Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, December 17, 2023, and National Maple Syrup Day, the only thing to put on waffles, French toast, and pancakes. Be sure to get the darkest grade you can, preferably one labeled “very dark color with strong taste” (that used to be grade C before, like many schools, Big Syrup eliminated grading). Here’s an inexpensive but tasty version from Amazon that I always have on hand (click to see specs):
*The horror has increased in the IDF’s accidental killing of three Israeli hostages. What’s worse is that, as the NYT reports, the men were trying to surrender:
The three Israeli hostages who were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza on Friday had emerged shirtless from a building and were bearing a makeshift white flag when they were shot, the military said on Saturday, asserting that the soldiers who fired had violated the military’s rules of engagement.
Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevy, the Israeli military chief of staff, said on Saturday that the three hostages had done “everything so that we would understand” that they were harmless. Nonetheless, Israeli troops shot and killed them, in an incident which shocked a country already deeply concerned about the fate of its remaining hostages in Gaza.
“The shooting of the hostages was carried out contrary to the open-fire regulations. It is forbidden to shoot at those who raise a white flag and seek to surrender,” said General Halevy. “The Israel Defense Forces, and myself as its commander, are responsible for what happened,” he added.
The three hostages emerged, shirtless, from a building tens of yards away from the Israeli soldiers, bearing a stick with a white cloth, the military said its preliminary investigation found. One of the soldiers, believing they posed a threat, opened fire on the three hostages, killing two of them and wounding the third, the early investigation found.
The third hostage fled into the building, from which a cry in Hebrew for help could be heard. The battalion commander ordered the forces to hold their fire. But the wounded hostage later re-emerged, after which he was fatally shot, the military statement said.
[Lt. Gen. Herzi] Halevi says the IDF has completed a preliminary investigation into the incident, and immediately sent new protocols to ground forces. “We informed the families of the difficult findings and published them transparently to the public,” he says.
As i said, it’s impossible to imagine the grief of these families, and hard to understand how IDF soldiers could be so hamhanded. They will surely be punished. As for the victims, all I can add is the old Jewish phrase of mourning, “May their memory be a blessing.”
A Vatican court on Saturday found Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu guilty of embezzlement and fraud and sentenced him to 5½ years in prison, marking a stunning fall from grace for a man who was once one of the most powerful advisers to the pope.
Becciu, who has denied any wrongdoing, was the first cardinal to be tried in Vatican City’s criminal court. “We reiterate the innocence of Cardinal Angelo Becciu and we will appeal,” his lawyer, Fabio Viglione, told reporters after the verdict and sentence were announced.
The 75-year-old Italian cardinal was the highest-ranking of 10 defendants in the 2½-year Vatican trial, which centered on losses from a failed London property investment. The charges also concerned the alleged misuse of money intended to help free a kidnapped nun, but allegedly spent instead on resort vacations and luxury goods from Prada and Louis Vuitton.
Pope Francis has said the case shows that his efforts to reform the Vatican have been effective. But defendants’ lawyers argued that the trial highlighted the contrast between the legal standards of a modern state and the Vatican’s power structure as an absolute monarchy.
Francis changed Vatican laws several times during the investigation in ways that the lawyers said favored the prosecution and violated the right to a fair trial, including granting investigators broader authority to eavesdrop on suspects.
All I can add is a question: do they have a jail in the Vatican?
*Worth reading from the Free Press: Madeleine Rowley’s piece on “We were taught to hate the Jews“. Rowley interviews five ex-Muslims who “grew up in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, but they were all indoctrinated, they say, with the same views on Jews and Israel.” It’s not hard to find such people, though a bit worrying that some of them grew up outside the Middle East and were still inculcated with antisemitism. She adds, “All of them came to reject their loathing for Jewish people and the West, and have rebuilt their lives in the wake of their realizations.” Except for one person who grew up in London, they’re from Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. Here’s one Iraqi who was partly deconverted by the words of Richard Dawkins:
I first heard this hadith—an instructional Islamic text passed down from the Prophet Muhammad—echoing throughout my neighborhood in Mosul, Iraq,from the minaret’s speakers during a Friday sermon. I lived in a neighborhood where most people practiced a strict, fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam called Salafism.
Growing up, I heard only negative things when it came to Jewish people and Judaism. The word Jew was an insult—a person might call someone a Jew if they did something wrong or were being cruel and uncaring. But by the time I heard this hadith, at 14, I was already starting to reject many aspects of my religion and decided to reject this hadith.
As a teenager, I sparked debates about Islam on Facebook. I was drawn to debating—there was no formal debate club at my school in Mosul like there are in the U.S. or the UK, so I used social media to discuss controversial topics. I created a post and asked about the historical accuracy of the Prophet Muhammad slaughtering one of the Jewish tribes at Medina. The majority of responses told me that it did happen and that the Jews were traitors who deserved collective punishment.
