Tuesday: Hili dialogue

July 10, 2018 • 6:30 am

by Grania

It’s Monkey Trial Day: in 1925 the trial of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act, began. In 1966 the Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., held a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. In 1553 the extremely unfortunate Lady Jane Grey became Queen for nine days. In 1991 Boris Yeltsin became the first elected President of Russia and in 1992 Panamanian drugs lord Manuel Noriega was sentenced to 40 years in prison for his sordid career in drug trafficking, bribery, corruption and racketeering.

It’s the birthday of Nikola Tesla (1856), Ron Glass (1945) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (1977) – both Serenity alumni – and Jessica Simpson (1980).

Philosophy and comestibles are the subject of conversation today in Poland.

Hili: I’m thinking and digesting.
Cyrus: I’m just digesting.

In Polish:

Hili: Myślę i trawię.
Cyrus: Ja tylko trawię

A few miles away Leon is patrolling the shop floor.

Leon: Insects are not working too hard today.

 

Finally, some bits and pieces from Twitter.

Fair point

 

Dining in

Dining out

Nothing has ever made rolling in the mud so enticing

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1016346153925787648

And an adorable conversation overheard.

The aftermath of the UK’s Conservative party having two key members resign.

Cat on a mission

https://twitter.com/holycutenesss/status/1015372877359730688

A disagreement in the bird kingdom

Just one of those days when you get knocked down by a dolphin.

Vampire cat awaiting supper.

https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1016274946375503872

Reader Harry has been doing some investigating about a wall, click through for the conclusion.

Some science-oriented Twitter

When crabs attack,

Eerie and beautiful, turn the sould up for this one

Matthew’s comment on this: “Gorgeous fossils from round 290 myr ago. This thing is part of our lineage, and is neither a lizard nor a dinosaur.”

The mullet

Right, back to work for you!

https://twitter.com/StefanodocSM/status/1016252289043124224

 

Hat-tip: Heather, Matthew, Harry S.

You think Honey has a big job!

July 9, 2018 • 9:45 am

Have a look at this tweet sent by reader Michael, which he calls “duck adoption agency”:

This of course raises many questions. Why do the mothers do this? (It is of course maladaptive to take care of ducklings who don’t carry your genes.) Is it just that they can’t avoid it when an orphan duckling joins their own brood? Can they distinguish between their own chicks and unrelated ones? Does their inability to do this make them prey to having such large broods?

I’ve written a bird expert about this bizarre phenomenon, so stay tuned.  Perhaps birders have already studied this, but I don’t know from mergansers!

UPDATE: Here is a “Supermom” goldeneye studied by reader Bruce Lyon, whose brood included offspring from six different moms. I’ll let him describe it in the comments. This is only a small part of her brood!

Note to readers

July 9, 2018 • 8:30 am

Professor Ceiling Cat here. I am still enjoying a well-deserved break from writing here (though I do enjoy it), and am entertaining visitors and having lots of extra-academic fun. I’ll be back on Wednesday. In the meantime, please hold off emailing me any news items or other things until then, as they tend to get lost in the welter of emails.

Here are the ducks (still doing splendidly) after two big unleashed dogs (whose owner was, of course a law-flouting miscreant) ran by the pond yesterday). They swam to the corner on Honey’s signal and remained absolutely still for about 20 minutes. There must be an instinctive fear of large mammals in ducks.

They are all looking at the spot where the dogs were (15 minutes before) and Honey is third from the rear. You can see she’s barely distinguishable from her brood now.

To paraphrase Andrew Sullivan, “See you on Wednesday.”

And remember:

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 9, 2018 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning! (and good night to those of you in New Zealand).

In 1816  Argentina declared its independence from Spain, Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan guy) set a new world record for 100m freestyle swimming. In 1937 the silent film archives of the Fox Film Corporation were destroyed in a fire. In 1962 a high-altitude nuclear test called Starfish Prime was conducted by the US. The newspaper was pretty upbeat about it.

Today is the birthday of OJ Simpson, Tom Hanks, Courtney Love, and Jack White (of The White Stripes).

From Poland today we have cats who appear fairly single-minded about the thing that is of utmost importance to felids.

Hili: I was dirty and I washed myself.
A: And now?
Hili: I’m hungry and I will feed myself.

In Polish:

Hili: Byłam brudna i umyłam się.
Ja: I co dalej?
Hili: Jestem głodna i nakarmię się.

 

Leon: What’s for supper today?

 

Finally, a selection of Twitter for your delectation.

A fascinating phenomenon in the UK during the hot, dry weather: archaeology ancient and less ancient shows up. More here.

From the football.

https://twitter.com/harleivy/status/1015983406419791874

Biology Twitter

Click through for the whole thread on this one

Click through for the whole thread on chimps

Duck adoptions

As best I can tell these are glass, not real

Random weirdness on the Internet

People are still fascinated by the apparent inability of artists to do cats and babies. As far as I know the baby thing was because the infant was painted to show the adult they became. No idea about the cats though.

Business Duck. Apparently.

Sound up on this one.

Follow Matthew during his epic voyage through Norway giggling at perfect normal words.

And finally a cat-pile.

https://twitter.com/lipezyKinc/status/1012190351770177536

Hat-tip: Matthew.

El Al responds, ineffectually, to a woman reader objecting to the airline’s catering to misogynistic Jews

July 8, 2018 • 8:00 am

On June 24 I reported that El Al Airlines, the national airline of Israel, once again made several women change their seats so that Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish men didn’t have to violate their religious scruples of not being in the position of touching women. This is after El Al, in a lawsuit brought by an outraged woman who had to move, settled the suit by paying her and then stating that they “agreed to never again ask a passenger to move seats based on a request that involved gender.”

