Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 12, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s the cruelest day of the week: Tuesday, January 12, 2021: National Glazed Donut Day, celebrating my least favorite donut, especially the odious Krispy Kreme version, an insubstantial donut of sugar-covered air. It’s also Curried Chicken Day, National Marzipan Day, National Hot Tea Day, National Pharmacist Day, and International Kiss a Ginger Day.

News of the Day:

Oy gewalt! According to Politico (and the FBI), ubiquitous ARMED protests by right-wing thugs and chowderheads are still in the planning, and they’re going to start soon: several days before Biden’s Inauguration.  (h/t Enrico; see also the NYT article here):

The FBI is warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington in the days leading up to President-election Joe Biden’s inauguration, stoking fears of more bloodshed after last week’s deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.

An internal FBI bulletin warned that, as of Sunday, the nationwide protests may start later this week and extend through Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to two law enforcement officials who read details of the memo to The Associated Press. Investigators believe some of the people are members of some extremist groups, the officials said. The bulletin was first reported by ABC.

Expect a ton of police and security and an inauguration behind bulletproof glass. Let us cross our fingers and hope for peace.

The impeachment is proceeding in the House may proceed quickly, even getting the articles of impeachment sent to the Senate posthaste. (Biden seems to have dropped his opposition to an immediate Senate trial.) However, given that 17 Republicans have to vote for conviction, and that only one has intimated that, while just two Republican Senators, Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Pat Toomey (PA), have called for Trump to resign and presumably would vote to oust him.  Two other GOP Senators, including Mitt Romney (UT) and Ben Sasse (NE) look likely to vote for impeachment as well. But that’s still not nearly enough.

Speaking of protestors, now Fur Hat Viking Loon has two real names (see tweet below). Poor guy—no organic food! Matthew says, “Let him starve!” (h/t cesar)

According to the BBC (and other sources) Bill Belichick, the skilled head coach of the New England Patriots football team, has turned down Trump’s award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest honor that can be conferred on an American civilian:

Belichick, of the New England Patriots, said he was flattered when he was first offered the medal – the top award given to civilians in the US.

But he said he changed his mind after a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress last week. Five people died.

The celebrated coach had previously spoken of his friendship with Mr Trump.

“Recently, I was offered the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which I was flattered by out of respect for what the honour represents and admiration for prior recipients,” Belichick said in a statement.

“Subsequently, the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award.”

Belichick, who has won a record six Super Bowl titles, is considered one of the most successful coaches in NFL history.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 376,476, an increase of about 2,000 deaths from yesterday’s figure. In two weeks we’ll pass 400,000 deaths: double what the most pessimistic pundits thought we’d ultimately have. The world death toll is 1,955,155, a big increase of about 10,600 deaths over yesterday’s total, and about 7.3 deaths per minute: one every 8 seconds.

Stuff that happened on January 12 includes:

  • 1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to require states to give women the right to vote.
  • 1932 – Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.

Caraway served for 13 years, and her photo is below:

His body is still frozen until the day when he can supposedly be revived and cured of his metastasizing kidney cancer. The Facebook page that details his preservation says this:

Compared to those employed by modern cryonics organizations, the use of cryoprotectants in Bedford’s case was primitive. He was injected with dimethyl sulfoxide, a compound once thought to be useful for long-term cryogenics, so it is unlikely that his brain was protected.Vitrification was not yet possible, further limiting the possibility of Bedford’s eventual recovery.
Here are some photos from that site:
Bedford (right) being frozen.

There was a hung jury and that ended matters for good.

  • 1991 – Persian Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of American military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
  • 2004 – The world’s largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage.

In 2006 I did my first of two lecture series on the QM2’s transatlantic crossing. Here I am doing my daily jog around the deck (I don’t have good photos of the ship itself):

Here’s a short video of the Stoning of the Devil (and a flock of sheep awaiting the end-of-Hajj slaughter). For a longer Hajj video filmed in secret, but fascinating, see here.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1729 – Edmund Burke, Irish philosopher, academic, and politician (d. 1797)
  • 1856 – John Singer Sargent, American painter and academic (d. 1925)

Here are “Two Cats” by Sargent:

  • 1884 – Texas Guinan, American entertainer and bootlegger (d. 1933)
  • 1893 – Hermann Göring, German commander, pilot, and politician, Minister President of Prussia (d. 1946)
  • 1930 – Tim Horton, Canadian ice hockey player and businessman, founded Tim Hortons (d. 1974)

Horton, cofounder of the famous chain of donut stores, died in an automobile  Here’s a Wikipedia photo from him captioned: “Tim Horton, playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, sitting in the penalty box at Madison Square Garden, New York City during a game against the New York Rangers.” He died at only 44 after osing control of his fancy De Tomaso Pantera sports car in St Catharines, Ontario.  He was returning from a hockey game, probably intoxicated, and still playing at over 40. 

  • 1942 – Bernardine Dohrn, American domestic terrorist, political activist and academic

Dohrn and her husband Bill Ayers, also an ex-radical, live in Chicago.

  • 1958 – Christiane Amanpour, English-born Iranian-American journalist
  • 1964 – Jeff Bezos, American computer scientist and businessman, founded Amazon.co

Bezos is the second richest person in the world, after (of course) Elon Musk. He’s worth over $200 billion. 

Those who Bit the Big One on January 12 include:

Here’s Walker, who invented barrel aging of whisky:

  • 1976 – Agatha Christie, English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright (b. 1890)
  • 2003 – Maurice Gibb, Manx-Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1949)
  • 2020 – Sir Roger Scruton, English philosopher and writer (b. 1944)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sounds like Sherlock Holmes in “His Last Bow”:

Hili: The night is coming.
A: From where?
Hili: From east Dobrzyń.
In Polish:
Hili: Idzie noc.
Ja: Dokąd?
Hili: Do Dobrzynia.

And a photo of lovely Kulka, with the Polish caption below the photo. Malgorzata explains that caption:

“Licho” is a kind of evil spirit in Polish folklore. But it’s a tiny one. It’s often used in various sayings and proverbs. Sometimes about mischievous children or animals. “A licho nie śpi” means literally “The little evil spirit is not asleep”. But it’s also used often as a warning to be careful because an evil spirit can cause harm (a small one).

In Polish: A licho nie śpi

From Chris Janis, a new Lego set!  You can put one of the guys at Pelosi’s desk:

From Jesus of the Day: How do cats make do in Japan?

A lovely photo from Emporium of Unique and Wondrous Things (no attribution of photo):

Titania got investigated by German Twitter:

Tweets from Matthew. First, the beauty of nature. The female seems to like being preened.

There’s a mole at Microsoft!

And this is adorable. Look at that clumsy baby!

Do these people know no limits????

Sean, who didn’t get his cats that long ago, has discovered the delights of the cat belly rub. I presume his cats don’t shred him when he does it.

I like whoever had this idea:

I had no idea until I posted this that Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) was now in jail for life. Looking it up, he was sentenced to 1,075 years, not just for sex crimes but for “sexual assault, sexual abuse of minors, fraud and attempted political and military espionage.”

 

22 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

    1. When i taught high school physics in the early 1970’s, I, as pretty much all teachersin those days, was required to create a hallway bulletin board. I decided to make it educational with a focus on scientific notation, which was taught and used in most high school science courses. I gave illustrative examples of various characteristic sizes from protons to atoms, molecules, man (that was before we would have been obliged to use person or human), and so forth through planet, solar system and galaxy. For molecule i simply wrote out the chemical formula for lysergic acid diethylamide and waited to see if anyone, chemistry student or teacher, would notice….apparently nobody did as it stayed up for its full month or more.

