Thursday: Hili dialogue

October 12, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, October 12, 2023, and National Pumpkin Pie Day, celebrating a good pie but not a great one, and best with lots of real whipped cream. Costco has huge ones, well made and tasty, for a pittance. Click on the arrow on the pie to find more.  Look at that pie: 3 pounds, ten ounces, and only six bucks (it’s a loss leader: made with real pumpkins and and with a great crust.

I’ve just persuaded myself to get one this weekend. . . .

It’s also National Gumbo Day, World Arthritis Day, National Farmers Day, Pulled Pork Day, Feast for Life of Aleister Crowley, celebrated as “Crowleymas” (Thelema), and, especially, Freethought Day, celebrating the end of the Salem Witch Trials. To me, the one person who best exemplifies free thought is Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899),”The Great Agnostic.” Here’s one of his many quotes, followed by a photo:

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life’s morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life’s joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art’s nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship”
― Robert Green Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the October 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Republicans have finally nominated someone to replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House: Steve Scalise. 58. As far as I know, he doesn’t have a very distinguished record in Congress, and his nomination is still not a done deal:

House Republicans narrowly picked Rep. Steve Scalise as their nominee for speaker, but some of rival Rep. Jim Jordan’s backers declined to immediately endorse him, setting the stage for another unpredictable leadership fight on the House floor.

In a secret ballot election Wednesday, Republicans voted 113-99 to select Scalise of Louisiana, currently majority leader, over Jordan, a fiery Ohio conservative who chairs the Judiciary Committee and is backed by former President Donald Trump.

The razor-thin nature of Scalise’s victory left the House staring down a potential replay of the 15-vote marathon back at the start of the year, when Kevin McCarthy of California emerged as the winner only after making a series of promises related to spending and other issues to conservatives. Some of the same holdouts helped to oust him just nine months later.

ouse Republicans narrowly picked Rep. Steve Scalise as their nominee for speaker, but some of rival Rep. Jim Jordan’s backers declined to immediately endorse him, setting the stage for another unpredictable leadership fight on the House floor.

In a secret ballot election Wednesday, Republicans voted 113-99 to select Scalise of Louisiana, currently majority leader, over Jordan, a fiery Ohio conservative who chairs the Judiciary Committee and is backed by former President Donald Trump.

The razor-thin nature of Scalise’s victory left the House staring down a potential replay of the 15-vote marathon back at the start of the year, when Kevin McCarthy of California emerged as the winner only after making a series of promises related to spending and other issues to conservatives. Some of the same holdouts helped to oust him just nine months later.

The House went into recess yesterday without taking a vote on the Speaker.

All we can do is wait and see. Now is a pretty rotten time to have the position of Speaker vacant, even if it is filled by a Republican.

*The WaPo describes what Israel’s “complete siege of Gaza” actually entails.

“No power, no food, no gas,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, orchestrated the ambush over the weekend, when militants took more than 100 hostages to Gaza.

Israel has bombarded the densely populated enclave in retaliation,killing at least 1,100 people.On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces announced that the border with Gaza was secured and that it was preparing for an offensive.

This sounds like a ground offensive to me, and that’s what I predict. But of course I’m no pundit.

The Gaza Strip, a 140-square-mile stretch of land with more than 2 million people, depends on Israel for most of its electricity and other basic services. Cutting off gas and power from the territory could leave many residents not only without power, but without clean drinking water, proper sanitation and health care. On Wednesday, Palestinian authorities said Gaza’s only power plant has run out of fuel and stopped operating.

Israel provides Gaza with power in two ways. Gaza’s solepower plant is operated by diesel fuel, which enters Gaza from the Karem Shalom crossing. There are also10 direct power lines from Israel to Gaza.

. . .“Within a matter of days Gaza will be in a blackout,” said Miriam Marmur, public advocacy director at Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit organization.

The Israeli siege couldalso “result in a severe shortage of already scarce drinkable water,” the United Nations said. The country has several major desalination plants, which transform water from the Mediterranean Sea into drinkable water, but they need power to operate.

