Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 27, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on a quiet Wednesday, December 27, 2023, at the University of Chicago: it’s a Hump Day (“Dita e gungës” in Albanian) and National Fruitcake Day, and, of course, the third day of Coynezaa.  As you know, the world has only one fruitcake that is endlessly passed from person to person. Here it is:

https://openverse.org/image/461b0528-c47a-401d-b581-44ffd61a8da7?q=fruitcake

It’s also Visit the Zoo Day and the third of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I had no idea that Stephen Fry was a Jew, and apparently he didn’t, either. Here, after DNA confirmation of his 52% Ashkenazi-ness, he proclaims himself a “proud, Gay Jew.”  (h/t: Jay)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Egyptians are still brokering a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, and Israel is discussing it with a new war cabinet, but things still don’t look propitious.

Israel’s war cabinet took an Egyptian proposal to end the war with Hamas to a wider group of ministers as domestic pressure grows to secure the release of hostages and regional powers look for a solution to end the fighting in Gaza.

Here’s the deal from an earlier WSJ story:

The deal calls for an initial pause in fighting to allow for the release of Israeli hostages including children, women and elderly in need of urgent medical attention, in exchange for the release of around 140 Palestinian prisoners. It would be followed by the formation of a transitional government for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank made up of various Palestinian factions, including Hamas.

Well, isn’t that peachy? Hamas would have a role in the government. What kind of moron would accept that provision? Not Israel:

The wider security cabinet was set to review the proposal on Tuesday night. Israeli officials say it is unlikely that Israel can agree to any deal that would allow a role for Hamas in Gaza after the war is over, as the Egyptian plan proposes.

The three main members of Israel’s war cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, have said that Hamas can’t be permitted to remain in power, after the militant group led an attack Israel on Oct. 7 in which Israel says around 1,200 people were killed and around 240 others abducted and taken to Gaza.

. . . A delegation from the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization is expected to go to Cairo soon to discuss the proposal, including the makeup of a potential, unified government that would run the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, committee member Ahmed Majdalani said Tuesday. The PLO, which represents Palestinians at the United Nations, initially said it had rejected the proposal after seeing parts of it. Hamas isn’t part of the PLO.

. . . Israel is willing to discuss the first stage of the Egyptian proposal, which would see the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, said Danny Danon, a senior lawmaker in Netanyahu’s Likud party who isn’t a member of the security cabinet. That was the same formula for a previous hostage release agreement earlier in the war.

I predict that Hamas will not offer to release all the hostages—not by any means. They have too many incriminating tales to tell. But they should let them all go, of course, for holding them is a war crime as well as an act of supreme brutality. If they dribble out hostage releases, more and more Gazans will be killed as the war continues.

Once again, I blame the deaths of Palestinian civilians on Hamas, which actually wants their own civilians to die. To end the fighting and killing, all that needs doing is for Hamas to surrender, give up the possibility of running Gaza, and release all the hostages. (There would, of course, have to be further negotiations about who runs Gaza, but that can be decided after the firing stops.)

*Meanwhile, while the IDF is expanding operations in southern Gaza, the defense minister issued a depressing proclamation that the war could take “years”(!)

Israeli aircraft bombarded the southern Gaza Strip overnight in apparent preparation for expanding the military’s ground offensive, the military said Tuesday, even as continued fighting near Gaza City challenged the army’s claim that it was largely in control of the north of the Strip after 80 days of war.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders vowing to continue fighting, despite growing international pressure to wind down the battle and calls at home for a deal to free hostages held in Gaza, the military appeared poised Tuesday for a newly intensified push into the central and southern parts of the Strip.

“This is a long, tough war. It has costs, heavy costs, but its justification is the highest that can be,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Knesset lawmakers Tuesday, hours after the army raised the death toll from the ground offensive to 158 soldiers. He vowed Israel would punish Hamas over its brutal October 7 attack, “whether it takes months or years.”

He also said Israel was fighting on “seven fronts” and had hit back on six of them.

