Issue #553 - 28th February 2020
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Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
beswathe |
Friday 28th February - Liu Bang was enthroned as Emperor of China, beginning the Han dynasty, 202 BCE. Explorer and cartographer Juan de la Cosa killed, 1510. Illustrator John Tenniel born, 1820. Author and essayist Hortense Allart died, 1879. Scientist Wallace Carothers invented nylon, 1935. Actress Ali Larter born, 1976. Saturday 29th February - Glassmaker Antonio Neri born, 1576. Abel Tasman set out on his second Pacific voyage, 1644. Piano builder Johann Andreas Stein died, 1792. Statistician Herman Hollerith born, 1860. Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award, 1940. The Monkees' Davy Jones died, 2012. Rare Disease Day. Bachelor's Day in the United Kingdom, Ireland and other countries. Leap Day. Sunday 1st March - Rio de Janeiro was founded, 1565. Mathematician John Pell born, 1611. Poet George Herbert died, 1633. Nebraska became the 37th of the United States, 1867. Singer-songwriter Kesha born, 1987. Actress Bonnie Franklin died, 2013. Beer Day in Iceland. National Pig Day in the U.S. Monday 2nd March - The Ostrogoths under King Vitiges besieged Rome, 537. King Robert II of Scotland born, 1316. Astronomer Francesco Bianchini died, 1729. Queen Victoria escaped an assassination attempt by Roderick McLean in Windsor, 1882. Frances Spence, one of the first programmers for the ENIAC, born, 1922. Actress and animal rights activist Sandy Dennis died, 1992. Tuesday 3rd March - Playwright Thomas Otway born, 1652. Polymath Robert Hooke died, 1703. The United States Marine Corps made their first amphibious landing, at the Battle of Nassau in the American Revolutionary War, 1776. Anti-Nazi Resistance fighter Elisabeth Abegg born, 1882. New Zealand became the first country in which the top three political offices were all held by women with the election of Margaret Wilson as Speaker of the House of Representatives in Helen Clark's government under Queen Elizabeth II as Head of State, 2005. Writer and publisher May Cutler died, 2011. Hinamatsuri in Japan. World Wildlife Day. World Hearing Day. Wednesday 4th March - Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid Sultanate, died, 1193. Explorer Henry the Navigator born, 1394. King Henry VI of England was deposed by his cousin who became King Edward IV of England in the Wars of the Roses, 1461. Educator and philanthropist Rebecca Gratz born, 1781. The Forth Bridge, then the longest single cantilever bridge in the world, was opened, 1890. Entertainer Minnie Pearl died, 1996. National Grammar Day in the U.S. Thursday 5th March - Cartographer Gerardus Mercator born, 1512. Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was added to the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books, 1616. Writer and librarian Henry Wharton died, 1695. Soprano Marietta Piccolomini born, 1834. Singer-songwriter Patsy Cline died, 1963. Sinclair Research launched the ZX81 home computer, 1981. St Piran's Day in Cornwall.
This week, Minnie Pearl:Kissing a fella with a beard is like a picnic. You don't mind going through a little brush to get there.
A selection of quotations from films with a common director. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films directed by Sam Mendes:
- The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.
- Y'know what I love about this city? You can throw a stick up in the air and it'll land on a taxi or an ambulance.
- When a women kills, it's usually her spouse.
- 100% he's there. OK, 95%, 'cause I know certainty freaks you guys out, but it's 100.
- You're about to jump out a perfectly good airplane, Johnny! How do you feel about that?
- - A gun and a radio. It's not exactly Christmas, is it?
- Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that anymore.
-- Skyfall [2012]- Remember those posters that said, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? Well, that's true of every day but one - the day you die.
-- Aerican Beauty [1999]- Under the Special Measures Act of 2001, I am detaining you on behalf of Her Majesty's Government.
-- Spectre [2015]- I hoped today might be a good day. Hope is a dangerous thing. That's it for now, then next week Command will send a different message. Attack at dawn. There is only one way this war ends. Last man standing.
-- 1917 [2019]- May you get to Heaven an hour before the Devil knows you're dead.
