Today we’ll have a truncated Hili dialogue because I’m in Paris. Bonjour on this Thursday, April 13, 2023: Parisian Lunch Day.
The brief Nooz
From the NYT: “Why we’re probably headed for a recession” by columnist Peter Coy.
From the WaPo: “Appeals court temporarily keeps abortion pills available but limits access.”
The court said a preliminary review suggests that a statute of limitations barred a challenge to the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug in 2000. However, it left in place parts of the ruling that targeted the loosening of restrictions by the FDA in recent years. These included a 2016 move to allow the drug to be used through 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of the initial seven weeks. It also included the FDA’s decision this year to further ease access to mifepristone by allowing retail pharmacies to dispense the pills.
Today Hili is bereft at her bowl:
Hili: Have you ever seen such an empty bowl?A: It was just washed.Hili: And it should be just filled.
Hili: Widziałeś kiedyś tak pustą miseczkę?Ja: Jest świeżo umyta.Hili: A powinna być świeżo napełniona.
From Divy, the definition of a kitten. Click to enlarge:
From Nicole, a Dave Coverly Speed Bump cartoon:
From Stash Krod, the Revolt of the Pedants:
From Masih, the Farsi translation:
Moments of singing by Amin Maroufi, a 16-year-old teenager who was killed by government agents in Ashnoye during the revolution *Woman_Life_Freedom. Ashnoye was the first city where the control of many parts of it was lost from the government’s hands and the people occupied the streets. #Mehsa Amini
لحظاتی از آوازخوانی امین معروفی، نوجوان ۱۶ ساله‌ای که در جریان انقلاب #زن_زندگی_آزادی، در اشنویه با گلوله ماموران حکومت کشته شد.
اشنویه نخستین شهری بود که کنترل بخش‌های زیادی از آن از دست حکومت خارج شد و مردم خیابانها را به تسخیر خود درآورده بودند.#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/HXHdjfIlQs
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 13, 2023
Barry sent an exchange about evolution on Twitter:
From Malcolm: Cat goes after virtual fish:
Funny 🤣 pic.twitter.com/mjnxW0nlgS
— Cats Tweets (@catstweets_) April 8, 2023
From gravelinspector, a tweet from. . . .. etsy???
I kind of want it….🤣 pic.twitter.com/0sGUPnTtQZ
— Lorna MacGillivray (@Elemjay1) April 7, 2023
Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, the famous ice-channel duck train. I’m sure I’ve shown this before:
Duck train pic.twitter.com/OHziflhFEK
— why you should have a duck 🦆 (@shouldhaveaduck) April 10, 2023
From a trail cam: a magnificent turkey display; he’s clearly looking for a mate:
Weekly highlights – this amazing turkey display 1/ pic.twitter.com/XhPvzQxVoq
— Wendy Wiens (@wendy_wiens) April 9, 2023
Yes, the three-judge panel of the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit that issued its ruling last night split the “unborn child” in this case. I suppose that the two Trump appointees who voted to lift the stay on the district court’s decision in part, fancy themselves as having exercised Solomon-like wisdom. (The third judge on the panel, George W. Bush appointee Catharina Haynes, would have stayed the district court’s entire decision, including district judge Kacsmaryk’s invalidation of 2016 modifications of the FDA’s regulations regarding mifepristone, pending full briefing on the merits and oral argument.)
There’s nothing Solomonic in that decision, Ken. The wisdom of Solomon was his insight that the true mother of the child would surrender it intact to the other woman claiming it, rather than having it killed and getting half as he provocatively proposed. Solomon of course recognized this and awarded her the child alive. Not a split decision at all.
I understand that perfectly well, Leslie. I was being ironic.
Effective use of irony requires that you demonstrate correct understanding of a reference and then giving it a twist of humour or unexpected insight. You can’t get to irony with a misinterpretation, even if deliberate, of the original reference. “The Wisdom of Solomon” is itself understandable only in an ironic sense, because of the twist in the king’s resolution of the dispute. If you take the twist out of it and try to make it sound only like a gritty plea bargain, the irony evaporates. Ironically.
The irony came from attributing to the two judges on the Fifth Circuit panel who voted for the split decision the misunderstanding of the Solomon story. This irony was invited by the two judges themselves, I believe, not only by their rendering a split decision, but by their adopting the language of the court below referring to a fetus as an “unborn child.” I did not, and would not, embrace the misunderstanding of the Solomonic story myself.
I should have hoped that would have been clear from the context.
Only a mother that cares would do that. A psychopathic one might say slice away! Besides, what sort of a monster would seriously suggest cutting a child in two? Surely anyone would say – you are not going to do that.
I went back and read your review of Cartet from 2020. It looks like the chef/owner is simply his own man…always turning out meals that are at least good or very good and sometimes or maybe often times excellent (we have only two data points). But i have eaten once every week at a chef/owner restaurant of similar whims when i was on a six- month out of town work assignment. I did not go in with any particular expectation except to enjoy myself with his creation du jour. Dinner was never bad or even mediocre; always very good to excellent. I assumed they were always things that appealed to him…and, not always, but almost always, appealed to me. You are in Paris in the springtime with a wonderful dinner companion. Please do not cancel your follow on reservation at Cartet and continue to send us pics (both paris itself and food) and reviews for our vicarious enjoyment. Btw I agree with your assessment of not caring for “fishy” fish, and imagined the perch cakes as wonderful.
