Good morning on the first Sunday of the month, February 6, 2022: National Chopsticks Day. The Chinese don’t use knives or similar implements because of the way the food is prepared: you don’t need to “butcher at the table.” In fact, I always eat rice from a bowl with chopsticks, even if I’m not eating Chinese food.
It’s also National Frozen Yogurt Day as well as Lame Duck Day, celebrating the day in 1933 when Twentieth Amendment, which deals with when presidential and congressional terms begin and end, went into effect. Finally, it’s a UN holiday: International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, as well as Ronald Reagan Day in California (he was born on this day in 1911), Sami National Day in Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and Waitangi Day, celebrating the founding of New Zealand in 1840.
The Sámi people used to be called “Lapps” or “Laplanders”, but that term is now considered offensive. They live in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, and there are nine variants of the language. Here’s some traditional costume on Russian Sámi:
Here’s a photo of nomadic Sámi in 1910. Caption from Wikipedia:
News of the Day:
*The Beijing Winter Olympics lead all the national news programs, but it’s all very jingoistic. The headline tonight was that the U.S. failed to “medal” (a verb that should be illegal), but that Norway did. Well good for Norway! Maybe I’m not patriotic enough, but I watch some of the Olympics to see great feats, not to find out if the U.S. leads the world in medals. My favorite events are all forms of ice skating, and also those huge leaps in the ski jumps, when the athletes stretch out their bodies until they’re nearly parallel to their skis.
*John Mcwhorter gave his take in the NYT on the case of Georgetown Law instructor Ilya Shapiro, suspended from his job by the Dean for making tweets seemingly critical of Biden’s desire to appoint a black woman ro replace Stephen Breyer. The tweet that got Shapiro in hot water his this one:
“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?”
McWhorter makes the case, and it’s credible, that Shapiro didn’t mean that black women were inherently “lesser”:
. . . “lesser black woman” easily can be read as meaning that there is something about being a Black woman that is automatically lesser. We read such expressions in this way especially when there is a prompt, rooted in negative stereotypes, to link the two things. Note, by contrast, that if someone had tweeted that a man divorced and then married a “richer Black woman,” we wouldn’t read the adjective “richer” as an insult and would simply think of a woman who is both rich and Black.
I think Shapiro meant that, one, Biden would choose a Black woman and two, that because Srinivasan is — in his view — the “best” of the judges that a Democratic president would consider nominating, any other potential nominee, including any of the Black women on the president’s short list, would be less qualified than Srinivasan. I don’t think Shapiro meant to say that a Black woman would be less qualified because she is a Black woman.
I may seem to be bending over backward here, but I sincerely am not.
But regardless of what Shapiro meant, he did apologize, and McWhorter, as do I, considers Shapiro’s suspension “unnecessary and unjust”, especially because the law school defended another faculty member, Jessica ‘Fair, who made arguably even more bigoted and odious tweets about Bret Kavanaugh and those who defended his appointment to the Supremes.
*A sad incident reported in The Washington Post: a five-year-old boy fell into a 100-foot-deep dry well in Morocco and became stuck between the sides. That launched a huge effort to rescue him by tunneling in from the side.
The emergency team’s extraction of the boy on Saturday night marked the end of a mission that involved teams of first responders and topographical engineers working around the clock with equipment, including bulldozers and backhoes.
. . . For four days, the team worked to safely retrieve Rayan, who fell into a dry well and became trapped between its narrow walls, in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s northern Chefchaouen province. The dramatic race to save him gripped Morocco and neighboring countries, with crowds gathering to join his parents and broadcasters live-streaming the effort
. . The team had remained hopeful of getting Rayan out alive. “It’s hard to determine his condition … but there is great, great hope,” said team member Abdelhadi Tamarani earlier Saturday.
But, sadly, the boy didn’t make it:
. . . An ambulance, a helicopter and medics were at the site to take the boy to a hospital. Rescuers formed a wall around the child as they pulled him from the pit and rushed him into a waiting ambulance, which quickly drove away around 9:30 p.m. local time.
