Friday: Hili dialogue

March 6, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good Friday (well, not the real one)! It’s March 6, 2020, and National Oreo Day, a deservedly successful cookie. (Why couldn’t Hydrox compete? That cookie is nearly extinct, and you can get them only on eBay or by mail order—at inflated prices. Even Amazon has run out of them.) Like warm brownies, Oreos are best consumed with a glass of cold milk.

Many people liked Hydrox better than Oreos, but I haven’t had one in years (I’d like to try). Here’s a side by side comparison. Hydroxes were certainly prettier!

It’s also Alamo Day, Dentist’s Day (which dentist?), World Day of Ineffectual Prayer, and Middle Name Pride Day (mine is Allen, what’s yours?). And if you’re a fan of The Big Lebowski, you’ll know that today is The Day of the Dude, a holiday for acolytes of Dudeism.

Stuff that happened on this day includes:

  • 1665 – The first joint Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, publishes the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the world’s longest-running scientific journal.
  • 1788 – The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.
  • 1820 – The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
  • 1836 – Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo – After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.

Here’s Johnny Cash singing “Remember the Alamo”, followed by a picture of the place. Can you name a more famous country song that prominently features the Alamo? The answer is somewhere in this post.

The Alamo:

This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Eixo at English Wikipedia. This applies worldwide.

That was a bad one: by a 7-2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that black Americans, whether free or slave, were not citizens and didn’t accrue the rights and privileges of citizens. This was nullified after the Civil War by the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments.

  • 1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.  Here’s the first publication of that table outside Russia, published in Zeitschrift für Chimie in 1869:

 

  • 1899 – Bayer registers “Aspirin” as a trademark.
  • 1902 – Real Madrid CF is founded.
  • 1951 – Cold War: The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.

As you may know, both were convicted of spying for the USSR (passing them nuclear secrets), and both were executed by electrocution in 1953. Historians seem to have settled on the verdict that Julius was certainly guilty, but it’s not so clear that Ethel was involved, or at least didn’t deserve execution.

Here they are on the day when they were convicted:

  • 1964 – Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.
  • 1970 – An explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three.
  • 1984 – In the United Kingdom, a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow signals the start of a strike that lasted almost a year and involved the majority of the country’s miners.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1340 – John of Gaunt (d. 1399)
  • 1619 – Cyrano de Bergerac, French author and playwright (d. 1655)
  • 1885 – Ring Lardner, American journalist and author (d. 1933)
  • 1905 – Bob Wills, American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader (d. 1975)

Here’s Bob Wills with one of his classics, somewhat marred by the gratuitous exclamations throughout the song:

  • 1906 – Lou Costello, American actor and comedian (d. 1959)
  • 1937 – Valentina Tereshkova, Russian general, pilot, and astronaut
  • 1944 – Kiri Te Kanawa, New Zealand soprano and actress
  • 1947 – Rob Reiner, American actor, director, producer, and activist
  • 1953 – Carolyn Porco, American astronomer and academic
  • 1967 – Glenn Greenwald, American journalist and author

I tweeted birthday wishes to Carolyn:

Those who found quietus on March 6 include:

  • 1836 – Deaths at the Battle of the Alamo:
    • James Bonham, American lawyer and soldier (b. 1807)
    • James Bowie, American colonel (b. 1796)
    • Davy Crockett, American soldier and politician (b. 1786)
  • 1888 – Louisa May Alcott, American novelist and poet (b. 1832)
  • 1967 – Nelson Eddy, American actor and singer (b. 1901)
  • 1982 – Ayn Rand, Russian-American philosopher, author, and playwright (b. 1905)
  • 1986 – Georgia O’Keeffe, American painter (b. 1887)
  • 2007 – Ernest Gallo, American businessman, co-founded E & J Gallo Winery (b. 1909)
  • 2016 – Nancy Reagan, American actress, 42nd First Lady of the United States (b. 1921)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is unusually expansive. As Malgorzata explained, “Hili is in a very friendly mood. She thinks that togetherness is great. So she is announcing that she will agree with Andrzej about nearly anything.”

