Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

August 12, 2019 • 6:30 am

Yes, it’s Monday again, and some people feel like this (h/t: Matthew):

Nevertheless, we shall persist. It’s August 12, 2019, and National Julienne Fries (or Chips) Day.  It’s also World Elephant Day, Truck Driver Day, and Vinyl Record Day (do you have any of these antiques?).

Stuff that happened on August 12 includes:

  • 1851 – Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine.
  • 1865 – Joseph Lister, British surgeon and scientist, performs 1st antiseptic surgery.

This appears not to be a real surgery, but the repeated application of carbolic-acid soaked gauze to a boy’s compound leg fracture. It healed nicely and without incident.

This is the only quagga photographed alive: in 1870 at the London Zoo. Smithsonian reports that most scientists see it not as a separate species, but as a subspecies of the Plains Zebra, Equus quagga.

  • 1914 – World War I: The United Kingdom declares war on Austria-Hungary; the countries of the British Empire follow suit.
  • 1950 – Korean War: Bloody Gulch massacre: 75 American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army.
  • 1952 – The Night of the Murdered Poets: Thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union.
  • 1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country’s racist policies.
  • 1981 – The IBM Personal Computer is released.

I believe this is a photo of the first model:

 

  • 1985 – Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Osutaka ridge in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520, to become the worst single-plane air disaster.
  • 1990 – Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton found to date, is discovered by Sue Hendrickson in South Dakota.

Sue resides in Chicago’s Field Museum, where she’s been given new quarters. Actually, they don’t know the sex of this dinosaur, nor its personal pronoun. Here’s a picture I took of the fossil in March of this year. Look at those huge teeth and tiny hands (I’ve circled the mitts):

 

  • 1994 – Major League Baseball players go on strike, forcing the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
  • 2017 – Violence erupts at the Unite the Right rally between the Alt-right and counter-demonstrators, resulting in the death of one civilian, two police officers and numerous additional injuries

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1831 – Helena Blavatsky, Russian theosophist and scholar (d. 1891)
  • 1856 – Diamond Jim Brady, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1917)
  • 1860 – Klara Hitler, Austrian mother of Adolf Hitler (d. 1907)

She does look a bit like Adolf, doesn’t she. Klara died at only 47 of breast cancer, and was much mourned by Adolf:

  • 1880 – Christy Mathewson, American baseball player and manager (d. 1925)
  • 1881 – Cecil B. DeMille, American director and producer (d. 1959)
  • 1887 – Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1961)

Here’s a Schrödinger birthday tweet from the Royal Society (play video):

  •  1925 – Norris McWhirter, Scottish publisher and activist co-founded the Guinness World Records (d. 2004)
  • 1925 – Ross McWhirter, Scottish publisher and activist, co-founded the Guinness World Records (d. 1975)
  • 1929 – Buck Owens, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2006)
  • 1930 – George Soros, Hungarian-American businessman and investor, founded the Soros Fund Management
  • 1949 – Rick Ridgeway, American mountaineer and photographer

Those who joined the Choir Invisible on this day include:

It is remarkable how much the Kennedys resemble each other (there were nine kids, of which Joe was the oldest). A lot of it is the toothy smile, but there’s something about the eyes and forehead, too. At any rate, it’s good evidence for a genetic basis for differences in people’s facial features (the Kennedys share genes and share the way they look compared to other families).

  • 1964 – Ian Fleming, English spy, journalist, and author (b. 1908)
  • 1982 – Henry Fonda, American actor (b. 1905)
  • 1989 – William Shockley, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1910)
  • 1992 – John Cage, American composer and theorist (b. 1912)
  • 2007 – Merv Griffin, American actor, singer, and producer, created Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune (b. 1925)
  • 2014 – Lauren Bacall, American model, actress, and singer (b. 1924)

Here’s Ian Fleming at work:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili incessantly wheedles for noms:

Hili: We have to discuss everything carefully.
A: And what is that?
Hili: What is in the refrigerator and what I would like to have right now.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy starannie wszystko przedyskutować.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Co jest w lodówce i na co ja mam w tej chwili ochotę?

