The Friday Irregular

Issue #566 - 29th May 2020

Edited by and copyright ©2020 Simon Lamont
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tfir@simonlamont.co.uk

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Contents

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^ WORD OF THE WEEK
aplomb
  n. poise; self-confidence


^ ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 29th May   -   The Byzantine Empire ended with the fall of Constantinople, 1453. Explorer Bartholomeu Dias died, 1500. King Charles II of England born, 1630. Jenny Lind sailed from New York at the end of her two-year tour of America, 1852. Actress, producer and studio co-founder Mary Pickford died, 1979. Singer-songwriter La Toya Jackson born, 1956. International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers.
 
Saturday 30th May   -   Astronomer Georg von Peuerbach born, 1423. The marriage of King Henry VIII of England and Jane Seymour, 1536. Poet Alexander Pope died, 1744. Outlaw Pearl Hart robbed a stagecoach 30 miles southwest of Globe, Arizona, 1899. Author and broadcaster Carole Stone born, 1942. Nobel laureate medical physicist Rosalyn Sussman Yalow died, 2011.
 
Sunday 31st May   -   Artist Tintoretto died, 1594. Samuel Pepys made the final entry in his diary, citing poor eyesight, 1669. Athlete Lucille Godbold born, 1900. The RMS Titanic was launched in Belfast, 1911. Politician John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, born, 1938. Actress Martha Hyer died, 2014. World No Tobacco Day.
 
Monday 1st June   -   The Mongols under Genghis Khan captured Zhongdu (present-day Beijing), 1215. Artist Maarten van Heemskerck born, 1498. Writer Honoré d'Urfé died, 1625. US President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain, 1812. Activist Helen Keller died, 1968. Singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette born, 1974.
 
Tuesday 2nd June   -   The Vandals began to sack Rome, 455. Katherine of Lancaster, queen of Henry III of Castile, died, 1418. Philosopher and writer Marquis de Sade born, 1740. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, 1953. Actress Jewel Staite born, 1978. Writer David Eddings died, 2009.
 
Wednesday 3rd June   -   Explorer Hernando de Soto claimed Florida for Spain, 1539. Artist Pietro Paolini born, 1603. Physician William Harvey died, 1657. Cree chief Big Bear escaped from the North-West Mounted Police in the last military engagement fought on Canadian soil, 1885. Burlesque dancer Lili St Cyr born, 1918. Actress Anna Neagle died, 1986. World Bicycle Day.
 
Thursday 4th June   -   Japanese emperor Shōmu died, 756. The people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon were granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese by King Charles VI of France, 1411. King George III of the United Kingdom born, 1738. Captain George Vancouver claimed Puget Sound for Great Britain, 1792. Writer and illustrator Mary Lucie Atwell born, 1879. Actress Dorothy Gish died, 1968. Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day.


^ THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Mary Pickford:
Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.


^ FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films by the same director. Answers next issue or from the regular address. Last issue's quotations were from films directed by John Huston:


^ WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

Update: The first edition hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone found in a skip twelve years ago by a teacher tidying their school library ahead of an OFSTED inspection has auctioned for £33,000 ($40,318). Two first edition paperback copies found with it went for £3,400 ($4,154) and £3,000 ($3,665).

Coronavirus Round-up: The Inn at Little Washington, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Virginia is preparing to reopen for a reduced number of customer as lockdown restrictions are eased at the end of this month, and has a unique way of maintaining social distancing guidelines. Half of its dining room tables will be occupied by mannequins dressed in 1940s vintage outfits. ● South Korean K-League soccer club FC Seoul has problems with a different type of mannequin. As well as using cutout figures to make its stadium look less empty it ordered a number of life-sized dolls, but photographs show that what they got was clothed inflatable sex dolls, complete with face masks. The club and its supplier are blaming each other for the mix-up. ● A nurse in Tula, Russia, 20 miles south of Moscow, has been reprimanded for wearing a bikini underneath her transparent plastic PPE. she told bosses that she was too hot wearing her uniform and the PPE, and had not realised how transparent the PPE was. Readers of a local paper and her (male) patients had backed her.

Video-conferencing software Zoom has become ubiquitous during the pandemic, but the BBC fell foul of one of its restrictions, having not paid up for the full version. The free version of Zoom limits meetings to 40 minutes and a live BBC News Channel interview with Scott Parsons, managing director of the Westfield retail property group came to an abrupt end leaving viewers with a brief glimpse of a producer's desktop screen in the middle of which was an alert reading "This free Zoom meeting has ended". ● Research at Carnegie Mellon University has suggested that of some 200 million tweets about COVID-19, many advertising false cures, pushing for the U.S. to reopen or spreading conspiracy theories, almost half were posted by bots. Although the geographic origin of the bots could not be determined many of the messages posted echoed Russian and Chinese state media. ● Sonya Savage, emergy minister for Alberta, has attracted anger from environmentalists and indigenous groups after telling a podcast hosted by the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors that the pandemic was a "great time" to press on with construction of a controversial pipeline project because no more than 15 people could legally gather to protest under lockdown legislation.

