Are mites having sex on your face?

Apparently, per this NatGeo video, the answer is yes, absolutely. They have an article that goes into more depth, but it's grossing me out to write about this stuff so go to NatGeo and read it yourself. I need to go take a shower, or maybe two.

Microscopic mites are having sex on your face, and researchers from North Carolina State University are eager to study them. The "Meet Your Mites" program is collecting samples from ordinary citizens to learn more about the life cycle of these microscopic creatures that live on all human adults.

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Marvelous animated video: Ex-Prisoners Take Priority Under ObamaCare Medicaid Expansion

I haven't read enough about the claims made in this video (and by the group behind it) to be sure that what they're saying is accurate - it makes sense to me on the surface but there's a whiff of agenda-driven interpretation about the whole thing. That said, I like the video quite a bit.

Put out by the Foundation for Government Accountability's Uncover Obamacare project:

“The entire idea of Medicaid expansion would be absurd if it weren’t so terrifying. Not only does expansion ruin a state’s financial future, it also sends the elderly and children to the back of the line while the criminals go to the front.” - Tarren Bragdon, CEO of The FGA

The DOJ Claims 35 percent, 1 in 3 of the expanded Medicaid population has a criminal history.

The expansion of state Medicaid programs have been funded by new taxes and $716 billion in payment reductions for seniors on Medicaid Advantage plans, meaning the one third of seniors who are on these plans will bear 43 percent of the cuts to Medicaid funding and services.

To find out more about who is on the ObamaCare chopping block, read our full report here.

via @Jim Eltringham

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Monday links

Lego versions of Peter Quill, Mal Reynolds, and Han Solo (from Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly and Star Wars, respectively) debate "Who shoots first?".

Wonderful Foreign Words With No English Equivalent, Illustrated.

Excerpts and illustrations from an 1895 book entitled Dog Stories from The Spectator.

It's International Coffee Day. So, Why Does Coffee Make You Poop? Here's the science, confirmed by questionnaires and anal probes.

15 Of the Most Magnificent Comb Overs You Will See.

34 People Who Managed To Screw Up Their One Job.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the Night of the Flaming Ballerinas, who accesses your car's black box, and a 1912 test for eighth graders in Kentucky.

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Why Does Coffee Make You Poop? Here's the science, confirmed by questionnaires and anal probes

Here's more than you ever wanted to know on the subject.

The short, somewhat boring answer is that coffee stimulates muscle contractions along the last couple of stops on the #2 Metro that is your large intestine (a terminal stretch of bowel that science calls the rectosigmoid colon). Way more interesting are the details behind the study that helped bring this quivering canal to light, not to mention questions that have been raised about the mechanisms linking coffee to its contractions.

For these, we turn to "Effect of coffee on distal colon function" — a research paper with an encouragingly no-nonsense title published in the April 1990 issue of Gut, a scientific journal dedicated to the digestive system. The paper recounts the findings of a study in two parts: a relatively painless questionnaire portion, and a second, somewhat more inquisitorial section involving anal probes.

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Weird anti-drug PSAs

My personal favorite is The Chicken Club - here's the youtube info:

This is a legitimate anti-drug music video (from the 80''s) conceived and created to let youngsters know that if they were confronted with the temptation to do drugs they could say "no" with confidence. Even if the person propositioning the child called them a "chicken" (as a last ditch effort to persuade the kid to change their mind) the youth could fire back with the completely unexpected answer, "That's right, I am a chicken and it's OK because there is this sweet music video that told me that it's cool to be a chicken. So your taunts, jeers and name calling will not make me change my mind, in fact they only strengthen my resolve. I'm not only a chicken...I'm in the Chicken Club!"

I would really like one of these Surfing Monkey Banks, please - story below the video:



Dangerous Minds had a post about the Surfing Monkey PSA in 2012 and heard from the creator, Greg Collins:

I’m one of the creators of that surfing monkey spot you threw up on Dangerous Minds this afternoon. Thanks for doing that.

That spot actually dates back to 1999. A buddy of mine and his wife totally smoked out one night. The next morning, they woke up on the sofa, their ribs and stomach muscles were hurting. They didn’t remember much of anything, other than laughing their asses off.

About a week later, a UPS guy knocked on their door, bearing some boxes from QVC. While they were all gassed out, they bought a Star Trek collector’s plate, a Chi-Wash-Wa home car washing system and a Michael Jordan in-flight pewter statuette. All in all, about $400. That must’ve been some great weed.

When they told me the story, I thought that’d make an awesome commercial, but all of that was too much to put into a :30 spot. We needed to drill it down to one item for simplicity and comedy’s sake. My buddy Greg hit on the idea of something really ridiculous like a surfing monkey coin bank. We shot the spot for like $300 and sold it through to the Partnership For A Drug-Free America. It ran in 1999-2000, and, to this day, remains one of their most beloved and recalled commercials.

