Sunday: Hili dialogue

December 3, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning!

Welcome to Sabbath for goyische cats December 3, 2023: National Peppermint Latte Day. This vile drink supports only one thing: Coyne’s Law that all coffees are in the process of evolving towards milkshakes.

This, for instance, is not coffee in any form that I recognize:

So be it. It’s also Advent Sunday, National Apple Pie Day, National Green Bean Casserole Day, and International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

And here is my host’s breakfast, which he consumes daily: muesli with fruit and nuts.  It’s not only food, but medicine!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*War Nooz from the NYT.  The U.S. is telling the IDF  that it has to reduce the civilian death toll as it moves into southern Gaza.

Top U.S. officials have urged Israel to do more to spare civilians in the Gaza Strip amid signs that Israel’s military is preparing a ground invasion in the south of the enclave, where Gazans who have fled the nearly two months of fighting are sheltering.

With the collapse of a weeklong cease-fire with Hamas and the resumption of Israeli military operations, Biden administration officials have been pushing for more targeted strikes to try to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza. American officials have been making clear to Israel that it must not pursue a campaign in southern Gaza that would have the same devastating consequences as in the north.

Israeli air and ground strikes have killed more than 15,000 people, by the Gazan health authorities’ count, since Oct. 7. On that day, Hamas-led attacks killed at least 1,200 people in southern Israel, according to Israeli officials.

The Gazan Health Authorities are, of course, Hamas, and we don’t know how many casualties are terrorists.  Israel is already distributing maps of bomb-free havens and dropping leaflets about safe evacuations. But this will be a tough bout of urban combat, as many Gazans have fled to the south, Hamas among them.

*Three American men climbed the North Face of Jannu in Nepal without fixed ropes, scaling one of the world’s greatest and scarierst rock faces. It was a stupendous achievement that took six days:

“In my mind, it’s the greatest climb ever — the greatest Alpine climb,” said Mark Synnott, a renowned climber and author who was stymied by Jannu’s north face in 2000 and called it the “last great problem in the Himalayas.”

At 25,295 feet, Jannu — with its remote location and combination of height, steepness and altitude — is one of the most daunting peaks for climbers. Its north face, especially, has stirred and vexed mountaineers.

Others had been to the top of Jannu, though not many. None had done this route in following the minimal ethos of an Alpine-style ascent: no supplemental oxygen, no ropes fixed in advance, no porters beyond base camp.

The three men used only what they could carry on their backs.

“It’s the simplest way of doing something,” Rousseau said. “You just begin at the bottom and go to the top.”

Here’s the face they climbed (photo by  Jackson Marvell).

*The Wall Street Journal has a big article on Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE, an article called “a free-speech advocate says that colleges are doing it wrong.” It is no secret that Lukianoff was hospitalized for depression, but I didn’t know why until I read the piece:

Lukianoff, who lives in Washington with his wife and their two young sons, became FIRE’s first legal director in 2001 and president in 2006. Though he does not shy away from defending sometimes odious speech, he notes that every case has its critics—whether he is fighting Florida’s prohibition on teaching critical race theory in schools or suing California’s community college system for forcing professors to teach “diversity, equity and inclusion.” “The disapproval can wear on you,” he admits.

Being in the culture-war crossfire, he says, is partly why he needed to be hospitalized for depression in 2007. Part of his treatment involved cognitive behavioral therapy, which taught him to contextualize his thoughts in a way that made him feel more resilient. This insight helped him appreciate the insidiousness of “safetyism” on campuses—with its safe spaces and trigger warnings—which he argues makes students more anxious and depressed by accommodating their fears and reinforcing their faith in their own weaknesses. The “‘cure’ turns out to be a primary cause of the disease,” he and Haidt wrote in their 2015 book.

. . . It might be disorienting to see students who embrace their own fragility also cheer on brutal acts of terrorism. But Lukianoff believes American universities now have an opportunity to correct their course after years of encouraging censorship and enforcing ideological conformity. He hopes that colleges seize the chance to steer students with conflicting opinions toward a more constructive dialogue and that university presidents who struggled to appease both donors and students with their recent political statements rethink the impulse to weigh in on politics at all. “Institutional neutrality is the bedrock of a free and open campus culture,” he argues.