And there’s a special treat today: Leon as a kitten—a retrospective! (He was fostered by Andrzej the Second and Elzbieta as the local vet didn’t have the facilities to care for the sick kitten. After intensive care, he survived, and his fosterers decided to keep him. Now, of course, he’s a robust hiking cat.

Leon: I don’t know, maybe I’ll live with you.
In Polish: No nie wiem,moze z wami zamieszkam.

From Philosophy Matters. I accept the Duck God!

Here’s what a guy did when his daughter asked him to put her hair in a bun: (he forgot the mustard and sport peppers!):

Grania sent me this tweet on February 4 of this year. Note that the Lions didn’t play on the February 3 Superbowl: it was the New England Patriots over the Los Angeles Rams. And, as you might guess, the Detroit Lions never played in a Superbowl (ever!), so of course the headline is technically accurate.

https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/1092281301724409856

A tweet sent by reader Julian. That must be one stinky moggie!

Two tweets from Heather Hastie. She says about the first one, “I’ve previously said all this, and endorse it anew now.”

And a kitteh. I wonder if these “toys” frustrate the cat.

Four tweets sent by our own Matthew Cobb. You probably know the Spanish, but it says, “The embrace of magnetism.” The video is nice!

Woodcocks really walk this way, though who knows why? But someone was clever enough to set this to the appropriate music:

https://twitter.com/slendersherbet/status/1160561014657732609?s=11

Head for the hills (or break out the bourbon)—it’s an ice tsunami!

I didn’t know this, either, but the linked article states that the original Monopoly game had two sets of rules, under one of which everybody won. That was ditched, and now the zero-sum rules are the only ones used:

 

34 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)”

  1. Actually, they don’t know the sex of this dinosaur, nor its personal pronoun.

    Must be why they gave it a proper name, a gender-neutral one, according to no less a paleontological expert than Johnny Cash.

    Reply

  3. First of all, who is it who decides that today is ‘World Something Day’? Every day is at least three or four separate celebrations of something. Who gets to say that it’s World Spanx Day or whatever?

    Secondly, where can I get a set of those magnets??

    I’m serious. As long as they don’t cost more than, say twenty, thirty quid I’m up for it.

    …Fuckin’ magnets – how do they work?

    Reply

    1. I’m sure that Amazon over there has them. There are quite a few on the US Amazon site, the price is roughly dependent on how many balls in the set. The set above, which looks like 1000 pieces costs $32.99; some priced higher. Sets with fewer balls( 216, 512) tend to cost less. Try Googling .5mm magnetic balls 1000.
      However the Amazon UK site doesn’t seem to have the 1000 piece set. Also manufacturers’ sites.

      Reply

    2. Magnet toys to buy: LOOK HERE

      MY GUESSES [not tried magnetic balls myself]

      ** Don’t buy the 3mm size because they are too small & look difficult to work with – easily lost when the structures you make ‘explode’
      ** Buy multicolours
      ** To do anything really interesting takes 1,000s of balls judging from YouTube videos – expensive!
      ** You’ll find instructions on YT how to build a cube – you’ll need a tool or two…
      ** …a flat sheet, rigid plastic or ceramic ‘cutter’ to carve with – I am guessing an old credit card is too flexi
      ** Wear eye protection
      ** You are going to lose some balls so best to think about your play area 🙂

      In the GIF: the part where the ball of balls is spun on a white surface & magically forms a cube is fishy! I provisionally suspect the recording is reversed [but not the sounds] or some other type of movie trickery. It isn’t that easy to make a cube from scratch so I doubt it will happen on its own just from angular momentum/centripetal forces. But, I’m keeping an open mind for now because I know nothing.

