Welcome to Thursday, March 21, 2024, and National Crunchy Taco Day. Also known as a “hard-shell taco,” this is an arrant example of culinary cultural appropriation that was inventeed in the United States. I like the soft-shell ones and don’t understand the popularity of this item. But, as they say, so it goes:
It’s also International Tiramisu Day, National French Bread Day, National Vermouth Day, National California Strawberry Day, World Poetry Day, National Flower Day, Education Freedom Day, International Colour Day ,International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, International Day of Forests (International), by proclamation of the United Nations General Assembly, Rosie the Riveter Day in the U.S., World Down Syndrome Day, and World Puppetry Day (International).
Although Normal Rockwell had an explicit painting of Rosie the Riveter on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post (see the Wikipedia page for Rockwell’s image), this poster, mistakenly called “Rosie the Riveter” is more famous. From Wikipedia:
More recent evidence indicates that the formerly misidentified photo is actually of war worker Naomi Parker (later Fraley) taken at Alameda Naval Air Station in California.[55][56][57][58] The “We Can Do It!” poster was displayed only to Westinghouse employees in the Midwest during a two-week period in February 1943, then it disappeared for nearly four decades. During the war, the name “Rosie” was not associated with the image, and the purpose of the poster was not to recruit women workers but to be motivational propaganda aimed at workers of both sexes already employed at Westinghouse. It was only later, in the early 1980s, that the Miller poster was rediscovered and became famous, associated with feminism, and often mistakenly called “Rosie the Riveter”
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Texas law that allows state officials to arrest migrants entering the country illegally, and state judges to prosecute them, is back in court, and not yet being enforced. As you recall, it was allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court, which didn’t rule on its constitutionality, but was kicked back to lower federal courts for more judgment. And the first lower court it was kicked to appears split:
Lawyers for Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and the Biden administration were back in court on Wednesday for the latest round in a bitter fight over immigration enforcement, as a panel of three federal judges in New Orleans heard arguments over the state’s migrant arrest law.
The panel, which did not immediately issue a ruling, was considering whether the law can take effect while its constitutionality is being challenged in court. During the hourlong hearing, which took place over video conference, only two of the judges spoke, and their comments suggested a split on the panel.
The chief judge of the court, Priscilla Richman, appeared skeptical of the Texas law, particularly its provision allowing state courts to order migrants back to Mexico. The other, Judge Andrew S. Oldham, a former general counsel to Mr. Abbott, focused his questions on the Justice Department’s lawyers and appeared likely to side with Texas. The third judge, Irma Carrillo Ramirez, who did not speak, was appointed by President Biden and confirmed only a few months ago.
The hearing came after a day of back-and-forth rulings that briefly allowed the Texas law to take effect. It would give state and local police agencies the power to arrest migrants who cross into Texas without authorization — powers that the Biden administration says are reserved for the federal government.
. . .By the end of Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, which had been considering the law’s constitutionality after a lower court judge ruled against the state, rendered all that moot in an order that once again blocked the law from taking effect.
Legal experts said that if the law stands, Texas would be the only state known to deputize local authorities to arrest people suspected of illegally entering the country. A ruling in the state’s favor, they said, could encourage other Republican-led states to enact similar laws. On Tuesday, lawmakers in Iowa passed their own similar bill.
In my view, it’s a federal issue and the states can’t willy-nilly make their own laws about this. It’s immigration, which is a national issue with the same rules applying to all immigrants. On the other hand, I think something needs to be done about it, pronto. There was a bipartisan bill that was vetoed by, of all people, Trump, who isn’t even in government, but the GOP herd follows his orders. On the third hand, that wasn’t such a good bill.
*The Washington Post discusses the possibility that Trump has dementia, and reveals that his father did (note that most forms of dementia are only weakly heritable).
The incident, Mary L. Trump said, left Donald Trump visibly upset at his father’s descent into dementia, which medical records show had been diagnosed several years earlier.Trump reflected his anguish in an interview around that time, with Playboy in 1997 reporting that seeing his father “addled with Alzheimer’s” had left him wondering “out loud about the senselessness of life.”