Hili: In principle I can agree with you.
A: About what?
Hili: About anything.
In Polish:
Hili: W zasadzie mogę się z tobą zgodzić.
Ja; W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: W jakiejkolwiek.

And, in Hilis’s house, Szaron is recovering from his first vet visit, which included eye medication, shots, and NEUTERING. He looked pretty out of it in this photo from yesterday! Tomorrow he goes to the vet for his post-op checkup. After he was brought home (Paulina is out of town), Szaron slept most of the day, had some noms, and PURRED for the very first time. Maybe his testicles were a liability!

Andrzej’s comment:  Sharon after examination with the vet and after castration.

(In Polish: Szaron po oględzinach u pani weterynarz i po kastracji.)

From Bad Cat Clothing:

From the waggish FB page of the Dover Public Library:

A groaner from Jesus of the Day. I’ll be here all week, folks. 

From Merilee:

Cenk Uygur, a huge Bernie Bro, has a tantrum about Biden’s win (he later walked off the show). (I see a stroke or an aneurism in the offing; the guy is tightly wound and prone to fly off the handle.) Cenk was a candidate himself, finished a miserable fourth in the race to replace resigned Congressperson Katie Hill.

Two tweets from Her Highness, who’s been on a roll lately:

This sounds like a joke, but some people really feel this way.

A tweet from Luana. I may have posted this before, but I’m forgetful. It shows both the delusions of faith and the fact that religion can literally be poisonous:

https://twitter.com/ar_persian1/status/1234014862155669504

Two tweets from Heather Hastie, the first showing some interspecific bonding:

I may also have posted this one. Heather says “This is a d*g, but a cool one.” (Her life was saved by a dog once, by the way.) Sound up.

And a tweet from Matthew. Look at this bizarre beetle photographed by the awesome Gil Wizen:

 

49 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The effect of the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, Roger Taney Chief Justice, on the sundering of the Union and the coming of the Civil War cannot be overstated. This decision was a major victory for the slaveholders, and, per the National Constitution Center had these major provisions:

    ——————–

    Taney announced that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and had no rights to sue in federal courts, and in fact, African Americans couldn’t be citizens.

    “There are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government then formed,” Taney argued.

    The court also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. And it said that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.

    https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/dred-scott-decision-still-resonates-today-2
    ——————–

    This decision polarized the country so much that reconciliation between the sections was now made much difficult, if not impossible. The southern dominated Court’s decision undermined the Republican Party’s reason for being: that Congress had the power to prevent the expansion of slavery into the territories. Now, the Court determined that slavery could go into any of the territories. Some in the North feared that the Court would rule before long that the states could have no power to prevent slavery from being allowed them, since slaves, as the slaveholders loved to say were nothing more than “another species of property.”

    With this decision we see the powerful impact of Supreme Court decisions on society and politics. The current Supreme Court may soon render decisions that will also tear the country apart. If this happens, it will be another legacy of Trump that will live on long after he is gone.

    Reply

    1. Dred Scott is one of those SCOTUS decisions that, despite its subsequent invalidation, will forever live on in infamy, along with the separate-but-equal decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu, the WWII Japanese-American internment decision.

      Reply

    1. My daughter is an ordained, card carrying, Dudeist Priest. She achieved her ordination when she was 12. That was a very stressful time for me.

      Reply

  4. “ … religion can literally be poisonous:“

    Astonishing,.. revolting behavior – genuinely committed, grown adults by any physician’s standards, but only nominally. How is this supposed to attract followers? Perhaps a thousand years ago.

    It’s a particular poison, though – not an intoxicating poison but something else, where the victim welcomes it as they might an intravenous medicine. Unctuous, is how Hitchens put it.

