The urban wild: animals take to the streets amid lockdown - in pictures (The Guardian)
Animals have started taking advantage of cities as they enter lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. From New Delhi, India to Buenos Aires, Argentina, groups of animals including deer and lemurs have started to come out to explore - in search of food or just to play.
Josh Wood: Two states: one Democrat, one Republican. Two very different outcomes (The Guardian)
"It does go to show why elections matter and that elections have consequences," said James Line, 24, a former Beshear campaign staffer who is the administrator of a Beshear meme Facebook group that has gained popularity as a result of the governor's handling of the pandemic. "If 5,000 votes had gone the other way we would have another governor right now and probably a lot more lives lost."
Ruth Graham: How I Knew It Was Over (Slate)
People who lived through other major viral outbreaks-from SARS to Ebola to the 1918 flu pandemic-on what it felt like when life started returning to normal.
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 - 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist; his music is amongst the most performed of the classical repertoire and he is one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. His works span the transition between the classical and romantic eras in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. The "early" period in which he forged his craft, is typically seen to last until 1802. His "middle" period, (sometimes characterised as "heroic") shows an individual development from the "classical" styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, covers the years 1802 to 1812, during which he increasingly suffered from deafness. In the "late" period from 1812 to his death in 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.
His first major orchestral work, the First Symphony, appeared in 1800, and his first set of string quartets was published in 1801. During this period, his hearing began to deteriorate, but he continued to conduct, premiering his Third and Fifth Symphonies in 1804 and 1808, respectively. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806. His last piano concerto (No. 5, Op. 73, known as the 'Emperor'), dedicated to his great patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was premiered in 1810, but not with the composer as soloist. He was almost completely deaf by 1814, and he then gave up performing and appearing in public.
In the following years, removed from society, Beethoven composed many of his most admired works including his later symphonies and his mature chamber music and piano sonatas. His only opera Fidelio, which had been first performed in 1805, was revised to its final version in 1814. He composed his Missa Solemnis in the years 1819-1823, and his final, Ninth, Symphony, one of the first examples of a choral symphony, in 1822-1824. Written in his last years, his late string quartets of 1825-26 are amongst his final achievements. After some months of bedridden illness he died in 1827.
Source
Randall was first, and correct, with:
ONE - Fidelio
Mark. said:
One.
Alan J answered:
One. Fidelio.
Mac Mac wrote:
One
Dave responded:
One. Confusingly, there are several versions and two titles for his only opera. Beethoven started work on Leonore in 1804, it premiered in 1805 but was not well received. Beethoven struggled to revise the opera several times finally washing his hands of it in 1814 (after renaming it Fidelio), saying it was like a "martyr's crown" for him. Beethoven had better luck with symphonies.
zorch replied:
Beethoven wrote one opera Fidelio. This opera was a flopera.
Cal in Vermont wrote:
One, titled Fidelio and it concerned The Triumph of Marital Love. Accordingly, The Marriage of Figaro ran through my head. Figaro was a Mozart work first performed in 1786 when Beethoven was 16. Perhaps Beethoven heard this (or not) and took inspiration from it maybe. ????Fidelo! Fideliofidelio Fidelio??!
Deborah said:
Just one - "Fidelio." Never heard it, to my knowledge.
Mid-80s yesterday, low 90s today. Probably in a week we'll be back to winter. Spring in NorCal is full of surprises.
Jacqueline replied:
Beethoven composed 32 piano sonatas, but only one opera.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, responded:
Ludwig van Beethoven composed hundreds of works, but only one opera. It is called Fidelio.
Billy in Cypress U$A said:
Wiki says one and only one because he was not as good as the competition, but that insight will never occur to tRump. djt will continue telling lies because that is the only thing he knows how to do, even though he does it so very poorly.
DJ Useo wrote:
I remember that Beethoven was very busy, & operas take time, so I say "one".
Barbara, of Peppy Tech fame answered:
One opera, "Fidelio."
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~~~~~
• Iggy Pop of Iggy and the Stooges had a talent for drawing attention to himself. One day, he admired a full-length dress that a young woman was wearing, and he convinced her to let him wear it. He ended up being arrested and taken to jail while wearing the dress, and the friends who got him his bail were shocked by what he was wearing. One friend asked, "Is that a woman's dress?" Iggy replied, "No, this is a man's dress." (Iggy was wild and crazy; at his early concerts, he occasionally rolled around in broken glass, necessitating stitches. Oddly, he derived a benefit from this. When a young woman asked him if he were Iggy, he would say, "Sure." If this didn't convince the young woman, she would say, "Show me your scars." Iggy was able to use his scars as a form of ID.)
• While singing at a Three Choirs Festival, Astra Desmond stayed at the same hotel as composer Sir Edward Elgar. One morning at breakfast in the dining room of the hotel, Sir Edward asked her to show him her leg, which was hidden by the dining table. She did, and he looked at it and said, "No good." Everyone was surprised by his actions, so he explained that one of the horses in a race was named "Grey Silk Stockings," and if Ms. Desmond had been wearing grey stockings he would have taken that as a sign to bet on that horse.
• Some punk rockers dressed very well - in clothes they found in the garbage. Debbie Harry of Blondie once posed for a poster early in her career while wearing a zebra-stripe dress. Before it became a dress, it was a zebra-stripe pillowcase that someone had put in the garbage. Ms. Harry says, "New York has gorgeous garbage sometimes. Leather jackets, suits, and boots could be found in excellent condition."
• In 1936, the always well-dressed Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted an orchestra in Australia, surprising the musicians with his impeccable suit and the red carnation in his buttonhole. During a break in the rehearsal, members of the brass section went outside, visited a street vendor, and returned with decorations in their own buttonholes: each was sporting a red candy apple.
• After she started making lots of money, folk singer Joan Baez faced a dilemma. She enjoyed wearing expensive suits from such fancy places as Saks Fifth Avenue and I. Magnin, yet many of her songs were about the poor. She solved the dilemma by buying four of each outfit she liked and giving away three.
Comedians
• Comedian Rusty Warren talked about sex in public before "decent" women were allowed to talk about sex in public. For example, when sex researchers Masters and Johnson identified approximately 349 sex positions, Ms. Warren joked that she knew only three sex positions - but she knew them good. One of her hits was a song titled "Bounce Your Boobies," which Air America host Randi Rhodes played occasionally. Later women comedians recognized her as the pioneer she was. Lily Tomlin requested an autographed photograph of her, and Elaine Boosler sent Ms. Warren a photograph inscribed, "Thanks for blazing the trail."
• For comedian Gracie Allen, Paul Whiteman's arranger wrote an original concert piece: "The Concerto for Index Finger." This involved Gracie, after a big buildup by the orchestra, hitting the wrong note with her index finger a couple of times; eventually she gets it right and the entire orchestra cheers. Gracie performed this concerto at Carnegie Hall.
This is a Florida lawyer enjoying his fight against the republicans. Follow him on Twitter.
Always a fan,
BSmasher
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee -John Donne
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'Bull', followed by '48 Hours'.
NBC opens the night with 'Dateline', followed by an old 'SNL', except on the left coast where it's a LIVE-at-home 'SNL', followed by an old 'SNL'.
'SNL' is FRESH-at-home.
ABC starts the night with some local crap, followed by a RERUN'American Idol'.
The CW offers some local crap and some '2½ Men'.
Faux has a RERUN'9-1-1', followed by a RERUN'Gordon Ramsey's 24 Hours To Hell & Back'.
MY recycles an old 'Major Crimes', followed by another old 'Major Crimes'.
A&E has 'Live PD', followed by a FRESH'Live PD: Rewind', then a FRESH'Live PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'Gran Torino', followed by the movie 'American Sniper'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] GREAT BEAR STAKEOUT
[7:00AM] GREAT BEAR STAKEOUT
[8:00AM] WILD WEST - Desert Heartlands
[9:00AM] WILD WEST - The High Country
[10:00AM] WILD WEST - Restless Shores
[11:00AM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - The Last Frontier
[12:00PM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - The Epic Journey
[1:00PM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - To the Ends of the Earth
[2:00PM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - Spring
[3:00PM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - Summer
[4:00PM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - Autumn
[5:00PM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - Winter
[6:00PM] YELLOWSTONE - Winter
[7:00PM] YELLOWSTONE - Summer
[8:00PM] YELLOWSTONE - Autumn
[9:00PM] LIFE STORY - Extended
[10:23PM] YELLOWSTONE - Winter
[11:23PM] YELLOWSTONE - Summer
[12:23AM] YELLOWSTONE - Autumn
[1:23AM] LIFE STORY - Extended
[2:46AM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - To the Ends of the Earth
[3:46AM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - Spring
[4:46AM] PLANET EARTH: FROZEN PLANET - Summer
[5:46AM] HIDDEN HABITATS - Amazon (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has the movie '2 Fast 2 Furious', followed by the movie 'Fast & Furious', then the movie '2 Fast 2 Furious'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'The Wedding Singer', followed by the movie 'Tommy Boy'.
