Thursday: Hili dialogue

September 14, 2017 • 6:30 am

Reader’s note: I don’t think I’ve clarified this before, but Hili’s name is pronounced like “hee-lee”, with long “e”s. It is not pronounced like “hilly”.

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How the time has flown! Today’s my last full day in Dobrzyn, as I take the train to Warsaw tomorrow and fly back on Saturday. Naturally I’m hopeful that my sweet female duck, Honey, will have migrated away from the pond. I don’t want her hanging around in the cold weather hoping for handouts.( The pond freezes solid in the winter.)

But today it’s Thursday, September 14, 2017, and it’s National Cream-Filled Donut Day (the “cream” is usually “creme” or “kreme”, indicating a lack of dairy products). I indulge in this comestible only once or twice a year when I go to Dunkin Donuts (I prefer the “double chocolate”: a chocolate-glazed chocolate cake donut). In Colombia, it’s Lord of Miracles of Buga Day, celebrating a cross that grew and grew. But here’s the tale from Wikipedia, and then a picture. The tale tells of a poor laundress in the mid-sixteenth century whose Big Dream was to own a fine crucifix (that’s what Catholicism does to people):

Some days after, while she was washing laundry, she spotted a small but brilliant object that was carried upstream by the current in the middle of the river. She caught it up and discovered that it was a tiny crucifix. She was very happy with her find and as soon as she returned home, fashioned an altar for the small crucifix using a common wooden box.

 One night she heard strange noises coming from the altar box of the crucifix. It was obvious that the wood was splintering. She was astonished to see that the box had been broken by the crucifix which was quite simply growing inside. Although quite small at first, the crucifix grew to almost two meters in length and almost a meter and half in width. The news of the miraculous event spread along all the Cauca River valley and many people started to gather at the place, where a hermitage was built, turning the woman’s humble house into a sanctuary.
The miraculous cross, shown below, now resides in its own church in Guadalajara de Buga, Colombia. The “miracle” also includes God’s diversion of a river so that people could visit the church:

Now onto things that really happened. On this day in 1741, Handel completed his Messiah. In 1752, the British Empire adopted the Gregorian Calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582. On this day in 1901, U.S. President William McKinley died after being shot September 6 in an assassination attempt. Teddy Roosevelt succeeded him as President.

On December 1 of 1969, the U.S. Selective Service chose September 14 as the first date of the Draft Lottery, which included men born between 1944 and 1950 (e.g., me). On that day in December, 366 capsules, each including a different date, were mixed and drawn by officials; the order of drawing was to represent the order of induction into the Armed Forces. Unlucky guys born on September 14 were to be the very first people drafted—and that was during the Vietnam War. My birthday (December 30) came up #3, insuring that I’d be drafted too (the dates chosen turned out to be nonrandom, suggesting poor mixing). I had already applied for conscientious objector status and resolved that if I was not granted it, I would go to jail. Later on I did get my I-O status, but, as I’ve recounted before, I discovered that men born on “draftable days” were forced into conscientious objector status in 1971 but not into the military, a disparity that violated the draft law. With the help of the ACLU, I began a class action suit, Coyne et al. v. Nixon et al, which we won handily in New York’s federal court, freeing several thousand illegally drafted conscientious objectors—starting with those born on September 14 down through the first 120-odd birthdays. But all of us had spent several months working in “alternative service” jobs, drawing the pay of an Army private (about $5000/year in those days), but without the free food, room and board, and medical care of men in armed service.

On this day in 1994, there was a strike in U.S. Major League Baseball, canceling the rest of the season, including the World Series. The strike ended only in April of 1995, when Sonia Sotomayor (then a U.S federal court justice) issued an injunction against the baseball owners. Finally, exactly two years ago, scientists first observed gravitational waves, though the observation wasn’t announced until the next February.

Notables born on September 14 include Alexander von Humboldt (1769), John Gould (1804), Margaret Sanger (1879), Jan Masaryk (1886), Clayton Moore (1914), and Allan Bloom (1930). Those who died on this day include Dante Alighieri (1321), John Harvard (1638; his eponymous college was founded the next year), Dom Pérignon (1715), Aaron Burr (1836), James Fenimore Cooper (1851), Isadora Duncan (1927), John McPhee (1952), Grace Kelly (1982), and Patrick Swayze (2009).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making a virtue of necessity, espousing a form of Feline Darwinism:

A: You killed a mouse again.
Hili: Yes, I’m helping evolution according to my modest ability.
In Polish:
Ja: Znowu zabiłaś mysz.
Hili: Tak, pomagam ewolucji w miarę moich skromnych sił.

The fall in fall migration

September 13, 2017 • 11:30 am

by Greg Mayer

For many bird watchers, the fall migration is the most exciting time of the year, as passage migrants, the arrival of winter visitors, and breeding birds in juvenile plumages, add to the diversity of forms, colors, and species that can be observed. For the birds, unfortunately, the fall migration is a time of high mortality, which is increased by the presence of human structures and lighting across the landscape. Many birds fly into buildings, cell towers, and other structures, and fall, dead or stunned, to the ground. Here’s a stunned bird I found with my vertebrate zoology class yesterday morning at 8 AM in front of a building. Note the closed eye and the drooping wing.