    Reply

  6. The founding myth [of Texas] is the Alamo. I was raised on the Revised Standard Version, which holds that while it was stupid of Travis and the gang to be there at all (Sam Houston told them to get the hell out), it was still an amazing last stand. Stephen Harrigan in The Gates of the Alamo is closer to reality, but even he admits in the end there was something romantic and even noble about the episode, like having served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

    — Molly Ivins, “Is Texas America?”

    Reply

    1. The biggest founding myth of the Texas revolt was that they were fighting for freedom. They were fighting to be able to maintain slavery.

      Reply

  7. I’m old enough to remember eating Hydrox (the original Oreo). Frankly, Oreos are better tasting. The Oreos look to be made using darker chocolate. Hydrox was more of a milk chocolate flavor. I do prefer dark chocolate, but the Hydrox just never tasted very good.

    Reply

    1. I am going to go ahead and say that the name had something to do with it, too. Who wants to eat a snack whose name is part of Sodium Hydroxide?

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      1. Yes, I’m half Irish, a quarter German, and a quarter Italian. I felt more Irish than everyone in my family because I was the only one with red hair. It just sort of fit. For an odd reason I’ve always felt Jewish also. I don’t know how to explain that and I know it’s a religion. A few years ago I was finally told how I got my first name. My parents had two names for girls: Elizabeth and Jennifer. When my older sister was born, the woman in the hospital bed next to her was very loud, I guess, and just sort of everything was rubbing my mom the wrong way. She happened to be Jewish. Her name was Liz. My mom decided to name my sister Jennifer instead of Elizabeth. When I was born, my mom lost so much blood that she almost died. She was unconscious so they asked my dad for the name. The only thing he could think of was Elizabeth. All I knew growing up is that they (my mom?) never wanted me to be a Liz. In second grade, my teacher started calling me Liz and it stuck with people who aren’t close friends (from younger years) or family. I think my mom sees that woman when she looks at me. I know it makes no sense. When I found out, I said, “How could you not have told me this until now?!?” It could also be because I’ve always been surrounded by Jewish people in extended family, school, friends etc. I’m Irish, though. Yes. My hair has turned darker and no one can really tell anymore. I’m good with that. Definitely have Ireland on my bucket list sooner rather than later. Are you Irish?

        Reply

        1. Mostly Scotch-English, although I had an Irish great-grandmother.

          On the subject of names, when I was born my mother was stuck for a name, so she named me after her doctor (Neil). But she only had one doctor so I didn’t get a middle name. 🙂

          Reply

  9. Listen to Cenk Uygur and close your eyes. It sounds almost identical to a Rush Limbaugh show clip.

    Reply

    1. That was precisely my thought.

      As such – and since your eyes are closed anyway- remember it’s all just a show. It’s designed, It’s superficial. It’s Fantasyland.

      Reply

        1. In the future, everyone will have a 15-minute podcast.

          Or maybe that’s the present. Who can even tell anymore?

          Reply

  10. Regarding the poster at the University of Liverpool reproduced by Titania McGrath: “Genital preferences are transphobic.”

    One person tweeted in response: “In which case gender reassignment is transphobic because it’s predicated on genital preference.”

    Touché.

    Reply

    1. Round and round, a wheel in a wheel, turtles on turtles…

      How about ( I’m feeling loopy today):

      Gender itself is gender biased – a new paradigm of the last two chromosomes… quantum chromosomosity… decomposition of the X and Y chromosomes into three generations of X and Y, qxarks, lxptons, gxauge bxsons, and then… the Hxggs bxoson.

      Note : the letter Y is not allowed!

      Reply

  13. That the odious Ayn Rand died in 1982 reminds me that Senator Paul Rand (named after her, and unfortunately, still alive) was the only senator to vote against the allocation of funds to support work against the corona virus world wide. He claimed we should spend tax money on our own country. What a sweetheart! Not only is he a selfish bastard, he’s foolish for not realizing that diseases can spread from China right to his front door.