I’m not sure a siege, though it’s not a war crime, is a good idea for a few reasons. First, by making the Palestinians suffer, even those who oppose Hamas, it will turn the world even more against Israel–at a time when they need the world’s support. Further, I’m not sure it would work. Israel is not going to allow Palestinians to die from lack of food or water, but the object seems to be to make them so deprived that they depose Hamas—Israel’s avowed aim.  Will it really do that? Remember, they can still get food and water (though no power) from Egypt, and Leningrad held out three years during WWII. I’m also worried about a ground invasion because of the carnage and the possible killing of hostages. It’s a tough situation and a tough call.

*In the meantime, Israel has agreed to a “unity government”, adding opposition leaders to the Cabinet, to help succeed in the war with Gaza. And there’s other miscellaneous news.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel formed an emergency government on Wednesday, adding two opposition lawmakers — both former army chiefs — to his cabinet. Analysts said the infusion of military expertise would give the government greater legitimacy to make tough wartime decisions, including whether to invade Gaza, or even southern Lebanon.

. . . There was heightening fear that the conflict could widen: Fire has been exchanged along Israel’s northern border with both Lebanon and Syria in recent days, and Israeli forces said they launched retaliatory strikes into Lebanon on Wednesday, hitting targets belonging to Hezbollah, an armed Iran-backed Lebanese group allied with Hamas.

. . .A New York Times analysis of Hamas propaganda and satellite images shows how the assailants were able to execute such a sophisticated operation on Saturday. They appear to have destroyed communications towers close to the Gaza border that are key to Israel’s defense. Israel has said little about what appears to be a spectacular failure of its security and intelligence operations.

. . . Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the Americans missing in Israel, was among the crowds at a music festival in southern Israel that was overrun by Hamas terrorists on Saturday. Members of his family who have pieced together at least some of what happened to him believe he is in desperate need of medical attention because part of his arm was blown off by a grenade the assailants threw before abducting him.

At least seventeen Americans are unaccounted for in the fight, though it’s unclear how many of them are hostages.

. . . The American secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, told reporters just before he boarded a plane to Israel at a Maryland air base that he will tell Israeli officials the United States has Israel’s back. “We’ll have it tomorrow, we’ll have it every day,” he said. “We stand resolutely against terrorism.”

Blinken said that U.S. officials are having an “ongoing conversation” with their Israeli counterparts about ensuring safe passage for civilians out of Gaza. So far, Israel has not granted safe passage to Gazans wishing to leave as Isaeli warplanes have carried out a bombing campaign. Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Palestinian Americans, are pleading for officials in the United States and other nations to help them leave. U.S. officials will try “to the best of our ability” to ensure civilians are not harmed, Blinken said, “but Israel has to take steps to defend itself.”

. . . A second U.S. Navy aircraft carrier group that is heading to the Mediterranean Sea was already scheduled to sail there and is not necessarily going to be deployed to defend Israel, according to John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. “No operational decisions like that have been made,” he said. “But she will be heading in that direction.”

*In the NYT, R. David Harden has an op-ed called, “Israel could be walking into a trap in Gaza.” The trap is the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, which I consider nearly inevitable.

Hamas knew that the attack on Saturday would give Mr. Netanyahu little choice but to retaliate with a ground invasion, and it knows that the Israel Defense Forces’ technology and military superiority would offer little advantage on the crowded streets of Gaza City; in Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp; or through Hamas’s labyrinth of underground tunnels. Gaza, 140 square miles with a population of more than two million, is one of the most densely populated places on earth.

It appears Hamas wants to draw Israeli soldiers into a quagmire, as Hezbollah did in Southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000. After years of fighting, Israel suffered a humiliating and chaotic withdrawal, leaving an empowered and threatening Hezbollah on its northern border.

Why might Hamas want to draw the Israel Defense Forces into a bloody ground battle? Hamas is the uncontested power in Gaza, though elections have not been held since 2006. The Palestinian Authority; its main political party, Fatah; the business community; civil society; and family clan leaders cannot effectively challenge Hamas, which has become only stronger after each successive conflict with Israel. Despite an Israeli blockade and round-the-clock surveillance, Hamas has apparently been able to build and buy more rockets, steadily improve their range and accuracy, provide offensive combat training for its fighters and develop an intelligence network sophisticated and far-reaching enough to launch a simultaneous assault on 22 Israeli locations. Hamas surely believes it can defeat the Israelis on its home turf in a war of attrition.

