Wednesday: Hili dialogue

48 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

1. I learned a new word this week:

   When a vessel as heavy as the Singapore-flagged Dali collides with such force …

   Allision: when a mobile entity (e.g. boat) hits an immobile one (pier, bridge). Distinguished from:

   Collision: when two mobile entities hit each other.

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   1. In case anyone missed it :

      allision vs. collision

      Nice call Coel! 😉

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      1. So what’s a ‘coalition’? Is it when things just run into other things, whether stationary or not, and everything becomes an irreparable mess?

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   2. That’s the second new word I learned this week! The first was “empurple.” At first, I thought it was a joke word, but it’s not. I like the word so much that I plan to use it as often as I can.

      On an unrelated note, my face empurpled when I saw Trump was touting a BIBLE adorned with the US FLAG.

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      1. And so the vocabulary embiggens.

         (Thank you, The Simpsons writers.)

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         1. They are all perfectly cromulent words.

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            1. XD

   3. I did a quick search in Merriam-Webster and could not find a verb form of allision (and my ignorant web browser just put a red squiggly line under “allision).

      So, two moving ships can collide in a collision, but one moving ship and one stationary ship cannot allide in an allision.

      We need to rectify this omission.

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2. “Readership continues to drop, at least judging by comments and views, and this is depressing.”

   No no no no no … not at all .. the appeal is becoming more selective :

   youtu.be/UZ6JxAgmxXg?si=xE4NxHHYj_CEN-41

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   1. I read every single article, and virtually all of the comments.

      I rarely comment of the biology or free will articles, only because I have little useful to add.

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3. That paella looks great. I imagine that all the spices and flavors are well melded in those large cooking pans. Funny what we remember as out of the way great dishes: I recall a simple roast beef sub sandwich from a hole in the wall roadside place in Enfield, CT. Our (now late) mutual college friend, Kenny King, took me there somewhere across the river from his parents’ house. But I also recall as memorable a tuna sub from urban Elsie’s Deli that I enjoyed from the right field bleachers at Fenway Park during a twi-night double header. These meals were 50 years ago.

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   1. I read the articles on this website almost every day and find the range and content remarkable even those which are above my understanding. The responding posts are always enlightening and mostly polite which is in itself testimony to our host. The Auschwitz Memorial , particularly now is a constant reminder that whilst we may forgive we should not forget and in this vein Jim of your “dish” memories it reminded me of this:-
      I remember a dish of mostly I think goat at a small bar restaurant not far from the Nato Air Missile Firing Installation. The meal was very good together with the company and local ouzo but what I remember most was that a group of German Air crew arrived and sat at a table. The barman owner studiously ignored them completely even when they asked for service but treated us (RAF) like royalty and in the end the Germans left. I asked one of our Greek airman accompanying us what the problem was and he explained that during WWII German paratroopers attacked his village during the assault on the island and killed many of his friends and family and he would not forget. This was Crete in 1970, the barman had a long memory.
      I have never forgotten him and this meal.

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   2. That paella joint looks wonderful. If I were to happen upon it unaware I would definitely stop. I’ve got to get a giant carbon steel paella pan like those.

      I once lived not more than 1/2 a mile from a joint that epitomized “hole in the wall.” It was a small, dumpy place attached to a gas station. They did seafood, everything seasonal and fresh. Scallops, lobster, pollack, red snapper, etc., always prepared perfectly. Anytime the doors were open it was packed shoulder to shoulder. The food was consistently fantastic, top 3-4 for seafood in my life and that’s including fine dining places.

      Funny thing was, the owner was fairly young and notoriously grumpy. Always there, always working his butt off making sure everything was proper, but always with a frown. And the customer was definitely not always right.

      To my near despair the place closed down within a few years of me finding it. Very sudden, no warning. The place was doing very good business, but I don’t think the guy was enjoying himself and he probably just burned out. A few months later I came across him in the plumbing section of a Home Depot with an apron on helping customers. He actually had a smile on his face.

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      1. Great story! Sometimes our talents don’t align with what will make us happy.

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4. On this day:
   1309 – Pope Clement V imposes excommunication and interdiction on Venice, and a general prohibition of all commercial intercourse with Venice, which had seized Ferrara, a papal fiefdom. [Excommunicated a city?!]

   1625 – Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France. [I’ll bet the French were overjoyed…]

   1794 – The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates.

   1836 – Texas Revolution: On the orders of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican Army massacres 342 Texian Army POWs at Goliad, Texas.

   1866 – President of the United States of America Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His veto is overridden by Congress and the bill passes into law on April 9. [The Act was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the American Civil War, to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to the United States.]

   1871 – The first international rugby football match, when Scotland defeats England in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.

   1884 – A mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States attacks members of a jury which had returned a verdict of manslaughter in what was seen as a clear case of murder; over the next few days the mob would riot and eventually destroy the courthouse.

   1886 – Geronimo, Apache warrior, surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.

   1915 – Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain for the rest of her life.

   1942 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany and Vichy France begin the deportation of 65,000 Jews from Drancy internment camp to German extermination camps.

   1945 – World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan’s ports and waterways begins. Argentina declares war on the Axis Powers. [Yup, an actual operation designed to starve the Japanese into surrender. Yet some in the US have the nerve to criticise Israel for a situation in Gaza that is not deliberate. Shocking hypocrisy.]

   1964 – The Good Friday earthquake, the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.

   1977 – Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). Sixty-one survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the deadliest aviation accident in history.

   1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.

   1999 – Kosovo War: An American Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk is shot down by a Yugoslav Army SAM, the first and only Nighthawk to be lost in combat.

   2002 – Passover massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people at a Passover seder in Netanya, Israel.

   2004 – HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander-class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.

   2016 – A suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, Lahore claims over 70 lives and leaves almost 300 others injured. The target of the bombing are Christians celebrating Easter.

   2023 – Seven people, including the perpetrator, are killed in a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. [The killer was a transman (i.e., a natal female) and a former student of the school.]

   Births:
   1724 – Jane Colden, American botanist and author (d. 1766). [Described as the “first botanist of her sex in her country”* by Asa Gray in 1843. Although not acknowledged in contemporary botanical publications, she wrote a number of letters resulting in botanist John Ellis writing to Carl Linnaeus of her work applying the Linnaean system of plant identification to American flora, for which botanist Peter Collinson stated “she deserves to be celebrated”. *In fact, others, including Maria Sibylla Merian and Catherine Jérémie, preceded her.]

   1824 – Virginia Minor, American women’s suffrage activist (d. 1894).

   1845 – Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923).

   1847 – Otto Wallach, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931).

   1854 – Giovanni Battista Grassi, Italian physician, zoologist, and entomologist (d. 1925). [His works in malaria remain a lasting controversy in the history of Nobel Prizes, because a British army surgeon Ronald Ross, who discovered the transmission of malarial parasite in birds was given the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But Grassi, who demonstrated the complete route of transmission of human Plasmodium, and correctly identified the types of malarial parasite as well as the mosquito vector, Anopheles claviger, was denied. His first major research on the taxonomy and biology of termites earned him the Royal Society’s Darwin Medal in 1896.]

   1857 – Karl Pearson, English mathematician, eugenicist, and academic (d. 1936).

   1862 – Jelena Dimitrijević, Serbian short story writer, novelist, poet, traveller, social worker, feminist and polyglot (d. 1945).

   1863 – Henry Royce, English engineer and businessman, founded Rolls-Royce Limited (d. 1933).

   1878 – Kathleen Scott, British sculptor (d. 1947).

   1886 – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German-American architect, designed IBM Plaza and Seagram Building (d. 1969).

   1899 – Gloria Swanson, American actress and producer (d. 1983).

   1905 – Elsie MacGill, Canadian-American author and engineer (d. 1980). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1911 – Veronika Tushnova, Russian poet and physician (d. 1965).

   1921 – Phil Chess, Polish-American record producer, co-founded Chess Records (d. 2016).

   1924 – Sarah Vaughan, American singer (d. 1990).

   1924 – Margaret K. Butler, American mathematician and computer programmer (d. 2013).

   1932 – Junior Parker, American singer and harmonica player (d. 1971).

   1935 – Julian Glover, English actor.

   1942 – Michael York, English actor.

   1950 – Tony Banks, English keyboardist and songwriter.

   1955 – Susan Neiman, American-German philosopher and author.

   1962 – John O’Farrell, English journalist and author.

   1969 – Mariah Carey, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress.

   1988 – Holliday Grainger, English actress.