I started getting into trouble at school and was sometimes kicked out of class for refusing to wear a hijab, which I saw as something that took agency away from me. I was dabbling in a minority sect of Islam called Quranism, which rejected hadith and the hijab, and I was reading internet blogs and Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene in secret. It wasn’t long before I became known as an apostate at my school.
When ISIS took over Mosul in 2014, my parents feared for my life. My mother knew that if ISIS captured me, I would be stoned to death for how outspoken I’d been. I escaped to the Kurdistan region of Iraq three months after ISIS took control, and then I boarded a plane to London alone. I was 17.
I took off my hijab on the flight to the UK and never put it on again—that was almost ten years ago. . .
Rana Mallah, 26, is a consultant in London. She was born in Mosul, Iraq.
What these people have in common, besides being taught Jew hatred, was a spirit of doubt as well as of toughness that eventually made them say, “No more.” Imagine how much less hatred there would be without the childhood indoctrination!
U.S. Capitol Police is investigating the shocking videotape of two men having sex in public in what appears the Senate large hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building. The room is familiar to many citizens from Supreme Court confirmations to impeachment.
The video shows one of the men hunched over the dais at the center of the seating for senators in Senate room Hart 216.
The video was reportedly shared on the Internet on gay sites.
Obviously, the videotape will result in the termination of any staffers involved. However, the question is any possible criminal charge. We have previously discussed porn videos shot in churches or other locations. Such porn shoots in church have also raised calls for prosecutions in other countries.
The Daily Fail gives a bit of a clip (nothing overly salacious, just the naked back of one guy) and a photo of the room where it was filmed:
The Fail adds some details:
A public account on X regularly shows the young man, who identifies as a ‘twink’, engaging in sex acts with his older ‘bear’ partner.
The images and videos are explicit in nature and contain his face, according to The Spectator.
Congressman Mike Collins reacted to the video on social media and hit out at the actions of the alleged staffer.
‘Heck of a week for the Left,’ he wrote. ‘Gay porn in the Senate, swearing in ceremony on child porn in Virginia, t****y tap dancers in the White House, and Satanic statues in Iowa. What else am I missing?’
*Finally, if you’re as old as I, you’ll have noticed that the price of cashmere garments has plummeted. Cashmere sweaters were once several hundred dollars or more; now you can get them for fifty bucks. With the price of everything going up, how can that be? Well, there’s no free lunch, and cheap cashmere is bought at the cost of the environment, or so Cornell ecologist Ginger Allington tells us.
A cozy cashmere sweater at a bargain price may seem like a win for consumers. But it comes at a steep cost to one of our most fragile environmental systems — the grasslands of the Mongolian Plateau in Central Asia.
Every cashmere sweater begins with a goat. The fibers are woven from the soft downy undercoat of several breeds. These days, most cashmere fiber comes from the cold, arid steppes of China and Mongolia — a pastureland of immense size and scale, about a million square miles, where for centuries seminomadic herders have raised sheep, horses, yaks, camels and other livestock. Demand for cashmere has grown so much that goats have become the dominant animal in many herds.
As a scientist who visits and studies the Mongolian Plateau, I have witnessed the toll that expanding herds of cashmere goats have had on the environment. Goats are much more destructive than other livestock to grassland ecosystems, like those of the Central Asian steppe. Whereas sheep nibble the tops of grasses but leave the base and roots intact, goats eat plants down to the roots so they cannot regrow, degrading habitat and causing soil erosion. These grasslands are particularly difficult to restore once the vegetation is removed and soils are damaged; in the most heavily impaired areas, grasses are displaced by shrubs and sand.
An estimated 27.5 million goats graze the grasslands of Mongolia (the government does not distinguish between cashmere and noncashmere goats, but cashmere goats predominate); in the Inner Mongolia region of China, the overall number is about 15 million. A 2018 national report on Mongolia’s rangeland found that nearly 58 percent had been degraded to various degrees from grazing as of 2016, with 23 percent classified as either heavily or fully degraded.
Well, if you don’t want to contribute to this environmental despoliation, what an you do? Right now, not much. Some firms are trying to produce sustainable and environmentally neutral cashmere (Allington names some), but if you’re of the green persuasion, perhaps it’s best to seek other fabrics:
For consumers looking to make more environmentally conscious shopping choices, sustainable cashmere ultimately may be unattainable.
My view is this: From an environmental perspective, the best solution is to forgo cashmere altogether. Wool from sheep, yaks or camels can still be made into very soft fabrics. These animals can also produce much more fiber a year than cashmere goats without causing the same level of ecological damage. Or consider vintage cashmere.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is so sad at the news about the shot hostages that she’s gone out of focus:
I’m losing hope.
