It’s Thursday, February 21, 2019, and Pancake Day! If you’ve having pancakes today, weigh in below. It’s also the UNESCO holiday of International Mother Language Day, celebrating multiculturalism and multilingualism. Just don’t be speaking someone else’s language without the customary self-abasement, as that’s cultural appropriation.
Hungry?
On this day in 1804, the first self-propelling steam locomotive chuffed out of the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales. On February 21, 1842, John Greenough was given the first patent in the U.S. for the sewing machine. However, a British patent was granted in 1755, and there were many other patents, so one cannot say there was a single inventor of the sewing machine. On this day in 1848, Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto. Is anybody reading this? Exactly three decades later, New Haven, Connecticut issued the first telephone directory.
On February 21, 1885, the Washington Monument was dedicated. And on this day in 1918, the last Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) died in the Cincinnati Zoo. The species was declared formally extinct 21 years later. It was one of only two parrots indigenous to the U.S. (the other is still extant but no longer ranges into our country). Here’s a mounted specimen of C. carolinensis from Chicago’s Field Museum:
Here’s a living bird, a pet, photographed in 1906:
On this day in 1947, Edwin Land demonstrated the first “instant” camera, the Polaroid Land, at a meeting in New York. Do these cameras even exist any more? On February 21, 1958, the peace symbol, originally known as the CND symbol (“Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”), was introduced by designer Gerald Holton. Finally, it was on this day in 1975 that Watergate miscreants John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison. They served 19 months, 18 months, and 18 months, respectively.
Notables born on this day include Rebecca Nurse (1621, executed as a witch in Massachusetts), John Henry Newman (1801, soon to be a saint), Harry Stack Sullivan (1892), Anaïs Nin (1903), W. H. Auden (1907), John Rawls (1922), Robert Mugabe (1924), Nina Simone (1933), Barbara Jordan (1936), David Geffen (1943), Kelsey Grammer (1955), David Foster Wallace (1962), and Ellen Page (1987). Is anybody reading this?
Those who took a dirt nap on February 21 include Baruch Spinoza (1677), Frederick Banting (1941, Nobel Laureate), Eric Liddell (1945), Malcolm X (1965), Howard Florey (1968, Nobel Laureate), Tim Horton (1974), Mikhail Sholokhov (1984), and Billy Graham (2018).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hil is being extra cute (I love the folded-paws position), and speaks out against violent revolution:
Hili: Liberty, equality, fraternity, but some order would be useful as well.A: I’m afraid it’s a lost cause.
Hili: Równość, wolność i braterstwo, ale jakiś porządek też by się przydał.
Ja: Obawiam się, że to przegrana sprawa.
Here are three items I found on Facebook:
And a great Kliban cartoon found by reader Stash Krod:
From reader j.j., a bluesman singing to his cat. The cat is positively mesmerized.
Sam Chatmon, cat man, at home with a friend in Hollandale, Mississippi, 1978. pic.twitter.com/M1ti8LaEnQ
— Alan Lomax Archive (@LomaxArchive) May 17, 2018
And from Heather Hastie via Ann German, who says, “Another sign of the END TIMES!” But it could just be a spa day. . .
Holiday Mondays pic.twitter.com/xCm6DsdvGO
— Evan Siegfried (@evansiegfried) February 18, 2019
Tweets from Grania. A snow leopard does a somersault (I had trouble spelling that):
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1098282219309801473
There are actually 19 of these aphorisms, so click on the list. The last one is my favorite:
https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1097794799648817152
Okay, I don’t know anything about this tweet except that although it’s cute, I doubt it’s good for either species:
Fox feeding orphan bears.😍😍
Please post where you're from so I can track how far this video has gone 🔥. pic.twitter.com/ybytGk7Ciy— NativeAmericanSoul (@Nativeesoul) February 19, 2019
A lot of the Earth in 30 seconds. We should be so lucky to ever get this view!
https://twitter.com/MichaelGalanin/status/1097559302250876928
Tweets from Matthew. Here’s a catch he made; recognize that line? (If not, go here.)
Fab opening line in this PNAS article. H/t @SarahMackAttack pic.twitter.com/3WcNspfSu2
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) February 20, 2019
Yes, this is true, but it doesn’t help astronauts breathe on the Moon. (Read the link in the tweet.)
Did you know the Earth's atmosphere extends beyond the orbit of the Moon? – https://t.co/MimoQ9sEkO pic.twitter.com/8uXPZkuJuk
— Fraser Cain (@fcain) February 20, 2019
As the paper’s abstract notes:
“We conclude that the Cambrian explosion was over by the time the typical Cambrian fossil record commences and reject an unfossilized Precambrian history for trilobites, solving a problem that had long troubled biologists since Darwin.”
