Friday: Hili dialogue

March 22, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Friday, March 22, 2019, and the second real day of Spring. And ducks are here! I am thinking that the hen might be Honey, but I’ll show the bill pictures later.

Tomorrow I’m off for Belgium and Amsterdam, so posting will be very light for two weeks or so. It’s World Water Day on Foodimentary, and they recommend you drink 8 cups of water per day. I am very bad about that, and probably drink about one. See also here for the Wikipedia entry.

On this day in 1622, the Jamestown massacre took place, with Algonquin Indians killing 347 English settlers: 1/3 of the colony’s population. This was in retaliation for the colonists’ appropriation of lands to grow tobacco. On March 22, 1765, the British parliament passed the Stamp Act that introduces a tax on all printed material in the American colonies (playing cards, newspapers, etc.), which had to carry a revenue stamp. This is one hated feature that led to the Revolution.  On this day in 1872, Illinois became the first state to require gender equality in the workplace. 1872!

Moving on, it was on March 22, 1960, that Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes got the first patent for a laser. Shawlow got the Nobel Prize in 1981, Townes in 1964. On that very same day in 1960, in the case of Eisenstadt v. Baird, the United States Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people had the right to possess contraceptives. I was only 11 then, so this was not a concern for me.  On this day in 1978, Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas fell off a tightrope stretched between two hotels in Puerto Rico. There was no net, so he plunged to his death. You can see the video here (warning, it’s a bit disturbing, though there’s no gore). On March 22, 2016, three suicide bombers set off explosives at the Brussels airport and a metro station, killing 32 and injuring 316. Three of the five perpetrators died in the bombings, the other two were arrested.  Finally, it was on this day two years ago that there was a terrorist attack in London near the Houses of Parliament. Four people were killed and at least 20 injured.

Notables born on this day include Adam Sedgwick (1785), Robert Millikan (1868, Nobel Laureate), Chico Marx (1887), Karl Malden (1912), Werner Klemperer (1920), Marcel Marceau (1923), Pat Robertson and Stephen Sondheim (both 1930), Lena Olin (1955), and Reese “Don’t You Know Who I Am?” Witherspoon (1976).

Those who bought it on March 22 were few; they include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1832), and Karl Wallenda (1978, see above).

By the way, Carl Reiner turned 97 two days ago and an article on Fox describes how he celebrated:

“By staying alive!” the comedian recently told Closer Weekly. “Today, I woke up thinking about a dish I haven’t eaten in a long time. We used to have a house in the south of France, and the first day we arrived we always had ‘lapin a la cocotte,’ rabbit in burnt butter sauce. I’m going to celebrate by having that!”

That’s a man after my own heart. I hope he had a good wine with it.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili prescribes a sort of feline Turing Test—or should we call it the Purring Test?

Hili: Artificial intelligence may purr but it will not be a cat.
A: But it can be quite charming.
Hili: You must be joking.
In Polish:
Hili: Sztuczna inteligencja może mruczeć, ale kotem nie będzie.
Ja: Może mieć jednak sporo wdzięku.
Hili: Chyba żartujesz.

From Facebook, created by Leigh Rubin of “Rubes“:

From reader Barry. This Christian textbook entry about evolution has one lie after another.  The “principles of Darwin’s general philosophy” are generally true (except I don’t think Darwin was firm on #2), but this screed leaves out a lot of other principles, like splitting of lineages and the creation of “designoid” features of organisms by natural selection.

From reader Nilou. I did this experiment and got the headline below the tweet; readers should try this themselves and weigh in below:

What I got:

Tweets from Matthew; I’ll show all four:

Matthew wondered why anybody would do this, and my response was, “To attract emus, of course!”

Which one are you? I’m right there next to “Atheist”.

Tweets from Grania. First, a lovely waterscape:

Good God! I’m never giving a seminar in Iceland. From the excellent Irish comedian Dara “get in the fooking sack” Ó Briain:

 

37 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. – steals vending machine

    water : having gone back and forth about tap water vs. purified, I’m committed to pitcher filters now. I looked inside my pipes.

    1. Florida woman : accused of defrauding two couples.

      That’s the only one I’ll report.

  2. I had a sheep’s head like that in Calabria for Easter many years ago.

    DO take a look at the bot fly that @phil_torres is growing on his back on twitter!
    🙂

    I think the emu see an emu-like shape & so investigate.