Since it’s not that worrisome for your own prospects to have a parent with dementia, this stuff below is what bothers me more:
Today, as the 77-year-old Trump seeks to return to the White House, he is still focused on the ravages of dementia — but this time he is using the condition as a political weapon, alleging without medical proof that President Biden, 81, is “cognitively impaired.” Those attacks follow a long pattern for the former president, who for years has bashed enemies as mentally frail while boasting in public about “acing” the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a basic test that flags signsof early dementia.
Trump regularly claims to have passed the test twice, but through a spokesman, his campaign declined to release his test results or to specify when he most recently took it. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), the former White House physician, said in an interview this monththat he administered it to Trump once, in January 2018. Trump in November released a three-paragraph letter in which Bruce Aronwald, a doctor of osteopathy, said that Trump’s health was excellent and that “cognitive exams were exceptional” but provided no details. Aronwald did not respond to a request for comment.
Ziad Nasreddine, the neurologist who created the test, said in an interview that if an individual in their 70s had not taken the Montreal test since 2018, the results would not be valid to cite today.
Three items about the war, which seems to be heating up even more.
*According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel has killed five senior Hamas officials in Rafah.
IDF fighter jets eliminated five senior Hamas officials in Rafah on Monday, the IDF announced on Wednesday.
The jets operated in accordance with intelligence provided by the IDF and Shin Bet.
The operatives killed were Sayid Katab Alkhashash, Osama Hamd Zaher, Muhamed, and Aud Almelalakhi, who were heads of Hamas’s Emergency Bureau in northern and eastern Rafah. Hadi Abu Alrus Kasin, an operations officer, was also killed.
As part of their operations, they managed Hamas activity in humanitarian zones and were responsible for coordination with Hamas operatives in the field.
Furthermore, Nidal Aleed, the head of Hamas’s Rafah Emergency Bureau, who managed all of its operations in the area, was killed in a strike last week, according to the announcement.
What this shows is that the IDF is already going after Hamas in Rafah—just what the U.S., E.U. and everybody else doesnt want. But the war cabinet has already said that those other countries can stuff it, and they’re right. So far, though, indications are that only a few IDF soldiers have actually operated on the ground in Rafah.
*The Elder of Ziyon analyzes the casualty figures from the Israel/Hamas war and concludes that the deaths of noncombatant civilians is likely grossly inflated, and that at least half of the deaths reported by Hamas were actually terrorists. But remember the EoZ’s estimates are subjective.
The Hamas media office simply makes things up out of thin air. Just as we’ve seen from the Al Ahli hospital explosion, they will inflate death tolls by 5 times or more. And the media knows it – none of them reported the higher Kuwaiti roundabout figures (that were killed by Palestinian gunmen.) [JAC: These are the Gazans around the food trucks recently who turned out to have been shot by Palestinian gunmen.] Yet the UN relies on the Hamas media office for its statistics of women and children killed, as well as the total number killed given by the MoH which includes the 13,000 from Hamas, and then the UN figures get reported as factual by the media.
Now that means that the 13,000 killed reported by Hamas are highly suspect. We can imagine there are some bodies that never made it to hospitals, but not anything close to 13,000.
In short, there are not 31,000 dead in Gaza. The real number is thousands less.
Let’s be generous and pretend that Hamas only inflates their portion of the death toll numbers by a factor of 2. That would mean that the total Gaza death toll is closer to 23,000, not 31,000.
Now, Israel is reporting that it has killed 13,000 Hamas and other terrorists. From previous wars, IDF estimates of terrorists killed were found to be accurate even though they were hotly disputed at the time.
I don’t know how the IDF makes these estimates, which are invariably very good, but let’s move on:
If the IDF has killed 13,000 terrorists, and the total Gaza death toll is 23,000 and not 31,000, that means that 56% of those killed are Hamas.If the real death toll is closer to 20,000 (which would be my guess with Hamas inflating their numbers by a factor of 5), then the percentage goes up to 65% – nearly two out of three being terrorist, which is an absolutely stunning number given how much Hamas relies on human shields as its defensive strategy.
But the number killed could be even less than that. We are not even counting the number of civilians killed by Hamas fire and rockets that fell short that are blamed on Israel.
*The U.S. has a new and even dumber alternative for dismantling Hamas given that it doesn’t want the IDF to go into Rafah, which of course the IDF must do to take out the remnants of that organization. (For reasons known best to Biden, he doesn’t want an assault on Rafah.)
The US will present alternative plans for how Israel can continue pursuing Hamas without launching a major ground operation in Rafah during an upcoming meeting with a visiting Israeli delegation in Washington, two senior US officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.
“This isn’t just us saying, ‘No you can’t do it.’ We’re saying that we’re willing to work with you on viable alternatives that still help you achieve your objectives,” one of the senior US officials said, speaking to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan touched on this idea on Monday when he announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a request from US President Joe Biden during their phone call earlier that day to send an inter-agency team to Washington “to hear US concerns about Israel’s current Rafah planning and to lay out an alternative approach that would target key Hamas elements in Rafah and secure the Egypt-Gaza border, without a major ground invasion.”
Elaborating on the alternative approach the Biden administration has in mind, a second senior US official said Washington envisions Israel focusing instead on preventing the smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor.
The official avoided blaming the Egyptian government for the smuggling that was partially responsible for Hamas’s re-armament amid successive rounds of conflict with Israel over the past 15 years. However, they said reaching a new arrangement with Cairo and building the necessary infrastructure to cut off the smuggling route would be more critical to the dismantlement of Hamas than a major ground offensive in Rafah.
This is totally insane, an indication that those in the U.S. who are supposed to be “thinking” have a conjunction between crania and fundaments. Stopping surreptitious movement of weapons and ammo between Egypt and Gaza is going to get rid of Hamas? Who are they kidding? Do they think that Hams doesn’t already have a huge stockpile of weapons, and can get more from sources other than Egypt. Did Tom “I don’t know much but I try” Friedman create this policy? It’s frustrating that a non-military biologist like me can see through these harebrained schemes.
*And, in today’s most important news item (from the NYT), Pattie Boyd, the model for “Layla” (my favorite rock song) is selling, among other stuff the love letters she got from Eric Clapton while she was still married to George Harrison.
In a recent interview, Boyd recalled that she had assumed the letter was from a crazed fan and showed it to her husband, the Beatles guitarist George Harrison. Then she forgot about it — until a few hours later when the phone rang. It was Eric Clapton, the rock guitarist and one of Harrison’s friends.
“Did you get my letter?” Clapton asked.
More than 50 years after Clapton’s missive drew Boyd into one of rock music’s most mythic love triangles, the note is getting a moment in the spotlight. On Friday, Christie’s is auctioning over 110 items from Boyd’s archives, including the letter (with an estimated price of up to 15,000 pounds, or about $19,000), as well as photographs of Clapton and Harrison and handwritten song lyrics by both the rock greats.
Boyd said she was parting with the intimate correspondence because she had moved on from that part of her life. “Eric wrote the most divine, beautiful letters, and I don’t want to keep reading them,” Boyd said. “It hurts.”
After receiving Clapton’s phone call, Boyd said that she didn’t know whether to feel “joyous or guilty” for having caught his attention. Frustrated in her marriage — with Harrison increasingly preoccupied by the Beatles’ breakup — Boyd said she couldn’t choose between the two men. “My astrological sign is Pisces, which is fishes swimming in different directions,” Boyd said. “Making up my mind on these major decisions is always hell.”
Here’s one transcription of that letter that you can see here (current bid is £11,000, but it’ll go for a LOT more, I’m betting). Clapton’s handwriting is surprisingly good. The entire Pattie Boyd collection is here.
The afterglow:
Harrison was aware of his friend’s feelings for Boyd. In her memoir, “Wonderful Tonight,” Boyd recalls a party at which Clapton said to Harrison, “I have to tell you, man, that I’m in love with your wife.” Yet the men never came to blows. For musicians, Boyd said, “rivalry is played out via a guitar.”
Eventually, Boyd succumbed to Clapton’s charm. In July 1974, she left Harrison. A week later, Clapton called and asked her to join him on tour, a call that led to a 10-year marriage and another classic song. In 1976, Clapton wrote “Wonderful Tonight” while waiting for Boyd to choose a party outfit.
And, of course, I have to post “Layla” once again. This is one of the brst versions (I go by the solo):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is kvetching:
Hili: For a cat, striving for happiness is not a small matter.A: What does it mean in practice?Hili: I devote much time to the thought of where I would be more comfortable.
Hili: Dla kota dążenie do szczęścia nie jest kwestią drugorzędną.Ja: Co to oznacza w praktyce?Hili: Wiele czasu poświęcam refleksji gdzie będzie mi lepiej.
