Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 6, 2018 • 9:30 am

Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) is not feeling well today, which accounts for the late Hili dialogue, mostly prepared yesterday. It’s doubtful that I’ll write anything more today, but bear with me until I’m better.

Well, another work week has begun: it’s Monday, August 6, 2018, and National Root Beer Float Day. I have to say that I do enjoy a cold mug of root beer with a scoop of vanilla ice cream afloat, but I haven’t had one in years. In Japan it’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony Day, marking the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 (see below).

On August 6, 1825, Bolivia gained independence from Spain. And on this day in 1890, the murderer William Kemmler became the first person executed by the electric chair. By all accounts, the execution, which took place at Auburn Prison in New York, did not go well, with Kemmler taking several minutes to die.  On August 6, 1914, World War 1 widened as Serbia declared war on Germany and Austria declared war on Russia.  On this day in 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English channel. Here’s a short video of her achievement:

Perhaps the most momentous event of this day is what happened in 1945, when the “Little Boy” atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the US: the first use of a nuclear weapon, and one of only two (Nagasaki was the other). 70,000 people were killed on the spot, and many thousands more died of radiation poisoning. Let us hope that this never happens again, but I do worry as so many nations have nukes. Could a terrorist get one? Here’s a scary BBC reenactment of the bombing:

On August 6, 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Finally, on this day in 1996, NASA announced that the  ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, carried evidence of primitive life forms. The bacteria-like inclusions in the meteorite are now thought to be artifacts and not evidence of life at all. Here’s one photo of the stuff that got scientists excited:

Notables born on this day include Johann Bernoulli (1667), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809), Alexander Fleming, and the gangster Dutch Schultz (1901), who was later murdered in 1934 by other gangsters. It took him almost a day to die, and police transcribed his last words. From Wikipedia:

Schultz’s last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble, spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted to calm him and question him for useful information. Although the police were unable to extract anything coherent from Schultz, his rambling was fully transcribed by a police stenographer. This includes the famous:

A boy has never wept…nor dashed a thousand kim.

But the entire text [here] is much more rambling, for example:

You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it.
Oh, Oh, dog Biscuit, and when he is happy he doesn’t get snappy.

One of his last utterances was a reference to “French Canadian bean soup” (French Canadian pea soup is a popular dish that is still produced as canned goods by many food companies).

Others born on August 6 include Lucille Ball (1911), Andy Warhol (1928), mountaineer Chris Bonington (1934), M. Night Shyamalan (1970), and Vera Farmiga (1973).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili finds solace in something strange.

Hili: The wind’s changed direction.
Cyrus: So what?
Hili: It’s better than nothing.
In Polish:
Hili: Zmienił się kierunek wiatru.
Cyrus: I co z tego?
Hili: Lepsze to niż nic.
And nearby, in his future home, Leon is pondering:
Where am I supposed to dig around?

A tweet sent by my old friend Ivan:

From reader Helian; the translation is “It is unbelievably hot, so please be sure that your cat doesn’t melt!”

https://twitter.com/adiz0r/status/1026164371767128069

From reader Gethyn, a superb example of pareidolia:

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1025907342859292673

Tweets from Grania:

An article worth reading from an eloquent and diehard Leftist:

News to come:

When pigs fly!

I haven’t read this article, but it may be worth a look:

Tweets from Grania: Tuna pillow!

Have a look at this amazing spaghetti-like tangle of freeways in China (it’s a video)

A ninja cat bests his friend:

https://twitter.com/OregonJOBS2/status/1025903737460510720

And from Matthew, a serendipitous conjunction of names and ancestry:

81 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)”

    1. Actually Nagasaki was site “B”. Kojura was the target that day but there was heavy cloud cover. As to why a second bomb was dropped at all – the Japanese refused surrender after Hiroshima, despite warnings that more attacks would occur unless they did. They finally did after Nagasaki.

      1. Nagasaki waqs also the place where the Dutch had a trading post on the small artificial island of Deshima (aka Dejima), after helping the Japanese to kick out the Portugese.
        For more than 200 years (1631-1858) it was the only contact point of Japan with the outside world.

      2. Kokura was the primary target for the second bomb, and I believe, the secondary target for the Hiroshima bomb. The orders were that the bombs be dropped so that visual observations could be made. Hence the cloud cover ruled out Kokura. This is sometimes referred to as ‘Kokura’s luck’.
        I have also read that Kyoto was considered as a target, but that the US Secretary of State of the time had honeymooned in Kyoto, and his wife forbade him to bomb it. Dunno if this is true?