Fallen warbler, UW-Parkside, Kenosha, WI, 2017 09 12.

Fall warblers can be hard to identify, so much so that many bird field guides come with a section entitled “Confusing Fall Warblers“, or something similar. I will leave it to readers as an exercise, to identify this one. The following photo might help, as it shows more of the ventral coloration.

Fallen fall warbler.

I picked him up, and moved him away from the door to the top of a rock (elevated so as not to get stepped on, and perhaps slightly harder for a passing cat or other predator to find).

A fallen warbler on a rock.

After class was over, at 9:30 AM, I checked and he was gone. He may have recovered sufficiently to fly away. My understanding, though, is that birds that fly off have often sustained sufficient injury to their heads that they succumb a few days later.

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ butts

September 13, 2017 • 10:00 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip ,called “bum,” came with this note:

From a story in The Freethinker, with a hat tip to Zoe Williams.

And the email added this:

There seemed like a feast of potential punchlines lurking in that article, but in the end I plumped for one which included my favourite word beginning with B (not “bum”, or “basically”).

I’m not sure what that word is; you can guess yourself (and I’m not sure which of the two pieces it’s in.)

You can read the two articles yourself, but in short, Tory M.P. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Catholic, said he took his church’s teachings on homosexuality and abortion seriously, Portsmouth Bishop Philip Egan, who opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest (on a family oriented site, I can’t use the words I want to characterize such a stand), supported Rees-Mogg with a series of ridiculous statements, including this one:

When on matters of sexual morality, people do not espouse chastity, they open themselves to deep-seated forces within. They can even unwittingly allow the Evil One to bind himself like a serpent tightly around their hearts.

Shades of Alvin Plantinga—here we go with SATAN again, always ready to appear when somebody masturbates or has illicit sex. At the Guardian, Zoe Williams replies scornfully:

The problem with people who bring religion to their politics is that they’re obsessed with sex. It’s never “I’m a devout Anglican, therefore I couldn’t possibly vote for a cap on social security payments (Acts 4:34).” When a politician’s potted history starts “a committed Christian”, you can bet this isn’t a prelude to a CV full of redistributive tax policies. It’s all sodomy and foetuses,

Williams’s comment is actually more telling than this week’s strip, which seems rather lame to me. Nevertheless, it’s a rare exception, and you should, if you like the strip, donate at least a few bucks monthly to the Jesus and Mo Patreon.  

BBC’s Today program honors 60 years of science reporting

September 13, 2017 • 9:00 am

Reader Dom called my attention to two BBC pieces on science that were broadcast yesterday, the 60th anniversary of The Today “programme”. The two bits have been concatenated into one 19-minute broadcast, which you can access by clicking on the screenshot below and then clicking the right arrow when you get to the BBC site:

The participants and a brief summary:

Steve Jones (beginning to 10:15), my old mate and emeritus professor of genetics at University College London, reports on how BBC science reporting has changed since he was a young lad listening to the broadcast. In short, he says, it’s become less worshipful and more critical—a change that Jones doesn’t see as entirely salutary. He briefly reviews several big science stories over the last few decades, including the “mad cow” beef scare, Andrew Wakefield’s phony claims about vaccines and autism (Jones sees this as a “The Big Car Crash” of science reporting, which taught the press a lesson in cynicism), and reporting on climate change, which, according to Steve, emphasizes the media’s structural difficulty of dwelling “controversy” when it should be dealing more with what science really produces: consensus. Steve is, usual, eloquent.

Richard Dawkins and David Willetts (former science minister; both 10:15-end). Willetts talks about the difficulty of making political policy about science, but then states baldly that politicians must adjudicate the science itself. That gets Richard’s dander up, as he properly wants scientists and not politicians to judge scientific truth. I like Richard’s two statements on the source of truth, the second of which is this: “When it comes down to it, science is the only way, finally, to know what’s really true.” The moderator says, “There’s that word ‘true’ again, isn’t it?” Richard says, “Yes; I don’t apologize for that,” and the moderator adds a dubious “Mmmmh.” Willetts once again notes that political policy is not solely concerned with scientific truth, but with people’s valuations of truth as well as their personal interests.

Right enough, but so what? Willetts and Dawkins appear to be talking at cross-purposes, but there’s a lesson here, and of course I dwell on it because it’s m own view:  truths about the world can be established only by science, or by what I call “science broadly construed”—the toolkit  of doubt, experimentation, observation, testing, falsifiability, and consensus  that characterizes the work of not only professional scientists, but also those like historians, archaeologists, and plumbers who are trying to find out what’s true about our Universe—including where our pipes are leaking.

 

Readers’s wildlife photos

September 13, 2017 • 8:00 am

Reader Tim Anderson from Australia sent three diverse photos. His notes are indented, but I have to say that I especially like the first one because of its artistry. It also came with a poem:

This is a picture of an Australian raven (Corvus coronoides taken on a gloomy day.

