Tuesday: Hili dialogue

August 22, 2023 • 7:00 am

As I’m just back from Ecuador and jet-lagged, it will take me a while to get up to speed with Hili—and posting in general. And, just when I do, I’m off to Israel, so bear with me. (I do my best.)

So welcome to Tuesday (the Cruelest Day):  August 22, 2023, and National Pecan Torte Day. 

It’s also National Tooth Fairy Day, National Bao Day (cultural appropriation of China’s great steamed dumplings), International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, Take Your Cat to the Vet Day, and National Eat a Peach Day, referring not to the Allman Brothers’ great double album from 1972 but to eating the fruit. But we shall consider the music:

But what a great album that was! Some of the best songs are “Melissa,” “Blue Sky,” “One Way Out,” “Midnight Rider,” “Little Martha,” “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” and “Whipping Post.” It’s hard to choose just one, but I love this one because it’s just pure gutsy blues, with Betts on guitar and Greg Allman on gritty vocals and keyboard. (The original from the album is here.)

Oh hell, I can’t resist this one, either, composed and played by Betts. Here he’s at his best, with one of the best guitar solos in the history of rock:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the August 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

No Nooz today; I need sleep.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,

Hili: This is a new kind of noise.
A: Why do you say that?
Hili: When you eat it I can hear it from a distance.
In Polish:
Hili: Nowy gatunek hałasu.
Ja: Dlaczego tak mówisz?
Hili: Jak to jecie to z daleka słychać.
And a photo of the lovely Szaron:

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A relevant cartoon by Dave Blazek, sent in by Thomas:

A New Yorker cartoon by Roland High sent by Merilee:

From the Cats FB page:

From the Absurd Sign Project 2.0:

From Masih, the women of Iran fight back against the hijab requirement:

Here’s the final scene of the second season of Ricky Gervais’s “After Life”.  It makes me tear up (his beloved wife has died previously) and he’s leaving a town fair in which things are put right for other folks. Gervais is a genius.

From Simon, who says, “This one is a sad thought on the time of year – halloween is already in the shops.”

From Cate, the world’s cutest bird:

And a video (it has a dark back and wings). It’s a subspecies of long-tailed tit that lives only on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed upon arrival, age 6

Tweets from Matthew. Now deep fry that thing for a short while and give it to me with a bottle of Heinz ketchup!

A specially modified plane ditches in the Pacific Ocean, but the pilot gets out of it okay (the plane, however, is lost). Read the thread for the whole story:

Translation of tweet below:

Yawning Yawn Spot-billed Duck  (youtube.com/shorts/5wWsCaC When sandwiched between two bad sleeping birds.

28 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Alas, that trip was too short – I was just getting into it. Wonderful!

    But welcome back, of course.

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  2. On this day:
    1485 – The Battle of Bosworth Field occurs; Richard III dies, marking the end of the House of Plantagenet.

    1614 – Fettmilch Uprising: Jews are expelled from Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, following the plundering of the Judengasse.

    1639 – Madras (now Chennai), India, is founded by the British East India Company on a sliver of land bought from local Nayak rulers.

    1642 – Charles I raises his standard in Nottingham, which marks the beginning of the English Civil War.

    1654 – Jacob Barsimson arrives in New Amsterdam. He is the first known Jewish immigrant to America.

    1780 – James Cook’s ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).

    1851 – The first America’s Cup is won by the yacht America.

    1864 – Twelve nations sign the First Geneva Convention, establishing the rules of protection of the victims of armed conflicts.

    1894 – Mahatma Gandhi forms the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in order to fight discrimination against Indian traders in Natal.

    1902 – The Cadillac Motor Company is founded.

    1902 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile.

    1922 – Michael Collins, Commander-in-chief of the Irish Free State Army, is shot dead in an ambush during the Irish Civil War.

    1942 – Brazil declares war on Germany, Japan and Italy.

    1953 – The penal colony on Devil’s Island is permanently closed.

    1972 – Rhodesia is expelled by the IOC for its racist policies.

    1978 – The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment is passed by the U.S. Congress, although it is never ratified by a sufficient number of states.