. . . The boy’s condition remained unclear for a brief period before local and regional media began reporting the palace’s statement that he had died.
*Queen Elizabeth, while declaring that she has no inclination to relinquish her throne, has declared who will be her successor as “Queen”. While it’s clear that Prince Charles will become King when Elizabeth dies or abdicates, the present Queen has declared that Charles’s second wife, Camilla, can be called “Queen Camilla” when Charles becomes King. He’ll wield the power, of course, but she’ll get to be called “Queen”. Well, actually, “Queen Consort,” but I suppose she’ll be called “queen”. On her recent Platinum Jubilee—70 years on the throne—Elizabeth II declared this:
“And when, in the fullness of time, my son Charles becomes King, I know you will give him and his wife Camilla the same support that you have given me; and it is my sincere wish that, when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service.”
What I wonder is who really cares about this. Charles is already well into his dotage—he’s 73—and I suspect he’s been champing at the bit for years. If he is King, it won’t be for long!
*Have a look at Jessica Bennett’s op-ed piece in Friday’s NYT, “If everything is ‘trauma,’ is anything?“. A good question, and one you wouldn’t think the New Woke Times would discuss. And while Bennet says that calling everything “traumatic” does at least give us a keener awareness of mental harm, in general thie linguistic iinflation results not only from the pandemic but from social media:
But part of the context, too, is that the age of trauma is unfolding in the age of social media — where everyone is striving, on some level, to rise above the noise, to be taken seriously, to (using another phrase of the moment) “feel heard.”
Words have always reflected culture. But at what point do they start to shape it?
We know, at this point, that algorithms reward outrage and public shaming online — and that, as the Yale psychologist Molly Crockett explained, those algorithms can’t distinguish between language that is proportionate or disproportionate to the original transgression.
We also know that victims of wrongdoing tend to be perceived as more “moral” or “virtuous” than others, and that using medical language tends to give a speaker authority, each of which are likely to result in more positive feedback.
It is not a huge leap, then, to imagine that deploying the language of trauma, or of harm, or even of personal struggle, carries cultural capital.
And while we’re discussing linguistic inflation, let’s not forget that “offense” has become both “harm” and “violence.”
*Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 901,009, an increase of 2,597 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 5,753,983, an increase of about 8,200 over yesterday’s total.
It is a thin day in history. Stuff that happened on February 6 include:
- 1860 – Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States with only 40% of the popular vote, defeating John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A. Douglas in a four-way race.
- 1947 – Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history, makes its debut on NBC Television.
Here’s a short history of the show, including some very early episodes. (Marvin Kalb looks like my dad.)
- 2012 – Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.
Here’s Baldwin, who’s been the junior Senator from Wisconsin since 2013. She was also the first woman to be elected to any congressional seat from that state.
Yes, but will we keep it? I’m doubtful.
Notables born on this day include:
- 1814 – Adolphe Sax, Belgian-French instrument designer, invented the saxophone (d. 1894)
Sax also invented several other brass instruments, like the “saxhorn”, the “6-piston trombone,” and the “saxtuba”:
- 1861 – James Naismith, Canadian-American physician and educator, invented basketball (d. 1939)
Naismith, a basketball, and a peach-basket hoop (that, of course, is why it’s called “basketball”).
- 1939 – Michael Schwerner, American activist (d. 1964)
One of three civil-rights activists, working for the Congress of Racial Equality, murdered by the Klan in Mississippi; they were investigating the burning of a black church.
Here’s the wanted poster showing Goodman, Schwerner, and Cheney. Eventually eight men were convicted of the murder, one only in 2005:
- 1946 – Sally Field, American actress
- 1948 – Glenn Frey, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 2016)
Frey died young from the complications of rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis. Here’s a song from his solo days; I’d forgotten that he wrote this one! It’s a good song to wake up to on a cold Sunday.
Those who went underground (or into an urn) on February 6 include:
- 1893 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian Composer (b. 1840)
Here’s la famille Tchaikovsky. Caption from Wikipedia:
- 1991 – Gene Tierney, American actress (b. 1920)
Talk about a rough life! Read about her life on Wikipedia:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s frustrated by her inability to reach a conclusion:
Hili: I do not have a firm opinion.A: That’s wise.Hili: Yes, but very frustrating.
Hili: Nie mam zdecydowanej opinii.Ja: To mądre.Hili: Tak, ale bardzo frustrujące.
From Robert:
From Seth Andrews:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Malcolm: the second tweet is a “wolf Moon” (the first full Moon of the new year) with a murmuration of starlings. What does it look like to you?
The first, from Alice Roberts, is another case of pareidolia:
Wanted to repost this Getty image of last months Wolf Moon, from BBC website – not for the moon but the Starlings murmuration … rsvp what you see pic.twitter.com/3zrFiMAHLg
— Ms DJ (@MsDJ1780) February 4, 2022
From Barry, who learned a new word today (me too!):
Surplus water usually leaves a plant through ‘pores’ called stomata.
But usually these are closed at night
So root pressure forces some water out through edge structures called hydathodes
this process is called Guttation 1/
📸 source https://t.co/Z2eXetiBSq pic.twitter.com/J6zAEIiwuC
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 4, 2022
From Masih on #NoHijabDay. These are about the bravest women I know. They risk years in jail just for removing a headscarf, but they do it anyway, as they want to be free.
Tomorrow, is our #NoHijabDay .This came out as a response to World Hijab Day. See how women are marching in the streets across Iran. 5 of these women are still in jail because of being #FreeFromHijab. They didn’t give up their fight from jail. #LetUsTalk pic.twitter.com/pu3uUA1teM
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 31, 2022
A tweet from Simon. This cat knows that it can’t be fired!
This one already has tenure pic.twitter.com/mABG8f7Fcl
— Oded Rechavi 🦉 (@OdedRechavi) February 5, 2022
Tweets from Matthew. This first set is quite remarkable: a case of cultural evolution in orcas which has no apparent purpose except to look cool by doing what the crowd does. Who woulda thought!
The Southern Resident Killer Whale dead salmon balancing game went on for weeks that summer before, like any fad, the orcas all suddenly lost interest and the behavior hasn’t been seen since. It appears that Northern Resident orca Alder has reinvented the game. pic.twitter.com/J8Vzrt3pKT
— Quad Finn (@Quad_Finn) February 5, 2022
Matthew explains this tweet: ”
There’s a big row over here about an awful comic who told a very unfunny joke on his Netflix show about gypsies in the Holocaust. Anyway, Baddiel waded in in a thoughtful way and finished with this powerful joke screenshotted in his tweet, which I would not feel comfortable re-telling, but you can.
And so I can. I like it. Many Jews who survived the camps and wrote about them, attributed their atheism to the Holocaust:
A paean to February from a lyrical journalist. This might have come from the mind of Thomas Wolfe: an “Ode to February” instead of an “Ode to October“:
now this is what i call journalism pic.twitter.com/BrfRaASKeQ
— Shawn Hils (@ShawnHils) February 4, 2022
I learned about guttation here, on Readers’ Wildlife Photos! There was some lettuce with droplets on it! Amazing!
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/09/11/readers-wildlife-photos-1098/
Lou Jost comment on there
That February day piece was St. Louis. You can almost see the base of the Gateway Arch.
I think you just about have to be from St. Louis to notice it in this video. I went to school down there many years ago and I guess it has changed. For one it has lost nearly half its population since I was in the area.
Lincoln was elected on November 6, 1860, not February 6, 1860.
And between Nov 6, when he was elected until March 4, when he took office, eight states had left the Union, apparently just because Lincoln was elected. Which makes you wonder, was Trump running against Lincoln?
@ Historian – November is the eleventh month; eleven in Arabic numerals is II. February is the second month; two in Roman numerals is II. They look the same to me.
Funny thing computers do. The typeface when I wrote my comment had no serifs on the “I’s”; now on my computer, the posted comment has serifs.
Wonder if Prince Charles has the same thought that his antecedent Edward, eldest son of Victoria, did?
“I don’t mind praying to the eternal Father but I must be the only man in the country afflicted with an eternal mother.”
Well Charles’s dad nearly made it to 100 and his mom is still going strong at nearly 96, so he may have a couple of decades to reign.
We are watching the Olympics as well, and I gotta say that Curling sport is damn riveting! We wind up yelling advice at the TV on what the next move should be.
Strange, but true – Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi are both massive curling fans: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/winter/curling/bon-jovi-the-boss-considered-for-curling-show-report-1.726890
People are foolish enough to construct specific notions of God. Some, when they observe events that are contrary to their construction, give up God entirely. Is this woolly headed thinking applied to a woolly headed notion? Maybe God is that kind of chap, the nasty kind. But on the other hand, maybe widespread suffering forced these people to reconsider the entire idea in more generality, which resulted in their becoming atheists. That seems less silly.
It would be nice if it did not take mass murder to knock sense into people.
The killing of 130 people made Justin Welby ‘doubt the presence of God’. I hope the other acts of barbarism (and natural disasters) that litter our history at least made him think a little bit.
This idiot had to find out he was Jewish before changing his ways.
Adolf Eichmann — and according to Otto Dietrich, probably Hitler — believed in God. He had a different notion of god, not the Welby kind.
An ancient theologian, having considered the Hebrew and Christian versions of God, concluded that there were two Gods.
So many great things in today’s Hili, it’s hard to single one out. The tufted coquette hummingbird is a very cute little critter and the photo of the leaves displaying the effects of guttation is breathtakingly beautiful.
Gene Tierney certainly experienced some misfortune, but nothing on the scale of Margaret Rutherford’s early (and indeed later) years…!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Rutherford#Early_life
Thank you for posting John McWhorter’s take on Ilya Shapiro’s “lesser black woman” statement. I took it exactly the way he (McWhorter) did and it had never entered my mind that it would be taken the alternative way to imply all Black women would be lesser because Black (or female.) A penny dropped here. McWhorter is not bending over backwards at all. If anyone is bending over backwards it’s the people attacking Shapiro.
I’m perfectly aware, even as a foreigner, of the politics of SCOTUS appointments and I’ll leave that to you experts. But McWhorter has hit on something important here.
I agree that Shapiro likely meant it in exactly the way McWhorter portrays. But it’s 2022, and in the current cultural milieu, Shapiro deserves criticism for being obtuse enough to even post such a clumsy tweet. He may not be racist, but is he ever dumb.
All he had to do is replace “black woman” with “candidate” and we’re not talking about his suspension. Instead we’d be talking about Sri Srinivasan.
Did you read what his colleague wrote about the Kavanaugh nomination that was either just as bad or worse? There should be NO talk of suspension here, and I’m surprised that you imply that it was okay to fire the guy.
I don’t think Ilya Shapiro’s tweet was racist; I think it was dumb. The idea that there is a single best-qualified SCOTUS candidate is silly (and the notion that any such “best-qualified” candidate will go on to have a distinguished career on the SCOTUS bench, historically unfounded.)
What there is is a pool of qualified potential nominees. And in recent years, that pool has become evermore narrow — requiring someone in their 40s or early 50s with an Ivy League legal education (or its near equivalent), a clerkship for a federal judge (preferably at the Supreme Court level), some time as a political appointee in public service and/or with a white-shoe law firm, then an apprenticeship served as a judge on a lower federal court bench (long enough to determine that the appointee is aligned with the political party in power, but not so long as to have lengthy list of written opinions that can be picked apart by the opposing party during senate judiciary committee confirmation hearings).
Most of the black women named as being under by consideration by Biden meet these qualifications. There is no reason to think — or at least no reason that Shapiro makes a cogent case for in his tweets — that Judge Sri Srinivasan would be a demonstrably better pick.
Brilliant response. The “search” for the single best-qualified SCOTUS candidate makes me think of the idea that, in order to settle any nagging question of life (e.g., is there a God?), all we have to do is find the smartest person in the world and ask him/her. Makes about as much sense.
People are foolish enough to construct specific notions of God. Some, when they observe events that are contrary to their construction, give up God entirely. Is this woolly headed thinking applied to a woolly headed notion? Maybe God is that kind of chap, the nasty kind. But on the other hand, maybe widespread suffering forced these people to reconsider the entire idea in more generality, which resulted in their becoming atheists. That seems less silly.
It would be nice if it did not take mass murder to knock sense into people.
The killing of 130 people made Justin Welby ‘doubt the presence of God’. I hope the other acts of barbarism (and natural disasters) that litter our history at least made him think a little bit.
This idiot had to find out he was Jewish before changing his ways.
Adolf Eichmann — and according to Otto Dietrich, probably Hitler — believed in God. He had a different notion of god, not the Welby kind.
An ancient theologian, having considered the Hebrew and Christian versions of God, concluded that there were two Gods. Smart man.
People can judge for themselves, the clip is here.
I don’t agree with Matthew. To me the joke works precisely because it recognises the “tension” in current relationships between Gypsy travellers and the mainstream community in the UK, and then invites the audience to consider whether they agree with it or not. It’s edgy but barbed. The joke would not have worked about the other victims of the Holocaust that are listed.
I thought Carr’s bit was pretty goddam funny. As Ricky Gervais has explained (and as is consistent with Carr’s own explanation incorporated into his routine), when you hear a joke that is ostensibly offensive, what you have to ask is who is the actual butt of the joke. In this case, what is being lampooned is not “gypsies” (so-called) but the dismissive attitude and casual bigotry many still express toward them.
That said, I’m not 100% convinced regarding your assertion that this has to do with “the ‘tension’ in current relationships between Gypsy travellers and the mainstream community in the UK.” As I understand it, the UK Travellers do not share a genetic ancestry with the Romani and were not themselves subjected to attempted mass extermination by the Nazis. Instead, they’re referred to as “gypsies” solely because of perceived behavioral similarities between the two groups.
Then again, I gotta admit, most of what I know about Pikeys I picked up from the Guy Ritchie film Snatch:
A UK audience would certainly make the connection between the joke and the current Gypsy/traveller population of the UK, though you are right that not all are Romany Gypsies in origin, though some are. Others are Irish Travellers in origin.
First, I really like the “I guess you had to be there” joke.
Second, I wish to ask if anyone here can explain something to me. If it is too off topic, of course it can be ignored or deleted.
I got an email today advertising a music memorabilia auction. That part is normal. I collect instruments and signed photos of people who used to be famous. Anyway, here is the auction-
https://www.julienslive.com/auctions/catalog/id/417
As I write this, the bidding for lot #5 is $9,000. But that is not for John Lennon’s guitar. That is for an NFT of the guitar. The winner does not ever get to own, play, or even see the guitar. I thought I sort of understood NFTs, but this auction confused me.
I just don’t see the point, or even what the guitar has to do with it.
Weird – ALL of the items listed are NFTs and another guitar NFT (lot #6) has a current top bid of $15,000! Sheer lunacy.
I read the terms of the auction, but to borrow one of my Dad’s old timey expressions, I felt like a hog with a watch.
The winner gets a digital file, which is unique, but the owner of the guitar can make as many NFTs of the guitar as he wants. If you sell the NFT, you could be liable to pay royalties on it. I am not even sure how the winner can demonstrate that the digital file is even associated with the guitar, or with anything else.
Lot #6 sold for $22,400. So the winner has something with has no utility, intrinsic value, or assurance of scarcity. It does not even seem to be a physical object.
I watched PCC(E)’s interview with the NZ chap regarding Maori “science” (mentioned yesterday in WEIT). It is quite long but very good – PCC (E) comes across and smart, alert and healthy and the academic office background fits well.
Much of it will be familiar to regular WEIT readers but it is good the argument is getting some podcast time as it is important and due to the capture woke-ism has over NZ there is little push back from the madness down there.
The interviewer is pretty good – I think I saw his Pinker interview lately.
That’s my movie review for this week. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
I liked the last February news piece and the first rooftop bit was shot in my ‘hood! And it looks JUST LIKE THAT (sigh) 🙂
D.A.
Chelsea, NYC