Wednesday: Hili dialogue

November 29, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Aso Hump” in Samoan) November 29, 2023, and National Chocolates Day. As always, I recommend See’s Candies as having the best quality/price ratio among commercial American chocolates. Unfortunately, the price has gone up considerably in the last few years. You can even choose individual chocolates (up to ten) to “build a box” (in the stores you can have as many different kinds as you want).  This page shows all the types you can choose from—there are 75! Here’s a bit of the selection showing my favorite, the apricot delight. They don’t carry the Savoy Truffle chocolate, but that’s bad for your teeth.

I’ll be going out of town early tomorrow morning for a week’s R&R.  That means that, after tomorrow, please don’t send wildlife photos, which are liable to be lost, until Dec. 8 or so.  As always, I do my best. Posting will be light tomorrow and probably Friday, though Matthew will provide the Hili dialogues.

It’s also National Square Dance Day, National Lemon Creme Pie Day (note the spelling: “creme”, which should be “cream” for a proper pie), National Rice Cake Day, and William Tubman’s Birthday in Liberia. Tubman was President of Liberia from 1944 to 1971: 27 years! He did a ton to modernize the country.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the November 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Here’s the latest Hamas/Israel war news from the NYT:

Hamas released 10 Israeli hostages and two Thai nationals on Tuesday as the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas continued into a fifth day, raising the total number of captives released to 85. Roughly 240 hostages were captured on Oct. 7, when Hamas led devastating raids into Israel and killed about 1,200 people, according to the Israeli authorities.

If you want a list of the hostages released so far, the Washington Post has one.

Here’s a NYT diagram of the status of all hostages as of this morning.  6 children 5 and under are still hostages, and 4 died in captivity. The status of still-captive hostages comes, of course, from reports by Hams.

More hostages were released yesterday, and Hamas’s violin has got Israel and the U.S. negotiating for an extended cease-fire:

Hours after Hamas and Israel completed the fifth exchange of hostages and prisoners, their fragile truce continued into Wednesday, allowing for more people to be released on both sides, as global leaders called for a longer pause in fighting.

The truce has occasionally been in doubt since it began last Friday, with delicate daily negotiations over the lists of released people on both sides. On Tuesday, each side accused the other of violating the cease-fire but stopped short of pulling out of the agreement, which originally called for Hamas to release 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinians held by Israel.

On Tuesday, the first day of a two-day extension of the cease-fire, Hamas released more hostages, raising the total to at least 85, according to a New York Times tally. Israel has released 180 Palestinians from its prisons.

Diplomats and intelligence officials were working to negotiate a longer pause. On Tuesday, the top intelligence officials from Egypt, Israel and the United States met with the prime minister of Qatar, the chief mediator between Hamas and Israel. Two people with knowledge of the talks said the hope was that the current model would generate momentum that would prevent the resumption of hostilities and would create the conditions for longer-term talks.

*As I predicted, the negotiators in the Irael/Hamas war are pressing for a long-term truce that might end the war altogether, but the terms cannot possibly be good, cannot possibly get rid of Hamas, and cannot possibly leave Israel less susceptible to terrorists than they were before.

The chief brokers of the Israel-Hamas hostage-prisoner exchange are pushing the two sides for a long-term cease-fire that would prolong the truce in Gaza beyond the current two-day extension and start talks that would end the war altogether, said Egyptian and Qatari officials.

On Tuesday, Hamas released 12 hostages, including 10 Israelis, as part of the current extension of the truce with Israel. The hostages have arrived in Israel, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials.

A long-term cease-fire would likely require Israel and Hamas to make hard-to-swallow concessions, such as trading Israeli soldiers for potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, the officials said. And it would require Israel to hold back on an offensive in southern Gaza intended to capture the strip and kill Hamas’s top leadership, the officials said. Hamas could also have to accept demilitarization, they added.

