Wednesday: Hili dialogue

40 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

1. Didn’t expect a Hili this early. That blackhole needs to slim. I think the feline is talking about the reality of Trump’s victory.

   1. That blackhole needs to slim.

      It will. Once “dark energy” (whatever that is ; but we know how it behaves, regardless of what it is) really gets going and separates it from it’s feeder galaxy (of which it is only a few percent of the mass), the Hawking radiation will start to slim it. I don’t have the equation on hand for that (I’ll have to find it!), but it’s lifetime until it evaporates to nothing will be order-of 10^100 years.
      I think Hili is channelling Richard Feynman :

      “In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. […] It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”

      1. I don’t have the equation on hand for that…

         I do 🙂
         t ~ (5120 Pi G^2 M^3)/(c^4 hbar)
         And yes. It’s ~10^99 years.

         1. Thank you for that. Equations make me happy.

2. On this day:
   41 – Claudius is proclaimed Roman emperor by the Praetorian Guard after they assassinate the previous emperor, his nephew Caligula.

   1536 – King Henry VIII of England suffers an accident while jousting, leading to a brain injury that historians say may have influenced his later erratic behaviour and possible impotence.

   1835 – Slaves in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, stage a revolt, which is instrumental in ending slavery there 50 years later.

   1848 – California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento.

   1857 – The University of Calcutta is formally founded as the first fully fledged university in South Asia.

   1908 – The first Boy Scout troop is organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell.

   1916 – In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., the Supreme Court of the United States declares the federal income tax constitutional.

   1933 – The 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, changing the beginning and end of terms for all elected federal offices.

   1935 – Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company starts selling the first canned beer.

   1939 – The deadliest earthquake in Chilean history strikes Chillán, killing approximately 28,000 people.

   1946 – The United Nations General Assembly passes its first resolution to establish the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.

   1960 – Algerian War: Some units of European volunteers in Algiers stage an insurrection known as the “barricades week”, during which they seize government buildings and clash with local police.

   1961 – Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.

   1972 – Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been since the end of World War II.

   1977 – The Atocha massacre occurs in Madrid during the Spanish transition to democracy.

   1984 – Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States.

   1986 – The Voyager 2 space probe makes its closest approach to Uranus.

   1990 – Japan launches Hiten, the country’s first lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a country other than Soviet Union or the United States.

   2003 – The United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation.

   2018 – Former doctor Larry Nassar is sentenced up to 175 years in prison after being found guilty of using his position to sexually abuse female gymnasts. [Wow – five years ago already!]

   Births:
   76 – Hadrian, Roman emperor (d. 138). [Built a big, beautiful wall – but didn’t get the Picts to pay for it…]

   1664 – John Vanbrugh, English architect and dramatist (d. 1726).

   1670 – William Congreve, English playwright and poet (d. 1729).

   1712 – Frederick the Great, Prussian king (d. 1786).

   1804 – Delphine de Girardin, French author (d. 1855).

   1858 – Constance Naden, English poet and philosopher (d. 1889).

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

   1864 – Marguerite Durand, French actress, journalist, and activist (d. 1936).

   1882 – Harold D. Babcock, American astronomer (d. 1968).

   1886 – Henry King, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1982).

   1888 – Vicki Baum, Austrian author and screenwriter (d. 1960).

   1888 – Ernst Heinkel, German engineer and businessman, founded the Heinkel Aircraft Manufacturing Company (d. 1958).

   1910 – Doris Haddock, American political activist (d. 2010).

   1917 – Ernest Borgnine, American actor (d. 2012).

   1926 – Ruth Asawa, American sculptor (d. 2013).

   1927 – Paula Hawkins, American politician (d. 2009).

   1928 – Desmond Morris, English zoologist, ethologist, and painter.

   1941 – Neil Diamond, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

   1943 – Sharon Tate, American model and actress (d. 1969).

   1947 – Warren Zevon, American singer-songwriter (d. 2003).

   1949 – John Belushi, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1982).

   1955 – Alan Sokal, American physicist and author. [And occasional visitor to this website.]

   1957 – Ade Edmondson, English comedian and musician.

   1958 – Jools Holland, English singer-songwriter and pianist.

   1959 – Vic Reeves, English television personality.

   1961 – Nastassja Kinski, German-American actress and producer.

   1966 – Julie Dreyfus, French actress.