Hamas also stands to expand its political credibility in the West Bank if Israel invades Gaza, particularly if Israeli advances stall. . .

My solution is to drop the siege, mount a ground invasion, and provide a corridor for Gazans to travel to Egypt to avoid the fighting.  I hear rumors that the UN and Israel and the US are working on that solution, and I hope it’s implemented, but right now the Egyptian/Gaza border is hard to cross as Gazans need a permit obtained in advance.

*Just a note on an Instagram statement posted on October 7 by the Berkeley student group “Bears for Palestine”. Of course it’s a justification for what Hamas did, which was merely “indigenous resistance”:

*According to the AP, Salman Rushdie is releasing a memoir based on the horrific knife attack he suffered last year.

Salman Rushdie has a memoir coming out about the horrifying attack that left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand. “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” will be published April 16.

“This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art,” Rushdie said in a statement released Wednesday by Penguin Random House.

Last August, Rushdie was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and abdomen by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York. The attacker, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.

. . .The 256-page “Knife” will be published in the U.S. by Random House, the Penguin Random House imprint that earlier this year released his novel “Victory City,” completed before the attack. His other works include the Booker Prize-winning “Midnight’s Children,” “Shame” and “The Moor’s Last Sigh.” Rushdie is also a prominent advocate for free expression and a former president of PEN America.

“‘Knife’ is a searing book, and a reminder of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable,” Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. “We are honored to publish it, and amazed at Salman’s determination to tell his story, and to return to the work he loves.”

Here’s Rushdie, looking like a priest. He’s lost an eye, and the dog collar may be there to cover up the scars on his neck. But I’m very glad he survived!

Credit: AP photo, Frank Franklin II

And the cover of his book, which will be published by my own publisher, Penguin Random House, which I call “Random Penguin”.

(from the AP): This cover image released by Random House shows “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” by Salman Rushdie. (Random House via AP)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s having a Big Think:

Hili: All this requires rethinking.
A: Namely what?
Hili: This and that.
In Polish:
Hili: To wszystko wymaga przemyślenia.
Ja: Co mianowicie?
Hili: To i tamto.

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

A latte costume for Halloween (from Linkiest):

From Matthew:

From a collection of funny newspaper bits:

From Masih.  Armita Garavand is still in a coma in a Tehran hospital. She’s not dead yet, but things don’t look good. The Iranian morality police (here the women in black) are beyond disgusting.

From Simon. The statement is reprehensible, but it’s free speech.  Rescinding a job offer may be against the law.

From Malcolm, a gluttonous moggy:

From Cate. I am baffled why the NYT would do this. (NOT!)

From cesar, who notes, “A few years ago Tlaib was in tears during testimony of children being separated from parents on Texas border while crossing.”

From the Auschwitz Memorial. First, Edith Stein was a philosopher and a Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a nun. When the Nazis were angry at the Dutch church, they executed all Catholics who had once been Jews, including Stein. Read more about her here.

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a woman feeding six foxes:

Three white cats all lined up.  They look like my late beloved Teddy. (There’s music.)

This may be true, but it baffles me.

38 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

    1. Unlikely as it seems, perhaps the MAGAs in the House clown show are actually embarrassed by the out of control insanity in the face of war in the Middle East. However, they did nominate Steve Scalise, who self identifies as “David Duke without the baggage”.

      For those unfamiliar with David Duke, he is a Louisiana politician, a Klu Klux Klan leader and Neo- Nazi who is now an international spokesman for Holocaust denial. Out of the frying pan into the crazy town fire. 🙄

      The fun part is this new guy doesn’t have the votes to become Speaker yet. So the cray-cray starts all over again.

      Reply

    2. Serving as the Republican speaker of the House is a fool’s errand. John Boehner couldn’t hack it. Paul Ryan couldn’t hack it. And Kevin McCarthy, the spineless gelding who lusted for the Speakership so bad, lasted about as long in the job as a triple feature at the drive-in.