      THE ORIGINAL VIDEO [go to around 3:15]

      https://youtu.be/SX28WBsi5rE

      Reply

    4. Confirmation of movie trickery:

      “In the GIF: the part where the ball of balls is spun on a white surface & magically forms a cube is fishy! I provisionally suspect the recording is reversed [but not the sounds] or some other type of movie trickery…

      I ran the original YouTube video through VLC Media Player, which has a forward frame-by-frame function & at 3:22 he seamlessly fades from a spinning ball to a spinning cube – the spin rates are exactly matched. The giveaway is individual balls do not relocate, they just fade out & the cube formation balls fade in. The sound throughout that segment is of the cube formation spinning.

      Reply

      2. That bit was very cool, so I’m slightly put off now. The pull of all those magnets seems much too strong to be overcome by centripetal force, especially just from spinning it with your hand. The guy has to painstakingly wrench the magnets apart when they’re in the wrong shape – they’re obviously very difficult to separate.

        Besides, even if the centripetal force was strong enough to overcome the magnetic forces I don’t see why the agglomerate should arrange itself specifically into the shape of a cube… Tricksy editing. Not cool.

        I still might get a set; they look fun. Much appreciate all the links Michael.

        And I will take the advice on ‘loss of balls’ VERY SERIOUSLY of course.

        Reply

      3. And to think I always thought Monopoly was invented to extoll the greatness of capitalism! How wrong can one be!
        The ‘different rules’ game also appears much more interesting than the ’empoverished’ version we are playing nowadays (well, before the advent of computer games that is).

        Reply

      4. I found that cube very difficult to accept too. Though I didn’t notice the ‘cut’; I did consider whether the video had been run backwards. Eventually I concluded that maybe somehow balls of differing magnetic properties had been used so they naturally sorted themselves into that shape, although I wasn’t too sure of that either (but see the weird and wonderful shapes ferrofluid assumes under a magnetic field e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJT9yK6yD9Q ).

        For some reason I find video trickery to be disappointing in this case.

        cr

        Reply

  4. 1856 – Diamond Jim Brady, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1917)

    There’s a name one doesn’t hear much anymore. But when I was a little kid, especially among the older kids on the block, it served as metonymy for big-spender. If someone showed up in the neighborhood sporting fresh bling (avant la lettre), like a fancy ring or ID bracelet, they’d get teased right away about being the new “Diamond Jim Brady.” At the time, I didn’t know who he was, but the meaning wasn’t hard to suss out.

    From the date of his death, I guess that usage was a holdover from a couple generations earlier.

    Reply

  5. We used to see the ice tsunami on the Lake Michigan shore. Sometimes the ice would pile up 15 feet high. The ice must be driven by wind pressure.

    Reply

    1. The wind (and likely water currents) builds up the velocity of the ice sheet, but I think what drives it so far up the shore is the momentum of thousands of tons of ice behind it. Of course that momentum had been imparted to it by wind and currents but over a much longer period of time.

      cr

      Reply

  6. Perhaps regrettably, it’s journalism’s job to identify murderers – including mass murderers. It’s legitimate news. But after the immediacy has passed, I see little point in memorializing killers on (say) the 1st, 5th or 10th anniversary of various massacres. Sadly, I know the name of fellow responsible for the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. And it’s not because I have good recall going back 30 years; it’s because his name has been repeated in the press for the last 30 years.

    Reply

    1. That tweet probably has a New Zealand source. And it was kicked off by our Prime Minister, who said she was never going to use the name of the Christchurch mass murderer, to deprive him of the publicity he craved. And it’s pretty well worked, I don’t recall his name even though I can remember Anders Breivik (the Norwegian mass murderer).

      The name of the Christchurch murderer isn’t legally suppressed – there is no legal prohibition on naming him – but most news outlets seem to have accepted the spirit of the ‘boycott’.

      cr

      Reply

  7. That ice ‘tsunami’ is impressive. Slow as it is, it has the momentum of many thousands of tons of ice behind it; it’s going to take a considerable distance to stop.

    cr

    Reply

  8. 1865 – Joseph Lister, British surgeon and scientist, performs 1st antiseptic surgery.

