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Issue #556 - 20th March 2020
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| Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
dunnekin [alt. dunnyken] |
Friday 20th March - Poet Ovid born, 43 BCE. Sir Walter Raleigh was released after 13 years in the Tower of London, 1616. Brewer Benjamin Truman died, 1780. Actress Holly Hunter born, 1958. Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the 1,135-mile (1,827km) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, 1985. Philosopher Mary Warnock died, 2019. World Sparrow Day. The vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. Saturday 21st March - Ostrogoth king Vitiges made a failed attempt to breach the northern and eastern walls of Rome during its siege, 537. Algonquin princess Pocanontas died, 1617. Inventor Mary Dixon Kies, the first woman to be granted a U.S. patent, born, 1752. Poet Robert Southey died, 1843. Racing driver Ayrton Senna born, 1960. Twitter was founded, 2006. Sunday 22nd March - Artist Anthony van Dyck born, 1599. The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the possession of cards, dice and gaming tables, 1630. Composer Jean-Baptiste Lully died, 1687. Social reformer Caroline Norton born, 1808. Cricketer Peta Taylor died, 1989. Intel shipped the first Pentium microprocessor chips, featuring a 60MHz clock speed and 100+ MIPS, 1993. World Water Day. Monday 23rd March - Waltham Abbey became the last religious community to surrender to King Henry VIII of England in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1540. French politician Nicolas Fouquet died, 1680. Explorer and botanist John Bartram born, 1699. David Frost recorded the first of the twelve Nixon Interviews with the former U.S. President, 1977. Olympic bobsledder Shelley Rudman born, 1981. Astronomer and cosmologist Beatrice Tinsley died, 1981. World Meteorological Day. Tuesday 24th March - Queen Elizabeth I of England died, 1603. Clockmaker John Harrison, inventor of the Marine chronometer, born, 1693 and died, 1776. Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated six concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt, 1721. The 1921 Womens Olympiad, the first international women's sports event, began in Monte Carlo, 1921. Stuntwoman and multiple world record holder Kitty O'Neill born, 1946. World Tuberculosis Day. Wednesday 25th March - Linguist and cartographer Guillaume Postel born, 1510. Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's larget moon, Titan, 1655. Architect Nicholas Hawksmoor died, 1736. Actress Simone Signoret born, 1921. Artist Harriet Backer died, 1932. John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their first Bed-In for Peace, 1969. Tolkien Reading Day [It can be hobbit-forming... -Ed]. Thursday 26th March - William Caxton printed his translation of Aesop's Fables, 1484. Artist Mary Beale born, 1633. Geologist James Hutton died, 1797. The first Henley Royal Regatta was held, 1839. Playwright Tennessee Williams born, 1911. Author Diana Wynne Jones died, 2011. Purple Day in Canada and the U.S.
This week, Tennessee Williams:All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.
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 Simon West:
- I am a retired officer of the RAF, twice decorated. I flew two hundred and seven missions over occupied territory - in bra and panties!
- - Would the prosecution like add something?
- No, Your Honour. But I would like to wag my finger at the accused a few times.- Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
- How I abominate your milk drinking and your lack of ancestor worship and your failure to eat your lunch out of little boxes.
- And finally, a wafer thin mint.
- - We have 83 rooms. Why can't you live in the house?
- Well, I'm a free spirit, me.
-- Lara Croft: Tomb Raider [2001]- I'm going to put a price on your head so big, that when you look in the mirror your reflection's gonna want to shoot you in the face.
-- The Mechanic [2011]- Put... the bunny... back... in the box.
-- Con Air [1997]- By the powers vested in me, I now pronounce you man and knife.
-- The Expendables 2 [2012]- Golly dang. If you like piña coladas and gettin' caught in the rain, I may just have to marry you, Captain.
-- The General's Daughter [1999]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Geologists studying the seafloor south of the Falkland Islands have found evidence of ancient massive underwater landslides that would have sent tsunamis between 33' (10m) and 131' (40m) high crashing over the islands. Dr Uisdean Nicholson of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh has identified an area between the Falklands and Antarctica where fast currents are picking up sediment before being slowed down and dumping it on a steep slope, where earthquakes probably triggered landslides. It could happen again, but Nicholson stressed that the event is most likely a once-in-a-million-years occurrence.
- The Shaft Bottom Boys are a Sudbury, Ontario, musical group which describes itself as celebrating Sudbury's mining history. Little surprise then that they recently donned their customary mining gear outfits and descended to the depths of the local Creighton Mine to set a world record for the deepest concert performed underground. Their 50-minute set took place 6,213' (1894m) below sea level. The concert raised funds for local summer science camps and a miners' cancer charity.
- Back in the early days of the World Wide Web (WWW) criminal hackers mostly wrote their own tools but now packages are available online, mostly on the "Black Web", the part of the WWW kept off Google and other indexing services. Now it seems that someone is hacking the hackers, having modified the tools downloaded by hackers to infect their own systems with spyware or making them part of a botnet to make distributed denial of service attacks (where a large number of computers simultaneously try to connect to a system to disable it). It is not known who is behind the hacked hacking tools, but evidence seems to point to someone in Vietnam. Quis furatus ex ipsos fures?
- If there is one thing everyone knows about the planet Mercury it is that it is hot. Daytime temparatures can reach 400oC (752oF), so the last thing anybody would expect to be present is ice. A recently published paper has revealed that there are, indeed, pools of ice on the planet, and they formed partly due to the Sun. The Sun emits solar winds, consisting of charged particles including protons. When these interact with hydroxyl molecules they form water molecules which, for the most part, break apart again in the heat, but some fall into crannies in the shade of craters on Mercury's surface in which light does not shine and temperatures remain around -200oC (-328oF). Over the last three million years the paper suggests that about 2.2 trillion pounds (1 trillion kg) of ice might have formed in this way, which still only accounts for 10% of the ice thought to be on Mercury; the rest would have been carried in or made by asteroid impacts.
- Various countries around the world censor journalists, some of the worst being Egypt, Russia, Mexico and Saudi Arabia, which infamously censored the writing of Jamal Khashoggi before his murder at the hands of the government. Reporters Without Borders, the advertising agency DDB Germany, designers Blockworks and production company MediaMonks have found a way around governments. They have constructed a massive neoclassical library in Minecraft, the world's most popular game which lets players create virtual worlds out of blocks. Inside the library users can read banned texts both in their original language and in English. The library launched on March 12, World Day Against Cyber Censorship, and proved so popular people had trouble logging into its server.
- Henry Anderton was cleaning a beach at Littlelure in Shetland when he found a message in a glass bottle. It had been dropped into the mid-Atlantic by a journalist for New York tech security magazine 2600 aboard the RMS Queen Mary II en route from New York to Southampton in December 2018, and promised a $1,000 (£770) prize to whoever found it. It must have travelled at least 1,500 miles (2,400km), in the words of Anderton "up the Gulf Stream and taken a right-hand turn". He added that the magazine staff were "amazed when I emailed them to say I had found it". He will split the prize money between The Ocean Cleanup, a charity, and his own project to restore a dilapadated red telephone box he bought for £1 ($1.18), which he hopes will provide shelter for locals and visitors to enjoy the view from, and hold tourist information and memories.
- When Las Cruces, New Mexico, police spotted a car reported as stolen being driven they ordered the driver to pull over but she kept refusing, until she eventually stopped outside her home. Surena Henry, 48, then claimed that she had found the keys in the car and felt like taking it for a joy ride, had refused to stop because she did not feel like it and that she was world famous pop singer Beyoncé Knowles... She has been charged with unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, concealing identity and resisting or obstructing arrest. Her mugshot does bear a striking similarity to... someone who looks nothing like Beyoncé.
- A cow has been on the run in Florida since late January, evading attempts by police and cow herders to recapture it. The Pembroke Pines Police Department has now issued a wanted poster describing the cow as "[..] brown with a white head. Faster than it looks; talented fence jumper; enjoys pools. [..] Pending charges: Mooving violations, Uddering false checks and fleeing and eluding police." While they do not consider cow to be dangerous they have warned that it has been known to wander onto roads.
- A collection of sketches found in a skip in 1999 and put in a loft have recently been valued and found to include early designs for the "magic piano" played by Paul McCartney in the 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour and a list of commissions for the art collective BEV. They will go under the hammer in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, with an estimated value of £10,000 ($11,800). Builder Andy Clynes, 54, had been converting an old mill into a wine bar when he threw a case into a skip. "The case burst open as it was thrown in. It was raining and I just picked up what I could," he said.