Australian corvids are difficult to differentiate from photographs alone (there are a number of endemic species that look very much alike, but have different behaviours). This one could be a Torresian Crow, but it is unlikely to be so this far south and so far inland.

In any case, it reminded me of an archaic Scots ballad that my parents taught me as a child. We used to sing it mournfully while driving home at night from Mum’s university classes. You sing it in the minor key, and in an impenetrable Scots accent.

“Twa Corbies”

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
“Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?”

“In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And nane do ken that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair.”

“His hound is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady’s tain anither mate,
So we may mak oor dinner swate.”

“Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We’ll theek oor nest whan it grows bare.”

“Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane;
Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.”

If anyone needs a translation, I can provide it, but it is pretty obvious what the two ravens are intending to do.

This is an Eastern Bearded Dragon (Pogona barbata), an agamid lizard common throughout eastern Australia. The genus includes the rather more spectacular Frill-necked Lizard, which reached its peak of fame during the Tudor monarchy.

This was taken in unusually still conditions using a monochrome camera and a 9.25-inch telescope.

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

September 13, 2017 • 6:30 am

by Grania & Jerry

Good morning! Jerry is still in transit this morning, and will check in with us later. It’s a fine sunny autumn morning here in Ireland.

The first commercial computer to use disk storage,  IBM 305 RAMAC was publicly announced today in 1956. Test units had been in use in the U.S. Navy and at private corporations. It weighed over a ton and had 20 tracks of drum memory which could store about 5MB of data. It was so expensive that it was not produced for sale, but for monthly lease—and a hugely expensive lease at that. How time has changed the computer! It’s no wonder that at the time IBM did not think there would ever be a high demand for computers in business, let alone at home.

In 1985 Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan and then in the USA, number two in a seemingly endless series of platforming and racing games. I’m not a fan, but 310 million fans can’t be wrong.

Am I the only person who thinks that Mario stole his look from George the handyman in Newhart?

Back in 2008, Hurricane Ike laid waste to Galveston having tracked devastation through Haiti and Cuba first. It went on to cause massive damage over a large area reaching from Louisiana to Texas.

On the birthday front, Joni Sledge (1956 – 2017) from Sister Sledge was born today. Their hit song We Are Family guarantees them their immortality.

Over at the news site kahoku.co.jp, there is a report in Japanese (Chrome will translate it) describing Hiroko Kubota’s new embroidery book (featuring Hili on the cover) and reporting on the exhibition in Sendai City of some of her cat embroideries (there’s one d*g, too). Here’s a photo of the framed Hili embroidery with the translated caption:

The automatic translation says this, which I’ve copied word for word (my emphasis). Those who can read Japanese might give us an accurate translation of the fate of that embroidered d*g.

Kubota is known for “cat shirt” embroidered on a shirt with the appearance of a cat appearing from his pocket, and the sophisticated and adorable cat is domestically and abroad with many fans.

In the embroidery exhibition, Mr. Kubota exhibited six cats and one dog stabbed for the full-length English masterpiece “The magic process EMBROIDERED CATS” (The Magic Process Embroidered Cats). You can see the delicate coloring and stitching that creates lively facial expressions and patterns, fur coat.

A tw**t after Michelangelo: Ceiling Cat creates Da Hooman:

https://twitter.com/holly/status/907273888358432768

Matthew found this David Attenborough tw**t with a lovely video of kin selection in raccoons; I think it’s been on this site before, but the video (and Attenborough’s caption) are worth seeing:

https://twitter.com/Attenboroughs_D/status/907510344226152448

Matthew also sent this cute tw**t, although perhaps Maura doesn’t know what “nutsacks” means in American English. On second thought, perhaps she does:

And finally on to the busy doings of Poland’s most famous cat.

A: Hili, what are you doing here?
Hili: I’m doing traineeship. I’m helping to edit Jerry’s website.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, co tu robisz?
Hili: Jestem na praktyce, pomagam redagować stronę Jerrego.

Inappropriate gesture of the year: A 9/11 Memorial Moment of Mini-Muffins

September 12, 2017 • 9:00 am

I found this photo on Facebook, and sure enough, some checking showed that a Marriott hotel branch did indeed memorialize the 9/11 victims with this thoughtful Moment of Mini-Muffins:

What a touching way to remind the 3,000 dead and 6,000 injured. Granted, the hotel chain did issue this explanation:

“We are aware of the picture that was tweeted. It shows an offer that was made independently by the hotel and not the Marriott Hotels brand. As far as we know, it was limited to one property. While the hotel was making a sympathetic gesture to its guests in remembrance of 9/11, we apologize and understand why some people may have misunderstood the intent of the offer. We are reminding our hotels to use discretion and be sensitive when remembering major events such as 9/11.”

What’s almost worse than this hamhanded gesture is the notion that somewhere, somebody thought this: “Let’s hand out some of those cheap mini-muffins for 9/11. But wait! The customers might gorge themselves, so let’s limit it to half an hour.”

And really, how can you “misunderstand the intent of the offer”? The intent is clear, it’s the method that stinks. Don’t blame customer criticism on “misunderstanding.”