  3. Atheist of course.

    If it is a meal of rabbit you are after let me recommend the following for the non vegie out there. After cleaning and skinning, soak the rabbit in a bucket of cold salt water over night. Not sure about the butter sauce but oil works okay.

  5. I tried the Google challenge.

    ‘Half-naked man walks goat in the rain; welcome to Florida’.

    Kinda half-baked, sadly. ‘Naked man … ‘ would have been worth taking note of.

    cr

  6. Feb. 25th: Watch Florida Man Vape semen.

    As for the handy atheist chart, I overlap in two areas: I Don’t Believe in Any gods and I Really Don’t Care. That’s been my progression through atheism; first I knew I was not a believer, then I wanted to know what everyone else believed and why, and now I don’t give a crap.

    1. Exactly my own trajectory, actually.

      I like to think of ‘don’t care’ as being even more dismissive than ‘don’t believe’.

      cr

  7. I like my Florida Man birthday:

    “Florida Man Attacks Neighbor With Machete Named ‘Kindness’”

    1. That is delightfully ambiguous. Who was named ‘Kindness’, the man, the neighbor, or the machete? And who owned the machete, the man or the neighbor?

      That’s six possible permutations in the one headline – excellent score. 😉

      cr

      1. I think the Attacker was awarded the name “Kindness” as a title because of the attack. There’s probably a medallion, or something, that goes with it. And he gets to tack it on to his name on letterheads and business cards, like “Attacker, B.A., Dip. Ed., Knight of the Kings Chamberpot, Kindness”.

        (Need I point out that I hope the Neighbour was unharmed?)

  8. Looks like Dara got to Iceland just in time for a Þorrablót celebration. We were lucky enough to miss Þorrablót by a couple of weeks when we visited, although we did try the hakarl (fermented shark).

  9. My Florida Man challenge returned, “Video: Florida man drops stolen TV from getaway scooter.”

  11. I claim victory in the “Florida Man” challenge:

    “Florida man who allegedly threatened family with Coldplay lyrics ends standoff after SWAT promises him pizza.”

    Some things you just can’t make up…

    1. Victory, eh?

      Put down the pizza and come over here, sweetie — and see my machete named “Kindness.”

  12. On that very same day in 1960, in the case of Eisenstadt v. Baird, the United States Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people had the right to possess contraceptives. I was only 11 then, so this was not a concern for me.

    Eisenstadt v. Baird was decided in 1972. That would put you at about 23, if my math is accurate, right in the prime concern-over-contraception-for-single-people demographic. 🙂

    Hell, I was a college freshman then, so solidly in that demographic myself.

    2. I would think you were way past due. I was same age as Jerry at 22 and out of the service and in school, far too late.

  13. This might make you feel better about the 8 cups of water per day. They are no peer-reviewed articles to backup this claim. Someone made it up, and it persists. At the university, where I am a librarian, one course regularly has this water-intake recommendation as an assignment. The students dutifully approach the reference desk asking for help in finding peer-reviewed articles that don’t exist. It’s an interesting exercise and they are all surprised to learn that this dietary recommendation is based on a long-standing myth or an old wive’s tales.

    1. I think there is a religious cult that pushes that myth. Mormons, Adventists, Scientologists…something like that.

  14. October 8th, also known as the day a Florida man reported a dead body by carrying the skull into a Publix and using it as a puppet.

    wtf ??

  20. February 15: Florida Man claiming people were “eating his brains” leads police on insane golf course chase

  21. That atheist chart is not very good. I fit three of the descriptions, all scattered around the agnostic/gnostic scale. Absolute knowledge of anything is impossible, not just gods. But most people don’t spend their time worrying about absolute knowledge, just what’s most likely based on the known evidence.

    So, I am “pretty certain we can know that there are no gods”, even if I also believe “It’s impossible to gain absolute knowledge of God.” And of course, “I don’t believe in any gods.” So, does that make me an agnostic gnostic atheist?

    1. I generally don’t like Sabine Hossenfielder’s ideas – she likes fringe physics – and that retweet was as bad as I expected.

  22. “Florida Man Arrested After Altercation Over Egg Rolls”

    Some time ago, I read a report about some Florida man who located, shot and injured another one after they quarrelled on Facebook. A reader commented that every story beginning with “A Florida man” is worth reading.

    However, I feel a little bad about the Florida men. Any of them here?

  23. Mine was something about Florida Man enticing minors. Yikes.

    I’m on the “pretty certain there are no gods” side of the diagram.

    -Ryan

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