Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 10, 2019 • 6:32 am

It’s Sunday, March 10, 2019, and it’s National Ranch Dressing Day, a dressing that didn’t exist when I was younger. But it is good, especially when made with real buttermilk. It’s also calorific. Today is also Mario Day, though I’ve never played that game—or any other video game. I am culturally ignorant.

And it’s “election day” in North Korea. As you might expect, voting is mandatory and there is only one government-approved candidate per post.

Remember, if you’re an American, you should have set your clocks forward last night. If you didn’t, it’s an hour later than you think.

Today was a thin day in history. On March 10, 1804, ownership of the Louisiana Territory was formally transferred from France to the U.S.: only about $15 million for 828,000 square miles! If that hadn’t been done, they’d be eating croissants in Nebraska today.  On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham bell conducted the first successful test of a telephone; as Wikipedia notes, “The first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876, when Bell spoke into the device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson answered.

On this day in 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force firebombed Tokyo, an event not much remembered: over 100,000 people were killed, and they were mostly civilians.  This is comparable to the death toll in Hiroshima: between 90,000 and 150,000.  It is also the 60th anniversary of the Tibean uprising, when thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace, the Potala, to prevent his abduction by China. But the same year he fled to India, where he lives now, and a fake Dalai Lama reigns in Tibet.

On March 10, 1969, James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. He later tried to recant, but of course was convicted, dying in prison of hepatatitis C in 1998.  You can make your own joke here: on this day in 1977, astronomers discovered the rings of Uranus. Finally, it was on this day in 2000 that the Nasdaq stock market index peaked at 5132.52, and then rapidly went downhill as the dot-com boom came to an end. Today, though, it stands at 7408.

Notables born on this day include Ferdinand II (1452, yes, that Ferdinand), Bix Beiderbecke (1903), James Earl Ray (1928), Chuck Norris (1940), Osama bin Laden (1957), Robin Thicke (1977), and Carrie Underwood (1983). Regarded as one of the founders of modern jazz, Bix died at 28 of alcoholism. Here’s one of the songs that ushered in modern jazz, “Singin’ the Blues”. And it’s still a good one. You can hear the Dixieland origins but also a novel trumpet solo by Bix (“Potato Head Blues” by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven, recorded about the same time, has a similar construction—Dixieland plus stunning trumpet solo).

Those who died on March 10 include Harriet Tubman (1913),  Mikhail Bulgakov (1940), Zelda Fitzgerald (1948), Andy Gibb (1988), and Lloyd Bridges (1998).

Here’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda, and their daughter Scottie in a Christmas-card photo. Scottie died in 1986; if you can ever find the volume of Scott Fitzgerald’s letters to his daughter, buy it and read it. I see you can buy used hardcovers on Amazon starting at $25. It’s one of the best books of letters I’ve ever read. If you have a good public or university library, it might be on the shelves.

American author F Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) dances with his wife Zelda Fitzgerald (nee Sayre) (1900 – 1948) and daughter Frances (aka ‘Scottie’) in front of the Christmas tree in Paris. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, today’s Hili Dialogue has a title:

 GOOD ADVICE

Hili: Leave these computers and let’s go for a walk.
A: That’s not a bad idea.
In Polish:

DOBRA RADA

Hili: Zostawcie te kmputery i chodźcie na dwór.
Ja: To nie jest zły pomysł.

From reader Merilee: Snow ducks in Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories:

And more snow ducks sent by reader Michael, along with their creators, live runner ducks:

Here’s some useful cat-related wisdom courtesy of Stash Krod:

From reader Barry. He’s heard of these “chicken-swinging clowns” but I haven’t, and I was brought up Jewish. Somebody enlighten us: is this a religious ritual?

Tweets from Grania. The first one required that she explained to me who “Mr. Lumpy” was. Her response:

A badger. This is from a woman who has a family of badgers living in her garden so she puts out food for them, even medicine for the baby when he hurt his snout (antibiotics prescribed by the vet and delivered via peanut butter). She never interacts with them; they are basically still wild.

Cats shouldn’t steal Mr. Lumpy’s cheese!