      Steve Scalise, should he succeed in getting his hands on the Speaker’s gavel, will likely fare no better. Scalise’s main claim to fame is having gotten shot during a practice for the annual congressional baseball game. Against my custom, out of respect for Scalise as a shooting victim, I watched the old, uncoordinated congressional farts blaspheme the game that I love that night on tv. I even grew a bit misty a couple times with the expressions of bipartisan support for Scalise from both sides of the aisle. And I rooted for a complete recovery for Scalise from his wounds. But let us not forget that, during his campaign for his first term as a Louisiana congressman, Scalise referred to himself as “David Duke without the [Klan] baggage.”

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      2. I remember the shooting and also wished him a full recovery at the time. What I find ironic is the police officer, Crystal Griner, who took down the shooter and was also shot by the gunman, is a lesbian. She saved his life and he turned around and voted to reject the Respect for Marriage act, which would require the federal government and all states and territories to recognize marriages performed legally—including the same-sex marriage of Crystal Griner. Steve Scalise –self confessed racist and demonstrable homophobe. Par for the course in the clown car we call the GQP House.

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          1. “Distinct from mainstream lesbian and gay movements, groups like Queer Nation resisted assimilationist strategies that sought rights on the basis of stable and unchanging identities. ”

            -Emily Drabinski
            President of the American Library Association
            In
            Library Quarterly, Volume 83, Number 2, 2013

            Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction

            Source: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/669547

      3. If the GOP had any sense, they’d vote for Hakeem Jeffries as their leader. That way, they’d at least be able to function and get some work done. They’re a complete disgrace, and that’s being charitable. They’ve been in power for a year and haven’t done squat. And it looks like they’ll lose another of their slim majority with the new Santos indictments. Why people vote for this MAGA GOP I’ll never know.

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  2. On this day:
    1492 – Christopher Columbus’s first expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically on San Salvador Island. (Julian calendar).

    1692 – The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Province of Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phips.

    1773 – America’s first insane asylum opens.

    1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute.

    1810 – The citizens of Munich hold the first Oktoberfest in celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Louis of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.

    1871 – The British in India enact the Criminal Tribes Act, naming many local communities “Criminal Tribes”.

    1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools.

    1901 – President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the “Executive Mansion” to the White House.

    1915 – World War I: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium.

    1917 – World War I: The First Battle of Passchendaele takes place resulting in the largest single-day loss of life in New Zealand history.

    1928 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Boston Children’s Hospital.

    1945 – World War II: Desmond Doss is the first conscientious objector to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor.

    1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion.

    1964 – The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew, and the first flight without pressure suits.

    1979 – Typhoon Tip becomes the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded.

    1983 – Japan’s former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, and is sentenced to four years in jail.

    1984 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army fail to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. The bomb kills five people and wounds 31.

    1994 – The Magellan spacecraft burns up in the atmosphere of Venus.

    1999 – Pervez Musharraf takes power in Pakistan from Nawaz Sharif through a bloodless coup.

    2000 – The USS Cole, a US Navy destroyer, is badly damaged by two al-Qaeda suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.

    2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in two nightclubs in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia, killing 202 and wounding over 300.

    2019 – Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya becomes the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:40 in Vienna.

    Births:
    1860 – Elmer Ambrose Sperry, American engineer and businessman, co-invented the gyrocompass (d. 1930).

    1864 – Kamini Roy, British India’s first female graduate, Bengali poet, social activist, and feminist writer (d. 1933).

    1872 – Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer and educator (d. 1958).

    1875 – Aleister Crowley, English magician and author (d. 1947).

    1929 – Magnus Magnusson, Icelandic journalist and academic (d. 2007).

    1932 – Dick Gregory, American comedian, actor, and author (d. 2017).

    1934 – James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 2012).

    1935 – Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor and actor (d. 2007).

    1941 – Michael Mansfield, English lawyer, academic, and republican.

    1944 – Angela Rippon, English journalist and author. [The first female journalist to be given a permanent role presenting the BBC national television news.]

    1948 – Rick Parfitt, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2016).

    1949 – Carlos the Jackal, Venezuelan terrorist.

    1953 – David Threlfall, English actor and director.

    1956 – David Vanian, English singer-songwriter.

    1962 – Mads Eriksen, Norwegian guitarist and composer.

    Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it:
    322 BC – Demosthenes, Athenian statesman, (b. 384 BC).

    1845 – Elizabeth Fry, English prison reformer, Quaker and philanthropist (b. 1780). [Instrumental in the 1823 Gaols Act which mandated sex-segregation of prisons and female warders for female inmates to protect them from sexual exploitation. Fry kept extensive diaries, in which the need to protect female prisoners from rape and sexual exploitation is explicit. Doubtless she’s now seen as a transphobic bigot…]

    1870 – Robert E. Lee, American general (b. 1807).

    1924 – Anatole France, French journalist, novelist, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1844).

    1948 – Susan Sutherland Isaacs, English psychologist and psychoanalyst (b. 1885).

    1971 – Gene Vincent, American musician (b. 1935).

    1978 – Nancy Spungen, American figure of the 1970s punk rock scene (b. 1958).

    1996 – René Lacoste, French tennis player and fashion designer, co-founded Lacoste (b. 1904).

    1997 – John Denver, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1943).

    2011 – Dennis Ritchie, American computer scientist, created the C programming language (b. 1941).

    2012 – James Coyne, Canadian lawyer and banker, 2nd Governor of the Bank of Canada (b. 1910). [Included as a namesake of our host.]

    Reply

  3. Re the NYU student. The student has the right to speak, and the government can’t stop him. NYU, as a private institution, probably could to some degree. However the potential employer (also private) can act as they see fit. It’s not clear to me why rescinding a job offer from a private company would be illegal, and since it’s from a law firm they probably have some language about bringing the firm into disrepute in the small print. You can say what you like, in general, and people can respond to your words as they see fit.

    Reply

    1. Yes, I just learned that. I thought that if you can’t rescind a job offer because of someone’s race, you couldn’t do it on the basis of their political views. But you can in Washington, D.C.!

      Reply

      1. I think we can also look at this from another angle.

        Supporting terrorists moves beyond political speech for someone working in law. It demonstrates a rejection of the rule of law which I think should be disqualifying from holding any post that has to do with upholding the rule of law.

        Reply

  4. To me, the one person who best exemplifies free thought is Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899),”The Great Agnostic.” Here’s one of his many quotes …

    With the quoted passage, Ingersoll certainly establishes himself as a master of the rhetorical use of anaphora, piling up infinitive phrases and clauses upon infinitive phrases and clauses.

    Props to him.

    Reply

  6. “… to feel within your veins life’s joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art’s nectar in the weeds of common things …”

    ^^^

    Holy PCC(E), thank you for putting this up.

    Reply

  7. Has anyone seen the 45-minute ling video on the role of banks and currency in wars and conflict? The X account is “Inversionism” or something. The “author” suggests banks are the origin of all modern conflict.

    I might find a link later. It sounded conspiratorial, but I am very unknowledgeable about banks, currency, etc.

    Reply

    1. I’ve become fascinated with the topic of money and currency, and have been reading about it for the past year or so. If you are interested, two books I found very readable and illuminating about what I’ll call the history and philosophy of money are:

      Money From Nothing by Hockett and James, and

      Making Money Work for Us by Wray

      Full disclosure, the authors are all Modern Monetary Theory aligned economists (James is a philosopher, though). I’ve been reading and listening to lectures about MMT for the past 4 years, and IMO, MMT is a theory in the same way gravity is a theory.

      Reply

  8. Not mentioned in this post, but the inculcation of hatred for Jews by the Palestinian education system has been mentioned here frequently of late. I’m pretty sure I recall a post from a number of years ago with examples of that – posters or pages from books and such – but I haven’t been able to find it. If you recall the post, could you give a link?

    Reply

    1. I recall several posts, but I’d have to do what you would: do a search in the box for “Palestinian schools” or “education” or similar search terms.

      There’s plenty to see on the Internet, too.