The continued fighting in the north of Gaza does show how tenacious Hamas is and how hard it is to eliminate them, but crikey, nobody wants a war that lasts for years (I suspect it won’t be that long). All Hamas has to do is surrender and turn over the hostages, and all fighting will stop instantly.

*I’m amazed that we’re not at war with Iran, though that would surely bring to a halt most of the terrorism in the Middle East. (Note: I am not advocating such a war, though one could argue that the long-term death toll would be lowered if we were.) But we did strike at Iran on Monday after three U.S. troops in northern Iraq were injured, one severely, by a drone fired by an Iranian-backed militia. Meanwhile, Israel is still picking off Iranian militants:

U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the United States military to carry out retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups after three U.S. service members were injured in a drone attack in northern Iraq.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said one of the U.S. troops suffered critical injuries in the attack that occurred earlier Monday. The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack that utilized a one-way attack drone.

Iraqi officials said that U.S. strikes targeting militia sites early Tuesday killed one militant and wounded 18. They came at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war.

Iran announced Monday that an Israeli strike on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus killed one of its top generals, Seyed Razi Mousavi, who had been a close companion of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Soleimani was slain in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.

Iranian officials vowed revenge for the killing of Mousavi, but didn’t immediately launch a retaliatory strike. The militia attack Monday in northern Iraq was launched prior to the strike in Syria that killed Mousavi.

Biden, who was spending Christmas at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, was alerted to the attack by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan shortly after it occurred Monday and ordered the Pentagon and his top national security aides to prepare response options to the attack on an air base used by American troops in Irbil.

Things would be a lot better if Masih Alinejad could get Iranian citizens to overthrow their oppressive, theocratic, and terrorist-supporting government.  Iran continues to enrich uranium, and the West continues to pretend that they’re not engaged in making nuclear weapons.

*I reported the the other day that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, after having disappeared in the state penal system, has been found in a grim labor camp in the Arctic, serving 19 years in permanent solitary confinement. That would seem to produce permanent depression, but Navalny, at least now, seems to regard it with humor.

Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, published a letter on Tuesday describing an arduous transfer to his new penal colony in the Arctic, the first time his supporters had heard from him in three weeks.

Mr. Navalny’s comments, posted on his social network accounts and written with a heavy dose of irony and humor, highlighted his good spirits and seemed intended to assuage concerns among allies who had grown anxious about his health and status since his sudden disappearance from the public eye on Dec. 5.

“I am your new Father Frost,” Mr. Navalny wrote, referring to the Russian version of Santa Claus. “I have a sheepskin coat, a hat with earflaps; I should get felt boots soon, and I have grown a beard during the 20-day transit.”

But, he added, “The main thing is that I now live above the Arctic Circle.”

Mr. Navalny, 47, is a longtime antagonist of President Vladimir V. Putin who has been subject to increasingly harsh punishment over the past year. His transfer to one of Russia’s high-security “special regime” penal colonies had been expected since September, when he lost an appeal against the 19-year sentence he is serving.

A former site of a Gulag labor camp, Mr. Navalny’s new snow-swept penal colony, in the town of Kharp, is one of the most remote in Russia. Known as the “Polar Wolf” colony, it is surrounded by tundra and polar mountains. Freezing dark winters give way to brisk summers with clouds of mosquitoes. Daylight is scarce, a fact he alluded to in his letter Tuesday.

“I don’t say ‘Ho-ho-ho,’ but I do say ‘Oh-oh-oh’ when I look out of the window,” Mr. Navalny said, “where I can see it’s night, then evening, then night again.”

Mr. Navalny said that he had not seen much of his new Arctic permafrost surroundings yet, but that he had noticed that prison guards there were different than their colleagues in central Russia. Wearing warm mittens and felt boots, they carried machine guns and were aided by “those very beautiful fluffy shepherd dogs,” he said.

