The Italian Baroque composer Isabella Leonarda was born in 1620. Here is her Twelfth Sonata in D Minor for Violin:
German Baroque composer Sebastian Knupfer was born in 1633. Here is his Was Mein Gott Will, das G’Scheh Allzeit:
Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was born in 1729. The great chemist John Dalton was born in 1766. Archaeologist Zelia Nuttall was born in 1857. Social worker Jane Addams was born in 1860. Composer Walford Davies was born in 1869. Here is his Solemn Melody:
Physicist Edward Victor Appleton was born in 1892. The great biochemist Luis Federico Leloir was born in 1906. And Christopher Nolan was born in 1965—not to be mistaken with Christopher Nolan and Chris Nolan.
Actor Jane Curtin is 66 today. Artist Ali Divandari 56. And comedian Jeff Foxworthy is 55.
But there are two other birthdays that I want to point out because I dislike them both so much. First is Carly Fiorina who is 59. I don’t dislike her simply because she got paid huge amounts of money to almost destroy Hewlett-Packard. That’s pretty typical and it is one of the reasons everyone should know that we live in a class society. People like her get paid well not because they are brilliant but simply because they are the sort of people who get paid really well. The reason I most dislike her is that I’ve seen her on political talk shows and she doesn’t know anything about business or economics. All I’ve ever heard from her is typical Very Serious statements that are simply false.
The other person is Chris Christie who is 51, the truly vile governor of New Jersey. The only reason the man wins elections is because he has the whole New Jersey rudeness thing down. So he’s great at signaling to the voters that he’s one of them. And talk about your “idiot America,” the people vote for him despite the fact that pretty much everything he stands for goes against what the people of New Jersey believe in. But in America, style matters far more than substance. I hope he goes away very soon, even though there are tons of assholes just like him.
The day, however, belongs to former Pink Floyd frontman, Roger Waters who is 70 today. I am a fan, although he seems to be a fairly terrible human being. Here he is doing “Comfortably Numb”:
Happy birthday Roger Waters!
