Welcome to cat shabbos, Saturday January 27, 2024, and it’s National Chocolate Cake Day. Here’s a good way to have it in Chicago: a “cake shake” at Portillo’s, a place downtown. I’ve eaten there (they’re famous for hot dogs), but haven’t had this delicacy: a chocolate milkshake with an entire piece of frosted chocolate cake partly whipped into it. You can see the whole construction starting at 4:45 in the video below. I’ll try it next time I go there.
It’s also National Geographic Day, celebrating the incorporation of that society on this day in 1888, International Port Wine Day, World Breast Pumping Day, and Day of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad in Russia. Finally, today marks the Liberation of the remaining inmates of Auschwitz on this day in 1945 (the Red Army were the liberators). Along with that are these days: Holocaust Memorial Day (UK), Memorial Day (Italy), and International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Here’s a photo from the Wikipedia article (no attribution)
And here are some of the dead about to be buried in Leningrad, the subject of a two year and four month siege (872 days) by the Germans, a siege lifted on this day in 1944. Many starved to death, and a total of 1.5 million people died.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the January 27 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*After three hours of deliberation, a jury awarded E. Jean Carroll a staggering $83.3 million for defamation of Donald Trump, much higher than the $5 awarded her in a previous verdict.
A Manhattan jury on Friday ordered former President Donald J. Trump to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her in social media posts, news conferences and even on the campaign trail ever since she first accused him in 2019 of raping her in a department store dressing room decades earlier.
The award included $65 million in punitive damages, which the nine-member jury assessed after finding Mr. Trump, 77, had acted maliciously after Ms. Carroll’s lawyers pointed to Mr. Trump’s persisting attacks on her, both from the White House and after leaving office
But Ms. Carroll may not see dime one of that money for years, as Trump plans to appeal.
*The International Court of Justice at the Hague has ruled on South Africa’s accusation that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. It was a mixed ruling, but the biggest issue, was whether Israel would be ordered to stop fighting. And that ruling was not given (Israel wouldn’t have obeyed it anyway, I think):
The court also said Israel must submit a report in one month outlining how it is implementing the court’s orders.
“We find ourselves in a perplexing situation as a court decision acknowledging the possibility of genocide falls short of demanding a complete cease-fire,” said Mohammed Mahmoud, 36, a father of five who has fled Gaza City for Rafah during the conflict. “Waiting longer in such circumstances only prolongs death and enduring pain.”
Palestinians had hoped the court would issue an order to immediately halt the fighting — as requested by South Africa — much the way the court in 2022 demanded that Russia stop its military actions in Ukraine. But legal scholars said there were key differences in the two cases that made a cease-fire order far less likely.
“The court found that Russia had no foundation under international law for its claims of self-defense and that it should stop waging war,” said Yuval Shany, a law professor at Hebrew University and former member of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. “In this case, you might read the court’s rulings as an implicit validation that Israel does have a legitimate claim of self-defense.”
Israel would be able to comply with the court’s directives to protect civilians from harm and increase aid without substantially changing its operations in Gaza, Shany said. Israel already insists it warns Gazans of impending attacks and facilitates aid.
But here’s a crucial part that most stories seem to miss. From the AP:
The court also called on Hamas to release the hostages who are still in captivity. Hamas urged the international community to make Israel carry out the court’s orders.
Now why aren’t the stories noting that, which, in my view, is critical. Why is the world calling on Hamas to obey the ICJ about the hostages? Cynically, Malgorzata said this:
Because all newspapers would gladly forget about the existence of hostages. They are a slight stain on the picture of evil Israeli and poor, defenseless Palestinians.
Well if the world calls for Israel to obey the Hague, they should be calling for Hamas to release the hostages, which under any view of war is an immoral act. But you can forget about that because, in fact, I think Malgorzata is right.
*The U.S. has for the moment suspended all support of UNRWA: the corrupt United Nations Relief and Works Agency that was tasked with helping Palestinian refugees. But as we all know by now, UNRWA was complicit in Hamas’s activities, and also in teaching Jew hatred to Palestinian youngsters. UNRWA’s employees were often also members of Hamas, but of course the UN ignored it. Now there’s evidence that UNRWA employees even took part in the butchery of October 7 of last year. Thank Ceiling Cat that the U.S. didn’t ignore it:
The US announced on Friday that it was temporarily suspending funding for UNRWA, the UN agency dedicated to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, citing concerns about the participation of several of its employees in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel.
