Friday: Hili dialogue

March 29, 2019 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning, welcome to Friday!

 

In history today:

  • 845 – Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collects a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.
  • 1549 – The city of Salvador da Bahia, the first capital of Brazil, is founded.
  • 1632 – Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.
  • 1867 – Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on July 1.
  • 1927 – Sunbeam 1000hp breaks the land speed record at Daytona Beach, Florida.
  •  1936 – In Germany, Adolf Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany’s illegal remilitarization and reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters.
  • 1974 – NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first space probe to fly by Mercury.
  • 1999 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark (10,006.78) for the first time, during the height of the dot-com bubble.
  • 2014 – The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales are performed.

Notable birthdays:

  • 1900 – Bill Aston, English race car driver (d. 1974)
  • 1927 – John Vane, English pharmacologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
  • 1929 – Dick Lewontin, Jerry’s Ph.D. boss, turns 90 today and is still kicking. Born March 29, 1929.
  • 1929 – Utpal Dutt, Indian Bengali actor, director and playwright(d. 1993)
  • 1936 – Judith Guest, American author and screenwriter
  • 1940 – Astrud Gilberto, Brazilian singer-songwriter
  • 1943 – John Major, English banker and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (28 November 1990 – 2 May 1997)
  • 1955 – Marina Sirtis, British-American actress, best known for Star Trek: The Next Generation

Today iHili is issuing orders that may or may not have an ulterior motive.

Hili: You’ve drunk your coffee.
A: Oh, so I have.
Hili: Make yourself another one with cream – but not all the cream.

In Polish:

Hili: Wypiłeś kawę.
Ja: O, rzeczywiście.
HilI: Zrób sobie następną, ze śmietanką (ale nie całą).

From Twitter today

There are worse things in life than being you.

From Wednesday, an interesting note.

An angle I had not considered

One thing you didn’t know ducklings like to do

A new and better ending to Frankenstein

An interesting story, no it’s nothing to do with chimeras.

Overly-dramatic man makes three new friends

Same

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1111143087231778816

Finally, panorama photos of dogs are a new form of art.

 

28 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Eyeless and wingless erotylid beetles that live around the arse and scrotum of mice.

    I can think of one other creature with a similarly wretched existence. He lives at the US Naval Observatory and is second in line under the Presidential Succession Act.

    1. True but there are many of that party right there with him. Must give credit where due.

    2. I just got to this thread and I’m sad you didn’t make a Dead Ringers reference for the woman with two wombs.

      1. My apologies to Messrs. Irons and Cronenberg for having overlooked that opportunity.

        1. One of my top three Cronenberg movies. I’m a huge fan of his. I own nearly every one of his movies on disc.

  2. Dog is confused by his own reflection in mirror – amusing. I noticed that of 4 dogs visiting here, only one, the youngest, was fascinated by his reflection. Maybe the others found it old news.

  4. That mutatis mutandis version of Mary Shelley’s novel is some funny shit, I don’t care who you are.

  5. Woman with two wombs gives birth twice

    Taking bets on how long before this is cited as scientific evidence of a sex spectrum.

  6. I love the duckling water slide! I wonder if their obvious delight in doing it had to be coaxed at first or if it happened spontaneously. Although the video is too short to be sure, they also seem to prefer going down the slide one at a time. I wonder why? Perhaps they enjoy watching others do it almost as much as doing it themselves. Or they reflexively wait to see if anything bad happens to the other duckling before doing it themselves.

    1. Here’s a video example of a similar device from a more informative angle:

      https://youtu.be/EpiGS-3PDU8

      There is a nice warm IR lamp up top & a food trough at just above comfortable eating height for a duckling. When a duckling stretches up for the grub it nabs some, but inevitably overbalances & tumbles down the slide.

      There are a few YouTube videos of various designs of duckling slide & they all operate the same way. I conclude people must take these devilish devices around to agricultural shows & State fairs. I think the ducklings would be better off with their mum on some lake, but that’s showbiz folks!

      2. I’m not sure, it definitely looks to me that some of the slides are purposeful.

          1. In contrast to the involuntary ducklings, I recall an account of New Zealand keas (parrots) who are legendary for their mischievous ingenuity. Apparently they discovered that a steep corrugated iron roof offered a nice slide and were going whoosh-bump down it all night, to the distraction of the occupants of the hut.

            cr

          2. We also have that magpie (IIRC) that repeatedly slide down a snow covered car front window.

          3. That I can believe. Behaviour seen also in blackbirds &/or ravens in the UK I think on car snowy windscreens & roofs [can’t check right now – on a not-so-smart ‘phone]

      3. I thought i saw heat lamp reflection over top of slide. Thanks for the update and correction. Too many misrepresentations floating around the web.

    2. I like that there’s a little warming lap up at the top so they don’t get a chill while waiting.

      1. They are not waiting to go down the slide – they are falling down while reaching for food.

    1. Seems the history is complicated [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace#Application_of_theory_to_humans,_and_role_of_teleology_in_evolution ]?

      Wallace premiered using evolution theory on humans and recognized the difference in brain volumes. Darwin praised that paper.

      In later life Wallace became a spiritualist and now premiered teleology in nature, specifically to explain humans. That was later adopted by Sophisticated Theologians™.

  8. “Funny animals” is in reality cruel trick, film at 11:00. In other news, sun rises.

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