Monday: Hili dialogue

December 23, 2019 • 6:30 am

Good morning on December 23, 2019, a balmy 38º F (3º C) in Chicago right now, with highs predicted to be 54º F (12º C) on Thursday, and no snow this week. Note that we’re now only two days from the reputed birthday of the apocryphal Baby Jesus. It’s National Pfeffernüβe Day, celebrating the excellent German gingerbread cookie, but unless you’re German you can’t have any, for that’s cultural appropriation.

It’s the first full day of Hanukkah, which began last night, so fire up the menorah and make some latkes (one of my favorites, but you must have both sour cream and applesauce on hand). This shows only sour cream:

Latkes: one of the (few) glories of Jewish cuisine

It is a secular holiday, HumanLight, founded in 2001, and described by Wikipedia this way:

HumanLight is a secular holiday that focuses on the “positive, secular human values of reason, compassion, humanity and hope”. While there are no universally accepted ways to commemorate the holiday, modern celebrations typically involve a communal meal among a family or group. The use of candles to symbolize reason, hope, compassion, and humanity has become widespread among those celebrating. Groups today also observe the holiday using charity work, gift exchanges, and other ideas associated with holidays and celebrations.

An admirable focus, but I don’t know anybody who celebrates it, and it’s a bit strange to create a secular holiday that happens to occur right around Christmas.

Finally,  it’s Festivus, created on Seinfeld in 1997.  I’m not sure how one is supposed to celebrate that, as I rarely watched the show. But I just found the way:

Google has a holiday theme today, and one that links to several “Happy Holidays” sites, avoiding singling out Christmas instead of Hanukkah, Festivus, or Coynezaa (click on screenshot):

News of the Day: Saudi Arabia has just sentenced five people to death for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Since this murder was surely done with the knowledge of (and probably at the request of) Saudi higher-ups like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, this is the height of hyporcrisy. (As you remember, Khashoggi was a critic of the Saudi regime.)

Stuff that happened on December 23 include:

  • 1572 – Theologian Johann Sylvan is executed in Heidelberg for his heretical Antitrinitarian beliefs.
  • 1783 – George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
  • 1815 – The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published.
  • 1919 – Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 becomes law in the United Kingdom.

This was a law removing many bars to women’s participation in civil society, including holding civil office and serving as jurors.

  • 1947 – The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.
  • 1954 – First successful kidney transplant is performed by J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray.

What they mean here is the first successful kidney transplant from one living person to another (from Wikipedia). They used identical twins to reduce the possibility of rejection:

A kidney transplant between living patients was undertaken in 1952 at the Necker hospital in Paris by Jean Hamburger, although the kidney failed after 3 weeks. The first truly successful transplant of this kind occurred in 1954 in Boston. The Boston transplantation, performed on December 23, 1954 at Brigham Hospital, was performed by Joseph Murray, J. Hartwell Harrison, John P. Merrill and others. The procedure was done between identical twins Ronald and Richard Herrick which reduced problems of an immune reaction. For this and later work, Dr. Murray received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990. The recipient, Richard Herrick, died eight years after the transplantation.

Sadly, Herrick was only 32 when he died.

  • 1972 – The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days, having reportedly survived by cannibalism.

This caused considerable debate, not just among the survivors, but among people judging them. To me it’s a no-brainer, and isn’t even cannibalism since what was eaten were flesh from corpses. If it’s either eat those or die, I see no moral dilemma, though of course people get squeamish at the thought.

  • 2007 – An agreement is made for the Kingdom of Nepal to be abolished and the country to become a federal republic with the Prime Minister becoming head of state.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1745 – John Jay, American jurist and politician, 1st Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1829)
  • 1805 – Joseph Smith, American religious leader, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement (d. 1844)
  • 1908 – Yousuf Karsh, Armenian-Canadian photographer (d. 2002)
  • 1929 – Chet Baker, American jazz trumpet player, flugelhorn player, and singer (d. 1988)
  • 1952 – William Kristol, American journalist, publisher, and political activist/pundit

Those who had their demise on December 23 include:

  • 1973 – Charles Atlas, Italian-American bodybuilder and model (b. 1892)
  • 1979 – Peggy Guggenheim, American-Italian art collector (b. 1898)
  • 1982 – Jack Webb, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1920)
  • 2007 – Oscar Peterson, Canadian pianist and composer (b. 1925)[

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is pissed off, and shows it—she wants to impeach Andrzej!

