Wednesday: Hili dialogue

February 20, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Wednesday, February 20, 2019, and National Muffin Day.  I haven’t had a muffin in a long time, and, truth be told, the ones I like best are unsweet corn muffins and blueberry muffins that aren’t the size of soccer balls and have real lowbush blueberries in them. Like bagels, muffins have been getting inordinately large while being gustatorially degraded for some years. It’s also World Day of Social Justice, so put that pink color in your hair and go punch a Nazi.

On February 20, 1792, the U.S Post Office was established by President George Washington, but some letters still haven’t made it to Chicago. On this day in 1816, Rossini’s opera buffa “The Barber of Seville” premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. In 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City, and in 1877 another work premiered, this time at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow: Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake.”

On February 20, 1935, according to Wikipedia, “Caroline Mikkelsen [became] the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.” Checking into this, it now appears she actually landed not on the continent, but on an island a few miles offshore. The first accepted claim for a woman landing on the continent proper is held by Ingred Christensen, a Norwegian explorer who stepped on Antarctica on January 30, 1937.

On this day in 1942, Naval aviator Lieutenant Edward “Butch” O’Hare became America’s first flying ace in World War II (an “ace” is someone who shoots down at least five enemy planes).  He also became the first person in the Navy to win the Medal of Honor in that war: he attacked nine bombers without support. He was lost in combat in November of next year. Chicago’s O’Hare Airport is named in his honor, though, if you fly here, you’ll see that the abbreviation for O’Hare is ORD, which is its old name—Orchard Depot Field.

Here’s O’Hare in his Grumman F4F aircraft; note the Felix the Cat insignia of his squadron: Flying Squadron 3. The insignia is below the photograph. A cat with a bomb!

 

On this day in 1943, the first painting of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms were published in the Saturday Evening Post; they depicted the freedoms outlined by President Franklin Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union address. This is that first painting, “Freedom of Speech,” photographed on October 25, 2012 while some of us were at to the “Moving Naturalism Forward” meeting in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. That’s where the Rockwell Museum is located, and where Rockwell lived. A free speaker poses next to Rockwell’s painting:

On this day in 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, making three orbits in about five hours in the Friendship 7 capsule.

Notables born on this day include Ludwig Boltzmann (1844), René Dubos and Louis Kahn (both 1901), Ansel Adams (1902), Robert Altman (1925), Roy Cohn and Sidney Poitier (both 1927), Bobby Unser (1934), Roger Penske (1937), Mitch McConnell (1942), Walter Becker (1950), Patty Hearst (1954), Cindy Crawford (1966), Kurt Cobain (1967), Trevor Noah (1984), and Rihanna (1988).

Those who died on this February 20 include Frederick Douglass (1895), Robert Peary (1920), Percy Grainger (1961), Chester Nimitz (1966), Gene Siskel (1999), Hunter S. Thompson (2005), and Alexander Haig (2010).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is pondering the heart of the matter, an inside joke between Malgorzata and Andrzej:

A: Did you ponder the heart of the matter?
Hili: I’m still doing it.
In Polish:
Ja: Czy zastanawiałaś się nad istotą rzeczy?
Hili: Nadal się nad nią zastanawiam.

Oy! This tweet, sent by reader Barry, has gained some traction. Still, I think the Divine Sarah could have used more nuanced and humorous language.

A tweet from Heather Hastie. I’m not so sure this bird is as smart as the caption implies. It fails several times!

From reader Barry. What kind of Umwelt do these cats have? (See post later today.)

https://twitter.com/MsMollyRachael/status/1097634710761734144

Tweets from Grania. Would you know what this was if it wasn’t labeled? And why does it look like this?

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1097586807108177921

I’m still not convinced that the “Scottish wildcat” is a real wild Felis silvestris rather than domestic tabbies that have gone feral (the tabby pattern is quickly selected for in the wild):

Maajid Nawaz, a victim of an assault apparently motivated by racism, thanks the people who helped him. Read all the bits:

Well her birthday was two days ago but who cares?

Tweets from Matthew. The more I learn about swans, the more I think they’re odious waterfowl, comparable to Canada geese.

This is TRUE! But I did look up the undergraduate senior honors thesis of my advisor Dick Lewontin, which still reposes in the MCZ library at Harvard. It was called “The Story of Butter”. I am not making this up.

If you think about this, or know the story of how the RAF used battle experience to reinforce planes, you’ll understand the test in the tweet:

This is almost too much information. But why can’t they put the hat on a dummy?

35 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. It’s also World Day of Social Justice, so put that pink color in your hair and go punch a Nazi.

    Dang, that’s a bit jaded, Jerry.

    It’s also unfair — many will have blue or green in their hair, too. 🙂

  2. In her book “hope for animals”, Jane Goodall tell us about conservation tactics for falcons. The person with the hat has to carry a dead bird, make eye contact with the falcon and make an ee-chip courtship calls. It’s not that simple to atract them to the hats.

  4. … so put that pink color in your hair and go punch a Nazi.

    Shock, Horror!! Exclusive: Coyne advocates Nazi punching.

    Sorry, I was channelling HuffPo and Behe-alikes for a second there. Quote mine anyone?

  5. With regard to the falcon hats: the birds are somewhat imprinted on their handlers and the hats only work when they wear them (though they could just be saying that because they want to be special 😀 )

  6. Typo alert: should be ‘planes’ and not ‘plans’.
    It’s hard to get to the bottom of the story about battle damage assessment altering aircraft design in WW2. There is a story, often used as an example of the failure of rationality, that an RAF study looked at where damage occurred, and recommended increased armour in those areas, which eventually made things worse: the returned aircraft had been hit in places that resulted in survivable damage and thus came home to be studied. To counter that, we do have solid history of the Hungarian Abraham Wald doing a similar study for the US Navy, and he, understanding the role of selection bias, thus recommended increasing armour on the areas that were not damaged on returned aircraft on the grounds that hits in those areas had prevented aircraft from returning to be studied.

