(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Good News, Stone Soup and a New (but known) Wednesday Cook [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-19 God has given wine to gladden the hearts of people....Psalm 104 Good Morning, Gnusies of Gnuville! Welcome to the Gnuville Breakfast Brunch & Stone Soup Kitchen. Yes, it is your ever-lovin’ WineRev turned loose on a WEDNESDAY. After I mangled the niftywriter/NotNowNotEver Tuesday/maybe Friday in even-numbered months with odd-numbered days, the Good News POWERS THAT BE (“All rise! Ye shall uncover and tug thy forelock!”) contacted me to ask if I would move from my 3rd Thursday of the Month assignment to 3rd Wednesday of the Month. After some mulling, I said ‘Yes’, so here we are. There is Good News in various groupings this Wednesday the 19th, but YOU, dear Readers and imbibers of hearty ales of Good News know that these daily round ups and gatherings all get MUCH BETTER when everyone comments, chips in, lets loose a zinger, leads off in a tangent, posts a link or a DARLING picture of a 4-paw, and otherwise enriches and uplifts everyone’s day. When you think about it, the Good News Round Up is an Internet version of the French tale ‘Stone Soup’. The daily host/ess comes among us Gnuville villagers and politely asks for a fire to be lit under a kettle of water. As the steam rises, with careful, gentle motions the host/ess lovingly unwraps something from its swaddling cloths: a well-rounded river rock of Good News items and slips it into the kettle. They announce “I will show you how to make Stone Soup. Just wait a while until the water comes to a boil.” We all look on with interest, and then the Opener of the Round Up says with a sigh, “This stone soup would taste even better if someone would chop some political onions into it.” And someone does, and we are moved to tears as the aroma wafts up. “You know, I remember a village where they added some carrots of science and various beans of arts and literature and music. Does anyone in this Wednesday Village have some of those they could add? It would make the Soup ever so much tastier and encouraging…..” So you see how this goes each day here. As the Wednesday UnWrapper of the Stone of Soup, I will also note to you that I like to add the cabbage, turnips, lentils and cacao beans of olden times remembered on this April 19th, so we might recall and cherish those who have made the news not only Good, but also Goofy, and made the news of their day into the history of ours. Good News from Science The race is on for humans to convert (and the sooner the better for all of us) from fossil fuels to renewables. The push is coming, big time, with engineering triumphs and new discoveries, ideas and products appearing seemingly every time you look. So, if we look today, we see our Stone Soup bubbling on the other side of the oven window. Now mind you, windows have improved a LOT from the hole chiseled in the cave wall, or the rags hung in front of the cannonball hole from the last battle in these parts. Glass was a major advance. Then came plate glass, which let architects go wild with 20th century designs featuring the “glass box.” Yes, those windows were/are double and even triple-paned to reduced temperature changes but then those windows are costlier and heavier. But now THIS STORY features a SPRAY (!) that can increase the insulating power of windows with a mist, so you use less energy; lower power bills and less need for power. Win-win. >>>>>>>>>>>> Now that microchips have become micro and ubiquitous, some of the cutting-edge types are claiming breakthroughs in AI, artificial intelligence, raising a host of issues. The meaning of life, even the definition of life, rear up as major questions. Certain dangerous tasks are much better done by expendable robots, but what about when more and more tasks displace more and more humans from more and more tasks? How to avoid severe economic dislocations? Well here is an 11-minute TedX from 2018 that grabs the issue by the diodes and rheostats and advocates a plan for Taxing Robots and Robotic work to pay for humans displaced. Worth putting on the chopping block and dicing some carrots of AI for the Stone Soup. x YouTube Video >>>>>>>>>> Every new ingredient in the Stone Soup of Energy has had its upside for many: when steam replaced animal power for several things, shipping, locomotives and powered assembly lines re-shaped human life. Electricity did the same a few decades later, and more recently the Jetsons showed us the benign and profitable applications of atomic power (for back packs, flying cars, etc.) Now Wind and Solar and Tidal and Geothermal and Wave Action are opening up brand-new industries, and…..there’s money to be made! And made….HERE! A DailyKos DIARY REPORTS there is now a US based factory coming on line making advanced solar panels…..and operating as a non-profit. You can go Green and go anti-capitalist in one stroke! Of course, science has been making Good News out of Stone Soup for a long time, and even on April 19ths….like in these years: 1619 Amsterdam Holland The Theatrum Anatomicum opens (building still stands.) The Protestant Netherlands encouraged the advance of science, including relaxing restrictions on autopsies. In this Theatrum aspiring doctors would perform autopsies on the remains of executed prisoners. However, it was also open to the public (for a minor admission fee to sit on