Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 16, 2020 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a cold Wednesday, December 16, 2020: National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, which could include worms and cardboard. It’s also Boston Tea Party Day, celebrating the British tea that slept with the fishes in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773 [see below]. In South Africa it’s the Day of Reconciliation, chosen to be December 16 because that date was already significant to both African and Afrikaner culture. It’s also ten shopping days until the beginning of Coynezaa.

News of the day:

There are two new cabinet appointees, and good ones, I think. Mayor Pete, whom I like a lot, has been named as Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, while Jennifer Granholm, the previous governor of Michigan and an advocate of renewable energy is expected to be tapped as Energy Secretary.

Mitch “666” McConnell has finally accepted the result of the Presidential election—after five weeks. Are we supposed to given him a medal for accepting an old truth? Besides, he’s still going to obstruct Biden for four years unless the Dems win the Senate:

Many of us are biting our nails about the two Senate elections in Georgia on January 5, for the results will determine if Democrats could take control of the Senate. I’ve been pessimistic about this, but a new poll by Fox News (of all organizations) suggests that Republicans may be less likely to vote than Democrats. Granted, the question below is about the next Presidential election, but may apply to Senate elections, too. Fingers crossed. The data:

If you’re in Massachusetts and want a pet sugar glider, you may be in luck. A man surrendered 44 of the adorable marsupials after his own pets started breeding uncontrollably. They’re cute as hell, but you have to know what you’re doing to own one, and of course they really shouldn’t be pets. (These, though, have to be raised in people’s homes, not let go in Australia.) Over a thousand people have applied to be owners. The story is here at the AP, and below is a video about what you need to know if you want one of these (note: they don’t smell very good):

The New York Times asked Anthony Fauci and other epidemiologists questions like “When can we start making plans?” Answers, of course, are tentative; here are two:

Will we shake hands again?

“I’m not. I don’t know about you. I said that many, many months ago and the newspapers went wild with it. I’m sure people will get back to shaking hands. I think people will probably become more aware of personal hygiene and protecting yourself. That doesn’t mean nobody will shake hands again, nor does it mean everybody will go back to the way we did it again. Probably somewhere in between. Some people will be reluctant to shake hands. Some people will be washing hands a whole lot more than they ever did, even when Covid-19 is no longer around.” — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci

What will the new normal look like?

“The new normal will be continued masking for the next 12 to 18 months and possibly the next few years. This is a paradigm shift.” — Roberta Bruhn, epidemiology core co-director, Vitalant Research Institute

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 303,963, an increase of about 2,900 from yesterday’s figure, with deaths occurred at about 2 per minute. The world death toll is 1,643,975, a huge increase of about 14,000 over yesterday’s report—about 9.7 people dying per minute.

Stuff that happened on December 16 includes:

  • 1653 – English Interregnum: The Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
  • 1773 – American Revolution: Boston Tea Party: Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
  • 1838 – Great Trek: Battle of Blood River: Voortrekkers led by Andries Pretorius and Sarel Cilliers defeat Zulu impis, led by Dambuza (Nzobo) and Ndlela kaSompisi in what is today KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. [see above]
  • 1930 – Bank robber Herman Lamm and members of his crew are killed by a 200-strong posse, following a botched bank robbery, in Clinton, Indiana.

Regarded as “the father of modern bank robbery” for his efficient methods, there are few pictures of Lamm, who committed suicide when the cops caught up with him. Here’s a mugshot from San Francisco, 1914:

The two men, probably using flotation devices, almost surely died when they were swept out to sea by the ebb tide at the time of their escape.

  • 1942 – The Holocaust: Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz.
  • 1944 – World War II: The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.
  • 1968 – Second Vatican Council: Official revocation of the Edict of Expulsion of Jews from Spain.
  • 1985 – Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of New York’s Gambino crime family.

Arrested in 1990, Gotti was charged with five murders, conspiracy to murder, loansharking, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, bribery and tax evasion. In 1992 he was sentenced to life without parole, and died in prison of throat cancer in 2002. Here’s his smirking mugshot at the time of his 1990 arrest:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1485 – Catherine of Aragon, Spanish princess, later queen consort of England (d. 1536)
  • 1770 – Ludwig van Beethoven, composer (d. 1827)
  • 1775 – Jane Austen, English novelist (d. 1817)
  • 1866 – Wassily Kandinsky, Russian-French painter and theorist (d. 1944)

As I’ve said, Kandisnsky was one of my favorite painters, and perhaps the first person to paint a truly abstract (non-representational) painting. Here’s one before he went abstract, “Landscape with Factory Chimney (1910).