And a picture of Mishka, King of the Beasts, staffed by Anna and Jay:
*******************
From The Dodo Pet:
From Somewhere on the Internet:
An Easter display of soda from “The Atheist Jew” via America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy, with the caption “What is going on in the U.S.? Don’t forget to read the signs:
From Masih, two Iranian protestors, both blinded in one eye by the government:
Mahsa Jina Amini's murder in Iran custody was 'unlawful', says UN mission.
These two brave Iranian women who were blinded and injured during the #WomanLifeFreedom uprisings, #SimaMoradbegi and #MersedehShahinkar, will be testifying alongside other activists before the @UN today.… pic.twitter.com/xjNmgNRKkY— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 18, 2024
From Rosemary: Canada appears to have lost its moral compass. Second tweet: a response I got when I tweeted it. The announcement from Canada is still reprehensible.
The announcement, while reprehensible, is symbolic. Canada has not sold arms/munitions to Israel in over 30 years. pic.twitter.com/7RfDpM6Hwl
— Dangerous Speech Podcast (@dangerousspeach) March 20, 2024
I think I agree with Peter, but in Faith Versus Fact I do describe a situation that would make me (tentatively) believe in God. Boghossian gets heckled by a believer, but handles it civilly and with aplomb:
A heckler attempted to disrupt my talk at FLCCC Alliance (@Covid19Critical) in Phoenix. This is my response. pic.twitter.com/BkqMcXLgBd
— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) March 20, 2024
I remember the Evzones very well because I lived in Greece for 2.5 years as a child. I used to watch them parade in front of the Presidential Palace:
Evzones, the Presidential Guard of Greece.pic.twitter.com/Mdt859zevq
— Figen (@TheFigen_) March 20, 2024
From Blue, a happy kitty making vertical biscuits:
Happy kitty.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/gOZNhdMB43
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 17, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a six-year-old girl murdered by cyanide gas upon arrival at the camp:
21 March 1936 | A French Jewish girl, Gitla Smutek, was born in Paris.
She arrived at #Auschwitz on 29 September 1942 in a transport of 1,004 Jews deported from Drancy. She was among the 698 people murdered after selection in gas chambers. pic.twitter.com/LIkIJcIv9p
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 21, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first appears to be the first documented photo of a cat:
This daguerreotype is most likely the first documented photo of a cat, circa 1845 pic.twitter.com/t3fzK4UcvD
— Adrian Black (@MsAdrianBlack) March 20, 2024
. . . and a lovely ribbon worm:
(2/10) Marvel at the spectacular colors of the Bifrost Nemertean, a ribbon worm named after Bifröst, the rainbow bridge in Norse mythology.https://t.co/FaBIUV1djo#toptenmarinespecies #taxonomistappreciationday #OceanDecade #GenOcean #marinespecies pic.twitter.com/1FwT46oAiN
— WoRMS (@WRMarineSpecies) March 19, 2024
Mexican cuisine includes a completely flat crisp fried tortilla called a “tostada” which they top with things like mashed avocado or beans etc.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tostada_(tortilla)
On this day:
630 – Emperor Heraclius returns the True Cross, one of the holiest Christian relics, to Jerusalem.
1556 – On the day of his execution in Oxford, former archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer deviates from the scripted sermon by renouncing the recantations he has made and adds, “And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy, and Antichrist with all his false doctrine.”
1788 – A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins.
1871 – Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone.
1919 – The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established becoming the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia.
1925 – The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.
1928 – Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
1935 – Shah of Iran Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran.
1943 – Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through; von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.
1945 – World War II: Operation Carthage: Royal Air Force planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also accidentally hit a school, killing 125 civilians.
1952 – Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
1960 – Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
1965 – Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of uncrewed lunar space probes.
1965 – Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
1970 – The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco.
1980 – Cold War: American President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet–Afghan War.
1983 – The first cases of the 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic begin; Israelis and Palestinians accuse each other of poison gas, but the cause is later determined mostly to be psychosomatic.
1986 – Debi Thomas became the first African American to win the World Figure Skating Championships
1994 – The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change enters into force.
1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
2000 – Pope John Paul II makes his first ever pontifical visit to Israel. [Spoiler: World peace did not ensue.]
2006 – The social media site Twitter is founded.
