Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 11, 2019 • 6:30 am

One more day before the weekend begins, as today is Thursday, April 11, 2019: the 101st day of the year. It’s National Cheese Fondue Day, another instance of cultural appropriation, but I haven’t had the dish and years and would love some, despite my transgression. And it’s International Louie Louie Day, celebrating that hard-to-understand song made famous by the Kingsmen’s version in 1963. But it was written by Richard Berry in 1955, and he was born on this day in 1935.

Berry’s version was in a calypso style, and others reworked it without giving him credit. After the Kingsmen’s version made the song famous, Berry sued and got over a million dollars in recompense. Here’s Berry’s original, recorded in 1957. If you’re as old as I, you’ll remember that the words in the Kingsmen’s version, which were nearly impossible to understand, were often interpreted as obscene.

Today’s Google Doodle is a cool gif of. . . .well, you can see for yourself (click on screenshot if you don’t know):

In other news, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London yesterday after Ecuador withdrew its offer of asylum. He’s now in British custody facing bond-violation charges, but will almost surely be extradited to the U.S. to face charges of leaking classified documents. He’s been inside the embassy since 2012. I believe he has a cat, but that doesn’t exculpate him.

On this day in 1727, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion premiered in Leipzig. On April 11, 1945, American forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.  Here’s a picture taken after liberation; it’s famous because Elie Wiesel (writer and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) is in it (he’s in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left, next to the vertical beam).

On this day in 1951, during the Korean War, President Truman fired General of the Army Douglas MacArthur from his command in Korea, as MacArthur had made statements contradicting the administration’s war policy. That same year MacArthur gave his “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech and retired.  Exactly six years after MacArthur’s firing, the UK agreed to allow Singapore to have self-rule.  And four years after that, in 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.

On April 11, 1976, the Apple 1 computer was created. Here it is—a version in the Smithsonian that’s undoubtedly worth a pile of money. And how far we’ve come! At the time it cost $666.66 (was that a bizarre joke), which was the equivalent then of $2,935. Prices have dropped!

Finally, it was on April 11, 1979, that Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deposed. He was given refuge in Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his death in 2003.

Notables born on this day include Leo Rosten (1908), Ellen Goodman (1941), John Krebs (1945), and June and Jennifer Gibbons (“The Silent Twins”, 1963). The twins are a very bizarre story that you can see in this hourlong documentary. If you have time, it’s well worth watching:

Those who expired on April 11 include Joseph Merrick (the “Elephant Man”, 1890), Luther Burbank (1926), Primo Levi (1987), Kurt Vonnegut (2007), Jonathan Winters (2013), and J. Geils (2017).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is obsessed with a bizarre idea. Malgorzata explains:

Hili got this strange idea that tigers have hollows in the trees , exactly like woodpeckers do. Nothing we say can convince her otherwise. She is looking for tiger hollows all over the garden and the orchard. 

The dialogue (note that her two front paws are in the air):

A: What are you looking for?
Hili: A tiger’s hollow.
In Polish:
Ja: Czego tam szukasz?
Hili: Dziupli tygrysa.

A tweet from reader Barry (also sent by Gravelinspector), showing that mountain lions aren’t nearly as good as cats at playing the shell game:

What rodent is this? Whatever it is, it was born spontaneously from an orange. (Translation of the Japanese appreciated, please.)

https://twitter.com/MeetAnimals/status/1107408874833960960

Tweets from Grania, a special edition featuring the black hole photo announced yesterday. All I can say is that I’m glad I was alive to see this: a long-standing prediction that was confirmed visually yesterday. (Of course, the press was wrong when they said that it was just a hypothesis until we saw the photo.)

That is a fricking BIG hole!

As a student at MIT and then a postdoc at Harvard, Katie Bouman developed the algorithm that made this image possible. The Guardian reports that it took HALF A TON OF HARD DRIVES shipped to her to get the final image (see here). Bouman now has a well deserved assistant professorship at CalTech.

https://twitter.com/veeallie1/status/1116054420016517121

Tweets from Matthew. I’m not sure this first trick would work with evolution:

What a beetle!

And do check out these books recommended by Jim Al-Khalili (I’ve read only two):

 

 

46 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Wiki will now mark today, Thursday, as the day the now bearded Julian Assange was arrested. Now will he be extradited to the US? I’d say probably.

    I sure hope that astounding photo of a black hole doesn’t end up as a one-eyed grinning emoji.

    1. Well if I click on the screenshot the black hole is replaced by a geometric design that tells me, if I guess rightly, that Piet Mondrian did something today.

      🙂

      cr

        1. Better Mondrian or Bauhaus than Munch or Dunkin’ Donuts.

          I love the black cat with black holes for eyes.

  2. So for the early computer screens you had to have a wood router if you wanted any text on there?

    1. Yeah, some end user had rotten taste. The wood from the whomping willow tree is ideal or the tumtum tree if you’re lucky enough to have one local to you. Mind you I’d wait until the invention of the network before constructing your router.

