satyanarayan told reporters that "it is important to keep our elephants protected from the bitter cold during this extreme winter, as they are weak and vulnerable having suffered so much abuse making them susceptible to ailments such as pneumonia."
- Mukhlis bin Muhammad of Indonesia's Aceh Ulema Council in the Aceh region where Sharia law holds sway helped draft strict laws that called for those caught committing adultery to be publicly whipped. In September he was caught near a tourist beach misbehaving in a car with a woman who was not his wife. Last week he received 28 public lashings, and was thrown out of the council. He is also the first religious leader to be publicly whipped since the laws came into force fourteen years ago.
- Last month a bottle of Macallan 1926, one of only 40 bottles of 60-year-old malt whiskey from cask 263 was sold at auction for a world record £1.45m ($1.87). David Robertson, distillery manager at The Macallan before becoming their master distiller had the job of tasting samples a number of times between 1994 and 2000 to ensure its quality, and said that "from memory, it was an incredibly rich, intense spirit - full of dried fruits, of prunes and dates and tons of incredibly spicy notes of cloves, ginger and cinammon" adding that "I also recall zesty orange marmalade, hints of peat and smoke, finished with a delicious drying oak tannin from the sherry cask, and waxy, linseed oil and leather notes." Unfortunately for the buyer he also said that "it's a great whiskey - but I've had better. The Macallan 1979 Gran Reserva, for example [..] There are other bottles from other distillers that are at least as good."
- Last week musician Stephen Morris left his 310-year old violin on a train in South London. The train company had no record of it being handed in as lost property so Morris put out a public appeal via social media and was contacted by a man claiming to represent the person who had taken it off the train. A meeting was arranged in a supermarket car park in Beckenham at which it transpired that the man who had contacted him was, in fact, the man with his violin, which was returned with apologies. The violin, worth £250,000 ($322,400), was still in tune.
- Lionheart, directed by Genevieve Nnaji, is Nigeria's first-ever entry for the International Feature Film Academy Award (formerly called the Best Foreign Film), but it has been disqualified because all but ten minutes' of its dialogue is in English, the rest being in Igbo. Academy rules state that films in the category must be over 40 minutes long, produced outside the U.S. and have dialogue predominantly in a non-English language. Ava DuVernay, another Nigerian film director, has pointed out the silliness of the Academy's rule in this case - "You disqualified Nigeria's first-ever submission for Best International Feature because its in English, but English is the official language of Nigeria. are you barring this country from ever competing for an Oscar in its official language?"
- Despite the hype, "smart assistants" like Amazon's Alexa do not have all the answers. To counter the problem Amazon launched Alexa Answers last September, with which anyone could file an answer to questions Alexa failed on in exchange for points (just points, there does not seem to be any redeemable value to them) and have their answers read out by the assistant next time someone asked it the question. Naturally, things have not gone well. The question "what are mold pigs?" now gives the answer "mold pigs are overweight animals, usually with green or purple hair and an unpleasant demeanour. Their usual habitat is west-coast university campuses" (they are actually a recently-identified microinvertebrate that lived in the mid-Tertiary period), while asking why cows are bad for the environment brings up the response that they are "no more harmful than any other animal," and "the 'cow-farts' theory is a made-up theory by climate change radicals". Other answers included blatant product placement. One of the wealthiest companies trying to crowd-source work for free, who would have thought it would go wrong?
- Rob Shaver, American football coach at Plainedge High School on Long Island, NY, has been suspended for one game because his team did too well, beating another school's team 61-13. The county has a "lopsided scores policy" in place which calls for players in a team that is doing too well in a game to be substituted with less-able teammates to encourage good sportsmanship [and comfort the perceived snowflakes -Ed]. If a team wins by more than 42 points its coach has to go before a committee to explain themselves. South Side High School's coach Phil Onesto, whose team lost the match, told reporters that he had no problem with how the game went and had told coach Shaver so. Plainedge's superintendent described the committee as "a kangaroo court".
IN BRIEF: Data from the Voyager 2 space probe, more than 11 billion miles away and beyond the Solar System, has confirmed findings from Voyager 1, which passed beyond the heliosphere in 2012; there is a bow shockwave rather than a gradual tailing off of the solar wind. ● Barge stuck on rocks in rapids above Niagara Horseshoe Falls since 1918 dislodged by storm, now stuck 164' (80.4m) further downstream. ● Cambridgeshire resident Robert Dempsey gives up annual (since 2014) million Christmas light home and garden decoration as "it got too big to handle". ● Tham Luang cave, Thailand, from where 12 boys and their soccer coach were rescued last year, reopens to tourists. ● Asteroid 2006 SF6, thought to be 919-2034' (280-620m) in diameter, to pass by Earth at about 2.7 million miles (4.3m km) later this month, predicted to be last 'close' approach for next two centuries. ● Antarctic researchers on otherwise-unoccupied (except for penguins) Macquarie Island find message in bottle; much of message unreadable, but was dropped in water off Bouvet Island west of Cape Town, South Africa in 2015. ● Cambridgeshire driver stopped for driving without insurance found to be still using provisional driving license fourteen years after it expired. ● NASA sends small oven and dough to International Space Station for "baking experiments". ● Archaeologists claim discovery of "Britain's first city" on Salisbury Plain.
