Friday: Hili dialogue

August 11, 2023 • 6:45 am

As you’re reading this, I’ll be winging my way to Miami, cooling my heels for a few hours, and then flying to Guayaquil for an overnight before we head to the Galápagos. I’ll be lecturing to U of C alumni (and perhaps alumni of other schools) on a Lindblad cruise of the islands. Yes, it’s departure day, Friday, August 11, 2023, and also National Panini Day.

Matthew will put in the Hili dialogue here, and for the next ten days this feature will probably contain only Hili dialogues—unless Matthew has something to say.

It’s also Annual Medical Checkup Day, Ingersoll Day, celebrating the “Great Agnostic” (Robert G. Ingersoll) born on this day in 1833, National Raspberry Bombe Day, National Raspberry Tart Day, and, in Japan,Mountain Day, Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the August 11 Wikipedia page.

Here’s Ingersoll along with my favorite quote from him. He was the Hitchens of his day, eloquent and able to hold an audience for hours without using notes. I think I used this quote to open Faith Versus Fact:

Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”

This is the only known photo of Ingersoll addressing an audience:

Here are the World Cup results from yesterday’s knockout round:

From the NYT:

A Women’s World Cup of change, of unexpected early departures and tantalizing arrivals, has completed its upending of certainty and tradition.

No former champion remains in the tournament with two rounds to play.

Gone prematurely are the United States, with its four world championships, and Germany, with two. Ousted is Norway, the 1995 victor. And now Japan, the 2011 winner, has exited in the quarterfinals with a 2-1 defeat to Sweden on Friday in Auckland, New Zealand.

Of course, it would be highly inaccurate to consider Sweden an arriviste. It has participated in all nine Women’s World Cups, finishing second in 2003 and third three times. But it has never won a major tournament and longs to be a first-time champion.

. . . Sweden will face Spain in the semifinals after smothering Japan’s versatile attack in the first half and then defending for its tournament life in the second. It built what seemed a secure lead early in the second half by scoring twice indirectly on its specialty, set pieces, then held on as Japan, desperate and energized, made a fierce, if futile, charge.

Spain’s meeting with the Netherlands on Friday in the quarterfinals of this Women’s World Cup was always likely to be close. As Spain’s draining, narrow, 2-1 victory proved, close may have been an understatement. There is barely a hair’s breadth between these teams: the Spanish, Europe’s great power-in-waiting, and the Dutch, famed for their talent but noteworthy for their resilience.

Four years ago, that mixture was enough to carry the Netherlands to the World Cup final against the United States. This year, it was starting to look as if a repeat trip might be in the cards. Andries Jonker’s team had advanced from the group phase in a style more impressive than spectacular. It had finished, most significantly, ahead of the United States. Thanks to the reflexes and concentration of Daphne van Domselaar, its goalkeeper, it had held South Africa at bay in the round of 16.

Here are the highlights of the Spain/Netherlands game, with Spain winning by one goal in overtime.

And the highlights of the Japan/Sweden game:

There will be no other Nooz today as I’m on the road.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili senses an intruder.

Hili: Is this dog barking in the garden or in the orchard?
A: It’s outside the fence.
Hili: Better go and check.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ten pies szczeka w sadzie, czy w ogrodzie?
Ja: Jest za płotem.
Hili: Lepiej sprawdź.

********************

Cat scientists from Divy:

From Laurie Ann; “When your replacement head arrives in the post”:

From the Absurd Sign Project:

From Masih (sound up).  There’s are English subtitles.  The arrant insistence of the regime that women cover their hair may be the straw that broke the back of the Islamic Revolution:

Ricky Gervais on d*gs and artificial selection:

From Simon, which reminds me of an old joke:

From Malcolm. Oy, what a racket!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 14-year-old Dutch girl gassed upon arrival.

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a caterpillar that, via natural selection, has come to resemble bird poop:

This is almost certainly mimicry of a predatory spider, and it’s some good mimicry!

I’ve posted this before, and will do so again because it’s so catlike:

13 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I hope the people and officials of Maui do a lot of thinking before they just rebuild the destroyed city. Similar to California, nature is telling them there are some places they should not be living. Climate change will be coming to call on a lot of places in the near future and people need to put much more thought into where they are going.

    Reply

    2. Jeez have some compassion for people who lost their homes and don’t want to be forced to leave permanently. Unless you’d be ok if they built New Lahaina in your back yard, maybe don’t have an opinion about where else they should put it (including in the same place as the original town).