    1985 – British Airtours Flight 28M suffers an engine fire during takeoff at Manchester Airport. The pilots abort but due to inefficient evacuation procedures 55 people are killed, mostly from smoke inhalation.

    2003 – Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

    2006 – Grigori Perelman is awarded the Fields Medal for his proof of the Poincaré conjecture in mathematics but refuses to accept the medal.

    Births:
    1647 – Denis Papin, French physicist and mathematician, developed pressure cooking (d. 1712).

    1834 – Samuel Pierpont Langley, American physicist and astronomer (d. 1906).

    1848 – Melville Elijah Stone, American publisher, founded the Chicago Daily News (d. 1929).

    1860 – Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, Polish-German technician and inventor, created the Nipkow disk (d. 1940).

    1860 – Alfred Ploetz, German physician, biologist, and eugenicist (d. 1940).

    1862 – Claude Debussy, French pianist and composer (d. 1918).

    1893 – Dorothy Parker, American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist (d. 1967).

    1896 – Laurence McKinley Gould, American geologist, educator, and polar explorer (d. 1995).

    1900 – Lisy Fischer, Swiss-born pianist and child prodigy (d. 1999).

    1902 – Leni Riefenstahl, German actress, film director and propagandist (d. 2003).

    1908 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer and painter (d. 2004).

    1915 – James Hillier, Canadian-American scientist, co-designed the electron microscope (d. 2007).

    1917 – John Lee Hooker, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2001).

    1918 – Mary McGrory, American journalist and author (d. 2004).

    1920 – Ray Bradbury, American science fiction writer and screenwriter (d. 2012).

    1925 – Honor Blackman, English actress and republican (d. 2020).

    1928 – Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer and academic (d. 2007).

    1935 – Annie Proulx, American novelist, short story writer, and journalist.

    1948 – David Marks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1958 – Vernon Reid, English-born American guitarist and songwriter.

    1961 – Roland Orzabal, English singer and musician.

    1963 – Tori Amos, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer.

    1973 – Kristen Wiig, American actress, comedian, and screenwriter.

    1978 – James Corden, English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter.

    1995 – Dua Lipa, English singer-songwriter.

    I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
    1664 – Maria Cunitz, Polish astronomer and author (b. 1610). [The most notable female astronomer of the early modern era. She authored a book Urania propitia, in which she provided new tables, new ephemera, and a simpler working solution to Kepler’s second law for determining the position of a planet on its elliptical path. The Cunitz crater on Venus is named after her.]

    1891 – Jan Neruda, Czech journalist, author, and poet (b. 1834). [The Chilean poet, Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, adopted the pseudonym Pablo Neruda, to express his admiration.]

    1918 – Korbinian Brodmann, German neurologist and academic (b. 1868).

    1963 – William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, English businessman and philanthropist, founded Morris Motors (b. 1877).

    1967 – Gregory Goodwin Pincus, American biologist and academic, co-created the birth-control pill (b. 1903).

    1974 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-English mathematician, biologist, and author (b. 1908).

    1980 – James Smith McDonnell, American pilot, engineer, and businessman, founded McDonnell Aircraft (b. 1899).

    1989 – Huey P. Newton, American activist, co-founded the Black Panther Party (b. 1942).

    2008 – Gladys Powers, English-Canadian soldier (b. 1899).

    2009 – Muriel Duckworth, Canadian pacifist, feminist, and activist (b. 1908).

    2016 – Toots Thielemans, Belgian and American jazz musician (b. 1922).

    2018 – Ed King, American musician (b. 1949).

    Reply

    1. Samuel pierpont Langley, American physicist and astronomer should also be recognized as an engineer who toiled on solving the problems of heavier than air controlled flight contemporaneous with the Wright Brothers. Langley was ultimately unsuccessful, though he enjoyed significant Smithsonian funding. In 1903, while the Wrights were successful in taking off, flying under human pilot control, and landing over land, Langley had several failures in catapult launch attempts of his craft from a barge over water in the Potomac River. Langley had excellent political connections. As an afterthought, I always found it a bit embarrassing to work at a NASA aeronautics research lab named after Langley, particularly when working with colleagues at the Air Force’s Wright Lab in Ohio.