Note that, given the certainty that if Hamas is disarmed other groups will rise up to take their place, Israel is being asked to swallow a lot more than is Hamas. And of course the butchers of Hamas suffer nothing more than putting down their arms, when they need to be severely punished.  Note, though, that the article says this:

U.S. and Israeli officials have said they fully expect the war to restart again after the exchange of hostages and prisoners fully plays out. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has emphasized in recent days his intention to realize Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas with full force after the militant group’s deadly rampage in southern Israel last month.

Well, what if Biden refuses to sell any more ammunition to Israel? That would stop the war very quickly, and Hamas would still have substantial power.Biden and Netanyahu are talking tough, but the pressure of world opinion (and growing U.S. opinion) is hard to withstand. Hamas was devilishly clever to take hostages, for without that the war might well be over now.  Perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic, but to me the elimination of Hamas is a requirement for Israel to persist as a nation.

*Francis Collins has an op-ed in the NYT touting something I knew nothing about: there is now a simple pill-based cure for hepatitis C, a viral disease acquired by contact with the blood of an infected person (addicts who share needles, transfusions gone wrong, etc.). In his piece, “We are squandering one of the most medical advances of the 21st century“, Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, says that what’s being “squandered” is the chance to completely eliminate Hep-C from America. That’s not fully possible given that the medication isn’t 100% effective, but we can get it to nearly zero.   (Rick, mentioned below, was his brother-in-law who died of the disease. I also knew someone who died from it; he took the pills when they were available, but it was too late.) But that this possibility even exists is a triumph for scientific medicine.)

It was. . . . in October 2014, that medical science provided a cure for hepatitis C infection. Based on groundbreaking research that later was recognized by a Nobel Prize, the treatment is simple — one pill a day for eight to 12 weeks, with essentially no side effects, and a 95 percent cure rate.

When the cure became available, I was serving as director of the National Institutes of Health. I was overjoyed that a cure had been approved, but the news was bittersweet. What gave me hope was thinking of the many other individuals and their families who would be spared from the misery that Rick and our family experienced. And to a significant extent, that hope was justified: These medications have cured about a million people in the United States.

But nearly a decade later, at least 2.4 million Americans remain infected with hepatitis C. About two in five people with hepatitis C don’t even know that they have the virus. Of those who do, many do not have access to the cure. Congress has an opportunity to turn this ongoing human tragedy into a public health advancement, by providing support for a five-year project to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States. But the time available for approval is growing short.

Hepatitis C progresses slowly. Over years, the virus causes fibrosis of the liver that can result in cirrhosis, esophageal bleeding and liver failure requiring transplantation. Hepatitis C is also the leading cause of liver cancer, responsible for half of the 40,000 annual liver cancer cases in the United States. Each year, about 15,000 Americans die from hepatitis C, many in their 40s and 50s. Given the safe and effective cure available for the last nine years, the correct number of deaths in 2023 should be zero.

Put simply, we are squandering one of the most important medical advances of the 21st century. It’s time to eliminate this threat to the health of Americans.

The problem is that the drugs are expensive, come with strings on your behavior, and there are few doctors who prescribe the pills and too few testing sites. Biden has proposed a workable plan to obviate the issues by making deals with drug companies (among other changes), but putting that plan into place requires Congressional approval, and that means bipartisan support. I don’t know whether there’s a problem there, but Collins implies that there might be.  The plan would be fantastic, though, saving millions of lives and billions of dollars.

*There were three days of tributes and a a memorial service in Atlanta, Georgia. for the late First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and the Washington Post has some photos. Even her husband of 77 years, Jimmy Carter, who is in hospice care himself, made it, albeit in a wheelchair and covered with a blanket. It’s sad that he lived to see his beloved wife pass away, but perhaps he’s too out of it to know. Jimmy, our best living ex-President (but not President) has been in hospice care for nine months, and I think they put you in that kind of care when you’re expected to die within six weeks. He’s a tough old bird. Here’s a photo of Jimmy, 99, arriving at the memorial service, draped with a blanket featuring both his and Rosalynn’s face (from People magazine):

Ms. Carter will be laid to rest today in Plains, Georgia.