On this day:
1204 – Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
1612 – In one of the epic samurai duels in Japanese history, Miyamoto Musashi defeats Sasaki Kojirō at Funajima island.
1613 – Samuel Argall, having captured Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia, sets off with her to Jamestown with the intention of exchanging her for English prisoners held by her father.
1699 – The Sikh religion is formalised as the Khalsa – the brotherhood of Warrior-Saints – by Guru Gobind Singh in northern India, in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
1742 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah makes its world premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
1870 – The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded.
1873 – The Colfax massacre: More than 60 to 150 black men are murdered in Colfax, Louisiana, while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
1919 – Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British Indian Army troops led by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer kill approx 379-1,000 unarmed demonstrators including men and women in Amritsar, India; and approximately 1,500 injured.
1943 – World War II: The discovery of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London and the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of President Thomas Jefferson’s birth.
1948 – In an ambush, 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital, and a British soldier, are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. This event came to be known as the Hadassah medical convoy massacre.
1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra.
1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.
1964 – At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
1970 – An oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 Service Module explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the Apollo command and service module (codenamed “Odyssey”) while en route to the Moon.
1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.
2017 – The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
Births:
1735 – Isaac Low, American merchant and politician, founded the New York Chamber of Commerce (d. 1791).
1743 – Thomas Jefferson, American lawyer and politician, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826).
1771 – Richard Trevithick, Cornish-English engineer and explorer (d. 1833).
1828 – Josephine Butler, English feminist and social reformer (d. 1906).
1852 – Frank Winfield Woolworth, American businessman, founded the F. W. Woolworth Company (d. 1919).
1860 – James Ensor, English-Belgian painter, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism (d. 1949).
1866 – Butch Cassidy, American criminal (d. 1908).
1892 – Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish engineer, invented Radar (d. 1973).
1906 – Samuel Beckett, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989).
1919 – Howard Keel, American actor and singer (d. 2004).
1939 – Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2013).
1949 – Christopher Hitchens, English-American essayist, literary critic, and journalist (d. 2011).
1967 – Michael Eisen, American biologist and academic.
A halo surrounded the Duck of Death nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the Duck of Death. I like the scythe. It amuses me): [With apologies to Markus Zusak.]
1938 – Grey Owl, English-Canadian environmentalist and author (b. 1888).
2006 – Muriel Spark, Scottish novelist, poet, and critic (b. 1918).
2015 – Günter Grass, German novelist, poet, playwright, and illustrator, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1927).
2022 – Gloria Parker, American musician and bandleader (b.1921).
Since you mentioned Jefferson twice, here’s a woke attack in re. him that just crossed my window the other day. It seems that a few yrs ago, UVA’s logo was modified to remove the wavy handles of the sabers that were intended to reflect the serpentine brick walls at the University that TJ was a great proponent of.
Anyone who knows anything about structural physics knows that serpentine walls are self-buttressing, and enable the existence of stable, single-brick walls. But somewhere along the line some looney got the idea that they were instead intended to muffle the sounds of slaves and hide them from view. Um, hello, Jefferson died in 1826, almost 40yrs before Emancipation, and was of course in his active phase much earlier than that. Why would there have been any motivation to hide slaves at all back then?
Only just recently, which is how I became aware of all of this, some historian is challenging the whole business. It took that long???
Just plain nuts.
Holy crap. Had not heard that even though I am close to many UVA grads here in Virginia. Well its post-modern…post enlightenment as I understand these things…nuts indeed
Here’s the thing about the challenge, which now I see was from back at the time the whole thing came up. Still, there doesn’t seem to be anything about how these were an English thing to begin with, and presumably where Jefferson got the idea to begin with.
You might be interested in TinyKittens. It’s a Canadian rescue organization that helps take care of feral cat colonies. They trap, spay/neuter, and provide medical care to the cats.
Right now, they just had a birth from one mama cat they trapped and are about to have another. They have a live stream on YouTube.
I’m not affiliated with them, just trying to promote awareness of all that they do.
I think “fishy” fish are fish high in oils: salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, herring. I like pretty much any fish, but mackerel and herring are a bit too “fishy” for me, unless they’re pickled. Though my favorite fish is halibut, which is decidedly not “fishy”.
How did Flanders and Swann sign off their “Ostrich Song“?
From a sheltered oasis a mile away /
I observed that dreadful scene /
And a single plume came floating down /
Where my Ostrich friend had been /
Because he could not bear the sound /
Of these words I had left unsaid; /
‘Here in this nuclear testing ground /
Is no place to bury your head!’
Since someone mentioned XKCD yesterday, I tripped over this recent Monroe delight : https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/salt_dome.png
Seems the news is the same. Conservative America wants Leave it to Beaver.
Others, not so much.