|
Issue #561 - 24th April 2020
|
| Contents | — – o o O o o – — |
^ WORD OF THE WEEK
gamophobia |
Friday 24th April - The Trojan War ended with the fall of Troy, 1183 BCE [traditional date]. Mathematician Thomas Fincke died, 1656. Writer Athony Trollope born, 1815. Space Shuttle Discovery launched on mission STS-31, carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, 1990. Cyclist Laura Kenny born, 1992. Businesswoman Estée Lauder died, 2004. Arbor Day in the United States. Saturday 25th April - Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of Great Britain, born, 1599. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, 1792. Poet William Cowper died, 1800. Princess Alice of the United Kingdom born, 1843. The USS Triton submarine completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe, 1960. Actress Bea Arthur died, 2009. Red Hat Society Day. Sunday 26th April - Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius born, 121. Artist Robert Campin died, 1444. An assassination attempt was made on Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother in the Duomo of Florence, 1478. Photographer and actress Koo Stark born, 1956. The Chernobyl disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union, 1986. Journalist and broadcaster Jill Dando was murdered, 1999. World Intellectual Property Day. Monday 27th April - The English defeated the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar in the First War of Scottish Independence, 1296. Explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed, 1521. Philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft born, 1759. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson died, 1882. Businessman and philanthropist Eric Schmidt born, 1955. Xerox PARC introduced the computer mouse, 1981. Tuesday 28th April - Actor/manager Thomas Betterton died, 1710. James Monroe, 5th President of the United States, born, 1758. Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors were set adrift in the Mutiny on the Bounty, 1789. Novelist Harper Lee born, 1926. Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon began a 741-week run on the U.S. Billboard chart, debuting at #1, 1973. Artist Barbara Fiske Calhoun died, 2014. Ed Balls Day. Wednesday 29th April - Joan of Arc arrived at Orléans to relieve the siege, 1429. Poet John Cleveland died, 1658. Polymath John Arbuthnot born, 1667. The musical Hair opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, 1968. Actress Uma Thurman born, 1970. Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock died, 1980. International Dance Day (UNESCO). Thursday 30th April - Frankish queen Hildegard of the Vinzgau died, 783. Christopher Columbus was given a commission to explore on behalf of Spain, 1492. Queen Mary II of England born, 1662. Physicist J.J. Thomson announced the discovery of the electron, the first identified subatomic particle, in a lecture at the Royal Institute, 1897. Actress and comedian Cloris Leachman born, 1926. Poet A.E. Houseman died, 1936.
This week, Harper Lee:The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
A selection of quotations from films with the same director. Answers next issue or from the regular address.Last issue's quotations were from films directed by Matthew Vaughn:
- My idea of Heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity, and they love me.
- - Why are you chasing me?
- Why you running?
- 'Cause you're chasing me, man!- All right, Popeye's here! Get your hands on your heads, get off the bar, and get on the wall!
- I'll make you a deal. If you can tell me right now what the life expectancy was for second lieutenant dropped into a hot LZ in Vietnam in 1968, I'll tell you everything I remember about Ca Lu.
- - Your Honor, I can't do no 20 years.
- Well do as much as you can, son.
- With no power, comes no responsibility. Except, that wasn't true.
-- Kick-Ass [2010]- England. Typical. Even drug dealers don't work weekends.
-- Layer Cake [2004]- - Darwin's dead, Charles, and we can't even bury him.
- We can avenge him!
-- X-Men: First Class [2011]- - Would sir care for a drink?
- Martini. Gin, not vodka, obviously. Stirred for 10 seconds while glancing at an unopened bottle of vermouth. Thank you.
-- Kingsman: The Secret Service [2014]- There was not a horse or beast he could not master. So much so that in his youth, he took to riding a camel... which was comical.