*An extra item about the International Red Cross (ICRS). When they’re asked why they didn’t visit hostages taken Hamas, but simply drove them across the border to Israel after they were released, the Red Cross waffled when asked why they didn’t actually visit the hostages in captivity and bring them the medicines that their relatives offered. The ICRC waffled, saying this:

The ICRC have helped facilitate the release of 109 hostages. Our ICRC colleagues are ready to facilitate and bring the remaining hostages back to their loved ones. But the situation is extremely difficult. The ICRC does not have information about where the hostages are.

Even if the location was known, the ICRC cannot force its way into where hostages are held. And they can only visit hostages if given access by those holding them or if there is an agreement by the parties to the conflict.

Well, Israel did agree to let the ICRC visit the hostages, of course. It was Hamas that prevented it, but the ICRC didn’t try too hard. In fact, they simply refused to even try to bring aid to the hostages: This is backed up by multiple accounts:

In an address to a Knesset hearing Monday attended by families of hostages,  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described how an International Red Cross Representative told him “no” when he asked her to deliver crucial medicine to hostages.

“I met with the Red Cross; I handed over a box of medicine for some of the hostages pictured here. Some of them really need it.”

He continued, “I told a representative to take this box to Rafah; she said no. It was a difficult conversation.”

When describing the difficulties with the Red Cross and the idea that freeing the hostages would take time, some members of hostage families yelled, “Now!” while Netanyahu was speaking.

“We are sparing no effort, both seen and hidden, to bring all of the hostages home,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu’s account of the Red Cross flatly refusing to deliver medicine and aid to hostages is consistent with testimonies by hostage families who recount similar interactions with the humanitarian organization.

. . .Elma Avraham’s son, Uri Rawitz, gathered his mother’s medications and tried to take them to the Red Cross so they could be administered to his mother.

The Red Cross workers said, “No, we can’t do anything.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not giving dime one to the Red Cross any more. They are clearly against Israel, and when Israel needed them, they crossed their arms and said “nope.”  They are, of course, supposed to be politically neutral.

*Who doesn’t like pizza? If you’re one of the 99.43% who do, the Washington Post has published a piece on “The best pizza in America, by region and style.”  I’ll report on Chicago, which of course is America’s best pizza city.

Chicago

Tavern style — thin, traditionally baked in gas ovens, round but square-cut — made its first appearance in the late 1930s as pizza grew in popularity in the United States, according to Chicago-based pizza historian Peter Regas. It was served alongside drinks in bars on cocktail napkins, sometimes free. Deep dish was born in 1943 at the Pizzeria (later to become Pizzeria Uno), originally owned by Ric Riccardo. The deeper pies were possibly a result of pans left behind from previous tavern owners, the Pelican, Dolinsky says.

For deep dish, the dough is pressed into a pan and up the sides, and covered with mozzarella, then the toppings (traditionally sausage), then covered in a chunky tomato sauce. Diners can expect to wait 30 to 45 minutes for their pizza — far longer than the minute or so cook time of a Neapolitan pie.

But if Chicagoans claim tavern style as their true pizza, how did deep dish become what we think of as Chicago’s signature dish?

“The concept of making pizza in the pan started to gain currency in the 1960s, slowly at first, and then by the 1970s. … We’d say today it went ‘viral.’ It just spread like wildfire,” Regas said. “Everyone, especially on the North Side, got into the ‘pizza in the pan’ business.”

By the 1970s, deep-pan spots like Pequod’s and My Pi came on the scene. Other styles started to spin off, including stuffed pizza, originated by Nancy’s. This subset of deep dish, which has an extra layer of dough and shredded mozzarella, is where Dolinsky thinks the stereotypes of deep Chicago pies comes from.

“These are the pies that are normally mocked — the aboveground pool, the boat anchor — because they are … the height of the pan,” Dolinsky said. “That’s a big, big difference.” Dolinsky says he’s always looking for “optimal bite ratio,” which is his perfect measurement of cheese, sauce and dough in every bite.  —Amanda Finnegan

Their choices are Lou Malnati’s and My Pi for deep-dish pizza and Kim’s Uncle in Westmont for thin-crust pizza.  They don’t even mention stuffed pizza, which is the very best, and the place to get it is Giordano’s. I haven’t been to the place in the video below, but it’s not in the town of Chicago, so it doesn’t count. Note: deep-dish pizza is NOT stuffed pizza; the former has a much higher filling-to-crust ratio. Get the stuffed!

At any rate, you can find your state and suss out what the WaPo says about its pizza.

For thin-crust, go to New York or, better yet, New Haven, where you can get the white clam pizza (made with fresh clams) at Frank Pepe’s.  Here’s a Pepe’s clam pie I shared with a friend after visiting Wesleyan University in 2011:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has IMPORTANT BUSINESS!

A: Do you have a moment?
Hili: No, I’m busy.
In Polish:
Ja: Czy masz chwilę czasu?
Hili: Nie, jestem zajęta.

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

From Merilee, a photo captioned, “Fixing the sink with Dad”:

From Julie:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih, yet another brave Iranian protestor:

From Science Girl, an endless source of information and joy:

I’m delighted that this group had second thoughts about demonstrating at Washington’s Holocaust Museum—a disgusting act.  The doctors also need to correct “anti-Semetic” in the second tweet, as well as “misrepresentated.”

From my feed; this has to be associated with the announcer’s voice, not a d*g rooting for a team!

Why is the world so impervious to this, which has been amply documented on video, and here by the words of a boss of Hamas?

From Jez, who “suspects that this is all true.” I like the casserole bit!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a man who lived but four days in the camp. His photo explains why.

From Dr. Cobb, who calls this “kot and dog”:

Yep, hyraxes, along with the dugongs and manatees (!) are the closest living relatives of elephants:

36 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    537 – The second Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is consecrated.

    1512 – The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regard to native Indians in the New World. [They forbade the slavery of the indigenous people but endorsed their conversion to Catholicism.]

    1657 – The Flushing Remonstrance articulates for the first time in North American history that freedom of religion is a fundamental right.

    1831 – Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution.

    1836 – The worst ever avalanche in England occurs at Lewes, Sussex, killing eight people.

    1845 – Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.

    1845 – Having coined the phrase “manifest destiny” the previous July, journalist John L. O’Sullivan argued in his newspaper New York Morning News that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country.

    1911 – “Jana Gana Mana”, the national anthem of India, is first sung in the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress.

    1918 – The Great Poland Uprising against the Germans begins.

    1918 – Ukrainian War of Independence: The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine occupies Yekaterinoslav and seizes seven airplanes from the UPRAF, establishing an Insurgent Air Fleet.

    1922 – Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō becomes the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned in the world.

    1927 – Kern and Hammerstein’s musical play Show Boat, considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway.

    1929 – Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin orders the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class”.

    1935 – Regina Jonas is ordained as the first female rabbi in the history of Judaism.

    1945 – The International Monetary Fund is created with the signing of an agreement by 29 nations.

    1966 – The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, is discovered in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

    1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital crewed mission to the Moon.

    1978 – Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship.

    1985 – Palestinian guerrillas kill eighteen people inside the airports of Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria.

    1996 – Taliban forces retake the strategic Bagram Airfield which solidifies their buffer zone around Kabul, Afghanistan.

    2004 – Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.

    2007 – Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in a shooting incident.

    2008 – Operation Cast Lead: Israel launches three-week operation on Gaza.

    Births:
    1571 – Johannes Kepler, German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer (d. 1630).

    1689 – Jacob August Franckenstein, Encyclopedia editor, professor (d. 1733).

    1822 – Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist (d. 1895).

    1879 – Sydney Greenstreet, English-American actor (d. 1954).

    1882 – Mina Loy, British modernist poet and artist (d. 1966).

    1901 – Marlene Dietrich, German-American actress and singer (d. 1992).

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

    1907 – Mary Howard, English author (d. 1991).

    1915 – William Masters, American gynecologist, author, and academic (d. 2001).

    1924 – Jean Bartik, American computer scientist and engineer (d. 2011). [One of the original six programmers of the ENIAC computer.]

    1931 – Scotty Moore, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 2016).

    1944 – Mick Jones, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer.

    1946 – Janet Street-Porter, English journalist and producer.

    1946 – Polly Toynbee, English journalist and author.

    1948 – Gérard Depardieu, French-Russian actor.

    1952 – David Knopfler, Scottish singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

    1955 – Barbara Olson, American journalist and author (d. 2001). [She was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 en route to a taping of Bill Maher’s television show Politically Incorrect when it was flown into the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks.]

    1971 – Guthrie Govan, English guitarist and educator.

    1995 – Timothée Chalamet, French-American actor.

    I don’t fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.
    1812 – Joanna Southcott, English religious leader (b. 1750). [Aged 64, she claimed she was pregnant with the new Messiah, the Shiloh of Genesis (49:10). Shiloh failed to appear on the due date. Southcott had a disorder that made her appear pregnant and this fuelled her followers, who numbered about 100,000 by 1814, mainly in the London area. She died not long after this. Her official date of death was given as 27 December 1814, but it is likely that she died the previous day, as her followers retained her body for some time in the belief that she would be raised from the dead. They agreed to her burial only after the corpse began to decay. Bizarrely, her religious movement survived her.]

    1923 – Gustave Eiffel, French architect and engineer, co-designed the Eiffel Tower (b. 1832).

    1981 – Hoagy Carmichael, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor (b. 1899).

    1982 – Jack Swigert, American pilot, astronaut, and politician (b. 1931).

    1994 – Fanny Cradock, English author and critic (b. 1909).

    2003 – Alan Bates, English actor (b. 1934).

    2007 – Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Polish director and screenwriter (b. 1922).

    2016 – Carrie Fisher, American actress, screenwriter, author, producer, and speaker (b. 1956).

    2018 – Frank Blaichman, Polish resistance fighter (b. 1922).

    1. Is the “I don’t fear death so much….” Yours Jez, or do you have a reference for it? I really like it.

        1. FWIW, online interview transcripts(?) https://www.irishamerica.com/2013/08/what-are-you-like-mary-roach/

          Your greatest fear?
          My husband has a fear of death, of not existing. I don’t fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.

          the traveling salesman
          Favorite sound?
          The clicking noise when you peddle backward on a bicycle.

    2. I’d never heard of Joanna Southcott until today. That’s what I really love about this blog. Besides our esteemed host and all his output we have such great readers who turn us onto all these tidbits.. And now I know what the Elephant and Castle is. I forgot about Gaza for 30 minutes.. for that I thank you

    1. Except it is deep fried.

      The WaPo article pointed me to a little New York style joint just a short drive from my place in NW Arkansas. Pretty darn good, I must say. I prefer the thin crust style, probably because I am a bread guy. But there is almost no BAD pizza.

      Funny story about that. Not long after being married, wife and I visited Chicago and quite liked Giordanos. Bought their cookbook. For some dumb reason we tried to make the eggplant pizza. Wife and I still laugh, it is the only time in almost 40 years of marriage we took one bite, threw out our food, and order food in.

  3. Ditto on dollars enriching ICRC coffers. The Red Cross has quite a history. In WWII, they declined to intervene on behalf of Jews detained by the Nazis. They also excluded Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom for decades. Another inept, ideologically bent and driven NGO.

  4. Thanks largely to Jerry’s observations here, I have canceled my regular donations to the Canadian Red Cross. They claim independence from the International Committee, and this may be true, but from now on I will donate only ad hoc to their appeals during specific disasters at home and abroad.

    1. If they are anything like the US Red Cross, donating ad hoc won’t help.

      Several summers ago we had a serious forest fire just north of us which kept traveling north another 25 miles before they got it even somewhat under control. Several people lost their homes. Livestock owners were forced to take their animals to the county fairgrounds to be kept safe until they were allowed to return home.

      I ran into the District Ranger during this fire, and I asked her what I could do to help. She told me that the Red Cross was handling the relief effort, and I could donate to them. I called their Albuquerque office and told them that I wanted to make a donation, but that I wanted it to go to the Torrance County fire victims, not into any general fund. I also told them that I didn’t want my name sold to any other charities. They agreed to both conditions, so I sent them a check.

      It wasn’t a week before I started receiving solicitations from other related charities. I have no way of telling whether my donation reached the people I intended to help.

      A cousin of mine went to work for the American Red Cross several years ago. She lasted barely a year before she resigned. She said she thought they were unethical in the way they raised money, and she didn’t want to have any more to do with them.

      L

      1. >I have no way of telling whether my donation reached the people I intended to help.

        But they said it would and you don’t know that it didn’t. Your additional complaint is that they gave (or sold or rented) your name to other charities, which was not what I raised. (This is normal legal practice except where privacy law requires them to honour your request not to be sold along.)

      2. That comports with experiences I’ve had with them. They are structurally unable to direct specific donations to any specific cause (I don’t blame them for that), but they most definitely use disasters in a misleading way to get donations. That part seems unethical to me.

        1. Straight up lying to get people to give you money is without doubt unethical. But I guess some folks are fine with unethical, so long as it isn’t also illegal.

          1. Look at POTUS 45, or many of the justices sitting on the bench of the highest court in the land. If those at the top don’t act ethically, why should anyone else? And now millions of Americans are fine with unethical behavior, whether it’s legal or not. It’s easy to be an atheist in the midst of America’s religious hordes in thrall of their corrupt leader(s).

      1. Actually, just a couple of days. A friend had sent me that picture, and I thought of the joke then…

  6. One issue with any peace between Israel and Hamas that I have not seen commented on (to be fair, there are other more obvious issues), is that Hamas keeps insisting that a separate Palestinian state have its capitol in Jerusalem.

  7. I don’t know about you, but I’m not giving dime one to the Red Cross any more. They are clearly against Israel, and when Israel needed them, they crossed their arms and said “nope.”

    I’m not sure. Are you assuming that the ICRC can get to the hostages? I suspect that Hamas completely refuses them access except when participating in a prisoner exchange.

    1. I agree, Hamas would also be paranoid they would be tracked as to where the hostages are located, I say you would run the risk of being shot if you tried helping directly. Hamas would be very suspicious of any trying to help Israelis.
      BUT, at the very least, the ICRC should have shown that they were are trying all avenues diplomatically at their disposal to check on the health and assist hostages, especially those that need medicines… even as we and the ICRC know that Hamas would not comply,

  8. My sister used to wait tables a lifetime ago at the My Pi on Clark Street just north of Fullerton. I still maintain that the best stuffed pizza (and, thus, the best pizza of all kinds) is Bacino’s.

  9. I must contribute to the pizza discussion. Any mention of Pizzeria Uno must bring forth the statement that we still have fond memories of their sea delico pizza, which is a seafood pizza. It has been maybe 20 years since we’ve had one, and I want one now.
    And then there is the amazing discovery of what is called a Mexican pizza, which is an unremarkable looking concoction sold by the midwestern HyVee grocery chain. This is a crunchy thin crust pizza, and it is, in my opinion a beautiful union between the Italian and Mexican cultures. And yet in this simple round pizza we have a great meal anytime.

    1. We bought a several-cheese pizza, added a few vegetable items, including artichokes, but had to be careful so as not to make the pizza soggy. Then, if memory serves me, we broiled some scallops for a certain amount of time, then finished cooking them with the pizza. Maybe there was some shrimp too. In any event, I much appreciate my dear wife accommodating me. I’m incompetent in the kitchen, except for making salad.