The brief text,  of the photo feature, which I can’t embed:

Some photos. Credits: “Photo editing and production by Stephen Cook, Dee Swan, and Jintak Han”. Click to enlarge:

*The city of Krakow, Poland (where I’ve been) has now installed a duck-food dispenser, called a “duck buffet” (in Polish: “kaczy bufet”), that dispenses good duck food by a lake to prevent people from feeding bread to the ducks. Bread is not good nutrition for ducks and can even warp the development of their wings. Don’t ever give bread to ducks!  Other Polish cities are following suit.  Video at the bottom:

With the first snow of the season beginning to fall, Kraków has announced the return of dispensers offering free bird feed for the public to give to ducks and other waterfowl.

The initiative, which is run by a number of towns and cities in Poland, is part of efforts to discourage feeding the birds with bread, which is unhealthy for the animals.

The authorities announced today that they have installed the devices at five municipal parks and reservoirs. They are officially called “duck buffets” (kaczy bufet) but the unofficial name is kaczkomat, a play on words adding kaczka (duck) to paczkomat, the widely used name for parcel-delivery lockers.

“The machines dispense food free of charge four times an hour, to avoid overfeeding and food waste,” announced the city. “Thanks to this, ducks receive food that is suitable for them – with vitamins and microelements. Remember that dry bread is not a good idea for feeding ducks!”

The Municipal Greenery Board (ZZM) notes that bread does not provide ducks with useful nutrients and that it can in fact cause them health problems by acidifying their digestive system and giving them too much salt.

. . . .Similar initiatives have been undertaken in a number of other towns and cities around Poland, with the first such dispensers appearing in the capital, Warsaw, in 2017, according to local news service Nasze Miasto.

In Łódź, like in Kraków, the devices have been installed as part of the so-called “citizen’s budget”, which allows local residents to choose certain projects that receive municipal funding.

The city pays for it, too. They love their ducks!  And here’s another great innovation, though I think that dog is going to be awake all night. I’m not sure why coffee grounds would eliminate ice; perhaps a savvy reader can tell us.

 

A video in Polish showing the food machine in action. Note that they put the duck food on the land. That may be either because it doesn’t float, or because they’re trying to avoid throwing any food into the water. If you understand Polish, please give us a summary translation.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is weary with hunting and fain would lie down:

Hili: Here is a hole but the owner probably is not at home.
A: And if it is, I hope it can see you.
In Polish:
Hili: Tu jest norka, ale właścicielki chyba nie ma w domu.
Ja: A jeśli jest, to mam nadzieję, że cię widzi.
And the hyperaffectionate Szaron:

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

From Unique Birds and Animals. Crows are awesome!

From Daniel. This is of course a satire of Pascal’s Wager. The problem is that you can’t force people to believe in Santa even if there is a miniscule chance that you’d get presents by so believing!

From Thomas. Yes, it’s true: the AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) is indeed sponsoring the upcoming Rolling Stones tour. AARP is a lobbying and interest group for geezers, defined as anybody over 50.

From Masih as well as reader David.. You can see the kind of Jew-hating brainwashing that Palestinian kids undergo. (I presume that this is not from Iran but Palestine.)  This is both amazing and deeply distressing. Watch the whole thing; it’s only 75 seconds.

Harvard anti-Israeli students make DEMANDS.  One of them is that those who violate University regulations via peaceful protest (i.e. blocking buildings) should not be punished.  If Harvard bows to any of these demands, woke as it is, I’d be surprised.  Here’s the summary:

From Barry who says about this, “Is this the most perfect thing you’ve ever read? I’m referring just to the sign.”  In my view, it’s good but a tad too harsh, for I occasionally give “content warnings” for gory stuff.

 

From Malcolm, a lazy Caturday:

Three released hostages (released with their mom, too), meet their beloved dog:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: here’s how I retweeted today’s contribution:

Three tweets from the estimable Dr. Cobb. He says of the first one, “The cats I had in Sheffield all did this. Sam, Harry, TC and Spizz. But none of the current three. Odd.”

And a T. rex race following a screaming kiwi!

Lagniappe from Malgorzata: This is a black Jewish woman from Ethiopia whose ancestors migrated to Israel. (Yes, there were black Ethiopian Jews for many years.) She’s in the IDF and has a few words to say about those who allege that Israeli is an “apartheid state”:

22 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1777 – San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga. It is the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California.

    1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 54 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance, beginning the Zong massacre.

    1830 – An armed rebellion against Russia’s rule in Poland begins.

    1864 – Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants inside Colorado Territory.

    1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

    1890 – The Meiji Constitution goes into effect in Japan, and the first Diet convenes.

    1899 – FC Barcelona is founded by Catalan, Spanish and Englishmen. It later develops into one of Spanish football’s most iconic and strongest teams.

    1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard E. Byrd leads the first expedition to fly over the South Pole.

    1947 – The United Nations General Assembly approves a plan for the partition of Palestine.

    1947 – French forces carry out a massacre at Mỹ Trạch, Vietnam during the First Indochina War.

    1961 – Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

    1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

    1963 – “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, recorded on October 17, 1963, is released by the Beatles in the United Kingdom.

    1972 – Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

    1987 – North Korean agents plant a bomb on Korean Air Flight 858, which kills all 115 passengers and crew.

    Births:
    1627 – John Ray, English biologist and botanist (d. 1705). [Widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology and his classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy.]

    1752 – The Public Universal Friend, American evangelist (d. 1819).

    1803 – Christian Doppler, Austrian mathematician and physicist (d. 1853).

    1832 – Louisa May Alcott, American novelist and poet (d. 1888).

    1843 – Gertrude Jekyll, British horticulturist and writer (d. 1932).

    1873 – Suzan Rose Benedict, American mathematician and academic (d. 1942).

    1876 – Nellie Tayloe Ross, American educator and politician, 14th Governor of Wyoming (d. 1977).

    1895 – Busby Berkeley, American director and choreographer (d. 1976).

    1898 – C. S. Lewis, British novelist, poet, and critic (d. 1963).

    1899 – Emma Morano, Italian supercentenarian, oldest Italian person ever (d. 2017).

    1900 – Mildred Gillars, American broadcaster, employed by Nazi Germany to disseminate propaganda during WWII (d. 1988).

    1917 – Merle Travis, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1983).

    1920 – Joseph Shivers, American chemist and academic, developed spandex (d. 2014).

    1929 – Derek Jameson, English journalist and radio host (d. 2012).

    1930 – Shirley Porter, English politician, Lord Mayor of Westminster. [Oversaw the “Building Stable Communities” policy — later described as the “homes for votes scandal” — and was consequently accused of gerrymandering. The policy was judged illegal by the district auditor, and a surcharge of £27m levied on her in 1996.[2] This was later raised to £42 million with interest and costs. She eventually settled in 2004, paying a final settlement of £12.3 million. She was stripped of her title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.]

    1932 – Jacques Chirac, French soldier and politician, 22nd President of France (d. 2019). [Another crooked politician.]

    1933 – John Mayall, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer. [Hugely influential in the development of British Blues and Rock.]

    1935 – Diane Ladd, American actress.

    1947 – Petra Kelly, German activist and politician (d. 1992).

    1958 – Michael Dempsey, Zimbabwean-English bass player.

    1959 – Rahm Emanuel, American businessman and politician, 55th Mayor of Chicago.

    1965 – Lauren Child, English author.

    As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow:
    1530 – Thomas Wolsey, English cardinal and politician, Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom (b. 1473).

    1643 – Claudio Monteverdi, Italian priest and composer (b. 1567).

    1759 – Nicolaus I Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and theorist (b. 1687).

    1872 – Mary Somerville, Scottish-Italian astronomer, mathematician, and author (b. 1780).

    1924 – Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer and educator (b. 1858).

    1942 – Ron Middleton (VC), Australian bomber pilot and Victoria Cross Recipient (b. 1916).

    1950 – Walter Beech, American aviator and early aviation entrepreneur (b. 1891).

    1954 – Dink Johnson, American pianist, clarinet player, and drummer (b. 1892).

    1981 – Natalie Wood, American actress (b. 1938).

    1986 – Cary Grant, English-American actor (b. 1904).

    1987 – Irene Handl, English actress (b. 1901).

    1993 – J. R. D. Tata, French-Indian pilot and businessman, founded Tata Motors and Tata Global Beverages (b. 1904).

    2001 – George Harrison, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and music producer (b. 1943).

    2004 – John Drew Barrymore, American actor (b. 1932).

    2010 – Maurice Wilkes, English physicist and computer scientist (b. 1913). [Designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who invented microprogramming.]

  2. Re: Harvard demands. First, I don’t trust the students’ concept of what “peaceful” is. I remember all those peaceful George Floyd protests. Second, there are many things which are disruptive of university operations that do not rise to the level of violence, such as blocking builds, that should be punished.

    1. I think that most protesters no longer understand there’s a third option between peaceful protests and riots.

      We called it ‘civil disobedience,’ and it was non-violent disruption, that may end with you in jail for, say, disrupting traffic.

      1. I think that most protesters no longer understand there’s a third option between peaceful protests and riots.

        That’s a broad statement, especially considering the recent trend of protestors gluing themselves to roads or otherwise causing traffic disruption. I see lots of civil disobedience going on.

        1. Yes, that would be civil disobedience. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I meant that some today think that civil disobedience is ‘mere’ peaceful protest, or that rioting is an acceptable means of civil disobedience.

          1. Civil disobedience has a better pedigree if it is devoted specifically to breaking laws that are themselves unjust. E.g. the women in Iran who let their hair run free. Or a doctor who openly does abortions in defiance of the law. You get arrested for breaking that law and your goal is the repeal of that law that you broke, willing to go to jail, and it sometimes succeeds.

            It’s harder to merit the honorific, civil disobedience, when activist groups non-violently (for now) blockade a railway line to protest a pipeline being constructed somewhere else. The blockaders aren’t protesting the law requiring them to obey court injunctions against civil trespass. (They would want the law enforced against trespassers on their own lands.)
            They are protesting the decision to approve the pipeline. And the blockades aren’t really “non-violent” anyway. If they were, the trespassers would simply allow the police to peaceably arrest them and remove them from the tracks, with the cameras running of course. Rather, it is the implied threat of violent resistance (at the blockade site or elsewhere in the country) that deters the police from promptly arresting them as the law requires they must, while the country’s commerce slowly strangles during the stand-off.

            Unlike civil disobeyers, who submit to arrest and trial as part of their protest, blockaders invariably demand that they not be prosecuted when the blockade finally ends, and almost never are. People are just relieved that the trains are running again and nobody got hurt, no matter how much money had to change hands to have that happen. Until next time.

          2. I agree. Random civil disobedience isn’t even effective; it just makes people mad at the protestors. When I was younger my friends and I often engaged in civil disobedience, but always blocking or disrupting an action that was itself bad and/or illegal. That was very satisfying and effective.

  3. Someone once mused that when Rahm Emanuel lost a middle finger in a meat cutter accident in his parents’ deli, it left him half mute. Gotta love Chicago politics! (Sorry – operator error – this was meant to be reply comment to Jez’ births list in #1)

  4. What economist Dean Baker recently posted regarding patent monopolies driving unaffordable drug prices applies to the Hepatitis C treatment and drugs generally:

    « Like many self-imagined “free-traders,” the Washington Post editorial board cannot even conceive of free trade when it comes to prescription drugs. They demonstrated this fact yet again in discussing ways to deal with the high price of effective weight-loss drugs like Wegovy. These drugs carry price tags of more than $1,000 a month, making them costly for insurers, governments, or individuals who have to pick up the tab themselves.