    2. My understanding on this question is Nagasaki was one of the few cities that had remained whole. Most other cities in Japan had already been damaged a great deal by the bombing. They expected to get a better idea of the impact in a city that was still pretty much in tact. Some of the earlier large fire bombing raids had accomplished nearly as much destruction as the atomic bomb.

    3. Basically, Hiroshima was not enough by itself to make the Japanese surrender.

      Also, you have to remember that the people making the decision had been laying waste to Japanese and German cities for years. In March 1945, Tokyo was levelled by a series of bombing raids that killed 100,000 people (fewer people died at Nagasaki). The Allied high command were used to giving orders that would wipe out tens of thousands of civilians.

      1. Keeping in mind the primary goal was ending the war and also remembering who started this global conflict.

        1. I also suspect that it was helpful going into the already inevitable cold-war having clearly established in the Soviet mind that there would be no wimping out over the issue of using the weapons on cities. If the U.S. had done a demo bombing as a threat, it would have sent an entirely different message to the more loony of the Soviet generals.

        2. The “you started it” thing is a bit childish. Bear in mind that the people who were being incinerated in the bombing attacks were not the people who started it.

          However, the primary goal was ending the war and in the context, the atom bombs had to be used. Had they not been used, the war would have continued for some time with maybe millions more people dying. Now, imagine you’re President Truman but you chose not to drop the bomb. A couple of years later, people are going to say “wait, you had the means to finish the war in 1945, a year and a million deaths early, and you didn’t use it? What kind of a monster are you?” Truman had no choice but to drop those bombs.

      2. Compare that to the drone strikes nowadays. Who said there’s no progress? Much better (or less evil) than firebombing, nuking or carpet bombing.
        I think that the bomb on Nagasaki made it clear that Hiroshima was not a fluke or a ‘once off’. In the end, horrible as the bombing was, it probably saved more lives than it took.

      3. The allies did not know how close the Japanese war machine was to total collapse ,they were making plans to invade Japan in 1946 .
        They were expecting hundreds of thousands of people killed on both sides .
        Maybe they could have dropped the first bomb on an uninhabited island .

        The Emperor could have forced the Japanese military to surrender .

    4. What I have to remember is that, whether “enough” or not to end WWII, the people of Japan ( at where I was welcomed June 2017 ) nearly immediately thereafter, became … … until Mr Abe and a few others of his mindset and y2014, … … pacifist. For subsequent decades’ time. Pacifist.

      Nearly immediately after their 15 August 1945 surrender. What an interestingly .swift. turnaround. Militarily. As well as nationally. Not ?

      Blue

      1. Your post runs a bit strange ,after the war the Japanese were all for giving up arms for good .
        But America wanted them to rearm as part of the great plan to contain the Commies .
        There is a cartoon of a Japanese man holding a pistol and an American urging him on .
        “Go on you will soon get the hang of it ” runs the caption .

      2. I would like to read the World’s Women’s History of World Wars I and II. That, however, is not possible.

        The history exists. Inside written accountings it, of course, does not.

        The opinions and the decisions, the comings and goings and thinkings and doings of over half of the World’s populations (including those of its children) were not considered.

        Blue

    5. Why Nagasaki? Out of scientific curiosity of course. Both types of bombs needed an experiment. Trinity didn’t kill anybody in the desert (right away), so science needed proof that mass murder can be achieved with both bombs.

      1. That is my cynical impression too. Plus the bean counters argument, ‘look this thing has cost xxx billion dollars, we need a return on the expenditure.’

        Am I too cynical?

        cr

        1. Yes, that’s too cynical, by far. JP’s comment is appalling and not worthy of this site (really, JP? Evil science? Utter nonsense).

          The US had at its disposal weapons they felt sure (and which proved true) would end an unimaginably bloody and drawn-out war that was headed for a horrific conclusion. The two weapons were of different make and there was no assurance that either would perform as expected, so there was always an interest in seeing how they worked. But, there is simply no reason to think there was some economic or “evil science” reason to use either one- the weapons were used because the US thought they’d be effective in getting Japan to surrender and end a hideous war. The Allies were facing having to invade Japan and the US would have borne the vast majority of Allied casualties. THAT was the reason to deploy them.

          The project DID cost an enormous amount of money, and by the end of the war many people were so numbed by the wholesale slaughter all over the Pacific and Europe that the prospect of killing tens of thousands of people didn’t phase them (they had killed far more with conventional weapons) and using them did play into the larger cold war politics that was to rise in the coming decade after their use. Those things (and more) are true, but those weapons were used in an attempt to end the war. Full stop.

          1. From what I’ve read, I think Nagasaki was the less defensible. That after Hiroshima the Japanese were on the point of surrendering.

            There was also the point of impressing the Russians. The generals were assured by their experts that it would take the Russians twenty years to develop their own bomb. It took them three. (The usual fate of such estimates).

            cr

          2. Before the day was over the US warned the Japanese that if they did not surrender they would be attacked again. They did not surrender so two days later the Americans proved they weren’t kidding. Certainly the US could see the power shift in the future and that Russia was to be a serious threat, but they bombed Hiroshima to get the Japanese to stop fighting and when they didn’t the US made sure they got the message. That Russia could see what was going on was surely something that did not trouble the Americans, and many who could see what was around the corner probably thought it was a good thing, but they wanted the Japanese to face the truth.

          3. There’s another point worth making re the bombs, compared to (say) starving Japan into submission by sinking ships, which was also under way. And this is that they made defeat visible, dramatic, undeniable. There was little room afterwards for some kind of stabbed-in-the-back theory, as in post-1919 Germany.

            If the goal wasn’t just to get the top guys to sign some paper, but to discredit the whole of japanese fascism, then maybe our appraisal should take this shock-and-awe factor into account.

          5. See my post above as to why the use of the bomb was inevitable.

            In summary: would you want to be the man who had to admit a couple of years later that he could have ended the war a year earlier, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans?

  2. Beginning to get a little worried there. Hope you will be feeling better soon. Are Honey and Phoebe on their own today?

  4. Hope you are fit soon.

    Now we see that pigs can fly, at least in the right hand seat. Good to see Leon looking well.

    If president twitter keeps it up he will impeach himself.

  5. About the online harassment article, I’d like to know where most of this harassment happens. This site is the closest thing to being social online for me. I long ago killed my Farcebook and Twatter accounts (and haven’t missed them at all) and I don’t comment on news sites, YouTube or any forums, nor have I felt the desire to. The one thing that comes close to harassment I experienced on ol’ PZ’s site and I haven’t been back since (after all, if I step in dog crap, I scrape it off, I don’t keep circling back to trod in it all over again), again, years ago and sure as hell don’t miss it. Are they talking more about content makers or content consumers? Maybe I’m just missing the point of the internet, most of which seems pointless to me anyway.

    1. To answer your question…

      the Pew methodology is HERE on page 8 of the report.

      The internet seeming pointless is a good thing – a bit of chaos & all that, but I assure you it’s a lifeline for many, I can think of a few here who depend on it [I won’t name names]. e.g. I’m unable to leave the house at the moment & likely not until 2019 – it’s damned useful getting my food delivered, finding a barber who home visits, finding a cleaner, replacing a broken fridge/freezer, ordering music, ebooks & books. Etc.

      1. I do see great benefits of the internet, as you noted. It does often seem like a magazine with the news to back page ad ratio reversed. Yes, unlike in my lonely isolated teen years I can talk to someone like you or buy books and music and vintage 1950’s lab equipment but compared to the penis enlargement pills and Kim Kardashian’s ass…! If only it could be segregated, with useful bits on www and everything else on wtf. Of course it could be that I’ve just not figured the internet out, much like the rest of human life and related flotsam.

        1. “If only it could be segregated, with useful bits on www and everything else on wtf.”

          Can I steal that line?

          Or, at least quote you with attribution?

          L

          1. Absolutely. Of course I’ll probably be accused of perpetuating the white patriarchy for using the word “segregation”… how about separated instead?

  8. That distorted** facebook video of the Guiyang city interchange looked fake to me at first because of the preponderance of white cars [around 50%], but I looked it up & China is a devil for white cars. And yet white is the Chinese colour of mourning. I recall a Scandi architectural company built a hospital in China decades ago that went mad on the white tiling – the sick stayed away in droves.
    ** squeezed left to right making the cars look like noddyland vehicles

    The Chinese are pouring concrete like there’s no tomorrow [making a nonsense of their stated commitment to the Paris climate accord] – here’s Huaiyu Mountain Highway, Jiangxi. One of many, many projects in a nation almost as obsessed with the car-as-status-symbol as Trumpistan [the extinguished beacon formerly known as the USA].
    https://flic.kr/p/28u9zXa

    2. Guiyang. Thanks. (Why do these Twits and Farcebookers never say where they stole their posts from?)

      I can’t find that actual interchange on Googlemaps, though Guiyang is surrounded by motorways and spaghetti.