  10. An excellent summary of the news—better than any of the news outlets I frequent.

    No, Israel will not accept a government that includes Hamas, but the Egyptian proposal has gotten people talking, which is good. Will the war go on for years? It depends on what you mean by “the war.” Israel will need to ratchet down the intensity of the war once it has damaged Hamas sufficiently. But it may indeed take years to complete the job. It took years for us to kill Bin Laden.

    The Red Cross has put their antisemitism on full display this past two months.

    I, too, noted that Iran vowed retribution for the Israeli attack in Damascus that killed Mousavi. This has me worried. If the form of the retribution is an attack on American interests, it could bring more involvement by the U.S. and a widening of the conflict. If it comes in the form of an attack on Israel, the war could widen and similarly bring about more involvement by the U.S. More likely is that the retaliation will be a tit-for-tat attempt to kill an Israeli military officer or something the Iranian regime seems equivalent—which would even the score but not induce further escalation. But, you never know. Iran may use this opportunity to do something provocative to test the waters.

    And now to deep dish pizza… . 🙂 My wife was a student at the U of C in the 1970s, so she had sampled deep dish pizza before I did. She introduced me to it at Uno’s. The best pizza, however, is pizza she makes from scratch.

  11. Re the one fruitcake that is endlessly passed from person to person, this year it’s at my house. Very boozy so has to be eaten at night. Should be done by Friday.

  12. When I lived in DC I visited the US Holocaust Museum. I came out feeling shell-shocked. I walked away and then turned around and looked back at more people leaving the museum. They looked like I felt. In front of me was an Arab guy selling snacks and he pointed at the people leaving and made derisive comments and laughed. I stared at him and the smile left his face and he shut up. Probably because I look Jewish. (My dad was Jewish) This was in the nineties.

    1. Good work…just a silent stare could do wonders. I wonder if one of today’s Gen Zer’s would get it?

  13. The trap door spiders are neat. We had them in Los Angeles area in the 80’s in our yard (neighbors didn’t) but they all disappeared by 10 or 15 years ago.

  14. War is a grim business. Civilians die. Should Hitler have been left in power, because bombing/invading Germany would inevitably kill civilians? I think not. Should the crazies be left in charge of Japan because the atomic bomb would mostly kill civilians? I think not.

    The US and the UK burned Hamburg, Dresden, and other German cities to ground. A great many civilians were killed. Was that wrong?

    Did US/UK bombs distinguish between pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi Germans? Of course, not. Did American atomic bombs only kill Japanese who supported the war? Of course, not.

    Truman knew that the atomic bomb would mostly kill civilians (as did the earlier and larger fire raids). He did not relish the deaths of Japanese women and children. He wanted to get the war over with (and the crazies out of power) as quickly as possible. Should we have left the crazies in charge of Japan to keep civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki alive?

    Israel now faces the same choices the US (and the UK, the USSR, etc.) did in WWII. Civilians will die to achieve military goals that must be achieved.

    1. If memory serves me, some U.S. and other Allied POW’s died as a result of Allied bombing.

      My father was in the 13th Air Force in the Southwest Pacific. He died in 1959 when I was age four. Had he lived, I would have liked to have asked him what he thought his further involvement in the war might have entailed had atomic bombs not been dropped on Japan. I contemplate whether I would have been typing this.

  15. Would not Stephen Fry have to have a little surgery before proclaiming his Jewishness? Circumcision is not routine in the UK, and is frowned upon unless there are religious reasons, so it is very unlikely he has already been snipped.
    An aside. My brother underwent circumcision as an adult for phimosis. I told him they threw away the wrong bit. Now he does not speak to me.

  16. Re. I had no idea that Stephen Fry was a Jew, and apparently he didn’t, either.

    He’s always known that he’s Jewish through his mother, Marianne, the daughter of Martin and Rosa Neumann, Hungarian Jews who emigrated from Šurany to the UK in 1927.

  17. Guthrie Govan, English guitarist and educator.

    What a guitarist! love the band “The Aristocrats”. American bassist, Bryan Beller, and fantastic German drummer, Marco Minnemann.

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