British intelligence described Trump's requests for help countering impeachment enquiry by discrediting Robert Mueller's findings that Russia interfered with the 2016 election (despite *cough* "complete and total exoneration") as "like nothing we have come across before". ● Trump refused to rule out government shutdown to attempt to force end to impeachment inquiry. ● Trump, Rand Paul amongst others calling for whistleblower's name to be released, despite legal protections; meanwhite the whistleblower has - through his lawyer - offered to answer written questions from Republican congress members. ● Congress voted 232-196 to begin public phase of inquiry.
At a White House Halloween event staffers encouraged children to place personalised paper 'bricks' on a "build the wall" mural. ● Trump was forced to admit that his "impenetrable" wall was not, after smugglers used off-the-shelf power tools to cut through new steel sections.
Although Trump repeatedly visits and uses his company's properties (technically run by his sons, but he is still the main beneficiary) for government events - more than 200 visits since taking office - some of them are failing. Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago's profits fell 89% from 2015 to 2018 and the Washington D.C. hotel is reportedly being considered for sale. Others, as previously reported, are dropping or reducing the 'Trump' branding. ● There is still no sign of irony from Don Jr. who said he wished he was Hunter Biden so he could profit from his dad's presidency - as Trump plugged Jr's (probably ghostwritten) new book on Twitter; naturally the responses were not complimentary - "Trump treats ethic and conduct violations like eating Lay's chips. Can't violate just one." (@ShopgirlAlic), "Guy who doesn't read endorses book by guy who doesn't write." (@HoarseWhisperer) and "'Nepotism: How the Trump thrive on hate and profit off division'" (@Diabolicalldea) being just three examples. Jr's book claims that his dad cannot be a racist because he let him play with Michael Jackson in Trump Tower (no mention of the whole other can of worms there...) and can relate to the working class because his dad took him to a Taco Bell on the way to boarding school... ● Three-judge appeals panel rules Trump's accountants must hand over tax returns to Manhattan district attorney; Trump likely to take appeal to Supreme Court... ● Trump has changed his official residence to Mar-a-Lago; no state income or estate tax in Florida, and Trump's tax cuts hit Democrat states like New York worse than Republican ones like Florida; New York governor Andrew Cuomo commented "Good riddance. It's not like Mr Trump paid taxes here anyway. He's all yours, Florida." adding that any criminal proceedings in New York would continue regardless of where Trump moved to.
MoveOn.org video crew asked Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) if he thought it was OK for foreign governments to interfere in U.S. elections, he answered by head-butting their camera. ● Trump witholding federal aid from California wildfires fight (and still claiming they are the state's problem for poorly managing forests, despite 97% of CA forest being on federal land) despite having offered US aid to Russia in August to combat Siberian fires. ● Jill Briskman, who made headlines and lost her job in 2017 for flipping off Trump as his motorcade passed her while she was cycling has unseated eight-year incumbent Republican Suzanne Volpe for a seat on Virginia's Loudon County Board of Supervisors. ● Trump's obsession with Barack Obama continues - he had mentioned his predecessor by name 537 times in 2019 through October, 36% up on 2018 and 169% up on 2017. ● Last week it was baseball, this week Trump went to a UFC Championship mixed martial arts event at Madison Square Garden in New York, and got booed again, having had to sneak in through a parking garage rather than the main entrance. As @grantstern put it on Twitter "Now, all he's got to do is an NFL game and NBA game and he can round out his tour of disapproval." ● At Mississippi rally Trump railed against CNN then pointed to press TV cameras and told the crowd a light on CNN's camera went off, showing that they cut coverage of his criticism; CNN's cameras do not have lights to show when they are recording... ● Trump has claimed that his economic policies have made wives regain respect for their husbands...
As a final note, if you want to see an award-winning Donald Trump (yes, really, and he did not have to forge the nomination), check out the execrable 1989 John Derek film Ghosts Can't Do It, starring Bo Derek as the widow of an elderly man who plots with his ghost to drown her handsome young suitor so her dead husband can take over his body. Yes, really... Trump has a cameo role as himself, and won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor. ;)
Instagram celebrity raccoon Pumpkin (4), actor Brian Tarantina (City by the Sea, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Gilmore Girls, 60), film director/producer Paul Turner (Hedd Wyn, 73), producer Lorin Salob (A Woman Named Jackie, Tron, Charlie's Angels, 77), television presenter Gay Byrne (RTÉ's The Late Late Show, 85), WWII French Resistance member Yvette Lundy (93).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:12, 17, 40, 51, 53, 57[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.
The class were learning about history. "Ok, children," the teacher said, "who can tell me something important that did not exist 50 years ago?"
All the children were silent for a moment before Little Jennifer's hand shot up. "Yes, Little Jennifer? Can you tell me something important that did not exist 50 years ago?"
Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "Me, Miss!"
^ ...end of line