Wednesday: Hili dialogue (with Mietek)

January 8, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s a hump day: Wednesday, January 8, 2019, and it’s rather chilly in Chicago: at 6 a.m., it’s just 19° F (-7° C), and the high today will be only 23° F (-5° C). But we won’t get any snow  until next week, when I head to Boston/Cambridge for a short trip. It’s National English Toffee Day: yet another example of arrant cultural appropriation. It’s also Argyle Day, Bubble Bath Day, National Man Watcher’s Day, and International Typing Day, created in Malaysia only 9 years ago. Why January 8 for that? Wikipedia has the answer:

Typing Day will be held on this day is because 8 January is one week after new year where everyone will have the time to think through and plan what they want to do for the following days and write it down on this day. For example, documents and ideas like resolution of the past year, vision, mission and objective for this year, compilations of ideas, opinions of the previous years etc. can be produced and shared with others.

That sounds as if it were written by someone whose native language wasn’t English.

News of the Day: Iran took credit yesterday for firing 22 missiles at two military bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops. Nobody appears to have been injured. Trump will make a statement today; my prediction is that he will do nothing, and my hope is that, if he does that, it will end the hostilities, at least for the time being.

Stuff that happened on January 8 includes:

  • 871 – Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings.
  • 1697 – Thomas Aikenhead, aged 20, became the last person executed for blasphemy in Scotland. (h/t: Dom)

Aikenhead’s crime? The indictment said this (my emphasis):

That … the prisoner had repeatedly maintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra’s fables, in profane allusion to Esop’s Fables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad to Christ: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ.

And for that the young student was hanged.

  • 1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City.
  • 1815 – War of 1812: Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British.
  • 1828 – The Democratic Party of the United States is organized. [JAC: as of 2020, it has become disorganized.]
  • 1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory.
  • 1912 – The African National Congress is founded, under the name South African Native National Congress (SANNC).
  • 1963 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
  • 1973 – Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins.
  • 2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

I traveled on the QM2 twice, both as part of an Oxford University Press lecture program, so I got two free and fancy trans-Atlantic cruises. Here I am in 2006, enjoying the top-deck hot tub with a favorite book (it was wickedly cold that November 23, but the tub was scenic and cozy):

  • 2011 – The attempted assassination of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and subsequent shooting in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in which five people were shot dead.
  • 2016 – Joaquín Guzmán, widely regarded as the world’s most powerful drug trafficker, is recaptured following his escape from a maximum security prison in Mexico.

Guzmán, also known as “El Chapo”, is serving a sentence of life plus 30 years in the nation’s most secure prison, the “supermax” ADX Florence in Colorado. Here are what the cells look like; it’s a grim place, and each prisoner spends 23 hours per day in his cell. Have a look at the link to see El Chapo’s unsavory prison-mates:

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s the Royal Society’s tribute to Wallace’s birthday (h/t: Matthew)

  • 1902 – Carl Rogers, American psychologist and academic (d. 1987)
  • 1911 – Gypsy Rose Lee, American actress, dancer, and author (d. 1970)
  • 1926 – Soupy Sales, American comedian and actor (d. 2009)
  • 1935 – Elvis Presley, American singer, guitarist, and actor (d. 1977)
  • 1947 – David Bowie, English singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (d. 2016)
  • 1958 – Betsy DeVos, American businesswoman and politician, 11th Secretary of Education
  • 1967 – R. Kelly, American singer-songwriter, record producer, and former professional basketball player
  • 1984 – Kim Jong-un, North Korean soldier and politician, 3rd Supreme Leader of North Korea

Those who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on this day include:

  • 1337 – Giotto, Italian painter and architect, designed Scrovegni Chapel and Giotto’s Campanile (b. 1266)
  • 1825 – Eli Whitney, American engineer and theorist, invented the cotton gin (b. 1765)
  • 1896 – Paul Verlaine, French poet and writer (b. 1844)
  • 1925 – George Bellows, American painter (b.1882)
  • 1941 – Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, English general (b. 1857)
  • 1976 – Zhou Enlai, Chinese soldier and politician, 1st Premier of the People’s Republic of China (b. 1898)
  • 1994 – Harvey Haddix, American baseball player and coach (b. 1925)
  • 1997 – Melvin Calvin, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)

Here’s probably what is Bellows’s most famous painting, a boxing scene called Stag at Sharkey’s (1908):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej discuss “safe spaces.” Malgorzata explains: “Hili is sitting on Andrzej’s lap and that is the safe place she appreciates. She means that everybody needs this type of safe space.”

