Wednesday: Hili dialogue

July 18, 2018 • 6:45 am

It’s Wednesday, July 18, 2018, and for those of us who are flush, it’s National Caviar Day. It’s also International Nelson Mandela Day, honoring the great man’s birthday. Google also celebrates another great man, the German conductor Kurt Masur, who is 91 today, but I’m curious why they didn’t post a Mandela Doodle given that today is the great man’s 100th birthday.

 

On this day in 1290, King Edward 1 of England expelled all of the country’s Jews—about 16,000—via the Edict of Expulsion.  On July 18, 1870, the Vatican Council decreed the doctrine of papal infallibility; a theological dogma completely fabricated by humans. Here’s Archie Bunker expounding on that doctrine:

On this day in 1925, Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf.  Exactly 44 years later, Senator Ted Kennedy, driving Mary Jo Kopechne in his car, crashed in a tidal basin at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing his passenger.  On this day in 1976, Nadia Comăneci became the first person in Olympic Game history to score a perfect 10. That first perfect score was achieved on the parallel bars; Comăneci got six more in the Montreal Games, winning a total of three gold medals. On this day in 1992, a picture of a group, Les Horribles Cernettes was taken, becoming the first photo ever posted to the World Wide Web. Here’s the photo:

And the group? Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

Les Horribles Cernettes “The Horrible CERN Girls”) was an all-female parody pop group, self-labelled “the one and only High Energy Rock Band”, which was founded by employees of CERN and performed at CERN and other HEP-related events. Their musical style is often described as doo-wop. The initials of their name, LHC, are the same as those of the Large Hadron Collider, which was later built at CERN. Their humorous songs are freely available on their website.

Notables born on this day include William Makepeace Thackeray (1811), Hendrick Lorentz (1853, Nobel Laureate), Vidkun Quisling (1887), Machine Gun Kelly (1895), Harriet Nelson (1909), Red Skelton (1913), Nelson Mandela (1918; his 100th birthday), Kurt Masur (1927; see above), Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933), Hunter S. Thompson (1937), Martha Reeves (1941), M.I.A. (1975), and Priyanka Chopra (1982). Those who died on July 18 include Caravaggio (1610), John Paul Jones (1792), Jane Austen (1817), Thomas Cook (1892), Horatio Alger (1899), Machine Gun Kelly (1954; died on his birthday), Mary Jo Kopechne (1969 aged 29; see above), and Nico (1988).

Caravaggio happens to be one of my favorite painters of all time and here’s one of my favorites works: The Calling of St. Matthew, painted between 1699 and 1700. It shows the moment where Jesus importunes Matthew to follow him:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is channeling Dr. King:

Hili: I have a dream.
A: What kind of dream?
Hili: A deep one.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam sen.
Ja: Jaki?
Hili: Głęboki.

Two tweets sent by Heather Hastie. Have a listen to this parody:

Funky kitten:

https://twitter.com/Elverojaguar/status/1018442666017730560

From Grania, yet another lie by Trump:

More Trumpiana, with various hypotheses:

A sweet but sad tweet about the death of Terry Pratchett:

And the Cute Kitten Tweet of the Day:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1019386818461126660

From Matthew: Will readers show that the colors aren’t really the same?

A video of Inimicus didactylus. Look at that fish!

Someone went to a lot of trouble to do this!

Amazing treasures from Sutton Hoo, with the objects referred to shown below:

Remembers that these objects were made in the 6th or 7th centuries!

An adorable gamboling goat:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1018581053471166464

19 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  2. That Gilbert & Sullivan parody is outta sight. Trump is a character made for opéra bouffe.

  4. Trump was reading for a typewritten script during his “clarification” moment but he made some handwritten additions, including: “THERE WAS NO COLLUSION”

    And he misspelled it “C-O-L-U-S-I-O-N”.

  5. Never noticed until now that Birdie, the bookstore bookkeeper from You’ve Got Mail, is played by Jean Stapleton from All in the Family. I usually pick up on those things.

  6. Just wondering what feminists would think of the Horrible CERN Girls? Considering a shirt with “briefly attired” women drives them into orbit.

  7. Regarding the colored-dot optical illusion: I zoomed in with Photoshop and sampled the colors. There’s a little bit of patchy variation due to the jpeg compression, but otherwise the colors are indeed the same.

    1. Only if one takes a “absolute” view of what colours are supposed to be. The problem with that is it is impossible to pick a “standard” which makes sense.

      I’m a colour *relationalist*, so I make context etc. matter.

      1. Impossible to pick a standard which makes sense? Light intensities and frequencies are physically quantifiable. They constitute a perfectly sensible standard. Now, if you want to talk about the subjective *experience* of the colors, then sure, they’re different. But that’s just a matter of using different definitions.

        1. But then one should just talk in terms of frequency (or wavelength): colours are what are *perceived*. Just like the difference between loudness (perceptual) and sound intensity (the physical property that is perceived, with distortions, etc.).

          1. No. Multiple frequencies can be contained within a single signal (for both light and sound). The relative intensities of the different frequencies must be taken into account.

          2. For example, if your retina is being bombarded simultaneously by 500 nm light with intensity X and also by 600 nm light with intensity 2X, you will perceive the combination as a single color. If, on the other hand, your retina were bombarded by the SAME frequencies but DIFFERENT relative intensities, say X for the 500 nm light and 3X for the 600 nm light, you will perceive this as a DIFFERENT color.

          3. I realize I misinterpreted your comment. I thought you were trying to tell me the difference between frequency and intensity. (When you said, “One should just talk in terms of frequency,” I thought you meant that I shouldn’t be talking about both frequency AND intensity.) I see now that you’re more interested in the qualia involved. Now it’s just a matter of definitions.

  8. Perhaps PCC(e) and his readers will indulge me in a personal remembrance: 80 years ago today, Douglas Corrigan (my father) landed his nine year old Curtis Robin airplane at Dublin, Ireland. The day before he had taken off from New York headed for Long Beach, California. This little navigation error earned him the name “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

  9. Interesting note: the word “inflammable” means exactly the same thing as “flammable.” In this case, the prefix “in” doesn’t modify the rest of the word because it’s not actually a prefix, but rather the first two letters of the word “inflame.”

  10. “Dildo sales, having been flaccid for months, suddenly shot up yesterday…”

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