   A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live. (Lao Tzu):
   1848 – Gabriel Bibron, French zoologist and herpetologist (b. 1805).

   1864 – Jean-Jacques Ampère, French philologist and academic (b. 1800).

   1878 – George Gilbert Scott, English architect, designed the Albert Memorial and St Mary’s Cathedral (b. 1811).

   1900 – Joseph A. Campbell, American businessman, founded the Campbell Soup Company (b. 1817).

   1910 – Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, Swiss-American ichthyologist, zoologist, and engineer (b. 1835). [His father founded the museum of natural history at Harvard.]

   1931 – Arnold Bennett, English author and playwright (b. 1867).

   1968 – Yuri Gagarin, Russian colonel, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1934).

   1977 – Shirley Graham Du Bois, American author, playwright, and composer (b. 1896).

   1977 – Diana Hyland, American actress (b. 1936).

   1994 – Elisabeth Schmid, German archaeologist and osteologist (b. 1912).

   1997 – Ella Maillart, Swiss skier, sailor, field hockey player, and photographer (b. 1903). [And adventurer, she travelled widely.]

   2000 – Ian Dury, English singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1942). [What a waste.]

   2002 – Milton Berle, American comedian and actor (b. 1908).

   2002 – Dudley Moore, English actor (b. 1935).

   2002 – Billy Wilder, Austrian-born American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1906).

   2007 – Nancy Adams, New Zealand botanist and illustrator (b. 1926).

   2012 – Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist and feminist (b. 1929).

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   1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from the excellent The Attagirls X/Twitter account]

      Woman of the Day engineer Elsie MacGill born OTD 1905 in Vancouver, the first woman in the world to earn an aeronautical engineering degree, the first in Canada to achieve a degree in electrical engineering, and the first woman aircraft designer in the world. Her work on aircraft production was vital to the Allies in WW2. She was known as the Queen of the Hurricanes.

      Elsie, daughter of a lawyer and the pioneering suffragist and judge Helen MacGill, caused a stir when she enrolled at the University of Toronto’s School of Practical Science to study electrical engineering. No woman had been admitted before.

      Graduating in 1927, she found work as a mechanical engineer with an automobile company in Pontiac, Michigan, and when it diversified into aircraft production, she studied aeronautics at the University of Michigan – the first woman to do so.

      Elsie completed her master’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1929 making her the first woman aeronautical engineer in the world. The same year, she was diagnosed with polio and doctors told her that she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Career cut short then, right? No. Temporarily confined to a wheelchair, Elsie combined a physiotherapy regime with writing magazine articles about planes and aviation in order to pay her medical bills and painstakingly learned to walk again with two strong metal canes.

      As soon as she could, she continued postgrad studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – would it surprise you to know she was the only woman on the course that time too? – and landed a job with an aircraft manufacturer in Quebec at a time when the Great Depression was in full swing and jobs were scarce. Polio did not stop Elsie from going up on dangerous test flights to monitor the performance of her designs. “Although I never learned to fly myself, I accompanied the pilots on all test flights – even the dangerous first flight – of any aircraft I worked on.”

      In 1938, Elsie became the chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car & Foundry (Can Car) in Fort William, Ontario – now Thunder Bay – and the first woman member of the Engineering Institute of Canada. This proved to be crucial to the Allies in WW2.

      Elsie completely re-engineered a new plane, the Maple Leaf II Trainer, and did so at impressive speed, making her the first woman aircraft designer in the world. Building on that experience, she oversaw the complete retooling of the Can Car plant and geared it up for mass production of the Hawker Hurricane. In essence, she pioneered a new system whereby aircraft parts were machined separately – making them completely interchangeable on a like-for-like basis – and only then assembled as a plane. Production time reduced significantly. Mechanics could repair planes more quickly. Gamechanger.

      In the early years of WW2, fighter planes were in short supply. The Battle of Britain was raging and Thunder Bay, a small northern Ontario town, produced a staggering 1,500 Hawker Hurricanes during the war when they were needed most.

      Elsie later designed and built a winterised version of the Hurricane with skis and de-icing equipment – the first winterised high-speed attack aircraft – which was invaluable to the Russian war effort at the Eastern Front. A 1942 issue of True Comics dubbed her “Queen of the Hurricanes”.

      Post-WW2, Elsie founded her own successful consulting engineering company and in keeping with her mother’s principles, was active in women’s rights issues such as paid maternity leave and the liberalisation of abortion laws. She was a member of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1967.