tiered benches) and all sorts of people attended (including portrait artists who found musculature studies quite important for their painting.) I get it but it still puts my teeth on edge. 1818 Paris On this day French physicist Augustin Fresnel (fray-nel) finishes writing an essay called, "A Note on the Theory of Diffraction" (filed on the following day). The document ends with what are now called (in his honor) the Fresnel integrals, which scientists find really useful for several things that I have no idea about. One thing I am sure of though: various lighthouses around the world (like Split Rock, along Minnesota’s North Shore of Superior) have these really cool circular and nested prisms that magnify and focus the light beam, and that these are called Fresnel lenses. (I’ll wager the principle applies to other wave phenomena too and is a big deal in, say, astronomy.) 1861 Cincinnati, Ohio Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe was something of an aeronautical researcher. He had invented a device that, by using a hand-crank, would pass an electric current through water, breaking it into oxygen and hydrogen, then capturing the hydrogen for his balloons. (He was also aware there was a Civil War coming and thought balloons could be useful to the Army.) Nonetheless, things got out of hand today. Launching in Cincinnati, strong upper-level winds carried him 900 miles in nine hours to Unionville, South Carolina. There he was temporarily placed under arrest as a Yankee agent as a flying spy, but he soon convinced them he was a scientist conducting an experiment. One of the longest free balloon flights of the 19th century. (Lowe later did convince Lincoln to use observation balloons with the Army.) 1965 Across American News Stands Here and there you can get specialty magazines, like one really forward thinking one called “Electronics.” In an article written by Gordon Moore (later Chairman of Intel) he noted that chips of integrated circuits seem to double in power every 18 months. Thus was born Moore's Law. (Moore later asserted that his claim was that the number of components that can be packed on a computer chip doubles every 2 years.) Good News from Politics DailyKos has been Stone Soup-ing on politics ever since Markos unwrapped his Soup Stone in the Cyber Village of 2003. Not all of it counts as Good News of course (see Dick Cheney……Sarah Palin……The Orange Insult to Democracy and his MAGA spawn……MT Greene) but there have been great moments as well (electing America’s first ever black President absolutely counts……and the coming indictments of all sorts of rats.) Fani Willis and “Smith……Jack Smith” (with a “Bond, James Bond” swagger and dangerous air) are itching to follow Alvin Bragg’s 34 counts against Mango Man. Hell, even Cameron Saxton, the Tennessee House Speaker might lose A) his title, B) his seat in the House (because he does NOT reside in the district he claims to represent----not allowed by Tennessee’s Constitution), C) and his ”model family and their religious values” because his wife has gone public and ballistic about his affair and mistress. All these certainly count as Good News. >>>>>>>>One of those “rats” is Faux Noise and after a 1 day delay to yesterday, jury selection is done, opening statements were ready…..and there was settlement out of court. (Rats! But lets wait for terms…...) But now comes Good News about “Parler” (no, those fools can’t spell either.) “Parler” is/was one of those website/chat rooms crawling with J6 plotters and planners of the MAGA persuasion (and the exchanges have figured in many of the J6 trials to date.) Now comes THIS STORY that Parler has been sold and SHUT DOWN. Yes, the rats will migrate to new holes, but it will take them time and effort to re-establish things, and anything that makes things harder for them is Good for us. >>>>>>>>>Another fine bit of News comes from Florida. Yes, Ron DeSantis is stomping his white plastic boots over the Constitution, rational thought, the rule of law, offending Disney as one of Florida’s largest attractions and employers. He also, like many of the MAGA aroma, wraps some of what he does or plans in religious language, claiming he can and should do this crap ‘for the Bible tells me so.” As a professional as well as a personal theist he and they grind my gears every time they rant like this. So I count it as Good News that IN THIS REPORT the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Miami has publicly called out DeSantis and his ilk (ilk, I say!) and denounced them from a religious point of view while defending a Faith I happen to share with the archbishop. YAY! Of course, the 19th of April has had a particular political serving of Good News for Americans since 1689 (or 334 years, so 1/3 of a Millenium!) and likely you might take a moment of pride in recalling these: 1689 Boston (Revolution #1) John Adams. John Hancock. Paul Revere . THE names for the opening of the American Revolution, right? But rebelling against tyranny? They had TRADITION to draw on. On this day, 86 years before Lexington and Concord, the residents of Boston rose up against their royal governor, Edmund Andros, dragged him from his house and lodged him in the jail at Fort William. Andros had been Royal Governor in the Bahamas (Andros Island is named for him). Back in 1686, without any input or election from the residents of Massachusetts (unlike all their earlier governors!) King James II appoints Andros governor of Massachusetts. Andros was a snooty, snotty fellow and after 3 years (and especially with the arrival of news that James II has been deposed, replaced by William and Mary,) by today the locals weren’t taking this crap off nobody, not even if appointed by the King of England. 1775 Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts (Revolution #2) Alerted by a “midnight ride by” Paul Revere, militia Capt. John Parker musters 78 militiamen on the Lexington green. At dawn they gulp hard at the arrival of 700 Redcoats, who form line of battle in style, then call on the militia to disperse. Somebody (unknown to this day) fires a shot. The British return fire en masse….leaving 8 Americans dead. They march on to Concord, find John Adams and John Hancock have made good their escape and that stories of barrels of gunpowder and arms….well, if they were here, they are not here now. A column of smoke from a trash pile rises over the town and the militia at the North Bridge assume the town is being burned, so they move out to save it. A British force at the bridge orders them to stop, “stop or we will fire.” Both sides do. About noon, the British column leaves, heading back for Boston. The militia, swelling every hour in numbers, takes this as a sign of retreat and begins firing from along the stone walls of the Boston Road. The British make it back to Boston but take 250 casualties. The American Revolution is on. (In the 1800s, Nathaniel Hawthorne put together the story of the 1689 uprising and linked it to this date (both April 19th) ‘The Grey Champion’ , from his popular collection ‘Twice Told Tales.’ Have a 10-minute read HERE if you fancy yourself in a revolutionary mood.) 1939 New Haven, Connecticut (Revolution #3….Closing Ranks against England!……..With all Deliberate Speed!) Yes, Madison wrote the Constitution and, upon further review, added a package of 10 Amendments, The Bill of Rights. Well, just because all those OTHER states approved it doesn’t mean the Nutmeg state is going to be stampeded. Only on this day does Connecticut approve the Bill of Rights to Amend the U.S. Constitution…. after 148 years. Good News Among People My sweetie SageHagRN and I have been bike riders for a long time. We are looking at doing some travel in Europe the next few years and are looking seriously at tours using E-bikes (to especially help on the upgrades.) In fact, SageHagRN has ordered one to start practicing as soon as the snow quits shorting out the motor and batteries…..sheesh. >>>>>>>>>E-bikes have lots of possibilities for low-cost transportation but as usual, there is a catch: the battery. Yes they are rechargeable (sort of the point) but the battery, motor and general engineering do NOT make these a cheap bike….at least new. Used? Then used after used…..after used? Now comes THIS HEARTWARMING STORY of a start-up e-bike company…..in KENYA! Even more remarkable, the founder and entrepreneur has figured out a way to (re)use the batteries…from old laptops to build his bikes and his business. YAY! >>>>>>>>As some of you have noted from time to time, I am not just house-sitting over here in Western Wisconsin. I am ALSO Cat sitting. When I started there were 3 elderly felines and now 2 of them have crossed over the Rainbow Bridge to join their mates and their Lady of This House, who was a huge fan. Now its down to Rascal and me, and Rascal turns 19 this spring…..with good spring still left in his legs. While “the Rascal guy” and I are going through the whole “sell the house being sitted and move to St. Paul to be with SageHagRN and Toby Tyler Cat (of the part Russian Blue persuasion, a nice contrast with Rascal’s gray stripe look) there are other people and their Fur Purrr-sons that have to make other arrangements. Well somebody has let their heart lead them and their hands into creating this Retirement Communities for Cats, a village of the elderly felines in their own cottages (or should that be “cat-tages?”) Of course, people being people and being good about it is always good news, regardless of how long its been. We keep the stories so that the stories will keep us. 1897 Boston (Revolution #4….ok, in athletics, but Boston looms large this day….) Inspired by the 1896 Athens Modern Olympic games, the Boston Athletic Association organizes the first Boston Marathon (first marathon in America too) the world’s oldest annual marathon. John J. McDermott took 2:55:10 to become the first winner. (Modern speeds are typically about two hours and 10 minutes or so.) The Route? Well, the BAA laid out a 26-mile, 220 yard route that mostly followed the retreat of the British from Lexington and Concord 122 years before. With deadpan faces they claimed that while theirs was only an athletic display, the Redcoats had really been the ones doing the running in their marathon. 1924 Chicago Those of us of a certain vintage will recall the 50,000-watt voice of rock-and-roll coming out of Chicago on WLS AM Radio. (We had an entry last week when they first went on the air.) However, the format was not rock-and-roll in the 1920s (since that hadn’t been invented yet) or swing, or jazz, or gospel. On this day "The Chicago Barn Dance" debuted on WLS Radio in Chicago. The show was later renamed "The National Barn Dance." (Personally, I liked the NEW format in the ‘60s…..) 