Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Kulka dialogue)

September 1, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s a new month, and summer is unofficially over: welcome to September 1, 2021: National Gyro Day, celebrating yet another cultural appropriation.

It’s also these food months:

National Chicken Month
National Honey Month
National Mushroom Month
National Papaya Month
National Potato Month
National Rice Month

Is there any single recipe that uses every one of those foodstuffs?

Further, it’s National Tofu Day (but only in the UK), Emma Nutt Day (celebrating the world’s first woman telephone operator, who started her job on this day in 1878), Ginger Cat Appreciation Day (if you’re the first reader to send a photo of your ginger cat, I’ll put it in this post), National Cherry Popover Day, World Letter Writing Day (I can’t remember the last time I wrote a personal letter, but it’s a shame the habit has vanished), and, in Australia, Wattle Day.

And here’s the winning First Ginger Cat from reader John C. McLoughlin:

Nigel, the oldest of our three gingers at 12 but a relentless sport-hunter nonetheless. He has been imprisoned as an indoor cat for the latter half of his life, but never ceases his attempts to escape and deal properly with the grosbeaks.

Remember the wattle featured in Monty Python’s “Bruces sketch,” featuring the Philosophy Department of Woolamaloo University in Australia? There was this poem:

⁣”This here’s the wattle, the emblem of our Land. You can stick it in a bottle, you can hold it in your hand.”

Today’s Google Doodle returns as a get-vaccinated gif with a link (click screenshot) on where to get your Covid jab. Note the “l” letter getting a shot:

News of the Day:

The fat lady has sung, the war is over, and here’s the last soldier to leave Afghanistan.

Biden has vigorously defended his policy, asserting that “I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.” And that’s understandable, at least to the American people, who agree that Biden did the right thing, but may have botched the execution. As the WSJ reports:

A poll conducted by Pew Research Center between Aug. 23-29 found that 42% of those surveyed said the Biden administration had done a poor job in handling the situation in Afghanistan. About 26% said it had done an excellent or good job, and 29% said it had done a fair job. The same poll found that 54% said the decision to withdraw was the right one, while 42% said it was wrong.

On the other hand, op-ed columnist Max Boot of the Washington Post, a centrist military historian, calls out Biden for botching the withdrawal big time in a piece called, “Biden has been a good President. But the exit from Afghanistan has been an epic own-goal.”

What makes this disaster so infuriating is that it was entirely predictable. The U.S. military urged Biden to keep a small troop presence in Afghanistan and the intelligence community warned that a total pullout would lead to a Taliban takeover. President Barack Obama acceded to those concerns, and refused to withdraw U.S. troops before he left office. But Biden didn’t listen. He wanted to get out of Afghanistan in the worst way, and he did.

The more I think about this, the more the upcoming misery, death, and oppression, which falls largely on women, preys on my mind. Could we have prevented this by permanently keeping a cadre of volunteer troops in the country? Well, we’ll never know. And, of course, the government we installed was deeply corrupt and incompetent.

Reader Greg informs me that the much-admired Robert Sapolsky has a 90-minute interview on the Huberman Lab podcast, and, among many other topics discusses free will. Go here and scroll to minute 73 to hear his take. He’s a determinist, but tries to put a happy face on the fact that we’re robots made of meat. He’s also written a new book, Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will, also mentioned in the free-will section but not yet listed on Amazon.

Over at his website Shtetl Optimized, Scott Aaronson reviews the new Netflix series “The Chair”, a show that will interest many of us, as it’s about a new chairperson, played by Sandra Oh, negotiating the difficulties of running a university English department. Apparently a lot of the program deals with wokeness. (I haven’t seen it.) Scott and his wife love the show, but he also has a bevy of kvetches.  (h/t Paul):

Last week Dana and I watched the full first season of The Chair, the Netflix drama that stars Sandra Oh as Ji-Yoon Kim, incoming chairwoman of the English department at the fictional Pembroke University. As the rave reviews promised, I found the show to be brilliantly written and acted. At times, The Chair made me think about that other academia-centered sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, which I freely confess I also enjoyed. But The Chair is much more highbrow (and more political), it’s about the humanities rather than STEM, and it’s mostly about academics who are older than the ones in Big Bang, both biologically and professionally.

Kvetches ensue.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 640,078, an increase of 1,346 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 4,535,094,, an increase of about 9,900 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on September 1 includes:

A painting of Pilgrims aboard the Speedwell by Robert Weir adorns the rear of America’s $10,000 bill (only five examples of this note are known, all in collections):

  • 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
  • 1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force, although it remains legal in the possessions of the East India Company until the passage of the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.
  • 1893 – Henry Perky patents shredded wheat.

Curiously John Kellogg patented shredded wheat as well, after Perky’s patent expired in 1912. Here you go:

  • 1914 – The German Empire declares war on the Russian Empire at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilizes because of World War I.
  • 1936 – The Olympics opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.

The Olympic Village then consisted of a series of nice small houses, and here’s the room occupied by Jesse Owens at the ’36 Olympics, a black American who won four gold medals in track and field.

  • 1944 – World War II: The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
  • 1965 – Frank Herbert‘s novel, Dune was published for the first time. It was named as the world’s best-selling science fiction novel in 2003.

A first edition and first printing of this book will cost you about $11,000:

  • 1966 – Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.

Whitman’s spree ultimately involved killing his mother, wife, three people inside UT’s University tower, and 11 more from the top, a total of 16 deaths. He was later found to have a malignant brain tumor the size of a pecan, which could have caused the killing. What should be done with such a person? Operate and then incarcerate? Here’s the University Tower, where you’re no longer allowed to go to the observation deck.

  • 1971 – The Concert for Bangladesh, organized by former Beatle George Harrison, is held at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

This was actually a pair of concerts on the same day; here’s a 5-minute summary video:

  • 1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world’s first democratically elected female head of state.
  • 1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, England.

You can now see Lindow Man, who lived roughly between 2 BC and 119 AD, at the British Museum. He was in his mid 20s and may have been ritualistically murdered:

  • 2007 – The I-35W Mississippi River bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

Here’s some surveillance video of the collapse:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 10 BC – Claudius, Roman emperor (d. 54)
  • 1744 – Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French soldier, biologist, and academic (d. 1829)

Lamarck (below) was infamous for his theory of environmentally-induced but heritable changes; nevertheless, he was one of the first to actually theorize that evolution had occurred:

  • 1843 – Robert Todd Lincoln, American lawyer and politician, 35th United States Secretary of War (d. 1926)

Robert Todd was the oldest son of Abe Lincoln, but he didn’t look like him, at least in this picture:

  • 1907 – Eric Shipton, Sri Lankan-English mountaineer and explorer (d. 1977)
  • 1931 – Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
  • 1936 – W. D. Hamilton, Egyptian born British biologist, psychologist, and academic (d. 2000)

Hamilton would have been 85 today had he not died from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, perhaps caused by a pill lodged in his gut. He was a genius, and though I never met him I have many friends who did, all of whom praised his generosity and brilliance. One of those friends is Dr. Anne Magurran of St. Andrews University, who sent the photo below that she took of Hamilton in Brazil. She also wrote this:

Here is a pic of Bill  I have on my laptop. It was taken in the floating lab in Mamiraua on my first visit (c.1992). Bill is working on his plant collection (he was interested in the extent of asexual reproduction in plants in flooded forest v. the terra firme forest). The pic was taken in poor lighting (in the evening) and is a photo of a photo so the quality is not great, but I think it captures the essence of the man as a field biologist. I did include it in a little description of my time working there for a piece on our lab website, but it hasn’t been included anywhere else.

  • 1936 – Yves Saint Laurent, Algerian-French fashion designer, co-founded Yves Saint Laurent (d. 2008)
  • 1942 – Jerry Garcia, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1995)

Those who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on September 1 include:

  • 1903 – Calamity Jane, American frontierswoman and scout (b. 1853)
  • 1966 – Charles Whitman, American murderer (b. 1941)
  • 1970 – Frances Farmer, American actress (b. 1913)

Farmer was a paranoid schizophrenic who became notorious for episodes of illness, and eventually was institutionalized as she got worse. She was played by Jessica Lange (nominated for Best Actress) in the 1982 movie “Frances”.  Here’s a smal video bio of Farmer with comments by Jessica Lange:

  • 1977 – Francis Gary Powers, American captain and pilot (b. 1929)
  • 1981 – Paddy Chayefsky, American author, playwright, and screenwriter (b. 1923)
  • 2007 – Tommy Makem, Irish singer-songwriter and banjo player (b. 1932)
  • 2015 – Cilla Black, English singer and actress (b. 1943)

Here’s my favorite song of Cilla (it was also her biggest hit):

  • 2020 – Wilford Brimley, American actor and singe (b. 1934)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Kulka and Hili are playing:

Szaron: I’m getting closer.
Hili: I’m ignoring it.
In Polish:
Szaron: Zbliżam się.
Hili: Ignoruję to.

And a rare dialogue with Kulka!

A: Are you coming out from the wardrobe?
Kulka: Not yet.
In Polish: A: Wychodzisz z szafy? K: Jeszcze nie.

From Lorenzo the Cat, labeled, “Motherhood, the truth.”

From Divy:

From Jesus of the Day:

The last American soldier leaves Afghanistan:

Weatherman Al Roker at NBC, informed (by trolls on Twitter, of course) that he was too old to be covering hurricanes, issues a pungent reply:

From Masih. We all know that Iran has political prisoners, jailed (and often executed) for voicing ideas the regime doesn’t like. Here’s Masih showing the wife of a man scheduled to be executed for belonging to a Kurdish political party, pleading for his life.

Today’s tweet from the Auschwitz Memorial. Once again, a new “resident” lived but a few days, probably perishing from disease or hunger:

From Simon, a really cool series of cat-themed milk cartons (I think):

From Barry: A tweet from John Cleese showing responses to complainers about “The Life of Brian”:

From Ginger K., an awesome domino fall:

Tweets from Matthew. In this first sedimentary section, the bottom is Precambrian and the top layer Triassic. The intervening 380 million years isn’t represented, as the layer eroded away.

Bobcat takes the easy way through:

Stairs several centuries old going down to the Thames in East London, north side of the river:

47 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue (and Kulka dialogue)”

  2. The biggest difference i see between Max Boot and Biden is that Biden has thankfully changed. Max Boot has not. Boot can be thrown into the pile of X generals and failed military policies that have not changed since Vietnam.

    Reply

    1. I think Boot is being disingenuous here too. He makes no mention of the agreement the Trump administration, via Pompeo, made with the Taliban for the US to exit Afghanistan. The one in which the Afghani government was excluded at the request of the Taliban. The one in which Pompeo agreed to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, which was done. The one in which the time table for the US withdrawal was agreed upon by Pompeo and the Taliban.

      And Boot makes no mention of what the likely results would have been if the Biden Administration had decided to reject the Trump Administration’s agreement with the Taliban. A Taliban that had been consolidating its forces for months, since the agreement, as the US was withdrawing forces. A Taliban that had been gifted with 5,000 previously imprisoned personnel, including the person that has been installed as their new president. What would have happened is that the conflict would have exploded again requiring a new large scale deployment of US forces to Afghanistan.

      Reply

    2. I mostly like Boot’s writing but I think he’s a bit off this time. If Biden had evacuated non-military Americans and Afghan helpers before the military evacuation, it would have sent a very strong no-confidence message to the Afghan government and military. It had to be done in the order it was done. Of course, the government and army fell much faster than was hoped. If Biden is guilty of something, it is in not planning sufficiently for that possibility. These things rarely go as planned. Except for his not completely levelling with the American public on what happened, Biden has done pretty well. I’m hoping that this will not be held much against him. The GOP are ready to make it his Benghazi, of course, but perhaps people are wise to that garbage now.

      Reply

  3. I also watched “The Chair” season on Netflix. I enjoyed watching it but many of the characters are stereotypes to an extreme level. There are only 6 episodes and the season ending left me with a feeling of “Do I care to wait for another season?”

    Reply

  5. Is there any single recipe that uses every one of those foodstuffs?

    I don’t know, but it seems pretty easy to make a ‘fried rice’ type dish out of these ingredients. Dice the chicken, baste it in the honey, and cook separately. Cook the rice. Dice the potatoes into 1/2″ inch cubes. Combine all ingredients in a fry pan with some oil and maybe some soy sauce, and fry it up until the potatoes are cooked through.

    He was later found to have a malignant brain tumor the size of a pecan, which could have caused the killing. What should be done with such a person?

    Well he obviously can’t be released into the public as-is, even if the brain tumor is at fault. So you keep him sequestered, operate on the tumor or treat it with chemo or radiation, observe his behavior over many years in sequestration, and then make a determination as to whether we think he remains a threat or not. Not much of which, IMO, the US jail system is designed to do well or humanely.

    Reply

    1. Too right. Good luck getting medical intervention of any kind at all in US prisons, or in Florida at least. I’ve seen a man just die on the rec yard (presumably from a heart attack), and no one was even allowed to try to help or give CPR, or anything. I don’t know if they even called for an ambulance or emergency medical help, but considering the numerous security hoops they would have needed to get through, it hardly seems likely they could have arrived in time.

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    2. Though in your recipe, you forgot the mushrooms and the papaya. I can’t see how those two ingredients go well together…maybe a green papaya that is more sour than sweet? Anyway, I thought your recipe sounded good, but you left out the papaya, which (imo) is the monkey wrench in that ingredient list.

      Reply

  6. … op-ed columnist Max Boot of the Washington Post, a centrist military historian …

    I think Boot could be described more accurately as a never-Trump neoconservative (which is, I suppose, in some weird way, about as close as Republicans — or recovering Republicans — come to “centrist” these days).

    Reply

    2. I knew he was a never-Trumper myself, that’s why I thought his article was off-base and disingenuous since he didn’t include the hand Trump/Pompeo played in this debacle (and they played a very large hand). I’m actually quite tired of these “Monday-night quarterback” ex-generals and those married to the military-industrial complex giving their opinions. And that’s the type of critics the MSM is interviewing and giving a platform to. In general, the MSM has exploited the exit for all it’s worth in terms of highlighting the negative, dismissing nuance, and exploiting an extremely complicated situation.

      Reply

  7. I once saw an interview with Jack Elliot where he described sleeping on Woody Guthrie’s couch for a couple of weeks, and each morning was awakened by the Guthries’ children.

    He said that they would throw stuffed toys at him until he woke up and arose, but if the stuffed toys didn’t work, after a while they would switch to trucks.

    L

    Reply

  8. George Martin’s rush to get Cilla’s version of Anyone who ‘ad a heart in Britain first peed Dionne Warwick right off, and no mistake.

    Reply

  9. I work in patent law. In case anyone is curious, the earlier Perky patent was for the product of and process of making shredded wheat (I actually looked up the text of the Perky patent). The later Kellogg patent would today be called a design patent and claims a new, ornamental design for a shredded wheat biscuit. So the second one does not repeat or infringe the earlier patent.

    Reply

    1. Since fairly recently I am listed (with three others) on two patents and we have two further submitted/in progress (broadly speaking, on using lasers to detect/identify bacteria). Because of that, I’ve been introduced to patent-ese, and so here’s a question. Was “embodiments” part of the lexicon back then?

      Reply

  10. A poll conducted by Pew Research Center between Aug. 23-29…

    I’ll wait for a poll conducted beginning in a few days.

    What makes this disaster so infuriating is that it was entirely predictable.

    That implies that something could have been done to change it. The scale of the evacuation is unprecedented. A large number were killed in one attack, but there were no further. Maybe the Afghans that could have steeled themselves against ISIS would have done so if they thought we would actually leave, but how would they ever think that if we never did?

    The Brown U calculation that the presence in Afghanistan was costing $300M/day needs to be part of any assessment, too.

    Meanwhile, as judged from emails that wind up in my spam folder (why I started getting them is an unanswered question), the cabal over at MyFaithVotes is rushing breathlessly to denounce the whole thing and trying to figure out whether they should mount a campaign to impeach Joe.

    Reply

    1. If Republicans take over Congress in 2022, we should expect Biden to be impeached almost daily. First on the docket is lying about getting a cat. Perhaps Prof. Coyne will be called to give expert testimony.

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  11. 1931 – Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

    John the Baptist of sorts to Dylan’s Jesus 🙂 , and, along with Dave Van Ronk, one of the archetypes for the early Sixties’ Greenwich Village folk singer (and titular character) played by Oscar isaac in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis.

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  12. Surprised to see even the New York Daily News coming out with an editorial like this on the withdrawal from Afghanistan:

    It was a success that, contrary to what Biden not long ago told the American people would happen, a government we supported over the course of two decades, with $2 trillion in taxpayer investments and 800,000 U.S. troops, melted in minutes. A success that our sworn enemy, the Taliban, now has billions worth of Pentagon equipment, and bragging rights of a victorious conqueror. A success that America had to scramble to find and rescue its people and the Afghans who had helped us throughout the war, getting many thousands out but leaving who knows how many to now face likely retaliation from the Taliban. A success that we left Afghan allies feeling betrayed and NATO allies feeling abandoned.
    …
    It couldn’t really have gone any other way, says Biden, even as he plays the grownup by saying he accepts full responsibility for what transpired, ignoring his own 2001 warning that “if we leave Afghanistan in chaos it will be another time bomb waiting to explode.” Full responsibility for what? An operation that supposedly went off without a hitch? As Joe would say: C’mon, man.

    I had to look twice to make sure I wasn’t reading the New York Post.

    Reply

  13. Musician Jerry Garcia is erroneously included on the September 1st birthday celebrant list. Jerry was born on August 1st (1942 ) and checked out the on August 9th (1995). The interregnum between those two dates is known to Deadheads as “The Daze (or days) Between”.

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  14. I’ve been watching The Chair, and I think we are on episode 5. Like any show about people in their profession, its exaggerated in the various tropes for that profession and is a fair bit simplified. All this is to quickly get the audience to quickly understand and invest in the various roles being played. In the case of this show, the story lines are heavily slanted toward creating dry and generally highbrow comedy (“Chaucer is a bad-ass!!”). But anyone in academia will immediately recognize all the types of characters and the situations that arise. They are real enough.
    I am enjoying it, and its also amusing to note that PZ absolutely hates it, accusing the writers of all being right wingers who know nothing about university life. Well, that certainly isn’t true. He also vehemently denies that students would mount protests over a professor who does a casual Nazi salute in class. That isn’t true either of course.

    Reply

    1. He also vehemently denies that students would mount protests over a professor who does a casual Nazi salute in class.

      In today’s climate, they might not have to. Send some angry emails to the University President claiming students were harmed by the salute, and the U. might cave and fire prof with no further investigation, evidence, or student protest being required.

      ***

      Unrelated, but the other big domestic news item of the day which Jerry missed is the Tx abortion law going into effect. Bad news all around. Though I suspect Tx’s “private civil right of action” precedent might end up overturned, or used by liberal states in ways conservatives really don’t like.

      Reply

    2. My wife and I watched the entire first season and enjoyed it. I think it is great to see campus wokeness thrashed out in public. On the other hand, I think it suffered from trying to be two shows at once: a situation comedy and a serious dramatization of woke conflict on campus. Bill, the guy who jokingly gives the Nazi salute, is portrayed somewhat cartoonishly for the sake of comedy. At the same time, his career has been put into jeopardy by woke students accusing him of being an actual Nazi. The show does about as good a job as possible but it is still a bit odd to my mind.

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  15. … an awesome domino fall …

    Wow, impressive, though not impressive enough to make me rethink my opposition to the Vietnam war.

    Reply

    1. The S.F. Exploratorium has one the kiddies can set up and trigger. My kid must’ve run it 10 times before he got bored of it.

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        1. I love the Exploratorium, too. When my son was around 13 we visited and he walked across an arch made of blocks which had apparently not been set up quite right. The arch collapsed under him and the pointy bit of the keystone hit his spine. My son was and is the epitome of UNwimpy, but the words that came out of his mouth from the pain🙀 We took an ambulance to the nearest hospital and after about half an hour he wanted to do wheelies on the guerney so we figured he was OK.