      “I have received many engineering awards, but I hope I will also be remembered as an advocate for the rights of women and children.”

      https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1772888409066877291

      Wikipedia adds:
      In 1946, she became the first woman to serve as Technical Adviser for International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), where she helped to draft International Air Worthiness regulations for the design and production of commercial aircraft. In 1947 she became the chairman of the United Nations Stress Analysis Committee, the first woman ever to chair a U.N. committee.

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      1. Wonderful and inspiring story of Elsie MacGill. She exhibited an example of Lao Tzu’s inner courage. These attagirl stories are so important. I seem to recall that a number of engineering schools in the U.S. were very late to admit women. Even in the sciences, the William and Mary physics building, designed and built in the early 60’s, had women’s rest rooms only on two of its four floors: the first and second where there were also classrooms. The basement and third floor both of which only housed faculty in labs and offices apparently required only men’s restrooms in the 1960’s architectural requirements. If I recall correctly….

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5. Thanks for the video of Ilya Malinin’s incredible long skate at the World’s this past weekend. I had forgotten about it being on. Unbelieveable!

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   1. In the intro. to the amazing performance by Ilia Malinin it says he performed 6 quad. axels, but that is inaccurate. He performed 6 quad. jumps, one of which (and the hardest because it involves an extra half rotation) was a quad. axel. Skaters are not allowed to repeat the same jump or jump combination in a single performance.

      Men’s and women’s competition is almost all about the hardest jumps (highest points), but I’d encourage you to look in on ice dancing if you haven’t in awhile. It used to be pretty boring (and compulsory dances still are), but the free skates have become spectacular. If you haven’t looked at it, watch Chock & Bates at the same competition. At one point (about 2:52) Chock tumbles through Bates’ arms with her blade flying past his chin, neck and upper arm and there are a number of amazing lifts as well.

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6. I would like to suggest a caption for the image of dRUMPf and LLC Greenwood. ” A One-Trick-Phony {Greatest yet most-persecuted business man ever!} meeting with a One-Trick-Pony (Duhhh…Welp, AT LEAST AH KNOW A’HM FREE…). “

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7. I believe the “credible high-level official” refers to Jack Lew, US ambassador to Israel and former Treasury Secretary. (I worked for him at Treasury way back when – a very smart, nice, and honorable man.)

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8. I wonder if Trump is paying royalties for his Bible. I believe the British crown still holds the copyright for the Authorized Version (KJV) through the Cambridge University Press even after 400 years.

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   1. According to Wikipedia:

      The Authorized Version is in the public domain in most of the world. In the United Kingdom, the right to print, publish and distribute it is a royal prerogative and the Crown licenses publishers to reproduce it under letters patent.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version#Copyright_status

      Because the protection in the UK is under royal prerogative, and not copyright law, it is protected in perpetuity because royal prerogative doesn’t have a time limit in the way that copyright does.

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9. why did it abstain from the Security Council vote yesterday? I’m pretty sure it’s for US presidential politics. Biden wants to appear sympathetic to Palestinians to win the left wing no-nothings.
   BTW “But it loos as if they’ll lose” – typo in mifepristone piece.

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10. I, too, read the reports that Israel has complied with international law in prosecuting the war in Gaza, but I was disappointed in how coverage of that fact was overshadowed by coverage claiming the opposite. Everybody hates Israel, of course, but some of the blame for the distorted coverage goes to the Biden administration itself. According to many statements by the administration, Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, and the right and obligation to retrieve the hostages, and the right to end Hamas’s capacity to wage war. But out of the other side of its face, the administration tells Israel that it must refrain from doing what is necessary to achieve those goals. Right now, when Israel needs moral leadership from the United States more than ever—in order to help them finish the job— the U.S. message has become a muddle.

    I haven’t read anyone in the media commenting that the best way to open the gates to humanitarian aid is to eliminate Hamas.

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    1. Imagine if the Biden Administration had publicized its report that Israel has been complying with its instructions about how to wage armed conflict. Then, the next time the Administration needed to throw Israel under the bus for domestic political reasons, it would raise concerns that the Administration was not being fully sincere. The bus-throwing might not yield the necessary dividend in votes.

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11. Everyone is practicing eugenics, especially pregnant women who abstain from alcohol.

