Monday: Hili dialogue

April 29, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s the work week again: Monday, April 29, 2019, and National Shrimp Scampi Day, honoring a dish I’ve never eaten. It’s also the double remembrance: Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare (a UN holiday) and  International Dance Day (a UNESCO holiday).

On this day in 1429, Joan of Arc, a peasant girl, arrived at Orléans on a Mission from God to lift the siege by the British. She and the French succeeded. Here’s a painting depicting her entry into the city:

Joan of Arc enters Orléans (painting by Jean-Jacques Scherrer, 1887)

On April 29, 1770, James Cook arrived in Botany Bay in Australia, a place that he named on the spot.  In 1916, this was the day of the end of the Easter Rising, when the Irish rebels surrendered to the British in Dublin. Fourteen of the leaders were executed by firing squad. On this day in 1945, there were two events in Nazi German: Hitler married Eva Braun in the Führerbunker, designating Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. The next day Hitler and Braun both committed suicide. On the same day, Dachau concentration camp was liberated by American troops.

On this day in 1967, after having refused induction into the Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title. But he fought (in the ring) again.  On April 29, 1967, as Wikipedia notes, “The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.” On this day in 1974, besieged by the courts and Congress, President Nixon released an “edited transcript” of the White House “Watergate tapes.” It wasn’t enough, and the S.O.B. was forced to resign.

Exactly eight years ago (was it that long?), Prince William and Catherine Middleton got married at Westminster Abbey in London.  For you Royal watchers, and also Kiwis—since William will one day be your King—here’s a short clip of the moment of the nuptials:

Finally, as Wikipedia again reports, “A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.”

Notables born on this day include Henri Poincaré (1854), William Randolph Hearst (1863), Harold Urey (1893, Nobel Laureate), Duke Ellington (1899), Hirohito (1901), Rod McKuen (1933), Zubin Mehta (1936), Bernie Madoff (1938), Brian Charlesworth (1945, my erstwhile colleague and chairman at Chicago), Jerry Seinfeld (1954), Daniel Day-Lewis (1957), and Uma Thurman (1970).

Those who bought the farm on April 29 include Ludwig Wittgenstein (1951), Alfred Hitchcock (1980), Mike Royko (1997), John Kenneth Galbraith (2006), and Albert Hofmann (2008).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hli is taking advantage of the rights conferred on her (remotely) by the American Declaration of Independence:

A: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m resting. I got tired in the pursuit of happiness.
(Photo: Zuzanna Frydrych)
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, odpoczywam, zmęczyłam się pogonią za szczęściem.
(Zdjęcie: Zuzanna Frydrych)

Pi got a lion cut, which he needs in the Hawaiian heat:

This is splendiferous!

Useful SFW words from Facebook:

Tweets from Heather Hastie. The tweeter here assures us that this floating pigeon is fine:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1121844728469782528

It’s a bumper crop of kakapos this year, and a good thing, too, given their rarity and low reproductive rate. Here are three in one nest!

From reader Barry. I think Dr. Goodall is being a bit too Pecksniffish here. I’d be curious how a chimp reacts to a cellphone.

Tweets from Grania. Say the name of this dinosaur out loud:

A chilling sea turtle. This looks like a young one:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1119439728317566976

This should interest you. Remember, this is not bone but cartilage:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1119315510393356288

Bucket cats. Translation: “Would you care for an egg?”

Tweets from Matthew. This first fact was news to me:

This carnivorous plant is really cool:

It’s hard to see platypuses (platypi?) in the wild. Here are some:

34 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The only remembrance I have concerning chemical warfare was a class during my military experience many years ago. This training included giving myself a shot through clothing to experience what you would do if attack by some kinds of chemicals and some real exposure to tear gas. A really pleasant day.

  2. On this day in 1974, besieged by the courts and Congress, President Nixon released an “edited transcript” of the White House “Watergate tapes.” It wasn’t enough, and the S.O.B. was forced to resign.

    [Expletive deleted] Richard Milhous Nixon!

    1. Lots of famous Americans have funny first & last names, Nixon had a funny middle name…
      🙂

  5. … sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game …

    That could be the only baseball stat that can never be topped — well, that, and DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. 🙂

  6. IMO people don’t appreciate ditches enough. What a fantastic invention. They keep your roads dry and your crops growing and your tractors from getting stuck in the mud. There needs to be a national ditches day.

    1. They ditched it…
      but seriously, you are right & it should be international. Lots of farms in the UK no longer have ditches as they have drainage in the fields, so they filled in ditches & pushed right up to field margins. As a consequence we have lost a lot of wildife habitat…

  8. Horrors! You have confused dinocephalians with dinosaurs, and perhaps therapsids with theropods. Birds are theropods, but you are a therapsid.

    2. I thought the same, but maybe “dinosaur” was used in a broad metaphorical sense as “huge pre-cenozoic amniote”. Most of WEIT readership has an idea of amniote phylogeny.

      1. I think that about half of all mammal-like reptile (or proto-mammal) fossils were found here in the Karoo. (I’m not 100% sure that is true, but the amount of these fossils is amazing)

  9. That fact about the world population of Jews also surprises me, but I guess it makes sense. Three generations isn’t really enough to replace those numbers.

  10. I think plain old scampi have flat tummies like lobsters and are about the size of crayfish. I used to be able to buy them around hers. I also think Italians call regular shrimp scampi, which can lead to much confusion.

    1. Your attempt to explain leads to more confusion, but the fault doesn’t lie with you; it’s due to the confusing common names that people, especially seafood purveyors, have given to all these edible critters that sort of resemble one another to the non-scientist. I think that what you refer to as “plain old scampi” is what I know as “Langostino,” just to throw another appellation into the seafood stew. But that doesn’t mean you’re incorrect. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langostino is a Spanish word with different meanings in different areas. In the United States, it is commonly used in the restaurant trade to refer to the meat of the squat lobster. (However,I’ve been condemned by a commentor on this site as a credulous ignoramus for citing Wikipedia, so caveat lector). I don’t know where you live but the article notes the confusion, which is at least partly geographical and partly due to marketing.

      1. You have langouste (big clawless -well small clawed lobsters) and langoustine (nordic lobster), gambas, scampi, van-mei prawns, prawns and shrimp (the north sea grey shrimp is one of my favourites) and many other kinds of prawns and lobsters. I think scampi, lobsters, crayfish and prawns come in dozens of species. The commercial and common nomenclature is one big mess, but I like about all of them.

        1. Whatever the heck they’re called, I like ’em all, too. When it’s going down the hatch, taste is all that really counts.

          But since langoustine has been under discussion, I’m going down to Trader Joe’s to get a package of their frozen “langoustines” (or whatever they are) and I’m going to cook ’em “shrimp scampi style” (meaning with garlic and butter) Unfortunately, I never see them fresh in these parts.

      2. Jenny, I realized after I had posted that I had not clarified very much, probably because, as you state, there are so many takes on scampi out there. Nicolaas adds to the clarification/confusion below🙀. I like about all of them, too, and am just sorry that I can no longer buy the little suckers locally (Toronto area) for a reasonable price, or at all. They are tastier than shrimp or lobster to my palate.

        1. Merilee, please see my comment above to Nicolaas Stempels. This exchange has made me so hungry!

    1. I take issue with Wiki there, the nordic lobster (aka langoustine or Nephrops Norvegicus) is not necessarily what is generally understood to be -or sold as- scampi.
      When you buy scampi (or gamba for that matter)you buy some big prawn of several possible species.

  12. “On this day in 1429, Joan of Arc, a peasant girl, arrived at Orléans on a Mission from God to lift the siege by the British.”

    Technically, the besiegers were English – there were no “British” people at the time.

  13. I agree that Dr. Goodall sounds like a grumpy old lady. If she has grandchildren, I bet she is unhappy with their use of electronic devices as well, and wants them to use that passtimes of 50 years ago. Why not give a modern toy to entertain an intelligent animal? Why not share a video of it using the toy? “Don’t share videos of chimps looking cute and intelligent, because this prompts illegal pet trade.” Give me a break!

    1. “I think Dr. Goodall is being a bit too Pecksniffish here.”

      I’d say!

      [I found it funny that the chimp retrieved the form of an especially different looking bikini model – one wonders if it goes “can humans look like that?”]

  14. Re the plural of platypus, there are those that argue the ‘pus’ bit comes from Greek (maybe the ‘platy’ as well, and that the plural should be ‘platypodes’. Any classical scholars who can clarify?

  15. “in 1429, Joan of Arc, a peasant girl, arrived at Orléans on a Mission from God to lift the siege by the British.”

    I’m quite sure that the Union was not formed in that century.

    By the way, French and English national feelings only really began to take form after the 100 years war. Until then, they were quite disparate regions. Also, many English nobles were descendents of the French nobility installed after William defeated Harald in 1066. It was quite a “French” civil war in reality.

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