Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

October 7, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s another damn Monday: October 7, 2019, and school at the University of Chicago has been in session for a week. Yesterday there were eleven ducks in Botany Pond: four drakes and seven hens, all jockeying for mates. They were so frenetic that I couldn’t descry whether one of them was Honey. I have ordered more duck chow in case they decide to hang around for a while. And once again I am disappointed at the tepid response to my science post, though I realize that many readers don’t think they have anything to add.

It’s National Frappe Day (what New Englanders call a milkshake), Blue Shirt Day® (to highlight bullying; does this really accomplish anything?), National Flower Day, National Inner Beauty Day, and World Architecture Day.

Stuff that happened on October 7 includes:

  • 1868 – Cornell University holds opening day ceremonies; initial student enrollment is 412, the highest at any American university to that date.
  • 1916 – Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222–0 in the most lopsided college football game in American history.

Here’s the scoreboard for that game, and Wikipedia’s note on lopsided American football games (there hasn’t been another 100+ score in over 50 years):

Since World War II, only a handful of schools have topped 100 points in a college football game. The modern-era record for most points scored against a college opponent is 106 by Fort Valley State of Georgia against Knoxville College in 1969. In the previous year Houston defeated Tulsa 100–6 to set the NCAA record in major college football. In 1949 the University of Wyoming defeated University of Northern Colorado 103–0. The Division III football scoring record was set in 1968 when North Park University defeated North Central College 104–32, using ten passing touchdowns along the way.

 

  • 1949 – The communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed.
  • 1958 – The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury.
  • 1959 – The Soviet probe Luna 3 transmits the first-ever photographs of the far side of the Moon.

Here’s the first image of the “dark side” of the moon from Luna 3, with the caption “The first image returned by Luna 3 showed the far side of the Moon was very different from the near side, most noticeably in its lack of lunar maria (the dark areas).”

  • 1985 – Four men from the Palestine Liberation Front hijack the MS Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt.
  • 1988 – A hunter discovers three gray whales trapped under the ice near Alaska; the situation becomes a multinational effort to free the whales.
  • 1996 – Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.
  • 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming.

I still remember this brutal assault. Shepard lived six days (in a coma) after the assault; both of his assailants are serving life terms in prison. And here’s Shepard, an unwilling martyr to homophobia:

  • 2001 – The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground. [JAC: We’re still there, with no signs of leaving.]

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1885 – Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962)
  • 1900 – Heinrich Himmler, German commander and politician (d. 1945)
  • 1923 – Irma Grese, German SS officer (d. 1945)

Grese, a vicious woman who was a guard at the Ravensbück and Auschwitz concentration camps, was hanged under British law for war crimes. At 22, she was the youngest woman executed under British law in the 20th century.  She was as the “Hyena of Auschwitz” because of her brutal behavior, and you can read more about her here.  A photo (and boy, does she look mean!):

 

  • 1931 – Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and activist, Nobel Prize laureate
  • 1934 – Ulrike Meinhof, German far-left terrorist, co-founder of the Red Army Faction, journalist (d. 1976)
  • 1939 – Harry Kroto, English chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2016)
  • 1952 – Vladimir Putin, Russian colonel and politician, 4th President of Russia
  • 1955 – Yo-Yo Ma, French-American cellist and educator
  • 1964 – Dan Savage, American LGBT rights activist, journalist and television producer
  • 1975 – Tim Minchin, English-Australian comedian, actor, and singer

Those who died on this day include:

  • 1849 – Edgar Allan Poe, American short story writer, poet, and critic (b. 1809)
  • 1925 – Christy Mathewson, American baseball player and manager (b. 1880)
  • 1992 – Allan Bloom, American philosopher and educator (b. 1930)
  • 2009 – Irving Penn, American photographer (b. 1917)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is asking about the library. (I’m told that she can read, but prefers not to!)

Hili: What is in these books?
A: Mainly words, some wise, some beautiful, and some not worth returning to.
In Polish:
Hili: Co jest w tych książkach?
Ja: Głównie słowa, jedne mądre, inne piękne i jeszcze są takie, do których nie warto wracać.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon rests and philosophizes:

Leon: I am where my pillow is.

In Polish: Tam ja, gdzie poduszka moja.

Bored Panda has a really nice post of interesting and amazing teachers. Here are a few photos from it (h/t: Su):

From someone’s physics teacher:

Caption: “After Not Taking Attendance All Quarter, My Teacher Assistant Was Out Of Town On Exam Day. This Was The Last Question”

 “My biology professor was wearing an awesome tie yesterday.” Indeed!!

There are 47 more at the site; go over and look!

From reader gravelinspector, a history lesson imparted by the Ohio State University marching band.

Three animal tweets from Heather Hastie. First, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But who’s imitating who?

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1176210287684456450

Cats taking over dog beds are now an Official Internet Thing™:

I love this one!

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences goes all soft porn with a racy picture; but the study cited is ONLY IN RABBITS! Matthew calls out PNAS:

Three more tweets from Matthew. First, where physics equipment goes to die:

I have no words for this one, except that it’s in India:

And another fantastic find by Dr. Cobb:

https://twitter.com/mr_meowwwgi/status/1180438803036692480?s=11

 

 

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

  1. I think in concussion ball, called Friday night fever at the high school level, they have some kind of limit or points ahead that will cause the game to end. There is only so much the spectators can stand.