Trilobite morphological clocks everyone!!! Disturbingly/tantalizingly, the (arthropod) Cambrian explosion is now narrowed into the Terreneuvian, just the time when fossil evidence is the scarcest…https://t.co/rkQFA651ty
— Jo Wolfe (@jopabinia) February 20, 2019
Kids have darker thoughts than we realize. . .
https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1098014918811381760
The translation of this tweet from the Japanese is this “Grasshopper to inflate something like a red bag from a gap in the head and chest.” Well, all I know is that there’s a red inflatable bit between the head and thorax, but that’s as much as i know. It’s a cool insect, though.
驚くと頭部と胸部の隙間から赤い袋のようなものを膨らませるキリギリス。 pic.twitter.com/HEbx8CSWbL
— 佐藤マメコ (@mamekosato1) February 19, 2019
Do you mean The Communist Manifesto, or your post? Either way, no. 🙂
Yes, I read this every day, up to the tweets.
Yes. can PCC(E) put ten dollar bills in next time?
I add that this week is such that I’m not commenting like I usually do – early and often.
I have cut way back on my commenting lately. Too busy to spend the time. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t read and enjoy many of PCC’s articles.
… and Ellen Page (1987). Is anybody reading this?
Seems to be a pattern here – the answer is yes.
…and Ellen Page (1987). Is anybody reading this?
Seems to be a pattern here, the answer is yes.
P.S. The previous anonymous incarnation of this comment, if it gets through, was me forgetting to fill in the form!
I am forced to ask how the Cincinnati Zoo always seems to end up with the last living specimen of a species dying on their premises… assuming I am not remembering the fate of the final Passenger Pigeon incorrectly.
No you are right. Cincinnati Zoo had the last passenger pigeon, named Martha.
There is a book about some tragic American extinctions, including the Ivory-billed woodpecker (broke my heart, as all the stories did) – the book is Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Christopher Cokinos, which I picked up at JFK in 2001.
Polaroids: How else can the Pub ‘Wall of shame’ carry on without the instant photo?
https://media.sandiegoreader.com/img/croppedphotos/2011/11/01/deal_lead_t658.jpg ‘Polaroids’ & the cameras are quite safe in the form of POLAROID ORIGINALS & other manufactures who’ve realised there will always be a market for the instant image you can leave on a wall. “we wuz ere & we got very, very drunk”
https://media.sandiegoreader.com/img/croppedphotos/2011/11/01/deal_lead_t658.jpg
Yes, I read it. All of it. And thank you.
+1
+1
Happy birthday Marlowe…
I’ll burn my books!
Polaroid cameras were in existence at least until about five years ago (we needed one for a play in which I was performing). Finding film was a cast iron bitch, though!
Yes, I am reading the birthday notices.
See comment #5. Polaroid film for vintage Polaroid cameras, refurbed vintage cameras, the new Polaroid cameras & film for those are readily available without difficulty via the POLAROID ORIGINALS company.
I feel sad about technology that becomes obsolete.
Yes I read the whole post of Hili dialogue. Would not miss it.
+1
How do we get a random pancake day? As the Brits (and others) who read this will tell you, pancake day is Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) which, per google, is March 5th this year. This celebration goes back hundreds of years, with records going back to at least the early 15th century. We should resist the incursions of “Big Pancake”
And for the French, La Chandleur was just a couple weeks ago.
Absolutely. Atheist that I am, I don’t do Easter, and consequently don’t do Lent. But Pancake Day is Shrove Tuesday come what may!
And no sweet syrup and berries either for that, nor cream. It has to be sugar and lemon juice over thin rolled up pancakes from home made batter. Dead easy!
Love powdered sugar and lemon juice on homemade crêpes, but dark (D grade?) Maple syrple on the thicker ones. Hmmm, sounds like a plan😋
We do Easter with the kids every year!
Honestly, a fictional bunny hiding eggs with candy in them has no thematic connection to the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. There’s pretty much no way any kid would start at A and infer B if they haven’t grown up in a Christian setting.
So celebrate away. The holiday is what you make it…nothing more, nothing less 🙂
This one totally foxed me… I went and looked at the calendar before the Doh! moment when I remembered that today is Thursday 😀
I too shall be resisting Big Pancake until 5th March and then continuing my hedonistic plunge to perdition come Ash Wednesday on the 6th (I didn’t understand the “what will you be giving up for lent” question when I was at infant school, no-one even asks it these days).