And once you've moved one from the madness of reefer, here's LSD, A Case Study (turn down the sound - there's a very loud screaming hot dog):

via Flavorwire, where you can find more.

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Lego versions of main characters from Guardians of the Galaxy, Firefly and Star Wars debate "Who shoots first?"

A conversation between the Lego versions of Peter Quill (Guardians), Han Solo (Star Wars), and Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly), discussing the age old question: when is it ok to shoot first? 

For anyone who doesn't know about the "Han shot first" thing from Star Wars, read up on it at Wikipedia.

via Geeks are sexy.

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Plastic prophets: artists create religious Barbie and Ken mods, "plan to skip Muhammad"

Argentinian artists Marianela Perelli and Pool Paolini will show their Barbie and Ken dolls modeled after religious figures at an Oct. 11 show titled, "Barbie, The Plastic Religion." I don't have a problem with this in principle - I've had a Dashboard Jesus in my car for years. The crucifixion version (at the bottom of this post), though, is a bit much.

Apparently they're smart enough not to take on the "religion of peace":

Pools also explained they have “nothing against religion” and were even careful about respecting all beliefs. The pair is working on Islam figurines and plans to skip representing Muhammad, as this religion condemns representing the prophet.

BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 23 (UPI): A pair of Argentinean artists are courting controversy with a series of Barbie and Ken dolls modeled after religious icons including Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Marianela Perelli and Pool Paolini posted photos online featuring Mattel's famous plastic couple as religious figures complete with boxes explaining their intended identities.

The artists said the dolls will be displayed Oct. 11 at an exhibition titled "Barbie, The Plastic Religion" in Buenos Aires.

The 33 dolls feature icons from religions including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism.

"If there's a Barbie doctor, a teacher and a police officer, why shouldn't there be a Virgin of Lujan Barbie?" the artists said on their Facebook page.

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Unexpected combination of the day: Stormtrooper Klingon Ballerinas

The concept reminds me of the sort of thing you'd hear about as guests on Jerry Springer (which I've never actually seen) - blind pregnant lesbian nuns or cross-dressing men who live in boxes. Except, of course, for the fact that Klingon Stormtrooper ballerinas are extremely cool and the Jerry Springer guest are weird and pathetic.

via Fashionably Geek

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Friday links

September 14, 1861: The Night of the Flaming Ballerinas.

Beat the Carnies: The Secrets to Winning 5 Popular State Fair Games.

Munch's "The Scream" without the screaming person, for example: Subtracting Art: Subjects Photo-Edited from Famous Paintings.

Reading recently about Common Core, let's not forget how much schools had already been dumbed down: From the archives, check out this test for eighth graders in Kentucky dated 1912.

1799, Humphry Davy, future President of the Royal Society, really got into laughing gas. “O, Excellent Air Bag”: Humphry Davy and Nitrous Oxide.

Now That Cars Have Black Boxes, Am I Being Tracked? Who gets access to the info in your vehicle’s event data recorder?

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include photos of Nature Winning The Battle Against Civilization, a 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees", and goldfish brain surgery.

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George Gershwin was born 116 years ago today - some quotes and history

Today, a great American composer:

The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself ... Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.

- George Gershwin (quoted in Goldberg, Tin Pan Alley)

Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas.

- Gershwin (The Composer in the Machine Age (1933))

My people are American, my time is today ... music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times.

- Gershwin (quoted in Armitage, Accent on America)

Many musicians do not consider George Gershwin a serious composer. But they should understand that, serious or not, he is a composer - that is, a man who lives in music and expresses everything, serious or not, sound or superficial, by means of music, because it is his native language.

- Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) (quoted in Kimball and Simon, The Gershwins)

Today is the 116th anniversary of the birth of American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn to Jewish parents of Russian/Ukrainian descent. Gershwin started piano lessons at an early age, left school at 15, first worked as a "song plugger" on Tin Pan Alley, and published his own first song in 1916. Later, while working as a piano-roll arranger, he began a series of Broadway collaborations, leading to his first show with brother Ira Gershwin (1896-1983), Lady Be Good (1924). This was followed by (among others) Oh, Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), Strike Up the Band (1927), Show Girl (1929), and Girl Crazy (1930). In 1924, Gershwin also wrote his quasi-classical Rhapsody in Blue for Paul Whiteman's band, and it has remained his most popular work in that vein. That same year, he traveled to Paris, hoping to study composition with Nadia Boulanger or Maurice Ravel - they demurred - but while there he did compose another of his well-known semi-classical works, An American in Paris. Following a brief Hollywood stint, Gershwin wrote his most ambitious work, the "folk opera" Porgy and Bess (1935), based on a novel by DuBose Heyward, and it has been an American classic ever since.* Gershwin's shows became the source of countless popular hits, including "I Got Rhythm," "Strike Up the Band," "Swanee," "Summertime," and "Someone," and his classical compositions raise intriguing questions about "what might have been" had he not been felled by a brain tumor in 1937. On his death, American novelist John O'Hara (1905-1970) wrote,

"George died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to."