Births:
1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach, German Baroque composer and musician (d. 1750).
1752 – Mary Dixon Kies, American inventor (d. 1837). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1802 – Augusta Waddington, Welsh writer and patron of the arts (d. 1896). [She helped found Y Gymraes (“The Welshwoman”), the first Welsh-language periodical for women. Her other interests included folk music and she encouraged the production and use of the traditional Welsh triple harp, employing a resident harpist at Llanover Hall. Big Ben in London is said to have been named after her husband, as he was Commissioner of Works in 1855 when the Palace of Westminster was built.]
1831 – Dorothea Beale, English suffragist, educational reformer and author (d. 1906). [As Principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, she became the founder of St Hilda’s College, Oxford.]
1839 – Modest Mussorgsky, Russian pianist and composer (d. 1881).
1857 – Alice Henry, Australian journalist and activist (d. 1943).
1866 – Antonia Maury, American astronomer and astrophysicist (d. 1952). [The first to detect and calculate the orbit of a spectroscopic binary.]
1885 – Pierre Renoir, French actor and director (d. 1952).
1902 – Son House, American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1988).
1904 – Forrest Mars, Sr., American candy maker, created M&M’s and Mars bar (d. 1999).
1922 – Russ Meyer, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2004). [Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!]
1925 – Peter Brook, English-French director and producer (d. 2022).
1930 – Otis Spann, American blues pianist, singer and composer (d. 1970).
1937 – Ann Clwyd, Welsh journalist and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Wales. [Successfully introduced the Female Genital Mutilation Bill (to prohibit parents in the UK from sending, or taking, their daughters abroad for operations such as female circumcision.]
1943 – Vivian Stanshall, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and painter (d. 1995).
1944 – David Lindley, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer (d. 2023).
1950 – Sergey Lavrov, Russian politician and diplomat, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
1955 – Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian politician and retired military officer, 38th President of Brazil.
1958 – Gary Oldman, English actor, filmmaker, musician, and author.
1959 – Sarah Jane Morris, English singer-songwriter.
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. (Herbert Hoover):
1617 – Pocahontas, Algonquian Indigenous princess (b. c. 1595). [As a kid, I saw her statue in Gravesend, Kent, where she died, and later the original version in Jamestown, VA when I visited the US as a teenager.]
1656 – James Ussher, Irish archbishop (b. 1581). [His accurate dating of the lifespans of old biblical dudes poses a serious challenge to the theory of evolution!]
1729 – Elżbieta Sieniawska, politically influential Polish magnate (b. 1669). [Called “the uncrowned Queen of Poland”.]
1843 – Robert Southey, English poet, historian, and translator (b. 1774).
1920 – Evelina Haverfield, British suffragette and aid worker (b. 1867).
1980 – Peter Stoner, American mathematician and astronomer (b. 1888).
1985 – Michael Redgrave, English actor, director, and manager (b. 1908). [His birth was noted here just yesterday.]
1991 – Leo Fender, American businessman, founded Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (b. 1909).
1997 – Wilbert Awdry, English cleric and author, created The Railway Series, the basis for Thomas the Tank Engine (b. 1911).
1999 – Ernie Wise, English comedian and actor (b. 1925). [Known for his “short, fat, hairy legs”.]
2011 – Pinetop Perkins, American singer and pianist (b. 1913).
2017 – Colin Dexter, English author (b. 1930).
2017 – Martin McGuinness, Irish republican and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland (b. 1950). [The Saville Inquiry concluded that, although he was “engaged in paramilitary activity” at the time of Bloody Sunday and had probably been armed with a Thompson submachine gun, there was insufficient evidence to make any finding other than they were “sure that he did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire”. McGuinness later contributed to the Good Friday Agreement and formed an unlikely friendship with Ian Paisley which formed the basis for the 2016 film The Journey.]
2019 – Victor Hochhauser CBE, British music promoter (b. 1923). [Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Hochhauser was the first impresario to organise tours of the West by Soviet musicians, and introduced audiences to David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Emil Gilels, Sviatoslav Richter, and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Dmitri Shostakovich was a house guest.]
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Mary Dixon Kies (born on this day in 1752, died 1837) was an American inventor. On May 5, 1809, her patent for a new technique of weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats was signed by President James Madison.