Mardi Gras this year is on March 5th, as you would expect with the name being French for “Fat Tuesday”.
I suspect that the confusion comes in because Jerry’s linked article is from 2015.
Yes I read the “notables born” list
ISS time lapse: That’s the first sideways looking one in portrait mode I’ve seen. Have they got a new window on the ISS? Does the ISS always point the same ‘face’ in the direction of its orbit I wonder?
Fraser Cain’s Tweet:
From the paper:
The Moon has her own atmosphere on the dayside that’s 500 times thicker than the Earth’s ‘geocorona’ at the Moon’s distance.
SOURCE
Satellites in low Earth orbit, 2,000 km (1,200 mi) or less, experience significant orbital decay due to friction with the atmosphere. At over 7 km/s a single atmospheric molecule would create quite a speed bump.
The following table provides a very rough guide to the lifetime of an object in a circular or near circular orbit at various altitudes.
Alt Lifetime
200 km 1 day
300 km 1 month
400 km 1 year
500 km 10 years
700 km 100 years
900 km 1000 years
The ISS is currently in orbit at about 400 km. This explains why it has to be given a boost once in a while. It’s pushed up a bit about every month or so.
“ISS mean orbital altitude is however now higher than it used to be during the Space Shuttle visits when it was still being assembled, for easier access of the Space Shuttles and to increase their total payload to orbit capacity. Since assembly complete in 2011, and retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, its orbit has been raised from about 355 km to now roughly 415 km (average)”
Makes sense, the ISS loses 2 km altitude in the first month & progressively more each following month if not re-boosted, so small regular re-boosts use less total fuel for a year.
P.S, Maybe it’s just your manner of speaking, but the ISS isn’t “pushed up a bit” – a push [by rocket] upwards results in the orbit becoming less circular & you end up closer to the Earth at the perigee. To widen the orbit & keep it circular [gain altitude] a horizontal firing of the rocket engines in line of travel is required to speed up the ISS which consequently moves to a higher orbit.
That’s what I said. It’s pushed > up^ a bit. 😎
Are you saying that 2000 km is in the order of tens or even hundreds of millions of years?
Your last few, if one can extrapolate (an order of magnitude per 200 km), points to more than 100 million years. I’m kinda wary about that table.
Moreover, I’m sure other processes than friction with atmosphere will come into effect.
THIS IS THE SOURCE for my table & it does say it’s a rough guide. It does assume a circular initial orbit with a compact satelitte with a typical cross-sectional area/mass ratio
There is no reason for the line to continue up in a sensible way because with greater time new effects become important – the inner & outer Van Allen belts in relation to the orbit & solar radiation pressure will have a measurable effect over a long period for example.
The orbits of satellites at altitudes above 2,500 km can decay faster than might at first be expected. e.g. Here’s a very extreme case with a very low density object designed to decay quickly by the USAF:
The Dash-2 burned up only 8 years after launch, but a denser satellite than this balloon will be very much less effected by radiation pressure & once eccentricity starts to increase the effect of atmosphere eventually comes into play exponentially.
All in all I’d say predictions about the future are very difficult – the hardest sort of predictions in fact 🙂
Yes, I am reading and regularly do. +1 for the $10 bills – hysterical!
My adult son stumbled upon this and we now use this recipe for pancakes.
It is gluten free (for celiacs) and has no preservatives.
For two people:
1 large banana
2 large eggs
Mash together until consistency of pancake batter (DUH)
fry in coconut or canola oil.
No need for syrup. My grand kids love it.
That Cambrian trilobite tweet needs explaining I think. The PNAS paper abstract in the link is incomprehensible to me. So I found a plain English explanation by the NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM:
I think there is a quite plausible explanation for the Cambrian explosion, even if it occurred within 3 million years (yes, that has been proposed). Different Phyla already evolved, and existed, even before the end (about 600 Mil years ago) of the ‘snowball Earth’.
Some trigger (development of eyes? Some other?) forced a plethora of arms races, resulting in all kinds of specialisations, such as armour, which generally fossilises easily.
I’d agree with that
I read that independently before checking on today’s Hili. Here is my uninformed take:
The total-evidence method used labors under the constraint that they have to exclude outgroups as they are sampled and break the methodology. In both the original work using the BEAST package and here they get much younger crown groups than earlier methods.
Intriguingly the BEAST originator (on penguin radiation) showed early peaked rate distribution. This work show no trend but the rates essentially fill up the rate space so does not seem very informative.
It would be nice to see more comparisons between full tree methods and total-evidence methods since they give so disparate crown group ages.