A: Hope for what?
Hili: For positive news.
In Polish:
Hili: Tracę nadzieję.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Na pozytywne wiadomości.
*******************
From D.J., an excellent cartoon, probably from the New Yorker, whose artist I can’t find (signature is illegible):
From Christopher:
From Merilee:
Once again I’m having trouble embredding tweets in my posts. I’ve contacted my tech person. It’s now been fixed for tomorrow’s posts, but for this post simply click on the screenshot to go to the original tweet:
A video tweet by Masih:
Watch this video: the sister of Armita Geravand, a 16-year-old girl killed by the morality police, shares her heartbreak on Instagram. ‘Armita, I am watching over your belongings and paintings,’ she writes. Defiantly walking to school every day without the mandatory hijab, Armita… pic.twitter.com/bghBbF9XYJ
From Luana. IBM’s RedHat is the organization’s consulting service.
BREAKING: OMG obtained an internal document from @IBM ‘s RedHat that reads like a religious text: The "Allyship Commandments" are 10 race-based rules employees must observe.
One commandment states “only white people can be racist”
On this day:
497 BC – The first Saturnalia festival was celebrated in ancient Rome.
546 – Siege of Rome: The Ostrogoths under king Totila plunder the city, by bribing the Byzantine garrison.
1538 – Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England.
1777 – American Revolution: France formally recognizes the United States.
1790 – The Aztec calendar stone is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City.
1835 – The second Great Fire of New York destroys 53,000 square metres (13 acres) of New York City’s Financial District.
1862 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
1865 – First performance of the Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert.
1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1935 – First flight of the Douglas DC-3.
1938 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.
1943 – All Chinese are again permitted to become citizens of the United States upon the repeal of the Act of 1882 and the introduction of the Magnuson Act.
1944 – World War II: Battle of the Bulge: Malmedy massacre: American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWs are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Joachim Peiper.
1945 – Kurdistan flag day, the flag of Kurdistan was raised for the first time in Mahabad in eastern Kurdistan (Iran).
1957 – The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1967 – Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, disappears while swimming near Portsea, Victoria, and is presumed drowned.
1969 – Project Blue Book: The United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs.
1970 – Polish protests: In Gdynia, soldiers fire at workers emerging from trains, killing dozens.
1973 – Thirty passengers are killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport.
1983 – Provisional IRA members detonate a car bomb at Harrods Department Store in London. Three police officers and three civilians are killed.
1989 – Fernando Collor de Mello defeats Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, becoming the first democratically elected President in almost 30 years.
1989 – The Simpsons premieres on television with the episode “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”.
2003 – The Soham murder trial ends at the Old Bailey in London, with Ian Huntley found guilty of two counts of murder. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, is found guilty of perverting the course of justice.
2010 – Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself on fire. This act became the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring.
2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations after severing them in 1961.
Births:
1706 – Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician and physicist (d. 1749).
1778 – Humphry Davy, English chemist and physicist (d. 1829).
1853 – Pierre Paul Émile Roux, French physician and immunologist, co-founded the Pasteur Institute (d. 1933).
1873 – Ford Madox Ford, English novelist, poet, and critic (d. 1939).
1900 – Mary Cartwright, English mathematician and academic, one of the first people to analyze a dynamical system with chaos (d. 1998).
1913 – Burt Baskin, American businessman, co-founded Baskin-Robbins (d. 1967).
1914 – Fernando Alonso, Cuban ballet dancer, co-founded the Cuban National Ballet (d. 2013).
1920 – Kenneth E. Iverson, Canadian computer scientist, developed the APL programming language (d. 2004).
1930 – Bob Guccione, American photographer and publisher, founded Penthouse (d. 2010).
1936 – Pope Francis.
1936 – Tommy Steele, English singer, guitarist, and actor.
1937 – Kerry Packer, Australian businessman, founded World Series Cricket (d. 2005).
1937 – John Kennedy Toole, American novelist (d. 1969). [His posthumously published A Confederacy of Dunces is wonderful.]
1941 – Dave Dee, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2009).
1942 – Paul Butterfield, American singer and harmonica player (d. 1987).
1945 – Jacqueline Wilson, English author and academic.
1949 – Paul Rodgers, English singer-songwriter and producer.
1957 – Dorothy L. Sayers, English author, poet, and playwright (b. 1893).
1992 – Dana Andrews, American actor (b. 1909).
1999 – Grover Washington Jr., American singer-songwriter and saxophonist (b. 1943).
2008 – Gregoire, Congolese chimpanzee, oldest recorded (b. 1942).
2009 – Jennifer Jones, American actress (b. 1919).