   1972 – Beth Hart, American blues-rock singer and piano player.

   1986 – Mischa Barton, English-American actress.

   You can cry about death and very properly so, your own as well as anybody else’s. But it’s inevitable, so you’d better grapple with it and cope and be aware that not only is it inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean. (David Attenborough):
   41 – Caligula, Roman emperor (b. 12).

   1965 – Winston Churchill, English colonel and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1874). [His father Randolph also died on this day, in 1895.]

   1970 – Caresse Crosby, American fashion designer and publisher, co-founded the Black Sun Press (b. 1891). [She was also the recipient of a patent for the first successful modern bra.]

   1971 – Bill W., American activist, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (b. 1895).

   1975 – Larry Fine, American comedian (b. 1902).

   1983 – George Cukor, American director and producer (b. 1899).

   1986 – L. Ron Hubbard, American religious leader and author, founded the Church of Scientology (b. 1911).

   1989 – Ted Bundy, American serial killer (b. 1946). [Executed by electric chair at Florida State Prison for the murder of over 30 known victims.]

   2003 – Gianni Agnelli, Italian businessman (b. 1921). [Principal shareholder of Fiat and the richest man in modern Italian history.]

   2016 – Marvin Minsky, American computer scientist and academic (b. 1927).

   2017 – Butch Trucks, American drummer (b. 1947).

   2018 – Mark E. Smith, British singer-songwriter (b. 1957).

   2019 – Rosemary Bryant Mariner, American United States Naval Aviator (b. 1953). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Captain Rosemary Bryant Mariner (née Bryant; formerly Conatser; born April 2, 1953 and died on this day in 2019) was an American pilot and one of the first six women to earn their wings as a United States Naval Aviator in 1974. She was the first female military pilot to fly a tactical jet and the first to achieve command of an operational aviation squadron.

      Born in Harlingen, Texas, she grew up in San Diego, California with a keen interest in aircraft and flying. Her mother was a Navy nurse during World War II, and her father served in the US Army Air Corps during World War II and in the Air Force during the Korean War as an attack pilot. He and co-pilot Donald Carillo were killed in an accidental plane crash on March 20, 1956, when Rosemary was three years old.

      While growing up, Mariner enjoyed watching planes at Miramar Naval Air Station, and she worked odd jobs, cleaned houses, and washed aircraft to earn money for flying lessons and flight time. She graduated from Purdue University in December 1972 at age 19, becoming the first woman to graduate from the aeronautical program. She earned a degree in aviation technology, and also earned FAA flight engineer and pilot ratings before joining the Navy. While in the Navy, Mariner earned a Master’s degree in National Security Strategy from the National War College.

      She joined the United States Navy in 1973 after being selected as one of the first eight women to enter U.S. Navy pilot training. She completed Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI, then headed to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida for basic flight training. She was designated a Naval Aviator in June 1974 and became one of the first six women to earn their wings as a United States Naval Aviator, alongside Barbara Allen Rainey, Jane Skiles O’Dea, Judith Ann Neuffer, Ana Marie Fuqua, and Joellen Drag. In 1975, Mariner was one of the first female military aviators to fly a tactical strike aircraft, a single seat A-4L Skyhawk. In 1976, she transitioned to the A-7E Corsair II, making her the first woman to fly a front-line tactical strike aircraft.

      During a ship’s company assignment, Mariner earned a dual-designation as a Surface Warfare Officer aboard the training aircraft carrier USS Lexington in 1984, after becoming the first female aviator assigned to an aircraft carrier in 1982.

      In 1987, Mariner became the first woman screened for command of an aviation unit in the U.S. Navy. In 1990, she became the first woman to command an aviation squadron in the Navy and was selected for major aviation shore command. During Operation Desert Storm, she commanded Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron Thirty Four (VAQ-34), flying the EA-7L and A-7E in Fleet training exercises. Mariner was president of Women Military Aviators, Inc. from 1991 to 1993, helping lead the removal of restrictions on military women flying in combat. In April 1993, when Secretary of Defense Les Aspin removed restrictions on female pilots flying combat missions, Mariner, along with Jane Skiles O’Dea, Commander Lin Hutton, and Naval Reserve Commander Joellen Oslund, was one of the first female aviators selected for promotion to captain in the U.S. Navy.

