We’ve reached another Friday: March 10, 2017, and it’s National Ranch Dressing Day (these food holidays are getting increasingly arcane!). It’s also National Mario Day in the US, honoring the video game; the name is chosen because MAR10 looks like “MARIO.” Oy!
On March 10, 1804, the immense territory of the Louisiana Purchase was ceded to the U.S. by France. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell first successfully tested his telephone: imagine what he’d think if he could see smartphones! On this day in 1959, when I was only ten, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa, afraid that the Chinese would abduct him and determined to prevent it. Later that year, Gyatso fled to India to create a government in exile. And on this day in 1977, astronomers discovered the rings of Uranus. While someone will undoubtedly make a joke here, Uranus’s rings are real; here’s a photo of the inner ones:
Notables born on this day include Clare Booth Luce (1903), James Earl Ray (1928), Chuck Norris (1940), Sharon Stone (1958), and Robin Thicke (1977). Those who died on this day include Harriet Tubman (1913), Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master and Margarita (1940), Zelda Fitzgerald (1948, burnt to death in a fire at her sanitarium), Andy Gibb (1988), and Keith Emerson (last year). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej engages in a completely enigmatic dialogue with Hili. When I asked Malgorzata to explain it to me, she said this:
I don’t understand either. The working title (not repeated on Andrzej’s Facebook page), is “Logic”. Give it to your readers to work it out.
Okay, readers: what does it mean:
A: Do you have a problem?Hili: Yes, if A = B where did C disappear?
Ja: Masz jakiś problem?
Hili: Tak, jeśli A = B, to gdzie podziało się C?
Finally, a wan sun has risen over the frigid wastes of Winnipeg. Gus is soaking up every sliver of it he can:
And here’s an adorable tweet. Is there anything cuter than a kitten?:
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/840171883433713666
have a look at this robber fly … how it captures prey in the air…
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30085-4
& one of the video clips! http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2086503788/2074215461/mmc2.mp4
Is there anything cuter than a kitten? Certainly, two kittens. A+B=2
🙂
“Someone will undoubtedly make a joke here:” I was in High School when the rings were discovered; we thought it was clever to say “And you thought ring around the collar was bad!”
I regret to inform you that “Mario” is sexist because the goal of the game is to save a princess, and saving princesses is misogynist, mmmk.
And “Super Mario Maker” is racist cuz reasons:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/07/22/no-super-mario-maker-is-not-racist/
Wow. I have Super Mario Maker. I never knew I was perpetuating the patriarchal hegemony by occasionally making 2D platformer levels for others to play through.
I learned these objectionable scenarios are referred to as tropes. If you think about it, almost all of art and culture consists of these tropes. You could make a career out of itemizing them.
Anita Sarkeesian made a successful career out of it, criticizing video games.
Kill women in a video game – misogyny and violence against women!
Don’t kill women in a video game – you’re not treating them the same as men, misgoyny!
Show attractive women in a video game – objectification!
Show unattractive women in a video game – BBW objectification!
Show scantily clad women in a video game – viewing women only as sex objects!
Show women covered up in a video game – you are perpetuating the myth that women cannot be strong and sexy!
Whatever you do, it’s wrong!
Ha! I wonder what would she do with porn?
Meaning of the conversation between A & H: In a world reliant on alternative facts, there is no solution to anything because of the missing real facts.
“Yes, if A = B where did C disappear?”
What we’ve got here is Immanuel Kat’s transcendental deduction.
Immanuel Kat????!!! But of course. Hili has now revealed to us some deep secrets of felid transcendental philosophy.
And now (after attempting to read the link, which I Kan’t for the life of me understand) I do get it that C must equal “cat”; and there must be an axiomatic assumption that C is the fundamental property of the philosophy, and the logical connective, without which none of it makes any sense to not-cats, even hip- or hep-cats.
I declare war on National Ranch Dressing Day.
That didn’t come out right …
I declare war – war on Ranch Dressing-mas.
I guess I also have to declare today The Mass of the Ranch Dressing. It’s the first one, it’ll be at my house to start.
Earlier noted in passing elsewhere and FWIW, the sanitarium that Zelda moved from (to the one that burned) is extant, but in danger itself.
“Hili: Yes, if A = B where did C disappear?”
I just assumed she’d lost track of Cyrus.
Google translate says “So, if A = B, then where was C?”
I wonder if the joke is lost in translation. As mentioned by a character in the movie Arrival, “the language you speak determines how you think…” and another character agrees, “Yeah. It affects how you see everything.”
I thought A was Hili, B was hungry and C was food.
So Hili is hungry so where is the food.
Chuck Norris’s birthday and not a single Chuck Norris joke? Can’t happen.
When Chuck Norris was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.
There is no evolution, just the animals Chuck Norris lets live.
When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he pushes the earth away.
Chuck Norris once beat the sun in a staring contest.