* N.B. Of Porgy and Bess, American composer Virgil Thomson 1896-1989) wrote,

"Porgy is ... an interesting example of what can be done by talent in spite of a bad set-up. With a libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen, a man who should never have attempted it has written a work that has a considerable power."

Rare footage of Gershwin himself playing I Got Rhythm:

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September 14, 1861: The Night of the Flaming Ballerinas

 Frightful scene in the dressing room of the Continental Theatre, Philadelphia, on the evening of Saturday, September 14, 1861 - Accidental burning of a portion of the ballet corps while preparing for the dance in Shakespeare's play of "The Tempest," resulting in the death of seven of the dancers - sketched by Mr. Oehlschlager who witnessed the catastrophe

For William Wheatley's first production at the Continental Theater in Philadelphia, the decision was made to present Shakespeare's The Tempest (wiki) in ballet form. From England, Wheatley imported a special effects expert, as well as four ballet dancing sisters, the beautiful Gales – Ruth, Zela, Hannah, and Adeline. Six other chorus dancers rounded out the ballet troupe. On the night of September 14, 1861, the cast only made it through The Tempest’s first act.

While the seas were raging at the end of the first act, the entire ballet company ran to change into gauzy costumes so as to be ready to welcome Alonso and the rest of shipwreck victims onto Prospero’s Island. At the Continental Theater the dressing rooms were above the stage itself, necessitating a fifty foot climb up a rickety flight of stairs. The chorus received their own dressing room, complete with lighting by means of gas jets close to the mirror, where their light could be reflected and doubled – if you look at the picture above, you’ll see the gas jets off to the top left.

Flaming Ballerinas Plunging to their Deaths 

Above the mirror, Ruth Gale had hung her dress for the second act; she climbed onto the back of the couch to pull down her dress and the hem touched the gas jet. Instantly Ruth’s clothes were on fire, and as she ran screaming through the room, she set her sisters’ clothes on fire, as well. 

Panicking, and on fire themselves, Ruth and her sisters plunged out the window and onto the street below, which was filled with pedestrians now under bombardment from flaming, screaming ballerinas who fell to earth with sickening thuds and the crack of broken bones.

Another member of the chorus, dress also ablaze, came running across the stage and fell into the pit where the stage crew simulated the storm that gave its name to the play. Tearing the cloths which represented the waves, they managed to smother the flames. Wheatley ordered the curtain brought down, and asked the audience to leave the theater peacefully. The remaining flaming ballerinas were extinguished.

Over the next four days, the six (one source says seven) ballerinas perished of their burns including all the Gale sisters. Wheatley was exonerated of any wrongdoing, and erected a monument to the perished ballerinas at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia. The inscription on the stone is barely legible now, but the New York Clipper preserved it. It reads:

IN MEMORIAM

Stranger, who through the city of the dead

With thoughtful soul and feeling heart may tread,

Pause here a moment – those who sleep below

With careless ear ne’er heard a tale of woe:

Four sisters fair and young together rest

In saddest slumber on earth’s kindly breast;

Torn out of life in one disastrous hour,

The rose unfolded and the budding flower:

Life did not part them – Death might not divide

They lived – they loved – they perished, side by side.

O’er doom like theatre let gentle pity shed

The softest tears that mourn the early fled,

For whom – lost children of another land!

This marble raised by weeping friendship’s hand

To us, to future time remains to tell

How even in death they loved each other well.

Maps: Top: 1858-1860
Middle top: 1875
 Middle bottom: 1895
Bottom: 1922 

Between the time of the fire described above and the end of the century, there were three additional fires at the same theater, although the name changed - on June 19, 1867, now known as Fox’s New American Theatre the group of ballerinas made it out safely and the audience was warned in time to leave the building. But, the front wall collapsed the onto volunteer firemen and others working along Walnut Street. As many as thirteen were crushed to death; at least four of them fire-fighters. The American Theatre was a complete loss.

The place was then rebuilt as the Grand Central Theatre (or just the Central Theatre) and suffered another major fire on March 24, 1888, a Saturday morning. No loss of life was reported, but the theater was, yet again, reduced to ashes. Plus, the stores and restaurants that faced Eighth Street from Walnut to Sansom were, once more, gutted. 

Then on April 27, 1892, the yet-again-rebuilt Central Theatre was destroyed in a huge blaze that also devastated the adjoining Times newspaper office on Sansom Street, as well as the shops and eateries on Eight Street. 

The audience members' exodus caused a stampede in which many were trampled underfoot. Those who lost their lives had ascended a stairwell that was one of two that led to doors in back of the theater, but unfortunately led directly to the fire itself. Confused when they found their escape route cut off, they were then overcome with fumes and died on the staircase. In a fit of hysteria, one man even forced his way out by slashing others with a bowie knife he had with him.

At least seven audience members and six performers died, and about fifty others were also hospitalized, suffering from excruciating burns and smoke inhalation. Some lost their eyesight, as their burns were mostly on the face. Many actors broke limbs when they jumped to the street from their dressing room windows onto Sansom Street, as the ballet dancers of 1861 had done.

Gilmore’s Theater, the fifth and final
 playhouse at 807 Walnut |
Image via The Roanoke Times,
February 1893

What remained of the structure was torn down to allow for recovery of the bodies, and immediately reconstructed as Gilmore’s Auditorium. It opened on August 26, 1893, with architect John D. Allen setting it back five feet from the old building line and placing a turret on the roof in front. It was advertised as “Absolutely Fireproof” and “the safest and probably the best built theatre in this country.” 

Perhaps it was absolutely fireproof, for the building did not burn again.

Via Hidden Philidelphia and Forgotten Stories. 

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Thursday links

"Women are teachable": 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees".

Goldfish brain surgery.

Dutchman fought to keep amputated leg, made a lamp.

Shostakovich was born 108 years ago today: some quotes and history.

Stolen identity, price-fixing, a foursome, and some deep space intrigue - Manischewitz: The Great Story of a Not-So-Great Wine.

21 Photos Of Nature Winning The Battle Against Civilization.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the world's most expensive cars, amputees with a sense of humor, and the 50th anniversary of Fiddler On The Roof.

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Shostakovich was born 108 years ago today: some quotes and history

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault.

~Dmitri Shostakovich (quoted in Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music)

The composer apparently does not set himself the task of listening to the desires and expectations of the Soviet public. He scrambles sounds to make them interesting to formalist elements who have lost all taste... The power of good music to affect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, "formalist" attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.*

~Pravda (on the Shostakovich opera Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk, "Muddle Instead of Music," January 1936)

Still from a production of
 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Shostakovich told me: "I finished the Fifth Symphony in the major and fortissimo... It would be interesting to know what would have been said if I finished it pianissimo and in the minor." Only later did I understand the full significance of these words, when I heard the Fourth Symphony, which does finish in the minor and pianissimo. But in 1937, nobody knew the Fourth Symphony.**

~Boris Khaikin (1904-1978) (Discourses on Conducting)

There may be few notes, but there's lots of music.

~Shostakovich (on his film music for King Lear; quoted in Wilson, Shostakovich, A Life Remembered)

Particularly during the Cold War, Shostakovich was anathema to many Western critics:

The Fifth Symphony of Shostakovich always has been singularly irritating to this chronicler... Whenever I hear one of his marches, my imagination fastens upon a picture of the parades in Red Square and the banners of Uncle Joe, and my irritation becomes powerful.

- Cyrus Durgin (? - 1962) (Boston Globe, 25 October 1952)

To anyone who knew his music, a first encounter with Dmitri Shostakovich could not fail to be startling. In contrast to the elemental force, bombast, grandeur of his works, he was a chétif*** figure, the perennial student, unassertive and shy, who looked as though all the music could be wrung out of him in a couple of song cycles.

~Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) (Unfinished Journey)

Today is the 108th anniversary of the birth of the greatest of Soviet composers, Dmitri Shostakovich (wiki) (1906-1975), recognized by many as the greatest symphonist of the 20th century. Three decades after his death, his reputation only continues to grow. Born in St. Petersburg, Shostakovich was an early piano prodigy and studied composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory during the early Soviet era. At first recognized internationally as an exemplar of the best of Soviet musicianship, he ran afoul of the regime with his modernistic opera, Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk, which so outraged Stalin that he is said to have had a personal hand in writing the infamous Pravda editorial, "Muddle Instead of Music" that literally put the composer's life in jeopardy during the "Great Purge" of the late 1930s. Shostakovich somehow survived, even though he was recurrently criticized by the regime for his “modernist” tendencies. During his subsequent tumultuous career, he produced an enormous oeuvre: 15 symphonies, concertos, a great quantity of chamber music, song cycles, piano music, and several operas. Generally considered a serious - almost tragic - composer, Shostakovich nonetheless wrote a large amount of “light” music, including even a stage work – Moscow Cheryomushki (1959) – that might be described as a Russian musical comedy.

Harry Potter looks exactly like
 a young Shostakovich

For newcomers to the music of Shostakovich, I would recommend his 4th, 5th, and 10th symphonies, the two piano concertos, the "autobiographical" 8th strinq quartet, his several "jazz" and "ballet" suites compiled from light works of the 1930s, and his film score for The Gadfly, whose "Romance" was used to great effect as the principal theme of the TV series, "Riley, Ace of Spies."

During the last two decades, there has been a raging musicological debate about whether the music of Shostakovich reveals him as a loyal Soviet citizen or a closet dissident whose works portray a tormented man. No one really knows. He was clearly a quirky guy. In contradiction to the opening quotation above, he noted late in life,

"I've said what I said. Either you have it in you to understand, or if not, then it would be fruitless to try to explain anyway."

* N.B. In the first year of the Great Purge, this last sentence was a terrifying threat.

** After the uproar caused by Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk, Shostakovich "redeemed" himself with his Fifth Symphony (1937), designated "A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism," still one of his most successful and popular works. However, his iconoclastic Fourth Symphony, which had been in rehearsal at the time of the debacle, was withdrawn and did not emerge again until 1961. It is now considered one of the master's most original works and a fascinating indicator of "the road not taken." By the way, Boris Khaikin was a Soviet-Jewish conductor.

*** Chétif - a French word meaning "puny."

Here is the romance from The Gadfly, accompanying a selection of photos:

More typical of Shostakovich is the opening of his 4th symphony:

The above is based on Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email.  If you'd like to be added to his list, leave your email address in the comments.

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"Women are teachable": 1940's booklet to “assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees"

The subject has always interested me, because my mom was one of them - the women who went to work during World War II while the men were off fighting, then gave up their jobs and paychecks once those men came back.

You've come a long way, baby. From the National Archives:

By 1944, over half of American adult women were employed outside the home, making invaluable contributions to the war effort. As women went about their duties, supervisors often worried about effectively assimilating them into the workforce. This publication from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) awkwardly attempted to assist supervisors with managing their new female employees.

Text:

When you supervise a woman…

Make clear her part in the process or product on which she works.

Allow for her lack of familiarity with machine processes.

See that her working set-up is comfortable, safe and convenient.

Start her right by kindly and careful supervision.

Avoid horseplay or “kidding”; she may resent it.

Suggest rather than reprimand.

When she does a good job, tell her so.

Listen to and aid her in her work problems. 

Text:

When you put a woman to work…

Have a job breakdown for her job.

Consider her education, work experience and temperament in assigning her to that job.

Have the necessary equipment, tools and supplies ready for her.

Try out her capacity for and familiarity with the work.

Assign her to a shift in accordance with health, home obligations and transportation arrangements.

Place her in a group of workers with similar backgrounds and interests.

Inform her fully on health and safety rules, company policies, company objectives.

Be sure she knows the location of rest-rooms, lunch facilities, dispensaries.

Don’t change her shift too often and never without notice.

Text:

Whenever you employ a woman...

Limit her hours to 8 a day, and 48 a week, if possible.

Arrange brief rest periods in the middle of each shift. 

Try to make nourishing foods available during lunch periods.

Try to provide a clean place to eat lunch, away from her workplace.

Make cool and pure drinking water accessible.

See that the toilet and restrooms are clean and adequate.

Watch work hazards - moving machinery; dust and fumes; improper lifting; careless housekeeping.

Provide properly adjusted work seats; good ventilation and lighting.

Recommend proper clothing for each job; safe, comfortable shoes; try to provide lockers and a place to change work clothes.

Relieve a monotonous job with rest periods. If possible, use music during fatigue periods.

Text:

Finally–call on a trained woman counselor in your personnel department…

To find out what women workers think and want.

To discover personal causes of poor work, absenteeism, turnover.

To assist women workers in solving personal difficulties.

To interpret women’s attitudes and actions.

To assist in adjusting women to their jobs.

The same group of documents in the Archives also has a booklet called ""Womanpower" Campaign". See the whole thing there:

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Fiddler On The Roof opened 50 years ago today. Here's Zero Mostel and a Lego version

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere. 

~Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) (notebook entry, 1928) 

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. 

There are people who have never been taught anything, and know everything, have never been anywhere, and understand everything, have never given a moment's thought to anything, and comprehend everything. "Blessed hands" is the name bestowed on these fortunate beings. The world envies, honors, and respects them.

A bachelor is a man who comes to work from a different direction every morning. 

A real pleasure is a pleasure one enjoys by one's self, without a companion, and without a single argument. 

No matter how bad things get, you've got to go on living, even if it kills you. 

~Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) (a selection of his observations) 

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of Anatevka, every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask, why do we stay here if it's so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word:Tradition!

~Sheldon Harnick (b. 1924) (Fiddler on the Roof, opening lines) 

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find, catch me a catch.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Look through your book
And make me a perfect match.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
I'll bring the veil,
You bring the groom,
Slender and pale,
Bring me a ring for I'm longing to be
The envy of all that I see.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find, catch me a catch.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Night after night in the dark I'm alone,
So find me a match of my own.

~Ibid., "Matchmaker, Matchmaker"

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first performance at New York's Imperial Theater of that phenomenally successful - and perennially revived - Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof (wiki), on this date in 1964. With music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, the show was based roughly on Tevye and His Daughters and other stories by the popular Ukrainian-born Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, 1859-1916). Set in the Pale of Imperial Russia in 1905, the story centers on Tevye the dairyman, father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his family and Jewish traditions while outside influences (e.g., the pogroms) encroach on their lives. The original production starred the inimitable Zero Mostel (1915-1977) as Tevye, Maria Karnilova as his wife, and Beatrice Arthur as Yenta, the matchmaker. The first run scored 3,242 performances, won a Tony award in 1965, and was followed by a highly successful movie version in 1971. 

