Monday: Hili dialogue

July 18, 2022 • 6:30 am

Top o’ the week to you: it’s Monday, July 18 2022: National Caviar Day.  I’ve had it once years ago, in pressed beluga form, and loved it. But I can’t afford it now, and wouldn’t eat it if I could, as I don’t like them cutting open females to get their eggs, though I eat other stuff that probably involves more suffering.

It’s also National Sour Candy Day, World Listening Day, and Nelson Mandela International Day (he was born on this day in 1918).

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) honors Oskar Sala ( (18 July 1910 – 26 February 2002) identified by Wikipedia as “a 20th-century German physicist, composer and a pioneer of electronic music. He played an instrument called the Trautonium, a precursor to the synthesizer. Sala’s Trautonium is below the Doodle:

A 1952 Traytonium:

And a piece of Sala’s music from 1991 (click on the “Watch on YouTube” line. It’s not bad!

Stuff that happened on July 18 include:

  • 1290 – King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England; this was Tisha B’Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.

Here’s a map of all the expulsions of the Jews over five centuries. We Jews can’t get no respect! (fixes tie). And you wonder why there’s Zionism. . .

The Messerschmitt Me262 was the world’s first operational jet aircraft. Here’s one taking off, flying, and landing. I’m not sure if this is an original or a replica; Wikipedia implies the latter:

Several aircraft survive on static display in museums, and there are several privately built flying reproductions that use modern General Electric J85 engines.

Here’s a more informative video about the plane, and this one shows the cockpit.

The Germans used it for about two years, but it didn’t turn the tide in the war, largely because the Allies bombed them on the ground.

 

  • 1944 – World War II: Hideki Tōjō resigns as Prime Minister of Japan because of numerous setbacks in the war effort.

Tojo was hanged in 1948 for a panoply of war crimes, but before that he tried to kill himself. Some interesting information from Wikipedia. Read it.

After Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945, U.S. general Douglas MacArthur ordered the arrest of forty individuals suspected of war crimes, including Tojo. Five American GIs were sent to serve the arrest warrant.  As American soldiers surrounded Tojo’s house on September 11, he shot himself in the chest with a pistol, but missed his heart. As a result of this experience, the Army had medical personnel present during the later arrests of other accused Japanese war criminals, such as Shigetarō Shimada.

As he bled, Tojo began to talk, and two Japanese reporters recorded his words: “I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die. The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous. I am very sorry for the nation and all the races of the Greater Asiatic powers. I wait for the righteous judgment of history. I wished to commit suicide but sometimes that fails.”

After recovering from his injuries, Tojo was moved to Sugamo Prison. While there, he received a new set of dentures, made by an American dentist, into which the phrase “Remember Pearl Harbor” had been secretly drilled in Morse code. The dentist ground away the message three months later.

Here’s Tojo after he attempted suicide, shooting himself below his heart. It didn’t work.
(From Wikipedia) In this Sept. 11, 1945, file photo made in Tokyo, Gen. Hideki Tojo lies semiconscious in a chair with a gaping bullet wound just below the heart after a suicide attempt. Sixty-five years after the former Army intelligence officer prevented Tojo from successfully killing himself, John J. Wilpers Jr. is just beginning to speak publicly about his wartime experiences. (AP Photo/Charles Gorry, File)
  • 1976 – Nadia Comăneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics.

The first 10 was for her 30-second routine on the uneven parallel bars, which is shown below along with her other performances in those Olympics.She won five 10s altogether in the Olympic, and was awarded the individual gold medal for best allover performance. She was only 14 years old.  Click on “Watch on YouTube because the IOC is stingy:

  • 1984 – McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, California: In a fast-food restaurant, James Oliver Huberty opens fire, killing 21 people and injuring 19 others before being shot dead by police.
  • 1992 – A picture of Les Horribles Cernettes was taken, which became the first ever photo posted to the World Wide Web.

Who were they? Wikipedia tells us:

Les Horribles Cernettes (French pronunciation: ​[le.z‿ɔʁiblə sɛʁnɛt], “The Horrible CERN Girls”) was an all-female parody pop group, self-labelled “the one and only High Energy Rock Band”, which was founded by employees of CERN and performed at CERN and other HEP-related events. Their musical style is often described as doo-wop. The initials of their name, LHC, are the same as those of the Large Hadron Collider, which was later built at CERN. Their humorous songs are freely available on their website.

Here’s that picture, originally posted as a gif:

Here’s one of their videos from 2000, this one about (and at) the Large Hadron Collider.

At least half a million Tutsis died in this massacre. This photo from Wikipedia is labeled, “Over 5,000 people seeking refuge in Ntarama church were killed by grenade, machete, rifle, or burnt alive.”

Da Nooz:

*A Texas man who was part of the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 may be facing a very long time in jail.  And I can’t feel too bad about it, as what those people did was unconscionable. Now if the guy reforms, maybe he’ll get out early, but he seems to be a bad actor. Unfortunately, “reform” is assessed only at infrequent parole hearings.

Federal prosecutors are seeking a 15-year prison sentence for a Texas man who was convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol with a holstered handgun, calling him a militia group member who took a central role in the pro-Trump mob’s attack, according to a court filing Friday.

If a judge accepts the Justice Department’s recommendation, Guy Wesley Reffitt’s prison sentence would be nearly three times the length of the longest sentence among more than 200 defendants who have been sentenced for crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the nation’s capital.

The longest sentence so far is five years and three months for Robert Palmer, a Florida man who pleaded guilty to attacking police officers at the Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich is scheduled to sentence Reffitt on Aug. 1. The judge isn’t bound by any of the recommendations or the sentencing guidelines calculated by the court’s probation department, which call for a sentence ranging from nine years to 11 years and three months,

*It’s unusual to see an op-ed in one newspaper castigating an op-ed in a rival paper, but that is what we see in the Washington Post’s piece, “The Wall Street Journal’s editorial shame.” The “shame” is an op-ed in the WSJ that called “fanciful” and “unlikely”” the report of a ten-year old girl having to go out of state for an abortion after she was raped and impregnated by an older man. This is part of the WSJ’s continuing opposition to abortion, and they wanted to discredit a story that President Biden related as ammunition against the Dobbs decision.

It turns out the story was true, and the WSJ had to do an about-face, but they did it dishonestly. From the Post:

Suddenly “fanciful” became “confirmed.”

The headline on the Tuesday editorial — “An Abortion Story Too Good to Confirm” — was now factually extinct. Numerous lines in the editorial now stood as evidence of the Journal’s too-quick inclination to dismiss a story cited by President Biden on July 8. Most outrageous was the line where the Journal appeared to ding Biden for … not naming a 10-year-old rape victim! “He said a 10-year-old girl he didn’t identify by name was forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana to have an abortion because Ohio now prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat is discovered,” reads the editorial.

The solution? The Journal overlaid an editor’s note on top of the errant text:

 

This risible half-measure drew its share of criticism on social media. The editorial said one thing; the editor’s note said something quite different. They were doing hand-to-hand combat.

The Journal apparently decided that it might be appropriate to address the snafu with some form of the verb “to correct” and published a new editorial on Wednesday evening with the headline, “Correcting the Record on a Rape Case.” Here’s the opening paragraph (the Post’s bold):

It appears President Biden was accurate when he related a story about a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and traveled to Indiana for an abortion. We wondered Tuesday about the case, after no one had confirmed its accuracy or any public report of the crime, though the story had made the media rounds for nearly two weeks.

Wondered??? They doubted it—12 times. Read the original WSJ piece. This is one reason that although I subscribe to the WSJ (readers here said the news section was good), I shy away from the op-eds (yes, I was warned.

*The Guardian reports that a woman has been sentenced to a horrible form of execution—death by stoning. You don’t really have to guess that the crime was adultery, and the religion behind it: Islam.

A woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, the first known case in the country for almost a decade.

Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab, 20, was arrested by police in Sudan’s White Nile state last month.

Tiyrab says she is appealing against the decision. The majority of stoning sentences, which are predominantly against women, are overturned in the high court.

Campaigners worry the sentence is a sign that the military coup in October has emboldened lawmakers to roll back small gains for women’s rights made under the country’s transitional government.

The African Center for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS), based in Uganda, said the sentence violated domestic and international law and called for Tiyrab’s “immediate and unconditional release”.

Stoning (“rajm” in Arabic) is either a provision of or mandated by sharia law under some schools of Sharia law, and is mentioned multiple times in the hadith. (h/t Ginger K.)

*I’m becoming a big fan of Pamela Paul, a liberal but non-woke op-ed columnist for the NYT. From its title, I thought that her latest, “In the face of fact, the Supreme Court chose faith”, was about the Dobbs decision, but it wasn’t. It was about Joseph Kennedy, the praying high-school football coach. We’ve covered this decision before, and I think Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent was a masterpiece. It even has pictures of the praying!

Paul:

Naming the single worst decision of the Supreme Court’s disgraceful 2021-22 term is a tough call. But the one that best captures the majority’s brazen efforts to inflict its political and religious agenda on the rest of the country may well be Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which ruled that the coach had a constitutional right to pray on the field. Overturning precedent and in a cynical elision of fact, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for a 6-to-3 majority, affirmed Kennedy’s assertion that his proselytizing on government property during a public-school function was “private,” “personal” and “quiet.”

It was nothing of the kind. In easily observable fact, Kennedy’s religious display was public, vocal and coercive, as demonstrated by testimony from football players and other community members and by video and photographs of the coach surrounded by crowds of people on bent knee. According to an amicus brief filed by one of Kennedy’s football players and seven other members of the community on behalf of the school district, participation in Kennedy’s prayers was “expected.” Students were explicitly encouraged by him to ask the other teams’ coaches and players to join in, something Kennedy himself boasted about.

But this court’s right-wing majority is following the dictum of our Trumpian age: Objective truth doesn’t matter. Subjective belief — specifically the beliefs of the court’s religious-right majority — does. The Kennedy decision wasn’t based on the facts but on belief in the face of facts. Moreover, those six justices are determined to foist their beliefs on the rest of the country.

In allowing for greater “religious expression,” the court curtailed the liberty of those whose prayers take other forms, Americans who practice non-Christian faiths and people who do not practice religion at all. Kitsap County is home to a variety of religions, including Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism and Baha’ism. A coach-led Christian prayer on the playing field is necessarily exclusionary.

*My philosophy of cooking, which is mine, is that you shouldn’t spend more time making dinner than you would eating it—unless you love to cook. That’s why I make simple meals (gussied up with a good wine), and save the fancy grub for restaurants. But the NYT has a pretty damn good list of “19 easy and cheap dinner ideas that everyone will love“. And the first is a variant of what I sometimes make: turkey chili. A pound of ground turkey, two cans of chili beans, some good hot sauce, ketchup, and a big onion for frying to add later, and lo! you have three whole dinners, putting the chili over rice and drinking a good red wine alongside.

There are other good recipes, too: check out the tricked-out instant ramen, the smoky white bean and beef sloppy joes, bean and cheese burritos—and there’s a lot more. (I’d spurn the ones that take too long to make.

*The New York Post reports that a transgender woman, in a New Jersey women’s prison for 30 years for manslaughter, has been transferred because she impregnated two fellow inmates. (The relationships appears to have been consensual.) New Jersey state policy is that you get sent to the prison housing people of the sex with which you identify (h/t Williams), so anybody can go to any sex-segregated prison they want.

Here’s a comment sent to me by one reader. See if his/her take on the article comports with yours::

This is disgusting and unacceptable, and there is so much wrong with this story. I don’t know if this Minor person is actually transgender and is using the woman card for whatever reason, but notice how it appears that it’s more important to use the proper pronouns and not to misgender Minor. The two pregnant inmates were barely mentioned. And if it was really consensual or not, doesn’t matter; it’s all about Minor’s struggles on being misgendered and being called he/him. The disgrace!

I get that people in prison are vulnerable, and just because they are there doesn’t mean that they should be stripped off of their human rights and dignity; and I wish there could be a place where actual transgender people can be safe from attacks. But this is too much, this kowtowing to these people when vulnerable, imprisoned women are left to fend for themselves when a self declared “woman” is placed amongst them.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is out to count the stars (their unknown number is “Sagan’s number“).

A: Where are you going?
Hili: I’m going to check “Sagan’s number”.
In Polish:
Ja: Gdzie idziesz?
Hili: Idę sprawdzić “liczbę Sagana”.

And a picture of baby Kulka:

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Reader Divy called my attention to a 6th birthday celebration for Rico, a Brazilian porcupine at the Cincinnati Zoo. She found it “cuteness overload”, and I agree:

From Jean, who says this is me:

****************

From Titania:

From Luana. This is the first time I’ve seen the data on “personality scores” of different groups that the Harvard admissions office gives (without having met the applicants) to achieve equity. The difference is extraordinarily striking! It’s hard to believe that this is anything other than manipulation. It is the low “personality” scores  assigned to Asians that kept their numbers down in the entering class. (See the first document to see what the “personal scores” encompass, which is one’s “personality”). It’s hard to think of this as anything other than dishonest manipulation to achieve equity, unless you want to believe, which I don’t, that Asians have crummy personalities.  Harvard won in court, but I doubt that the Supremes will let this pass.

Two tweets from Ken. The first one he calls, “Thus Spake Dershowitz”. The Dersh is beefing because he didn’t get invited to a party. Awww. . . poor guy!

Ken adds this:  “Here’s the email The Dersh says he got from the victim of the beach punch-out incident. Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds a bit contrived”. Ya think? The “sand in the face” thing reminds me of the old Charles Atlas ads in comic books where a nerd gets sand kicked in his face and then bulks up and comes back to thrash the original assailant.

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

My new cop acronym is “ACLD”: All Cops  Love Ducks. The second tweet from Niko shows three Japanese cops escorting a duck and its offspring through the steets during a festival. Niko adds this: ”

“The Gion Matsuri (matsuri simply means festival) is one of the largest in Japan. Do yourself a favour and google some images about it. “
The image search is here.

Speaking of ducks, here’s the first of three tweets from Matthew. Lovely little ones, aren’t they?

It’s gonna be hot in Britain this week! Perhaps I should start a GoFundMe to get Matthew an air conditioner:

I’ve seen one of these; isn’t it fantastic?

37 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Like our host, I’ve been reading Cathy Young regularly, as I think she’s a smart writer. She and the Bulwark, however, are in the same camp as the WSJ regarding this abortion story. Young originally doubted the truth of it, then when it was confirmed, added a parenthetical correction at the top of the article, not even a half-measure corrective, more of a quarter-measure, IMO. Read for yourself: https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/did-it-really-happen?r=2xi1r&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

    Reply

  2. WP: “The Journal overlaid an editor’s note on top of the errant text: […] This risible half-measure drew its share of criticism on social media.”

    What’s is actually wrong with the WSJ’s method of correcting the original? They left the original (wrong) piece up and added the correction. Isn’t that what one should do? It’s more honest than a “stealth edit” (removing the original, thus giving the impression that they hadn’t previously got it wrong), which is how many media outlets go about it.

    Contrary to popular suposition, readers are capable of comparing the original to the correction and drawing appropriate conclusions. They don’t have to be beaten over the head with “here’s what to think” wording.

    So, yes, criticise the WSJ for misjudging originally, but not for their correction.

    [PS How much openly correcting the record have the MSM done on their doubting the veracity of multiple Hunter Biden stories?]

    Reply

      1. An apology for doubting the veracity of a politically charged story being promoted by a leading politician at a time when the public evidence supporting it was indeed meagre? Isn’t that what the press should be doing?

        We’d all be better off if everyone demanded evidence more regularly — the fault here is not the doubting, it’s applying doubt in a partisan way.

        Reply

        1. The two publications in question did not just doubt the story’s veracity, they rushed to judgment. Doubt and skepticism require restraint, especially where evidence is meagre. The WSJ and Bulwark were unrestrained in their condemnation of Biden and accusation that he was promoting a fabricated story for partisan purposes before they even bothered to gather more evidence. Hence, apologies are necessary, not only to Biden but to the poor girl who is the victim in all of this.
          Enough from me. I’ll let you have the last word if you’d like.

          Reply

        2. You are off target on this specific incident. Though I completely agree that the press should be skeptical of claims and seek evidence to confirm or disconfirm them, that isn’t what happened here. StephenB clearly explains.

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    2. What we should see from these publications are articles entitled “Why We Got It Wrong.” Perhaps, at least to a small extent, this incident will lead to more responsible journalism. Now, the WSJ and Cathy Young have a black eye and their credibility is diminished. For the benefit of society, there should not be a further erosion of trust in mainstream media. The growing public distrust in established institutions is one factor in explaining today’s polarization.

      Reply

    3. The story is still politically charged. Fox News reported—Yes, I know….—that Ohio police have made an arrest in the case. They have charged an undocumented migrant from Latin America, name and photo supplied, with raping the girl. Twice.

      Anyone who knows this to be incorrect, please say so.

      Reply

  3. It’s not just going to be hot in Britain today and tomorrow. The current high temperature record of 38.6 C, set here in Cambridge three years ago, is likely to be shattered on both days, with highs of 40 or 41 or even 42 C quite possible across much of southern and central England. The Met Office has taken the unprecedented step of issuing a “red alert” heat advisory, warning of temperatures that could be dangerous even to people who are fit and healthy.

    Now, complaining about the weather is an inalienable part of every Englishperson’s birthright, but this goes way beyond that.

    Reply

    2. Thanks, David – I was going to make the same point. And I’m just a dozen miles away from Cambridge, in Royston.

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  4. Nothing wrong with journalists approaching quasi everything, especially if it comes from a politician, with initial doubt; though writing about it as if you actually know it’s not true goes a fair bit too far. What I don’t quite understand is why the WSJ should find the story the least bit surprising. After all, such things happen/happened regularly in countries that don’t allow abortion even in extreme cases. Indeed, after Dobbs it was only matter of (a short amount of) time before such a report would surface.

    Reply

  5. “(fixes tie)”

    I am subscribing (i.e. not staying in my email bubble) _just_ because of ^^that.

    Reply

  6. I have concluded – and it’s a conclusion which is mine that I concluded – that the pronoun fad – which is entirely unrelated to a basic interest in language and grammar – is a way to control speech. And that is the interest. Controlling speech. Another layer behind that is controlling spontaneous thought.

    [ venting halted ]

    Thank you.

    Reply

  7. The map of the Expulsion of the Jews has an arrow from the 1497 expulsion from Portugal pointing toward the Americas. But was there really Jewish immigration to the Americans at this point? I would have assumed it came significantly later. A google search yields the first known cases in the middle of the 17th century. Anyone know of any earlier cases?

    Reply

    1. from wikipedia to virtual jewish world https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sao-tome-and-principe-virtual-jewish-history-tour

      “In 1496, to punish the Jews of Portugal who would not pay the head tax of the state, King Manuel deported nearly 2,000 Jewish children, from the ages of two to ten, to the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe straddling the Equator west of Gabon. The King had wished to colonize the islands, under Portugal’s rule, but did not want to risk the lives of Portuguese men doing so. Nevertheless a year after, the children were disposed on the islands only 600 were found alive. Some of the children attempted to retain some semblance of their Jewish heritage and religion. Even into the early 1600s Jewish practices could still be observed on the islands, but by the 18th century most of the Jewish presence had perished. A new small community was established in the 19th and 20th centuries with the arrival of a few Jewish cocoa and sugar traders. Today there are no known practicing Jews living on the islands, but there remains a clear distinction in fair skin citizens, many of whom can trace their ancestry back to the Portuguese Jews.”

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    2. Have any of these edicts of expulsion of Jews ever been rescinded? Are Jews still officially expelled from all these countries?

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  8. Jerry, regarding the chili. My wife has always made EXCELLENT chili, but after opting for a vegan diet, exchanged the meat in the dish with canned lentils. A bowl of this chili with some fresh, warm cornbread is absolutely unbeatable on a cold winter day. We do not miss the animal flesh one bit.

    Since you have no free will, you must try it sometime!

    Reply

    1. I’m not sure why I must, as a determinist, try this. That would depend on whether the laws of physics, which also governed the issuance of your recommendation above, drive me to make lentil chili. Right now my neurons aren’t feeling it, but I do like my cornbread!

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      1. To add weight on the scale of the laws of physics, may I add that I also love lentil chili (I add the lentils in the frying stage and use the red variety), but a also add a bit of Joghurt as a topping to the finished product. My husband gets his with added meat fried in a pan and has never complained about the lentils ;).

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  9. … I can’t afford it now, and wouldn’t eat it [caviar] if I could, as I don’t like them cutting open females to get their eggs, though I eat other stuff that probably involves more suffering.

    Couple years ago, my bestie the teaching chef invited me to tag along to a major professional food show. The show’s concentration was on seafood, and they had a dedicated caviar booth. Knowing who he was, the people in the booth kept plying us with great caviar. And even though it’s not seafood per se (but is derived from waterfowl) they also had a booth dedicated to foie gras (which I normally eschew, because gavage, but couldn’t help but make a few passes by to sample).

    The food was so great, I completely forgot to feel guilty.

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  11. Now if the guy [the Jan. 6th Capitol rioter from Texas] reforms, maybe he’ll get out early, but he seems to be a bad actor. Unfortunately, “reform” is assessed only at infrequent parole hearings.

    Federal parole was abolished by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, effective as to all crimes committed after November 1, 1987. Since that date, with few exceptions, federal prisoners do 85% of the time they’re given at sentencing (with approximately 15% off, as an incentive for good behavior while imprisoned).

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  12. A woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery …

    The Sudanese gonna require that he who casts the first stone at young Ms. Tiyrab be someone without sin among them?

    Reply

    1. I might have batted a weary eye if the report had said that the man had been sentenced to stoning.

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  13. The Me262 could have been used against the bombers much earlier if Hitler had not interfered. He was shown a test aircraft in November 1943.

    “Hitler reportedly asked Willy Messerschmitt, the head of the company, whether the machine could be loaded with bombs, to which he replied in the affirmative, since investigations had already been made in this regard. Hitler agreed to mass production on the condition that the aircraft would be used mainly as a bomber (so-called “Blitzbomber”), which he urgently needed to repel the expected Allied landings. This decision turned out to be a strategic mistake: The Me 262 was designed as an interceptor and, due to the pilot’s limited field of view of the ground, had comparatively poor accuracy when dropping bombs.”

    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262#Hitlers_Vision_eines_Blitzbombers

    Had the Me 262 been used from beginning in its original purpose as an interceptor, as planned, the losses of bombers and their crews would have skyrocketed. It would not have changed the outcome of the war, but the war itself could have been dragged out for weeks or even months. From this point of view, we must be grateful for Hitler’s intervention.

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    2. Fortunately the 262 could not operate at night, lacking radar, (edit: except for an experimental two-seat version adapted from trainers) so the RAF/RCAF Bomber Command offensive would still have carried grimly on with its merciless loss rate of 6.1 per 100 sorties, mostly from superb radar-equipped night fighters sneaking up on them in the dark. Incredibly, some survivors of a 30-op tour signed up for a second.

      Near the end of the war, the Lancasters did attack daylight targets with the USAAF and encountered 262s flown by pilots whose training by then could not be allocated sufficient fuel for comprehensive skills development. A jet diving at high speed at a lumbering bomber has only a second or two of sight time and most green pilots missed. Some uncommonly skilled escorting fighter pilots although much slower eventually learned how to turn inside the 262’s arc and get a deflection shot if it came around for another pass. At their peak they were a dangerous adversary even though they couldn’t stay in the air very long.

      As Jerry says, the Allies started to coordinate fighter-bombers to loiter in the vicinity of their landing fields and shoot them down as they drifted in slow and out of gas, or catch them on the ground. This was dangerous work but the jets were valuable enough to risk several Typhoons to get one. Eventually their fields were overrun as the Allies advanced and that was the end of that.

      Whether they would have prolonged the war if used as fighters earlier is conjectural. It is wrapped up in continuing dispute about whether the strategic bombing offensive was effective at all, especially the daylight component where destruction of industrial targets was modest and losses high: 10 men per bomber. What is certain is that the cost of achieving air superiority over a battlefield or over a country is very high and remains so to this day.

      Reply

  14. As to the Coach prayer case. I wonder if the College of Cardinals would have ruled differently had the coach been Muslim and praying towards Mecca in the middle of the field.

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  15. One of the greatest gymnasts of all time, Nadia Comaneci earned 7 perfect 10s to win 3 gold medals (all-around, uneven bars, and balance beam), 1 silver (team), and 1 bronze (floor exercise) at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

    Reply

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