    1. Yes, it’s very, very hard to separate bullshit from fact.

      It is said [but see further down] that Abraham Wald’s SRG during WWII worked on improving the survivability of USAAF ETO bombers [mainly B17s I think] not USN planes AFAIK. There’s dozens of blogs & articles all with their own embellished versions of the Wald airplane survivorship bias legend.

      What we do know is the SRG, working from Columbia University, NYC, NY published & distributed a series of technical memoranda during WWII of a highly theoretical nature, like the one illustrated here: FRIGHTENING CALCULUS PDF ~ they covered a range of technical statistical methods that might be of use to the U.S. military & the war effort & one of them was on survivorship bias [see link].

      A few weeks ago I thought Wald & the SRG actually suggested which bits of various aircraft should have greater protection, but now I lean towards the idea that Wald & the SRG provided the methodology & the mathematical tools that OTHERS implemented independently. I csan’t imagine the SRG having the resources or the interest to do all the manual computing that would be necessary to produce solid, specific recommendations.

      Wald’s [the SRG’s] memoranda were taken up by the postwar USN for the Korean [1950]& [64ish] Vietnam wars – presumably in relation to USN carrier aircraft, but without Wald’s direct involvement [ironically Wald & his wife died in a commercial airliner crash in 1950] & it is the USN mainly who circulate his papers down to today.

      I’m not aware of people engaged by the RAF [or the UK War Department] to do that type of analysis on our RAF planes, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did or didn’t. I know we were mad for statistical analysis of just about everything to do with the enemy their spare parts serial numbers, the wear on engine & transmissions & what it might tell us about German production volumes/capabilities.

      1. The RAF did do a survey of bomber damage to determine where to put the armour and it was originally recommended to put it where the bullet holes were on returning aircraft. However, the recommendation was never carried out because a) the armour would have been too heavy, also b) it was pointed out by the Operations Research Group that the survey was flawed due to survivor bias.

        1. I think you mean RAF Bomber Command’s Operational Research Section. That story has been disputed – the source seems to be an American wargames designer & military buff James F. Dunnigan. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support the RAF story outside of Dunnigan.

          READ THIS

          1. “When they looked at the F-4s which survived combat, there were no holes in the narrowest part of the tail, just forward of the horizontal stabilizers. They figured out that all of the hydraulic lines for the elevators and rudder were tightly clustered in there, so that a single hit could damage all of them at once, leaving the plane uncontrollable. The solution in that case was, rather than increasing the armour, to spread the redundant lines out to reduce the chances of losing all of them to a single hit.”

            At the risk of sounding like a know-all, that is exactly what I had concluded before I looked at that link. Never mind analysing where bullet holes were or weren’t, from an engineering point of view one should consider which areas are most critical and attempt to build in redundancy or reduce the vulnerability.

            e.g. you don’t run all the control cables through the cabin floor which will collapse if a cargo door blows off (again)…

            cr

          2. That guy links to Freeman Dyson’s reminiscences of his time in ORS. I love Dyson’s anecdote about the two Mosquito pilots who were enjoying a friendly ‘dogfight’ over Munich.

            cr

          3. Yes. I was shocked that Bomber Command took so long to latch onto the existence of the Schräge Musik [Jazz] upward [60 to 75 degree] dual firing cannon attack tactic & Freeman Dyson’s unit didn’t even get a sniff of it.

          4. I suppose that’s a sort of parallel confirmation of the idea that the really effective damage wouldn’t leave traces.

            And of course, nothing fitted with Schrage Musik would ever have cause to venture over Allied territory so they would never have the chance to see any crashed examples.

            cr

    1. Me too. Her response wasn’t sophisticated as Jerry pointed out but I think the crudity was part of the intended message. Works for me.

    2. I can’t say those exact words went through my mind, but she nailed my contempt for that bastard precisely.

  8. I’ve always thought the Rockwell painting looks like Steve Young the 49’er Hall of Fame Quarterback 🙂

  10. “The inside of the mouth of a Leatherback Turtle”. That’s it for me. I will never go near the water again.

  13. I saw a Netflix program on the Scottish Wildcat called “The Tigers of Scotland” (silly name). They spent quite a bit of time on how to differentiate them from wild house cats. The wildcats have bigger heads, ears mounted lower on the head, and a tail that is fat at the end rather than the house cat’s tapered end. There’s also this:

    https://youtu.be/qaQ6CJvje-s

    1. I saw this show too. I’m convinced they are a bonafide wild subspecies. Though according to this documentary they may not be for long. They are in danger of becoming hybridized out of existence because of breeding with the very feral cats they do so closely resemble.

  14. On today’s birthdays:
    You can add Sir Charles Barkley (basketball player).
    I had forgotten that I share a birthday with Kurt Cobain. I somehow I’ve gotten through life without knowing that I share one with Mitch McConnell as well. What an eclectic bunch of people.

    1. Sometimes when I read the “today’s birthdays” I imagine them all together somewhere in some joint celebration. It makes for some very interesting wonderment!

  15. That parrot did way better than a cat could ever do.

    A cat wouldn’t deign to even touch a puzzle piece. Even if it’s owner’s life depended on it.

    If it’s own life depended on it it might though.

    Of course..

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