  • 1901 – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist and author (d. 1978)
  • 1946 – Trevor Pinnock, English harpsichord player and conductor
  • 1969 – Adam Riess, American astrophysicist, astronomer, and academic Nobel Prize laureate

Those who croaked on December 16 include:

  • 1921 – Camille Saint-Saëns, French pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1835)
  • 1940 – Eugène Dubois, Dutch paleoanthropologist (b. 1858)
  • 1965 – W. Somerset Maugham, British playwright, novelist, and short story writer (b. 1874)
  • 1980 – Colonel Sanders, American businessman, founded KFC (b. 1890)

The Colonel (who had been baptized in the Jordan River, sold his franchise in 1964 and later faulted the quality of the food sold under his name. Wikipedia says this:

Sanders remained critical of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s food. In the late 1970s he told the Louisville Courier-Journal:

“My God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a thousand gallons and then they mix it with flour and starch and end up with pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God, because I’ve seen my mother make it. … There’s no nutrition in it and they ought not to be allowed to sell it. … crispy recipe is nothing in the world but a damn fried doughball stuck on some chicken.”

The Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky, run by the Colonel and his wife after he sold KFC, purports to still serve the original recipe chicken. Try it if you’re in the area!

Here’s his gravesite in Louisville, Kentucky (there should have been a chicken on it):

  • 2007 – Dan Fogelberg, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1951)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a funny:

Hili: I know what journalists are going to ask artificial intelligence.
A: What?
Hili: “What more would you like to tell us?”
In Polish:
Hili: Już wiem o co dziennikarze będą pytali sztuczną inteligencję.
Ja: O co?
Hili: Co jeszcze chciałaby nam powiedzieć.

And right upstairs lives have the estimable Szaron, here resting sweetly on a sheepskin:

From Michael:

From Facebook. That’s right—you!

From Jesus of the Day:

From Titania, who finds wokeness everywhere:

From Barry, a Jesus moose. Not really: that water is shallow, for chrissake!

Tweets from Matthew. What’s up with this croc?

A wonderful human/cat duet:

This is a good one:

I DO!!! I DO!!!:

There are more videos in this thread, but this one’s the best (the possum is a total jerk). Be sure to watch it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it:

33 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Mitch “666” McConnell has finally accepted the result of the Presidential election—after five weeks” – indeed, but Mitch waited until Putin had congratulated Biden before he made his own statement.

  2. National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, which could include worms and cardboard.

    Anything but cotton, just ask Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22:

    1. Back then we wondered, what the hell happened to Milo. Today we wonder, what the hell happened to Jon Voight?

  3. Love that possum. Why is it that so many animals, including humans, cats, dogs, goats, now possums, and surely many others, get a kick out of pushing other animals into bodies of water?

  4. I wouldn’t worry too much about the vote in Georgia. First day voting set new records.

    1. I heard that the line was not as long as with the general election. That’s not a surprise of course. They also said that the mix of Dems and Reps was proportionate to the overall voter population. In other words, neither side dominated the early turnout. It’s probably going to be close.

  5. The possum-skunk video is hilarious.

    Re: Mayor Pete. Transportation Secretary is okay, but I’m kinda hoping he’ll run for Todd Young’s Senate seat in 2022. Though I don’t know Indiana politics, so I don’t know if a Dem (even a publicly popular Dem) has a realistic chance at it or not.

    1. Indiana gave the nation congressman, later governor, later VP, Mike Pence. So there’s one clue. You get into southern Indiana, you’re damn near in the deep South. Indiana was a Union state during the Civil War, but there was a lot of Confederate sympathy flowing through the southern part of the state. And southern Indiana was a stronghold for the Klan, when the KKK had its resurgence in the 1920s. I’m not saying it’s anywhere near that bad today, but once you get out of Indianapolis (or Gary, which is on the Illinois border, hard by Chicago, and almost 90% black) or college towns like Bloomington or South Bend (up north, where Pete was mayor), Indiana gets deep red real fast.