2010 – Captain Beefheart, American singer-songwriter (b. 1941).
2011 – Kim Jong-il, North Korean commander and politician, second Supreme Leader of North Korea (b. 1941). [His death doesn’t prevent him from serving as the Workers Party of Korea’s Eternal General Secretary.]
Someone ran an AI to finish Schubert’s symphony. It is interesting – consult YouTube.
All I can add is a question: do they have a jail in the Vatican?
Is there any reason why not? They’re an independent state, so one would expect some policing and trial apparatus. They may effectively outsource their border controls to the Italian state – as do San Merino and Monaco (to France) and Liechtenstein (to Germany, Austria or Switzerland?). The wife was visiting Andorra recently, but made no comment on their border arrangements, but having different taxation regulations to both Spain and France they mush have some sort of system. Whether they’re part of the Schengen zone, I’ll have to check. [… it’s under negotiation. Check back next decade.]
The screaming question is, why is it not filled with all those priest who have abused 10s of thousands of children and the bishops and cardinals and popes who have protected them? Well, assumedly because the church isn’t really that concerned about its children, but touch their money, and you might just go to jail.
Yes, I think you’ve got the main points.
Obviously, there’s nothing unique about the Catholic church in this respect. Pretty much all religions have documented history of doing this, and any (few) that don’t have a documented history can safely be investigated to find out why their cover-up procedures are better.
More importantly – the “inform me by email of replies to my comment” check-box is back and working!
The Kelloggs advert sounds like the wonderful Maddy Prior, of Steeleye Span. She is alongside Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand as my favourite female singers.
I’m pretty sure it’s not Maddy Prior. It sounds a bit like her, but not exactly.
The Kelloggs ad has the Union flag back to front!
“… 5½ years in prison, marking a stunning fall from grace”
I love how “grace” is used like this all the time. “Fall from grace” – not like those other guys in funny hats, all up in the grace.
… ah ha! Subscribe/email update button! Hooray!
“ Send me an email notification when someone replies to my comment”
I would like an email for any comment, like we used to have.
I’m not sure that’s possible, and you’d get a ton of emails. Is the “email for a reply to one’s comment” working?
I always suggest to readers to just go to the site on a computer after a day if you want to see all the comments. I never read this site on a phone—ever. Plus if you just read the articles in emails, you’ll miss when they’re edited or added to, something I do fairly often.
The comment to mine works. We use to have an email for every comment once you posted and selected it. I have no problem fielding dozens of comments for a thread. I read quickly and then unsubscribe when it became too much or very repetitive.
Agree with Bob
The sidebar shows the last 5 comments. Is there a way to get a longer list? I might never see #6 if it’s to a post more than a day old.
Slightly amusing story about the final post/question.
A friend of mine invited me to his and his brother’s birthday party last year, that they were hosting at the brother’s house. Big party, couple of hundred people I reckon were there. Anyway, he tells me the dress code is “the roaring twenties”.
Now this friend is pretty funny, often sarcastic and dry. My wife asks if he means we actually have to go in fancy dress, like something out of the Great Gatsby.
“Nah,” I reassure her, “he’s just being funny. It is the “roaring” twenties now! It’s just a joke.”
Anyway, you’ll have guessed the punchline. I was too quick to think people were referring to the current decade as the twenties and we ended up looking like right pillocks in our usual clothes. My wife was mortified and still hasn’t fully forgiven me.
Anyway, he tells me the dress code is “the roaring twenties”.
I’d have taken that as an instruction to turn up wearing an oversize Tangerine Shitgibbon foam head, with built in megaphone set to winging about having been beaten.
Not being terribly up-to-date on American politics, weren’t the Roaring Twenties when Al Capone took over Chicago from Boss Taft? So there’s an alternative fancy dress theme.
There is zero chance that the soldiers who shot the hostages will be tried, let alone punished, and rightfully so.
Since Friday, I haven’t heard ANYONE suggesting that they should be.
They are fighting in an urban environment. This is the most difficult and dangerous form of combat, where you have to make immediate decisions.
It’s a tragedy and the soldiers involved are part of its victims, not villains.
To my knowledge as an Israeli, nobody here thinks about it as a criminal issue.
Totally agree, the event is terrible as is combat and imagine what could have happened had the “surrendering “ been hamas.
This in the same week that one of the soldiers involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre has been committed for trial. Justice fifty years delayed is still justice.
Reply to Gravelinspector-Aidan.