Rays are beautiful, graceful, and often friendly:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1102303110515449856

I haven’t heard about the mutant Grumpy Cat for a while, but he’s still riding Roombas. And now there’s a contest:

Maru would do this, too, but he was too fat to make it through the box:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1102388695347482624

I could think of worse things:

https://twitter.com/castellanosce/status/1094481373887455232

Tweets from Matthew. I still plan on reporting about this paper giving evidence that predation was a selective pressure helping promote the evolution of multicellular from unicellular organisms. But a science post is the hardest kind of post to produce!

In lieu of a science post today, I request—nay, demand—that you watch this video. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it immensely pleases the scientist.

This snake is a far better actor than Ellen Page, but not nearly as good as Carey Mulligan:

An evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus) dining, but its table manners aren’t the best:

40 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Isn’t that snake cute? Anyone know what species it is?

    (Re PCC’s comment, I’m not sure when Carey Mulligan played dead? But I only know her as Sally from the Dr Who episode ‘Blink’, which is widely regarded as the best one-off Doctor-lite ep ever. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5uc4ab )

    cr

    1. It is a hognose snake, but I do not know the species since there is more than one of these.

      Agree on the ‘Blink’ episode. There are a couple others that really grabbed me, especially the one where they are trapped in this vast library and there are voracious predatory creatures that must lurk… in the shadows.

  2. In other news, is there any function for the incredibly long tail on that lovely eagle ray?

    cr

    1. I couldn’t find an explanation for the tail, so I will guess.

      They eat shelled creatures in the reef & in the sandy bottom using smell & nose electro-receptors similar to those of sharks. The nose seems to be muscular for digging [judging by video].

      A video showed a huge 500lb specimen facing into the current & flapping its wings lazily to hover over one point in the sea bed for a long period [not close enough to employ receptors]. The commentary said they like to be in a current & hovering is part of their behaviour. I suppose the tail might help them keep station although they don’t seem to be able to move it themselves.

      Perhaps the long ray tail aids stability in the same way as the tail on a kite.

  3. Cool video

    Unrelated Random thoughts:

    At the CPAC thing, The My Pillow guy claimed Trump was chosen by god. Bill Maher has a take on this from Friday.

    I don’t know precisely what flavor is in ranch – perhaps it is celery seed in small amount?

    1. That pillow guy does appear to be a couple of bricks short of a load.

      The navigators, magnetic moths…

    2. Trump is being called the modern King Cyrus lately. I never heard of Cyrus before, til Maher’s editorial.

  4. Technically, I think Mr. Beiderbecke is playing a cornet, rather than trumpet, on “Singin’ the Blues.”

    1. He was better known as a cornet player rather than a trumpet player, although those instruments (along with the flügelhorn), while they differ in construction and sound quality, are identical from the player’s standpoint.

      Most listeners can’t tell one from the other.

      1. Thanks, BJ.

        I think he’s gonna be fine. Found a growth on his leg. He had a malignancy once before, so we were worried. The vet removed it yesterday, and said she didn’t think it was malignant. She sent it to the lab for testing, so we’ll know for sure later this week.

        The vet didn’t put him under for the operation, but she gave him something to relax him. He was stoned to the bone when I got him home. 🙂

        1. Glad to hear it. Stoned pets are always amusing.

          Take a look at my response in the last thread when you get a chance, if you’re interested in discussing the film further.

    1. If I was wearing a black suit, I would not go swinging a chicken above my head. But maybe that’s part of the atonement thing…

  6. It is difficult to justify multicellularity evolving as a defense mechanism against predation using just one kind of contemporary protozoan predator. Who knows what the protozoa were serving up as predators 3/4+ of a billion years ago when multicellularity first appeared. I would also like to know what happens when enemies such as amoebae are added to the mix. Being big (multicellular) considerably improves the surface/volume relationship, which may be advantageous under nutrient stress or desiccation. I suspect that other equally plausible primitive advantages could be proposed.

    1. There is a well known experiment on selecting for multicellular yeast where selection was done by choosing yeast that quickly settle to the bottom of the vial.

      Another advantage for multicellularity might be that cells can more easily settle by gravity and stay on the nutrient-dense sea bottom.

  7. Prof. CC on Bell’s new boondoggle :

    On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham bell conducted the first successful test of a telephone; as Wikipedia notes – The first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876, when Bell spoke into the device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson answered.