- Coronavirus round-up: A California man is operating a toilet paper exchange, accepting rolls from people with too many and giving them to passers-by with too few. ● Residents of Wuhan, China, reacted angrily to an attempt by the city's Chinese Communist Party chief to launch a "gratitude education campaign" to express thanks to President Xi Jingping and the Party for their handling of the outbreak; the campaign was hastily changed to express thanks to citizens for enduring the hardship of a lockdown. ● Italians, living in a lockdown to contain the virus' spread, have taken to their balconies to sign to their neighbours - or in one filmed case, to play a recorder badly... ● With supermarkets around the world stripped of toilet paper and other items two violinists in America donned lifejackets to film a performance of the hymn Nearer My God To Thee in an empty toilet paper aisle - the hymn is the one legend says the band on the RMS Titanic played as the ship sank. ● Last week it was China, this week nitrogen dioxide pollution levels have plummeted over northern Italy. ● A Japanese convenience store has placed a curse on the toilet paper rolls in its public restroom to deter people from stealing them. ● Police in Oregon have had to issue a public request that people not call the 911 emergency number to report that they have run out of toilet paper. ● After British TV presenter Susannah Reid self-isolated because her son was displaying flu-like symptons, Good Morning Britain co-host Piers Morgan has been inundated with calls to self-isolate too [although we cannot say whether it is because of Susannah or just because he's Piers Morgan... -Ed]. ● A Leeds schoolboy was suspended for a day after selling "squirts" of hand sanitiser to fellow pupils. ● A Tennessee man who bought nearly 18,000 bottles of hand sanitiser to sell on for profit has had his sales banned from Amazon and eBay. ● A woman in Vancouver, Washington, was mocked online after admitting that she had discovered the bar of soap she had been studiously washing her hands with for days was actually a block of cheese. ● Thames Water has warned that the UK's sewer network is facing blockages from 'fatbergs' caused by a massive increase in the number of wet wipes, kitchen paper and other replacements for toilet paper being flushed down toilets. ● Republican congressman and Trump fanboy Devin Nunes (R-CA) [TFIrs passim] has said that people should "stop panicking" and "it's a great time to just go out" if you are healthy. ● A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman has suggested that the COVID-19 virus might have been engineered and released in Wuhan by the American Army during economic tensions between the countries...
IN BRIEF: The Bank of Oklahoma is suing a cannabis dispensary for trademark infringement, claiming that the "Dank of Oklahoma" is using a very similar polygon logo and typeface to theirs in its signage. ● Failed demolition attempt leaves Dallas, Texas, with its own leaning tower; petition raised to keep it as it is rather than complete demilition. ● Magnetic evidence of massive star-shaped lightning strike (or multiple smaller strikes on the same spot) found in Airigh na Beinne Bige stone circle on Lewis in the Western Isles. ● Arizona man arrested in sting operation after agreeing to pay for sex with a hamburger. ● Hundred-year-old coffee stall in London, run by three generations of the same family, to go on display at the Museum of London after closing for the last time. ● Endangered red pandas found to be two species, not one. ● Swiss court rules against claim that logo of Jägermeister alcohol - a cross above a stag's head - is offensive to Christians. ● A seafood salesman has been given a suspended jail sentence for smuggling £53m ($63m) of endangered live eels from London to Honk Kong, hidden under fozen fish.
The last week has proved how utterly unfit for office Donald Trump is, from confused statements about banning non-American air passengers from Europe (but not the UK, then also from the UK), made without consulting the European or British Parliaments which caused worldwide stock markets to crash, to statements intended to buoy up the US stock markets which caused US stock markets to crash (the New York Stock Exchange automatically paused trading for the first time in 30 years) and directly contradicting health experts immediately after they spoke to denying his culpability when asked why he cut the administration's Pandemic Response Team in 2018 and speeches filled with demonstrably-provable untruths about the virus. ● Trump also reportedly tried to convince German research film CureVac, which is working towards a vaccine for COVID-19, to supply the vaccine "only for the United States" according to a German government source, even suggesting the U.S. government could try to buy out the company - something the Germans would block. ● The United Nations, civil rights groups and world governments, particularly the Chinese, responded with shock and anger after Trump tweeted called COVID-19 "the Chinese virus"; the U.N. specifically avoids naming viruses and diseases after countries to preclude targetting of nationals - Chinese state media criticised Trump for "pandering" to racists and called his response to the pandemic "sloppy and belated".