    The Post throws out a couple of ideas that could allow for a lower price, but never considers the fact that these drugs would be cheap without the government-granted patent monopolies that prevent generic manufacturers from entering the market. The monopolies are of course to provide an incentive to undertake the research, but there are other mechanisms for providing incentives, like paying people.

    We did this when we wanted Moderna to develop a Covid vaccine, paying the company almost a billion dollars to develop and then test the vaccine. In the standard for our government, we then gave Moderna control over the vaccine, creating at least five Moderna billionaires. (Tell me again how conservatives want less government.) If we adopted the policy of only paying for research once, we would have both had the vaccine and low prices, since it likely could be manufactured and distributed for around $4 or $5 a shot.

    In the case of Wegovy and other weight loss drugs, it’s likely the case that we would be talking about a cost of $20 or $30 a month in the absence of the patent monopoly. In this case, the monopoly is raising the price by a factor of 30 or 40, the equivalent of a tariff of 3,000 or 4,000 percent.

    While the WaPo would usually go on the warpath over a tariff of 10 or 25 percent, it is apparently just fine with this much larger tariff that keeps drug prices high. Needless to say, we would not be debating how to cover the cost if Wegovy was selling for $30 for a month’s dosage.

    We should also recognize this is real money. We will spend over $600 billion this year (almost $5,000 per family) on drugs that would likely cost less than $100 billion in a free market. This dwarfs the money at stake in tariffs on items like cars or steel, but it goes unmentioned at the Washington Post and in polite circles more generally.

    In addition to lower prices, there is a second very important reason we should want free trade in prescription drugs. As the Post mentions, there are serious questions about the long-term side effects of Wegovy and other weight-loss drugs.

    It would be good to have honest assessments of these side effects. While the researchers doing studies of these side effects may all be doing credible research, it is likely that there will be some ambiguities in the results. The billions of dollars on the table, in the form of prospective profits, puts a very big thumb on the scale towards minimizing negative side effects.

    We would likely get a more honest scientific debate, and better outcomes for patients, if there wasn’t so much money on one side of this issue. For that reason also, we should want to see a free market for weight-loss drugs and drugs more generally.»

    https://www.cepr.net/when-it-comes-to-prescription-drugs-the-washington-post-cant-even-conceive-of-free-trade/

    1. No real objections here except to say that in the company I work for, we spent more than eight billion dollars developing an anti-cancer therapy (which works) before it was approved. Further trials added another two billion to development costs. It took more than seven years, but this year is the first to make a profit from the therapy. It is very difficult to get anyone, even the most happiest anti-capitalist, to cough up eight billion dollars investing in an idea before recouping even a penny.

      Some drugs and therapies are expensive because they cost a lot to develop and make. Some are expensive because of greedy capitalist dogs(tm). Most are expensive because of a combination of the two.

      These days, it’s fun and fashionable to have the only acceptable opinion on this. That’s all I have to say.

      1. I think the everyday common opinion is that drugs are TFE (Too Damn Expensive). Where the Hepatitis-C drug Sovaldi was priced at some $84,000 a treatment course here, it cost $1000 in Egypt, less in India, where they weren’t bound by our patent laws.

        What you say is a standard reply of those in “the system”, in Big Pharma. But I’d like to see a lot more details and itemization of what it “cost” to develop your company’s anti-cancer drug. Which, if it ends up costing a million dollars a patient per year of life added, or however they judge such things, would be unavailable to most people. How much went to lobbying congresspeople? Was it truly superior to cheaper, earlier treatments? Etc.