Some sources say she was the first woman to receive a US Patent, however other sources cite Hannah Slater in 1793, or Hazel Irwin, who received a patent for a cheese press in 1808, as the first. [Wikipedia doesn’t explain the difficulty in establishing this, but women had difficulties obtaining a patent in their own names and there was a fire in the Patent Office in 1836, so perhaps these are factors?]
Mary’s father, John Dixon, was a farmer born in 1679 in Ulster, Ireland. Her mother, Janet Kennedy, was John Dixon’s third wife. They had married in Voluntown, Connecticut on August 7, 1741.
Mary Dixon was born in Killingly, Connecticut on March 21, 1752. She married Isaac Pike I, and in 1770 they had a son, Isaac Pike II. After his death she married John Kies (1750–1813) who died on August 18, 1813, at age 63. She then lived with her second son, Daniel Kies, in Brooklyn, New York, until her death at age 85 in 1837.
Because of the Napoleonic Wars, the United States had embargoed all trade with France and Great Britain, creating a need for American-made hats to replace European millinery. The straw-weaving industry filled the gap, with over $500,000 ($9 million in today’s money) worth of straw bonnets produced in Massachusetts alone in 1810.
Mary Kies received her patent on May 5, 1809, for a new technique of weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats.
The hats produced with this technique were sturdier than others, because Kies’ method of using silk instead of straws in the seam held the cross-hatching together. Also, the hat-making method she introduced was highly cost-effective; thus, a lot of businesses in the hat-manufacturing market adopted it, after Kies’ patent was burned in the fire of the Patent Office in 1836.
Even though there was an estimated profit of $500,00 (now worth $4.7 million) made from straw hat manufacturing, Kies made very little profit from her sales.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Dixon_Kies
If we’re going to talk about Presidential fitness, I think another question to be asking is, If Joe Biden is so hale, why doesn’t he take a cognitive test and release the results in order to end the questions?
He REALLY wishes he could. Unfortunately, all of President Biden’s cognitive test results are being audited by the IRS, so his hands are tied. He PROMISES to make them public the second those pesky auditors allow it. But these things can take years.
Once he releases them though, that will definitely “end the questions”, exactly as you suggest. I mean why wouldn’t it?
If Biden published his cognitive test it would very likely show that he has suffered some decline, which is what you would expect of anyone at his age. However, the result would certainly be used by the GOP as a political weapon and might throw the election to Trump. You wouldn’t want that would you? Or would you?
Would someone whose previous term as President led to peace deals in the middle east, a growing economy, record low unemployment for black people and none of the abuse of the justice system seen since really be a worse option that someone sat hiding behind a senile figurehead pulling all the strings?
All Joe Biden has to do to dispel the claims he’s a puppet is take that cognitive test and demonstrate that he’s in control of his own mind.
So, you didn’t watch his State of the Union speech.
I hate to think who’s pulling your strings.
What does Trump need to do to dispel the claims he’s a cheat, sexual abuser, secret documents thief, insurrectionist …?
Why do we need that? It does nothing to inform us of anything substantive when the most dangerous man to ever be at the top of a Presidential ticket is Biden’s adversary. Biden might as well be a tuna sandwich, and any thinking person would still vote for the sandwich if it meant Trump couldn’t step foot in the Oval Office.
Did those Evzones uniforms start off that way, or did they evolve? And who came up with the footwear?
‘Twas the Grecian Ministry of Silly Walks, of course.
Inspired by sloths or perhaps a praying mantis, the pom pom on the shoes are a distraction as he takes aim and shoots.
You channeled Attenborough perfectly!
I like how the results of our former president’s cognitive exams were “exceptional”. That doesn’t mean they were good. They can be exceptionally poor and the statement would still be true.
That being said, imagining our current president’s cognitive health in 2028 is a depressing exercise. How could these two men be our only options in a nation of 330 million?
I’ve really come to lean towards an idea that I first encountered in the AC Clarke novel Songs Of Distant Earth, that anyone who wants to be the president should probably be disqualified by that alone. In the story the president of the human colonized planet where the events take place is chosen by a random lottery and the job is generally considered to be a burden to be avoided. Something similar to the way most people in the US seem to hate jury duty.
“How could these two men be our only options in a nation of 330 million?”
Money? Corruption? An ignorant, apathetic, worn down populace?
