Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 9, 2020 • 6:30 am

Isn’t there some other way to characterize Wednesday than “Hump Day”? That old bromide is getting tired. The Germans word for Wednesday is “Mittwoch,” or “middle of the week”, so welcome to the middle of the week: Wednesday, December 9, 2020. It’s also National Pastry Day, National Llama Day (celebrated since 1932!), and International Day of Veterinary Medicine, which we’ll celebrate in the next post.  It’s also only 16 days until the start of Coynezaa.

News of the Day:

Here’s an eye-opener from Doc Bill. I haven’t checked the data, and the figures may be off a bit (or so someone said on Facebook), but they’re in the ballpark.

I highly recommend that you read the new interview (a summary of a conversation really, really) of Barack Obama by Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times‘s premier book reviewer. You’ll learn what books and authors Obama likes (he’s very well read, completely unlike Tr*mp), and how he put together his memoir. (I read part of it in the New Woker, and thought that bit, about “Obamacare”, was great.) One quote:

Whereas 20 years ago, Mr. Obama says, he would have needed an army of researchers to help him with a presidential memoir, the internet meant he could simply “tap in ‘Obama’ and then the date or the issue, and pull up every contemporaneous article — or my own speeches, or my own schedule, or my own appearances — in an instant.” The actual writing remained a painful process, requiring him to really “work at it” and “grind it out.”

“This is a really important piece of business that I’ve tried to transmit to my girls and anybody who asks me about writing,” he says. “You just have to get started. You just put something down. Because nothing is more terrifying than the blank page.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has finally issued a ruling on an election issue, and it’s not in Trump’s favor. From CNN:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to block certification of the commonwealth’s election results, delivering a near fatal blow to the GOP’s long-shot bid to invalidate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

The Supreme Court’s action is a crushing loss for Trump, who suggested as late as Tuesday that he thought the justices — including three of his nominees — might step in and take his side as he has continually and falsely suggested there was massive voter fraud during the election.

The one-line order was issued with no noted dissents.

The justices acted quickly, just after the final brief in the court was filed Tuesday afternoon, suggesting that they wanted to send a decisive message to challengers of the election results.

The Washington Post has a very good compendium of questions and answers about the several coronavirus vaccines about to be unleashed. I found the explanation of how messenger-RNA-based vaccines work—the Pfizer and Moderna ones—very easy to follow, and it’s a remarkable techology. Many other questions are answered there, too, like “Will I have a choice of vaccines?” (probably not) or “Will I still need to socially distance?” (yes).

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 286,443, a big increase of about 2,600 from yesterday’s figure—about 1.8 deaths per minute. The world death toll is 1,565,246, another big increase of about 13,000 over yesterday’s report—about 9 people dying per minute.. 

A lot of stuff happened on December 9, these incidents among them:

  • 1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
  • 1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.

Here’s a drawing of the first lights, which were manipulated manually. The first electric lights didn’t appear until 1914: in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

Pinchback, the son of a free mulatto woman and a white planter, served as governor for one year and three days, filling in for a governor suspended from office. It was 108 years until another African-American became a governor—Douglas Wilder of Virginia. Here’s Pinchback:

  • 1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
  • 1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem, Palestine.

Here’s archival footage of Allenby preparing to enter the city on foot, showing his respect, and then a photo of the entry itself:

  • 1946 – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India.
  • 1948 – The Genocide Convention is adopted.
  • 1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
  • 1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world’s longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.

I’ve never seen this show, but Wikipedia says that it’s aired six times a week (some duplicates). It’s been going sixty years now!

Here’s a cool video of The Mother of All Demos. Look at that first computer mouse! But Engelbart says, “I don’t know why they call it a mouse.” Really?

  • 1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (rinderpest in 2011 being the other).

The virus persisted in the lab, and photographer Janet Parker, a Brit, died from an accidental infection in 1978. Here’s the last sufferer from the disease in “nature”: three-year-old Rahima Banu of Bangladesh, who survived. I’ve mentioned before that only one other disease has been totally eradicated on Earth. Can you name it?

  • 1980 – Berk Breathed put this strip on his Facebook page, saying it was the very first Bloom County strip, adding this: “At this point, I had NO idea what Bloom County was going to be about or who should be in it so I shrewdly named it after a place… to be filled with characters when I figured it out. This gag was one I carried over from my college comic strip, Academia Waltz. Penguins, like my actual children, awaited birthing. -bb

  • 1996 – Gwen Jacob is acquitted of committing an indecent act, giving women the right to be topless in Ontario, Canada.