        “In the case of Sovaldi, the patent monopoly has a distortionary effect that is similar to a 10,000 percent tariff. Predictably it leads to a huge amount of corruption, with companies routinely misrepresenting the safety and effectiveness of their drugs. The secrecy that companies rely upon to ensure themselves the ability to capitalize on the value of their research also slows the pace of drug development. Unfortunately the industry is so powerful (it is a major source of advertising revenue for the Post), that it can prevent alternatives to patents from even being raised in public debate.”
        — Dean Baker, https://cepr.net/the-cost-of-sovaldi-would-not-pose-problems-if-elites-in-the-united-states-believed-in-free-trade/

        1. Take away the profit motive and many drugs likely would never have been developed. This is true everyewhere, not just in the US. I understand there is a problem with costs in the US, including the evil lobbyists, and hatred of pharma prevails, even here on WEIT, but the truth is that the reason we can treat so many maladies today is because of those god damn capitalist pigs you so hate. It’s more complicated than “pharma = bad”, and it could be done better.

  5. I’m not sure why coffee grounds would eliminate ice; perhaps a savvy reader can tell us.

    I doubt it would eliminate ice, but the (relatively) gritty particles would reduce the slipperiness of the ice – in itself a significant reduction of harm) – while darkening the ice (or packed snow) would increase the amount of sunlight it absorbs, speeding up softening and melting. At least, until sunset.
    You get the same effect from just sand (rather than sand+salt – the normal scattering in the UK), but coffee grounds are darker. You can also see the same effect when you get soil mixed in with the snow in high traffic areas.
    The main thing they’re trying to avoid is probably continuing to add salt (NaCl) to soils which wouldn’t naturally have such a high salt content – which affects the plants that can grow there. My botanist father tells me that you can trace “ribbons” of “coastal” species running through the country along major roads.

  6. I know that the pressure on the Israeli government to enact a permanent cease fire is unrelenting, but Prime Minister Netanyahu is vowing to complete the mission of destroying Hamas. See here: https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-no-way-we-will-agree-to-end-war-against-hamas/. The need to destroy Hamas is also strongly supported by the son of one of its founders: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-775612.

    I sincerely hope that the Israeli government and public keep this essential goal front and center. They must destroy Hamas, for only with Hamas gone is there any hope for peace in the region.

    The U.S. administration has been ambiguous of late regarding the need to destroy Hamas, thanks to the shift of focus to the hostages. We need the U.S. to be clear that Israel needs to both get its hostages back *and* destroy Hamas. Hamas doesn’t get bonus points for returning hostages to Israel.

  7. Every President and First Lady attended the Carter Memorial, except of course the Orange Plague. He doesn’t go anywhere unless it is all about him – can’t wait for his funeral.

    PS – Notify me of new comments box is still missing.

    1. The NY Times sees fit to offer a fashion critique of the First Ladies attending, with a fatuous over-emphasis on Melania Trump.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/style/melania-trump-rosalynn-carter-memorial.html

      The Times’s fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, makes it a point to mention Melania’s “husband’s norm-trampling tendencies.” But apparently it is now the norm, to hear the Times tell it, to hijack a funeral for the purpose of bloviating media sartorial critiques. (It must gash Friedman to no end not to have been around during the JFK funeral to similarly hold forth on Jacqueline Kennedy and attempt to impose a new norm on a grieving nation.)

      It would probably be too much to expect The Donald to decline to attend that event so as not to take too much attention away from Mrs. Carter. But had he attended, there’s little doubt that the Times would have been no less inclined to publish a piece drawing attention to him and to that extent away from Mrs. Carter.

  8. I don’t think Barack Obama or George Bush attended either. I’m not sure they were even invited. Perhaps it would require too many security folks. While I can’t stand the Orange Plague, I don’t think we can blame this one on him. Melania did attend.

  9. It looked like one Israeli hostage was released yesterday with her dog, Bella, in her arms. That was also one small thing to be happy about. (Yes, I like both cats and dogs!)

Comments are closed.