“The United States is extremely troubled by the allegations that twelve UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel,” US State Department Matthew Miller said in a statement. “The Department of State has temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA while we review these allegations and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.”
The US announcement came after UNRWA confirmed that it was launching an investigation into the employees suspected of involvement in the pogrom.
“The Israeli authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7,” Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, said in a statement.”To protect the agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay.”
While Miller claimed that 12 UNRWA employees joined the Hamas assault — in which more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were murdered and more than 200 taken hostage, amid atrocities that included mass rape and mutilation — Lazzarini did not disclose the number of employees allegedly involved in the attacks, nor the nature of their alleged involvement. He said, however, that “any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror” would be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.
And, according to the NYT, the UN is taking this seriously. It could hardly do otherwise given the evidence:
The United Nations on Friday fired 12 of its employees in Gaza and began an investigation into them after accusations by Israel that they had helped plan and participate in the Oct. 7 terrorist assault that left about 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 others captured.
The workers, all men employed by the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, known by the acronym UNRWA, are subject to a criminal investigation, two U.N. officials said.
But that’s not enough; the whole UN needs to go in favor of some decent international organization. Afater UNRWA should go UN Women, who refused to condemn Hamas’s assaults on women for several months—until they were forced to. The UN is a joke.
*In his Weekly Dish, called “The tyrant who is also a joker,” Andrew Sullivan tries to determine whether Trump is a serious threat to democracy or just a right-wing nutter pulling our legs. He comes out somewhere in the middle, deciding that while he’s not voting for Trump by any means, he’s not as dangerous as many Americans think:
. . . . My fear of a second Trump term is thereby less crippling than my terror at the prospect of the first — because he seeks power only for his own psychological needs, because he is inherently incompetent, and because, at heart, he is a coward. And then there’s the question of his obvious trolling. What, for example, are we supposed to make of his bizarre statement that he intended to be a “dictator on Day One”? It was a joke! When asked to explain it, he said he meant he would “close the border” and “drill, baby, drill” on his first day in office and then act constitutionally. Neither of those requires dictatorial power, of course, and all of it was a comic trolling of Sean Hannity. It’s insane, of course, that we had a president who says things just to get a rise out of people. But it’s not the same as Hitlerian doggerel.
Of course, it’s a crisis that a mature democracy should be entertaining a candidate this dangerous, this unstable, and this malevolent. The very idea that we should be worried about any elected official effectively ending the rule of law, refusing to leave office, open to deploying violence on his behalf, and capable of daily, hourly, outbursts worthy of a mafia boss is a sign of how deep the rot has gone.
It’s going to be extremely hard for me to vote for Biden again this fall, given his appalling record on immigration, his aggressive race and sex discrimination, and his support for transing children. But Trump is not just a despicable human being. He is a completely unpredictable violator of constitutional and democratic norms. Even if he did fail to deliver on many of his authoritarian threats in his first term, that doesn’t mean we can be sure he won’t in his second. He may not be a new Mussolini, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t way outside the line for responsible government.
One final thing. Trump’s inability to concede an iota to his opponents, his fusion of truth and lies so that truth disappears entirely, and his daily doses of ever-intensifying polarization deeply corrode our liberal democracy. He has empowered the far left, because the moderate Democrats fear that any resistance to the woke will be tarred as being in league with Trump, thereby accelerating our descent into democratic dysfunction.
His demagogic genius is very real. He may be the most talented thug in American political history, which makes him ineluctably the most dangerous. And tyrants rarely mellow with time; their gambles tend to grow in ambition. And a victory for him would not just mean a threat to the rule of law; it would mean a democratic mandate for a president outside the law, and beyond morality. It would make the deep stain of 2016 permanent. It’s unthinkable.