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    2. There have been an alarming number of similar crimes in the US, and I’m not clear why Montgomery received the death penalty when other perpetrators didn’t …

      Imposition of the death penalty in the US is arbitrary and capricious. During this nation’s failed 230-year experiment with capital punishment, no one — not its most ardent proponents — has yet come up with a reliable method for consistently distinguishing cases believed to warrant the penalty from those that do not.

      That’s one reason this barbarism should be ended.

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      1. Barbarism, for sure. But it’s clear why it persists. Folk wisdom says some crimes deserve death, because freewill. They could have done otherwise. Makes you feel better. Revenge seems inherent in human nature.

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  4. “Tweets from Matthew. First, the beauty of nature. The female seems to like being preened.”

    You know what this brings to my mind? “Muskrat Susy, Muskrat Sam….”

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  5. Regarding the elephants – when we were on an elephant ride in Thailand and stopped for lunch near a stream, all the YOUNG people and all the YOUNG elephants hopped in the water to play and all the OLD people and all the OLD elephants stood around and watched!

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    1. Except this time, it’s the Pentagon that needs protecting from a mad, anti-democratic president, rather than the other way round.

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  7. Matthew – shame on you for wanting fur-hat-man to starve! 😁
    If he likes organic food maybe he should have considered that first before being naughty!

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  8. It kills me to say it, but thumbs up Belichick. Trump’s decision to award it to him is ridiculous, but B. isn’t at fault for that and he certainly wasn’t ethically obligated to turn it down

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  9. Interesting enough…Agatha Christi was married to Max Mallowan who was a primary archaeologist working at the ruins of UR (and other sites) in Iraq.

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    1. Agatha Christie said it was great being married to an archaeologist, as the older she got the more interesting she became to him.

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  10. I really get annoyed at seeing Jacob Chansley/Jake Angeli referred to as the “Viking guy” and his headgear as a “Viking helmet” or a “Viking hat”. Despite popular misconceptions, Hägar the Horrible and the logo of that sports team in Minnesota, Viking helmets did not have horns (ceremonial headgear worn by Norse goði, or priests, sometimes featured antlers or similar appendages), and, in fact, no sane fighting man would wear such a thing.

    The purpose of a helmet is to deflect or absorb a blow to the head. The conical helmets worn by Norse warriors during the Viking era were an example of the former. An overhead blow to the head gets deflected aside by the curve of the metal. Adding a horn – or any other appendage – gives a descending sword a place to catch on the helmet. The result is that the head is pulled violently to the side, with a strong chance of breaking the wearer’s neck. Part of the whole idea of body armor is to deflect or absorb, not engage, blows from oncoming weapons. Only an idiot would wear such a helmet into battle. The only proper appellation for horned headgear is not Viking; I’d suggest some alternative adjectival words, but that would require offensive language (the first word that comes to mind begins with ‘a’ and ends with ‘e’).

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  11. I much admire Sargent. He is a great realist and had enormous facility with the brush. Check out the Wiki-link for examples. One thing he was noted for is his ability to paint hands. Another aspect to note is his subtle use of complimentary colors in compositions – a strong color in one area and it’s compliment hidden in a muted form elsewhere. For portrait commissions he was known to flatter his subjects quite subtly so that they were an improved version of themselves.

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  13. I found the secret haji video very interesting. Such a weird event with such silly rules. I will always now approach cutting of nails with a new reverence lol.

    By now they must have run out of stones or does some poor person have the tedious responsibility of picking them all up and returning them for next years holy debacle.

    All in all it is a very clear example of how daft most people can be in their beliefs.

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  14. Vice News did a profile of Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) a few years ago. He is a very, very eccentric character. His anti-evolution/creationism book is amazing. Bonkers.

    Inside the Weird World of Adnan Oktar’s Islamic ‘Feminist’ Cult
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bH21w2R0hc

    I think his bananas sentence lately is more to do with his political stance than his sexual crimes. Though… *ALL* cult leaders are narcissists and sex is often their main motivation so I’m not acquitting him of the sex allegations. Just look at the “kittens”! 🙂

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

    Reply

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