Respectfully this is Not justice, Tony Blair instigated political revenge aided by the idiot Cameron who apologised in 2010. When have the Irish Republicans apologised? It is over thirty years since the “Good Friday” agreement but the violence has continued right up to the present time. I served at RAF Ballykelly NI and I remember the attack on the local pub used by British servicemen and women, one of the worse outrages so I am familiar with the “troubles”
No senior officer or politician or other was held to task for committing “crack” assault troops, The Parachute Regiment, the “Red Devils” equipped with the then state of the art Belgian FN SLR which fired projectile’s capable of piercing brick walls and they did! These soldiers were not trained in peace keeping duties and all of them operated within the then ROE. It has never been conclusive as to who fired first.These soldiers carried out their orders.
Prosecutions for this fifty plus years on is not justice. Sorry but No one can convince me otherwise.
Well of course the “management” of the military will preferentially sacrifice squaddies to the courts. I agree – some brigadiers, generals and squaddies need to do jail time for their actions. Of course, that will never happen.
An IDF spokesman said yesterday that the soldier involved was being debriefed and would not be punished: fog of war, no malice. President Biden’s administration seems to want to micro-manage the IDF’s policy on friendly-fire mistakes, too; colour of uniforms next?
A public account on X regularly shows the young man, who identifies as a ‘twink’, engaging in sex acts with his older ‘bear’ partner.
Which young man on X?
As for the Kellog’s jingle, I suspect kitty just wanted the singer to STFU😵💫
“Does the Vatican have a jail?” Don’t know, but I’d bet you dollars to communion wafers that they have more than one dungeon.
Earth is the jail.
As both geologist and spelæologist, I have to disagree.
Ah – a gnostic temptation I can get behind – escape from the jail – through geology!
For Those About to Rock – We Salute You
-AC/DC
Yes. The prof banned that one form the minibus several years before I went … is it “up”, “down”, or “inwards”? Verily, I was not the Department’s first greebo.
Come to think of it, with punk “Dr Toxic” and his sidekick “Beanpole Barry” in the PhD lab, I rather think he was universally fed up with the “Young ‘Uns” version of music.
I disagree with all the allyship tenets, but am confused by the denial that this is white saviorism. It totally seems like white saviorism.
I’m also confused by the insistence that the black community isn’t a monolith, that we must “NEVER question the reality of our black friends and colleagues” — and yet they’ve put up a bunch of statements which not all black people agree with. Perhaps the emphasis shouldn’t be on the word “never,” but the word “OUR.”
Right – who, precisely, is “our”?
Probably not what one would think – but a council – a sovet.
I too was struck by the apparent internal inconsistency of the ‘allyship commandments’. It seems to treat both blacks and whites as ‘monolithic communities’ and the entire exercise seems to be one of enforced white ‘saviorism’.
Terrible about the IDF accidently shooting the Israeli hostages. This is so sad for the families. I assume there will be a full investigation and I assume it will come out that the soldiers were stress and thought they were Palistinians.
“Relax. Pot temperatures have been going up and down for centuries.”
This cartoon is by GRANT MCALOON, an Australian who publishes “WEEKLY HUMORIST.” (December 2, 2022 — “Globoil Warming”):
I would hesitate to take anything from O’Keefe at face value.
Minor correction: Red Hat isn’t IBM’s consulting service, it’s a company that sells and supports a Linux distribution. It was acquired by IBM in 2019.
“Like many schools, Big Syrup eliminated grading.”
I did actually LOL
A new question that hadn’t occurred to me before, as suggested to me by the “Allyship Commandments”:
Let’s say the so-called “diversity equity and inclusion” is finally achieved.
What then?
How is that maintained?
Does the “DEI” council simply dissolve away, to let the harmonious society / corporation flourish?
Does that sound similar to anything else?
Once DEI has managed a certain threshold of success, the racist and capitalist societies in which it is being implemented will succumb to the disruption and fall. A socialist utopia will emerge, and the proponents of DEI will all be made Commissar, or even given a seat on the central committee.
None of this is about making improvements to the system. It has always been about disruption and revolution.
In our case, our diversity as a society is seem as a weakness to exploit. If you want to get a fairly united group of people to fracture and fight each other, it is best to amplify their differences, or even manufacture grievances that were not there before.
Again for us, we are generally pretty conflict averse, and will concede a great deal to keep things civil. This must be intensely frustrating for the Marxists. That something as absurd and surreal as the “allyship” rules does not induce the expected chaos means that they need to think of something even more extreme.
Well put
Dialectical political warfare
Elicit the friend / enemy distinction
Nobody has to react – nor go along with an unjustified program.
The Wright brothers had spent all of $1000 of their own money over four years at the time of that photo. Samuel Langley, the head of the Smithsonian Institution at the time, went through $70,000 of government and private money over more than 10 years and failed embarrassingly badly a few days prior.
Langley had successfully flown a powered, heavier-than-air craft in 1896, but it was unmanned. The Wright flights on Dec 17, 1903 were piloted and controlled. The control aspect is what set them apart from everyone else and wowed everyone in Europe when they finally got there a few years later.