      It always seems a little – hypocritical – to criticise the Chinese for playing catch-up in their standards of living. Sort like “We (the west) have done our best to f*ck over the planet but you mustn’t do the same”. Unfortunately for everybody that’s what the situation is.

      (I wonder if the sound of (fried) chickens coming home to roost in California will do anything to convince the climate-change-deniers to take their heads out of the sand? Probably not…)

      cr

      1. I think I’ve found it, but don’t know how to post a Google Earth location here. Search for “Guiyang Qianlingshan Park”. Zoom in on the peg marked “Qian Ling Shan Gong Yuan, and look to the west. Makes Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction (qv) look positively basic.

        1. Well spotted!

          I imagine it’s less confusing for drivers – just follow the signs. At least I hope so.

          The best spaghetti I have encountered (though it can’t remotely approach the Chinese for elevated structures) is at Bolzano in northern Italy. If heading southeast on SS38 intending to turn left onto A72 northeast for the Brenner Pass, you first turn right through a total of 450 degrees to reach the toll plaza, then a further 180 degrees right to join the A72.
          (Search for ‘Bolzano Sud’ on Google Maps to see it). You just have to put your faith in the direction signs.

          cr

  9. On August 6, 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

    And nearly 50 years later, immediately after the Roberts Court voided the “pre-clearance” provisions of the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder, the legislatures in same states that used to have poll taxes and literacy tests began enacting new rounds of voter suppression laws.

    Plus ça change …

      1. In some cases it is voter id requirements. Other scams include reducing voter locations making it much harder for people to get to the polls. Reducing time for voting and particularly advanced voting time periods.

      2. How about the North Carolina voter ID law that tracked, with “surgical precision,” a study determining the type of identification minority voters were least likely to possess? (Enacted by the self-same NC legislature whose ruthless gerrymandering to disenfranchise the black vote was subsequently overturned by the federal courts.)

        Or how about Ohio, with its reduction in early voting hours, reduction in polling places open in poorer neighborhoods, and purging of its voting rolls?

        1. You know what bothers me the most about this kind of shite? I get it that politics is a rough, take-no-prisoners thing, but the Republicans intent in all of these laws is plainly obvious to absolutely everyone, yet they insist it’s all about the integrity of the elections or that they are only trying to make the process easier, or some equally unconvincing bullshit. They aren’t fooling anyone; they are intentionally attempting to disenfranchise citizens who they don’t want to cast a vote.

          It’s just the baldness of the lie that gets me, not that they would attempt it (that’s to be expected of them). It’s the outrageous bald faced lies.

        2. Good call, Nicolaas (though I think you mean “Kobach” — as in Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, the guy Donald Trump made the co-chair of his late, completely unneeded, and little lamented Voter Fraud Commission, the one that was meant to institutionalize voter suppression).

          1. Tomorrow is the primary in Kansas and hopefully this clown loses in the governor race. However, some want him to win and then maybe lose to the democrat in Nov. I just want him to lose and crawl back under his rock.

      4. I live in a mail-in ballot state and I love it. I get a few weeks to process the pamphlet, peruse the ballot and then I leisurely fill it out while sipping coffee and contemplating the election. This year, they’ve even pre-paid the postage for us. Other states ought to take note, our elections are quite secure here in WA.

        1. Yeah, I concur. Living in Washington, you get the sense of what a real democracy feels like. Encouraging people to vote, not suppressing their ability. It’s outrageous what Republican governors, state houses and secretaries of state are doing to their constituents in red states: they’re a disgrace.

          Oregon is even one step better since they have mail-in voting, PLUS Oregonians are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18.

          As Jim Morrison said: “The West is the best…get here and we’ll do the rest.”

    2. Is it ironic the same people who want voting restrictions seem to be perfectly happy with the actions of Russia into our elections. There are other explanations I suppose and one of them is racism.

        1. “By any means necessary,” as J-P Sartre & Malcolm X used to say. Republicans are ruthlessly clinging to power in spite of their shrinking old-white-guy demographic — fairness, the will of the majority, and one-man/one-vote be damned.