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    1. That article, “When Everything is Eugenics, Nothing Is,” is well worth reading.

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       1. It’s not a long article, either, and quite reasonable.

          Many years ago I made the “mistake” of referring to the condition of a friend’s autistic child as a disability. I was quickly corrected and admonished to use the term “different.” Rather than being coerced into using a euphemism, I stopped referring to his child at all.

          (For a variety of other reasons — his pro-gun position, his willful confusion about what “atheist” means, his stance against GMO-based foods — I eventually ended the friendship, so it’s no longer an issue.)

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          1. What did ‘atheist’ mean to him?

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             1. He aligned it with Soviet communism and the death of millions.

12. Why not make every day Whisky day!
    And, the see-through echinoderms are glorious.
    Thank you for the wee bits of good news.

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13. Whiskey, Manatees, and Paella? I like all of those. What a great day!

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14. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68580015
    This article explains how an old 19th century law could hand the anti-abortion groups a possibility to stop abortion nation wide. The Comstock Act.
    If I remember correctly is looks a lot like the Prohibition Act: not the consumption or production of alcohol was forbidden, but the transport of the stuff.

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15. Trump’s boast “the the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” implies that he does not endorse any others. Should that not cause some concern to his followers?

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16. This investigation relates to how Israel is blocking aid going into Gaza while not officially blocking aid.

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    1. Its also a bit hard to square claims that Israel in letting voluminous aid through with the sacking of Eylon Levy for representing to the UK government that Israel is letting basically all the aid through. While UK officials have been extremely polite in how they put this to the media they do seem to believe that Levy was essentially just lying to them in many of his representations.

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       1. IDF, COTGAT, other spokesmen for Israel, pictures of long queues of checked by Israel trucks waiting for delivery – all this shows that Levy just spoke the truth. Unless you think that they are all lying and that there is one huge conspiracy by the Israelis. I think sacking Eylon Levy for some words which were not too diplomatic (yes, about British politicians) was exceptionally shortsighted because he not only presented the truth about the situation in Gaza but did that perfectly.

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          1. How long do you think those long queue’s of trucks have been waiting there?

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             1. There are data about it. Sometimes for days. Check COTGAT’s reports. Easy done on X (Tweeter).

          2. I think trucks waiting for days is exactly what UK politicians don’t think is acceptable (given the state of famine in Gaza). Rumor has it that David Cameron is a few days or weeks ahead of the US in messaging, so the US telling Israel that the checked trucks will now need to be allowed into Gaza is probably due shortly.

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             1. These trucks are ALREADY CHECKED by Israelis and are waiting for distribution on the OTHER SIDE of Israeli checkpoint.

                There is no famine in Gaza. Even the prices of free humanitarian help stolen by Hamas and others and sold to Gazans without arms and possibility to get them free – as intended by donors – are now falling rapidly because there is so much food in Gaza. Only weak and poor people are going hungry because humanitarian help is falling into the hands of terrorists and bandits.

                But, of course, if your assumption is that all Israeli officials are liars and are in cahoot with each other, and all statements by Hamas and its ilk are Gospel there is no way any evidence will convince you.

          3. Well at least your rationalizing your support for this with the belief that this aid is not actually needed. I guess you agree then that, was there presently a famine in Gaza the aid should of course be immediately sent (even if that means the IDF telling Israeli’s they must leave the border zone). You can check back in with your conscience later when the scale of the famine becomes undeniable.

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             1. I don’t understand what you tried to say. There is no famine because food is coming into Gaza in huge quantities. And it is coming into Gaza thanks to efficient work of Israelis who have to check every incoming truck. They already managed to stop a few attempts to smuggle weapons to Hamas. So no truck can be left unchecked because such weapons would be used against Israelis as Hamas Charta promises the eradication of all Jews. Hamas valiantly attempted to do it on October 7. Of course, it may have been so long ago that you don’t remember it. You may also have forgotten all those Israeli hostages in Hamas’s dungeons.

17. The bear drinking Mountain Dew is hilarious!

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18. “World Whiskey Day” — I should open my favorite bottle:
    https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1664682030762688513

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19. Beautiful echinoderms and love the bear (especially that he doesn’t spill the rest of his drink when he pauses to take a breath).

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20. “Readership continues to drop, at least judging by comments and views, and this is depressing.”

    AGREED!

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