The Wrights started their project shortly after Wilbur dismissed the automobile as having no future, what with being so noisy and having so many things go wrong with it.
On this day:
497 BC – The first Saturnalia festival was celebrated in ancient Rome.
546 – Siege of Rome: The Ostrogoths under king Totila plunder the city, by bribing the Byzantine garrison.
1538 – Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England.
1777 – American Revolution: France formally recognizes the United States.
1790 – The Aztec calendar stone is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City.
1835 – The second Great Fire of New York destroys 53,000 square metres (13 acres) of New York City’s Financial District.
1862 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
1865 – First performance of the Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert.
1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1935 – First flight of the Douglas DC-3.
1938 – Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of the heavy element uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear energy.
1943 – All Chinese are again permitted to become citizens of the United States upon the repeal of the Act of 1882 and the introduction of the Magnuson Act.
1944 – World War II: Battle of the Bulge: Malmedy massacre: American 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion POWs are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Joachim Peiper.
1945 – Kurdistan flag day, the flag of Kurdistan was raised for the first time in Mahabad in eastern Kurdistan (Iran).
1957 – The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1967 – Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, disappears while swimming near Portsea, Victoria, and is presumed drowned.
1969 – Project Blue Book: The United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs.
1970 – Polish protests: In Gdynia, soldiers fire at workers emerging from trains, killing dozens.
1973 – Thirty passengers are killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport.
1983 – Provisional IRA members detonate a car bomb at Harrods Department Store in London. Three police officers and three civilians are killed.
1989 – Fernando Collor de Mello defeats Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, becoming the first democratically elected President in almost 30 years.
1989 – The Simpsons premieres on television with the episode “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”.
2003 – The Soham murder trial ends at the Old Bailey in London, with Ian Huntley found guilty of two counts of murder. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, is found guilty of perverting the course of justice.
2010 – Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself on fire. This act became the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring.
2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations after severing them in 1961.
Births:
1706 – Émilie du Châtelet, French mathematician and physicist (d. 1749).
1778 – Humphry Davy, English chemist and physicist (d. 1829).
1853 – Pierre Paul Émile Roux, French physician and immunologist, co-founded the Pasteur Institute (d. 1933).
1873 – Ford Madox Ford, English novelist, poet, and critic (d. 1939).
1900 – Mary Cartwright, English mathematician and academic, one of the first people to analyze a dynamical system with chaos (d. 1998).
1913 – Burt Baskin, American businessman, co-founded Baskin-Robbins (d. 1967).
1914 – Fernando Alonso, Cuban ballet dancer, co-founded the Cuban National Ballet (d. 2013).
1920 – Kenneth E. Iverson, Canadian computer scientist, developed the APL programming language (d. 2004).
1930 – Bob Guccione, American photographer and publisher, founded Penthouse (d. 2010).
1936 – Pope Francis.
1936 – Tommy Steele, English singer, guitarist, and actor.
1937 – Kerry Packer, Australian businessman, founded World Series Cricket (d. 2005).
1937 – John Kennedy Toole, American novelist (d. 1969). [His posthumously published A Confederacy of Dunces is wonderful.]
1941 – Dave Dee, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2009).
1942 – Paul Butterfield, American singer and harmonica player (d. 1987).
1945 – Jacqueline Wilson, English author and academic.
1949 – Paul Rodgers, English singer-songwriter and producer.
1973 – Paula Radcliffe, English runner.
1975 – Milla Jovovich, Ukrainian-American actress.
I’m dying, but so are you:
1273 – Rumi, Persian jurist, theologian, and poet (b. 1207).
1559 – Irene di Spilimbergo, Italian Renaissance poet and painter (b. 1538).
1830 – Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan general and politician, second President of Venezuela (b. 1783).
1833 – Kaspar Hauser, German feral child (b. 1812?).
1857 – Francis Beaufort, Irish hydrographer and officer in the Royal Navy (b. 1774).
1917 – Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, English physician and activist (b. 1836).
1930 – Peter Warlock, Welsh composer and critic (b. 1894).
1940 – Alicia Boole Stott, Anglo-Irish mathematician and academic (b. 1860).
1957 – Dorothy L. Sayers, English author, poet, and playwright (b. 1893).
1992 – Dana Andrews, American actor (b. 1909).
1999 – Grover Washington Jr., American singer-songwriter and saxophonist (b. 1943).
2008 – Gregoire, Congolese chimpanzee, oldest recorded (b. 1942).
2009 – Jennifer Jones, American actress (b. 1919).
2010 – Captain Beefheart, American singer-songwriter (b. 1941).