I’m not sure that constructive dialogue is possible between Jewish students and, say, the SJP, but I appreciate Lukianoff’s implicit vote for Chicago’s principle of institutional neutrality: the Kalven Report. Only two schools share that principle with us: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University.  And I agree with this, too:

More generally, Lukianoff argues that Americans would be better off “if we loosened elite higher education’s grip on society.” After “Coddling” came out, he says that heads of corporations and nonprofits called him to privately complain that young graduates from top schools were creating “serious problems” in the workplace by fixating on “minor interaction problems” with each other or with the institution itself. “My answer is, ‘Could you please tell the world that?’” says Lukianoff. “People need to know that the kind of product coming out of these elite schools is unworkable.”

*I found this NYT op-ed deeply confusing: “I teach the humanities, and I still don’t know what their value is.” It’s by a Chicago colleague, Dr. Agnes Callard, an associate professor of philosophy. In fact, philosophy is the first “humanities area I thought of whose value I can defend easily: it teaches you to analyze and dissect arguments, and to examine your own beliefs to see if they’re consistent.  But Callard professes to be confused:

We have been issuing a steady stream of defenses of the humanities for many decades now, but the crisis of the humanities only grows. In the face of declining student interest and mounting political scrutiny, universities and colleges are increasingly putting humanities departments on the chopping block.

We humanists keep on trying to teach people what the value of the humanities is, and people keep failing to learn our lessons. This suggests to me that humanists do not know the value of the thing they are trying to defend. We can spout pieties that sound inspiring to those already convinced of our cause, but so too can an ignorant math teacher “teach” math to those who already know it.

As a humanist — someone who reads, teaches and researches primarily philosophy but also, on the side, novels and poems and plays and movies — I am prepared to come out and admit that I do not know what the value of the humanities is. I do not know whether the study of the humanities promotes democracy or improves your moral character or enriches your leisure time or improves your critical thinking skills or increases your empathy.

Well, maybe it does all those things, and more. Maybe it teaches you how to see life from other perspectives, or glory in the beauty of art and of prose: how to read and how to see.  I don’t care so much about moral character, but has the good doctor considered that humanities may do different things for different people, and for some people nothing at all. After all, my teaching evolution excited some people (several of whom became biologists), but many others weren’t turned on. But I can still defend it (I won’t here, because this is the Nooz). However Callard even questions the value of teaching science:

Humanists are not alone in their ignorance about the purpose of their disciplines. Mathematicians or economists or biologists might mutter something about practical applications of their work, but very few serious scholars confine their research to some narrow pragmatic agenda. The difference between the humanists and the scientists is simply that scientists are under a lot less pressure to explain why they exist, because the society at large believes itself to already have the answer to that question. If physics were constantly out to justify itself, it would become politicized, too, and physicists would also start spouting pious platitudes about how physics enriches your life.

Well, why are the practical implications to be ignored? And, of course, there are many cases in which “pure” science has given us unpredictable but practical results (think of the development of gene-sequencing technology that began by wondering how bacteria survived in springs near the boiling point). I would have no trouble defending evolutionary biology even if it never led to practical understanding, as it tells us the truth about nature and about how things got here and why. Isn’t that satisfying to our curiosity? After all, humans like questions answered. Callard, though, doesn’t even seem to understand the purpose of doing science: humans are curious primates, and also primates who want their lives to be better.

In the end, Callard does answer her question:

The task of humanists is to invite, to welcome, to entice, to excite, to engage. And when we let ourselves be ourselves, when we allow the humanistic spirit that animates us to flow out not only into our classrooms but also in our public-self presentation, we find we don’t need to defend or prove anything: We are irresistible.

Her first sentence–the value of humanities–contradicts her penultimate sentence. Why are they irresistible?

*In her latest article in The Critic, “Saving Gaza with a queer intifada,” the irrepressible Titania McGrath has a solution to the Middle East crisis (yes, yes, I know it’s satire, but this column is funny; h/to to Athayde):

The answer to the Middle East conflict is simple: intersectional slam poetry. I recently announced that I will soon be touring Gaza, Iran and Saudi Arabia — mostly vegan cafes and community centres — in order to perform my poems and spread the message of diversity, equity and inclusion.

I will be accompanied by my friends from the “Queers for Palestine” collective, who will doubtless receive a warm welcome. Unlike Britain, there has never been a single arrest for homophobic hate crime in the whole recorded history of Palestine. Gay people in Arab nations are out and proud and are known to happily shout it from the rooftops.