    This struck me as peculiar… what exactly did Watson say in his reply? Why aren’t Watson’s words part of history if this is a “bi-directional” phone?

    Bell’s journal, now at the Library of Congress, contains the following entry for March 10, 1876:

    I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you.” To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.

    So Watson had a Baldrick moment & rather than replying into the phone he walked over to Bell? LOL

    If only that were true it would be a great, absurd moment in telephone history, but unfortunately it’s not to be. The journal continues:

    I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, “You said ‘Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you.'” We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled

    My reading of that is it was “bidirectional”, but wasn’t set up for speech in both directions or it wasn’t bi-directional…

    Pity. could have been a great story: The first person to not quite grasp the concept of talking on the phone.

    1. So Watson had a Baldrick moment & rather than replying into the phone he walked over to Bell?

      If my boss told me to “come here” on the phone, I’d go there even though I am fully cognisant of the capabilities of a telephone to transmit speech.

    1. I am not Orthodox, as obviously the people pictured are. I have never seen, not heard of this ritual of “chicken swinging”. It must have something to do with some dietary blessing. Although I am Jewish, they seem to be from some strange culture.

  9. So glad to see the tweet re multicellular life. Here’s asking that we pursue this more here, for the following reasons. One thing not mentioned in the tweet/article is that multicellular life is thought to have arisen several times in plants, but only once in animals. (If anyone has evidence/papers showing the contrary please let me know!) What bothers me is that this has big implications for the emergence of intelligent life, assuming such life would only be found in animal organisms. If animal life “emerged” only once in 4.8B years, it suggests the odds of this happening are very small compared to all other developments along the path of life and evolution. This would have big implications for the likelihood of there being intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy or universe. Another way of saying this is that it would be the bottleneck in the Drake equation. Yet I haven’t heard about this much either in evolutionary biology circles, or in the life-elsewhere-in-the-universe discussions. And there does not seem to be much out there, publication wise, that is readily findable. On a philosophical level, this really keeps me up at night! Has anyone else been thinking about this? Can anyone point to some good sources of related information?
    Thanks!

    1. Are you putting your reasoning in a half nelson by speaking of “animals” & “plants”? Technically there are no unicellular animals so your horse is pushing the cart.

      LIFE AS WE KNOW IT JIM IS ROUGHLY LIKE THIS [I hope no mistakes!]

      EUKARYOTES:
      Animalia
      Plantae
      Fungi
      Protista

      PROKARYOTES:
      Archaea/Archaebacteria
      Bacteria/Eubacteria

      I would have thought the big bottleneck was the happy accident of of some bacterium [mitochondrian-to-be] taking up residence in some other ur-cell to give the cell the tools & energy needed for cell differentiation [temporally & by location in the body]. That seems like the ‘miracle’ to me & I think it happened once. Is that right?

      Multicellularity [or pluricellularity] is easy by comparison surely? The Wiki for multicellularity says it happened at least 46 times across all organisms.

      I expect there’s life everywhere & it’s planet & moon-based sludge – maybe smart sludge like in Solaris, but sludge can never leave its biosphere. I expect there are Einstein pools of sludge out there stuck in their gravity well. We might be a very rare beast that can detach from its biosphere – or maybe we only think we can. I expect we should be looking [in our system] for advanced alien replicating machines & when we find them we should kill them.

      1. “…of some bacterium [mitochondrian-to-be] taking up residence in some other ur-cell to give the cell the tools & energy needed for cell differentiation [temporally & by location in the body]. That seems like the ‘miracle’ to me & I think it happened once.”

        Yes, that’s the view I’ve seen in the literature. That it may be a “miracle” that has occurred once in life’s history (at least on earth) would seem to make “intelligent” like much less likely than if the path to animal forms were more common. Thing is, this really bugs me, and is disappointing in that my hope would be that intelligent life in the universe is not rare.

        1. I think there’s no galactic empires in our [Homo sapiens] future & the only alien intelligences we’ll meet are the ones we build.

          It would be nice if we’re remembered by our non-Homo sapiens replacements/descendants – it is they who might seed our galaxy with complex life. This seeding appears not to have happened anywhere or we would see other galaxies packed full of life signatures, but we don’t see that.