2011 – Kim Jong-il, North Korean commander and politician, second Supreme Leader of North Korea (b. 1941). [His death doesn’t prevent him from serving as the Workers Party of Korea’s Eternal General Secretary.]
Someone ran an AI to finish Schubert’s symphony. It is interesting – consult YouTube.
Is there any reason why not? They’re an independent state, so one would expect some policing and trial apparatus. They may effectively outsource their border controls to the Italian state – as do San Merino and Monaco (to France) and Liechtenstein (to Germany, Austria or Switzerland?). The wife was visiting Andorra recently, but made no comment on their border arrangements, but having different taxation regulations to both Spain and France they mush have some sort of system. Whether they’re part of the Schengen zone, I’ll have to check. [… it’s under negotiation. Check back next decade.]
The screaming question is, why is it not filled with all those priest who have abused 10s of thousands of children and the bishops and cardinals and popes who have protected them? Well, assumedly because the church isn’t really that concerned about its children, but touch their money, and you might just go to jail.
Yes, I think you’ve got the main points.
Obviously, there’s nothing unique about the Catholic church in this respect. Pretty much all religions have documented history of doing this, and any (few) that don’t have a documented history can safely be investigated to find out why their cover-up procedures are better.
More importantly – the “inform me by email of replies to my comment” check-box is back and working!
The Kelloggs advert sounds like the wonderful Maddy Prior, of Steeleye Span. She is alongside Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand as my favourite female singers.
I’m pretty sure it’s not Maddy Prior. It sounds a bit like her, but not exactly.
The Kelloggs ad has the Union flag back to front!
“… 5½ years in prison, marking a stunning fall from grace”
I love how “grace” is used like this all the time. “Fall from grace” – not like those other guys in funny hats, all up in the grace.
… ah ha! Subscribe/email update button! Hooray!
“ Send me an email notification when someone replies to my comment”
I would like an email for any comment, like we used to have.
I’m not sure that’s possible, and you’d get a ton of emails. Is the “email for a reply to one’s comment” working?
I always suggest to readers to just go to the site on a computer after a day if you want to see all the comments. I never read this site on a phone—ever. Plus if you just read the articles in emails, you’ll miss when they’re edited or added to, something I do fairly often.
The comment to mine works. We use to have an email for every comment once you posted and selected it. I have no problem fielding dozens of comments for a thread. I read quickly and then unsubscribe when it became too much or very repetitive.
Agree with Bob
The sidebar shows the last 5 comments. Is there a way to get a longer list? I might never see #6 if it’s to a post more than a day old.
Slightly amusing story about the final post/question.
A friend of mine invited me to his and his brother’s birthday party last year, that they were hosting at the brother’s house. Big party, couple of hundred people I reckon were there. Anyway, he tells me the dress code is “the roaring twenties”.
Now this friend is pretty funny, often sarcastic and dry. My wife asks if he means we actually have to go in fancy dress, like something out of the Great Gatsby.
“Nah,” I reassure her, “he’s just being funny. It is the “roaring” twenties now! It’s just a joke.”
Anyway, you’ll have guessed the punchline. I was too quick to think people were referring to the current decade as the twenties and we ended up looking like right pillocks in our usual clothes. My wife was mortified and still hasn’t fully forgiven me.
I’d have taken that as an instruction to turn up wearing an oversize Tangerine Shitgibbon foam head, with built in megaphone set to winging about having been beaten.
Not being terribly up-to-date on American politics, weren’t the Roaring Twenties when Al Capone took over Chicago from Boss Taft? So there’s an alternative fancy dress theme.
There is zero chance that the soldiers who shot the hostages will be tried, let alone punished, and rightfully so.
Since Friday, I haven’t heard ANYONE suggesting that they should be.
They are fighting in an urban environment. This is the most difficult and dangerous form of combat, where you have to make immediate decisions.
It’s a tragedy and the soldiers involved are part of its victims, not villains.
To my knowledge as an Israeli, nobody here thinks about it as a criminal issue.
Totally agree, the event is terrible as is combat and imagine what could have happened had the “surrendering “ been hamas.
This in the same week that one of the soldiers involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre has been committed for trial. Justice fifty years delayed is still justice.
Reply to Gravelinspector-Aidan.
Respectfully this is Not justice, Tony Blair instigated political revenge aided by the idiot Cameron who apologised in 2010. When have the Irish Republicans apologised? It is over thirty years since the “Good Friday” agreement but the violence has continued right up to the present time. I served at RAF Ballykelly NI and I remember the attack on the local pub used by British servicemen and women, one of the worse outrages so I am familiar with the “troubles”
No senior officer or politician or other was held to task for committing “crack” assault troops, The Parachute Regiment, the “Red Devils” equipped with the then state of the art Belgian FN SLR which fired projectile’s capable of piercing brick walls and they did! These soldiers were not trained in peace keeping duties and all of them operated within the then ROE. It has never been conclusive as to who fired first.These soldiers carried out their orders.