Some critics of the pro-Palestine movement have accused us of supporting terrorism, but this is simply a misunderstanding. When the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter tweeted “I stand with Palestine” along with an image of a paraglider, this wasn’t a reference to Hamas. It was simply because they were being sponsored by a firm that specialises in outdoor activities and adventure sports. How else would BLM be able to afford all those mansions in California as a base for their important social justice work?

And when protesters in London were calling for “jihad”, this was also widely misinterpreted.  As the Met Police pointed out, “jihad” has multiple meanings. So while it can mean a holy war, in most cases it’s more like a yoga retreat. In fact, I went for a really nice jihad at my local spa last week. I treated myself to an intifada, which is a kind of facial massage with lavender and tea tree oils.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili finally has to accept the hard truth:

Hili: We have to accept reality.
A: And what is that?
Hili: Winter is coming.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy zaakceptować rzeczywistość.
Ja: Czyli?
Hili: Idzie zima.

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

From Ducks in Public (I love this one):

From Malcolm:

From BuzzFeed; this is apparently a Flemish Museum:

Masih draws parallels between Iran and Hamas (remember, the former funds the latter); read the whole tweet.

From Malcolm: a Lego machine that not only folds paper planes, but launches them!

The University of Michigan student body, set to vote on two resolutions about Israel, Gaza, and BDS, had to cancel the vote after the election was hijacked by a Palestinian group that sent emails to all students urging them to vote in the “right” way.  The thing is, the pro-BDS (i.e., anti-Israeli) side probably would have won if the pro-Palestinians just could have kept their fingers out of the election:

Here’s a cat that learns quickly:

Umm. . . AOC, we don’t condition our aid to Palestine on whether they violate “human rights and international law.” Much of the aid we give Palestine, including humanitarian aid, goes to Hamas and other terrorist groups. But that doesn’t concern the Squad. We should condition our aid on ensuring that it doesn’t go to Hamas.

You know that AOC hates Israel, but she’s walked back her vitriol since it gets in the way of her ambition to become a Senator (there are voting Jews in New York):

Also this; she was too chicken to vote on a bill that condemned Hamas, though all the other members of her “squad” did.

Here’s her vote:

Before she wised up, AOC voted “no” on an October 25 bill to condemn Hamas (there the House vote was 412-10).

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed upon arrival, age ten:

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. First, a larva both camouflaging and protecting itself by sticking stuff (including a live mealybug) onto its back:

Bobkittens born on a rooftop! They’re adorable.

22 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1800 – United States presidential election: The Electoral College casts votes for president and vice president that result in a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

    1818 – Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.

    1854 – Battle of the Eureka Stockade: More than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.

    1904 – The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California’s Lick Observatory.

    1910 – Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.

    1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.

    1925 – Final agreement is signed between the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom formalizing the Partition of Ireland.

    1938 – Nazi Germany issues the Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property forcing Jews to sell real property, businesses, and stocks at below market value as part of Aryanization.

    1960 – The musical Camelot debuts at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. It will become associated with the Kennedy administration.

    1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).

    1971 – Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches a pre-emptive strike against India and a full-scale war begins.

    1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

    1979 – In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert.

    1979 – Iranian Revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.

    1982 – A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.

    1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom later died from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

    1992 – The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in a storm while approaching A Coruña, Spain, and spills much of its cargo.

    1992 – A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world’s first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.

    1997 – In Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People’s Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.

    1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

    2014 – The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to an asteroid to collect rock samples.

    2021 – COVID-19 pandemic: New Zealand moves into COVID-19 Protection Framework (Traffic Light System), moving Auckland out of lockdown for fully vaccinated people.

    Births:
    1729 – Antonio Soler, Spanish composer and theorist (d. 1783).

    1810 – Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord, American author and political essayist (d. 1879).

    1838 – Octavia Hill, English activist and author (d. 1912).

    1842 – Charles Alfred Pillsbury, American businessman, founded the Pillsbury Company (d. 1899).

    1842 – Ellen Swallow Richards, American chemist, ecologist, and educator (d. 1911).

    1857 – Joseph Conrad, Polish-born British novelist (d. 1924).

    1863 – Gussie Davis, African-American songwriter (d. 1899).

    1884 – Rajendra Prasad, Indian lawyer and politician, 1st President of India (d. 1963).

    1895 – Anna Freud, Austrian-English psychologist and psychoanalyst (d. 1982).

    1927 – Andy Williams, American singer (d. 2012).

    1930 – Jean-Luc Godard, French-Swiss director and screenwriter (d. 2022).

    1938 – Sally Shlaer, American mathematician and engineer (d. 1998).

    1942 – Alice Schwarzer, German journalist and publisher, founded EMMA Magazine.

    1944 – Ralph McTell, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1944 – Craig Raine, English poet, author, and playwright.

    1948 – Ozzy Osbourne, English singer-songwriter.

    1951 – Mike Stock, English songwriter, record producer, and musician.

    1952 – Don Barnes, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1952 – Duane Roland, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 2006).

    1952 – Mel Smith, English comedian, actor, director, and producer (d. 2013).

    1959 – Eamonn Holmes, Irish journalist and game show host.

    1960 – Daryl Hannah, American actress and producer.

    1960 – Julianne Moore, American actress and author.

    1965 – Andrew Stanton, American voice actor, director, producer, screenwriter.

    1967 – Marie Françoise Ouedraogo, Burkinabé mathematician. [The first Burkinabé woman to defend a thesis in mathematics, in 2009, she became president of the African Mathematical Union Commission on Women in Mathematics in Africa.]

    1968 – Brendan Fraser, American actor and producer.

    Most people, I’m convinced, don’t think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they’re carried out feet first.
    311 – Diocletian, Roman emperor (b. 244).

    1552 – Francis Xavier, Spanish missionary and saint (b. 1506).

    1691 – Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh, British scientist (b. 1615). [The sister of Robert Boyle and is thought to have been a great influence on his work in chemistry. In her own right, she was a political and social figure closely connected to the Hartlib Circle.]

    1888 – Carl Zeiss, German physicist and lens maker, created the optical instrument (b. 1816).

    1894 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist, poet, and essayist (b. 1850).

    1910 – Mary Baker Eddy, American religious leader and author, founded Christian Science (b. 1821).

    1956 – Alexander Rodchenko, Russian sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer (b. 1891).

    1973 – Emile Christian, American trombonist, cornet player, and composer (b. 1895).

    1980 – Oswald Mosley, English lieutenant, fascist, and politician, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (b. 1896).

    1989 – Connie B. Gay, American businessman, founded the Country Music Association (b. 1914).

    1993 – Lewis Thomas, American physician, etymologist, and academic (b. 1913).

    2003 – David Hemmings, English actor (b. 1941).

    2009 – Richard Todd, Irish-born British soldier and actor (b. 1919).

    2015 – Scott Weiland, American singer-songwriter (b. 1967).

  2. Does anyone have the url for an archive copy of the fUll WSJ article on Greg Lukianoff, please?

    2. A copy of his new book is … well, about five feet away from me. Had to wait a while for a library copy – a good sign.

  4. I must say, sadly, that the US is in no position to lecture any other nation on the need to limit civilian casualties.

    Also, Venezuela is voting today in a plebiscite on whether to attack Guyana, which coincidentally was recently discovered to have large oil deposits. Brazil is moving forces to the Venezuelan border to support Guyana. Where is the Biden administration on that issue? I would expect them to be using all their persuasive to prevent this from happening. They haven’t even appointed Kamala as a czar to deal with it.

    1. Grenada is just off the Venezuelan coast. Has it been behaving itself lately? I wonder if the U.S. would have a problem with Venezuela invading there.

      If the U.S. thought it had cause to invade Grenada in 1983 (in the noble spirit of the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary), how would it justify not intervening with military force in any war between Venezuela and Guyana? Would the U.S. order Brazil to stay out of it, and if Brazil declined what would the U.S. do?

  5. “all coffees are in the process of evolving towards milkshakes”

    No! Coffee is coffee. Black. Hot. Uncontaminated. Fresh from your local shop. This shall not end!

  6. “Jannu”

    Somehow, this is exactly the sort of thing I needed right now.

    Exhilarating!

    … also I remember that guy waving – I like that guy!

    A great start to the day!

  7. … has the good doctor considered that humanities may do different things for different people, and for some people nothing at all[?]

    Dr. Callard strikes me as one professor who could do with a bit more sweating — to work through the inconsistencies in her argument and to come to grips with the value of the humanities. Heck, might do her some good to think this through on an actual treadmill instead of a mental one.