FX has the movie 'Maze Runner: The Death Cure', followed by the movie 'The Martian'.
History has 'The UnXplained', followed by a FRESH'The Curse Of Oak Island: Digging Deeper', 'The UnXplained', then a FRESH'The UnXplained'.
IFC -
[7:00A] Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Creeping Terror
[9:15A] Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Bloodlust
[11:30A] The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
[1:45P] Dark Shadows
[4:15P] The Watch
[6:30P] Tropic Thunder
[9:00P] Zoolander
[11:00P] There's Something About Mary
[2:00A] The Watch
[4:15A] The Three Stooges
[4:30A] Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Skydivers (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[6:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[7:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[8:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[9:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:00am] The Andy Griffith Show
[10:30am] The Andy Griffith Show
[11:00am] Hogan's Heroes
[11:30am] Hogan's Heroes
[12:00pm] Hogan's Heroes
[12:30pm] Hogan's Heroes
[1:00pm] Hogan's Heroes
[1:30pm] Hogan's Heroes
[2:00pm] Hogan's Heroes
[2:30pm] Hogan's Heroes
[3:00pm] Hogan's Heroes
[3:30pm] Hogan's Heroes
[4:00pm] A Knight's Tale
[7:00pm] The Patriot
[10:30pm] Saving Private Ryan
[2:30am] The Patriot (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'RIPD', followed by the movie 'The Goonies'.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went on Zane Lowe's Apple Music show this week to promote the new Rolling Stones single, "Living in a Ghost Town," which also gave them an opportunity to respond to Paul McCartney's recent claim that the Beatles were a better band than the Stones.
"[The Stones] are rooted in the blues," McCartney recently told Howard Stern. "When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues. We had a little more influences. There's a lot of differences, and I love the Stones, but I'm with you. The Beatles were better."
This is part of a friendly rivalry that goes back nearly 60 years, and Jagger laughed when it came up. "That's so funny," he said. "He's a sweetheart. There's obviously no competition."
But he did elaborate on what he saw as the big difference between the two bands. "The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas, when the Beatles never even did an arena tour, Madison Square Garden with a decent sound system," he said. "They broke up before that business started, the touring business for real."
Dolly Parton secretly produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the unexpected crossover of cultural icons has left fans reeling.
While Parton was not herself credited as a producer on the long-running fantasy series, a company she co-created and owned was responsible for it coming to television.
Sandollar Entertainment, which is listed on the end credits of every episode of the show, was created by Parton and her friend and former business partner Sandy Gallin in 1986. It produced a number of films, including Father of the Bride (1991) and Fly Away Home (1996), as well as several Parton projects - most recently her Netflix anthology series Dolly Parton's Heartstrings.
Showtime released the series premiere of "Penny Dreadful" sequel "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels" for free online on Friday, two days ahead of its planned network debut.
The first episode of the new 10-episode drama starring Natalie Dormer and Nathan Lane is available for free now on YouTube and SHO.com. The premiere has also been released "across multiple television and streaming providers' devices, websites, applications and authenticated online services and their free on demand channels," per Showtime, and is available for free on the Showtime stand-alone service at showtime.com.
Created by "Penny Dreadful" creator John Logan, "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels" will make its linear debut Sunday at 10/9c on Showtime.
We land lovers might be finding what little joy we can from Southern California's clear freeways and clearer skies, but there is one traffic jam forming right now, just a bit west of Pacific Coast Highway.
As of Thursday afternoon, 27 oil tankers were lined up in our coastal waters, carrying crude oil nobody needs right now, because of a worldwide oil glut and (you guessed it) coronavirus.
"Due to the unique nature of this situation, the Coast Guard is constantly evaluating and adapting our procedures to ensure the safety of the vessels at anchor and the protection of the surrounding environment," Cmdr. Marshall Newberry from the USGS' Los Angeles/Long Beach Sector said in a press release.