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  3. To brighten your day.
    Winner of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe pun.
    Comedian, Lorna Rose Treen.
    I started dating a zoo keeper but I found out he was a cheetah!

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    3. I’ve been waiting for a suitable segue into my own pun.

      Even after so many years, the thrill of seeing my first sea-slug still invertebrates down my spine.

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  4. The first time I watched that closing scene from the season two finale of Ricky Gervais’s show, I bawled like some common Jordan Peterson.

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  5. In a period of heet out on the plains of Kansas but it is cooling off. Topped off on Saturday at 111 or 43.9 celsius. Sunday – 108 or 42 celsius, Monday 105 or 40.5 and today about the same. By the weekend we may miss 100. At the World Track and Field Championships a woman ran the 100 m race in 10.65 seconds. The men’s 100 m race was 9.83. Less than one second difference. Both winners were Americans.

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  6. That parachute landing reminded me of the story of the first attempted flight from California to Hawaii in 1925. The Navy used two specially built flying boats. One had mechanical problems and had to make a water landing, where its crew was picked up by a destroyer (ships were stationed along the planes’ course in case of trouble). The other continued, but a headwind caused it to be short on fuel. It, too, landed, but the expected guard ship wasn’t there. Long story short, the pilot, Commander John Rodgers, tore fabric off the bottom of the wing, fashioned a sail, and sailed the plane the rest of the way. After sailing the plane about 400 miles, fifteen miles from Kauai they were spotted by a submarine, and towed in. Full story here. I read about this earlier this year, and thought, Man, that would make a great movie. Apparently, some one did write a script a few years ago, but it hasn’t been made, yet. (One would think that a plane that identities as a boat would get some interest in today’s climate.)

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    1. Problem is two years later some guy flew across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Paris. Kind of takes the wind out of your sails.

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        1. Yes, I don’t know why that did not get more play that long ago. Kind of a rough landing in Ireland.

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    2. Great record! I was able to see the Allman Brothers a few years after Eat a Peach came out, and for me the highlight was their playing of Les Brers in A Minor.

      For the record, so to speak, some of the songs listed (such as Midnight Rider, Whipping Post, and Elizabeth Reed) weren’t on Eat A Peach. But if these were listed as great Allman Brothers songs: totally agree!

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  9. “Halloween is already in the shops.”

    Supermarkets around here (CT) are already selling Thanksgiving decorations. (For non-Americans, Thanksgiving comes at the end of November.)

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  10. I’ve always wondered how to pronounce “Szaron.”
    I pronounce it like Sharon but Zaron. I’m sure that’s not correct.

    “After Life” is probably the most emotional show I’ve ever watched. One scene I’m crying, the next I’m laughing hysterically; no show embodies the term (cliché?) “emotional rollercoaster” better. Yes, Gervais is a genius. I need to rewatch “Extras.”

    That potato “kirigami” (in search of a better word) is amazing. And yes, let’s see what happens once it’s deep fried and salted!

    Reply

    1. I hoped someone might bring this up.
      Effect of Aircraft-Cabin Altitude on Passenger Discomfort. J. Michael Muhm, M.D., M.P.H., et al. 2007
      https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa062770

      Not a study of jet-lag per se although was cited in popular media as such. Study was supported by Boeing Co.
      Altitude was simulated by a hypobaric chamber. Pressure equivalent to 8000 feet — universal on commercial airliners — reduced O2 saturation of hemoglobin by about 4 percentage points and some subjects experienced discomfort after 3 – 9 hours. Effect was attenuated with pressure equivalent to 6000 feet. Note that the 787 Dreamliner which Boeing was bringing into service at the time was designed to be able to be pressurized to 7000 feet without structural fatigue or compromise to fuel efficiency.

      I have made just one transatlantic flight in a 787 — I like the 777s better for other reasons — and can’t say I noticed any differences in flight or after arrival.

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  12. > Here’s the final scene of the second season of Ricky Gervais’s “After Life”.

    It was the final scene of the third (and last) season, not the second.

    A great show.

    Reply

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