Hili: Did you buy pâté?
A: I forgot.
Hili: Impeachment.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Kupiłeś pasztet?
Ja: Zapomniałem.
Hili: Impeachment!
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

From Jesus of the Day:

 

Also from Jesus of the Day via Diana MacPherson. I thought this was fake, but she sent this link, which shows that it’s apparently a real sign in California. And yes, cows have fallen from the cliffs there and hit cars.

A cartoon from reader Merilee. As we see, d*gs have owners and cats have staff:

Two tweets from reader Barry. Forget the sex comparison in the first one; just look how tenacious that fish is!

Barry wants to know if anything like this has happened with a cat. Not that I’m aware of, but I’m not sure that growth is genetically homologous to a real tail.  Narwhal! What a great name.

Two tweets from Heather Hastie via Ann German. The first shows her favorite animal:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1207468838314373124

Here’s an intriguing graph. The y-axis is total tax rate:

And four tweets from Matthew Cobb, starting with the daily barn egress at Marsh Farm. The fowl are quite excited today; do they know that Christmas is coming?

Look at this gorgeous tarantula. I used to have about six of these spiders as pets in graduate school, but not this species:

Isn’t this duck release lovely? The ducklings are quite eager to get to the water (and Mom):

And you absolutely must have the sound up on this one! Listen to the cockatoo meow!

https://twitter.com/mr_meowwwgi/status/1208731702908112899?s=11

 

70 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  2. I wonder how the cow falling sign actually reduces the event, unless the cows see the sign.

    The tax video is very good.

    1. It doesn’t reduce the event. It is merely informative. If the roof of your car is suddenly at steering wheel level and you find yourself squashed into the footwell, now you know why.

      1. Must be free range cows, heifers, steers or whatever. Maybe the guy never heard of a fence. They do things different out west.

      2. Jenny, that isn’t the same “falling cows” warning sign as in the OP. The one you found photographed by Alison Sheehey is a standard CalTrans “Falling Rocks” yellow diamond warning sign [identical, I checked 🙂 ] to which someone has added a black cow sticker for the fun I suppose – Alison herself says it’s an applied cow. I also looked on the stretch of road she mentions & it no longer exists, but her directions don’t make 100% sense anyway. [I looked in Streetview at the two locations she might mean]

        The sign in the OP is the version for NM & you can see it below – no moocow:

        https://twitter.com/taosnews/status/1094249565778264069

        NM road signs are interesting though – they like their flying saucers & aliens on road signs – some of them even look like they’re sanctioned rather than stickers/Photoshop [99% are obviously faked one way or another], which makes sense given Roswell, Aztec & other NM tourist dollar draws. NM seems to be Hippy Central with the full spectrum of “Wellness” fads & other pseudoscience nonsense – rather like Totnes, Devon, UK which is twinned with Narnia [really, it is].

          1. LOL – just I looked up the Panama pedestrian sign – a fat bloke. The Comic Sans of road sign graphics I reckon. 🙂

        2. Merci for the correction. I read but didn’t fully process the info about the application.

  3. Sure that angler landed the tarpon, but I’ll stay with the old tried’n’true hook’n’line method.

      1. Tarpon seem to have sharp stuff all over the place. I used to fish quite a bit at an inlet in Florida known for Snook, Red Drum, shark and Tarpon fishing. Only problem with the Tarpon was that if you hooked one, impossible to avoid at times, you were very unlikely to be able to land them. The most common outcomes by far were 1) the Tarpon was big enough that it simply picked up your bait / lure and ran straight out until all the line was stripped off your reel, or 2) after a few moments it cut or broke your line. Didn’t seem to matter what kind of leader you used, they would cut or break it. I’ve even lost shark rigs to Tarpon, with 300 lb test single strand wire leader.