-- Stardust [2007]
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
- Navy veteran Ken Benbow, 94, is a resident in a care home in Preston where he lived with Aida, his wife of 71 years until her death six months ago. He had taken to going to sleep every night since her death holding a framed photograph of her, despite the staff worrying that he might injure himself if the glass broke while he was asleep. Kia Tobin, 17, has been working at the home for a year and came up with a surprise for Ken that led to a video of them going viral. She gave him a cushion with the picture of Aida printed on it, so he can still go to sleep holding her, but more safely. Kira is staying at the care home while the coronavirus outbreak is ongoing, but her grandparents, with whom she normally lives, told a BBC North West reporter that they were delighted with her kindness, but not surprised.
- The makers of a BBC documentary about Scottish seminarians in Rome have revealed that the Vatican demanded one clip be cut from it. The offending clip showed a group of visiting student priests at the Apostolic Palace presenting the Pope with a bottle of Oban malt whisky, which, instead of just handing off to an assistant, he held up and declared, with a laugh, "questa e la vera acqua santa" - Latin for "this is the real holy water". The quip put the students at their ease but the Vatican media office decided that while it was clearly a joke it would be inappropriate to show the Pope endorsing whisky.
- Scott McKay, of no fixed abode, has been jailed for 26 weeks by Preston magistrates after breaking into a Blackburn pharmacy while drunk by prising open metal window bars then swallowing an undisclosed number of pills from the shelves. When police arrived they had found him too inebriated to get out again and had to call in firefighters to assist them. It was not reported what medicines he had swallowed.
- A kayaker who went missing off the Queens borough of New York City was found alive on a small island in Jamaica Bay having lit a fire and spelled out 'HELP' in the sand using sticks. The New York Police Department (NYPD) tweeted that he was taking "social distancing to the next level" but the Twitterati were more interested in the night vision camera images of him standing on the beach wearing a life vest, which prompted several to ask if the NYPD had discovered Bigfoot.
- A picture of a wheelie bin has been taking the Internet by storm. The bin appears to be floating in mid-air thanks to a puddle of water between it and the camera that looks like its shadow, with many commenting that seeing it as floating is clearly a sign of having been in coronavirus lockdown for too long. You can see the bin picture on Reddit.
CORONAVIRUS ROUND-UP: A number of American anti-vaxxers - people who object to their children being vaccinated against common diseases - are reported as having changed their minds in the wake of COVID-19. ● The Chinese government has said that there is no cover-up concerning COVID-19 because they do not allow cover-ups... ● Remember ice cream vans driving around? Someone is driving a music-playing van around Boulder, Colorado, but instead of selling ice cream he is selling cold beers - handed out using tongs after contactless payment is made via a QR code stuck to the side of the van. ● The elusive street artist Banksy has posted a picture to his Instagram account of misbehaving rats painted on his bathroom walls with the caption "My wife hates it when I work from home." ● The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has revealed a hand-held device which he claims can detect anyone infected with COVID-19 from 100m (328') away. The device bears a remarkable similarity to the bogus bomb detectors sold by British fraudsters in the wake of the Iraq War. ● A Colombian "holistic doctor" is claiming that the whole COVID-19 pandemic is "a fake" because (according to him) HIV was a fake. He doesn't say why people around the world are becoming ill... ● Fashion retailer Boohoo has been slammed for selling fashion slogan-bearing face masks; they were quickly withdrawn. ● On April 1 the Guido Fawkes website ran an April Fools' story about Richard Branson offering his Necker Island resort as collateral for a loan to save Virgin Atlantic. The story has now become true, despite Branson's personal £4bn+ ($4.9bn+) fortune and Virgin Atlantic being 49% owned by the American Delta airline. ● Ohio resident John W McDaniel, who claimed that COVID-19 was a political ploy and said his state's lockdown