[playboy] why a rabbit?

If you were to pull off a train robbery, would you only make off with a load of Playboy cushions?

The attack happened in the northern suburbs of Marseille, the regional newspaper La Provence reports. [T]he thieves blocked the track with sleepers, causing the 700m (760-yard) train to screech to a halt, and forced open a number of containers.

Apart from the Playboy cushions, police said it was not clear what else was taken. The train driver was not harmed.

Right. Playboy cushions.

Which brings us to the next question - why a bunny? Why not a kitten or a lamb or a chicken? Wiki doesn't help:

They wore a costume called a bunny suit inspired by the tuxedo-wearing Playboy rabbit mascot, consisting of a corset, bunny ears, a collar, cuffs, and a fluffy cottontail.

Finally I think I have it: Hugh Hefner, the creator of the 'Playboy' magazine, once explained:

'I selected a rabbit as the symbol for the magazine because of the humorous sexual connotation, and because he offered an image that was frisky and playful. I put him in a tuxedo to add the idea of sophistication. there was another editorial consideration, too. since both 'the New Yorker' and 'Esquire' use men as their symbols, I felt the rabbit would be distinctive; and the notion of a rabbit dressed up in formal evening attire struck me as charming, amusing and right.'

The first sketch of the bunny

Added Art Paul, the magazine's first art director:

'If I'd had any idea how important that little rabbit was going to be, I probably would have redrawn him a dozen times to make certain I was doing him justice, and I suppose none of those versions would have turned out as well as the original. as it was, I did one drawing and that was it. I probably spent all of half an hour on it.'

Well, if it's good enough for Gloria Steinem, it must be OK.

Next week we'll look at the time I went undercover to a brewery to expose the shenanigans going on in the brewing industry and how I sampled twenty bordellos to expose the vice and corruption endemic in that industry.

Hands on, primary source reporting always carries more authority, don't you feel?

[shark attack] what did he expect

The KNBC-TV story, as reported, is pretty rambling and i have no link as it was e-mailed to me:

Dr. Dave Martin, a 66-year-old retired veterinarian, [was one of a] group of nine swimmers [who] entered the water near Fletcher Cove, off San Diego, in an area known as Table Tops, at about 7 a.m. for a morning ocean swim, according to Lt. Mike Cea of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. They swam northward, and while they were swimming, Martin was attacked by a shark.

Because of the form of the attack and Martin's wounds, the shark was almost certainly a white shark, according to Prof. Richard Rosenblatt, a shark expert at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla. He estimated the fish to be 12 to 17 feet long.

Witness said that Martin was lifted from the water by the shark. White sharks normally feed on seals, attacking from below with a powerful bite. The white shark ranges from north of San Francisco to the Gulf of California, so it is not unusual for them to be in the San Diego area.

Piecing it together, it seems the shark might have mistaken him for a seal and the fact that it bit him, harried him then let him go suggests it realized its mistake and then went off for seals. I should have thought the unusual presence of sea-lions in the area would have given them pause before they swam out but no - they were part of a triathlon club and seemed to know the ropes.

Here is an article on "Shark Dives" in the San Diego area which shows that the possibility of sharks in the area is at least substantial. Another thing which puzzles me is the board riders who went out the next day after the attack. Here is a list of sharks indigenous to the waters off California - another reason it didn't seem too bright an idea to venture out unprotected.

Finally is the nonchalant [or was it tongue in cheek] comment by one blogger:

San Diego beaches will probably be not-so-popular for a while.

For a while.

Yes.

[dating easter] why the discrepancy

The interestingly [and today fittingly] named, newly 23 year old Oestrebunny asked about the Western and Eastern discrepancies in the dating of Easter, as we know it, known as Computus.

Phew - where to begin researching? I came up with this:

The Christian Easter is tied in with the Jewish Pesach or Passover.

The Passover itself is complicated and ties in with the Metonic cycle of years, which involve the Golden Numbers 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19.

From this come calculations for the Jewish calendar year - the Hebrew Pesach is determined in the Old Testament to begin on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nisan.

Almost from the very beginning of the existence of the Christian Church, the issue presented variations. Although the New Testament relates these events to the Jewish Passover, the details of this relationship are not clear.

On the one hand, the tradition of the synoptic gospels identifies the Lord's last supper as a passover meal, placing the death of the Lord on the day after Passover. On the other hand, the tradition of the Gospel of St. John situates the death of the Lord at the very hour the paschal lambs were sacrificed on the day of Passover itself.

In practice, one group were celebrating it on any day of the week [wherever the Jewish mid-Nisan fell] and they became known as the Quartodecimanists. The other was putting it on the Sunday after Passover.

The First Ecumenical Council convened at Nicaea in 325 took up the issue. It determined that Pascha should be celebrated on the Sunday which follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox-the actual beginning of spring.

There was a strong feeling in some quarters that the Christian tradition should not tie in with the Jewish calendar.

Also, there was the question of determining the calendar. In the East, the 19-year cycle was eventually adopted, whereas in the West an 84-year cycle. The use of two different paschal cycles inevitably gave way to differences between the Eastern and Western Churches regarding the observance of Pascha.

An event I'm proud to relate concerns the Synod of Whitby - held at Whitby Abbey which I have visited many, many times [it being close to my home], in which Northumbria determined the date of Easter eventually adopted by the English [despite the ridiculous assertion in the Wiki article that Bede's account is an exaggeration].

A further cause for these differences was the adoption by the Western Church of the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th century. This took place in order to adjust the discrepancy by then observed between the paschal cycle approach to calculating Pascha and the available astronomical data.

Therefore, in practical terms, the invariable date of the vernal equinox is taken by the Orthodox church to be April 3 in our current calendar (but March 21 on the Julian Calendar).

To this blogger, except that it is celebrated vaguely round the spring equinox, it hardly matters, as long as it is celebrated. The act of excommunicating someone for having the incorrect day:

Bishop Victor I of Rome, excommunicated the Quartodecimans (then apparently led by Polycrates of Ephesus) for not adhering to the Paschal practices of the majority of Christians.

... is one of the major reasons I'm not Roman Catholic though I deeply respect them for keeping the light of Christianity alive under its current assault these days. Sisu's series of posts on the Pope, preceding this one, was informative and moving.

Personally I like the two Easters plus the [actual] Oestrebunny angle with the rabbits and eggs but I also like the kulich and all that tradition, as well as the midnight vigil.

It all seems to give a nice balance of gravitas and fun. After all, the Resurrection is joyful by definition, not gloomy. Now I'm off for some tea and kulich.

Have a joyful day - already the sun has burst out.

[thought for the day] saturday evening

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

[Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938]


... unless, of course, you want to call the Lizard Queen. If she does not manage the nomination, I feel we should all call her, on successive nights, at 3.a.m., on a roster basis, to offer our condolences.

3 a.m. is also the time my U.S. readers start to overtake the U.K. readers and are roughly equal in proportion:


3 a.m. is also a nice time for cuddling your one and only:


... or when you stare, alone, into the log fire, with that glass of cheer in your hand:


... or when you get over to Grendel's place to watch this classic clip:


... or when the Morlocks come for you:


The possibilities are endless.

[housekeeping] some celebratory notes

There was a Bunny birthday recently and I missed it. Oh woe. There was also a Rob birthday and I missed it. Oh double woe.

I nearly missed my father's day of demise [April 26th] but my header at least is a memorial in itself. Well I didn't miss it but got round to posting about it late. Hope the party was good up there, Dad.

Glimmer of light in that other matter which shall remain cryptic as I don't wish to think of it on this happy occasion.

Which leads to the main dish of the day - Easter and the renewal. This is the day we're now coming into when He rose from the dead and conquered death:

Христос Воскрес. Воистину Воскрес!

People of an Orthodox ilk round this neck of the woods are at the local Khram or Sobor and doing the all-night candle vigil.

Call me a choker but I think I'll just blog on the matter and do my own little vigil.

Missed the whole painted egg show this time round but do have the kulich [pictured below]. This is very light bread with icing on top and yummy with butter.

So young lady and family have gone without me as I crashed six hours ago and just woke up. Let me just check the answer machine - hmmm, nothing. They might have forgotten me. Such is life.

Just check the e-mail. Yo - she wrote. That's nice but it was hours ago.

Orthodox Kulich [below] is pretty yummy but has no preservatives or chemicals of any kind and thus is only good for the one day, after which it dries up very quickly. It's their equivalent of the hot cross bun.

[national identity] time the namby-pambyness stopped

This is not a post about power plugs but power plugs do help us understand national mentalities.

Above is the British standard and the plug itself is a work of art. Huge, square and chunky, with beefy pins set perpendicularly to the long, overkill-design earth pin, the designers would say, "Well, it's electricity, init, mate? Can't muck about with electricity, can we?"

Note the two tone, partly protected live pins as well.

The British mentality is to fret over the least thing, to over-legislate to circumvent the direst imaginngs and to take pleasures tepidly, for fear of exciting the senses. Take something like a political demonstration, for example. The least sign of precipitation, the chance of leaves on the line or heaven forbid, even the wrong leaves and that's it, matey. No demo.

Lord Somber has kindly despatched a copy of a Pajamas article on this matter:

The news this week that authorities in the English city of Bradford had apparently banned a St. George’s Day parade by schoolchildren because it might offend local Muslims appeared at first sight to be yet another example of timid British officialdom caving in to the demands of extremists.

The parade story was reported by several UK newspapers, and picked up by the blogosphere. The response was predictable ... but because Pajamas asked me to write about the story I spent some time reading the various reports in detail, and particularly reports from Bradford’s local media. And a rather different picture of events emerged.

Organizers had been planning the event with a local police team for some months, but last week the city council, citing police advice from higher up, said the event could not go ahead as planned because of “health and safety” concerns. In true Hillary Clinton fashion, they added that the decision had been taken “in the interests of the children.”

What appears far more likely — and what the parade organizers are saying — is that senior police officers failed to communicate with their colleagues who were involved in planning the event, and when they learned of the proposed route they became concerned that troublemakers, whether Muslim extremists or members of far-right groups, might have taken advantage of the parade to stir up trouble.

But if the police really feared violence they should have supervised the parade in sufficient strength to ensure that they were able to deal with it. Instead they gave in — not to extremism, and not even to the threat of extremism, but to the mere notion of extremism

The irony, of course, is that one of the aims of the event was to bring young people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds together, with the aim of eradicating the distrust that leads to the kind of trouble the police apparently feared.

There’s a legitimate debate going on in Britain about the failure of Muslims and other immigrants to assimilate, but it’s not helped by the authorities, or the media, looking for problems where they don’t exist.

At the end of a report on Wednesday’s St. George’s Day celebrations, the BBC News website invited the public to send in photos and video of events — street parties, fancy dress parades, and the like — with the following disclaimer: “Do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.”

The more gung-ho Americans would raise an eyebrow at this at the very least - at least those of a certain mentality would. However I think the same mollycoddling pc-ishness is at large over there. If you see a potential problem float past on the wind, rush out and nail it down in a plethora of legislation.

You have to wonder about the short-sightedness. Whether or not Muslims have any intention of "assimilating", to include Muslim youth in the 2000 schoolkids marching on St. George's day would have been a filip at the least, for this goal.

But to cancel the march - well that also cancels any possibility of progress, let alone robbing the marchers of the moral high ground where any attack would have been roundly condemned by all communities.

I noticed one of the commenters speak of multi-culturalism but I beg to differ. Take Australia, for example which, despite its claims, is not truly multi-cultural - it is a broadened culture which is still recognizably Australian. Despite British supposed inability to find cultural identity these days, this is surely rubbish. Of course there is a recognizably British tradition and English tradition which transcends the current nationality issue.

It's what parents in the colonies sent their kids to boarding schools to experience and what millions of visitors each year also come to experience. It includes St. George, tea, fish 'n chips and Trafalgar Square, Oxford and Cambridge, to name some things and requires no apology from any Brit of whatever hue.