        Though I don’t recall ever intentionally fishing for Tarpon at this inlet I did once manage to land one. With a Penn 650 and 20 lb test line. Must have been an ill or infirm Tarpon. Took me about 1-1/4 hours. I’d work hard and get enough line back that I was sure I’d be able to see the fish soon (it was night) and then the thing would turn and apparently effortlessly strip my line back off until I could start seeing metal through the line left on the reel while all I could do is barely hold on. I asked my “friend” if he could hold my rod for a minute while I shook out my arms. He just smiled and said “No, but if it gets to be too much I’ll cut your line for ya!” I finally landed it. It was almost exactly as long as I am tall, 5′-6″. Didn’t have anything to weigh it with. I released it of course.

        1. Tarpon are great game fish; that’s why anglers go after them. A tarpon, a permit, and a bonefish all landed in a same day is considered a “grand slam.”

          They take that stuff very seriously in the Upper Keys around Islamorada.

      1. The guy’s arm was already shredded before the video started! Was he making that ungawdly howling noise?

        1. I think the screams were from his female companion. It’s pretty clear in the version Michael added below.

  4. Regarding the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act.
    In 1925 a Dutch law was introduced which enabled the state to fire female teachers on their day of marriage. It was only repealed somewhere around 1955 when all the members of the liberal, social-democratic and communist parties voted for its removal. Plus all the female representatives of the religious fractions in the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer). Heart warming as these votes were needed to give this initiative a majority.
    A few years earlier a law that denied legal validity of the signature of a married woman was repealed.
    We are not that much ahead in time compared to some culture these days.

  6. That’s the absurd TARPON FEEDING at Robbie’s, Islamorada, Florida – tourists pay to enter a pier where they pay for fish & then dangle their arm above the water to entice semi-tame tarpon to take the bait. This guy below [same 2011 clip as in OP, but normal sound] decides he wants to take the tarpon & hooks his left arm through the gill to haul it out. headphone users – the female egging him on with screeching may hurt your ears!

    https://youtu.be/OdnHGm5VGwM

      2. It may looks stupid but it’s a time honored way of catching Catfish and other fish with small or non-existent teeth (the Tarpon has many teeth but they are very small and the mouths feel like rough sandpaper). It’s called noodling and has been a fishing technique for millenia. There are many online videos of people wrestling fish out of the water, mostly of white folk appropriating an ancient indigenous fishing technique.

        1. @EdwardM It is absurd & stupid in the context I gave. You are not meant to noodle at tourist sucker joint [$6.25 entry to dock + small bucket of 5 to 8 fish] Robbie’s of Islamorada & they’re not going to let you off the dock with a Tarpon anyway. Around 100 tarpon begin to hang out below the dock once the tourists are admitted in the morning.

        1. A retelling of the story of The Fall — the Woman tempting the Man to partake of fruit of the sea of the knowledge of good and evil: or how the tarpon lost its legs. 🙂

  7. One of the main effects of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was that it became illegal for bodies such as the Bar Council and the equivalent body for solicitors to prevent women from joining and becoming legal professionals. It also stopped universities from refusing to accept women applicants on their courses on the basis of sex.

  8. Speedy flotilla is remarkable. The chicks stay in tight formation from the time they coalesce in the water. I’d guess that this behavior is an adaptation to make them look like one large bird – less vulnerable to attack. I’ve seen similar tight groupings of fish in coral reefs. A dozen hand-sized fish can lock together and move like one much larger animal.

    1. Could it also be a hydro-dynamically efficient way for the group to swim? Like geese flying in a “V”.

      1. Hydro-dynamically efficiency? You’ve identified an interesting research avenue. Not sure how you’d be able to measure it though. Maybe create model fish and run them in a flow tank. You could measure resistance alone and in groups. Send me $20 and I’ll start working on it. 😎

      2. Fish, F.E. generally agrees with your hypothesis Edward in THIS PDF PAPER: Energy Conservation by Formation Swimming – Metabolic Evidence From Ducklings, Frank E. Fish, West Chester University, ffish@wcupa.edu

        He goes into Reynolds numbers & all sorts, but he seems to be working with older, larger ducklings, throws in a couple of dubious vortices diagrams & doesn’t prove a connection between the real metabolism savings & the range of possible causes. It is said the flying V formation aerodynamics depends on the vortex upwash from a goose wing tip adding lift to the wing-synched goose immediately diagonally behind, but does this apply in water where we’re at the water/air interface?

        I doubt that sticking close to mum in a duckling blob offers a real reduction in water drag for those tiny little ducklings & little flippers pushing water backwards would probably impede following little flippers. But dense, close formation must be useful in shielding from above water breezes & gusts – they are anti-iceberg fluff balls sensitive to every air movement.

        And as rickflick says – it resembles a bigger ‘prey’ animal.

  9. -1973 – Charles Atlas, Italian-American bodybuilder and model (b. 1892)
    -1979 – Peggy Guggenheim, American-Italian art collector (b. 1898)

    never knew, is here a formal difference in nationality origins?

  10. Dear Jerry,

    Don‘t overuse the „ß“. A sharp „s“ is always „ss“. So it is Pfeffernüsse Day although in German you would rather say Pfeffernusstag (singular). I repeat: Kuss, Küsse but Gruß, Grüße.

  11. Does anyone know if the “moral” objections to survival by eating the flesh of the dead is a relic of Christian & Islamic beliefs in “bodily resurrection”?

    (The great al Razi in the 900s used this as an argument against the idea of resurrection — because what would happen to people who got killed and eaten by cannibals?)

    And thanks for the explanation of Festivus, and (to Heather) for the hedgehog in socks.

    1. I don’t know what the “moral” objections are, but I will submit that religions always want to take advantage of a feelings of guilt. They use such feelings as a source of leverage over the adherents. They can make you pay to assuage the guilt and shame. Penance. Repent sinner! Give me money or you’ll be damned!
      It wouldn’t have to be a high moral principle.

    2. Not to deny your question but in one respect, how could that be given the cannibalistic celebration of the Eucharist:”Take, eat, for this is my body”?

      In some cultures it’s a sacred act.

    3. I suppose the Christian Death Cult has an interest in suppressing rival death cults. The Catholic invaders of the Americas used anti-cannibalism as one of the reasons for destroying the culture of the societies they encountered [according to Wiki]

      1. Well, anti-cannibalism isn’t a bad position. But there is irony in the argument being made by people who ritualize cannibalism every Sunday morning.

  12. I love Pfeffernüsse but I didn’t buy any this year for Xmas because I tend to eat and eat it and I’m sure it’s quite fattening and since I already have a big marzipan Stollen I figured that was enough.

    1. I think the mom is very concerned. She headed out to a safe distance from shore and is calling the chicks. You can see that this strategy is very effective at evading danger.

        1. I can’t go there with you, Paul. “Potato pancakes” tend to be more potato-flour-ish than latkes. The latter are more grated-potato-ish.

          Potato pancakes are a standard component of a traditional Wisconsin Friday fish fry, although many heathens who don’t know better eat French fries instead. In any case… latkes are very similar and yet… different.

          1. What I’m saying is take your favorit latke recipe and call it “potato pancakes”. No one will know. Anyway, there are a million potato pancake recipes. I suspect latke recipes are just a proper subset.

      1. That was great, especially the bank in Ouagadougou. My first pooch on my own was named Ouagadougou, or Ouagatushi as my Jewish rommie named her🐾🐾

      2. That was great, especially the bank in Ouagadougou. My first pooch on my own was named Ouagadougou, or Ouagatushi as my Jewish rommie named her🐾🐾

    2. Just hilarious! Some of the more amusing red flags were the scammer’s self-description as a person of ‘high personality’, their location as Burkina Faso, the huge sum of money that reminded me of the stash recently found in an abandoned Nigerian apartment, and the sudden professing of love on both sides, all the while bringing the conversation back to the money.

  16. The tarantula is exquisitely beautiful. In the twitter thread there is reference to a fascinating book, published in 1681: “An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon together With somewhat Concerning Severall Remarkable passages of my life that hath hapned since my Deliverance out of Captivity” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Historical_Relation_of_the_Island_Ceylon.

    The first illustration in the Wiki entry led me to this sad and grisly means of execution: ‘execution by elephant’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_by_elephant.

    PS, Notice that the meowing cockatoo also hisses at the cats. Love it.

    1. The cats were exceedingly disturbed by the bird’s Rich Little antics, and when the cockatoo hissed at them, I think it was saying “You effing TERFS,” as in trans exclusionary radical felines.

      Not a cockatoo, but here’s what a horse does with a simulacrum

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