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Praefectus Praetorio said:
The old parish priest on Achill Island on the West Coast of Ireland in the late sixties was making his rounds visiting families in the rural areas.
He came to the small farming cottage of Aiden and Aileen O’Connor. He sat and visited a while before commencing to reminisce.
“Aye, it was ten years ago this Spring that I sanctified you both in Holy Matrimony in our Mother Church. And you two have been good attenders at Mass and your eight children have all been Baptized in the Holy Faith.”
He paused and looked a little confused. He started counting on his fingers. Then he looked at the two of them with a countenance of Holy Rage!
“Only Eight leanaí? What Devil’s work have you been up to?”
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On the subject of clerical jokes, an Anglican curate was due to preach a sermon on sin at the next Sunday service but realised he had no practical experience of the subject. He asked his supervising Vicar for some advice and it was suggested that the curate should visit the red light district in town to remedy this state of affairs.
The curate removed his dog collar donned his sports jacket and off to town he went. He soon found a reasonably god looking girl touting for business, she helped him overcome his shyness,they agreed a fee and off they went to her room.
When they had done the business, the young curate was feeling particularly proud of himself and said "I bet you would never guess that I`m a curate , would you"
She replied "What, with balls like that, I thought you were a canon"
 
Loxuru said:
Her character from 'the she-wolf of the SS', is said to be loosely based on Ilse Koch. Actually, Koch and her husband made it so terrible when in charge in concentration camp Buchenwald, that they were arrested during the war, and he was executed.

Concerning 'the harem keeper of the sheik', in those years, with the oil crisis of 1973 still in mind, Arab sheiks were a very fancy subject, including myths and urban legends of young women being abducted by white slave traders, to serve in a harem.
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And Ilse was hung by the british.
 
phlebas said:
Freeman Dyson

www.mainepublic.org

Renowned Mathematician And Physicist Freeman Dyson Has Died At Age 96

Freeman Dyson, renowned scientist and scholar, has died at 96, according to his daughter Mia.The British-born scientist and professor emeritus spent much…
www.mainepublic.org www.mainepublic.org

To be honest I thought he was already dead!
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Well, you beat me to it.
Here is the obituary from the NYTimes. He was certainly a genius, and he certainly had clever ideas.
The climate deniers here will like "I have no idea whether the world is warming up or not, but those models aren't worth anything" (it is worth noting that QED is a mathematical model, albeit one backed by evidence, and it is valid only approximately, when the energy isn't too high).
On his war work, I recall his saying how depressed he was when Bomber Command proposed making the escape hatches on bombers smaller so the airmen would have more incentive to "press home attacks".
The "Dyson sphere", to harness the energy of the sun for human use via a giant contraption in space, featured in the angst about "Tabby's Star" (named after a female astronomer) the output of which varies up to 20%. Some people thought it was evidence an advanced alien civilization had built a "Dyson sphere".
The world is poorer when clever people don't think outside the box, as long as they are honest enough to admit they are speculating when they are. He was honest about that.
 

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Dyson helped dream up Project Orion, which is still the only space drive we could build right now that would put the entire solar system within travel times of days and weeks instead of months and years.

It also still looks batshit crazy.

 
Frank Petrexa said:
Got it. This guy sounds like the re-incarnation of the former humor columnist for Nature, David Jones, whose company was named Dreadco. Maybe he ought to talk to Elon Musk.
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According to a quick-and-dirty search I just did Dyson and Musk never met. But I’m certain that the latter knew all about the former. ;)
 
Belatedly, I've only heard today -
Edward Kamau Brathwaite -
a giant of Caribbean poetry

'To read Kamau Brathwaite is to enter into an entire world of
human histories and natural histories,
beautiful landscapes and their destruction,
children's street songs, high lyricism,
court documents, personal letters,
literary criticism, sacred rites, eroticism,
violence, the dead and the undead,
confession and reportage,
an epic of one man (containing multitudes)
in the African diaspora.
Brathwaite's world even has its own orthogrphy and typography,
demanding total attention to the poem,
forbidding casual glances.'

www.theguardian.com

Edward Kamau Brathwaite obituary

Poet and academic who aimed to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry to celebrate the region’s voices and language
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