      Mariner’s final military assignment was as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Professor of Military Studies at the National War College. She retired after twenty-four years of military service, a veteran of seventeen carrier arrested landings with over 3,500 military flight hours in fifteen different Navy aircraft.

      Mariner retired from the Navy with the rank of captain at the end of 1997. She was a resident scholar in the Center for the Study of War and Society (now the Center for the Study of Tennesseans and War) and a lecturer in the Department of History from 2002 to 2016 at the University of Tennessee.

      She died on January 24, 2019, in Knoxville, Tennessee at the age of 65, following a five-year battle with ovarian cancer. During her funeral, the United States Navy conducted an all-female pilot flyover for the first time, performing a four F/A-18F aircraft Missing Man Flyover over New Loyston Cemetery in Maynardville, Tennessee.

      Mariner’s career is detailed in several books, including Crossed Currents: Navy Women from World War I to Tailhook, Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution, Tailspin: Women at War in the Wake of Tailhook, and Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Bryant_Mariner

      1. I am from a long career in Aerospace and this Lady impressed me immensely however it also surprised me how relatively recent were some of her very noteworthy achievements. Thinking back it brought into sharp focus my own experiences of the dearth of women in significant positions both in the armed forces (RAF) and in commercial aerospace. These pioneers paved the way but there is still room for improvement.
         Thank you Jezgrove for your research, always interesting.

         1. +1 to both of Robert’s observations

      2. There is a distinguished group of women aviators, mainly British but from other countries too, who served in the Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II. This civilian group ferried airplanes to wherever they were needed, freeing up military pilots. Starting in 1940, they flew everything from Spitfires to heavy bombers. Fifteen women were among those who died in this service. Many of the women have individual Wikipedia entries, but there is also a Wikipedia entry on the Air Transport Auxiliary itself, which has a section on the women pilots.

         1. Absolutely! https://x.com/colour_history/status/1750185478949576716

   2. W00T Sokal!

      I wrote a silly (but enthusiastic!) comment on a Sokal post one time, never expecting the man himself to read the post. So embarrassing.

      Then again, my pseudonym is silly, so…

   3. 1961 – Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.

      Hmmm, That sounds worrying. But when you think about it … not terribly surprising.
      Specifically, it’s a URANIUM core, so even if highly-enriched in 235U, it’s got a half life of seven hundred million years. So it’s specific (“per unit mass”) activity is going to be relatively low. More than 238U λ ~=4.468 × 10^9 years, or the potassium in your bananas (40K λ ~= 1.248 × 10^9 years), but a lot lower than – say – typical fission products like 137Cs λ = 30.17 years). So … bury it a few m deep in soil (with a normal complement of potassium in it’s mineralogy) and you’re going to be really hard put to find it by it’s radioactivity.
      How well U corrodes, and how mobile it is in the environment, I don’t know. It is quite strongly adsorbed onto clay minerals (which is a large part of why clay minerals give a strong signal on our gamma-ray sensors – typically similar contributions from U, Th and K ; variations in those contributions are a correlation tool), which is going to slow it’s diffusion into sediments and groundwater, slowing the development of a plume which geochemical sampling could detect.
      Thinking about it, I’m less surprised that the thing hasn’t been found (yet). Particularly if it went underwater.
      If the bomb was designed to penetrate before exploding (a “bunker buster”), then it’s likely to have made better penetration into the ground than it was designed to go into reinforced concrete.

      1. Wikipedia clarifies that what is missing from Goldsboro Bomb #2 is not the primary fissile uranium-235 core — it was quickly discovered intact along with its tritium-boosted pit and explosive lenses — but the secondary that undergoes hydrogen fusion if the primary detonates. The precise design of American weapons remains classified but it is believed credibly that these bombs are jacketed in a shell of normally non-fissile U-238 which under the intense neutron bombardment from fusion will undergo one-off fission, increasing the yield.

         The location of the secondary is known. It was just too deep in the flooding ground to recover efficiently and it was decided to leave it there with a suitable earth cover to make it less of an attractive nuisance. It is inert and no more radioactive than the thousands of depleted-uranium anti-tank shells in the world’s inventory.

         The really scary part of this broken-arrow event was the non-zero risk that these accidents during armed airborne alerts could have caused nuclear explosions on American and non-enemy territory.

         1. It is inert and no more radioactive than the thousands of depleted-uranium anti-tank shells in the world’s inventory.

            Good, in other words, for scaring the hard-of-thinking. Public entertainment.

      2. The bombs involved were Mark 39s, which can be detonated three ways- Air burst, surface contact, or lay down delay. In all three cases, the descent is slowed by parachute, which in the latter two detonation methods, allow the device to land safely on the ground.
         The one that ended up buried did not deploy the parachute, and landed in swampy farmland. After recovering what they could, the government purchased an easement on the land, and digging there is prohibited.

   4. I’ve seen the future, and it’s Fine.
      https://images.app.goo.gl/nc8JdYotHEXDEDXq9

      1. Dan Quisenberry, the relief pitcher/philosopher/poet of the Kansas City Royals once said “I’ve seen the future, and it is like the present, only longer”.

3. I really enjoy these abbreviated Hili Dialogues (on occasion!)!

   1. Well, that’s the way they used to be. I can always omit all the regular added stuff, which would be a lot less work.

      1. I could send MOAR Coynezaa gifts!

      2. I’m sure, if you decided to delegate some of the work to the commenters, as you have with the “on this day” section, people would step up to the plate.

         1. people would step up to the plate.

            That’s Hili’s job!

            1. :o)

      3. Well, I look forward to the full schmear each morning…your commentary on da nooz digest, the smile producing cartoons, inane videos, and particularly the very moving reminders and constant daily parade of human sadness from the Auschwitz Memorial. I appreciate your incredible dedication required to producing a full Hili each day. But please do what best suits you these days.

         1. Agree.

            1. +1

            2. Me, too.

         2. +1

         3. +1

         4. Yup

            1. +1

         5. Yes I too appreciate it greatly.

4. Thank you Matthew for kicking things off this morning.

5. I think Haley did surprisingly well, compared to her percentages in early polls. This was a competitive race, even though the media are piling on her.

   1. The distribution of Trump- versus Haley- leaning results is very even. No obvious clustering. Which would mean lots of divisiveness. Neighbour versus neighbour. It’s going to be a wild campaign. Best viewed from a distance.

   2. I am dismayed Trump had another win, and I admire Haley for pressing on–though to what end, I can’t be sure. Polls keep showing Trump ahead in a matchup later this year with Biden. But in politics, nine months is a long time. The gap could narrow or widen. As said elsewhere, best try to view it from a distance!

   3. She did better than I expected. If she loses big in South Carolina, I’m afraid that she’ll have to leave the race. Losing in her home state is a bad symbolic (and substantive) blow that will all but end her financial backing.

      As many others would, I’d like to see her beat Trump for the nomination. That would probably give her the presidency, as many moderate Democrats would move over to her side simply because she a younger and more vigorous candidate. A Trump/Biden re-run will be more competitive—assuming that they both reach the finish line which, given their respective ages, is a question.

      1. Haley is anti-abortion, so I think that would very much limit her appeal even to Democrats who might pine for someone younger. I remain a Biden supporter, while I’m keeping an eye on Gavin Newsom.

         I don’t like Harris, who is way above her pay grade, and who is the reason I’m nervous about Biden’s age. But even though Biden’s speaking style is seriously underwhelming, I think Biden’s thinking remains sharp, and he is effective at getting things done, especially given the many Republican roadblocks he must contend with.

         https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1747086086936076342?s=20

   4. The media is piling on her because she is making Trump look like a weaker candidate than the Fox pundits, et. al. would like. I agree that Haley did surprisingly well. Trump’s grip on the party isn’t as implacable as his backers think it is. They’d like her to disappear so Trump doesn’t have to defend himself against her criticisms, and wouldn’t have to travel as much- he’s obviously exhausted. She’s already spent 4 million in South Carolina ad buys and I don’t know if she’ll keep going when she loses there. She’s backed by Koch brothers’ money (well, I guess there is only one brother now) so it’s probably up to them. I hope she stays in past SC, as her presence is obviously rattling Trump’s feeble mind. (I’m referring to his flub at a recent rant rally when he confused Nancy Pelosi with Haley; it was pretty bad.)

6. Seems to me that 55% isn’t much to crow about for a former POTUS, and if you accept just for this argument that he actually won, then he’s the incumbent, right?

   I think it also means that O’Julius didn’t get any DeS votes. If Haley has indeed been getting Koch bro support, I imagine that it will continue.

Comments are closed.