1927 New York City. Ah, the 1920s: Prohibition, flappers, the Jazz Age, rum-running, and soon, Hollywood films, even with sound. Things got racy in New York too, sometimes too racy. After appearing in the lead role of a stage play called “Sex”, actress Mae West was arrested. On this day she was found guilty of obscenity and corrupting the morals of youth. She was sentenced to 10 days in jail and fined $500…..but the publicity launched her career in Hollywood. (The classic example of the Hollywood motto: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”) 1967 Boston (Revolution #5…..in athletics) One of the hundreds of Boston Marathon (see 1897 entry, so 70 years ago today) runners to cross the finish line today is 20-year-old K. Switzer. At the finish line officials checking her bib number learn that registered runner ‘K. Switzer’ is Katherine Switzer, the first woman to run and complete the race. Officials did not list her as finishing since women were not allowed to compete…….but she competed…..and persisted…….and finished! Way to go, Katherine! (Boston Marathon officially reformed themselves and welcomed women to register and compete starting in 1972.) ……… And BTW, during this 1967 race? Race official Jock Semple spotted Katherine among the runners during the race and physically tried to stop her and grab the entrant bib number off of her . Now every great runner and every football fan knows how important a hard-nosed pulling guard can be to throw that crucial block, right? Well Katherine had one! Her boyfriend and fellow marathoner Thomas Miller , running alongside Switzer, thought something like this could happen. When Semple made his move, Miller knocked Semple down…..without helmet or pads, but a well-applied shoulder…….and trotted on to catch up with Katherine again. (In honor of April 19th, Miller probably called Semple a damned Redcoat under his breath……) Photo shows Thomas Miller throwing his block on Jock Semple (long pants, ugly face over the shoulder) just behind Katherine Switzer #261. Good News from the Deeper and the Higher of Life When you talk with the technocratic types of people, they are very intelligent and clever…..to a point. They can acquire and use data. Data assembled can become information. Information can lead to intelligence. But intelligence is not yet wisdom. There are many things that have survival value, but humans being humans do and create things that give value to survival. You can ask a Chatbot AI program to describe music, art, religion, literature, or even games but they cannot explain WHY these have meaning or value beyond the prosaic of description. Humans are full of surprises, another thing that makes us human. >>>>>>>>>>So who would have thunk it? Gen Z/Homelanders. Born starting around 9/11 in 2001. Their phones have always been “smart.” For them and their experience, the internet has always been part of existence. At any time, from anywhere, you can access, explore, interact, even text or (if you must) e-mail other people with shared interests. And yet… Now COMES A HEAD-TURNING REPORT that CHESS, as in chess clubs and tournaments FACE TO FACE is booming among students of the GenZ persuasion. “But….but….you can get the virtual experience on line, just as good,” the techno wizards sputter. Yet as the hippies of the ‘60s taught, virtual is not the same as Real….”So you have to BE there…” Of course part of the human tapestry added some threads on April 19ths: 1529 Speyer, Germany Back in 1521, Martin Luther had been summoned to defend himself at an assembly in the city of Wurms (known as the Diet of Wurms.) Even though Luther lived (as an outlaw for a few years, during which he translated the Bible into the local German, starting a MAJOR trend, with 1000s of likes) the Diet of Wurms still condemned his teachings. After a LOT of yelling, there was a meeting in the city of Speyer to try to find an answer. No luck. They tried again, the so-called 2nd Parliament of Speyer (also known as the Diet of Speyer; it least it sounded more appetizing than the Wurms one, at least to us 8th grade confirmation kids.) Once again, this meeting voted with the Roman Catholics and banned Luther’s ideas. The minority position argued their case loudly, both inside and outside the meeting. They protested how things had gone, and their foes labeled them “Protestants” as a slur . As has happened before in history, the labeled ones took it as a badge of honor, proudly carrying “Protestant” for the first time as a positive. 1705 Parma, Italy Birth of Francisco Courcelle, organist, composer. Born into a French family renowned as professional dancers , Courcelle showed early promise, so much so he was appointed choir master (a well-paid post) in a cathedral in Parma at age 24. Along the way, caught the attention of the Spanish Court and moved to Spain in the 1730s and lived there in high circles the rest of his life. Wrote a great number of works in both the Baroque and coming Classical style. His vocal works, sacred and secular, are noted for dramatic leaps. He made extensive use of syncopation, even in liturgical works, and liked to use a Grand Pause for telling effect. x YouTube Video So with that, this particular Wednesday kettle of Stone Soup is open for you and your Good News. Come one, come all and add your savories, your piquants, your hearty and your accents, so that all of our Good News is tasty and filling this day. May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring. Shalom. 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