was "bullshit" has died - of COVID-19. ● Two Greater Manchester Police officers, Sgt Marie McNulty and PC Jay McGreavy, who had to postpone their wedding due to COVID-19 were surprised with a blessing from Police Inspector Rob Findlow, who is an ordained Anglican priest, flowers and champagne on what should have been their big day. Their colleagues had arranged it. ● More than 2,000 online scams relating to COVID-19 have been shut down by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, and Google has blocked 126 million phishing emails (ones intended to trick people into giving their personal details often including bank or credit card account numbers) relating to the outbreak. ● The British Parliament is using a hybrid in-person and video-link system for both the House of Commons and the Lords, with limited numbers allowed in the chambers and a set number of other politicians taking part via either Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Dr Phil McGraw, a TV celebrity with a PhD in psychology but no medical license is being criticised after claiming (on Fox News, naturally...) that more people might die from the lockdown than from COVID-19, and comparing the virus' death toll to those from automobile accidents, cigarettes and "360,000 a year from swimming pools but we don't shut down the country for that." As many have pointed out, none of those are highly-contagious viruses and the actual figure for deaths in swimming pool accidents was an average 3,600/year from 2005-2014. ● The Genesis II Church of Health & Healing in Florida has been banned by a federal judge from selling its "Master Mineral Solution" (MMS) which it claimed could cure COVID-19 by taking six drops in water every two hours. MMS was industrial-strength bleach. ● Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has called for America to go to war with China because of COVID-19, while Fox News has defended its frequently broadcast lies about COVID-19, claiming that the First Amendment protects "false" speech... ● Louisiana pastor Tony Spell, who held multiple large church services in defiance of state orders has asked congregants to donate their stimulus cheques to his church. ● Wisconsin, where Republicans blocked postal voting, has seen a surge in COVID-19 cases a week after the ballot. ● Police in Taneytown, Maryland, have issued a request for people to "put pants on before leaving the house to check your mail" after complaints of at least one (unnamed) person going out to their mailbox in their undies.
Dr Norman Swan, an Australian doctor is warning that infected people might be ejecting particles of coronavirus in their farts, and warned that people should not fart close to others or "with your bottom bare" - there is little medical research into the area, although American late night TV host Stephen Colbert joked that, for safety, you should fart into your elbow... ● Volunteers in Indonesia and Malaysia are dressing up in sheets so they look like 'pocong', shroud-wrapped ghosts of local legends, to jump out and scare people defying lockdowns at night. ● IKEA have shared the recipe for their meatballs. ● McDonald's have released a template for their Happy Meal box so children - or adults - can cut out and make their own.
More wildlife sightings: a Norfolk woman is taking her pet kookaburra, a bird native to Australia, with her on her daily walk because 'Siren' is bored with the lockdown. ● Lions are sleeping on the warm deserted roads of South Africa's Kruger National Park. ● A flock of sheep have been photographed congregated around a closed McDonald's in Ebbw Vale, Wales. ● A kangaroo has been filmed hopping down deserted Adelaide streets. ● Wild wolves have been sighted in Northern France for the first time in over a hundred years. ● Meanwhile if your video conference calls are getting boring, a North Carolina farm is renting out its residents to make appearances, so you can have Mambo the miniature donkey, horses Heiren, Zeus or Eddie, ducks or chickens pop up mid-conference for light relief. There have also been requests for them to appear in virtual classrooms.
Updates: Broadcasting watchdog OFCOM has issued "guidance" to ITV after Eamonn Holmes' comments about the (unfounded) links between 5G technology and COVID-19, and has found London Live in breach of standards for its broadcast of an interview with conspiracy theorist David Icke. ● At the time of writing (Wednesday afternoon) Captain Tom Moore's fundraiser for the NHS charities has raised £28,059,473 ($34,566,885.68).