Wait a minute! He’s not dangerous but he’s very dangerous? In the end, I’m not sure what verdict Sullivan renders. One thing is for sure: I ain’t voting for him, and I’ll do all within my power to keep him out of office. (That’s precious little given that I live in a Democratic state—even my vote is pretty useless.) But his popularity has led me to question the sanity of my fellow American even more than usual. I can see no justification for anyone voting for the loon, yet more than half of America might well do so!
*In response to an order from the Biden administration, the American Museum of Natural History is closing two major exhibits of Native American objects.
The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.
“The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”
The museum is closing galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and covering a number of other display cases featuring Native American cultural items as it goes through its enormous collection to make sure it is in compliance with the new federal rules, which took effect this month.
Museums around the country have been covering up displays as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago covered some display cases, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University said it would remove all funerary belongings from exhibition and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.
But the action by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which draws 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends a powerful message to the field. The museum’s anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States, known for doing pioneering work under a long line of curators including Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. The closures will leave nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibition space off-limits to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibits would reopen.
“Some objects may never come back on display as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we are looking to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is underway.”
. . .At the American Museum of Natural History, segments of the collection once used to teach students about the Iroquois, Mohegans, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other groups will be temporarily inaccessible. That includes large objects, like the birchbark canoe of Menominee origin in the Hall of Eastern Woodlands, and smaller ones, including darts that date as far back as 10,000 B.C. and a Hopi Katsina doll from what is now Arizona. Field trips for students to the Hall of Eastern Woodlands are being rethought now that they will not have access to those galleries.
“What might seem out of alignment for some people is because of a notion that museums affix in amber descriptions of the world,” Decatur said. “But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas.”
It’s no longer just remains and funerary items, but all “cultural items”. Pardon me, but I think this is too much sacralization of people seen as oppressed at the expense of knowledge. If a tribe can prove that some items were stolen and they have a lineage back to them, well, returning them might be okay, but museums are at their best when they’re finding out and disseminating knowledge of our past, not when “the changing ideas they reflect” involve virtue-signaling brands of wokeness.
*As ever, I steal three items from the estimable Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary in The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Soldiers of the resistance.”
→ Updates from Canada: Canada’s the new California when it comes to crazy news that keeps me in this job. We see you up there, we love you, and step away from the ledge!
Concordia University, one of Canada’s finest, is setting out to “decolonize” the entire curriculum across every department. The plan, which you can read in full here, and with strange Canadian spelling intact, is:
To critically evaluate and decentre Eurocentric knowledge systems across all academic programs university-wide; reconceptualize curriculum in ways that centre, weave and privilege Indigenous ways of knowing, lived experiences, histories and perspectives across the curriculum respectfully and meaningfully.
That’ll be in English departments, obviously, but also chemistry, physics, math, and history. History you can pretty much kiss goodbye. And honestly, modern universities themselves are Eurocentric knowledge systems, so maybe they just disband at the end. In traditional Soviet fashion, it is a five-year plan.
→ Hamas leader thanks American college students for their support: Here’s Hamas leader Khaled Mashal this week speaking about the incredible new support his cause has garnered from American campuses: “I believe that the dream and the hope of Palestine from the River to the Sea and from the north to the south has been renewed. This has also become a slogan in the U.S. and in Western capital cities, by the American and Western public. ‘Palestine is free from the River to the Sea’—that’s the slogan of the American students.” You’re welcome, Khaled! Wait till you meet Cornell’s class of 2029.
Hamas also issued a press release saying their fighters never intended to hurt women and children, which is really weird because they wore GoPros and publicized videos gleefully killing women and children. But in Hamas’s language: “We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people.” And in Jordan, a new shawarma place honoring the massacre opened in a mall. It’s called October 7.
→ Journalists are using fake quotes to push “genocide”: In order to make Israeli officials sound monstrous, journalists are gently tweaking their quotes, per a great new story in The Atlantic. An example: the Israeli defense minister said that the IDF is going to destroy Hamas. Translated from Hebrew: “Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.”
