Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

September 20, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Friday, September 20, with one day to go until Fall. In a month I’m off to Antarctica for five+ weeks, and this website will experience its first serious hiatus (internet is dicey on a ship in Antarctic waters, and I’ll be busy lecturing). I ask for your indulgence during that lacuna! Would that Grania were here to fill in, which she would, but that won’t happen any longer.

It’s National Rum Punch Day, as well as National Fried Rice Day, National Pepperoni Pizza Day, and National String Cheese Day. It’s also National Gibberish Day, “dedicated to a type of speech that is nonsensical, or appears to be so” (viz., our “President”).

I saw a bunny on my way to work, and got pretty close, but the iPhone photo is lousy. Still, you can see the creature’s tapetum lucidum. (Also, using my Drosophila net, I rescued a wren caught in the breezeway who couldn’t find the open exit to the outside. I am proud of myself.)

There’s a new Google Doodle today celebrating the Rugby World Cup. The event will be held in Japan from Sept. 20 through November 2. When you click on it (below), you go to a page of upcoming games (today Russia plays the host nation Japan. Australia plays Fiji, New Zealand plays South Africa, France plays Argentina, and Italy plays Namibia):

Stuff that happened on September 20 includes:

  • 1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
  • 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga, in northwestern Georgia, ends in a Confederate victory.
  • 1881 – U.S. President Chester A. Arthur is sworn in, the morning after becoming President upon James A. Garfield’s death.
  • 1893 – Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
  • 1962 – James Meredith, an African American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.

Meredith was finally allowed to enroll on October 1, but not until Attorney General Robert Kennedy (and the National Guard) intervened and the racist Governor Ross Barnett decided it wasn’t in his interest to keep out the University’s first African-American student. Here’s a photo from the time, labeled as “US Army trucks loaded with steel-helmeted US Marshals roll across the University of Mississippi campus on October 3, 1962.”

  • 1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome.

Here’s some scenes from the match (the sound starts about 9 seconds in). I remember that the nation was transfixed, but these days, thank Ceiling Cat, there wouldn’t be much interest in a “battle of the sexes”:

  • 1973 – Singer Jim Croce, songwiter and musician Maury Muehleisen and four others die when their light aircraft crashes on takeoff at Natchitoches Regional Airport in Louisiana.

Note: Croce died on his birthday (see below); he was only 30.

  • 2001 – In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a “War on Terror”.

He should have said a “War on Terrorism”; it wasn’t the terror he was going after.

  • 2011 – The United States military ends its “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1878 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist, critic, and essayist (d. 1968)
  • 1884 – Maxwell Perkins, American editor (d. 1947)
  • 1899 – Leo Strauss, German-American political scientist, philosopher, and academic (d. 1973)
  • 1913 – Sidney Dillon Ripley, American ornithologist and academic (d. 2001)
  • 1934 – Sophia Loren, Italian actress

La Loren is 85 today. Here’s a photo of her with my dad on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, ca. 1956. She was about 22 at the time. (My dad is on her immediate right.)

  • 1977 – Chris Mooney, American journalist and academic. [Remember “I must have struck a nerve” Mooney? He’s gone very quiet.]

Those who went six feet under on September 20 include:

  • 1586 – Chidiock Tichborne, English conspirator and poet (b. 1558)
  • 1793 – Fletcher Christian, English lieutenant and mutineer (b. 1764)
  • 1863 – Jacob Grimm, German philologist and mythologist (b. 1785)
  • 1947 – Fiorello H. La Guardia, American lawyer and politician, 99th Mayor of New York City (b. 1882)
  • 1973 – Jim Croce, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1943)
  • 2006 – Sven Nykvist, Swedish director, producer, and cinematographer (b. 1922)

This is my favorite Jim Croce song, which I see as a miniature masterpiece. It was the first song of his I ever heard, and I was transfixed when I listened. Wikipedia reports that “The story was inspired during Jim Croce’s military service, during which time he saw lines of soldiers waiting to use the outdoor phone on base, many of them calling their wives or girlfriends to see if their Dear John letter was true.”

Here he is performing the song live, accompanied by Maury Muehleisen, who died in the same plane crash that killed Croce.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being vain:

Hili: Do I have such huge ears?
A: It’s lengthened shadow.
Hili: A fraud.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ja mam takie wielkie uszy?
Ja: Nie, to wydłużony cień.
Hili: Oszust.

And everywhere in Poland, Fall has arrived.

Leon: Why are you surprised? It’s autumn.

In Polish: Co się Dziwisz? Jesień!

A stupendous ultrasound of a (human) woman, and Proof of Ceiling Cat, from reader Graham. Look at the cat in there!

From Stash Krod: “Expose yourself to art.”

Pork socks on sale at Wish; not suitable for Jews or Muslims:

There are no more tweets from Grania. I saved some of her emails, but I can’t bear to look at them.

This is one I found about Bret Weinstein’s views on evolution, which I wrote about yesterday. I absolutely deplor Lingford’s statement that Bret’s a “moron” (that’s bloody rude!), for he’s the opposite of that, but you should read the whole thread to see a less but critical take on Bret’s views. There’s a video, too, but I’ll discuss that later.

From reader Barry: faith versus fact. I’m wondering why this guy even goes to church!

From Dom, a lynx photobomb. It’s BEHIND HIM!

A tweet from Heather Hastie. She says, “It’s a puppy, but it’s cute.”

Tweets from Matthew. This is a very bizarre ritual, and though I don’t like the dead cat, I wonder what this is all about:

A caracal (Caracal caracal) catching a bird. Look at the leap in the second tweet! (There are more videos in the thread.)

Yes, a very good idea, but if the pilot hits the power lines he’s cooked!

 

43 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)”

  2. My favorite Croce song is I’ve Got A Name

    The lyrics can be viewed in a whimsical light, or seriously., I think.

  4. if the pilot hits the power lines he’s cooked!

    I think not necessarily, unless you just mean his career. The helicopter isn’t earthed so you wouldn’t get much of a current.

    Only yesterday a story was reported in which a pilot ejecting from his F-16 ended up hanging from a power line after his parachute got caught up.

    1. if the pilot hits the power lines he’s cooked!

      I think not necessarily, unless you just mean his career. The helicopter isn’t earthed so you wouldn’t get much of a current.

      Indeed, aircraft in flight normally build up a potential of several kilovolts. For reasons I’ve never seen a good explanation for, when insulating fluids move over a conducting material, they generate a charge. If the conductor itself isn’t earthed, then the conductor will acquire a charge.
      For most people, this doesn’t matter much. Few people notice it. I first heard of it in “seafarer rescue” drills – when a helicopter is coming in to evacuate shipwrecked mariners from a lifeboat or a liferaft (or, indeed, from on land), the winchman trails an earthing lead below him (or her ; it’s not a brute force task). Normally the winch operator will try to dip this into the water or drag it along the ground to earth the aircraft, but every so often a helpful person grabs the line to “help”. I’ve not heard of someone paying for their helpfulness with their live, but you do get a pretty substantial “belt” – low current, high voltage.
      Some years later – and several repetitions of the safety course, I re-encountered the phenomenon in checking incident reports. A technician had been taking an oil sample from pipework on a production rig, with the bucket sitting on nice, freshly painted steel (an insulator), then picked it up with nice insulating rubberised gloves, and it discharged against the pipework triggering a fire. We take fires quite seriously, so the union got to make comments on the investigation and it landed on my desk.
      So, yes, you too might encounter this in the real world. Pouring petrol into a car on a hot day has real potential to do this. That’s why some cars have earthing straps hanging down to touch the ground. I’ve seen people claim that these are for something to do with lightning, or travel sickness. But earthing frictional potential is the only physically reasonable purpose I can think of for them.
      Pouring fuel into aircraft has fun potential too – which is why the fuelling technicians should have a variety of earthing straps, and adhere to a procedure of using them.

      TL;DR version – the pilot isn’t particularly worried about getting a shock from the power lines. And there are strict procedures about underslung loads, including engineered weak links that will drop the load rather than pulling the helicopter out of the sky. (Hollywood must be so sick of these regulations!)

      But bloody hell, it’s some solution! Whoever cut that firebreak too narrow (or who put a power line down an existing fire break “to save money”) has got some serious explaining to do. At first glance, you might think that trimming the trees individually would be safer, but that’s putting a lot of people (carrying chain saws) a long way up some thousands of trees … which adds up to a lot of risk. And as for felling the trees to make the firebreak/ line break wider … also pretty fraught. I think someone has actually had to do some pretty serious risk assessment to end up with a solution like this.
      Corollary : re-routing the power line is a damned expensive option too.

      Only yesterday a story was reported in which a pilot ejecting from his F-16 ended up hanging from a power line after his parachute got caught up.

      Which is why “rope access” people’s personal tackle bags have a little side pocket for a knife chunky enough to cut your ropes. If you’re on wire (rare, but not unknown), carry bolt cutters.
      I assume parachutists also carry cutters for their harness. The main chutes can, I know, be released in mid-plummet. I rather doubt that’s an option for reserve chutes.

      1. The first time I saw one of those giant cutter things on a helicopter was in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough. It was first shown slicing a path through a forest to put in a pipeline and then the bad guys used it to slice his car in half lengthways. At the time, I thought it was a made up thing.

  5. Grania was irreplaceable. But isn’t there anyone who could act as temporary “co-host” of WEIT during Jerry’s Antarctic sojourn? If she’s willing and able, Heather Hastie comes to mind.

      1. I’m guessing we will all survive. You know what they say about absence. Who knows, maybe Trump will be on the way out when you get back…

    2. Greg and Matthew have stepped in in the past.

      If there were a (temporary) address for us to send our snippets to, which Greg, Matthew (and any other co-hosts) could access, then things should be able to roll along adequately.
      Is WEIT-submissions@gmail.com available, as an example? And to be honest, why make it temporary? Most email systems can do automatic forwarding.

  8. Bill Burr is a brilliant comedian but he walks a thin line between being an all-round cynic with a brilliantly caustic worldview…and just being a middle-aged guy yelling at millennials for being ‘pussies’.

    He’s so brilliant it’s difficult to quibble but he does pick at some pretty low-hanging fruit. I hope he continues to dish it out to both sides and not just go all-in on anti-PC stuff.
    It’s a ripe area for comedians because SJW-ism is so often utterly humourless and ridiculous, but as Dave Chappelle and Louis CK have recently demonstrated it’s easy to slip from caustic satire into bitter and cheap misanthropy.

    1. Dave Chappelle told a few adult jokes.
      Hardly edgy, except to a certain few, and not in any way misanthropic, in my opinion.
      There is always an understanding of and sympathy for the plight of us all in Chappelle’s work.

  9. The Jim Croce song is sweet as a nut. I love the delicacy you can get from fingerpicking(I can’t get anywhere near being able to do it).

    1. …on that subject I highly recommend Call Me By Your Name, not just because it’s a truly gorgeous, summer-swim of a film, but also because it has some of the most lovely fingerpicked music Sufjan Stevens has ever written:

      1. This movie was very good. I was looking for Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell last year but it wasn’t out on video yet. I found this movie with Timothée Hal Chalamet also in it instead. I didn’t expect it to be that good.

        1. It seems to breeze by; it’s not long, and it’s told with such unshowy lightness of touch, but then you can’t help thinking about it afterwards. At least that’s how it was with me.

          And everyone, gay or straight, can relate to the young love in the film, the longing for someone who you can’t have. It’s portrayed with such subtlety and tenderness that it transcends the sexuality of the characters.

  10. “It’s Friday, September 20, with one day to go until Fall.”

    That’s not strictly speaking true. The equinox occurs at 07:50 GMT on September 23 this year, according to Her Majesty’s Nautical Almanac Office, who can be trusted in these matters. That’s the astronomical equinox, defined as the instant when the centre of the Sun’s disk passes through latitude zero i.e. it is, instantaneously, directly overhead at the equator.

    Fun fact: the French Revolutionary calendar had the autumn equinox as its New Year’s Day. That was the actual astronomical equinox. Alas, back in the late 18th century, this was quite difficult to calculate accurately in advance, and it’s one of the reasons why the Revolutionary calendar never took off. That, and the fact that nobody outside France was using it.

  11. “Yes, a very good idea, but if the pilot hits the power lines he’s cooked!”

    Not necessarily. Helicopter repairs can actually touch power lines, change insulators, etc., so long as they establish equal potential with the lines. They usually do this by first reaching out with a probe that arcs to the line and brings them to the same potential. The danger (among many others) would then be with discharges to the ground. I think there was actually a reality TV show about these guys.

    Of course, there are probably many other risks with flying around with a giant set of spinning blades…

    1. I think there was actually a reality TV show about these guys.

      I don’t know about on TV, but I recall seeing a magazine spread about people who did “hot” line repair work. Silver-coated chain mail suits, rubber matting, being very careful with your rigging of access ropes (which you keep very dry!)

      For some reason, South Africa pops into my head as where this spread was done, but I doubt the general technique is unique to them. Herr Stempels?

    2. Of course, there are probably many other risks with flying around with a giant set of spinning blades…

      Look carefully. The load consists of a suspension cable, then a block – which is probably an IC-engine and controls – then the blade assembly.
      From which I infer that they only power it on for the working leg of the flight.
      On third watching, I’m slightly surprised that the blade diameter isn’t noticeably greater than their separation. So at some point a branch is going to contact the frame – and that’s a snagging potential. Which is why if the helicopter can lift 2 tonnes, and the tool+fuel weighs one ton, then they use something like a 1.25 ton weak link in the load sling.