El Al lied, for in this latest incident they did ask the women to move, and even if the women moved voluntarily, it still violates the airline’s promise to simply not ask.

I had previously written El Al over the earlier incident and got a similar promise. This time an outraged woman reader wrote the airline expressing anger over this sexism. Here is her letter:

Dear El Al Airlines,

I was shocked to hear of the mistreatment of women by your airlines when I discovered that women were asked to change their seats due to the religious sensitivities of a few men.
I was further shocked to discover that your airline was already sued for this type pf misconduct and that you had promised to never do it again. The proper response to the men who are causing the disruption is to KICK THEM OFF THE PLANE! This will set the precedent that these misogynists need to prevent further disruptions and hurt. Accommodating them will do nothing but encourage more of this behavior in the future.
I hope you will appropriately apologize to the women you have deeply offended – I know that if this were to have happened to me, I would have a very hard time getting over it!
Sincerely,
[Name redacted]
Here’s the response from El Al, just arrived:

Dear [name redacted],

Thank you for taking the time to write to El Al Customer Care and thank you for your patience with our response.

While in the air, we remain sensitive to current issues that stir daily life in Israel on the ground.

Discrimination against women could never be part of El Al policy, nor could preference of one sector over another.

El Al, as Israel’s national airline, strives to accommodate the entire gamut of passengers that choose to fly with us. We do everything possible to ensure that both non-religious and religious needs are respected.

I do hope that you will continue to choose to fly with us and give us the chance to demonstrate that we are fully committed to all our passengers. Thank you for caring.

Sincerely,
Aviva Lavi
El Al Customer Care

I, and the woman involved, considers this a non-response.  If “discrimination against women could never be part of El Al policy”, then why do they go on to imply that discrimination against women may be part of their policy to ‘respect the needs of both the religious and the non-religious”?  It looks as if they’ll continue to ask women to move if the Haredi men make a fuss.

This reminds me of the ACLU’s new policy to balance legal free speech against the possibility that certain people could be offended by free speech, and to ratchet down their defense in the case of the latter. Free speech is a non-negotiable, as is equal treatment of women by airlines.

El Al is weaselling here, and I urge readers to avoid flying them until they make a firm commitment that women will never be asked to move because of religious sentiments that are misogynistic.

As the writer noted, “Is this a temple or is this an airline?”

El Al apparently wants to play it both ways.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 8, 2018 • 6:44 am

by Grania

Good morning, welcome to Sunday!

 

Today in 1776 John Nixon delivered the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. In 1874 the Mounties begin their March West. In 1994 Kim Jong-il assumed supreme leadership of North Korea on the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, and in 2011 Atlantis launched on the last US Space Shuttle mission. The most important one, today in 1947 broadcasts reported that a UFO had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico spawning movies, TV series, novels and countless conspiracy theorists including one taxi driver in Cork, Ireland who tried to convince me of its truth just last week.

 

Today is the birthday of Kevin Bacon (1958),  Winnie Fung (1962), Beck (1970)

Re-live your youth

From Poland Hili is trying out her best etiquette, and then retiring it in short order.

Hili: Do you mind my bringing dead mice onto the verandah?
A: I do.
Hili: Too bad. You’ll have to get used to it.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy nie przeszkadza ci, że przynoszę na werandę martwe myszy?
Ja: Przeszkadza.
Hili: No trudno, musisz się z tym pogodzić.

 

Finally onto interesting tweets from the Twittersphere.

Tweet from a reader whose name Jerry mislaid: The answer is below the fold:

https://twitter.com/ne0liberal/status/1002372871220539392

Baby flamingo

Reciprocity

Baby coral

Priceless Amber

Part MCMXXVIIII of “Isn’t Nature Wonderful”

A Twitter book-club you can join.

Breakfast Cat

Woe to those ill-mannered enough to get married during football season.

https://twitter.com/bbcpaddy/status/1015590863886569472

 

Hat-tip to Matthew, mystery Tweet person, Barry & Gethyn

Continue reading “Sunday: Hili dialogue” →

Caturday felid trifecta +2: Perfectly camouflaged tabby, hummingbird taunts cat, cat deep learning,

July 7, 2018 • 2:00 pm

Welcome to another Caturday where we feature cats and absolutely nothing else.

Ready?

https://twitter.com/thecatvids/status/992089932687593472

The first cat of the week is Camouflage Cat.

Well, some of this story is true, because this is indisputably a picture of a cat on a floor. Given that it’s source is the Daily Wail, it may be more embroidered than is claimed. Nevertheless, this ginger tom perfectly matches the stain on its staff’s floor boards.

 

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Next we have a cat and a humming-bird. One of the two is a perfect troll. That cat behaves itself perfectly.

Reader ViralHog:

This was a typical morning sitting in my yard, having coffee, supervising my cat and watching the hummingbirds. What was different today as compared to three years of comfortable apathy between the two was the aggressive curiosity of the birds! I’ve never seen them get up in her face like that! She has some pretty great self control and I didn’t really think she’d lunge. She’d rather have outside visitation than eat a bird and be forever banned. The look on her face at the end perfectly sums up my ‘what the hell!”

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Finally, a strange story of AI and cats, namely the Meow Generator where a computer is trained to learn what a cat face is from a database, and then generates its own. It’s the brainchild of Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau. The results are a little disconcerting if indisputably cat-like. What do you think?

 

If you need something to soothe your senses after those cats, you could try Neko Atsume, which is a zen garden of cats on your phone. It’s free and available for iPhone and Android.

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h/t: Grania, Tom