Exactly three decades later, New Haven, Connecticut issued the first telephone directory. What were they using before that? Ah, must have been the operator. “Hello, Maggie? Connect me to uncle Bob please.”
Actually, that might have been a pleasant, more personal time.
They used operators for many decades after then [1878] – in the UK there were operators until the 1970s & in the USA a bit later than that because of your competing phone companies.
Little communities had an operator, often at the local post office I suppose, who connected you to the big city exchange nearest to your locale. I recall when living in Liverpool in the 80s I couldn’t make international calls from my home phone – I had to walk down to the exchange at the Pier Head [by the River Mersey], fill in a form & wait on a bench. Then I was called to a booth & picked up the ‘phone & an LA operator would put me through to my party up in the hills of Mulholland drive.
Going back to that first ‘directory’ – it was a cardboard sheet with fifty names & addresses on it with no phone numbers – the phone number wasn’t yet necessary! The way it worked: You paid $22/yr for a phone at your home & you were allowed to make two calls a day to anyone who also was a subscriber, thus you needed to know who had a phone! To call someone you picked up your earpiece, rotated a handle to make a bell ‘ding’ in the operator’s room & when she answered you’d tell her who you wanted & she’d plug you through.
These directories were also a means to show off your exclusivity – far more impressive to be in the directory than to own the latest smartphone boondoggle! Later directories were festooned with ads & made the company loadsamoney in themselves.
In those days the US operator rooms in cities had many boards & they were each staffed by lads, but someone discovered girls/women were better at it. It was one of the first jobs where the families of young well-spoken middle class females permitted their girls to go to work! [outside of the usual dress & hat shops].
https://www.google.com/search?q=lily+tomlin+operator&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
Sorry…no free will
Ah yes – I love those sketches by Ernestine/Tomlin. Thank you I’m gonna watch a few.
Always pulling up her bra straps.
My mother and I did that “Is this the party..” routine for decades when we’d call long-distance.
Thanks for the stroll through memory lane. And, wow! Mulholland drive! Wasn’t that where two babes kissed?
“Polaroid Land, … Do these cameras even exist any more?”
There is a new mini-version. I’m not sure who’s making them. It’s very small and produces very small prints – about 2 X 2.
See comment #5 & #8
My daughter (age 17) has a Polaroid camera, though it takes smaller pictures than the old ones.
Yep, reading it. And in honor of Kelsey Grammer’s birthday, here is his classic rendition of “Buttons and Bows” from Frasier: LINK.
Yes, I read the entire post every day and I like to know those vital statistics. Frequently, I Google one or another of the people listed to learn more.
I’m extremely envious of the person who invented that Bungee Jesus. Wish I’d thought it up. Once, I tried to develop a Shroud of Turin beach towel and a Baphomet bath mat, but those didn’t work out.
It is not too late to invent a crucified chocolate Jesus for Easter.
Given how entrepreneurial and Christian many Americans are, I would not be surprised if it has been done already!
There’s a convent/private women’s college outside of Terre Haute, Indiana which has a fabulous church where I’ve made some nice recordings of medieval music. The giant cross on the wall is just like the parody we’re talking about — Jesus leaping off the cross. Sorry, I can’t find a picture. But even as a stone-hearted atheist, I always thought that was a nice symbol of the resurrection.
As little kids these days say, with hands on hips, “You are not the boss of me!”😺
S*! I sent this without filling in the info, so resend with an addition.
Yes, I read the entire post every day and I like to know those vital statistics. Frequently, I Google one or another of the people listed to learn more. I read Hili Dialogue first thing in the a.m., then to Titania McGrath, whom I learned about here. I need a good dose of her absurdity first thing in the morning.
I’m extremely envious of the person who invented that Bungee Jesus. Wish I’d thought it up. Once, I tried to develop a Shroud of Turin beach towel and a Baphomet bath mat, but those didn’t work out.
No. I am not reading the Communist Manifesto. I read it in college (as well as Mein Kampf) as part of the required “great works” sequence. I found the first mediocre and unsupported, and the second to be whiny ur-angst.
Though I did just read that today is Nina Simone’s birthday. Gotta spin some vinyl when I get home from work (Just to clarify: not millenial hipster vinyl. The turntable was an upgrade during the 1980’s, and I’ve had the Nina Simone longer than that)
“Tweets from Matthew. Here’s a catch he made; recognize that line? (If not, go here.)”
There is a very funny parody of scientific articles by Georges Perec, a French writer, titled “Experimental Demonstration of the tomatotopic organization in the soprano
Cantatrix sopranica L.” . I was once surprised to find a reference to it in a (serious) article. The author confirmed to me that it was indeed a “clin d’oeil”.