    1. Very cool. I have the feeling the pilot who starts this job is going to want a practice patch to trim, devoid of power lines. Working against the pilots control would be wind, of course, but also the pressure from the blades passing through the trees would be rather variable. A cluster of thick branches followed immediately by a gap would cause the chopper to get pretty wonky.

      1. The MD MD-500 [the 50 year old Vietnam war Hughes OH-6 Cayuse observation chopper basically] is a very popular choice for this work, judging by the YT vids I’ve just scrolled through. Great power/weight, handling & crucially tried-&-tested reliability.

        The weight of the engine in the box on the aluminium pipes [& the pipes] must add some useful inertia & time lag – the pilot is always looking down & must see what’s what before the effect reaches the chopper.

        I think it’s a horrible job – concentration levels are high all the time in the air on that task. Must take plenty of experience to safely manage on rising & falling terrain. Most firms hiring run a 28 day on/off routine which seems too long a cycle to me. Exhausting.

          1. NB my quotes are from the link at the bottom of my comment

            On the surface [LOL] that seems the rational answer, but the reality is more complicated. For example ‘undergrounding’ has implications for cost, maintenance &

            …may make them more susceptible to damage from corrosive storm surge and flooding from rainfall or melting ice and snow. Areas with greater vulnerability to storm surge and flooding will confront systems that are less reliable (and at greater cost) as a result of undergrounding.

            For areas prone to high winds, undergrounding will

            mitigate damage from wind events such as flying debris, falling trees and limbs, and collected ice and snow. But alternatives, such as proper vegetation management practices, replacing wood poles with steel, concrete or composite ones, or reinforcing utility poles with guy wires, may be nearly as effective in mitigating storm damage and may cost less.

            Undergrounding [or say laying in pipe along the surface] may be difficult or impossible in terms of physical practicality in high country hilly areas or where there’s a water table close to the surface. But most often it seems to come down to cost with

            nationally, roughly 25 per cent of new distribution and transmission lines are built underground, according to a 2012 industry study. Some European countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, have made significant commitments to undergrounding.

            Burying power lines costs roughly $1m per mile, but the geography or population density of the service area can halve this cost or triple it. In the wake of a statewide ice storm in December 2002, the North Carolina Utilities Commission and the electric utilities explored the feasibility of burying the state’s distribution lines underground and concluded that the project would take 25 years to complete and increase electricity rates by 125 percent. The project was never begun, as the price increase was not seen as reasonable for consumers.

            HERE’S MY SOURCE

            OPEN MARKET, UNREGULATED CAPITALISM IS A BITCH:

            And let us suppose that undergrounding is the best solution for the area & society [less risk of initiating forest fires for example] there’s the problem of shareholders in essentially services [a very bad idea to have shareholders in vital infrastructure, health, pensions etc!]. For selfish greed they will block service improvements, R&D, innovation & reduce routine maintenance to increase their short term dividends.

  13. As a scientist it is my duty to provide an alternative hypothesis for the image of Ceiling Cat in the ultrasound. It is actually Ceiling Owl! Clearly it has a beak and ear tufts. Perhaps because owls are honorary cats on this site others will suggest that this so-called ‘alternate’ hypothesis is just a subset of Jerry’s claim.

  14. A question occurred to me in the fuzzy patch between waking and the first caffeine.

    Why does the English language accept the idea of an “underdog”, but not an “undercat”?

    1. An “underdog” is not exactly a loser, not exactly a winner, but in a pathetic way is hoped – for some sad, unexplained reason – will succeed, or win, somehow.

      Your suggestion is that dogs naturally fit this scenario, and the name “ underdog” stuck.

      It is beyond me what cats have to do with such a scenario in any way whatsoever.

    2. Cats can’t be trained to fight each other – you’d have to starve them I suppose – whereas dogs can. “Underdog” originates with dog fights betting as the least favoured of the dog pairing pre-fight.

  17. Today, as Wikipedia noted, is the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Chickamauga, one of the deadliest battles in the Civil War. Officially Antietam is the single deadliest day, but it is quite possible one of the days at Chickamauga was worse, as official tallies of each day do not exist.

    Chickamauga led to the siege of Chattanooga where Rosecrans’s army was very nearly forced to surrender. The army was saved when General Grant managed to force a path for supplies into the city.

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