Saturday: Hili dialogue

April 6, 2019 • 6:45 am

Professor Ceiling Cat has landed, and so I/he/hir/they is/ am/are taking over the reins again. Many hearty thanks to Grania for handling the difficult but important job of starting the day with news, some history, and some tweets.

And now it’s Caturday Saturday, April 6, and I haven’t yet checked the pond for ducks. It’s National New Beer’s Eve, which precede’s tomorrow’s celebration of National Beer Day. (We’ll learn tomorrow why April 7 is designated as that day.) When I have time this week, I’ll help celebrate by posting pictures of all the great beers I had in Belgium.

It’s also National Caramel Popcorn Day, another comestible which is produced in its tastiest form in Chicago (try the Garrett Popcorn Shops).

Yesterday’s Google Doodle celebrated the life of German physicist Hedwig Kohn, born on this day in 1887 (died November 26, 1964), a Jewish physicist who fled Germany, settling in the U.S. to do pioneering work on spectrometry and electromagnetic radiation.

On this day in 1199, Richard 1 of England, 41, died of sepsis after an arrow was removed from his shoulder. On April 6, 1808, John Jacob Astor formed the American Fur Company, an enterprise that eventually made him America’s very first millionaire. On this day in 1895, after waging an unsuccessful libel lawsuit against the Marquess of Queensberry’s claim that Wilde engaged in homosexual activity (which he did), Oscar Wilde was arrested for sodomy. He was convicted, sent to prison for two years (1895-1897), and then went into self-imposed exile in Paris where he died an agonizing death in 1900. Exactly one year later, the first “modern” Olympic games were resumed in Athens after a 1500-year hiatus when they were banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I.

On this day in 1909, Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reported that they reached the North Pole: the first people to do so. However, this may be erroneous; as Wikipedia reports:

. . . in a 1989 book British explorer Wally Herbert concluded that Peary did not reach the pole, although he may have been as close as 60 miles (97 km). His conclusions have been widely accepted, although disputed by some authorities.

On this day in 1930, protesting the British tax on salt, Gandhi’s “Salt March” reached the sea. Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud to the sky and declared “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”

Finally, on April 6, 1994, the genocide in Rwanda began when a plane carrying the nation’s president Junvénal Habyarimana (and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira) was shot down.

Notables born on this day include Maimonides (1136), Raphael (1483), Gerry Mulligan (1927), James D. Watson (1928), Ram Dass (1931, real name Richard Alpert), Merle Haggard (1937), and Marilu Henner (1952).

Those who expired on April 6 include Richard I (1199), Raphael (1520; died on his 37th birthday), Albrecht Dürer (1528), Igor Stravinsky (1971), Isaac Asimov (1992). Tammy Wynette (1998), Mickey Rooney (2014), Ray Charles (2015), Merle Haggard (2016), and Don Rickles (2017).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, the editor of Listy, is being bothered by trolls on the website:

Hili: A troll wrote a comment again.
A: It’s their second nature.
Hili: More like their first.
In Polish:
Hili: Znowu jakiś troll napisał komentarz.
Ja: To jest ich druga natura.
Hili: Raczej pierwsza.

Reader Barry contributed his own caption to this caption-queried tweet: “Cat yoga”:

https://twitter.com/WlLDNATURE/status/1113421021384630272

Four tweets from Heather Hastie, the first two via Ann German. Heather says that she loves Sherlock, and that Grania will get this tweet even if I don’t (and indeed, I don’t, but so be it). Perhaps you will get it:

Heather says this about her second contribution,

“Ann said, ‘I couldn’t even get through this vid without breaking into a cold sweat.’ . I tweeted it with the comment: FFS. #Snowflakes are destroying the liberal brand.”

Crow feeds kitten?! I wish I knew more about this since I don’t believe a crow can properly nourish a kitten:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1110995460854968320

Heather notes that this one will especially appeal to reader Diana MacPherson, who will undoubtedly point out that the cat damage in this case was limited since the toilet paper was placed in the proper “under” position.

Tweets from Matthew; the first is worth following up:

I was going to post on the data below, but I’ll let you read the article as it just shows the (salubrious) continuation of a long-standing trend:

Tweets from Grania:

A needy cat, but what’s wrong with that?

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1114149506919084032

Well, they forgot the cilia. . . .

And a fantastic reflection:

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1114136585858179073

 

29 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Alpha plus for the homage to Sherlock. I have no idea how anyone has the patience for such an enterprise 😀

    1. I’m not sure how you ‘get’ the tweet (in the sense that Grania ‘gets it’ and PCC doesn’t).

      It’s a video (nicked from Youtube as usual) of a Sherlock Holmes-themed domino cascade. Self-evidently. There are many similar on Youtube. But I’m not sure what there is to ‘get’ about it?

      cr

      1. It’s an homage to the TV show “Sherlock”. If you don’t watch it you may not get all of the references.

        1. I don’t watch ‘Sherlock’ – but I got *most* of the references from Conan Doyle.

          I think Conan Doyle probably contributed almost as many literary memes to English culture as Shakespeare or Dickens.

          cr

  2. Welcome back.
    How extraordinary to see a crow and a kitten enjoying a rough and tumble. What amazing birds they are. I presume the crow was given food to give to the kitten.