Marc Chagall's Fiddler On The Roof, which
may have been the inspiration for the play

Born to a Hasidic merchant family in the Kiev region, Rabinovich began writing at the age of 15 and soon adopted as his pseudonym a Yiddish variant of the Hebrew phrase, Shalom aleichem - "Peace be with you." He married a rich landowner's daughter, whom he had been tutoring, but lost her inherited fortune in unsuccessful stockmarket speculations, and - fearful of the growing threat of the pogroms - emigrated to New York City in 1906, where he became an ardent proponent of Yiddish as a literary language and emerged as the foremost writer of stories, novels, and plays in that medium. He died in New York of tuberculosis and diabetes in 1916, suggesting for his own epitaph, 

"Here lies a plain and simple Jew who wrote in plain and simple prose."  

Smithsonian has an interesting article: Six Things You May Not Have Known About Fiddler on the Roof.

Here's Zero Mostel, the original Tevye, in his most famous song from Fiddler, performed at a Tony Awards entertainment in 1971:

And here's the opening scene recreated in Lego, over Zero Mostel soundtrack:

(Based on Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email. Leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list.)

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Monday links

Today is the autumnal equinox - science, videos, quotes, poems, Vivaldi and Copernicus

13-year-old turns dead pet into 'Ratcopter'.

Fiddler On The Roof opened 50 years ago today; Zero Mostel singing If I Were A Rich Man will make your whole day. Plus, the Lego version.

Excellent gallery: Landscapes Dominated by Powerful Storms.

Parody of the Song Under the Sea From The Little Mermaid Highlights the Horrors of Deep Sea Life.

10 Most Expensive Cars in the World.

Photos of amputees with a sense of humor.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, including making and eating the worst of the Jello recipes from the 1950s, the evolution (devolution?) of toilet training. and lots of Talk Like a Pirate Day stuff.

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Today is the autumnal equinox - science, videos, quotes, poems, Vivaldi and Copernicus

Mechanics of the equinox:

Science of the equinox. More here, here and here (this article is from 2012, so the time is wrong).

Here's a 2 minute Nat Geo video:



No, you can't balance an egg on the equinox.

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold....
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sunburned hands, I used to hold
Since you went away, the days grow long
And soon I'll hear ol' winter's song.
But I miss you most of all my darling,
When autumn leaves start to fall.
~Johnny Mercer, Autumn Leaves (see Nat King Cole singing this, below)

Here's Nat King Cole singing Autumn Leaves:

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

~Samuel Butler

The leaves are falling, falling as from way off,
as though far gardens withered in the skies;
they are falling with denying gestures.
And in the nights the heavy earth is falling
from all the stars down into loneliness.
We all are falling. This hand falls.
And look at others: it is in them all.
And yet there is one who holds this falling
endlessly gently in his hands.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Autumn

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.
~William Blake

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

~John Keats

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

~P. D. James

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute

Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

~Robert Browning

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.

~Albert Camus

Autumn's earliest frost had given

To the woods below

Hues of beauty, such as heaven

Lendeth to its bow;

And the soft breeze from the west

Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.

~John Greenleaf Whittier

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

~George Santayana

The day becomes more solemn and serene,

When noon is past - there is a harmony

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,

As it could not be, as if it had not been!

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

The teeming Autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime
Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease.
~William Shakespeare

Today (22 September) at 10:29 in the evening (EDT), we will mark this year's Autumnal Equinox, the moment at which the sun appears to cross the celestial equator from north to south - or more simply, the first day of fall, with equal hours of light and darkness. It's not generally appreciated that perhaps the best-known of all works of baroque music, Le Quattro Stagioni ("The Four Seasons") by Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi (ca. 1675-1741), was first published with four Italian poems - likely by Vivaldi himself - that describe the several scenarios represented in the music. 

Below is Vivaldi's poem Autumn, and here's a performance of the third movement of "Autumn" in Venice's foggy Piazza San Marco:

Allegro

Celebra il Vilanel con balli e Canti
Del felice raccolto il bel piacere
E del liquor de Bacco accesi tanti
Finiscono col Sonno il lor godere

The peasant celebrates with song and dance,
The harvest safely gathered in.
The cup of Bacchus flows freely,
And many find their relief in deep slumber.

Adagio molto

Fà ch' ogn' uno tralasci e balli e canti
L' aria che temperata dà piacere,
E la Staggion ch' invita tanti e tanti
D' un dolcissimo Sonno al bel godere.

The singing and the dancing die away
As cooling breezes fan the pleasant air,
And the season invites each and all
To a sweet sleep, without a care.

Allegro

I cacciator alla nov'alba à caccia
Con corni, Schioppi, e canni escono fuore
Fugge la belua, e Seguono la traccia;
Già Sbigottita, e lassa al gran rumore
De' Schioppi e canni, ferita minaccia
Languida di fuggir, mà oppressa muore.

The hunters emerge at dawn
With horns, shotguns, and dogs baying.
The quarry flees while they give chase.
Terrified by the dogs and wounded by the guns
The prey struggles on,
But harried, dies.

The two revolutions, I mean the annual revolutions of the declination and of the centre of the Earth, are not completely equal; that is the return of the declination to its original value is slightly ahead of the period of the centre. Hence it necessarily follows that the equinoxes and solstices seem to anticipate their timing, not because the sphere of the fixed stars moves to the east, but rather the equatorial circle moves to the west, being at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic in proportion to the declination of the axis of the terrestrial globe.

~Nicolaus Copernicus

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Climate march photo of the day, presented without comment

Oh, the irony.

More at Weasel Zippers

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Parody of the Song ‘Under the Sea’ From ‘The Little Mermaid’ Highlights the Horrors of Deep Sea Life

You probably don't want to play this for the little girls in your life (or, really, Little Mermaid fans of either gender):

Nature is viscous
Look at these fishes
Deep in the sea

Here's the original, in case you want to compare:

via Laughing Squid

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This Chart Explains the Chemicals That Give Autumn Leaves Their Color

Click here to embiggen

Compound Interest explains the chemicals that give leaves their color both when they are green and when they change color in autumn. Further explanations are available in their post.

Leaves are green because of chlorophyll, yellow because of a combination of carotenoids and flavonoids, red because of carotenoids combined with anthocyanins, and orange when only carotenoids are present. 

via

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"To get ungrounded you must earn 500 points" - this strikes me as a good parenting idea.

Although whoever made this must really hate laundry - you get 50 points for cleaning out a kitchen cabinet and 100 points for a load of laundry?

Thanks, Tracy!

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Friday links

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties! Instructions, translators, and Dave Barry's 2002 column.

Making, and Eating, the 1950s' Most Nauseating Jell-O Soaked Recipes.

Local Grandmother Quilts Giant Penises. (SFW)

Hey, Firefly fans - tomorrow (Sept 20) is Unification Day. Related: the biggest comparison of sci-fi spaceships ever is complete at last.

14 Extremely Detailed Close-Ups of Animal Eyes.

95% of children in the '50's were out of diapers by age 18 months - now it's 10%: The Evolution of Potty Training.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, including Samuel Johnson's Scotland-bashing, Pony Express history, how Richard III died, and weird ways to stop lava.

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Hey, Firefly fans - tomorrow (Sept 20) is Unification Day

Here's Wikipedia on Firefly's Unification Day:

Unification Day is a holiday celebrated in the fictional universe of the science-fiction television series Firefly. It marks the day in which the Alliance forces defeated the resistance ("Browncoats") in the Unification War.

"The Train Job", the second episode of the series (although Fox originally aired it before the pilot episode "Serenity"), opens with Mal, Zoe, and Jayne in a bar during a Unification Day celebration. Malcolm's brown coat and his disinterest in celebrating Unification Day lead to a brawl.

Unification Day is a holiday mentioned in the backstory of the television series Firefly. According to Nathan Fillion (Mal), the holiday is on September 20th.

There's also a Facebook page.

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Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties!

Avast!

Get a free donut from Krispy Kreme.

The Official Talk Like A Pirate Day Song.

A 12-step program for drawing a pirate.

Translators, name generators & quizzes.

17 Swashbuckling Facts About Talk Like A Pirate Day

Wikipedia page.

"Cap'n Slappy" and "Ol' Chumbucket", the
founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day

Pirate stuff for kids.

Instructions: How to talk like a pirate.

Here's an English to Pirate translator.

Dave Barry's Talk like a pirate column from 2010: Is that a yardarm in your doubloons, or are you just glad to see me?

Time magazine article: Arrrggg You Serious? How to Truly Talk Like a Pirate.

Read more here: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/#storylink=cpy

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Thursday links

Dr Samuel Johnson was born on this date in 1709: here's a selection of his Scotland-bashing quotes.

King Richard III's Final Moments Were Quick & Brutal.

Ancient Warriors Drew Power From The Crying Infants On Their Backs.

Video: Men Get Bikini Waxes for the First Time (OK for work).

The Surprisingly Short History of the Pony Express.

Weird Ways People Have Tried To Stop Lava.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, including the narcoleptic squirrel song, a drive-thru funeral home, fictional poisons vs real ones, and how beans become farts.

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Dr Samuel Johnson was born on this date in 1709: here's a selection of his Scotland-bashing quotes.

Today is the 305th anniversary of the birth of that quintessential 18th-century curmudgeon Dr. Samuel Johnson (wiki), the literary lion of Georgian London for much of his lifetime (1709-1784). A poet, critic, lexicographer, and wit, Johnson compiled the first respectable English dictionary between 1747 and 1755, following several years of writing critical articles for London magazines such as The Idler. 

From The Grub Street Journal (Oct 30, 1732), this cartoon depicts the “literatory,” a sort of publishing factory driven by beasts without artistic inspiration. Such was the perception of Grub Street writers like Johnson and Savage, who did indeed scrape together a living from commissioned writing.