World leaders pledged on Friday to accelerate work on tests, drugs and vaccines against COVID-19 and to share them around the globe, but the United States did not take part in the launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) initiative.
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa were among those who joined a video conference to launch what the WHO billed as a "landmark collaboration" to fight the pandemic.
The aim is to speed development of safe and effective drugs, tests and vaccines to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19, the lung disease caused be the novel coronavirus - and ensure equal access to treatments for rich and poor.
"We are facing a common threat which we can only defeat with a common approach," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as he opened the virtual meeting.
A spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva had earlier told Reuters that the United States would not be involved.
Everyone confined to home during the COVID-19 pandemic deals with the angst, inconvenience, and boredom differently. President Trump (R-Inept), though not like any other American in most regards, begins and ends his day in front of the TV, arriving in the Oval Office as late as noon and "usually in a sour mood after his morning marathon of television," Katie Rogers and Annie Karni report at The New York Times, piecing together the president's "strange new life" through interviews with more than a dozen administration officials and close advisers.
By the time he arrives at work, Trump "has been up in the White House master bedroom as early as 5 a.m. watching Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing," the Times reports. "The president sees few allies no matter which channel he clicks. He is angry even with Fox, an old security blanket, for not portraying him as he would like to be seen."
Trump calls advisers with the TV on, stews about internal polls showing him losing support in some swing states, sits through his intelligence briefing, and gets tested for COVID-19 once a week, the Times reports. "But the president's primary focus, advisers said, is assessing how his performance on the virus is measured in the news media, and the extent to which history will blame him." White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told the Times that Trump's "highest priority is the health and safety of the American people," not his news coverage.
It isn't all grim. Trump looks forward to his 90-minute-plus press briefings every evening, viewing them "as prime-time shows that are the best substitute for the rallies he can no longer attend but craves," Rogers and Karni report. And if he doesn't work too late, Trump "occasionally has dinner with his wife, Melania Trump, and their son, Barron." Read more about the president's lockdown schedule at The New York Times.
The world's biggest iceberg, A-68, just got a little smaller.
At around 5,100 sq km, the behemoth has been the largest free-floating block of ice in Antarctica since it broke away from the continent in July 2017.
But on Thursday, it dropped a sizeable chunk measuring about 175 sq km.
The iceberg is currently moving north from the Antarctic Peninsula. Having entered rougher, warmer waters - it is now riding currents that should take it towards the South Atlantic.
Thanks to advances in DNA technology, we now know we're all a little bit Neanderthal. Just how their genes continue to affect us has become a topic of wild speculation, with anything from red hair to sleeping habits a potential legacy left by our extinct cousins.
With more research, many of these claims have been put to rest, but such suggestions do remain, contesting that many Neanderthal genes still hold sway over our physiology, behaviour, and even susceptibility to disease.
A new study suggests at least some of this might be a little overblown, failing to find more than a handful of traits that could be influenced by our ancient genes.
Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark and a number of Icelandic research institutions took a close look at some 28,000 genomes to work out if possessing DNA from ancient relatives made us more or less likely to have certain biological traits.
A team of scientists think they've found the oldest evidence of a meteorite striking and killing a person, according to a new report published in the journal journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
Given the hype around space rocks hitting Earth, there are surprisingly few records of meteorites striking people, much less killing anyone. But scientists at the Ego University and Trakya University in Turkey and the SETI Institute in the United States found a 1888 record from General Directorate of State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey that contains three manuscripts that seem to recount a death-by-meteorite event.
The first manuscript, written on September 13, 1888, details a fireball occurring the month before in the evening, over a village whose exact location the scientists couldn't determine. Smoke and fire accompanied the flash, and meteorites rained from the sky for 10 minutes. One man died and another was injured and paralyzed as a result of the event. A second manuscript contained a request forwarded to Sultan Abdul Hamid II asking what should be done about the event. A third also recounts the events and mentions that a man named Ahmed Munir Pasha sent a letter with "a stone piece" to the Grand Vizier.
Basically, on August 22, 1888, a meteor exploded over a village in Turkey, killing one man and paralyzing another. On September 13, a local legislator reported the event; the central government heard about it on October 8; and the sultan heard about it on October 9, according to the translations in the new paper, titled "Earliest evidence of a death and injury by a meteorite."
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