    The Afghanistan conflict is the result of a military industrial complex and a useless government.

  2. With regard to your excellent science posts, I recommended the one on gene loss in whales to my 3rd year undergrad class on evolution. They responded with enthusiasm. I suspect the posts are enjoyed more than your metrics suggest,

  3. I, for at least one, do appreciate the science posts and subsequent discussions.
    The post about development of hand muscles etc.in human embryos is fascinating.And I learned to put quite a few discrepant ideas into a simpler structure. The tendency to assume facile explanations and the slowly learned capacity to rather assume that the natural world is pretty much always quite a few steps more complex well displayed in the discussion.
    Similarly the discussion of the Meyer, Gelertner etc forum. None of them knew enough biology. That was what I would call scientism -applying sophisticated (somewhat) mathematics to insufficiently observed natural phenomena.’-If the math is correct then the conclusion must be correct’ but not if it starts off on the wrong basis.

    2. I must also make one more point on this terrible decision. This one may very likely insure the impeachment of this clown. The far right religious folks are really pissed off about this one. Even that idiot Senator from South Carolina was wonder what the heck was going on.

      1. I doubt it. Pay attention to their weaselly language. They are unilaterally phrasing their criticism as “boy if these reports are true that would be a bad thing,” giving Trump an opportunity to walk it back while also characterizing the announcement as simply “reports” from “the media” when it was literally a formal announcement FROM the White House.

        Don’t expect Republicans to find a spine.

    3. In other news this morning, I read that there are now “multiple” whistleblowers. Their ranks grow by the day. Yay!

      1. If they appear together in a group scurrying down a hallway in the House Chamber, we can refer to them as a tweet of whistleblowers. Or, perhaps a blow.

  5. One year ago i commented on harry kroto’s birthday. I wantto again honor posthumously his excellent work in providing subject matter expertise to k-12 science education. I met him in the small, rural, former mill town of danville va (us) in 2009 when he was the keynote speaker for a nanotechnolgy workshop of 125 middle and high school science teachers. He was an excellent speaker and provided numerous additional educational materials free of charge online. Unfortunately, k-12 education departments often devalue subject matter expertise in favor of professional education knowledge. Sir harry’s nobel credentials (like richard feynman’s) opened doors to k12 education and his wonderful lecture style and general demeanor were always pitch perfect for his audience of science teachers. Thank you again sir harry!

  6. One should read the technical details of how Luna 3 took the pictures from the dark side of the moon. Short version: the camera was fixed on the spacecraft, and Luna 3 was the first 3 axis stabilized spacecraft (in 1959!). Pictures were taken and exposed onto 35 mm film. The film was processed onboard, then placed in a scanner which shot a cathode ray through the film and onto a receiver. The 1000 or so scanned lines were then transmitted back to Earth. More info on Wikipedia.

    1. I wonder who the Russian equivalent of Heath Goldberg and Rube Robinson is. There has got to be one.

      1. I imagine the Soviet Union would have been full of what we would call “odd hacks” because they were so much poorer, and yet equally (at least in some domains) into “high tech” as the US.

        1. There is the old joke about the million-dollar NASA zero-gravity pen, versus the Russian pencil.
          Obviously, it was a propelling pencil.

          1. Further, the Russian space program was propelled by Shakespeare who wrote “… I could be bounded in a nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space.”

            As for choosing the pencil, Shakespeare was ambivalent, writing “2B or not 2B”.

    2. There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.

      – the last words on Dark Side of the Moon

  7. I read most of the science posts, but generally have little to say unless I have a question, as most of that content is of interest to me, but outside of my field.

    I would have had about a 0.2 chance on the at exam question, even after attending every session and being attentive. At that point in my life (university), I had not yet learned how to recognize faces. These days (many decades later), I do all right in some contexts, like in the office where there is a limited, generally well defined, set of individuals, but if I see one of them elsewhere, I rarely can recognize a face, unless there is something VERY distinct. I pretty much memorize a checklist of differentiating characteristics, and am routinely confounded by hair style changes and glasses vs. contacts.

  10. For the record, I do enjoy your science posts although usually I can only skim for the less technical high points. I certainly am not qualified to make any comment on an article with the word “epitrochleoanconeus” in it. Dropped out of U of Chicago way too soon.

  11. What is the threshold for “tepid”? That post had 40+ comments. I think I remember reading you considered 50 comments a good response. Sorry you don’t get as many comments on the Science Posts. They really are a highlight of WEIT, and I read every one with interest (and concentration).

    1. Same here. I read and appreciate them all, but I seldom have any informed contribution to make.

      And I do seem to recall PCC(E) saying some weeks ago that people shouldn’t just post ‘likes’ if they haven’t anything substantive to say.

  13. Off topic ,but it concerns cats ,so it is ok .
    A company in Japan have started making cups and glasses where a cats face appears when you fill it up with liquid ,don’t know if you have see it ,don’t know how to post a link to it on my phone .

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