I’m wondering why given this, the women of Ontario aren’t going around topless all the time—at least in summer. Here’s Jacobs in 2015; the photo was censored to prevent legal baring:

  • 2008 – The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Trump pardoned the crooked ex-governor last February, and now Blago is free.

  • 2017 – The Marriage Amendment Bill receives royal assent and comes into effect, making Australia the 26th country to legalize same-sex marriage.
  • 2019 – A volcano on White Island, New Zealand, kills at least 18 people after it erupts.

Those born on this day include:

  • 1608 – John Milton, English poet and philosopher (d. 1674)
  • 1842 – Peter Kropotkin, Russian zoologist, economist, geographer, and philosopher (d. 1921)
  • 1883 – Joseph Pilates, German-American fitness expert, developed Pilates (d. 1967)
  • 1898 – Emmett Kelly, American clown and actor (d. 1979)

A story from Wikipedia:

On July 6, 1944, Kelly was preparing to perform in a matinee show of the Ringling Brothers Circus for an audience of 6,000 in Hartford, Connecticut.Twenty minutes into the show, the circus tent, which had been waterproofed with paraffin wax and gasoline, caught fire. Kelly was among those who acted quickly to help extinguish the fire, and then he helped panicked audience members—mostly women and children, due to World War II—to swiftly exit the tent.  Officially, 168 people died in the fire, and 682 people were injured. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

Kelly’s actions that day were immortalized by audience member Ralph Emerson, who took a photograph of Kelly rushing toward the burning tent in his full clown make-up and costume, carrying a single bucket of water. The photograph was published in Life on July 17, 1944.

Here’s that photo:

  • 1909 – Douglas Fairbanks Jr., American captain, actor, and producer (d. 2000)
  • 1916 – Kirk Douglas, American actor, singer, and producer (d. 2020)
  • 1934 – Judi Dench, English actress
  • 1962 – Felicity Huffman, American actress and producer, former jailbird

Notables who shed their Earthly existence on this day were few, and include:

  • 1971 – Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)
  • 1991 – Berenice Abbott, American photographer (b. 1898)

Here’s a photo Abbott took in 1935 of a New York restaurant. I like it because it shows the dishes and prices (cheap back then!). Sirloin steak with onions: only 25¢!  Haircuts were equally cheap: 30 cents for a clip and shave. Click to enlarge.

  • 1996 – Mary Leakey, English archaeologist and anthropologist (b. 1913)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, an increasingly chubby Hili is thinking about food:

Hili: I’m reminiscing about a distant past.
A: And that means?
Hili: I wonder what I had for breakfast.
In Polish:
Hili: Wspominam odległą przeszłość.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Zastanawiam się co jadłam na śniadanie.

Little Kulka is playing on the rooftop; she looks as if she’s conducting an invisible orchestra (photo by Paulina R.):

From Irene on Facebook: The first time a kitten sees a Christmas tree!

A cartoon (apparently from Robert Leighton) sent in by reader Terence:

Another Christmas cat meme, from Nicole:

From Ken: The President-Eject gives a Medal of Freedom (our highest civilian honor) to an ex-wrestler, and then leaves the poor guy hanging as Trump walks out of the Oval Office. Jebus!

From Barry, who commented, “Okay, help yourself to a spot if you can find one, but there’s no goddamn way I’m going to give up my spot.”

Tweets from Matthew. This lovely and crusty 91-year-old guy (he denigrates his lunch as “rather nasty”) just got one of the first Covid-19 jabs in Britain. Listen to the interview!

“I’m not going to have the bloody bug now.”
“There’s no point in dying now when I’ve lived this long, is there?”

Matthew says, “Well, I thought it was funny.” I thought it was okay.

Now this is funny! Go home, cat—you’re drunk.

See that brown ribbon on the side? That’s tunicate poop!

Finally, a camera-trap selfie of a gorgeous snow leopard (Panthera uncia):

29 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Doc Bill’s Deadliest Days image rather overlooks that something like 10,000 Americans would die routinely on any random day, wouldn’t they?

    2. Maybe a more instructive comparison came out in some parliamentary testimony that I heard while setting the PVR this morning (so I didn’t see who was making the comment, just that it was evidence to some Parliamentary committee) : in August, COVID was the 24th-commonest cause of death in Britain ; in September it was the third commonest.
      I was paying attention to something else, so I may have got the numbers wrong in detail, but the thrust is correct.

      There’s also some debate over the numbers in the “meme”, but taking into account the number of significant digits, you still get the same thrust to the argument.

      This new site code-base seems to have lost the flag that comments have been replied to. Or is there some setting I’m missing?

    3. Well, the average in 2017 according to the CDC was about 7700. But these list deaths generally caused by one “thing” or “event” above and beyond the usual causes of death. An extra 2600 when usually about 8000 die a day is a pretty big increase.