      The consumer Apple I was just a bare motherboard – you the poor customer would have to build your own case [if you could be bothered] & obtain a power supply, keyboard & screen, the latter could be a CRT instrument of some description or it could send the correct signal to run an American TV.

      Here’s a more typical setup:

      https://flic.kr/p/24TquMR

      2. You should see my current computer. Power supply poeped out so I replaced it with an old one with wires too short so it’s propped up inside the main frame with a spaghetti box so it would reach the places to plug the wires in. Cooled by a regular fan because the fan don’t work haha.

          1. I forgot to mention I replaced the CPU fan, which is now too small and thus is held in place with two pieces of string.

      3. A friend bought a Heath Kit computer back in the day. He programmed it one byte at a time, toggling in each bit. He predicted that advanced versions would be great for keeping tons of records for search and retrieval. A visionary.

        1. HaHa. Nobody predicted the true function of the home computer: internet LOLCats & kitty videos.

        2. My college roommate and I built an Altair computer kit. I think we paid $400 for it. After assembling it and plugging it in, nothing happened. Turned out the power cord that came with it was defective. After replacing it, all worked as expected. Still, toggling in programs made it fairly useless. I didn’t do much else with it since my day job involved real computers.

      1. I would love for a British court to rule that he committed no crime on US soil therefore the US has no standing in the matter. And further, that exposing war crimes and government misconduct is not in itself a crime.

        But I’m very much afraid it won’t.

        cr

        1. We’ll see. I expect Assange to fight the request in court and not to be extradited if there really is no crime. The courts will not be swung by political considerations.

          Note that the UK will not extradite for any crime where the accused can face the death sentence. So if there is that possibility, the extradition request will not get far.

      1. It’ll be interesting to see what the Brits do with him. Over here,the plot thickens with the indictment of former Obama counsel Greg Craig, accused of lying about his work for Ukraine, and the US charging Assange with hacking. I am hearing tantalizing speculation that the two events are related, and could be used to block releasing the Muller report and used as ammo for Barr to blame any hacking on the Dems; and/or that it has something to do with Roger Stone. I’m just taking in the information and speculations, which are coming in fast and thick, and waiting for more to form my own speculations.

        And what might Heather Hastie have to say about all this?

        One of the reasons Assange was booted out of the Embassy was because he didn’t take care of his cat and expected others to serve as staff (also cleaning up his bathroom). This may seem trivial, even laughable; but as a cat person, I’d kick him out for that alone, and keep the kitty.

  4. APPLE I: Apple CC charged resellers double their parts cost of $250.00 = $500.00

    Adding on the traditional retail markup of 1/3 [$166.67] = RRP of $666.67, but Wozniak rounded down & set it at $666.66 because “I as a mathematician like repeating digits”
    [Quoting from THIS VIDEO at 2:10

  5. We should probably make a deal with Ecuador to trade Julian Assange for attorney general Barr. What is the monthly rent in the embassy these days? Barr could spend his time there looking for spies.

  6. Damn, I’ve seen tourists on Time Square who were better’n that mountain lion at the shell game — not much better, mind you, but better.

    Wonder how mountain lions make out at Three-card Monte.

  8. I fear for Julian Assange. What chance does he have of a fair trial in the land of Free Speech (except when it’s classified or some corporation’s Intellectual Property…) ?

    cr

    1. Has he got access to a lot of money?

      Anyway, I would expect him to fight the extradition in the British courts first. It’ll be a while before he sees the inside of an American prison, if he does at all.

    2. Maybe he’ll get extradited to Sweden to face the sex charges first. If not, well, tant pis.

  9. Yesterday the high was 83F /28C. Today the low is 38F / 3C. Did the black hole cause this?

    1. He should hurry on over here because I’m sure Trump has a cabinet position for him. Just get his citizenship and he will fit right in with the rest of the crooks.

  14. Thanks for the original Louie Louie recording. Words finally made some sense after all these years of unintelligent mumbling. Another worthwhile use of the computer.
    Listening to the song got me listening to some favorite music and took a half hour to get back to the post.
    I definitely have a frontal lobe problem with staying in task and with delayed gratification. Note my problem with failure to properly proof read.

  17. With extensive help from Google Translate, my rough translation of the text in the hamster video is:

    It’s Shirashi.
    If you notice it, you are in a mandarin orange.
    [Nun!]
    Even though I wanted to eat the orange, what about the important contents?
    [Fununun]
    [Fununutsu]
    Oh!
    Escape force!
    I’m looking for fruit of oranges =3.
    [Shiyatatata]

    The stuff in brackets is just sound effects/onomatopoeia. I’m not quite sure what the exact, best translation of that third real line.

    The second line MIGHT be better translated as “If you notice it, I’m in a mandarin orange.”

  18. I’m going to bet that Barr gives him a pass. Trump fears that Assange will trade info on Russia/Trump for leniency. They’ll go easy on Assange in exchange for his silence. Also, Obama wanted him prosected and Trump always wants to take the opposite tack.

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