          Reply

    1. Bah. The idea that the four seasons begin on the equinoxes and solstices is bullpucky. The summer solstice was celebrated traditionally as Midsummers Day.

      Reply

      1. The idea that the seasons begin on the first of March/June/September/December is a very recent invention by meteorologists. Any astronomer will tell you that the equinoxes and solstices have defined the seasons for centuries. Who to believe? Consider this: meteorologists can’t tell you what the weather will do next week, whilst astronomers can predict eclipses to the second for centuries to come.

        Reply

  17. The picture of the UT tower and accompanying story reminded me of a different one involving a university tower. This one was at U. of California at Santa Barbara. Some wags put up flyers all over campus announcing a “Jump for Jesus!” event involving the tower. AFAIK, no one actually jumped. Even if someone decided to participate, I suspect campus police would have prevented it from happening.

    Reply

  18. I had the pleasure of meeting William D. Hamilton in the early 1990s when he visited our ecology field course at a forest camp near Manaus. The visit was arranged by (José) Márcio Ayres, one of the scientists most instrumental in establishing the Mimirauá Sustainable Development Reserve where Hamilton and Magurran conducted their research. The reserve has an area of 4250 sq. miles and is incorporated in a management area of 22,000 sq miles, an area larger than Costa Rica, linking two important national parks. Ayres died in 2003 at 49 (here are 2 links to Ayres’ accomplishments – good English translations can be had via Google).
    https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/ciencia/fe1203200302.htm
    https://super.abril.com.br/ideias/o-senhor-da-floresta/

    Shortly before his death, Hamilton requested that his body be returned to the Amazon: “I will leave a sum in my last will for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure against the possums and the vultures just as we make our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death.”

    Reply

      1. I think Hamilton meant he would go on “living” in the biology and chemistry of the Amazonian rainforest ecosystem. Hamilton, however, was denied his wish.

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  19. A little noted historical event for the day: today is the 50th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Pirates becoming the first major league baseball team to field a lineup consisting entirely of persons of color.

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  20. re: Monty Python; It seems that there are always taboos in comedy, although the specific taboos change over time. My father grew up in the era of Amos ‘n’ Andy and Stepin Fechit and complained that you couldn’t do humor like that any more-“Nobody today can take a joke.” Of course, he was offended by jokes about religion–while he liked “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Fawlty Towers,” he thought “Life of Brian” shouldn’t be shown. Oh yes, and “Brian” gets criticized today because it has a transgender character played for laughs. Hate speech!

    Even TV shows from the 90s such as “Friends,” “Frasier,” and “Seinfeld” are problematic today, accused of being sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fat-shaming, etc. Niles’ obsession with Daphne on “Frasier?” Stalking! Stalking isn’t funny!

    Drag humor, a staple of comedy at least since Shakespeare, is now accused of being transphobic. No more movies like “Tootsie” or “Some Like it Hot,” I guess. Any guesses on what the next taboo will be?

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    1. Monty Python had tons of hilarious cross-dressing men, often whomping people on the head with their handbags. My only criticism is that they had almost no real women, except for the occasional blonde bimbo.

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  21. Regarding “1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world’s first democratically elected female head of state.” — what about Margaret Thatcher, who became UK prime minister in 1979? Sure, technically the head of state in the UK is Queen Liz (female but not elected), but in terms of the political leadership of a nation, Maggie got there first.

    Reply

    1. Margaret Thatcher wasn’t the first woman prime minister. That honour goes to Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka. Thatcher wasn’t even second or third, since Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir became prime minister of their respective nations in the 1960s, ten years before the 1979 general election that brought Thatcher to power.

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  22. Did nobody else notice that the events of the day, births and deaths are, I think, all for August 1st?

    Compare the lists with those on August 1st’s Hili Dialogue.

    Commenter Eric L. Cabot in comment 13 noted that Jerry Garcia’s birthday was wrong, but didn’t put it all together.

    bPer

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  23. Warsaw uprising broke out on August 1, 1944. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, which was the beginning of WW II.

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  24. rb > c
    It was RD’s The Selfish Gene that got me rivetted to Hamilton’s great insight. A colossal intellect indeed, goodnight, once more, Bill x

    Reply

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