Monday: Hili dialogue

December 7, 2020 • 6:30 am

It’s a Monday in December—December 7, 2020—and could things be bleaker? It’s National “Have a Bagel” Day, and I’m baffled by those scare quotes. Are we supposed to just pretend we had a bagel? It’s also National Cotton Candy Day (the confection called “candy floss” in the UK), Letter Writing Day (when is the last time you wrote a real letter, one with a signature and a stamped envelope?), and, of course, National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, memorializing the day in 1941 when the Japanese attacked the U.S. If you’re a Scientologist (and you shouldn’t be one), it’s also Flag Land Base Day.

Wine of the Day. My tipple last night: a lovely Oregon Pinot Noir—juicy, a tad off-dry, and redolent of raspberries and cherries. A bargain, too.

Dream of the Day: Last night I dreamed that I was in a small airport (it looked like LaGuardia) and I had to catch a plane overseas (I don’t remember the destination). I do remember that the plane was at Gate A4, and I was late, with the plane due to take off any minute. I ran all around the airport but couldn’t find Gate A4; all the gates were labeled “B”s. Then I woke up.

News of the Day:

With the century only 20% finished, the New Woke Times, apparently desperate for articles, enlists film critics Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott to list “The 25 greatest actors of the 21st century (so far)” In a separate pie, they offer an inside look at the list, explaining why people like Meryl Streep weren’t chosen. But Melissa McCarthy was? Give me a break! Their list of 25 best films, from 2017, is substantially better, but give me another break; it also includes “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which I found unwatchable. Their encomia include:

We took to Facebook to find the best action movie of the 21st century and what resulted was, in part, a philosophical debate. What, exactly, counts as an action movie in this era of hyperactive digital special effects? Are superhero franchises automatically action movies? What about kid-oriented fantasy adventures? The Jason Bourne movies? The rebooted “Star Trek” or “Planet of the Apes” series?

Tough questions! And while film scholars may differ, our standards are fairly inclusive. There needs to be a lot of chasing, and a lot of stuff has to blow up. That can happen in outer space, in Gotham, at Hogwarts, on the freeways of Los Angeles or in whatever global capital poor Jason Bourne happens to be running through when his enemies catch sight of him.

They discredit themselves immediately: “We took to Facebook  to find the best action movie of the 21st century. . . ” OY!  A lot of chasing and stuff blowing up. That makes a great movie???

Over at the NYT, Dolly Parton talks books. Sadly, although her music is great, her tastes in reading aren’t that edifying:

What books are on your night stand?

The Bible, of course; a daily devotional book; and a charming book called “The Midnight Library,” by Matt Haig.

What’s the last great book you read?

You know I am shameless and am always selling something so of course the answer is my new book, “Dolly Parton, Songteller,” in stores everywhere! LOL!

LOL indeed. . . .

Meanwhile, after the Devil went down to Georgia and kvetched about how his election as President was real but stolen, state Republican officials became upset because they think Trump’s beef will hurt the chances of the two Republican candidates up for Senate seats in January. After all, if the state elections are rigged against the GOP, why would Republicans bother to vote?

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 282,313, an increase of about 1,100 from yesterday’s figure. The world death toll is 1,542,908, an increase of about 7,000 over yesterday’s report.

Stuff that happened on December 7 include:

  • 1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.
  • 1732 – The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London, England.
  • 1787 – Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
  • 1842 – First concert of the New York Philharmonic, founded by Ureli Corelli Hill.
  • 1930 – W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts telecasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The telecast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.
  • 1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.

Here’s Einstein and his wife Elsa on their first trip to the US—in 1920:

Here’s a scene from the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor depicting the attack; I saw the movie and it was pretty crappy, but this gives you an idea what the raid was like.  The damage was severe (from Wikipedia):

 Of the eight U.S. Navy battleships present, all were damaged, with four sunk. All but USS Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. A total of 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, dry dock, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 64 servicemen killed. Kazuo Sakamaki, the commanding officer of one of the submarines, was captured

Here’s Roosevelt’s declaration of war the next day:

  • 1963 – Instant replay makes its debut during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
  • 1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

Here’s that photo (the original was upside down, but of course we all know the way the Earth is aligned!):

  • 1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

Notables born on this day include:

Bernini’s masterpiece: The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa:

Schwann, along with Matthias Schleiden, were responsible for promulgating the “cell theory” of plants and animals: that all structures were made of cells: the units of organismal structure.

  • 1873 – Willa Cather, American novelist, short story writer, and poet (d. 1947)
  • 1928 – Noam Chomsky, American linguist and philosopher

Chomsky is 92 today. The last time I saw him, about two years ago in Puebla, Mexico, he looked a bit frail and was walking with assistance, but his mind (evidenced by his talk) was as sharp as ever.

  • 1942 – Harry Chapin, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1981)
  • 1951 – Robert Mears, American retired financial expert, amateur fixer of broken stuff, and my brother in law
  • 1956 – Larry Bird, American basketball player and coach

Those who “fell asleep” on December 7 include:

  • 1817 – William Bligh, English admiral and politician, 4th Governor of New South Wales (b. 1745)

Yes, that Bligh.

  • 1902 – Thomas Nast, German-American cartoonist (b. 1840)
  • 1962 – Kirsten Flagstad, Norwegian opera singer (b. 1895)
  • 1970 – Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist, sculptor, and author (b. 1883).

Here’s Goldberg at the drawing board, showing his machines and then touting gasoline and its use in automobiles. Gasoline, of course, is not “nothing” but a fossil fuel that can be depleted.

  • 1985 – Robert Graves, English poet, novelist, critic (b. 1895)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili objects to being weighed. Malgorzata reports that the Princess has gotten quite chubby this fall. The weighing was unsuccessful as Hili struggled and managed to escape.

We have to weigh you.
Hili: This is misogyny.
In Polish:
Ja: Trzeba cię zważyć.
Hili: To jest mizoginia.

Here’s little Kulka standing bipedally on the roof of the veranda (photo by Paulina):

From reader Pliny the in Between’s Far Corner Cafe,“I got nuttin, Pat”:

From Divy:

From Facebook; wouldn’t a cat have sufficed?

From reader Barry, a lovely marine flatworm:

From Luana, who sent this in response to yesterday’s post on all the black people killed by black shooters. Leonydus Johnson has put up a gallery (read the thread) of black kids shot by accident. Here are two:

 

I got this tweet from so many readers that, although I’ve posted it before, I’ll put it up again. As Matthew said, “Can’t see this too often.” Who said ducks were dumb?

I challenge all the male readers not to hold their scrotum when they watch this:

Tweets from Matthew. Olbermann really can’t stand Trump! What newsman calls him “The Devil”?

This is a good one:

Hard to believe an amateur took this video. What kind of telescope does he have?

In Austria, Krampus scans your groceries on Krampusnacht (yesterday):

 

38 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

    2. Let It Snow was a category on Celebrity Jeopardy on Saturday Night Live. Sean Connery (played by Darrell Hammond) selected the category as “Le Tits Now.”

    1. They remind me of the futuristic reality show in the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy. The popular show was named “Ow, My Balls!”

  3. “What kind of telescope does he have?”
    ??? It says right in the side comment! An 11 inch diameter Schmidt Cassegrain (a specific type of folded optical system) with a Hydrogen Alpha filter*. Without a narrow wavelength filter, anything viewing through the eyepiece would be essentially instantly destroyed (including camera sensors, let alone biological eyes). NEVER look directly at the sun using an unfiltered telescope, unless you do not value your former vision.

    *Note: The filter goes over the front aperture of the telescope rather than the eyepiece. Otherwise the concentrated solar energy would even destroy some of internal optical components of the telescope. Look at the sun momentarily with your unaided eye. An 11 inch diameter telescope would make that view about 1,600 times brighter and your visual system would be instantly “pining for the fjords”.

    1. Although according to bad astronomy you can look at the sun with your eyes EXCEPT during a solar eclipse All that light flooding your brain… hmmm

        1. Excellent for vaporizing ants, I’m sure. Not that I would ever do that, of course.

          I just bought a new telescope. A 6″ reflector, not a huge 11″ one. I don’t plan to point at the sun either.

          2. Yes, it’s a big problem. I’m in Southern California so I expect to drive a couple of hours into the desert to see much. It remains to be seen how often I get up the gumption to do it. New scope should arrive in a week or two.

    2. He states in the YouTube caption that he didn’t use his 11 inch telescope for the solar image. He used a 15 cm achromatic refractor with a Daystar Hydrogen-Alpha filter. This filter is transparent to the deep-red layer one sees in prominences during a total solar eclipse. According to my estimates, the price (brand new) of the equipment he lists in the description of the video is approximately USD 4000.

      Amazingly, the Daystar filter is mounted between the telescope and the camera, not on the sky-end of the telescope as filters for visual use would be mounted. The user must tune it to the H-alpha wavelength, as the wavelength will drift as the temperature changes. On the front aperture, a red or yellow “energy rejection filter” is placed (not to be used visually!). Even so, the Daystar becomes very hot.

      The 15 cm achromatic refractor he used is not a high-end telescope. It brings only two colors to perfect focus, not three colors as would an apochromatic lens costing five or six times as much. It doesn’t need to be apochromatic because one doesn’t use the entire visual spectrum, but only a single color of light, – the red light emitted by ionised hydrogen.

  4. I’m not old enough to remember the Great Storm of 1703, but I do remember the Great Storm of 1987, which was almost as violent, but thankfully had a much smaller loss of life. The worst of the storm passed over southern England, where there was widespread damage and disruption to road and rail networks and the power grid. Millions of trees were blown down, including the trees that gave the Kent town of Sevenoaks its name. I was living in Liverpool, 200 miles further north, and even there, the winds were strong enough to be very frightening during much of the night.

    Most British people who were around in 1987 will remember the unfortunate BBC weather man Michael Fish saying confidently in the early evening forecast that reports of an imminent hurricane were mistaken. He never really lived that down, even though it wasn’t his fault that the Met Office forecast seriously underestimated the severity of the oncoming storm.

      2. I think it’s a retrospective estimate, based on the damage reported at the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1703#Severity

        “[Daniel Defoe] records 400 windmills being overturned or destroyed: in some the sails turned so fast that the friction caused the wooden wheels to overheat and catch fire, burning them down.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2010/nov/22/weatherwatch-great-storm-1703-daniel-defoe

        It turns out an old lecturer of mine wrote a paper about the storm: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1256/wea.83.03

        1. There’s a pair of windmills on the Sussex Downs called Jack and Jill: https://jillwindmill.org.uk (we did a great walk round there last weekend). Apparently Jill had her sails up during the Great Storm of 1987, and very nearly suffered the same fate. Fortunately a member of the preservation society realised what was happening and came up to disconnect the sails before Jill’s wooden bearings got too hot.

    3. Actually, Michael Fish was falsely maligned. It wasn’t a hurricane.

      Edit:

      Ninja’d by Jezgrove.

      Anyway, here’s the actual forecast

      Also, my parents lived in a village in Suffolk that was quite badly hit. As they walked to the shops in the morning, they passed the local milk float and saw that it was carrying a massive log. It turned out that a tree had fallen across it so they simply cut it off on both sides with a chainsaw.

  5. I agree with the good Professor on the unwatchable mess that is Fury Road. I love all the Mad Max films save that one. While there are moments of breathtaking cinematography, in toto, Fury Road a loud, confused mess that starts and ends nowhere.

      1. I did contribute actually. Regardless of the polls, I think they have a really good chance of winning. Georgians must see Trump and his adherents as people who want to screw around with their vote. Even some who voted for Trump don’t like that. Also, as recent winners the Dems should have it together more than the losing GOP in terms of getting voters to the polls. Finally, the two GOP candidates are terrible. My fingers remain crossed.

        1. I agree. The GOP seems to be shooting at itself down there and the Dems might just pull it off. I’ve made a few contributions and likely will do so again.

    2. Likely I’m just repeating what others may have said; I’ve largely ignored that election.

      But I suspect the Mass Murderer actually wants his party to lose both. On the one hand, to people with half a brain, he could then try to claim it was the party which caused his own loss, since look at the run-off result. On the other hand, to those without, he can say: look at how this Dem cheating is really happening. It’s just happened again.

      Losing them makes no difference at all directly to him. But being seen personally as a loser does.

  9. That dream is easy to interpret. You desperately want to travel. Desperately. All you need to do is get to gate A and you’re on your way, but the virus has you trapped like a rat. Every gate you find is the wrong one. Hopefully, in 2021 your nightmare will end.

  10. Sadly, the US deaths at Peal Harbor were a bit less than the current daily deaths from COVID-19. We are having a Pearl Harbor every day, so to speak.

    1. Not necessarily. There was an Aikido group in Chicago that would do self-defense demonstrations, and they did teach (and did demonstrate) that men can learn to take a solid kick to the groin.

  15. 1956 – Larry Bird – Happy birthday Larry. I used to watch him in Boston in the 80s. What a hard working and talented fellow he was. Most of his contemporary ‘greats’ were African American.

Comments are closed.