Friday: Hili dialogue

December 4, 2020 • 6:30 am

We made it through the first work week in December—kudos to everyone on this Friday, December 4, 2020. It’s National Cookie Day, and we must name our favorite. Mine, as I’ve noted before, is the McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuit. You can’t beat these with a stick! (The milk chocolate biscuits aren’t quite as good, but still superb.) They go wonderfully with tea.

McVitie’s Boasters used to be right up there, too, but I just discovered this depressing fact:

It’s also Cabernet Frank Day (no, not a person but a grape), Bartender Appreciation Day, International Cheetah Day, Wildlife Conservation Day, and Faux Fur Friday (better yet, don’t even wear fake fur).

For Cheetah Day:

Wine of the Day: A new feature (when I remember to do it). In lieu of posting my restaurant-meal pictures, which are on hold during the pandemic, I’ll post some of the wines I drink. The food I make is usually simple, but I do like a good tipple to wash it down. Here’s a nice and inexpensive Chianti Classico that I had last night. (I drink 1/3 to 1/2 a bottle with dinner, but not every night.) I had this with a baguette, aged Tilamook cheddar, and fresh tomatoes. (The simpler the food, the more it shows off the wine.)

News of the day:

Emotional support animals on airplanes, like rabbits, birds, and even ponies, now seem to be a thing of the past. According to many sources, including The Washington Post,  Airlines can accommodate the ESAs if they want to, but don’t have to. Animals that help people with psychiatric disabilities (beyond just needing emotional support) are also allowed:

Airlines no longer will be required to accommodate travelers who want to fly with emotional support animals such as pigs, rabbits and turkeys under a final rule announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The new rule now defines a service animal to be a dog that is “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability” and limits the number of service animals a person can travel with to two. It also requires airlines to treat psychiatric service animals as they would other service animals.

. . . Industry trade group Airlines for America estimated the number of emotional support animals traveling aboard commercial flights increased from 481,000 in 2016 to 751,000 in 2017.

The growth led to conflict between passengers, particularly when animals misbehaved.

Last summer, an American Airlines flight attendant received five stitches after she was bitten by an emotional support dog on a flight out of Dallas/Fort Worth.

The growth in the number of these things (I once talked to a flight attendant who was beefing about an emotional support miniature horse who stood in front of the cabin) seems to parallel the growth of those who claim to be emotionally fragile, as evidenced by the numbers above.

Look at this travesty!:

The Guardian reports a botched restoration in Spain, similar to the famous and laughable “Money Christ” restoration described in Wikipedia. This time carvers tried to restore the face of a woman carved on a building in the city of Palencia, and wound up creating a distorted mug that looks a little bit like Trump. I don’t think it was a joke, though it might have been. Ecce Homo:

And you may recall the “Monkey Christ” restoration, which was definitely not a joke.

 

Also in the Guardian, a report that an Australian family found a live koala in their artificial Christmas tree. Apparently the errant marsupial crawled in through an open door and found its way to the tree. A picture and a tweet (with video) are below; the beast has now been placed back in the right habitat.

Charles Blow has op-ed in The New York Times praising Obama as a politician but criticizing him as an “activist” (the Obama-bashing is already beginning). This is because the other day Obama said that saying “defund the police” will turn off those who are otherwise liberal, and reduce the credibility of your own liberal agenda. A quote:

Of course, as a political matter, Obama is right in a way. He is looking at the path to legislative and public opinion success. To take that path, the power structure can’t be so much confronted as coaxed. Those who do not recognize your full humanity must be convinced rather than condemned.

But that all feels like cowardice and accommodation to the activists. They are right, after all. Policing needs to be restructured in this country. Part of the reason so many unarmed Black people are killed at the hands of the police is that policing itself has become sick and corrupt; it has become bloated and impervious to prosecution.

I believe that Obama recognizes this, too, to some degree. But to the politician, baby steps are still progress. Winning the hearts and minds of the populace in that tradecraft, it is the way — the only way — they believe that progress is made.

From the BBC we learn that a man named Adolf Hitler—actually, Adolf Hitler Uunona—won a local election in Namibia. And yes, his parents, who admired der Führer, gave him that name. I would have changed my name were I Mr. Uunona.