      Reply

    2. This may be true, but it baffles me.
      That’s because although I can understand what he’s trying to say, the way he’s phrased it doesn’t make any sense.
      Basically, he’s saying that 2023 is the hottest year on record for over 60 years, so for anybody alive today who was born after the (unspecified) record high year of over 60 years ago, this year is the hottest they’ve ever known.
      The second part is not even necessarily true because it relies on the idea that all future years will be warmer than this year, which is by no means a certainty. However, if that proves to be the case then 2023 will be the coolest year that people alive today will experience from this year onwards.

      Reply

      1. It will probably average a bit cooler over the next several years, since this year climate was also an El Niño year.

        Reply

      2. Our man writes :

        “In case you are aged 60 or above, 2023 will mark the warmest year you have ever encountered. On the other hand, for those below 10 years of age, 2023 will be the coldest year they will experience for the rest of their life.”

        Just because, I’ll give it a go :

        “Coldest” means lowest temperature. So, winter, as low as the mercury goes.

        The prediction is that both peak and “trough”, or lowest, measured temperature in the same location and conditions will follow an upward (increasing y coordinate) trend over time (increasing x coordinate), in particular, the span of a (current, average) human lifetime.

        Reply

        1. Or to simplify, just say that for everyone alive today, 2023 has been warmest year of their life so far but will be the coldest year of their life from 2023 forward. Except as pointed out the latter half is probably not going to be true

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    3. This scenario appears consistent with Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and The Politics of Education – though acute in focus, being obvious local politics.

      Reply

  9. The siege. It risks incurring the condemnation of the international community and it risks the lives of civilians. On the other hand, if the lack of power, water, and food encourage innocents to leave via corridors set up for civilian evacuations and *if* those corridors and safe harbors are put into place, a siege could have some benefit in saving lives. (Those are a lot of ifs.) The time window for testing the effectiveness of the siege is a narrow one.

    The trap. Hamas surely knew that the Israeli army would have to act inside Gaza, so Hamas is prepared. Israeli soldiers will encounter fierce resistance in a region that Hamas knows better than they do. But, if the original Hamas attack is part of a planned larger operation with Iran and Hezbollah, an Israeli incursion into Gaza could signal a Hezbollah attack in the north and perhaps other attacks that are yet unknown. The next few days will be filled with peril. This is why U.S. assets are now stationed in the eastern Mediterranean.

    The surprise. Was the Iranian leadership surprised? Perhaps they were surprised by the timing of the Hamas attack or by the sheer amount of devastation that it wrought upon Israel. But they were not surprised that an attack would take place.

    Reply

    1. Sure, it is a trap. The Hamas folks want Israel to respond in a way that can be portrayed as brutal overreaction.
      Weepy western sympathies about the fate of women and children is just a weakness to be exploited.
      That being said, the task ahead of Israel is a formidable one. The best thing would be if they could convince the residents of Gaza to rise up and expel the terrorists, after which the Israelis could set up a reasonable temporary government, and go block by block checking each residence, business, and resident.
      Like the denazification of Germany after the war.
      I don’t know if such a thing would be permitted by other Arab states, or even possible considering that Palestinian children are taught the virtue of stabbing Jews as soon as they are old enough to hold a knife.

      I suspect that the destruction of bunkers, weapons caches and terror tunnels would leave little else standing.

      Reply

    2. I wonder if the terrorists believed that there would be no invasion because of the large number of hostages. Remember that Israel waited 5 years and released 1,000 terrorists to get one solder back. There will be an invasion with huge loss of life, but otherwise the terrorist have a model for future successful atrocities. I’ll be very surprised if more than a few hostages come out alive.

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  11. I want people to keep confronting Tlaib and others like her with questions like, “How many babies is it necessary to kill to achieve peace?” and “Do you think Hamas has killed too many or too few babies?”

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  12. I found “Pumpkin Pie Spice” (McCormick brand, or the other one) at the grocery store – there’s something to it.

    It’ll need sugar, and maybe cooking – not sure about how good an idea a lot of raw spice is.

    Reply

  13. I love pumpkin pie. And yet if I mention a fondness for pumpkin spice lattes’ I am at times vigorously dissed.

    Reply

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