          The other hope is that ‘life’/intelligence can be beyond our imaginations – it could be sitting here & we can’t detect it yet. Lisa Randell suggest a Dark Matter universe of dark particles & chemistry, but she’s probably selling a book as usual!

    2. I think that we know too little about key conditions and mechanisms in the emergence of both life in general and multicellular life, to calculate probabilities.

      About multicellularity emerging only once in animals: Cavalier-Smith points out that multicellular plants and fungi can generally keep the feeding mode of their unicellular precursors, while multicellular animals are more tricky because they need new feeding strategy:

      “Origin of animal multicellularity:precursors, causes, consequences—thechoanoflagellate/sponge transition,neurogenesis and the Cambrian explosion”
      https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2015.0476

  10. Part of the tragedy of Bix, IIRC, was that his family regarded him as a failure. He’d take or send his records home and they’d be ignored.

  11. Re the moths, some organisms are known to use magnetic fields for navigation. Certain ocean worms contain magnetite that allows them to determine which way is “up”, so allowing them to seek food in mud near ocean bottoms. Magnetite has been found in salmon and other fish, though I don’t recall if it’s been determined experimentally whether they respond directly to magnetic fields. I used to work on a scanning probe technique that detected magnetic fields. We tried looking for magnetite in bees brought by a researcher who thought they may also be influenced by magnetic fields in cases where the sun and polarized light may not be the entire mechanism. (It was like looking for a needle in haystack and we did not find any.) I wonder if the moth researchers have looked directly for the presence of magnetite.

  12. A quick thought about the Louisiana Purchase, did anyone consult the real owners of the land and ask them how they felt about it?

  13. Regarding the elections in North Korea, I am a member of several building societies here in the UK (I don’t know what the equivalent is in the USofA, sorry) and I get invited to vote in elections for directors to the governing bodies. In these elections there are always an equal number of candidates matching the vacancies. To my way of thinking this is not an election but a coronation but I always get ignored when I complain about it.

  15. “Louisiana Territory was formally transferred from France to the U.S… If that hadn’t been done, they’d be eating croissants in Nebraska today.”

    Don’t they do it now? In my country, croissants are quite popular.

  16. Best (worst?) Bix Beiderbecke alcoholism anecdote:

    The trumpet player who stood next to Bix in Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra penciled into his music, at the point just before Bix’s solo was to occur, the reminder, “Wake up Bix.”

  17. My cats and I have a tacit agreement: If I can sit on a piece of furniture, so can they. That means that chairs, sofas, beds and so forth are open territory. Tables, countertops and the like are not. They are pretty good about sticking to this rule. They hae a food dispenser that holds nearly a month’s supply, so I never have to worry about early AM feedings.

    There is one notable exception to the sitting rule, since they are allowed, even encouraged, to sit on my lap which is something I cannot do.

  18. On this day in 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force firebombed Tokyo, an event not much remembered: over 100,000 people were killed, and they were mostly civilians

    This deserves repeating more often. People often wonder how Truman could take the decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima, but they don’t realise that the Allies were already there killing hundreds of thousands of the enemies’ civilians regularly. The only difference is the number of aircraft required to do the job.

  19. Bogong moth story:

    In the 1980s, when I worked at CSIRO Entomology in Canberra, Australia, the newly opened Parliament House was invaded by literally tons of Bogong moths. They were attracted from their usual migratory path (on the way to the Snowy Mountains) by the unusually bright lights used on the building, swamping the corridors and nearby houses. It was astounding to see, reminding one of Hitchcock’s movie ‘The Birds’.

    A few months later, after the moths had been removed, it was found that they’d laid eggs behind the expensive woollen tapestries on the walls, as these were being eaten from the inside out by moth larvae.

    I remember that the Federal Government seemed to think that the Entomology Division was somehow to blame for all this fracas, not ill thought out lighting.

    rz

  20. The chicken-swinging thing is done only by a few Orthodox Jews. It’s really more a folk custom than a part of the religion. Most rabbis, including Orthodox rabbis, are a little embarrassed about it — especially because, at the end, the chicken gets killed. They try to convince people to donate money to the poor instead. But people keep doing it because their parents and grandfathers did it.

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