The film Cool Runnings told the story of the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsleigh team, and how they trained for the winter sport in the decidedly unwintery Caribbean. Two members of the current team, Shanwayne Stephens, an RAF Regiment gunner, and Nimroy Turgott, are on lockdown together in Britain having competed together in Austria in January, and, unable to access regular training facilities, have taken a Cool Runnings approach to training. They have built a mini gym in Stephens' back garden and, for resistance training, instead of pushing sleds, they are pushing his Mini car around a quiet industrial estate. ● Two 10-year-old French brothers had reason to be cheerful after their family relocated from Paris to their late grandmother's house in Vendôme for the lockdown. Wanting to create a makeshift hut in the garden the boys were told they could take some sheets from a spare room. When they picked up the sheets two heavy objects fell out, which they put back, but later told their father about. The objects were gold bars, weighing 2.2lb (1kg) each, and their father found documentation showing that their grandmother had bought them in 1967. At current prices, with the value of gold rising due to the virus outbreak, they are worth an estimated €40,000 (£35,800; $43,800) each.

In what could well be the punchline to an old joke, the Australian lockdown has caused "world famous TV psychic" John Edwards to postpone his upcoming tour of the country "owing to unforeseen circumstances"...


^ TRUMPWATCH

After the World Health Organization declared that it was suspending trials of Trump's much touted hydroxychloroquine (in which he has a financial interest) as a possible treatment for COVID-19 because of its side effect on heart rhythm Trump declared that he was no longer taking it. ● On Tuesday, at a speech aimed at seniors with diabetes Trump openly pondered whether he should be taking insulin - "I don't use insulin. Should I be? I never thought about it, but I know a lot of people are very badly affected, right?" A reporter then asked him if someone who doesn't have diabetes should take insulin, at which point Surgeon General Jerome Adams had to bail him out, saying "Your body, Mr President, actually makes insulin endogenously and people such as you and I, we make our own insulin. So, yes, we do utilize insulin, but we make it ourselves. Other people who have diabetes oftentimes need exogenous insulin... so that they can be healthy and live long and successful lives." ● A woman from Wisconsin who has been taking hydroxychloroquine for 19 years to treat lupus contracted COVID-19 last week, despite Trump's claims that it prevents infection. ● After Trump had initially said he was taking the controversial drug a member of the press corps asked Kayleigh McEnany, his press secretary, why the released doctor's letter [viz. previous TFIr] did not explicitly confirm it was prescribed for him. Her response was "The reason is the President of the United States said it, and if it were any other President of the United States, the media would take him at his word." As has been pointed out before, Trump has made more than 18,000 false or misleading claims since being elected, and almost 70% of things he says are untrue to some degree.

Trump is not a fan of postal voting. He threatened to withdraw funding from two states, claiming that they had sent out postal ballot forms to their entire populations, then had to pull back when it became clear that they had sent out application forms for ballots, not actual ballots, to their electorate, but still claimed that what they had done was illegal. He has, of course, presented no evidence of voter fraud by postal voting, possibly because it is very rare, even according to Fox News; in the 2018 midterms there was one documented case of absentee ballot fraud (committed by a Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina), while last month a West Virginia postal worker was charged after changing party preferences on five postal-ballot applications from Democrat to Republican. This week Trump tweeted that "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Gorvernor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people..." Twitter flagged the tweet with a fact check label and linked to a factchecker below it. Trump, of course, went ballistic, tweeting that "...Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!" [No, they are not. They did not delete his tweet, or stop him tweeting; they simply added a link to a factchecker to the rampant nonsense Trump was spouting.] Trump told journalists that "voting is an honor". The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution starts "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridge by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude"; voting is a right, not an honour, but of course Trump's grasp of history, law and, indeed, truth, is... missing.

Fox News' Brit Hulme responded to Trump tweeting a picture of presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden wearing a face mask on Memorial Day with typically abusive comment by saying that Trump is "vain" and "would not want to look ridiculous". Biden himself, when asked about Trump's tweet, said "This macho stuff, for a guy, I shouldn't get going, but it just, it's cost people's lives. It's costing people's lives." ● Ahead of Trump's visit to a Ford factory in Michigan last week Dana Nessel, the state's Attorney General, wrote to the White House asking him to wear a face mask for the visit, given how badly Michigan has been hit by the virus. Ford also requested that he wear one. Shortly before the visit Nessel told CNN that "if he fails to wear a mask, he's going to be asked not to return to any enclosed facility inside our state." Trump, of course, did not comply, leading Nessel to tweet that "He is a petulant child who refuses to follow the rules. This is not a joke." Trump responded by calling her "a do nothing A.G." after which Nessel shut him down referencing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ("that woman from Michigan" according to Trump) and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (who had to twice remind him of her name), tweeting "Hi! After struggling with our Gov & SOS, impressed you know my name. Seems like you have a problem with all 3 women who run MI - as well as your ability to tell the truth" and "Also, hard to say I've "done nothing" as AG with all the lawsuits myself and the other @DemocratAGs have filed and won against you."

