Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 17, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Hump Day: Wednesday, April 17, 2019, and National Cheeseball Day, celebrating a spherical “comestible” made from petroleum byproducts studded with nuts. It’s also Malbec World Day, celebrating that gutsy wine from South America.

It’s not a banner day for either historical events or the births and deaths of famous people. I do my best, but I can’t make stuff happen in the past.

It was on April 17, 1397, when, or so Wikipedia reports (and I’m getting increasingly skeptical of their reports) that Geoffrey Chaucer related his Canterbury tales to the court of Richard II. As Wikipedia notes, “Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as the start of the book’s pilgrimage to Canterbury.” On this date in 1907, the immigration center on Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, processed its record number of immigrants: 11,747 people. On April 17, 1949, the Republic of Ireland came into being when, at midnight, 26 Irish counties officially left the British Commonwealth.

On this day in 1961, the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion took place when a group of CIA-supported Cuban Exiles landed at that bay, aiming to overthrow Fidel Castro. The failure was complete within three days, with 67 Cuban exiles killed in action and ten others, including two other Americans, executed or died after capture.  Finally, exactly eight years later, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy on June 6 of the previous year.  Now 75, and having the 50th anniversary of his sentencing today, he remains in prison in California.

Notables born on this day include Samuel Chase (1741), J. P. Morgan (1847), Thornton Wilder (1897), Harry Reasoner (1923), Cynthia Ozick (1928), Olivia Hussey (1951), Nick Hornby (1957), Liz Phair (1967), and Victoria Beckham (1974).

Those who fell asleep on April 17 include Benjamin Franklin (1790), Louise Nevelson (1988), Piet Hein (1996), Linda McCartney (1998), and Gabriel García Márquez (2014, Nobel Laureate).  McCartney (née Eastman) was married to Paul McCartney for 29 years and had four children with him; she died of breast cancer in 1998. Here’s a song that Paul wrote about his quiet times with Linda at their place in Scotland:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili analogizes the children of the town with the trees in the park along the Vistula River:

Hili: Look at the playing field.
A: What do you see there?
Hili: The children are blooming.
In Polish:
Hili: Popatrz na plac zabaw.
Ja: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Dzieci kwitną.

I found this one:

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1117940853081878535

A tweet from reader Barry, showing a woman and her wolves. Be sure to turn the sound up high!

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1117121701203062784

Tweets from Grania. A baby badger gets treats; isn’t it adorable?

Snark from Eric Weinstein:

This is pretty amazing, especially because Seamus Blackley appears to be a video game designer.

It worked! See the thread for more steps in the process:

One of the classic examples of sexual selection via lekking (groups of males competing for female attention):

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1115850767271956484

Tweets from Matthew. What’s a potoroo? See here.

Here’s Matthew on the BBC participating in a show about the French Resistance. He’s famous (and the show is good)!

I really must go see this; it’s not a real kilim but a mosaic. To get there, take the RER C Metro from Paris toward Dourdan or Saint-Martin d’Etampes, and get off at Sainte-Geneviève des Bois.

You need this app if you’re a naturalist, professional or amateur:

 

20 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. With all the “national” days – which nations exactly? I am never clear on that.

  3. The SEEK link is very interesting – “Real-time Computer Vision predictions in Seek by iNaturalist version 2.0.” Maybe it’s time for me to get my first smartphone?

    1. A self-inflicted addiction I would advise against. Today you go directly from sucking your thumb or carrying a teddy to the cell phone.

    2. Looks like you’ve discovered your threshold app. It doesn’t get very much awesomer than this. Identifying birds is a little harder since they don’t hold still for pictures. I’m holding out for now.

      1. Good point! I’ll hold out until there’s a Duck Detector App or Flighty Tiny Songbird App.

  4. The badger eating trail mix is interesting. Their natural diet is mostly pocket gophers, I think. The group of black labs, does anyone know who they are?

    1. Black Labs: It’s just a generic stock image, there’s no info as to the history of those particular doggies. Is that the question you’re asking?

  5. Cultivating yeast from ancient Egyptian bread pots to recreate the ancient bread? Very cool! That bread looks great too.

    I love stuff like this. Reminds me of Dr. Pat and Dogfish Head brewery. Dr. Pat is a Biomolecular Archaeologist who has worked with Dogfish Head in several collaborations to recreate ancient brews. He analyzes residues in ancient containers to determine the make up of the contents.

    A brew named Midas Touch was the result of Dogfish Head’s first collaboration with Dr. Pat. It is based on Dr. Pat’s analysis of the residue in the drinking vessels discovered in the Midas Tumulus in Turkey that dates from about 700 BC and may be the tomb of Midas or perhaps Gordius. I’ve had this several times and like it. It’s very interesting stuff.

    “. . . Midas Touch, whose Iron Age-era recipe of muscat grapes, saffron, barley and honey is said to be reminiscent of Sauternes, the glorious French dessert wine.”

    Back to ancient yeast. For at least one of these recreations, an ancient Egyptian recipe, Dogfish Head went to Egypt and placed petri dishes in likely places in the region the evidence for the brew they were trying to recreate was found. They then sent them to a lab to culture the wild yeast found and used that to brew the beer, Ta Henket. Haven’t tasted this one, but it on my list. As is Dogfish Head’s Chateau Jiahu, a recreation of the oldest known fermented beverage, found in China.

    For more read this great article on Dr. Pat and Dogfish Head, The Beer Archaeologist

    From Dr. Pat, “I keep telling people that beer is more important than armies when it comes to understanding people.”

    1. This is a Sumerian drinking song performed by the late Anne Kilmer, a Sumeriologist, and a colleague. Original text and English translation interpolated. I can’t say how accurate the melody is, but for fun, who cares? She did a lot of work on Sumerian music.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdsjzBA1Vlk

      I took a class in divination in the ancient world from her at Cal Berkeley a long time ago — loads of fun. We didn’t drink any ancient brewskis but did learn how to perform entrail divination — a useful skill if there was one. Whenever I elaborate on my vita, I list entrail divination as a skill I learned in college..

      1. LOL on that last!

        Thanks for the video link. By all historical accounts our ancestors really knew how to party.

    2. I’m deeply suspicious of that

      a yeast … sample that I got from (redacted source).

      I’d be really really dubious before brewing up from a source I didn’t have some sort of a provenance for. At the very least, I’d do a trial brew first and test the result on … someone who “volunteers”. “Informed consent” … are words that I understand.

      1. I think there is very little risk to obtain, say, botulinum toxin under conditions optimized for brewing. But to believe that the microorganisms originated from Pharaoh tombs? Ceiling Cat!

  6. Greater Sage-Grouse #1: “Hey girl, check out my pecs.”

    Greater Sage-Grouse #2: “Nah girl, check out my pecs!”

    And so on. Ah, nature.

  7. How good is SEEK compared to some of the other apps which have higher ratings? [A friend had an early version of, i think, a Smithsonian app which identified >50% of all tree leaves as Eastern Redbud.]

  8. Oy, “increasingly” skeptical!? But the statistics is firm (mostly because it is still one observation 🙂 ).

    It is good to be skeptical, 80 % of dictionary claims are erroneous.

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