  9. According to a survey by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) research firm, which surveyed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,
    almost all (98%) of the respondents said the slaughter made them feel “prouder of their identity as Palestinians,” with an equal percentage saying they would “never forget and never forgive” the Jewish state for its ongoing military operation against Hamas.

    The Ramallah-based institute polled 668 Palestinian adults in the southern Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria between Oct. 31 and Nov. 7.

    Meanwhile, the view of America itself is unanimously negative, with 98% of respondents saying they hold a “very negative” or “somewhat negative” view of the United States’ role in the conflict.

    When asked whether they are now more or less convinced that “coexistence between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples” is possible, the response was nearly as unanimous: 90% of respondents said they were less confident now that peace will ever come.

  10. Geographic puzzles combined with linguistic ones intrigue me, so I did a bit of research.
    From Wikipedia: “Kiek in de Kök (Low German: Peep into the Kitchen) is an old Low German nickname for towers, mainly those that formed parts of town fortifications. They gained the name from the ability of tower occupants to see into kitchens of nearby houses.” That particular one is is Tallinn, Estonia, from the 17th/18th century (maybe influenced by the Hansa League?).

  11. I don’t have access to the NYT but am interested in Callard’s op-ed on how she can’t defend the humanities. I think that the humanities are quite defensible—and have been defended innumerable times by humanists and scientists alike—but I can imagine being dismayed by where the humanities are failing us today. To the extent that today’s DEI bureaucracies, today’s social justice warriors, today’s far-left authoritarians, and today’s oppressor/oppressed world view come out of today’s humanities departments, I can certainly understand being disappointed with today’s practices. (I don’t know if Callard is basing her concerns on these failings or not.) But surely strong defenses of the humanities can be made.

  12. Regarding the 3 who climbed Mount Jannu in Nepal…

    “It’s the simplest way of doing something,” one of them said. “You just begin at the bottom and go to the top.”

    I read the NYT article about their technical ability, endurance, and perseverance, but I remain in much greater awe of Alex Honnold’s scaling the face of El Capitan with his BARE HANDS and NO ROPES or other technical equipment whatsoever.

    Coincidentally, yesterday I saw a posting on X-Twitter by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who is currently in orbit on the International Space Station. Mogensen was pilot this year of the Commercial Crew-7 SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which launched August 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

    Mogensen posted photos he took from the space station showing the group of mountains in the Himalayas that includes the world’s tallest, Mount Everest — and probably Mount Jannu.

    He asked readers to confirm the identity of Everest in the photos — and they did. He’d been trying to get photos of the mountains for a while, but had been stymied by clouds until this time.
    https://x.com/Astro_Andreas/status/1730630696442438009

    1. In the planetary science community, lots has been said about a sheer rock wall on Miranda, a small moon of Uranus. The cliff (“Verona Rupes”) is estimated to be 12 miles high straight up.

      Given the moon’s low gravity, an astronaut falling from the top of the cliff would take 12 minutes to reach the ground, reaching a final speed of about 125 mph on impact. Oof.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Rupes

      There’s a wonderful video homage to a text spoken by Carl Sagan. It’s called “Wanderers” — referring to humanity — and created by digital artist Erik Wernquist. All of the imagery is artfully extrapolated from actual photos taken by various NASA planetary spacecraft.

      One brief scene in the video shows astronauts diving for fun with outstretched arms from the top of Verona Rupes, leaving it to our imagination what happens at the bottom. I recommend watching the full 4-minute video on a big screen with good sound:

    2. In the planetary science community, lots has been said about a sheer rock wall on Miranda, a small moon of Uranus. The cliff (“Verona Rupes”) is estimated to be 12 miles high straight up.

      Given the moon’s low gravity, an astronaut falling from the top of the cliff would take 12 minutes to reach the ground, reaching a final speed of about 125 mph on impact. Oof.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Rupes

      There’s a wonderful video homage to a text spoken by Carl Sagan. It’s called “Wanderers” — referring to humanity — and created by digital artist Erik Wernquist. All of the imagery is artfully extrapolated from actual photos taken by various NASA planetary spacecraft.

      One brief scene in the video shows astronauts diving for fun with outstretched arms from the top of Verona Rupes, leaving it to our imagination what happens at the bottom. I recommend watching the full 4-minute video on a big screen with good sound:

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