Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 16, 2018 • 6:30 am

Well, yesterday it turned out to be a holiday at my school, but now it’s Tuesday, January 16, 2018, and it’s business as usual. It’s National Hot and Spicy Food Day, as well as Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il’s birthday) in the world’s worst country

The New York Times and other venues report a horrible case of child abuse in which a California couple kept their 13 children, aged 2-29, shackled to beds without adequate nutrition. (Police said the 17 year old who managed to report the crime looked as if she were ten.) The parents are in jail with 9 million dollars bond. And there’s a big kerfuffle in Kazakhstan, as the country is adopting a new alphabet (they didn’t have their own written language, but used Cyrillic), and the president wants to use a ton of apostrophes to represent Kazakh sounds. Everyone else says it’s a mess.

Today’s Google Doodle shows Katy Jurado  (born on this day in 1924, died in 2002), a Mexican actress who was unknown to me but, I see, appeared in some well known films, including, High Noon, Arrowhead, Broken Lance, One-Eyed Jacks, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. As Wikipedia reports, she “was the first Latin American actress nominated for an Academy Award, as Best Supporting Actress for her work in Broken Lance, and was the first to win a Golden Globe Award for her performance in High Noon.” Here’s her Doodle:

Here’s a clip with Jurado (and Grace Kelly) in High Noon. And I do remember this scene after I watched it.

UPDATE!!! Reader Roger informs me that these things happened on FEBRUARY 16, not January 16, and he’s right. Well, so be it; you’ll see these events highlighted in a month. In the meantime, I’m busy and can’t be arsed to fix it! To see what really happened on January 16, see the Wikipedia link for this day.

Only a few notable things happened on January 16. In 1923, Howard Carter opened the burial chamber of King Tutankhamun in Egypt. On this day in 1959, Fidel Castro became the Premier of Cuba after overthrowing Batista. On January 16, 1968, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone number became operative—in Haleyville, Alabama. Exactly ten years later, the first computer bulletin board system (CBBS in Chicago) was created. In 1985, Hezbollah was founded, and in 2005, the entire 2004-2005 National Hockey League season was canceled because of a labor dispute.

Notables born on this day include three biologists, and I hope you know of at least two of them: Francis Galton (1822), Ernst Haeckel (1834), and Hugo de Vries (1848).  Also born on January 16 were Sonny Bono (1935), Kim Jong-il (1941, see above), science journalist Natalie Angier (1958), and Elizabeth Olsen (1989). There weren’t many deaths on this day: all I could find were William Masters (2001) and Lesley Gore (2015, born Lesley Goldstein). Here’s Gore with a live performance of what is probably her most famous song (“You Don’t Own Me”, however, is better).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess is demanding transport off the windowsill into the house:

A: Why don’t you come when I call you?
Hili: Because I prefer you to carry me.
In Polish:
Ja: Dlaczego nie przychodzisz jak cię wołam?
Hili: Bo wolę jak mnie nosisz na rękach.

A tw**t from Grania—look at that octopus change color!

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/952573886993874944

Also from Grania—Scotch shadows:

https://twitter.com/adamhess1/status/952506166822817792

From Matthew, an amazing cocoon:

And the well known migration of red crabs on Christmas Island (watch the video):

You can’t see this video too often!

https://twitter.com/invisibleman_17/status/952273272481206273

 

33 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. FROM WIKI :- The UK’s 999 number is the world’s oldest emergency call telephone service. The initial scheme was introduced in the London area on 30 June 1937, covered a 12-mile radius around Oxford Circus & the public were advised only to use it in ongoing emergency if “for instance, the man in the flat next to yours is murdering his wife or you have seen a heavily masked cat burglar peering round the stack pipe of the local bank building.” – the scheme was extended to major cities after WWII & then to the whole UK in 1976.

      1. WWII delayed the roll out, but all major towns & cities had the 999 service by 1948. Back then it was an expensive modification at the various exchanges where the switchboard operators became aware of a 999 call via a klaxon & a red light blinking! I remember The Queen’s Head pub near me used to get swamped by the ‘telephone girls’ around 10pm after the shift change – happy 70s days!

        I assume the period ’48 to ’76 gradually picked up many, many smallish ‘manned’ & one-person village exchanges – the householder connects to some of those by just picking up their receiver – so no value in a “999” setup. “999” became universal only when the network was entirely run on automated exchanges [no human-operated plugboards] – which was 1976.

        1. I mean the Grade II listed Queen’s Arms, Birmingham next to the telephone main exchange for the city at that time. The landlord was notable for refusing a jukebox & playing only jazz & some blues via a record deck & cassette deck behind the bar. No TV. Ideal.

        2. Made me curious as to when 9-1-1 (what is used in the US and Canada) came out. Found this in Wikipedia:
          https://e n.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1
          “For example, although the City of Chicago, Illinois, had access to 9-1-1 service as early as 1976, the Illinois Commerce Commission did not authorize telephone service provider Illinois Bell to offer 9-1-1 to the Chicago suburbs until 1981.Implementation was not immediate even then; by 1984, only eight Chicago suburbs in Cook County had 9-1-1 service. As late as 1989, at least 28 Chicago suburbs still lacked 9-1-1 service; some of those towns had previously elected to decline 9-1-1 service due to costs and—according to emergency response personnel—failure to recognize the benefits of the 9-1-1 system.”

          Mexico is still implementing its 9-1-1 system. In most of Europe, the number is 1-1-2.