The Communist Manifesto has been in my whish list at Amazon.de for years but I have not bough it yet. I have too many still unread books; I wish I could resist a couple of years without buying books, just to read waht is waiting on my shelves. This year I am trying to read only classic literature (ancient and modern) and biology (evolution, ecology, natural history). Just now I am reading chapters from Wallace’s Malay Archipelago to warm up for a naturalists’ trip to Borneo.
Just look it up online. It’s short. I am sure there are multiple copies on Archive.org. As I get old, I have more and more recourse to online, public domain books, both to save money and space.
I also read the notable birth/death notices just about every day. I run about 50:50 on how many of the names I recognize.
Love the BunJeeZus
How did ‘Robert, 13’ gain his experience with electric fences? Most 13-year-olds aren’t tall enough to do the described act. (I learned about electric fences at the age of about 10 when I grabbed one – knocked me on my butt.)
There’s a song kids used to sing on school buses [TRIGGER WARNING–bad words]:
Farmer Brown, he had no sense
He took a whiz on an electric fence.
He got a shock, it hurt his balls,
He pissed all over his overalls.
I spat on one once to see if it would spark. The problem was, the spit was still attached to my mouth. That f’n HURT! The two friends who were with me were delighted by my stupidity- they laughed for what seemed an hour.
Many years ago, my husband and I were fixing a gate on the bull’s pen in cold weather. The bull was sick. He stood quietly near the fence, snot forming draining out his nose, forming a long rope. The wind blew. The snot his the single wire of the electric fence. Did that bull jump!
Poor bull😿
Yes, I read the Hili dialogue religiously… well, you know what I mean.
Marx and Engels? Not so much.
IIRC, with the demise of the Carolina parakeet, there were also two highly specialised parasites going extinct.
“Is anybody reading this?”
Yes, that part in particular as I was curious who shared my birthday today.
Happy birthday!
Mine too! Happy birthday, Michael!
I should add that I read everything on this site. The ‘ping’ of the first notification is one of the highlights of the day. I am often not qualified to comment, or don’t have anything interesting to say; but I value WEIT more than any other resource on the net.
So, maybe the legend of Romulus and Remus could be true!
Yes, I’ve read it all.
Is anyone reading this? Of course. How else would I have learned that on today’s date in 1848, Laura Engles Wilder published the Communist Manifesto and in 1974 Tim Horton won a Nobel Prize, I assume the peace prize for his donuts.
I tried reading Marx, but got bogged down. I never get bogged down reading HD nor the notable birthdays and those who shuffle off their mortal coil.
Truth be told, I don’t always read all the births and deaths.
READ THEM!
Hili with folded in paws so cute. I also love it when my cat Kofi does this. Refer to this as her perfect meatloaf and fuss over her.
I read every part of Hili dialogue each morning.
Love kitty meatloaves😻
Oh, me too. And Hili looks very cute today.
…Reading this? Yes, most days
A local moonshiner from my small town in Southern Appalachia served time with John Mitchell in a minimum security prison in Alabama. He told my dad after he got out that John was a really nice guy. They worked together in the prison laundry.
Two of my direct ancestors, not related to each other, testified against Rebecca Nurse. One tried to retract her testimony when she saw how serious the matter was but it did not help Rebecca.
I read the Hili most days while out work waiting for the computer to boot up.
I always read every part of the Hilli Dialogues. I usually read everything. I read the Communist Manifesto. I finished it 54 years ago so I’m not still reading it. I read the deaths and births. That is probably a little morbid curiousity that has grown stronger with age. Unfortunately I usually read WEIT in the evening. If I read it in the morning I would probably waste too much time on the web. Actually I know I would because I have.
I may skim over the more serious posts, but I read Hilli dialogues and the birth and death lists every day.
I do read the births and deaths. Can’t recognize most of them though.
-Ryan
Yes, I’m reading this. Both times. I’m not just here to look at the pictures.
The Pen-y-Daren locomotive was of course built by Richard Trevithick, a most talented engineer (see his Wikipedia page for much more on his varied career).
In fact the locomotive was converted from a steam-hammer driving engine in 1802 or 1803; the Feb 21st 1804 excursion – which was the first successful demonstration of a self-propelled rail locomotive – was the result of a bet between ironmasters. 500 guineas – big money in those days.
The other significant point was that the locomotive had smooth wheels and ran on smooth rails; it had been doubted by most that there would be enough friction for a smooth-wheeled locomotive to haul a load.
cr