CNN and MSNBC have vehemently denied a claim by Trump's re-election campaign, naturally with no evidence, that they are broadcasting his daily coronavirusmeltdownsbriefings with a 15-second delay to filter out (unspecified) things their audiences will not want to hear. ● Trump has announed that he will sign an executive order temporarily suspending all immigration to the U.S., presumably blocking any foreign medical staff (surely pretty much the only group of people wanting to enter the U.S. at the moment) who want to help... ● Trump defended his self-congratulatory video played at Sunday's press briefing saying that he was sticking up for everyone who has fought the virus outbreak, despite there being no mention of them in the video. At the same press briefing he called the FBI's top managers "human scum", admitted that he bears a grudge against Mitt Romney (the only Republican senator left off his task force to reopen the American economy despite Romney's experience) and called a CNN reporter "brainless". ● Fox News appears to be collaborating with Trump in an attempt to make the anti-lockdown protests into the new Tea Party. ● Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug frequently touted by Trump - and in which he has a financial interest - has been found to have no benefit over, and cause more deaths than routine treatment in a large study of its use in American veterans' hospitals. ● Approval ratings for Trump's pandemic response continue to plummet. ● It is a known fact that Trump's statements and the truth are far apart, but he reached new depths of ridiculousness by claiming that his actions had saved "billions" of lives - in a country with a population of just under 330 million and the highest death toll from the virus in the world. ● After Dr Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control warned of a second outbreak this winter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Trump of "engaging in distractions" rather than providing real leadership and overseeing the "total failure" of the U.S. response; Trump's considered highly-intelligent response? He called her "dumb", a reaction described as "bananas" and showing someone "in need of a Zoom intervention" by MSNBC's Nicole Wallace. ● Trump adviser KellyAnne Conway told Fox news that "some of the scientists and doctors say there could be other strains later on... this is COVID-19, not COVID-1, folks. So you would think the people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that... people should know the facts." As pretty much everyone in the world apart from KellyAnne Conway (and possibly Trump) know, the virus is called COVID-19 because it was first identified in 2019. Ignorance, thy name is KellyAnne.
After the Trump administration's failure to obtain working testing kits Larry Hogan, Republican governor of Maryland, and his wife, who is fluent in Korean, negotiated with South Korea and acquired enough kits for 500,000 tests. The next day vice president Pence told Meet the Press that testing capacity across the country was "sufficient" while Trump publicly questioned Hogan's intelligence and said that his administration had provided a list of thousands of laboratories that could process tests. Hogan, in response, tweeted his thanks for the list of places he could send his tests to be processed, highlighting Trump's confusion between actual tests and the facilities to process them. ● An Abbott Labs quick-testing kit that Trump produced at a press briefing to show how well he was managing the crisis has shown errors in laboratory analysis, leading to at least one hospital sending them back. ● While the White House was encouraging people without symptoms to refrain from wearing face masks earlier this month it has emerged that they were desperately trying to obtain masks for themselves.
The much-touted ill-conceived stimulus package that saw every American apart from about 43,000 millionnaires receive a $1,200 (£974) cheque regardless of where they live or their cost of living (Steve Mnuchin, Trump's Treasury Secretary, said it should last people 10 weeks; the public response was not good...) has been found to have a backdoor benefit for those millionnaires. Thanks to Republicans they will gain an average of $1.6m (£1.3m) in tax breaks hidden in the stimulus legislation. ● Trump's much-promoted deal to limit oil production has failed to stop the West Texas Intermediate (one of the oil pricing standards in America) price of a barrel of oil going negative for the first time in history, meaning that producers were actually paying buyers to store their oil. ● Eric Trump is seeking reduced rent charges for the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. as a result of the outbreak reducing guest numbers. The hotel, run by the Trump Organization (beneficiary, Donald J. Trump) is located on federal ground, meaning that it pays rent to the federal government (president, Donald J. Trump). Whether the land rent is reduced or not, the General Services Administration, which is negotiating with Trumpling will look bad.
Attorney General William Barr is threatening legal action against state Governors who continue to impose strict lockdowns, while Trump has tweeted suppport for protesters demanding that businesses be allowed to reopen despite the pandemic. ● Facebook has incurred the wrathful tweets of Trump after banning event posts that violate social distancing orders, including planned protests in California, Nebraska and New Jersey. ● Michael Steele, former Chairman of the Reuplican National Committee has criticised Trump for backing the protesters. ● Another group opposing stay-at-home orders is white evangelical christians, a number of whom continue, mysteriously, to be Trump supportors [TFIrs passim], with a third polled as wanting churches to be exempt. ● Stephen Colbert has compared Trump to "an angry Tinkerbell" for his apparent need to hear chanting mobs - "Quick, kids! Scream LOCK HER UP or I'll die."
In the middle of a nationwide lockdown and stay-at-home orders - including in D.C. and New Jersey, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner went to Trump's New Jersey golf course for an overnight stay to mark the start of Passover. ● Melania Trump has posted a video online thanking senior citizens across America for doing their part in the fight against COVID-19, while Trump wants to reopen America, likely leading to a second wave of infections and several Republican politicians have said that the economy is more important than (probably senior citizens') lives.
As is usually the way with Trump, his actions contradict his previous statements. Trump's criticism of China and the World Health Organization has been highlit as a marked contrast to a tweet he sent in January praising President Xi Jingping for containing the outbreak in China and promising that everything would work out. Even further back, in 2014 at the height of the Ebola outbreak, he tweeted "All the governors are already backing off of the Ebola quarantines. Bad decision that will lead to more mayhem."
Trump has tweeted that "I don't care about [ratings]" - at the end of a tweet bragging about his ratings. ● Even one of his arch-supporters, British broadcaster Piers Morgan, who frequently belittles people on air or in tweets and has a misplaced sense of self-importance [reminds us of someone... -Ed] is criticising Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, saying "On almost every level... Donald Trump is failing the American people. He's turning these briefings into a self-aggrandising, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him - almost like what's more important [than the American people] is winning the election in November."
It sounds like Trump may be looking for a new Chief of Staff before the election, after reports that Mark Meadows (R-NC) has twice been reduced to tears by the toxic Trump-centric atmosphere in the White House. ● Mystery surrounded a recent tweet in which Trump seemed to order the U.S. Navy to open fire on Iranian gunboats deemed to be harassing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, effectively declaring war, until it emerged that an hour earlier Fox and Friends, Trump's favourite TV show, had broadcast a segment on Iran's first military satellite launch and showed footage of Iranian gunboats "performing dangerous manoeuvres around our warships in the Persian Gulf" ● The Trump administration has refused requests by 9/11 victims' families to release documents relating to their civil lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, claiming that exposing Saudi ties to the attacks (fifteen of the nineteen attackers were Saudi citizens and there is evidence linking Saudi embassy officials) could pose "exceptionally grave damage" to national security (or, more likely, Trump's business dealings in the Kingdom). ● New Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany's attempt to gain respect for Trump by tweeting a demand that a journalist refer to him as "PRESIDENT Trump" backfired spectacularly after it emerged that in 2012 she tweeted, showing her own respect for the office, "Obama filling out his "presidential bracket" now on ESPN. Don't you have better things to do son? Like.. oh, I don't know.. govern." ● Trump has whined that Congress are deliberately delaying confirmation of his judicial appointment, and claimed that "it's never happened before". The Republican-led Senate unde Mitch McConnell held off confirmation of Obama's replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia for over a year, arguing that a President should not be able to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat in an election year... ● The White House has still not explained why Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson was fired, despite a letter from eight senators demanding a detailed explanation by April 13. Atkinson was responsible for handling the CIA whistleblower's complaint that became the basis of impeachment proceedings against Trump, whose written explanation at the time of Atkinson's firing was that it was "vital" that he had confidence in the independent government watchdog but "that is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general."
Bssist Matthew Seligman (Thomas Dolby, David Bowie, The Thompson Twins, 64), ring announcer Howard Finkel (WWE, American Wrestling Hall of Fame, 69), businessman and film producer Ronan O'Rahilly (founder of Radio Caroline, manager of George Lazenby, The Girl on a Motorcycle, 79), actor Brian Dennehy (Rambo: First Blood, To Catch a Killer, Ratatouille, 81), jazz saxophonist Lee Konitz (Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, 92).
^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:3, 6, 16, 19, 32, 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's teacher was telling the class about how people age. "Now, children, we're going to start with after you are born. Who can tell me what you were before you started school?"
The children thought for a moment, before one hand shot up enthusiastically. "Yes, Little Jennifer," the teacher sighed.
Little Jennifer smiled as only she could. "Happy, Miss!"
^ ...end of line