-- Road to Perdition [2002]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Everton supporter Mick Cullen has completed a charity walk the length of Britain from John O'Groats to Land's End wearing just a pair of blue speedos, shoes, a hat, scarf and his backpack, raising more than £300,000 ($389,720) for Merseyside charities helping disadvantaged families. Cullen, 55, dubbed 'Speedo Mick', walked through wind, rain and storms Ciara and Dennis, having set off in December, and described conditions as at times being like walking into knives, but said that public support had kept him "running on adrenaline". A former homeless addict who turned his life around, Cullen has previously raised money by swimming the English Channel (where he got his nickname) and walking from Everton's Goodison Park Stadium in Liverpool to Wembley Stadium in London, but cites his "best achievements are the fact that I have become a father, a husband, a brother and a son that my family can be proud of." He donated a pair of his speedos, with 'Everton' across the back, to the museum at Land's End.
- Researchers at Brown University in America have analysed 6.5 million tweets about climate change from around the time in 2017 that Donald Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord and found that about 25% of tweets promoting climate change denial were posted by automated bots, against just 5% advocating the consensus-backed science. The study was unable to determine who was behind the bots.
- Notoriouly anti-LGBTQ+ hate group the Westboro Baptist Church protesting against openly transgender Virginia Delegate Danica Roem found themselves up against an unusual counter protest. The 'church' which made its name by protesting at funerals of dead soldiers makes money by suing anyone who physically attacks their claimed first amendment rights to free speech, but they met their match in Virginia. Roem is also a heaavy metal singer, and Randy Blythe of another metal band called on fans to wear the most absurd costumes they could, and handed out free kazoos, with which the dancing, headbanging counter-protesters drowned out the Westboro demonstrators, who gave up after 30 minutes. Roem was not present, but raised more than $25,000 (£19,250) for her reelection campaign. The best part? Blythe's band is called Lamb of God.
- Earlier this month we reported on the Kentucky company selling "politics scented candles" that were "made from real Kentucky horseshit for subtle notes of burocracy, hypocrisy & old farts". Now, in the run-up to next year's 50th anniversary of their most famous product McDonald's are to sell burger-scented candles in six packs "inspired by Quarter Pounder ingredients: Bun, Ketchup, Pickle, Cheese, Onion, 100% Fresh Beef". No, we're not sure whether burger candles or horseshit candles would smell better, either...
- More evidence that advertising a product as 'smart' means it is anything but has come via automatic pet feeder devices made by Petnet. The SmartFeeder (£222 ($288) from Amazon UK) supposedly lets owners schedule and control feeding via a smartphone app if they are away or just too lazy to open a tin or packet, but suffered a week-long failure, leaving unattended pets starving. The devices suffer other problems too - "My three Gen2 feeders constantly jam and won't dispense food" one owner tweeted during the outage. Another 'smart' device, Amazon's Echo/Alexa, embroiled in privacy complaints, has received a blow after a cyber security expert confirmed that the only way to stop it recording your private conversations is "don't buy one".
- Daragh Curley, a 10-year-old Manchester United fan from County Donegal, Ireland, was given a school assignment to write a letter. While most of his classmates wrote fan mail Daragh wrote to Jurgen Klopp, manager of Liverpool F.C. who are on track to win this year's Premier League by a wide margin, having not lost a league match, and only drawn one, this season, asking if it they could lose some games so they do not win the League title. He was surprised when Klopp replied in person, praising Daragh's passion for Manchester United, but explaining that Liverpool could not drop points on his behalf. Klopp also advised him that "when you are ten years old you think that things will always be as they are now but if there is one thing I can tell you as 52 years old it is that this most definitely is not the case." Klopp told reporters that his reply to the "cheeky" letter had been written "in private" and "the next day it's in a newspaper - I don't like that much but it's fine" adding that he likes the Liverpool-Manchester United rivalry, especially that "we can keep that on the pitch". Daragh's father praised Klopp's response, saying "what I love about the letter is that it's about sportsmanship and respect too and I think saying that to a 10-year-old is great." Daragh has now been invited to Old Trafford to watch his team play.
- As the old sayings go, you cannot take coal to Newcastle or sell ice to the Inuit, but one Lancashire firm has found that you can sell sand to Turkmenistan, the central-Asian country that is about 70% desert. The sand, sourced from Lancashire and Cheshire, is destined for a new horse racing track. Simon Bowen, whose company took the order, told reporters that "lucky for us the sand there isn't really ideal... it's kind of the wrong texture [and] the wrong shape."
- One victim of climate change is the British Ice Swimming Championships, due to be held in Sandford Park Lido in Cheltenham, where they have found that the water is too warm for any official records to be broken. The water must be below 5oC (41oF) for records to be set, but it is 6.4oC (43.5oF). Event director Kate Steele accepted that no records could be accepted, but "I think to be honest, anywhere's too warm. I know where they train, up in Hatfield in Yorkshire, where they do ice miles - the water's too warm [..] everywhere's too warm at the moment." Swimmers are coming from all over the world to take part.
- Zach McWhorter, a student at Brigham Young University, was practicing pole vaulting last September when he suffered an unfortunate accident. Normally the pole swings back away from the athlete after they let go, but on this occasion the top continued forwards and hit him in the testicles after he had crossed the bar. Fortunately his coach - who also happens to be his father - was on hand and is a urologist specialising in male genitalia. He took his son to his office and sewed him back up with 18 stitches. "Yeah, never been closer with my father until that day," McWhorter told a local TV reporter. A video of the accident went viral on Twitter recently.
- Last week we reported on the ancient turtle fossil the size of a small car, this week it has been reported that a farmer in Argentina has found the fossilised remains of four glyptodonts, giant car-sized armadillo-like creatures that developed around 20 million years ago. The farmer had noticed the unusual mounds in a dried-up river bed and called in archaeologists. The fossils, believed to be of two adults and two children, weigh up to a ton each.
IN BRIEF: Four-hundred-pound (181.4kg) bear goes for stroll around Los Angeles suburb; safely tranquilised, returned to forest. ● Ohio woman, 36, arrested after calling police - twice - to report that her parents had shut off her cellphone service. ● Cambodian sisters, aged 98 and 101, reunited after 47 years of thinking each other had been killed by Khmer Rouge. ● Indonesian Child Protection Commissioner apologises after claiming that women swimming in the same pool as men could be impregnated by "strong sperm" ejaculated by men sexual excited by the sight of women in the pool. ● TripAdvisor has to remove joke reviews of round hole in a wall beside ATM in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, after it becomes fourth highest-rated attraction in town. ● Cressida Dick, Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, dismisses critics of facial recognition software as "highly ill-informed" despite own force's study finding that it is only 19% accurate. ● Pentagon promises to only use military artificial intelligence for good [coincidentally as latest Terminator movie is released on DVD...]. ● Border collie becomes world's most expensive sheepdog after selling to American ranch owner for £18,900 ($24,550), will be rounding up cattle. ● Former US marine George Hood, 62, sets world planking record of 8 hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds. ● Prague renames square after murdered Russian dissident Boris Nemtsov, one of the most vocal critics of President Putin; square happens to be location of Russian embassy. ● Hundreds of Marsquakes detected by NASA's InSight probe. ● Pigeon that cannot fly befriended at Rochester, NY, shelter by chihuahua that cannot walk.
Trump's state visit to India went much as expected, beginning with his address at the new Motera cricket stadium where the president, who has enough trouble pronouncing English names, stumbled several times over Indian words and names, most notably referring to local cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar as 'Soo-chin'. No wonder hundreds of people were filmed leaving the stadium during his address. He then forewent eating a traditional vegetarian banquet, preferring meat, which is offensive to many Hindus. A visit to the Taj Mahal was marked by Ivanka Trump (no official explanation of why she and Jered Kushner were even in India other than as a freebie trip at taxpayers' expense) posting a photograph of herself there, getting responses including "why am I paying for their 2nd honeymoon omfg", "Did daddy take you on a field trip, Princess?", "New sweatshop, #nepotismbarbie?" and a picture of her typing on her phone captioned "Look, Daddy, I'm governmenting!" Trump hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "very tough" and applauded him for his religious tolerance - as Delhi erupted into the worst days-long rioting in decades over a controversial anti-Muslim citizenship law.
At a rally in Colorado Trump criticised the Academy Awards (but apparently did not mention the documentary feature award [see last issue]), complaining that "the winner is - a movie [Parasite] from South Korea! What the hell was that about? We got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of that, they give him best movie of the year? Was it good? I don't know. Let's get Gone With the Wind. Can we get Gone With the Wind back, please?" Call us cynics, but GWtW runs just short of 4 hours, so there is no way someone with Trump's inability to concentrate for more than a couple of minutes would be able to sit through it. Bette Midler responded to his complaint with "I'm more upset that a parasite won the White House", while Neon, the American distributors of the subtitled film tweeted a succint "Understandable, he can't read."
As the election approaches, Trump is preparing to hand over more massive taxpayer-funded subsidies to farmers hit by his policies, claiming that trade tariffs will pay for them. As has been pointed out many times (even in the recent official Economic Report of the President), but he still fails to grasp, U.S. tariffs on foreign goods are paid by U.S. citizens importing those goods; indeed a report issued two weeks ago by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump's tariffs will cost the average American family $1,277 (£987) this year, and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office is opening an investigation into Trump's farm subsidies, which last year accounted for about 40% of farmers' income. ● After railing against Fox News and claiming (again) that he won all the debates in the 2016 election, even Fox fact checked Trump with a blunt "he did not". ● Trump whined at an Arizona rally (again) that the military dog involved in the killing of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi got more publicity than him, and ranting about "crooked politicians" investigating his 2016 campaign's [proven] links with Russia, and again struggled to pronounce words, referring to the Nafta US-Canada-Mexido free trade agreesment as 'Nasta', 'overdose' as 'overdoth', 'prison' as 'privat' and 'neonatal' as 'neonetical'. Can an English-Trumpian Dictionary be far away? ● Trump claimed that the U.S. is well-prepared to fight a COV-19 coronavirus outbreak, and the stock market was doing better than ever - on the day the Dow Jones fell a 2-year record 1,031.54 points, the S&P 500 erased its year-to-date gains and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 3.7%, all over concerns about the coronavirus... ● Never mind Trump and the Russians, it has emerged that the official Florida Republican Party Facebook page and nine Florida county Republican Facebook pages are apparently being administered in... Turkmenistan, located between Uzbekistan and Iran in Central Asia, ranked the worst country in the world (even below North Korea) for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders, and where Facebook is banned...
This week's self-pwn by Donnie Jr was an attempt to prove himself a man of the people by sitting in economy (aka coach) on a flight from Las Vegas to Phoenix, and getting someone (probably a lackey posing as an average American) to tweet a photo and praise for his choice, including saying that no Democrat candidates would fly economy. It met with the fully-expected response, including pictures of Democrat candidates flying coach, "the average American hasn't even flown in the last year", "when you post a picture of yourself in coach to point out how much of a regular guy you are, it suggests that this is not typically how you travel", "look at me! I'm just like the poors!", comments that it was a 90-minute flight and he would not fly coach long-distance and, perhaps most damningly, someone pointing out that the airline he was flying on has no first class anyway, just coach throughout their planes.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, currently facing extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. pending a court hearing has claimed that Trump offered him a pardon on all charges against him in exchange for testifying that Russia were not behind the hacking and leaking of emails, despite Russian intelligence officials having already been indicted in the U.S. (The White House denied the claim). ● White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has admitted that there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine, and said the the U.S. is "desperate - desperate - for more [immigrant] people... we are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we've had over the last four years. We need more immigrants." ● Dr Ronny Jackson, the former chief medical advisor who infamously said Trump was in excellent health at his January 2018 medical, has admitted that he tried hiding cauliflower in Trump's mashed potato, attempted to make ice cream "less accessible" to the president and tried introducing an exercise machine into the White House in hope of Trump losing 10-15lb (4.5-6.8kg), to no avail. At his last medical in February 2019 Trump had gained 4lb (1.8kg) and was clinically obese.
Daredevil Mike Hughes (builder of a steam-powered rocket to try to prove his flat-Earth beliefs [TFIrs passim, 64), broadcaster Simon Warr (BBC Suffolk, That'll Teach 'Em, 65), computer scientist Larry Tesler (Xerox, Apple Corps, inventor of cut/copy/paste and find/replace, 74), actress Frances Cuka (Friday Night Dinner, Coronation Street, The Watcher in the Woods, 83), author Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt novels including Raise the Titanic and Sahara, Isaac Bell Adventures, Fargo Adventures, 88), politician Hosni Mubarak (former Vice-President [1975-1981], Prime Minister [1981-1982] and President [1981-2011] of Egypt, 91), actor Boris Leskin (Men in Black, The Falcon and the Snowman, The Package, 97), mathematician Katherine Johnson (NASA, depicted in Hidden Figures, Presidential Medal of Freedom [2015], 101), supercentenarian Chitetsu Watanabe (verified world's oldest living man, 112).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:9, 19, 45, 47, 50, 51[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 came home from school, looking puzzled. "What's the matter, Little Jennifer," her mother asked, "Did something happen at school?"
Little Jennifer looked at her mother. "We had a test, Mummy, and Miss said that I'd got an 'A' in spelling!"
"Well that's very good," her mother said, somewhat surprised.
"Oh, I know that, Mummy, but I've been thinking all the way home, and there isn't an 'A' in 'spelling' and I'm sure I didn't put one in!"
^ ...end of line