 
Frank Petrexa said:
The climate deniers here will like "I have no idea whether the world is warming up or not, but those models aren't worth anything" (it is worth noting that QED is a mathematical model, albeit one backed by evidence, and it is valid only approximately, when the energy isn't too high).
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Of course, Dyson was not a "climate denier," he believed in anthropogenic climate change as do I. But I am disappointed by your introduction of the topic with a pejorative expression like that. That is indeed what Dyson argued against all his life. The "I am certain and you are an idiot (or evil) for disagreeing" attitude of some today ruins the search for knowledge and truth. One of the things I most admired Dyson for (besides his remarkable mathematical ability) was his realization that we learn by NOT closing our minds. For example, he condemned equally some religious for wanting to control the thought of scientists (e.g. Galileo, Darwin) with some scientifics who want to control the thoughts of the religious. In all these modern, black or white disputes where people talk past each other, I urge the advice of Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
Of course, Dyson was not a "climate denier," he believed in anthropogenic climate change as do I. But I am disappointed by your introduction of the topic with a pejorative expression like that. That is indeed what Dyson argued against all his life. The "I am certain and you are an idiot (or evil) for disagreeing" attitude of some today ruins the search for knowledge and truth. One of the things I most admired Dyson for (besides his remarkable mathematical ability) was his realization that we learn by NOT closing our minds. For example, he condemned equally some religious for wanting to control the thought of scientists (e.g. Galileo, Darwin) with some scientifics who want to control the thoughts of the religious. In all these modern, black or white disputes where people talk past each other, I urge the advice of Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
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Let's put it this way. Freeman Dyson's name appears prominently on websites of groups who push doubt (the basic thesis is that the world may be warming up, but it could be natural and no real action is required, even as a precaution, because any action will destroy the economy). I never heard him distance himself from that view (although he may have and I didn't read about it). The kinds of disasters (floods, droughts, the Australian fires) we have been seeing can be traced probabilistically to climate change. The melting at both poles is empirically documented and very real. So are increasing ocean temperatures and sea levels. Carbon dioxide and methane are "greenhouse" gases--they do heat the atmosphere, and that is an empirical fact. To argue that the jury is still out and we should be doing nothing is in my view disappointing. For the record, I own stock in Chevron (an oil company) and Schlumberger (an oil field servicer). I support "fracking" because I think it displaces "dirtier" kinds of oil (from the Canadian tar sands and the "heavy" Venezuelan sources). I think there is a need for a bridge between today and a "renewable" future, and oil and gas are a better one than coal. I also think that it is a practical matter. The oil is going to run out some day. The Middle East is a tragedy. I am not one to put all the blame on the West--far from it--but the arms would be fewer and the wars would be far less frequent and violent if there were no oil there and therefore no Western "interest" and income to fund armies and buy off people so they won't object to oligarchs. To not set goals (like mileage requirements) and therefore give companies incentives to innovate to decrease dependence on fossil fuels is to court disaster. Energy efficiency should be subsidized and encouraged (targets without mandating specific technologies). If we can reduce or keep constant our energy use while meeting our needs we will beat the tyranny of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that no matter where we get our energy increasing use of it will mean increasing waste heat and increasing warming. I don't think that is a "black and white" position. To not recognize a problem is closed-minded (a pejorative frequently hurled at opponents by groups which invoke Dyson's name) in my view, not the other way around. The longer we wait to get started, the harder it will be to deal with and the more damage we will do to our economies. I do not think that is a "black and white" position. It is also not necessarily a "Green New Deal". It is common sense.
 
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If anyone is interested.

Freeman Dyson Takes on the Climate Establishment

Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has been roundly criticized for insisting global warming is not an urgent problem, with many climate scientists dismissing him as woefully ill-informed. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Dyson explains his iconoclastic views and why he believes they...
e360.yale.edu e360.yale.edu
I would say only two things. One is that experiments have been done which call into question whether CO2 can just go up indefinitely and still be good for plants.
The second is that there are very definitely industrial interests who are pushing money at people who say these kinds of things (not at Dyson--there is no evidence of that) and those folks don't care whether they are right or not. To say that people who worry about climate change are biased and greedy and those who do not have no vested interest in denying its effects is naive at best and dishonest at worst.
 
Eulalia said:
Belatedly, I've only heard today -
Edward Kamau Brathwaite -
a giant of Caribbean poetry

'To read Kamau Brathwaite is to enter into an entire world of
human histories and natural histories,
beautiful landscapes and their destruction,
children's street songs, high lyricism,
court documents, personal letters,
literary criticism, sacred rites, eroticism,
violence, the dead and the undead,
confession and reportage,
an epic of one man (containing multitudes)
in the African diaspora.
Brathwaite's world even has its own orthogrphy and typography,
demanding total attention to the poem,
forbidding casual glances.'

www.theguardian.com

Edward Kamau Brathwaite obituary

Poet and academic who aimed to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry to celebrate the region’s voices and language
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

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I grew up thinking this was limbo:
16889802438_80b42d675d_c.jpg Jan Brueghel The Elder and Hans Rottenhammer - Christ in Limbo, 1597
Note how Jesus is pressin' the flesh. Looks like a Dem candidate hours before super Tursday!
 
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