The New York Times has an interactive vaccination quiz where, if you give them your age, location, and a few other facts like your profession, they can show you your place in the vaccination line in America, your state, and in your county.  Here’s mine—not that heartening.

Based on your risk profile, we believe you’re in line behind 118.5 million people across the United States.

When it comes to Illinois, we think you’re behind 4.6 million others who are at higher risk in your state.

And in Cook County, you’re behind 1.9 million others.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 276,375, a big increase of about 2,900 from yesterday’s figure, representing about 2 Americans dying per minute.  The world death toll is 1,513,798, a big increase of about 12,500 over yesterday’s report—about 8.7 deaths per minute. 

Stuff that happened on December 4 includes:

  • 1619 – Thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. The group’s charter proclaims that the day “be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
  • 1783 – At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, U.S. General George Washington bids farewell to his officers.

Fraunces Tavern is still there, a historic building on Broad Street:

  • 1791 – The first edition of The Observer, the world’s first Sunday newspaper, is published.

Here’s your first Sunday paper:

  • 1864 – American Civil War: Sherman’s March to the Sea: At Waynesboro, Georgia, forces under Union General Judson Kilpatrick prevent troops led by Confederate General Joseph Wheeler from interfering with Union General William T. Sherman’s campaign destroying a wide swath of the South on his march to the Atlantic Ocean from Atlanta.
  • 1865 – North Carolina ratifies 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, followed soon by Georgia, and U.S. slaves were legally free within two weeks.
  • 1872 – The crewless American brigantine Mary Celeste, drifting in the Atlantic, is discovered by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. The ship has been abandoned for nine days but is only slightly damaged. Her master Benjamin Briggs and all nine others known to have been on board are never accounted for.

The absence of a crew on a sound sailable ship remains a mystery after 150 years.

Here they are, and you can hear some of their music here.

  • 1964 – Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents’ decision to forbid protests on UC property.
  • 1969 – Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.
  • 1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco’s first female mayor.
  • 1991 – Pan American World Airways ceases its operations after 64 years.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1835 – Samuel Butler, English author and critic (d. 1902)
  • 1865 – Edith Cavell, English nurse, humanitarian, and saint (Anglicanism) (d. 1915)
  • 1875 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian-Swiss poet and author (d. 1926)
  • 1908 – Alfred Hershey, American bacteriologist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
  • 1940 – Gary Gilmore, American murderer (d. 1977)
  • 1944 – Chris Hillman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
  • 1947 – Jane Lubchenco, American ecologist, academic, and diplomat
  • 1944 – Dennis Wilson, American singer-songwriter, producer, and drummer (d. 1983)
  • 1964 – Marisa Tomei, American actress

I love Marisa Tomei; here’s the part that made her famous, as Mona Lisa Vito in the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinnie (Joe Pesci is in the scene, too). She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in this role:

Those who began pushing up daisies on December 4 include:

As I always like to point out, T. H. Morgan was my academic great-grandfather:

 

  • 1967 – Bert Lahr, American actor (b. 1895)
  • 1969 – Fred Hampton, American Black Panthers activist (b. 1948)
  • 1975 – Hannah Arendt, German-American historian, theorist, and academic (b. 1906)
  • 1993 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1940)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (and the other cats) are reluctant to go outside as it’s cold: 5 degrees C is 41 degrees Fahrenheit:

Hili: Is outside as cold as it seems to be?
A: It’s plus five degrees.
Hili: That’s only a theory, it looks much colder.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy tam jest tak zimno jak mi się wydaje?
Ja: Jest pięć stopni plus.
Hili: To tylko teoria, wygląda na to, że jest zimniej.

From Don:

From Facebook:

From Laughing in Disbelief on Facebook. Can you spot something that isn’t like the others?

Titania spoofs the least harmful form of virtue flaunting (or “moral preening”, as some say):

From reader Barry, who notes that the “Sarcastic Fringehead” really is the vernacular name for the species Neoclinus blanchardi.

Here’s a one-minute video showing all kinds of bizarre fish, including two Sarcastic Fringeheads going fin-o a fin-o:

Tweets from the Big Macher Matthew. The first one shows something unusual: a klutzy parrot:

Apparently this is a sewage tunnel. I’m always amazed at how, starting from either end, they manage to meet absolutely precisely:

Wonderful “runway lights” for feeding these chicks, complete with appropriate movements:

I had no idea that this could be done and still have no idea how it IS done:

46 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Today’s reported covid-19 death toll: we should expect this number to continue to rise, maybe even continue to accelerate for a while if we just consider epidemic infection dynamics in the simplest first order math model which depends only on two populations: infectious and susceptable. The growth curve of total infections is called a logistic curve, shaped like a lazy “s” with an inflection point around where the number of infected equals the number of susceptables. In the u.s., cdc says we are currently around 14M infected in a population of 330M. So by those numbers we still have along way to go. Even if the 14M is an underestimate by a factor of 5-10 we still have a ways to go to the 50 percent point at which cases still grow but the growth rate decelerates. This shape reflects the probability of an infected interacting with a susceptible and recognizes that when less than half the population is no longer susceptable that there are fewer opportunities for spread. If only one person is infected then he has a vast ocean of potential susceptables to infect through daily interaction, but as more people get infected , the likelihood of interacting with a susceptable slowly but steadily decreases though there are more infecteds now interacting with theirsusceptable peers. Of course as the vaccine comes online, the number of susceptables will also start to decrease. This also ignores, as many americans unfortunately appear to be doing, public health measures such as wearing masks, social distancing, and isolating which can elongate (flatten) the “s” slope while awaiting a vaccine. Obviously there are many other higher order factors, but just wanted to provide a simple context regarding what to expect over the next few months as i had not yet seen it on this site. Caveat: my expertise is in math modeling, not biology, but i think what i have written here is mostly correct enough to be useful.

    1. Very good and helpful to me.

      Also,
      “This also ignores, as many americans unfortunately appear to be doing, public health measures such as wearing masks, social distancing,…”
      The word “appear” seems unnecessary, as you’d likely agree.

      It could be replaced with ‘.. , behaving in a decidedly evil way, endangering millions of others, killing thousands of them….”

      This is happening elsewhere too, including Canada where I live, on a lesser scale mostly, perhaps proportional to the availability of Rupert Murdoch’s murderous Fox propaganda.

  2. similar to the famous and laughable “Money Christ” restoration

    Quite an amusing typo.

    we must name our favorite. Mine, as I’ve noted before, is the McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuit. You can’t beat these with a stick!

    No, but you can beat them with a plain chocolate hobnob.

    NB I think it’s quite cool that McVitie’s web site has a pop up asking you to accept their cookie policy.

    1. Yes, they are biscuits not cookies, & McVities is now part of United Biscuits. Not sure who they are united against?! 😋

      By the way I would urge readers to check that they are not consuming palm oil in their biscuits/cookies etc

    3. I had to give up sugar as much as possible about 15 years ago, and I think plain chocolate hobnobs and digestives are the foodstuffs that I miss the most.

  3. Oi Coyne – you are already virtually betrothed to Sandra Bullock ! I will tell on you!

    Or are you just spreading your bets?!

    I say – finally WordPress is remembering my details so I do not have to sign in every time😁

  4. 1619 berkely hundred: interesting…i just checked the berkely hundred/plantation website, as berkely hundred is just thirty miles up the james river, west of me, and they have no thanksgiving/holy day of remembrance listed for today. They certainly do claim to be the scene of the first thanksgiving though.

  5. Amazing how my place in line for the vaccine jumped from 268 million to 23 million when I changed my risk factor status from “no” to “yes” (the only risk factor I can claim is obesity).

    As for the tunneling machine, the precision is very impressive. However, it is much easier these days with the advent of GPS and laser guidance.

  6. My favorite cookie is Toll House. I figured that was a better answer than ‘homemade fresh from the oven’. Whatever cookie you want, they are so much better than purchased cookies.

      1. You could always take naked McVitie’s digestive biscuits and coat them with dark chocolate… on both sides!

    1. I was greatly amused when I did the quiz and saw that I was placed just in front of the homeless and those in prison. And after thinking about it for a moment, wondered why should that be? I actually have the resources and ability to protect myself from infection, whereas prisoners and homeless probably don’t. I’ll certainly get the vaccine as soon as it is readily available to me, of course.

  10. Regarding the Monkey Christ, somewhere in the U.S a new cult has been started based on the revelation that this picture is of the True Christ.

  11. Today’s Hili dialogue is inspiring me to have fun with Indo-European cognates, viz., Polish pięć, Hindi  पाँच (transliterated paanch), Greek πέντε (pente). The German fünf and English five resulted from the initial p shifting to f centuries ago. (See Grimm’s Law.) Latin took the consonant shifts in a different direction: quinque. OK, I’m a language nerd!☺

  12. My wife and I ate lunch at the Fraunces Tavern when we visited New York City four years ago. The food was excellent.

    The new tunnel in London is part of a major project to increase the capacity of the system that takes sewage and rainwater away from central London. The existing London sewer system was built by the celebrated engineer Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860s, but London has grown somewhat since then, and after heavy rainfall, raw sewage enters the river Thames via overflow pipes. The new project aims to stop that. It was the subject of a fascinating documentary series on British TV last year.

    Modern tunnelling techniques do indeed achieve remarkable precision. When the CrossRail project was tunnelling through central London, it had to thread the new rail tunnels between a maze of existing Tube tunnels, platforms and escalator shafts at Tottenham Court Road station. At times, the clearance was only a foot. And this was all done “blind”. Apparently, some of the really tricky digging was done at night, as it was thought that the sound of the tunnelling machine would alarm passengers using the station if it happened during the day.

  13. My favorite cookies are Walkers shortbread cookies but the McVities dark chocolate biscuits are a close second.
    Speaking of wine, can you post the white wine you prefer instead of Pinot Grigio? I’d like to try it over the holidays. Thanks

    1. There are many whites: try a good Sauvignon Blanc or, if you want something a bit less dry, a Chenin Blanc. Or a good Gewurztraminer (good with turkey, but get a dry one) or a Riesling (ranges from dry–Kabinett–to sweet–Auslese and higher). The Spanish whites: Albarino, Rueda, and Torrontes, are some of my favorites. They are great value for the money.

      As always, there are good and bad specimens of a wine, but you can get good examples of the above for not too much money.

      2. Your wine recommendations are most appreciated, Jerry. I can’t imbibe much more than a taste or two, but it takes out the guess work when I want to pick up a special gift for someone. Of course I stick to the moderate price ranges.

  14. The GRACE system is composed of 2 satellites in identical orbits with one trailing the other by 220 kilometers. They are equipped with a sensitive ranging system that can detect changes as small as 10 microns in distance between the 2 satellites. When the leading satellite approaches a region with slightly stronger gravity it accelerates relative to the trailing satellite which increases the separation. Separation decreases when the trailing satellite passes the region.

    1. The GRACE satellites are also used to measure groundwater loss. For example, farmers in India are pumping groundwater out of the sediments along the foothills of the Himalayas much faster than it is being recharged. The GRACE satellites gives a regional scope and magnitude of this loss. It is pretty amazing!

  15. As for “weighing” the ice using the GRACE (Follow-On) satellites, that is done by measuring precisely the distance between the two satellites. Changes in that distance are caused by variations in the gravity field underneath. The satellite pair repeats their coverage and so they can make monthly “maps” of gravity, and look at how things change month by month. That is how they can map out local variations in gravity. A lot of those changes are related to the ice sheets (and basins on Earth), so that is how they have been able to map out the ice loss over Greenland, Antarctica, etc.

  16. Parrots who have a habit of chewing through their perches, know they will always get a replacement. This one had too many miles on it.

  17. “This is because the other day Obama said that saying “defund the police” will turn off those who are otherwise liberal, and reduce the credibility of your own liberal agenda.”

    Quite right he is. It turns me off completely. (And we fly the rainbow flag in front of our suburban home and have BLM sign out there too.)

    http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/2020/2020-10-24/IMG_1397.jpg

    http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/2020/2020-10-24/IMG_1396.jpg

    (The campaign signs are down now.)

    The threat of “abolish the police” has already dramatically reduced the number of police officers in Minneapolis and the city is “enjoying” a severe violent crime wave, including car-jackings. I won’t be going to Minneapolis (15 minutes away by road) any time soon (regardless of COVID).

    Some activist was on my local radio yesterday saying, “police don’t stop crime”. Um, right, hence the jump in violent crime in Mpls.

    Get rid of the police? You get CHOP or the Murray-Hill Riot.

  18. The sea level rise can’t be due to ice melting since numerous professional knownothings in congress have proven that (1) Melting ice cubes in a glass do not raise the water level in the glass, and (2) scientists have foolishly forgotten about all of those rocks falling into the oceans. It is only a matter of time until they claim that removing all of the sponges in the oceans would easily reduce the sea levels. And besides, all of that water falling over the edge of the Earth ensures that the sea levels can’t rise too high. I’m pretty sure that the congressional ignoramuses are furiously working on yet more “evidences”* for their profoundly ignorant viewpoints.

    *Note: A word found in religious apologetics and never in science,

  19. Just a reminder, there are a few knock-off brands of McVities Digestives available in Asian supermarkets and they are excellent and less expensive than the real thing here in the US.

  20. Screw Charles Blow! He suggests that being against “defund the police” means you are a structural racist and still part of the problem. I used to have a good impression of Blow but I can’t remember why. No longer.

    Right now, I think we have a real chance to push back hard on this kind of Leftish thinking. I hope Biden resists the Woke side of his party and, in fact, replaces their agenda with one that gets stuff done. Of course, McConnell and his cronies will be a big obstacle. My fingers are crossed for the Georgia run-off.

  22. Best cookies I’ve had? Depends on the mood, but the top 2 would have to be my wife’s special chocolate chip cookies or my own peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

    The koala in the Christmas tree is awesome.

    1. The best are my chocolate chip cookie bark, Basic tollhouse recipe but using only brown sugar, no egg, no baking soda. McVitie’s’ DARK chocolate Digestives ain’t bad, but fuhgeddabout the milk chocolate ones.
      Yay, just successfully used the edit function to correct the spelling of McVitie’s. However, I am still not getting any email notifications from WEIT. 🙀 woe is me.

      1. Hi merilee!

        Interesting on the cookie bark. Never thought of that.

        I’m really missing the bell icon that has gone missing, apparently from all WordPress blogs. Used to always be at the top right, when clicked showed a long list of all responses to your comments and alerted you when there were new ones. It was how I always kept tabs on my interactions on WEIT.

        1. Thanks, Darrell. Pls do me a favor andwrite a random comment and I’ll see if I get it. I have had no WEIT emails in 2+ weeks.😖

          1. Random comment!

            Sorry about the delay, sort of closed myself off from the outside world trying to get something done.

          2. You tried to get something done???😂
            Muchas gracias. Much appreciated. I somehow got things to work again by changing to my gmail acct.

  23. A good Chianti is a fine thing, but I tend to think that the Riojas Sangioveses are their less popular yet more genuine siblings.

    1. Chianti (especially Classico) is the classic wine made from Sangiovese grapes. I doubt the world would know Sangiovese without Chianti. It (currently) must be at least 80% Sangiovese (and grown within the required geography and other requirements) to bear the DOCG.

      A Sangiovese could hardly be more genuine than Chianti.

      Rioja is Garnacha (Grenache) and Tempranillo, mainly.

  24. Even if one happened to be a raging anti-Semite, there still would be little reason to admire Adolf Hitler. He mismanaged WWII and left Germany in literal ruins.

  25. For the vaccine I came in behind 118M in the US, 5M in Pennsylvania and 507K in my county (pop 1.2M). The metrics the NYT seems to be using are mostly altruistic – how much at risk are you to die if you get COVID. The selfish component is how much would your incapacity adversely impact the rest of us?

    Missing, I think, is a metric along the lines of what the vaccine trials use to select participants (and on which basis I was rejected): how much at risk are you of getting the virus. For the trials, and I was pleased to learn this even tho I wanted to be picked – they are actively trying to get people likely to become infected. It’s no good if 90% efficacy is based on stacking the odds with people like me who live with only one other person and who don’t spend much time around other people. So I’m OK with vaccinating people (like a colleague who did get the Moderna vaccine) who have three kids and live in an apt bldg and are thus more likely to get the virus and then infect me, ahead of me.

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