    This appears not to be a real surgery, but the repeated application of carbolic-acid soaked gauze to a boy’s compound leg fracture. It healed nicely and without incident.

    If I recall correctly, I think Lister described it as “aseptic” surgery to start with, but usage has settled on the rather less ambitious description.
    A later modification of the protocol was to have a “mister” – glorified spray bottle – put a suspension of carbolic acid droplets into the air around the patient and surgeon and nurses. Then they added things like particular rooms for operating, special clothes, etc, to reduce the germ counts.

    Actually, 1865 would have been before the likes of Petri and Koch started to develop techniques for measuring bacterial counts, at which point the distinction between “aseptic” and “antiseptic” protocols would start to become significant.

    Reply

    1. Tomorrow (13 August) in that very same year 1865, will be the day Dr Ignatz Semmelweiss died of his wounds inflicted two weeks earlier in a struggle to lock him up in an asylum.
      He pioneered hand-washing with chlorine to prevent puerperal fever. In fact the dispute about this was the reason they locked him up.
      It is only about a decade later he was vindicated by Pasteur and Koch.

      If your surgeon washes his/her hands before cutting you, be grateful to that unsung hero.

      Reply

  9. 1992 – John Cage, American composer and theorist (b. 1912)

    I can’t believe we’ve got to comment 11 without this.
    A minute’s silence for Mr Cage.

    Reply

    1. 1990 – Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton found to date, is discovered by Sue Hendrickson in South Dakota.
      […] Actually, they don’t know the sex of this dinosaur, nor its personal pronoun.

      The gender identity of this dinosaur isn’t known, yet, nor it’s biological gender. But we are slowly getting a handle on gender in some dinosaurs. It has long been suspected that some morphological species pairs of dinosaur fossils actually represent the sexual dimorphism of a single species. But demonstrating which specimen is which gender – that’s a good deal harder.
      But not impossible. (“Chemistry supports the identification of gender-specific reproductive tissue in Tyrannosaurus rex“, Schweitzer et al, Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 23099 (2016); Open Access paper.) This is a re-investigation of work originally published in 2000-odd. Cheical techniques change and become more discriminating.

      Look at those huge teeth and tiny hands (I’ve circled the mitts):

      The arms may seem tiny. They’re still closer to the size of human legs than arms.
      I wonder what the developmental allometry of them is? While they do look ridiculously under-size in the adults (but still capable of [O]100kg of force, each), but their relative size in hatchings and juveniles may be different, suggesting different usages though life stages. Hmmm. Thinking on keyboard here.

      Reply

    2. “A minute’s silence for Mr Cage.”

      There’s a moment of respect for “old John Cage” in this video:

      (Gimme Some of That) Ol’ Atonal Music
      – Merle Hazard

      Reply

  10. That Charles Martel of Hungary should not be confused with the Frankish leader Charles Martel who defeated the Umayyad invasion of France at the battle of Tours (aka the battle of Poitiers) in 732 (half a millennium earlier).
    Many historians consider that victory as the battle that saved Europe from Islamic conquest.

    Reply

  11. In the ’90s early ’00s I collected Vinyl records. I have about 500 records, a modest collection. However, my turntable broke and I can no longer play them!

    Some interesting pieces I have are Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart (with the original artwork inset), Clockwork Orange soundtrack by Walter/Wendy Carlos and the single To Weird to Watusi by Klark Kent (Police drummer Stewart Copeland’s other band) on green vinyl (green for Kryptonite). I also have a fair number of Zeppelin bootlegs that are not as rare as I thought at the time of purchase!

    My favorite piece in the collection isn’t vinyl but a CD of Hendrix performances including a TV appearance from 1965 (he was a backing musician). If you Google “Hendrix, Chitlin Circuit, Shot gun” it comes up on You Tube. If you watch, the two lead singers appear to do the Macarena dance (starting at 1:14 mark). I purchased prior to You Tube, so imagine it has lost some value now.

    I would still never sell any of my collection.

    Reply

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