    Reply

    1. All those criticisms are necessary but insufficient to show how poisonous the popular writings of Ayn Rand are. The key is : one has every reason to be *proud* of their acknowledged selfishness, general imperfections, and how they interfere with everyone but themselves.

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    2. I saw Rand’s father, Ron, asked if he named his son after Ayn Rand. He said no. Rand’s full first name is Randal.

      Reply

      1. That’s one thing – but I thought the Pauls are motivated specifically by the popular writings Ayn Rand?

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        1. Yeah, they are, at least as to the supposedly salubrious aspects of economic selfishness. Somehow, they seem to have glazed over the godlessness part of Objectivism.

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    3. Rand Paul is a mixed bag but I am very glad he and Ron Wyden frequently team up for civil liberties against the wishes of their parties. They oppose much of the post 9/11 surveillance that everyone else seems to supports. His filibuster on killing Americans abroad was wonderful.

      He is too often Trump’s lap dog but Paul was against Trump declaring an emergency for the wall, opposed Trump ending the Iranian nuke deal.

      IMO, Paul and Wyden are the two most valuable senators even though I disagree with both most of the time. They have a core belief in civil liberties which is needed and rare.

      Reply

      1. Well, even a corpse performs a useful function of leaving nutrients in the soil. (Or is it right twice a day). 😎

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  14. The Cenk Uygur meltdown is something else. He’s unhinged. Claiming Biden constantly lies. AFAIK, no one is saying that. He’s also out of touch with reality as Bernie has little chance of winning the nomination now. It will be all over once we have a few more state primaries that go to Biden.

    My middle name is Reginald, my father’s first name. Fun fact: my father had no middle name!

    MSM got a black eye yesterday. MSNBC’s Brian Williams put up a fake tweet claiming that Bloomberg spent $500M on his campaign (true), an amount which represents more than $1M for every US citizen. That’s some pretty bad math as it is really only $1.53 per person.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/media/486288-brian-williams-nyts-gay-roasted-over-math-flub-saddest-clip-in-tv-history

    Reply

  15. I have two middle names one of which is Worthy. This and my first name run in the family, both being quaker virtue names. I’ve seen that they go no further.

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  17. My middle name is Amier.. my mother was reading Pamela when I was born. Hence my name. Loved the bobcats

    Reply

  18. It is odd that the Rosenbergs are considered “cold war spies” when their alleged transmission of secrets to the Soviet Union occurred during WWII when the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States.

    Reply

    1. Ethel Rosenberg was, at most, an accessory-after-the-fact to her husband’s crimes (and was charged primarily in an effort to coerce her husband into cooperating against others). Julius’s espionage advanced the Soviet Union’s acquisition of a nuclear device perhaps by a couple years. He did not deserve the death penalty (even assuming, as I do not, that capital punishment is warranted in some cases).

      Their trial took place in an atmosphere of Cold War hysteria and was marred by anti-Semitism — made all the worse by the whole tawdry affair’s having been fronted by a pair of self-loathing Jews: prosecutor Roy Cohn and judge Irving Kaufman. (For years afterward, Cohn bragged about the unethical ex parte communications he had had with Kaufman to orchestrate the imposition of the death sentences against the two.)

      Reply

      1. For that alone, the Rosenbergs should be pardoned. By Cohn’s own admission, they did not get an impartial trial. Cohn was a despicable piece of work.

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        1. Cohn reminds me (somehow) of tRump’s Stephen Miller. I guess it’s the same facial expression of contempt for mankind.

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  19. You note that in 1899 Bayer registered “Aspirin” as a trademark. A while back, I watched a talk on C-SPAN about the history of narcotics in America. Bayer was the first pharmaceutical company in America to market heroin. The more interesting fact is that they marketed the drug as a “cure” for morphine addiction (this was around 1900). No less interesting, is that heroin was sold over the counter (without a prescription) for years for as little as ten dollars an ounce. One of the more worthy precedents in the long history of malpractice in the pharmaceutical industry.

    Reply

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