Friday: Hili dialogue

October 7, 2016 • 6:30 am

It’s Friday, October 7, 2016, and I’m in Pittsburgh, soon to head out to Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of home architecture: Fallingwater. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has offered that as an excursion, and as speaker I get to go! (The last time I spoke at the FFRF, it was in Hartford and we got to tour Mark Twain’s house.) I believe some of us are meeting at the hotel bar today at 4 p.m.

It’s National Frappe Day, and for non-Americans a “frappe” is a milkshake (milk, ice cream, and syrup), but it’s only called that in New England. In other places it can be an iced coffee drink, sometimes with ice cream, like my grandmother used to make.

On this day in history, Uppsala University was inaugurated in Sweden in 1477; can you name a famous early biologist who taught there? On October 7, 1868, Cornell University also began operations, and as a purely secular school. The GDR (East Germany) was formed on this day in 1949, and one year later Mother Teresa’s order of nuns began in India.

Notables born on this day include Joe Hill (1879), Heinrich Himmler (1900), Desmond Tutu (1931), Harry Kroto (1939), Oliver North (1943), Yo-Yo Ma (1955), and Tim Minchin (1975). Those who died on this day include Edgar Allen Poe (1849), Christy Mathewson (1925), and Irving Penn (2009). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili decides to imitate Jesus, except that the staff is providing the loaves and fishes:

THE SERMON ON THE LAP
Hili: We came and you petted us, and now it’s time to feed us.
A: I’m afraid I do not have a choice.
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In Polish:
KAZANIE NA KOLANACH
Hili: Przyszliśmy i pogłaskałeś nas, a teraz pora nas nakarmić.
Ja: Obawiam się, że nie mam innego wyboru.

Lagniappe: a cat attack a plush tiger. Look at that wicked right paw!

giphy

22 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  2. Errrmmm. …off the top of my head and with 5 cc coffee: I guess Svedberg, or… Porath. I have a feeling they don’t count though.

    1. Beat me to it. Originally known as Carl von Linné, he founded modern taxonomy and binomial nomenclature.

      1. I have the pleasure to try for my 2nd MSc, in Bioinformatics, at the haunts of Carl Nilsson Linnæus (lat. Carolus Linnæus; ennobled Carl von Linné, lat. Carolus a Linné) in my old alma mater of Uppsala University.

        Big Biology meets Big Data…

  7. Pittsburgh reminds me of my home town. They are about the same size. They both have three rivers that converge. Both have blue collar working class histories. Falling water is nearby here, but we have a Wright home in my neighborhood in MKE and, of course, Taliesan is not far away.

    Pittsburgh doesn’t have Milwaukee’s great virtue, however, Lake Michigan.

  9. Checking the map location of Fallingwater, I see it is 150 miles south of Pittsburgh, adjacent to State Game Lands 51. Area 51 is believed to be top secret. Keep your eyes open for any unusually designed birds overhead. Do not pick up green hitch hikers.

    Fallingwater is on my bucket list.

      1. Thanks for the correction. I misread the map’s scale marker. Must have been a recessive decimal in there somewhere.

  12. It looks like it was a left hook, rather, that almost had the tiger down for the count.

  14. That cat looks like the titular character of Get Fuzzy. I wonder if it’s missing a tooth?

  15. Most biologists and anthropologists will tell you that human hands evolved to better manipulate tools. However, Andrzej is demonstrating the real driver: the ability to pet multiple companion animals at the same time.

  16. I’ve seen that cat vs. plush tiger video before, still hilarious. I wonder if it’s something about the tiger’s eyes that set off the boxing kitty. Seems rather unusual behavior for a cat but I don’t know if anyone else has seen cats give any real or toy beasts such a thrashing.

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