Dementia on top of Narcissism and Borderline Personality Disorder would I think be disastrous, since it could confirm baseless suspicions and create new scenarios. Trump already overreacts to being told he made a mistake. His fury may lose whatever bounds it currently has.
Yes, the Biden administration’s alternative plan—to trade away the immediate destruction of Hamas battalions in Rafah in favor of (perhaps ineffective) barriers against future weapons shipments to Gaza—seems naive in the extreme. Israel needs to destroy those battalions now, and eliminate Hamas’s capacity to wage war. (No. The Hamas ideology will not itself be destroyed, but an ideology festering in the minds of the defeated is better than an ideology animated by weapons and soldiers.) Thankfully, the IDF is already engaged in targeted attacks on Hamas leaders in Rafah, even as Israeli leaders try to convince the Biden team that a larger Rafah engagement is necessary.
I am glad that Israel is sending a delegation to Washington to discuss the issues. And I’m glad that Biden and Netanyahu are still talking. But given that the Republicans are trying to engage Netanyahu separately—in an effort clearly to embarrass Biden—and that Netanyahu might very well take the bait and speak to Congress, I’m even more concerned about the (near-term) future of the Biden-Netanyahu relationship.
And who stands to lose the most in this battle taking place inside American politics?
Israel.
Someone’s comment on the X-Twitter posting of the daguerreotype of what might be the first documented photo of a cat (circa 1845): “Cats existed before the internet?”
“Canada discontinues arms sales to Israel” They haven’t sold any arms to Israel for more than thirty years. Plus, they don’t have any weapons or armaments that Israel would be interested in. NATO contribution less than 2% GDP, relies on the USA for everything.
On Monday March 18th 338 Canadian MPs spent the whole parliamentary day debating a motion regarding Palestinian “ statehood”! as if anyone gives two sh**s what Canada thinks or has to do with Palestinian Statehood. Talk about Trudeau “ virtue signalling” to the muslim LPC contributors when there are serious problems to discuss such as dysfunctional health service, lack of affordable housing, complete rejection of the so called “carbon tax” unsustainable immigration, it goes on. You couldn’t make this up.
The shameful Canadian resolution to “stop” selling arms to Israel was sponsored by the far-left New Democratic Party that props up the minority Liberal Government. Enough Liberal MPs voted against a companion motion that Canada should unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state that it failed to pass. Since this was a motion from a party that is technically an opposition party* it would not have been binding on the government’s foreign policy even if it had passed — and neither is the arms “embargo”. But it would still have been deeply embarrassing for Canada’s tattered reputation as a serious country. The NDP brought the motion purely to virtue-signal among its coalition of old-style Reds who run Canada’s public-sector labour unions, the various hues of race-grievance hustlers, and what passes for an intelligentsia which lives off government grants and subsidies.
——————
* In Parliaments, the function of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is to oppose, not to legislate.
“The Birds” scared me poop-less as a youngster. For days and nights I had the image of the farmer whose eyes got pecked out and of poor Ms. Pleshette lying lifeless on the ground in front of her house. Nowadays I find young Veronica Cartwright more appealing than the glamorous Ms. Hendren. Somewhere there’s a documentary about Hitchcock’s films narrated by Cliff Robertson that includes several scenes from this film, including the one in which Melanie sits outside the schoolhouse in front of a jungle gym, unaware that, one by one, the murderous crows are gathering on the bars behind her. I can’t find a link to the documentary on YouTube.
Veronica Cartwright was so good in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Birds scared the crap out of me too – the pecked out eyes.
Daphne du Maurier’s original short story has a much bleaker ending.
Regarding WaPo’s story about the dementia suffered by Trump’s father. You parenthetically noted that dementia is “weakly heritable.” But intelligence is highly heritable and cognitive capacity steadily declines for all of us beginning around age 30. Those who begin with less intelligence (Trump) will reach diagnosable mental deficiencies at an earlier (old) age.
Dementia is not the same thing as “low intelligence” and that is different from “diagnosable mental deficiencies.”
I stand by what I said; Trump is worried not about getting dumb, but getting dementia.
You said, “In Faith Versus Fact I do describe a situation that would make me (tentatively) believe in God.” What is that situation and which god are we talking about?
Christian God, read the scenario in the book as I don’t want to copy it out here.