On October 24, 2014, after two Americans had died of Ebola, Trump tweeted "President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf!" On Memorial Day weekend, as the number of Americans killed by COVID-19 neared 100,000, Trump was golfing. A political cartoon a few days earlier by Michael de Adder depicted Trump standing a rug atop a pile of dead Americans, preparing to hit a golf ball. The New York Times ran with a front page naming the dead. The JustVent Twitter account mashed the two together, showing Trump about to hit the ball into the list of names. Normally altering political cartoons is considered verboten but this added to, rather than changed, the meaning, and de Adder himself admitted that he liked it. After that a number of other cartoonists depicted Trump golfing against the NYT pront page. We particularly liked Jeff Parker's depiction of Trump trying to putt the coronavirus but missing the hole. ● The Republican National Committee came under fire for using Memorial Day to tweet promoting sales of Trump campaign merchandise. ● Trump and Melania attended the Memorial Day Wreath Laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetary, where he stood for a moment of silence in front of a wreath. Or should have. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot and visibly swaying back and forth. He did the same during the national anthem, while everyone around him stood still. His behaviour caused many on Twitter to point to balance loss and an inability to stand still as "just one of his many symptoms of Frontotemporal dementia". ● His speech at the White House that day was meant to honour veterans. Instead he insulted Nacy Pelosi, saying she "was dancing in the streets of Chinatown trying to say 'It's okay to come to the United States [..] bring your infection with you," [She had visited San Francisco's Chinatown to tell tourists there was no reason to fear Chinese people due to the virus - because of Trump's anti-Chinese vitriol] and attacked Representative Conor Lamb (D-Pa) as an "American fraud" and a "puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi". Conor Lamb (Trump even misspelled his name in a later tweet as 'Connor Lamm') is a Marine Corps veteran. As @TrumpsTaxes put it on Twitter, "Conor Lamb was a Marine, and today is Memorial Day, so perhaps now is not the best time to insult our veterans Cadet Bone Spurs."

After Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused journalists of "desperately" wanting churches to stay closed after they questioned her about Trump's claim he would "override" governors who failed to meet his demand that they reopen places of worship amid the pandemic, Fox News' Chris Wallace tweeted that "I spent six years in the White House briefing room covering Ronald Reagan. I have to say, I never... I never saw a White House press secretary act like that." ● At another briefing McEnarny bragged about a $100,000 (£81,850) personal donation Trump made to the "Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health" "to support the efforts being undertaken to confront, contain and combat the coronavirus" as part of his promise to donate his presidential salary [He makes far more routing taxpayers' and foreign money through his businesses]. Unfortunately, as she flourished the cheque, she revealed where Trump banks, his account and routing (sort code) numbers. As was pointed out on Twitter, apart from the revealed details, donating $100,000 is one thing, but Trump has cut $15m (£12.3m) from national and global health budgets.

After Trump tweeted "Great News: The boring but very nasty magazine, The Atlantic, is rapidly failing [..]. This is a tough time to be the Fake News Business!" editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg took a leaf out of Greta Thunberg's book [TFIr passim] and changed his Twitter bio to "Boring but very nasty editor in chief of the boring but very nasty Atlantic". ● Ivanka Trump tweeted a photo of herself working at home, and left Twitter wondering... why is she surrounded by pictures of herself, and why is her ancient laptop sitting on top of books - likely blocking its ventilation slots? ● For a measure of just how badly Trump is handling the pandemic and pretty much everything else, even far-right media figure Ann Coulter took a break from peddling the racist, xenophobic rhetoric beloved of Trump, to blast him as "The most disloyal actual retard that has ever set foot in the Oval Office is trying to lose AND take the Senate with him. Another Roy Moore fiasco so he can blame someone else for his own mess."


^ OBITUARIES

Organ donation campaigner Lucia Mee (Live Loudly Donate Proudly, 20), unarmed African American George Floyd (46), singer Mory Kanté ("Yé ké yé ké", 70), film publicist Charles Lippincott (Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Alien, 80), alligator Saturn (believed to have belonged to Adolf Hitler according to urban legend, 83-84), actor Richard Herd (Seinfeld, SeaQuest DSV, The China Syndrome, 87), actress Heather Chasen (The Navy Lark, Eastenders, Les Misérables, 92), veteran paratrooper Sandy Cortmann (parachuted for a second time over Arnhem last year to mark the 75th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, 97).


^ DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:
3, 8, 17, 24, 35, 42
[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.


^ AND FINALLY...

    Little Jennifer stomped into the house, slammed the door behind her and threw her coat onto the floor. "Little Jennifer!" her mother said, "What on Earth is the matter?"
    "Miss gave me zero on my test, Mummy!"
    "But that's no reason to slam the door. It just means you should study more for the next one."
    Little Jennifer pouted as only she could. "That's not what I'm angry about, Mummy! I asked Miss why I got zero and she said it was because she couldn't give me any less!"


^ ...end of line