Hili: We all need a safe space.
A: Yes, but some are defining this concept very strangely.
In Polish:
Hili: Wszyscy potrzebujemy bezpiecznej przestrzeni.
Ja: Tak, ale niektórzy dziwnie to pojęcie definiują.

And there’s a Mietek monologue!

Mietek: We have to write down what’s most important.

In Polish: Musimy zanotować to, co najważniejsze.

From The Silly Penguin:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Merilee:

There’s a huge DuckFest on Twitter under the hashtags #FirstDayQuack and #InternationalSolicitedDuckPicDay. They have tons of duck photos, videos, drawings, and artifacts. If you’re a anatidaephile, which I’ve just discovered is the fancy name for duck lover, go see.

. . . and another:

. . . and two more. There are tons more at the two sites.

Turtle and flamingo humans:

This new combination engagement ring box/video maker marks the end of the civilized world as we know it:

From reader Barry, a tweet from the same person as above:

Tweets from Matthew. Where are the ducks when you need them?

Why we need universal background checks. Look whose gun this is!

And two more ducks: a bizarre duck species and a wayward family (I hope they found their way to the water!):

 

 

23 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue (with Mietek)”

  2. As far as I’m concerned today is National First Day of Shoveling the Dang Driveway Day.

      1. Snowplows are mean. They always pile up snow at the ends of the driveways. Makes it twice as hard. 😛

  3. 1828 – The Democratic Party of the United States is organized. [JAC: as of 2020, it has become disorganized.]

    “I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.” — Will Rogers (1935)

    Plus ça change …

  4. The War of 1812. Our first ill conceived war but certainly not the last. Canadians everywhere are shaking in their snow boots over this one.

    1. I was put off by the excessive reaction on the part of the woman. Who actually reacts like that, except those who have seen Marriage Proposal Videos online, then cave into the pressure to feign hysteria?

      1. Ours went something like this.

        Me: You wanna get married?
        Her: Sure
        Me: We can go see Don and get a ring.
        Her: ok

        1. Ours was:
          She: You should ask me to marry you. I am not going to wait much longer.
          Me (getting down on one knee): Will you marry me?
          She (surprised. Pauses for a long time to keep me hanging. The floor is hard and my knee is starting to hurt): Yes!
          Me (thinking): What have I done? [But this was by far the best thing that ever happened to me].

        2. We went to the county clerk without even a ring…just two friends/witnesses. We didn’t even have the $50 to pay for it and had to borrow it from one of the friends. Spur of the moment, but have been married for almost 20 years. No kids helps 😉

  9. I just finished a fascinating book about the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. The book contained a significant amount of geologic and biological background of the area, with special attention paid to Alfred Russel Wallace and his work to define the “Wallace Line”. According to the book, in the course of his work Wallace not only derived the reason for the biological differences on opposite sides of the Wallace Line but was almost able to translate that work into what eventually became the science of plate tectonics. He couldn’t quite make that leap of imagination, however, and it would be another century (or close to it) before others would make the connection.

  10. Scrolling through the Kawasaki images, I was rewarded by the fanciful as well as the informative illustrations. Homologies are fun.

    The Chopra quote reminds me of a debate he had with some well known skeptic in which he weasel-worded around criticism. He has that ability in common with the great red lump in the Oval Office.

  11. I was quickly scanning through the pictures. I saw the picture of Jerry in the hot tub on a cruise ship. Then I saw what at first I thought was a diagram of his cabin.

  13. There is a fabulous edition of “Great Lives” on BBC radio 4, with the comedian, musician, and polymath Bill Bailey on Alfred Russel Wallace. Did you hear this Matthew?
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000cldv
    And it is from the BBC sounds app, which is free, available almost everywhere, and a must for sound lovers.

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