      Reply

      1. They had a plan which listed the most likely risks to the community, and the estimated toll of each event. Then, they look at what resources they have or can obtain, and come up with a plan, and any preventative measures that need to be implemented prior to the event.
        Several brush fires during hurricane force winds was not high on the list, perhaps not even on their bingo card.

        It seems easy to blame any such event on whatever they are calling global warming this week. Sometimes it is just an unlucky confluence of events. From a present perspective, there is a lot that they could have done to minimize the damage, at least. Except that they did not have our knowledge, so they focused on preparing for tsunamis or the other events higher on their list.

        I am sure that when they rebuild, lessons learned now will feature in new plans.

        Reply

        1. For sure! But it would not be hubris for the people of Lahaina to rebuild their town right where it stood before the fire.

          Reply

  3. On this day:
    3114 BC – The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya, begins.

    1315 – The Great Famine of Europe becomes so dire that even the king of England has difficulties buying bread for himself and his entourage. [Let them eat cake…!]

    1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.

    1871 – An explosion of guncotton occurs in Stowmarket, England, killing 28.

    1919 – Germany’s Weimar Constitution is signed into law.

    1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

    1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.

    1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones, two-way radio communications, and Wi-Fi.

    1945 – Poles in Kraków engage in a pogrom against Jews in the city, killing one and wounding five.

    1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.

    1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.

    1969 – The Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine following their liftoff from the Moon.

    1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.

    1984 – “We begin bombing in five minutes”: United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.

    1988 – A meeting between Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, and leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan culminates in the formation of Al-Qaeda.

    2003 – NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.

    Births:
    1885 – Stephen Butterworth, English physicist and engineer (d. 1958). [Invented the filter that bears his name, a class of electrical circuits that separates electrical signals of different frequencies.]

    1897 – Enid Blyton, English author, poet, and educator (d. 1968).

    1897 – Louise Bogan, American poet and critic (d. 1970).

    1912 – Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer and academic (d. 1954).

    1921 – Alex Haley, American historian and author (d. 1992). [Haley’s Roots was criticised for plagiarism and fabrication, with Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., acknowledging the doubts surrounding Haley’s claims about Roots, saying, “Most of us feel it’s highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship”.]

    1933 – Jerry Falwell, American minister and television host (d. 2007). [No comment…]

    1937 – Anna Massey, English actress (d. 2011).

    1950 – Steve Wozniak, American computer scientist and programmer, co-founded Apple Inc.

    1952 – Bob Mothersbaugh, American singer, guitarist, and producer.

    1954 – Joe Jackson, English singer-songwriter and musician.

    1958 – Jah Wobble, English singer-songwriter and bass player.

    1962 – Charles Cecil, English video game designer and co-founded Revolution Software.

    1965 – Viola Davis, American actress.

    1968 – Sophie Okonedo, British actress.

    1978 – Isy Suttie, English comedian, musician, actress, and writer.

    1983 – Chris Hemsworth, Australian actor.

    Then have we a prescription to die when Death is our physician:
    1578 – Pedro Nunes, Portuguese mathematician and academic (b. 1502).

    1596 – Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William Shakespeare (b. 1585).

    1614 – Lavinia Fontana, Italian painter (b. 1552). [Trained by her father Prospero Fontana, who was a teacher at the School of Bologna, she is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe as she relied on commissions for her income.]

    1851 – Lorenz Oken, German botanist, biologist, and ornithologist (b. 1779).

    1886 – Lydia Koidula, Estonian poet and playwright (b. 1843). [Despite sex prejudice, she was a founder of Estonian theatre and has achieved the status of the national poet of Estonia.]

    1919 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Carnegie Steel Company and Carnegie Hall (b. 1835).

    1921 – Mary Sumner, English philanthropist, founded the Mothers’ Union (b. 1828).

    1937 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (b. 1862).

    1939 – Jean Bugatti, German-Italian engineer (b. 1909).

    1956 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912).

    1994 – Peter Cushing, English actor (b. 1913).

    1995 – Phil Harris, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1904). [As a voice actor for Disney, he played Baloo in The Jungle Book (1967), Thomas O’Malley in The Aristocats (1970), and Little John in Robin Hood (1973).]

    2014 – Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (b. 1951).

    2018 – V S Naipaul, British writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1932).

    2022 – Anne Heche, American actress (b. 1969).

    Reply

  5. I try to live by these words of Robert Ingersoll:
    “When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.”

    Reply

    1. I am inspired to look up some others.
      “Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself”.

      “The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it”.

      Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *