Thursday: Hili dialogue

November 26, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s Thanksgiving Day in America: Thursday, November 26, 2020, and National Cake Day. Here’s are some amazing cakes made by a tattoo artist:

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) celebrates the history Thanksgiving:

It’s also Unthanksgiving Day, also known as The Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony, described as “a yearly event that takes place on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Coinciding with the National Day of Mourning in Massachusetts and a counter-celebration to Thanksgiving Day, Unthanksgiving Day honors indigenous people and promotes their rights. It commemorates the survival of indigenous people after the European colonization of the Americas and honors their resistance through the centuries.” Finally, it’s Turkey-Free Thanksgiving, and, truth be told, turkey is an awfully bland dish. Give me a ham, a pork roast, or roast beef! Better yet, rib tips!!!

News of the Day:

Well, we all know about this pardon; how many other undeserved and self-serving pardons will we see before January 20?

More on the shameful new Supreme Court decision on religion later today.

Diego Maradona died; the soccer legend was only 60 years old, but suffered a heart attack (he had abused cocaine earlier in his life, had other health problems, and was overweight). He was a very great player, and two of his goals (below) were notable—one “infamous”, as the video below notes, but the other deservedly famous. Both were scored in the same game: the quarter-final of the 1986 World Cup, when England played Argentina. The “hand of God” goal was clearly an illegal handball

. . . and a memorial story (sound up):

For a video of Maradona training in the mud (and doing some incredible dribbling and shots), go to this Facebook video (h/t: Jez)

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 262,137,  a big increase of about 2,300 from yesterday’s figure. Yesterday 1.6 Americans died every minute from the virus. The world death toll is 1,428,873, a big increase of about 12,100 over yesterday’s report. About 8.3 inhabitants of this planet died every minute yesterday. 

Stuff that happened on November 26 includes:

  • 1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
  • 1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President George Washington at the request of Congress.
  • 1863 – United States President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. Following the Franksgiving controversy from 1939 to 1941, it has been observed on the fourth Thursday in 1942 and subsequent years.
  • 1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years.

Here’s a view of the tomb when it was opened in 1922 (it had been plundered at least twice previously):

Harry Burton, View of tomb interior, November 1922 (Tutankhamun Archive, Griffith Institute, University of Oxford)
  • 1942 – Casablanca, the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.

This needs no introduction:

  • 1950 – Korean War: Troops from the People’s Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces (Battle of the Ch’ongch’on River and Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.

Here’s an amazing fact:

  • 2003 – The Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.
  • 2004 – The last Poʻouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii, before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.

Here’s one that was still alive:

  • 2008 – Mumbai attacks, a series of terrorist attacks killing approximately 166 citizens by 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan based extremist Islamist terrorist organisation, and the ship, Queen Elizabeth 2 is out of service, and docks in Dubai.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1607 – John Harvard, English minister and philanthropist (d. 1638)
  • 1853 – Bat Masterson, American police officer and journalist (d. 1921)
  • 1894 – Norbert Wiener, American-Swedish mathematician and philosopher (d. 1964)
  • 1907 – Ruth Patrick, American botanist (d. 2013)
  • 1933 – Robert Goulet, American-Canadian singer and actor (d. 2007)
  • 1943 – Marilynne Robinson, American novelist and essayist
  • 1954 – Roz Chast, American cartoonist

Now that the cartoons in the New Woker are going downhill, Roz Chast’s work remains a bright light. Here’s one of her pandemic cartoons:

Those who passed away on November 26 include:

  • 1504 – Isabella I, queen of Castile and León (b. 1451)
  • 1883 – Sojourner Truth, American activist (b. 1797)\

Her real name was  Isabella “Belle” Baumfree, she lived to be 86, and was a famous abolitionists and campaigner for women’s rights. Here she is in around 1870:

 

  • 1956 – Tommy Dorsey, American trombonist, trumpet player, and composer (b. 1905)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Hili dialogue is enigmatic. When I asked Malgorzata what it means, she replied, “This dialogue is not easy to explain and it can have many different interpretations, depending on the reader. One of them is that, maybe, it’s better to remain ignorant about how politics and sausages are made.”

Hili: Is it possible to understand all that?
A: No.
Hili, Maybe, it’s just as well.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy można to wszystko zrozumieć?
Ja: Nie.
Hili: Może to i lepiej.

In nearby Wloclawek, teenager Mietek has a question:

Mietek: What are you doing over there?

In Polish: Co tam porabiacie?