          1. Actually a quote from one of the characters in Sartre’s play “Dirty Hands”.
            Sartre is generally credited with coining the phrase.

            It is spoken by Hugo, a fellow trying to make good with the Communist party, but they are sceptical of him due to his wealthy background.

  11. Think you omitted a comma from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s moniker, boss.

    I bring it to your attention only ’cause I know you share my deep and abiding reverence for the peerage system. 🙂

    1. Actually you are correct. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

      Much to my surprise; I had always thought he was Alfred Lord Tennyson and ‘Lord’ was just his middle name. Possibly because common everyday usage is just to say either ‘Alfred Somebody’ or ‘Lord Somebody’, the full mode of address is generally only used on formal occasions.

      cr

  13. Least we not forget, on this day in 2012 Donald Trump tweeted:
    “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.”

  14. I particularly like the bumper sticker “Fundamentalism stops a thinking mind” (a riposte to their bumper sticker about abortion stopping a beating heart).

    But I confess I also like the sign in some local and very liberal Episcopal churches “Jesus came to take away your sins, not your mind”.

    =-=-=

    Very Farmiga is a sorely underrated actress mostly doing Gothic horror stuff these days.

  15. Chicken Church seems determined to fledge. With eyes focused on it’s launch line, it appears ready to take a test flight…oops! Face plant.😬!

    1. I think it may be relevant that architects generally only drew up front and side elevations, not diagonal views. And, of course, in monochrome only. So the ‘chicken’ aspect was doubtless much less obvious.

      cr

  16. According to SA radio 6 August 1883 was also the date that the last Quagga died in the Amsterdam zoo (Artis). However, according to Wikipedia it was the 12th of August 1883 (at least they agree on the year).
    At the time it was not realised it was the last Quagga. The zoo asked for another specimen. The fact that in some local languages “quagga” indicated all zebra’s may have added to the confusion.
    [Since quaggas are quite closely related to mountain zebra’s, and (if I’m not mistaken quite a bit of quagga DNA is known) there might just be a tiny possibility that the quagga is a species that could indeed be ‘revived’].

    1. Quagga does just means zebra and is derived from onomatopoeic names in native southern African languages. Quagga – Equus quagga quagga – was a subspecies of the plains zebra, not the mountain zebra. So, depending on how you feel about subspecies, one could say it is not extinct.

  18. Knocked out by the connection between Darwin and Crick’s ancestor.

    Apologies if I’ve mentioned this before, but Sue Blackmore’s book “Conversations on Consciousness” (2005) includes the last interview that Francis Crick gave, in April 2004 (he died in July). It is both moving and inspiring: he was clearly very unwell, yet comes across as still intellectually curious, and completely hard-nosed on issues such as free will and monism. A truly great man.

    Get better soon, Jerry.

    1. Last night I watched Sean Carroll on Joe Rogans show and Sean said he disagreed with Sam Harris about free will. He then described exactly why free will can’t exist but that all didn’t matter because he disagreed with the words being used. It was bizarre.

  19. Also on 6 August, exactly one year before Hiroshima (at least the peak), men armed with only the usual tools killed just over half as many civilians in another city:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_massacre

    This one had zero military justification, quite the reverse as it pulled troops from where they defending a retreat.

    Let’s not forget who we were fighting. A pity the bomb wasn’t ready a year earlier, is one take. Or conversely, had it been delayed a year, just imagine how many more cities would have been fought through with, you know, guns, tanks, shovels, dynamite, and all that.

    1. Hang on. You are equating the Warsaw Uprising with Hiroshima? That’s a stretch, even for what-aboutery. What did anyone in Hiroshima know of Warsaw?

      cr

      1. Not equating. But trying to give some sense of scale, which is often missing when discussion of August 6th rolls around.

        I only noticed this year that the dates happen to line up, which fits our host’s format of “this day in history”.

  21. Hope you feel better soon PCC(E)

    I think the cat pillow is a salmon steak, not tuna.

  22. Get well soon, PCC(E)! You’ve become a part of my daily routine over these past few years since I found your wonderful website. You’re a great dude and I hope you feel better 🙂

  23. I am fairly agog at the possibility that men and women are eually likely to ba harassed online. Hope to see the study repeated.
    Otoh no one whistles or comments at me walking down the street.

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