    1. Starving strays will eat most anything. One mother cat with kittens lived off of buttered microwave popcorn from the trash bins.

  4. The rise of the “nones” is an encouraging trend, but its significance in terms of influencing politics, i.e., diminishing the role of the religious in shaping governmental policy is quite uncertain. The article notes:

    “If herding atheists, only one part of this group, is like herding cats, trying to corral 23% of the population without any shared creed or specific ideology is corralling an even less predictable menagerie. We need to know far more about what people affirm, as well as what they deny, if we want a clearer picture of where the country’s politics—if not its government or policies—might be headed.”

    In other words, the “nones” are generally younger than the religious, tend to vote less than the latter, and seem to have little in common other than a rejection of organized religion. Many may very well vote for Republicans (although they tend to trend liberal), the party of religion, because they find the GOP policies attractive and more important than the religious affiliations of its politicians. Hence, at least in the short term, the political power of the rise of the “nones” on affecting pro-religious policies of the government and decisions of the Supreme Court will have little impact. This may all change over the next decade or so if the upward trend in the number of “nones” continues. What we also need to know is how do “nones” prioritize their rejection of religion vis-à-vis other issues. When they vote, do they consider the religious orientation of the candidates as important in deciding whom they will vote for? Or is it a minor consideration compared to other factors?

    1. It is very like the nones dominating Europe, I think.

      They may well vote Christian Democratic (I could not, terrible name) when it aligns with their interests (currently fear of EU and migrants here in Sweden).

      Specifically in Scandinavia – or at least Sweden – overt religious politicians are often laughed out of their office as gullible, unconventional and suspected of having hidden agendas. Few if any votes for them and their open special interests, though they may form small such interest groups within parties. I don’t see much of that in the rest of Europe (or US).

      1. New Zealand is similar. Few politicians choose to highlight their religion, since it would probably cost them more votes than it gained. People just like to keep their religion separate from politics.

        This is why the opposition to a choice-in-dying bill currently in Parliament stick to mendacious slippery-slope arguments and absolutely never, ever admit their religious motivations.

        We did have a Christian Heritage Party a few years back, which briefly gained one MP in Parliament (as a defection from another party), but then it went the way of the better US televangelist churches – its leader was sent to jail for child sex abuse. Yes really. You couldn’t make this up.

        cr

        1. Did you ever get the feeling the the majority of religious leaders are simply grifters. They hit on what they take is an easy way to make a living. Tell people what they want to hear and they’ll pay you for it. A bit like choosing between burglary and steeling checks from mailboxes. They are endowed with a certain talent for straight-faced lying to get what they want, and they simply extend that technique to their sexual appetites, children being the easiest prey. Basically, they are criminally lazy.

  8. This comment is in appreciation of Grania’s format of listing birth/death dates at the opening of the blog. It’s much easier to read.

  9. Well, they forgot the cilia. . . .

    The paper (that got criticized by modern marine scientists, dunno about other paleontologists) that worked out a tentative fossil sequence from sea anemone like ancestors in the Ediacaran put those – as well as the comb rows – as heavily derived ancestral mouth parts.

    Meaning they put ctenophores as essentially flouting mouths; I wonder what gave them that idea … (But the progression looked superficially nice, albeit long branch and heavily morphed, to non-experts; the resulting character tree looks good too!)

    Would be nice to know what the organ gene expressions are!

    1. Oh, I forgot, they relied on Qingyang (and later Burgess) Lagerstätte fossils, but the contemporary Chengyang now show ctenophores. Re possible problems with the hypothesis, dunno how bad that is, especially in terms of “the explosion”.

  11. Ctenophores are beautiful. Bowever, one of them is destroying the biota of our Black Sea, so, as a good bigot, I hate all ctenophores:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemiopsis

    Additionally, their early and still disputed divergence from stem metazoans gives headaches to all interested in animal classification. For the short course we offer our students, I have solved the problem in a Solomonian way by simply omitting them.

  12. Comb jellies swallowing comb jellies. I’m shocked, I thought they only did micro-plankton.
    And I’m even more dismayed to learn that Mnemiopsis ledyi is an invasive species.
    Note, ignoring/omitting is not Salomonian. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can do that.

  13. The BBC Sherlock series is one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen. Every episode is a mini-masterpiece. The domino tribute was excellent. Makes me want to rewatch them all.

    Thanks Grania for standing in seamlessly for Jerry.

    Welcome back PCC(E)! How are the ducks?

  14. Has anyone else had a problem with the Reflection video crashing their browser? When I click to play, the whole screen stutters for a few seconds, then closes down the browser (Waterfox 56.2.8, Windows 10). The other videos on this page work fine.

      1. Thanks for the link, Paul, but I can’t find anything on it to help. As it was just that one video, I can live with it, unless I have further problems.

  15. Swaddling, just what some terrified college kids need to calm their fears. Hope they don’t find out about this or it might become popular.

    1. “Adult babies” has been a known paraphilia since … long ago. This just seems to be the same kink coming out in a different way.

  16. Is it my eyes, or is the yoga cat polydactyl, at least on the front paws?

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