Born in Lichfield the son of a book dealer, Johnson studied at Oxford and ran his own private school - where the actor David Garrick was a student - before removing to London and its literary milieu in 1737. There, in 1763, he met his companion and biographer, the Scot, James Boswell (1740-1795), to whom we owe the recording of most of Johnson's voluminous observations. 

He was no fan of Scotland:

"The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!"

I having said that England was obliged to us for gardeners, almost all their gardeners being Scotchmen; Johnson: "Why, Sir, that is because gardening is much more necessary amongst you than with us, which makes so many of your people learn it. It is all gardening with you. Things which grow wild here, must be cultivated with great care in Scotland. Pray now," throwing himself back in his chair, and laughing, "are you ever able to bring the sloe to perfection?"

He would not allow Scotland to derive any credit from Lord Mansfield; for he was educated in England. "Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young."

"There is in Scotland a diffusion of learning, a certain portion of it widely and thinly spread. A merchant has as much learning as one of their clergy."

"What enemy would invade Scotland, where there is nothing to be got?"

In “The Mitre Tavern” (1880), Samuel Johnson (far right)
 converses with James Boswell (center) and author Goldsmith.

Asked by a Scot what Johnson thought of Scotland: "That it is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir" "Well, Sir! (replies the Scot, somewhat mortified), God made it." Johnson: "Certainly he did; but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S------; but God made hell."

Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they would choose it. Johnson: "Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren." Boswell: "Come, come, he is flattering the English. you have now been in Scotland, Sir, and say if you did not see meat and drink enough there." Johnson:"Why yes, Sir; meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home."

"Your country consists of two things, stone and water. There is, indeed, a little earth above the stone in some places, but a very little; and the stone is always appearing. It is like a man in rags; the naked skin is still peeping out."

"A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I told him it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. This, said he, is nothing to another a few miles off. I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. Nay, said a gentleman that stood by, I know but of this and that tree in the county."

[Of an inn in Scotland, SJ wrote...] "Of the provisions the negative catalogue was very copious. Here was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine. We did not express much satisfaction."

"He that travels in the Highlands may easily saturate his soul with intelligence, if he will acquiesce in the first account. The highlander gives to every question an answer so prompt and peremptory, that skepticism itself is dared into silence, and the mind sinks before the bold reporter in unresisting credulity; but, if a second question be ventured, it breaks the enchantment; for it is immediately discovered, that what was told so confidently was told at hazard, and that such fearlessness of assertion was either the sport of negligence, or the refuge of ignorance."

A literary party, 1781, of Johnson (second from left)

and other members of "The Club".

(Written by an Irishman) The author of these memoirs will remember, that Johnson one day asked him, 'Have you observed the difference between your own country impudence and Scottish impudence?' The answer being in the negative: 'Then I will tell you,' said Johnson. 'The impudence of an Irishman is the impudence of a fly, that buzzes about you, and you put it away, but it returns again, and flutters and teazes you. The impudence of a Scotsman is the impudence of a leech, that fixes and sucks your blood.' 

Johnson also, of course, had little use for America or Americans:

"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging."

"To a man of mere animal life, you can urge no argument against going to America, but that it will be some time before he will get the earth to produce. But a man of any intellectual enjoyment will not easily go and immerse himself and his posterity for ages in barbarism."

"I am willing to love all mankind, except an American"

A Blackadder clip on Johnson's Dictionary:

Here's a very well done bio of Johnson by the BBC:

A selection of his legendary insults:

Dr. Johnson in the ante-room of Lord Chesterfield. 

Of Lord Chesterfield:

"This man I thought had been a Lord among wits; but I find, he is only a wit among Lords."

And of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son:

"They teach the morals of a whore; and the manners of a dancing-master."

Of Thomas Sheridan:

"Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in nature."

Of the respective merits of the poets Derrick and Smart:

"Sir, there is no settling the point of precedence between a louse and a flea."

Of the criticism of one critic (Edwards) of another (Warburton):

"A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but the one is but an insect and the other is a horse still."

Of Lady Macdonald of Sleat:

"...she was as bad as negative badness could be, and stood in the way of what was good; that insipid beauty would not go a great way... and such a woman might be cut out of a cabbage, if there was a skilful artificer."

Of two disputants:

"One has ball without powder; the other powder without ball."

Of a man hired to sit with him during a convalescence:

"The fellow's an idiot; he is as awkward as a turn-spit when first put to the wheel, and as sleepy as a dormouse."

Of James Macpherson:

"He wants to make himself conspicuous. He would tumble in a hogstye, as long as you looked at him and called him to come out."

Of the new rich:

"Sir, they have lost the civility of tradesmen, without acquiring the manners of gentlemen."

Despite his legendary bile, Johnson did remark later in life,

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly."

Attribution for many of the quotes above can be found at the Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page. More on Johnson here and here.

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