Friday: Hili dialogue

January 15, 2016 • 6:00 am

It’s one of those days when I’ll arrive at work with no idea what I’ll write about on this site. Stay tuned: it might be NOTHING. On this day in 1759, the British Museum opened; my favorite things to see there are the Portland Vase, the Bog Man, the Elgin Marbles (which should be returned to Greece) and the Rosetta Stone. I’ll doubtless give it a visit on February 13. On on February 15, 1919, the Great Molasses Flood occurred in Boston, a bizarre event in which 21 people were drowned in goo when a molasses holding tank burst. The wave of molasses was said to be 25 feet high. And, seven years ago today, Captain Sully Sullenberger brought U.S. Air Flight 1549 to a safe landing in the Hudson River after the engines were ssilenced by a bird strike; all passengers were saved. In 1919, Rosa Luxemberg, socialist hero, died—or rather had her skull crushed by the rifle butt of a German soldier. She was then shot and thrown into a canal. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus is trying to be helpful but Hili pwns him.

Cyrus: When you walk on the snow you have to lift your paws high.
Hili: Do you remember what Oscar Wilde said about good advice?

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In Polish:
Cyrus: Jak chodzisz w śniegu musisz wysoko podnosić nogi.
Hili: Pamiętasz co Oscar Wilde mówił o dobrych radach?

17 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

    2. “…wearing “a tall structure having a shiny lustre and calculated to frighten timid people”.”

      Where was their safe space?!

      1. I’d fear there might be some embarrassing entanglement should those two, uh, come together…

  3. Oscar had some good advice about advice.

    February 13th you say. My 40th anniversary I believe. Better think of something.

  4. The Sullenberger incident was dubbed reflexively and revoltingly by the media – “the Miracle on the Hudson”, and I was really pleased when Sullenberger rejected the cliche saying that it was not in any way a “miracle”. The safe recovery was the result of training of the crew in safety technique. In fact, Sullenberger was a safety instructor in addition to being a pilot for the airline. He was thoroughly prepared for such an emergency and handled it magnificently. He gave credit to humanity not deities. I don’t know if Sully is an atheist, but he might be. It fits.
    His reaction to gods-talk reminds one of the reaction of Oprah Winfrey to Diana Nyad’s profession of aw while being an atheist. Nyad rejected Oprah’s surprise and confirmed that atheists can feel great about life. Such corrections of the mainstream perception of atheists are needed more than ever.

    1. Sully? Landing on the Hudson.
      welcome to the way that I treat flying.
      before flight – you have a 20 minute video. Inattention results in a repeat – yes, you are being watched.
      What is your drill on an aborted take off?
      What is your drill on controlled landing on water?
      Really, I wonder what level of incompetence I would accept from fellow-travellers. I had a wake-up in Turkey, when we discovered that the “Central African” part of the rig crew really did not understand “cold water can kill you.”
      Clearly their flight training did not include being thrown into 6C water for a couple of hours.
      You do expect your fellow travellers to be able to launch and enter a liferaft ; to be able to pull YOU into a liferaft ; to prep the liferaft for Arctic to Tropical conditions; to handle the EPIRB?
      Seriously, where do you civilian travellers get your flight training? I got my basic in the oil field, and extended it with tropical work since. But how do you “civilians” get trained to handle a flight going down?

      1. Well, there’s a couple pages of instructions on safe exits in the pocket in front of you. It shows that oxygen may drop down (save yourself before saving your child), and the flotation device is under the seat, and the exit nearest you has a slide to jump down, and there are life rafts…somewhere.

        1. And the penalty for not reading it? Have you ever seen anyone put off the flight for not watching the safety demonstration? And I still don’t know how many times the person next to me has been drilled in handling and securing a liferaft.
          No wonder the mortality rate for landing on water is up in the 80s of % for civilians, when it’s down in the 20s for us workmen. (I don’t have figures for the military, but since they get training similar to ours, their mortality is probably comparably low.)
          The world is 2/3 water-surfaced. If it weren’t for the fact that few airports are also harbours (since the demise of the sea plane), and most crashes tale place in take-off or landing phases of a flight, you’d expect there to be more ditchings. It’s certainly still a requirement of civilian plane design – that they can glide to a safe landing on water. Which is a bit bloody obvious, if you think about it.

          2. We call that the HUET (pronounced “huey”, as in “throwing up”) machine – Helicopter Underwater Escape Trainer. Every 3 years I spend a morning being dunked repeatedly in the thing with various combinations of the different models of survival suit and life jacket. Plus life-raft launching, loading, maintenance ; water entry from height ; righting an inverted (non-aviation) liferaft.
            Actually … I should be due for a repeat in a few months. That’ll be about number 10.
            Firefighting with hoses and portables too. And first aid. Yawn.

          4. It’s a sacking offence. People die on these training courses. Not as often as they used to, but they still die. The companies involved get very twitchy and if they find you with a camera, they black list you. Which is normally a career-destroying move. (Of course they claim there isn’t a black list, but we all recognise that as being company-speak for “there is a blacklist.”)

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