From Peter N., who saw this license plate on a car in front of a grocery store:

From Stash Krod:

From The Cat House on the Kings:

From reader Barry, a comparison between creationism and our “President”:

From Matthew. Here’s the most wonderful thread I’ve seen on Twitter in a long time: ANIMALS WHO ATE TOO MUCH!

DUCKLING!  This is the best one, right up there with the pastry-filled possum:

One of Matthew’s beloved optical illusions:

And other. As Matthew says in all caps: “NOTHING GROWS OR SHRINKS OR MOVES ITS POSITION HERE. IT’S ALL ILLUSORY”

And variants:

 

 

23 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A pardon is admission of guilt, of course this clown already pleaded guilty twice. Additionally, if they should be so bold as to go after Trump for his Russia games, Flynn can be called to testify and cannot claim the 5th.

    Reply

  4. “The last Poʻouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii, before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.”

    What, in principle, keeps any species from evolving to fill the space left by an extinct animal, or plant, etc.?

    Reply

  6. Regarding Maradona…

    I was part of the “youth soccer boom” in the United States in the 1980s…I played year around and it was taken quite seriously.

    Problem was, this period also coincided with the demise of the professional game in the US. And since this was the 80s, it wasn’t like you could just pop on the TV and see a match in England or Spain like you can now (some folks had access then to games via satellite TV, but they were few and far between).

    So unlike our native sports like basketball, we had no one to emulate, no superstars to imitate. I think that this is one of the reasons that my cohort (kids born in the 70s) never really produced a very creative, skillful US male player.

    It wasn’t until a soccer camp I attended in 1988, age 12, that I was exposed to the surreal skills of the great soccer stars. The camp staff, which was an eclectic blend of foreign coaches, had prepared videos to watch during lunch, and we were treated to the likes of Cruyff, Pele, Rivelino, John Barnes…and Maradona.

    Maradona was in his pomp at Napoli at that time, and by far and away he was my favorite. I think he had the same affect on the other kids…we were all trying his moves. I remember going home after being at the camp all day and still working on his skills in the back yard!

    That sense of fantasy and the outrageous acts of creativity that he performed, even in probably the most brutal and cynical era of football, will always mark him as my favorite player.

    Objectively, Messi may be a tad better, but then he never had to worry about guys like Goiko (the “Butcher of Bilbao”) hacking away at his ankles!

    Reply

    1. Until Messi came along, I thought Maradona was the best player ever (followed by Zidane). However, I definitely agree with your comment about players hacking away at Maradona; yet, as the tackles came flying in, Maradona was jumping over them and constantly trying to stay on his feet. Even when he went down, he was often straight back up and on the ball.

      Reply

      1. He wasn’t above diving, either – though he apparently apologised when his antics got a player sent off – but above all, he saw it as all part of the game.

        Reply

  7. The pardon was justified and deserved. See the Journal’s editorial here. Not the least thing to be regretted in a Biden win is that this chicanery will not get the investigation it deserves.

    Reply

  9. The similarity of creationism and Trump is nice but, unfortunately, Trump may run again in 2024 and he’s not just supported by evangelicals. That said, I predict he won’t be much of a force in 2024. He will find it tough to lose the stink of losing in 2020 and the GOP politicians will realize that 12 years is just too large a fraction of their lives to dedicate to Trump.

    Reply

  10. Cook visited the place where he’d later be stabbed in the neck & die. Take that for pretending you’re a god – hubris bites again!

    Reply

  12. WRT turkey on Yanksgiving: we’re making pork shoulder in the slow cooker. It’s a bad Canadian impersonation of North Carolina pulled pork, for the American relatives across the street. But it’s as close as we can come to the real thing.

    Reply

  13. I don’t know US law but my presumption was that by pardoning Flynn, Trump was helping to ensure that he would not be motivated to testify against Trump in any future investigations into Presidential impropriety. Am I off target with that interpretation? (I am guessing that Flynn could be called upon to testify from prison as easily as from outside?).

    Reply

  14. Joan Smith has published an article in the Guardian titled “Tributes to Diego Maradona show how easily violence against women is ignored”. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/27/diego-maradona-violence-women-heroes-abusers

    As though he doesn’t deserve any recognition because he was accused of but never charged with beating his girlfriend. He’s still one of the greatest footballers, and someone who has just died. She then goes on to mention Oscar Pistorius, who I think we can all agree has gotten what he deserved and continues to breathe. Giving accolades to the dead is not ignoring someone’s faults, it’s just declining to mention them in the same breath. Maradona’s faults have been well publicized. He deserves a eulogy. It’s not like he’s Peter Sutcliffe.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to blitz442 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *