Tuesday: Hili dialogue

July 26, 2022 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Tuesday: the Cruelest Day, with no weekend in sigh. It’s July 26, 2022, and National Bagelfest. (Note: 99.5% of bagels sold in America are mediocre: brown tori made of Wonder Bread. This is a real bagel, and you have to go to Montreal to get it. (I’m told that one or two places in New York City produce the genuine thing.)

Below, one from Fairmount with a schmear. My lap shows the scale: it’s not an oversized giant of a bagel, but small, dense, and chewy. Steve Pinker, who’s from Montreal and has eaten many Fairmount bagels, told me that there are only two acceptable kinds: “white seed” (sesame) and “black seed” (poppy). Thank Ceiling Cat I chose one of the acceptable ones (there are about five flavors on offer, but nothing like blueberry or cinnamon raisin). Canadians are more sensible than that.

The source, photographed in 2016:

It’s also World Tofu Day, National Coffee Milkshake Day (that’s what you get anyway when you order one of Starbucks’s fancy coffees, Aunts and Uncles Day, and Esperanto Day.(“Ĉu vi scipovas paroli Esperanton. Ĝi estas senutila lingvo”).

There’s a Google Doodle today that celebrates steelpan drumming. If you click on it you go to a YouTube animation with some great music:

Wine of the Day: I’ll be brief: this is a superb value in Chardonnay, coming in at $10 per bottle. It’s the 2020 Novellum from the underappreciated region of Roussillon in southern France. It’s gutsy and not oaky, with a nose of crisp apples and pears. It’s ready to drink, has substantial complexity for such an inexpensive wine, and I’m informed that although it’s made entirely from the Chardonnay grape, it was aged over the lees of another grape I love: viognier.  It went wonderfully with my “healthy” abstemious meal: soft fresh goat cheese, a baguette, good ripe tomatoes, and black Niçoise olives in virgin olive oil.

Jeb Dunnock, who has a good palate, gave it a 94/100 (amazing score for a $10 wine) and says this:

A richer styled wine (I’ve compared this cuvée to a Chardonnay from Mark Aubert), the 2020 Novellum has a medium gold hue as well as a rich, powerful bouquet of caramelized lemon, honeyed almonds, candle wax, and toasted bread. Rich, medium to full-bodied, beautifully textured, and balanced, this is another no brainer purchase.

If you see this puppy, and it’s not more than $12, snap it up. The quality/price ratio is outstandingly high.

Stuff that happened on July 26 includes:

First, as reader Tom wrote me:

Wishing you a happy 834th anniversary of the Erfurt Latrine Disaster, when the combined weigh of dozens of assembled nobles in Germany caused a wooden floor to collapse into a latrine cesspool below, resulting in between 60-100 of them drowning in liquid excrement on July 26, 1184.

Pizarro was assassinated by Diego de Almagro II the son of another Spanish conquistador, Diego de Almagro and “Ana Martínez, a native Panamanian Indian woman”. (“Indian” is Wikipedia’s usage.) He’s buried in the Lima Cathedral, and here’s his tomb:

Drake is not in good odor in California. He did participate in the slave trade and was a “colonialist”, so a number of San Francisco institutions, most notably the Sir Francis Drake Hotel (the most famous hotel in the city) has changed its name. It’s now the Beacon Grand.

I was surprised that women’s cricket started so early, but so it did. Here’s a painting of “a 1779 cricket match played by the Countess of Derby and other ladies.” The dress looks a bit uncomfortable for the sport. 

  • 1775 – The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania takes office as Postmaster General.
  • 1882 – Premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal at Bayreuth.
  • 1918 – Emmy Noether‘s paper, which became known as Noether’s theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy.

I’m not an expert on Noether, but her connection between conservation laws and symmetry was a tremendous achievement. She was Jewish, by the way, and was expelled from the University of Göttingen by the Nazi regime, but found an academic home in the U.S. Here’s a photo with the caption, “Professor Emmy Noether (on the left) with mathematicians at Göttingen, Spring 1931 From the Emmy Noether Mathematical Institute.”

Here are what’s presently seen as exact conservation laws, each associated (as per Noether) with a symmetry:

  • 1944 – World War II: The Red Army enters Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, capturing it from the Nazis. Only 300 Jews survive out of 160,000 living in Lviv prior to occupation.

Here’s a related photo taken in Ukraine, “The Last Jew in Vinnitsa“, which has its own Wikipedia page. The photo was taken between 1941 and 1943, and to me is one of the most iconic photos to show the horror of the Holocaust. Wikipedia describes it:

The Last Jew in Vinnitsa is a photograph taken during the Holocaust in Ukraine showing an unknown Jewish man near the town of Vinnitsa (Vinnytsia) about to be shot dead by a member of Einsatzgruppe D, a mobile death squad of the Nazi SS. The victim is kneeling beside a mass grave already containing bodies; behind, a group of SS and Reich Labour Service men watch.

  • 1947 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.
  • 1951 – Walt Disney’s 13th animated film, Alice in Wonderland, premieres in London, England, United Kingdom.

I had no idea the film, which initially flopped (but did a lot better in a 1974 re-release) was premiered in London. Here’s the part where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat:

  • 1977 – The National Assembly of Quebec imposes the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.
  • 2016 – Hillary Clinton becomes the first female nominee for President of the United States by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Here’s Clinton accepting the nomination. I voted for her in the final election (but for Bernie in the primary), but of course we got Tr*mp.

Da Nooz:

*Washington Post op-ed columnist Jennifer Rubin, in her latest piece “Conscience exception” to abortion bans” pushes for an interesting point of view, which itself rests on a lawsuit that Jewish congregation is bringing against the new Florida anti-abortion law (h/t Jim).

A lawsuit in Florida brought by the Jewish Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor challenges the state’s 15-week abortion ban by arguing that it is vague and violates equal protection and due process protections. But it also makes an interesting argument that raises some important legal and moral questions: that the law tramples First Amendment rights and the state constitution’s free-exercise clause.

The complaint alleges, “The Act establishes as the law of the State of Florida, a particular religious view about abortion and when life begins, which is contrary to the views of Plaintiff, its members, congregants, and supporters as well as many other Floridians.”

The suit explains:

The Act reflects the views of Christian nationalists who seek to deny religious freedom to all others, under the arrogant, self-righteous notion that only they are capable of understanding God’s law and judgments and the religious views of all others are false, evil and not entitled to respect or constitutional protections. Proponents of this way of thinking used their political power to enshrine their narrow religious views as the law of the State of Florida, which not only results in irreparable harm to Plaintiff and all others who espouse a different view, including many of their co-religionists, but it also threatens and harms the very framework or our Democracy, and the cherished ideal of the separation of church and state which has been the cornerstone of American democracy since its inception and the reason it has been so successful and the envy of freedom-loving people throughout the world.

Laws that ban abortion rest on the belief that “fetal life” is conterminous with “personhood.” The complaint explains why this assumption is so arrogant: “Jewish law does not consider life to begin at conception or at 15 weeks and most Jews such as Plaintiff, its members and congregants do not believe that all the rights of personhood are conferred upon a fetus.” The complaints adds, “In fact, under traditional Jewish law life begins at birth and if a fetus poses a threat to the health or emotional well-being of its mother, at any stage of gestation up until birth, Jewish law requires the mother to abort the pregnancy and protect herself.”

In other words, the Florida law violates some Jews’ freedom of religion: a First Amendment guarantee. It sounds like a good argument, but will it prevail over the Florida law and the Supreme Court decision? I wouldn’t bet on it.

*I rarely read Salon (too woke), but I clicked on it today and found an article I hadn’t seen elsewhere. The title is “Secret Service agents who tried to torpedo Hutchinson testimony lawyer up; refuse to testify: panel.” That’s a jawbreaker of a title, but what the piece says is disturbing.

Top Secret Service agents who tried to undermine former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the Jan. 6 committee have hired private lawyers and are refusing to cooperate with the investigation, members of the panel said over the weekend.

Hutchinson, who worked as a top aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified last month that she was told by deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato that former President Donald Trump was so irate that his security detail would not take him to the Capitol with his supporters on Jan. 6 that he lunged at Secret Service agent Bobby Engel, the head of his detail. Hutchinson said Ornato, who made the unusual leap from working at the Secret Service to working for Trump before returning as a senior Secret Service official, described the incident with Engel present and he did not dispute it.

After her testimony, journalists citing anonymous sources reported that Engel and the driver of Trump’s vehicle were “prepared to testify under oath” to dispute Hutchinson’s account and that Ornato denied telling Hutchinson that Trump “grabbed the steering wheel or an agent.”

LOL. Now they not only won’t voluntarily testify, but they’ve got their own lawyers. I guess the claims of “willingness to testify” were baseless. Unless Hutchinson’s testimony is rebutted by the Secret Service, it will stand as true.

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*Reader Jim reported this:

It will get interesting now. Article in WaPo metro section today on alumni groups from universities are getting formally involved in university cancel cultures. Seems like in Virgina–at least with U.Va and VMI it will bring together white supremacists, Confederacy apologists, and Nazis with traditional supporters of academic freedom, The Chicago Principles, and FIRE efforts to oppose the woke.
From the article:

More than a dozen groups have joined the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, a group announced last fall that now includes graduates from schools including Harvard, Bucknell, Yale and Cornell universities, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Wofford and Davidson colleges. Organizers say hundreds of people from schools all across the country have contacted them, all graduates who have questions they say their traditional alumni associations are not asking.

To join, the groups must hold freedom of speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity as primary missions, said Edward Yingling, president of the alliance and a founder of Princetonians for Free Speech. “There is a feeling that a lot of universities are losing their way,” Yingling said. “There is very little diversity of thought.”

I’m not joining, as I already spend too much time promoting these causes. Plus it’s not all that comfortable being in the company of people who, though they promote free speech and viewpoint diversity, are probably doing it from motives that differ from mine, and have political philosophies on the conservative side. Still, it’s at least one palliative for the craziness of today’s elite campuses.

*Jeffrey Frank, a writer on politics, has a new NYT op-ed called: “Kamala Harris is stuck“.  The title tells it all, and the article doesn’t presage a brilliant career for Vice President Harris, who hasn’t been taught (as Ike taught Nixon) how to do politics in preparation for the Presidency.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was a first-term senator from California before entering the White House, hasn’t been given the sort of immersive experiences or sustained, high-profile tasks that would deepen and broaden her expertise in ways Americans could see and appreciate. In the modern era, of course, a 68-day trip for a vice president would be laughable. But over the past 18 months, her on-the-job training in governing has largely involved intractable issues like migration and voting rights where she has not shown demonstrable growth in leadership and hit-or-miss trips overseas like the troubled foray in Central America a year ago and the more successful delegation to meet with the United Arab Emirates’ new president, leading a team that included Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

If other presidents have formed substantive partnerships in office with their V.P.s and made efforts to deepen their experience, President Biden and Ms. Harris have been unable to do so or uninterested in bringing about a similar transformation. From the outside, there’s little evidence that the Biden White House feels much of the urgency felt by General Eisenhower to enhance the role and preparedness of the person who might inherit the presidency at any moment.

. . . Americans deserve to know and see that they have a vice president who is trusted by White House and administration officials to take over, should anything happen to the president.

Instead, we have mostly seen the opposite. She is hampered by Mr. Biden’s unpopularity, to be sure, but she has also not become the successful public face on any major issue.

Don’t look for her to run in 2024, even though it’s traditional for the VP to replace the President if his two terms are up or if (as should be the case for Biden, but may not) he steps down after one term.

*Reader Ginger K. tells us this about Title IX, which is being revised by the Biden administration, has a number of revisions which are NOT salubrious, and it’s time for the public to leave comments (see link below):

We have until 9/12 to tell the Dept of Education NOT to destroy a highly successful 50-year-old civil rights law. Non-USAnians can also comment.

Effective comments include personal experience, scientific evidence (include links so they’ll become part of the official record,) how prioritizing “gender identity” over the reality of biological sex is dangerous for women, and actual logic to demonstrate the absurdity of the proposed rewrites.

Here’s the link. (Note that all comments become part of the public record and anyone can search for your name. If you prefer to remain unknown, use a pseudonym

Please comment opposing these changes to Title IX!

*”Do octopuses feel pain?”  It’s hard to determine if another species is sentient (viz., “What is it like to be a bat”), but a team at the London School of Economics has determined that octopuses, some of molluscan relatives, and decapod crustaceans can feel pain. Here’s their methodology(h/t Divy):

Take, for instance, the ability to feel pain – the focus of the LSE team’s report on cephalopod molluscs (which include octopuses, cuttlefish and squid) and decapod crustaceans (which include crabs, crayfish, lobsters, prawns and shrimps). Browning and her colleagues reviewed more than 300 scientific papers to distil eight criteria that suggest an animal can feel pain:

    1. possession of nociceptors (receptors that detect noxious stimuli – such as temperatures hot enough to burn, or a cut)
    2. possession of parts of the brain that integrate sensory information
    3. connections between nociceptors and those integrative brain regions
    4. responses affected by local anaesthetics or analgesics
    5. motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against opportunity for reward
    6. flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat
    7. associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitisation
    8. behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured

An animal can meet a criterion with a high, medium or low level of confidence, depending on how conclusive or inconclusive the research is. If an animal meets seven or more of the criteria, Browning and her colleagues argue there is “very strong” evidence that the animal is sentient. If it meets five or more with a high level of confidence, there is “strong evidence” of sentience, and so on.

Using this measure, Browning and her colleagues concluded that there was little doubt octopuses could feel pain, and were therefore sentient. They met all but one of the criteria with high or very high confidence, and one with medium confidence. They scored most highly out of the creatures studied – more so even than their cousin the cuttlefish, who are considered to be more intelligent. (Browning notes, though, that far less research has been done on cuttlefish and other cephalopods besides octopuses, which affects their scores.)

These data are being used to counter proposals to farm octopuses for food, but the evidence for consciousness (apprehension of “aualia”) “was used as evidence to inform an amendment to the UK’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill to recognise that cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans are sentient.”

*According to the Daily Beast, The Fabulous Joni made her first stage appearance in years on July 24, after suffering a brain aneurysm a while back. Of course her voice is gone—after years of age and many packs of cigarettes, but here she is singing one of her first hits, “Both Sides Now”. (h/t: Terrance).

From the Beast:

The legendary performer made a surprise return to the stage, performing at the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday, her first concert since suffering a near-fatal brain aneurysm in 2015. The appearance was a Big Deal. It was Mitchell’s first full set in two decades—alongside Brandi Carlile and a chorus of musicians that included Wynonna Judd, Taylor Goldsmith, and Marcus Mumford—and her first time on the Newport stage in 53 years.

.  . . Videos of Mitchell’s set trickled in over the weekend, but one that went viral Monday has sent the internet into a collective emotional breakdown: the 78-year-old singing the lead vocals on a moving rendition of “Both Sides Now.”

“Both Sides Now,” with its aching lyrics and stirring string arrangement, is an emotional song on any day. But Mitchell performing it with such gusto—a combination of frailty and strength that couldn’t suit the song better, revealing how subtly it still evolves—added an unignorable weight.

At various points during the performance, Carlile is visibly overwhelmed, as if in disbelief that this special moment is happening. Behind Mitchell, Judd begins crying, at which point anyone watching will surely lose it. Judd recently lost her mother, Naomi. When she reached her hand to the sky at the end of the performance, it was all over; I think I let out an involuntary shriek, it was so moving.

Nobody even knew whether Mitchell would perform until she did. See the article for more. Here’s the video, with her fellow performers tearing up. Me too.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili asks a weird question:

Hili: Why don’t we have a donkey?
A: Because it too would want to sleep with us in our bed.
In Polish:
Hili: Dlaczego nie mamy osiołka?
Ja: Bo też by chciał spać z nami w łóżku.
And Baby Kulka gets a drink:

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

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Jesus of the Day, Terry Pratchett. Sourcery:

From reader Malcolm: a cartoon by Martin Perscheid. Do you get it?

The Tweet of God, who seems to be a bit schizophrenic today:

I found a Telephone Kitty. Sound up!

From Nancie; this is indeed a powerful “artwork”:

From Barry. LOOK AT THIS BIRD!

Here’s a video about the bird, which I take to be the Amazonian Royal Flycatcher, whose name tells you where it’s found.

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

Tweets from Professor Cobb. First, to complement the performance above, a painting by Joni (she always thought of herself more of a painter than a singer):

Matthew’s caption for this one is “Down with splitters!” Yes! T. rex is one species!

I hope somebody got that cow out of the trough!

One of the three cats that Matthew and his family services. This is Ollie, who laid open my nose with one deft swipe of his paw when I was holding him up to my face. I will never forgive him.

51 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Drake is not in good odor in California” – presumably Californians are upset because they have singed beards from the wildfires… burnt hair does pong!

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    1. oops – edit is missing today – now I have duplicated this comment & put the wrong spelling of Goodwyn – duh!

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  4. Goodwyn’s – is missing the apostrophe! Also, clearly in England from the style of the building – & where else ?! 😉
    179 Dudley Road, Brierley Hill DY5 1HR

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  5. Ben Franklin was also (co-)Post-Master General for the Crown. He was responsible for the mails from Pennsylvania north.

    I have thought that there is a First Amendment case to be made against abortion restrictions for thirty years. I think Roe made people lazy.

    Immigration is not an intractable problem. The Biden administration wishes it to be thought so, but have actually settled the matter to their satisfaction by just leaving the door open.

    Lastly, why does Hili wants a donkey?

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  6. I think that the creation of an “Alumni Free Speech Alliance” is a great idea. It can give some focus and heft to the concerns of alumni (such as have been led by Jerry and discussed here at weit over the last few years) as those concerns have no clearly welcoming inbox at universities. Many universities have DEI departments or offices which run unchecked it seems. The alliance or alliances will allow for some well thought out positions to be brought to university governing boards where policies that energize and support the creation of DEI structures and their current activities by university presidents. DEI could become a home for debate of wide ranging viewpoints and synthesis of ideas for actions that are more clearly understood by the entire university community.

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    1. They might want to consider hyphenating “Free-Speech” lest they become a Speech Alliance that is Alumni Free.

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      1. I believe the Lorentz contraction would be the same for a object with the same speed both approaching and receding.

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        1. Correct. Now, if the man watching got noticeably older while the driver stayed the same age during the time difference between the two panels, that would illustrate time dilation.

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    2. I was thinking along the same line. The perception is shifted — the size and color of the car, the driver’s nose is way longer. Are we right?

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    3. Got the shape change instantly; took a few seconds for the color change to register.
      If there was a middle panel with the car directly in front of the viewer, the car should look normal – perfectly round wheels, etc. But what color? White?

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      1. Jeez, guys!! None of you overeducated buys noticed that the tires on both cars are not ROUND? On one car they are squashed vertically and one the other horizontally. Too many PhDs around….

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  8. 1745 – The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.

    I learned just yesterday that the younger sisters of Helen Joyce, the author of the excellent book Trans: When Ideology meets Reality, played cricket for Ireland. (Cricket in Ireland seems to be a small affair – three of Joyce’s brothers also played for the country!) I came across this information in her speaking notes from a recent event held at the House of Lords, in which she makes an excellent case for the retention of single-sex services and facilities: https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/joyce-activated-issue-14/

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      1. Fascinating, thanks Stephen! And all because of the unsuitable female clothing that our host commented on, too.

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  9. Perhaps surprisingly, the female Royal Flycatcher also has the amazing crest. My Colombian bird guide states that the female’s crest is orange, while the male’s is scarlet. I see the crest in the first video as orange, meaning the bird is a female and the caption is incorrect.

    As alluded to by the person in the second video, the crest is apparently rarely displayed in the wild, but usually is when the bird is handled, suggesting to me that it’s used as a threat display.

    There is disagreement on the taxonomy of the Royal Flycatcher. The American Ornithological Society, which sets the taxonomy followed by millions of birders in the US and Canada, has decided, at least for now, that there is only one species, but others have split it into as many as four (very similar) species. The Royal Flycatcher ranges to Mexico, Ecuador and Peru west of the Andes, south-east Brazil. So the bird in the first video, for which there isn’t much information, may not be from the Amazon. It looks to me like one of the other forms but as I’ve never seen a Royal Flycatcher (it’s on the ol’ bucket list), I’m hardly an authority.

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  10. “Wishing you a happy 834th anniversary of the Erfurt Latrine Disaster, when the combined weigh of dozens of assembled nobles in Germany caused a wooden floor to collapse into a latrine cesspool below, resulting in between 60-100 of them drowning in liquid excrement on July 26, 1184.”
    I think Tom messed up his maths. 1184+834=2018. One of those numbers must be wrong.

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    1. dozens falling resulted in 60-100 deaths? better described as gross

      also i think anniversary was cancelled for pandemic and a few years in wwii

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  11. The wicket-keeper (woman behind the sticks) seems to be suggesting that a middle stump (a stick in the middle) might be a good idea.

    Eileen Ash, a former England test cricketer, died recently at 110. She played in the 1930s and 1940s and was the oldest test cricketer at the time of her death.

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  12. I went to the Fairmount bagel web site to see if they ship to Washington State—a bagel desert where, with few exceptions, a “bagel” (quotes intentional) isn’t even boiled before baking. It’s not a bagel if it’s not boiled!

    Anyway, Fairmount doesn’t seem to ship here, so I’ll never learn what a bagel tastes like after enduring 3000 miles in a UPS truck. Also, they seem to have taken a few steps toward the dark side. They now offer blueberry, chocolate, and cinnamon-raisin. They also make a Mueslix bagel. See the mouth-watering (and otherwise) varieties here: https://fairmountbagel.com/events/. I want a white seed bagel badly!

    My late Aunt Nellie lived in Brooklyn in the 1960’s and used to visit us in Binghamton a couple times a year. It was a 3 1/2-hour drive via the “quickway” (U.S. Route 17). She would fill her car with several dozen just-baked bagels and get to our house about noon—in time for lunch. Bagels, Nova Scotia lox (which we simply called “Nova”), sometimes bialys as well. They were still warm when she got there.

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    1. Norman, you might want to try Whidbey Island Bagel Factory in Oak Harbor –boiled and baked, named “best bagel in Washington”, etc.

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  13. Joni: I saw her at the 1969 Atlantic City Pop Festival (which was eclipsed by Woodstock 3wks later). She had barely started her (IIRC) first song when she became overwhelmed by something and could not continue, and that adds further to completing this one 53yrs later.

    Kulka drinking: A ladyfriend had a cat that had originally been feral. Ralph loved feral water wherever he could find it, and whenever outside visited all of his favorite feral water sites, one of which was a 5gal bucket with a lid on it. Eventually I installed a 5gal bucket + lid in the bathroom so he could channel the outdoor experience from the comfort of being inside.

    And apostrophes: There is a FB group titled, “Oh shit here comes an ‘S,’ better put a goddamn apostrophe” (Yet also noted on the pic: Goodwyns has no apostrophe!)

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    1. I almost want to sign up to Facebook just for that group. I find unnecessary apostrophes and quotation marks particularly bothersome these days.

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      1. It’s not the only FB group for that, either. And there’s one for whose/who’s, plus probably many more.

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        1. I especially enjoyed the apocalypseses’s’. The final apostrophe adds a certain je ne sais quoi🤓

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  14. … Vice President Harris, who hasn’t been taught (as Ike taught Nixon) how to do politics in preparation for the Presidency.

    Not so sure I agree 100% with your parenthetical, or with Jeffrey Frank’s contention in his NYT op-ed that Eisenhower went out of his way “to enhance [Nixon’s] role and preparedness” for the presidency.

    Nixon — who cut his teeth on the House Un-American Activities Committee — was put on the bottom half of the 1952 GOP ticket to be Ike’s attack dog, so Eisenhower could stay above the fray. Nixon had the reputation as a vicious campaigner, of dubious ethics, after his 1946 House campaign against Jerry Voorhis and his 1950 Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas (wife of actor Melvyn Douglas) whom Nixon smeared as being soft on communism by claiming she was “pink down to her underwear.” (Hell, Nixon damn near got booted off the ’52 ticket when it came out that he had a slush fund, until he went on tv and gave his maudlin “Checkers Speech.”)

    And during Nixon’s 1960 campaign for the presidency, Ike didn’t do Nixon any favors when, at a press conference, he was asked if Nixon had contributed any major ideas to his presidency, and responded, “If you give me a week, I might think of one” — a putdown JFK later incorporated into an attack ad against Nixon.

    Although the two were later related by marriage (Nixon’s daughter Tricia married Ike’s grandson David, albeit after Dwight D’s death), I don’t think they were ever particularly close. I’m pretty sure Eisenhower always saw Nixon for the sleazebag he was.

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  15. I had not heard about the (former) Sir Francis Drake Hotel. A bit of nostalgia for me since it is where we spent the first night of our honeymoon almost 60 years ago.

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  16. “Oh, I am a lonely painter,
    I live in a box of paints.”

    The interplay of Joni’s and Carlile’s voices on “A Case of You” was spectacular.

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  17. As I am fond of pointing out, I believe that Noether’s Theorem is also/sometimes called the Lasker-Noether theorem. It was first proven for special cases by Emanuel Lasker in 1905, then later generalized by Noether.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_decomposition#:~:text=In%20mathematics%2C%20the%20Lasker%E2%80%93Noether,%2C%20powers%20of%20prime%20ideals).

    Lasker was world chess champion from 1894-1921, the longest official reign of any player.

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    1. Yes, Lasker was one of David Hilbert’s students. Hilbert was Noether’s champion; to give her a chance to lecture at Gottingen, Hilbert would schedule lectures in his name and have her give them. (Aside: Hilbert was a very nice man.) Noether was the preeminent algebraist of her time, possessing extraordinary creativity and insight.

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        1. This is EXCELLENT!

          I’d like to note – in the YouTube/Podcast v. Reading/Writing/’Rithmatic “debate” – the above video (Prof. Greene) is highly effective. I’m not sure anyone could reduce his exposition into writing and make it as effective.

          Likewise, all of the Why Evolution Is True pieces are highly effective as written pieces, and I cannot see them transforming into YouTube/Podcasts well at all.

          I further note the “transcript” of Prof. Greene’s talk is good as far as it goes, but sadly fails to capture the mathematics – and never will, I’d argue.

          More Notes! : PCC(E) is a great speaker so he could easily do YouTube/Podcasts, but of course would detract from the ducks, is what it comes down to 🙂 . I wonder if Greene could write his talk as a WEIT style piece – probably too complicated.

          Thanks!

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  18. I think Ms. Mitchell’s current smokey contralto is even better suited to another tune she performed at this year’s Newport Festival — Mr. Gershwin’s “Summertime”:

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    1. You bet. Nothing wrong at all with Ms Mitchell’s voice. It’s changed over the decades but it’s still lovely and delivers a spot-on interpretation, especially of the Gershwin.

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  20. If Tuesday is the cruelest day – and I think it is – then 2 PM must be the cruelest hour.

    Or maybe 1:30-2:30 PM.

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  23. @Jerry

    Thank you so much for including the Title IX info!

    Everyone PLEASE COMMENT and oppose ideology superseding reality! USAnian women and girls need an intact Title IX, not one disemboweled by extremists!

    Thank you all very much!

    Reply

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