  2. Researchers from one of the labs where I work, uses molecular techniques on snow leopard scat to determine what they eat. The info let’s farmers know that they aren’t preying on their livestock, which may inhibit them from killing the cats to protect their livelihood. Pretty cool stuff.

    1. It’s not impossible that they were different, but it’s a pretty big ask just from first principles. It would require simultaneous not-strongly-selected-for changes in the same direction in a lot of substantially separated populations.
      When you add in that there is no evidence of significant skeletal alterations (apart from overall size increase) between early modern cat skeletons and modern skeletons, it gets much harder for that to be a good explanation.
      The occasional mediæval artist who managed to draw cats in a fashion that we, today, find representative is another severe blow to the idea.

      Nice try, but I’m not convinced of your hypothesis.

  4. 1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

    Harry Gold rolled on David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, who, in turn, finked on his sister and brother-in-law. Gold end up doing 15 years; Greenglass, nine and a half. The Rosenbergs were executed by electrocution at Sing Sing (leaving behind two orphans) in June 1953 — the “queer, sultry summer,” according to the famous first line of The Bell Jar, when Sylvia Plath’s narrator “didn’t know what [she] was doing in New York.”

    1. I dunno, James. I just watched the full 20 minute C-SPAN video linked to in that Politifact piece. With two-and-a-half minutes left in the proceeding, Trump answers one question about Rudy Giuliani, saying that what Rudy is up to now (viz., assisting Trump in his attempted autogolpe) is more important than what he did during his entire time as mayor of New York (which, of course, included the 9/11 attack), then uses a second question to segue into his standard rant about rigged voting machines and a stolen election. Trump then takes a powder while reporters are trying to ask him about Biden’s inauguration and whether he plans to can AG Bill Barr.

      I don’t think it’s standard presidential protocol to leave a Medal of Freedom winner standing like a bump on a log in front of the Resolute Desk.

      1. the Resolute Desk.

        Huh?
        So, the woodwork is some bit of … naval history? Or is it a name recognising the failed dictum that “the buck stops here”? (Darth Trump having discovered how to get the accountability to flow away to other people.)

          1. The Resolute had quite a career.

            “H.M.S. RESOLUTE forming part of the expedition sent in search of SIR JOHN FRANKLIN IN 1852, was abandoned in latitude 74° 41′ N longitude 101° 22′ W on May 15, 1854. She was discovered and extricated in September 1855 in latitude 67 degrees N by Captain Buddington of the United States Whaler “GEORGE HENRY.” The ship was purchased, fitted out and sent to England as a gift to HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA by the PRESIDENT AND PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES as a token of goodwill & friendship. This table was made from her timbers when she was broken up, and is presented by the QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN & IRELAND to the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES as a memorial of the courtesy and loving kindness which dictated the offer of the gift of the RESOLUTE.”

  6. With regard to the photo of Emmett Kelly rushing toward the burning tent with a bucket of water, how can we be certain that it wasn’t actually a bucket of confetti??? Something to think about . . . .

  7. I think that one thing the Obamas miss about Chicago is the Seminary Coop Bookstore. It is no longer in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary but it is a great bookstore. Michelle did a signing for them. Barack signed copies of the deluxe edition of his book ($350 – all sold out) for the Coop to raise some money. I joined back in 1974. I think it cost $10.
    https://www.semcoop.com/

    1. A bookstore cooperative? That’s a bit left-wing, isn’t it. When did the gun-nuts last burn it to the ground? Or … they haven’t realised what that concept means, and how utterly communist it is?

  8. Regarding the deadliest days in US history: I find info saying 195,000 Americans died of flu in October 1918. That works out to an average of over 3,000 per day. While daily totals are probably not available (disclaimer: I did not search), it seems the quoted statistic may be wrong?

    1. My math comes out to about 6000 a day in October based on 195000. But when you consider that, in October 1918 prior to ventilators and corticosteroids and antibiotics for superinfections, to say nothing of molecular biology and all the other diagnostic techniques and the general (at least somewhat) lower standard of sanitation and the like, if only twice as many people died a day of flu in 1918 than are dying today of Covid…imagine how this virus would have devastated things back then.

        1. Yeah…unless they narrow it down to last 50 years, perhaps. Even then, I’m not sure. But it DOES do some good to point out the comparison to events like 911, because the deaths are so diffuse with COVID that people don’t really FEEL it in their bones, so to speak.

    2. Is this a reply to Coel@1?
      What was the US population in 1918, compared to the 330-odd million today? You’ll need to scale your figures by population base to compare numbers from the different times as death rates.

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