      I’m sure a bright young fella like Mayor Pete understands that running for statewide office among the Hoosiers would likely be the graveyard for his budding career. Transportation Secretary is the place to be, at least for the time being. It’ll give him a chance to make the DC connections (and to get the federal-government experience) he’ll need down the line for a serious run at the White House.

      1. I’m also reminded that in addition to Pence, Indiana gave us another Veep, Dan Quayle. No more, Indiana, please!

      1. I’m sure he’d do a fine job but he’d also be wasted. After all, press secretaries aren’t supposed to express their own opinions but the official WH opinion.

        1. Plus, the Biden comms shop is a done deal — the first all distaff ever.

          Ol’ Handsome Joe promised a White House staff and cabinet that looked like America, and now he’s delivering.

          2. Are there any Biden appointees/nominees thus far that you would classify as incompetent? Any that you would identify are mere sops to the Far Left?

          3. I haven’t studied them closely but they seem to be good choices. My concern is that Biden is playing identity politics with them rather than choosing based on a coherent view of the world and the US’s future trajectory. This is my main concern with Biden overall, though not a strong one. I was hoping for a constructive agenda rather than based on appeasing various groups in his coalition. A strong smart agenda would unite the country more than one that simply plays it safe. He needs a moon shot. Fighting the pandemic would have fit the bill if Biden had been around at the start. Now all we can hope for is that it gets us out of it as soon as possible without getting blamed for messing it up.

            On the other hand, perhaps Biden will deal with the politics while his cabinet work together on a coherent forward-looking agenda. His seeming attempt to check all the identity boxes with his choices makes me worry that they were not chosen with this in mind. Still, it will be way better than Trump’s administration.

  7. Lol, I enjoy reading your column even tho I disagree with almost everything you say. There are too many things to refute but please can you answer one particular question? You make a big stink about the hoards dying from COVID but I would really like an explanation of why it is that the number of people who die in the U.S. every year from all causes runs, according to the CDC at about 2,800, 000 and here we are just a few weeks till the end of the year where you tout these awful, horrendous numbers dying of COVID and this year’s death total is running at 2,600,000. Why are we running 200, 000 short instead of 200, 000 over?

    1. Here’s the short answer. We all die sometime, right? Do you want to die in the next few months? How about someone close to you? COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death for people who aren’t yet considered old.

    4. You laugh, you enjoy but disagree with almost everything. That reaction, if true, is almost as strange as your question. The numbers dead in this country from the virus are now over 300,000 as reported by nearly all official counts. Some believe this is underestimated as many die but are never tested or verified to have the virus. If you doubt this figure simply because it does not fit your statistical look at annual deaths then you should explain or answer your own question. If the statistics show that less people die in plane crashes than in auto crashes then why doesn’t everyone fly? Oh, another useless question.

    5. I see this only now (23/12), but the reason ‘we see no excess deaths’ is simply because it is not true.
      From January 26 to October 03, 2020, the no of excess deaths in the US was nearly 300,000, while the official Covid death rate was just under 200,000 then. I suspect many of the 100,000 discrepancy are unrecognized Covid deaths.
      https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm

  8. Hili: I know what journalists are going to ask artificial intelligence.
    A: What?
    Hili: “What more would you like to tell us?”

    Give that journalist an award! (And Hili, of course.) Until an AI can give a believable answer to that kind of question, it is not a proper AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

  9. I underscore the points that Fauci and Bruhn are making in these quotations. My wife and I have discussed this issue, and we’ve decided that we’re not completely dressed going out of the house from now on unless we carry masks along with our handkerchiefs. Furthermore, I am adopting the practice of saluting people with the Indian namaste/Japanese gassho gesture or Mr. Spock’s “Live long and prosper” hand sign.🖖

  12. “… Chris Pratt must *not* be allowed to play the role in future sequels until he has fellated at least twelve men.”

    I’m thinkin’ maybe there’s the potential for a new Oscar category here somewhere. 🙂

  13. Calendar. The Chinese Chang’e-5 return capsule, which landed on Earth in the early hours of Thursday, bringing the country’s first Chinese lunar samples as well as the world’s freshest lunar samples in more than 40 years.

    I’ve been waiting a week for this return.

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