Fortunately [for the virus -Ed] Trump tested negative after a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, some of whose entourage since tested positive; Trump is still meeting and shaking hands with people - Representatives Doug Collins, Mark Meadows and Matt Gaetz to name three - who have been in contact with people who since tested positive. He said he did not need to self-isolate before being tested. ● State legislators are introducing laws to limit panic buying, mass gathering, in the absense of federal moves. ● A stimulus package to provide paid sick leave to small and midsized companies passed Congress, was blocked by Republicans in Senate (although Majority Leader Mitch McConnell later said it would be passed). ● Paula White, Trump's "spiritualgrifteradvisor" has called for donations for her "hospital for those who are soul-sick, those who are spiritually sick" - which is not a hospital, it is her religious ministry. ● Trump's latest great idea to fight the virus is reportedly to introduce a nationwide curfew (though how that would work in a country straddling six time zones beats us...)
Not surprisingly, Trump used the coronavirus to tout his vanity wall project, publicly musing whether it could stop the virus spreading North from Mexico. The per capita infection and fatality rates in Mexico are far lower than in the U.S. ● Even guests on Fox News are slamming Trump's administration as "incompetent and incoherent". ● George Conway has reminded Senate Republicans that they could have helped the situation, tweeting "@realDonaldTrump actually can't help that he's intellectually, psychologically, and morally unfit for any public office. But there are 52 people who could've done something about it 5 weeks ago. No one should forget their responsibility, not this fall, in 2022 and 2024 - or ever."
One American politician gave a speech about the pandemic last week, in calm, measured tones, stressing the need for testing in America (around 1,000 American are tested per day, although that should go up over time, compared to 10,000 per day in South Korea) and American leadership on public health across the world. Not Trump, obviously; potential Democratic candidate and former Vice-President Joe Biden.
Fox News' and frequent Trump defender Sean Hannity told viewers, without a trace of irony, "In serious situations, truth matters. Facts matter, and unfortunately, there's been way too much politicizing of this, too much well, untruths being told and actually even some actually weaponizing what is a pandemic. That needs to stop. I hope it will." raising the question of whether he actually watches Fox News himself or listens to what his #1 viewer has been saying...
Mystery still surrounds the sudden unannounced "routine, planned interim checkup" that saw Trump driven through rush hour traffic (rather than being flown on the Marine One helicopter) to Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre four months ago. ● Mark Hamill tweeted a selection of presidential quotations: "'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' -FDR 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' -JFK 'I don't take responsibility at all.' -DJT", inspired flood of similar collections...
^ ENTERTAINMENT BRIEFS SPECIAL
2020 Razzies - Worst Picture: Cats; Worst Actor: John Travolta, The Fanatic and Trading Paint; Worst Actress: Anne Hathaway, The Hustle and Serenity; Worst Supporting Actor: James Corden, Cats; Worst Supporting Actress: Rebel Wilson, Cats; Worst Screen Combo: Any Two Half-Feline/Half-Human Hairballs, Cats; Worst Director: Tom Hooper, Cats; Worst Screenplay: Lee Hall and Tom Hooper, Cats; Worst Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel: Rambo: Last Blood; Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property: Rambo: Last Blood; Razzie Redeemer Award: Eddie Murphy, Dolemite Is My Name.
Actress Saskia Post (Dogs in Space, Bliss, The Sullivans, 59), radio D.J. Pete Mitchell (Virgin Radio, BBC Radio 2, BBC 6Music, 61), chef and restauratuer Michel Roux (Le Gavroche, The Waterside Inn, Skindles, 79), actor, comedian and entertainment historian Roy Hudd (The News Huddlines, Lipstick on Your Collar, the British Music Hall Society, 83), actor Lyle Waggoner (Wonder Woman, Love Me Deadly, The Carol Burnett Show, 84).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:5, 14, 34, 35, 51, 56[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 was at Sunday school. "Now then, children," the priest said, "Who was the first woman?"
There was no response. "I'll give you a clue. It was something to do with an apple."
Little Jennifer's hand shot up. "Yes, Little Jennifer," the priest said.
Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "Granny Smith?"
^ ...end of line