Prosecutions for this fifty plus years on is not justice. Sorry but No one can convince me otherwise.
Well of course the “management” of the military will preferentially sacrifice squaddies to the courts. I agree – some brigadiers, generals and squaddies need to do jail time for their actions. Of course, that will never happen.
An IDF spokesman said yesterday that the soldier involved was being debriefed and would not be punished: fog of war, no malice. President Biden’s administration seems to want to micro-manage the IDF’s policy on friendly-fire mistakes, too; colour of uniforms next?
Okay, but did the latter ever get around to fixing the Hart Senate Office Building’s cable? 🙂
Which young man on X?
As for the Kellog’s jingle, I suspect kitty just wanted the singer to STFU😵💫
“Does the Vatican have a jail?” Don’t know, but I’d bet you dollars to communion wafers that they have more than one dungeon.
Earth is the jail.
As both geologist and spelæologist, I have to disagree.
Ah – a gnostic temptation I can get behind – escape from the jail – through geology!
For Those About to Rock – We Salute You
-AC/DC
Yes. The prof banned that one form the minibus several years before I went … is it “up”, “down”, or “inwards”? Verily, I was not the Department’s first greebo.
Come to think of it, with punk “Dr Toxic” and his sidekick “Beanpole Barry” in the PhD lab, I rather think he was universally fed up with the “Young ‘Uns” version of music.
I disagree with all the allyship tenets, but am confused by the denial that this is white saviorism. It totally seems like white saviorism.
I’m also confused by the insistence that the black community isn’t a monolith, that we must “NEVER question the reality of our black friends and colleagues” — and yet they’ve put up a bunch of statements which not all black people agree with. Perhaps the emphasis shouldn’t be on the word “never,” but the word “OUR.”
Right – who, precisely, is “our”?
Probably not what one would think – but a council – a sovet.
I too was struck by the apparent internal inconsistency of the ‘allyship commandments’. It seems to treat both blacks and whites as ‘monolithic communities’ and the entire exercise seems to be one of enforced white ‘saviorism’.
Terrible about the IDF accidently shooting the Israeli hostages. This is so sad for the families. I assume there will be a full investigation and I assume it will come out that the soldiers were stress and thought they were Palistinians.
“Relax. Pot temperatures have been going up and down for centuries.”
This cartoon is by GRANT MCALOON, an Australian who publishes “WEEKLY HUMORIST.” (December 2, 2022 — “Globoil Warming”):
https://weeklyhumorist.com/cartoon-globoil-warming/
I would hesitate to take anything from O’Keefe at face value.
Minor correction: Red Hat isn’t IBM’s consulting service, it’s a company that sells and supports a Linux distribution. It was acquired by IBM in 2019.
“Like many schools, Big Syrup eliminated grading.”
I did actually LOL
A new question that hadn’t occurred to me before, as suggested to me by the “Allyship Commandments”:
Let’s say the so-called “diversity equity and inclusion” is finally achieved.
What then?
How is that maintained?
Does the “DEI” council simply dissolve away, to let the harmonious society / corporation flourish?
Does that sound similar to anything else?
Once DEI has managed a certain threshold of success, the racist and capitalist societies in which it is being implemented will succumb to the disruption and fall. A socialist utopia will emerge, and the proponents of DEI will all be made Commissar, or even given a seat on the central committee.
None of this is about making improvements to the system. It has always been about disruption and revolution.
In our case, our diversity as a society is seem as a weakness to exploit. If you want to get a fairly united group of people to fracture and fight each other, it is best to amplify their differences, or even manufacture grievances that were not there before.
Again for us, we are generally pretty conflict averse, and will concede a great deal to keep things civil. This must be intensely frustrating for the Marxists. That something as absurd and surreal as the “allyship” rules does not induce the expected chaos means that they need to think of something even more extreme.
Well put
Dialectical political warfare
Elicit the friend / enemy distinction
Nobody has to react – nor go along with an unjustified program.
The Wright brothers had spent all of $1000 of their own money over four years at the time of that photo. Samuel Langley, the head of the Smithsonian Institution at the time, went through $70,000 of government and private money over more than 10 years and failed embarrassingly badly a few days prior.
Langley had successfully flown a powered, heavier-than-air craft in 1896, but it was unmanned. The Wright flights on Dec 17, 1903 were piloted and controlled. The control aspect is what set them apart from everyone else and wowed everyone in Europe when they finally got there a few years later.
The Wrights started their project shortly after Wilbur dismissed the automobile as having no future, what with being so noisy and having so many things go wrong with it.