          Growing up, the phone number for the police and fire department was always prominently printed on the front of the telephone book (remember those?). They were different numbers. I think one of them was 976-1313. Did not have to worry about area codes back then. The entire Chicago area was 312. The suburbs were not spun off into 708 until 1989. I think there are ten now.

          1. I think the little town/county where I am from is still attempting to set up a working 911 system. Right up to date there.

          3. In New Zealand the number is 1-1-1, the reverse of UK, but for the same ‘mechanical’ reason.

            This was because, in UK, the dials on the old phones ran (from least to most ‘clicks’) 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0, so 999 was chosen as most unlikely to be generated spuriously by e.g. the wind tapping the wires together. Whereas in NZ our dials ran 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0.

            Of course digital has made the reasons for this obsolete but the numbers persist.

            cr

  3. Speaking of Katy Jurado, for me, the look she exchanges with a gut-shot Slim Pickens, at “magic hour” in the desert, with Dylan’s “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” playing in the background, near the end of this clip from Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett, is priceless:

  4. Note my addition: the events, births, and deaths (except for Katy Jurado) are actually from February 16, not January 16. I screwed up and can’t be arsed to go back and fix it. I think this is the first time I’ve done this.

    To see what happened on January 16, go here.

    1. Yes, Benny Goodman’s first Carnegie Hall concert took place exactly 80 years ago.

      Katy Jurado was one of the most important sex symbols for me as a kid.

  5. Interesting you mentioned Kazakhstan and their alphabet problem. They have other problems such as a dictator who ran off with billions of dollars from the state bank. Lots of connections to one Donald Trump as well. Looks like lots of money laundering and so it goes. By the way, the current president of Kazakhstan is suppose to be visiting the white house today. Imagine that. Maybe Trump has some classified information for him as well.

    1. Over at MSNBC.com Rachael Maddow there is a nice 20 minute video on this if anyone is interested.

  6. When I was in Uni a Scottish friend made it very clear that ‘Scotch’ refers only to the drink and things like ‘scotch broth’ and ‘scotch eggs’. He was a Scot, he was Scottish, but he was not ‘Scotch’. Whether this applies to tartan shadows, only a true Scot can tell us.

      1. I agree with westernweb, who provides a good summary. Not all Scots get it correct. I would tend to refer to tartan as “Scottish”. “Scotch” is generally used in well-recognised combinations such as Scotch whisky, Scotch pie, etc. Safest to only use “Scotch” in such a recognised combination, and otherwise use “Scottish”.

    2. I came across that too & learned quickly to take care! And yet the chorus of Scottish Sir Harry Lauder’s “I love A Lassie” is:

      I love a Lassie, a bonny, bonny Lassie She’s as pure as the Lily in the Dell She’s as sweet as the heather, the bonny bloomin’ heather Mary ma Scotch Blue-bell.

      – perhaps you have to be Scots to break the rule 🙂

      I have heard a Scottish extraction Canadian on TV calling herself Canadian Scotch [or was it Scotch Canadian?] – maybe it’s different over there.

  7. I think all that running will make Frog quite tasty. He will be quite the base for some great chicken stock.

    1. Exactly what I thought but I was too considerate to say it.

      [virtue signalling accomplished]

      cr

  8. I was surprised yesterday when PCC(e) said MLK Day was not a holiday at the University of Chicago. So he was mistaken. MLK Day is a big deal at UofC.
    https://mlk.uchicago.edu/

    Saturday was the day of service. This afternoon is the event at Rockefeller Chapel. The keynote speaker is Dorothy Butler Gilliam. it is at 6pm central time. You can watch it here:
    https://news.uchicago.edu/webcasts

    Back in 2002, the keynote speaker was a Senior Lecturer in the Law School at UofC, Barack Ssomething. Anyone know what happened to him?

  10. It is my understanding that those monstrous parents were fundamentalist Christians, probably adherents of the Quiverfull movement, or some equivalent. Just read that the grandparents said that “God called” them to have so many children.

    2. Sometimes official statements are masterpieces of irony.

      ‘Some of the children were restrained with chains and padlocks. “The parents were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.’

      cr

    1. This is hilarious. Except for the tell-tail, the cat could be dead. It even mimics rigor mortis.

      I was once acquainted with a small, sweet rufous pig named Daisy. When her staff took her up to the UC campus for an outing, she’d have the time of her life rooting through the grass and stealing any food within her ambit. When staff wanted to leave, Daisy would collapse in a very dramatic manner and play dead. It was so funny.

  13. “there’s a big kerfuffle in Kazakhstan, as the country is adopting a new alphabet (they didn’t have their own written language, but used Cyrillic)”

    It was, however, their own version of Cyrillic, the letters varied slightly from Russian Cyrillic (as do Belarus’s). (A difference to be aware of if ordering stick-on keyboard letters from the useful Chinese sellers on Ebay.)

    That link is a very interesting article. The proposed ‘new alphabet’ is based on Latin, but the article highlights the difficulty inherent in rendering languages with different phonetic structures in a ‘foreign’ script. And in applying it to a keyboard. The Kazakh president favours dropping in lots of apostrophes to make it keyboard-friendly, some of the opposition want such as ‘cedillas, tildes, breves, dots and other markers’ which are more accurate but certainly not ASCII-keyboard friendly.

    (We English have long since got used to the idea that written letters bear only a loose relationship to the actual sound).

    (Touch screen devices like tablets are much easier, of course, you just change the on-screen ‘keyboard’ to suit).

    Of course, aside from the technical, there’s a political aspect as well, which complicates matters as always.

    cr

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