How was that quoted in the American and British press? “Gaza will not return to what it was before. We will eliminate it all.” So the media deleted the whole Hamas part to make it sound like the Israeli military leader is a genocidal maniac seeking to eliminate Gaza, which is—and this is no coincidence—the narrative they so desperately want. That Hamas-free version ran in small publications, zines really, like NPR, the BBC, The New York Times (twice), The Guardian, and The Washington Post (the writer of that piece stated that the defense minister said “the quiet part out loud,” incredibly).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains today’s dialogue:
Hili is talking about “Listy”. Before Oct.7 we had many more articles about science and in the part about religion/antisemitism/Middle East we tried to write about things not many other media wrote about. Now almost everything is about antisemitism/Middle East and everybody in the Polish mainstream media is writing about it. But, as A. answers Hili, we show a different picture.
Hili: Don’t you have a feeling that we changed our profile?A: Yes, we are more often looking in the direction everybody else is looking, but we see a different picture.
Hili: Czy nie masz wrażenia, że zmieniliśmy profil.Ja: Tak, częściej patrzymy tam gdzie inni, ale widzimy inny obraz.
And a photo of the affectionate Szaron:
*******************
From Beth: Trumpopoly!
From Facebook. I had to ask somewhat what this meant, but I think some readers will know. Put the answer below.
And a disaffected post, also from Facebook, presumably from
From Masih: More Iranian women fighting with the odious Morality Police. Alert! Alert! Unveiled woman walking into the store!
I keep receiving videos from women of Iran, fighting back the morality police in the streets while using their cameras to expose them. Guess what? morality police officers are trying to hide their faces from camera. They are not even proud of what they are doing. What they do?… pic.twitter.com/p6rb1jtoBb
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 26, 2024
Bethany Hamilton is a famous woman surfer who competed despite having her arm bitten off. But she opposes having to compete against transgender women:
“For those who may not be aware, Bethany Hamilton announced in February 2023 that she refuses to compete in World Surf League events in response to their decision to adopt the International Surfing Association (ISA) policy on transgender participation,” the letter said. “Bethany Hamilton wants transgender surfers to be segregated into a separate athletic division. . .
I suspect this is why she was dropped and replaced by a transgender woman. See below. Gender activism obviously trumps ableism:
Rip Curl – a famous surfing brand – have dropped Bethany Hamilton (who lost her arm in a shark attack) from their ad campaigns.
They have instead used Sasha Lowerson to advertise women’s surfing.
Their total contempt could not be more clear. pic.twitter.com/Gmc2n5aL0s— Jill Foster (@JournalistJill) January 26, 2024
From Simon, “A priest speaks truth.” (“Ducks” is a verb, not the waterfowl.)
Christianity. [ducks] https://t.co/xFQAotKYMz
— Fr. Bill Dailey, CSC fatherbill.bsky.social (@wrdcsc) January 23, 2024
From Michael: a Jewish comedian shows why pro-Israel chants are inferior to pro-Palestinian chants:
RIP my comments section. 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #israel #palestine #comedy #chants #standupcomedy pic.twitter.com/JmyTkh0wXV
— Dan Ahdoot (@standupdan) January 23, 2024
From my feed. A very dextrous bald eagle:
Caught it midair
pic.twitter.com/ZHYfHVVT60— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 25, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial. It was on this day in 1945 that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Here’s some video from the days of liberation:
The Auschwitz camp was liberated on January 27, 1945, by soldiers of the Red Army. Well-known are the scenes captured by Soviet cameramen, which, although not showing the exact moment of liberation, are important documents revealing the crimes committed by the… pic.twitter.com/K56QB9Ehdk
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2024
Two tweets from Matthew (that sounds like the title of a children’s book). The first shows how interconnected nature is:
Ecology is complicated. An ant from Mauritius has spread through Africa. In Kenya it disrupted a mutualism between native ants and acacia trees that led to increased herbivory by elephants and ultimately a shift in lion prey species from zebra to buffalo. https://t.co/8a2IGoxXhv
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) January 26, 2024
Second, Matthew was very fond of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, which, over three years, made 72 flights (only five were anticipated), but the copter just damaged a rotor blade while landing and can no longer fly. Read more here. Here’s NASA’s sad farewell to the brave little copter:
Flight 72. That’s the final flight for our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter.
Ingenuity and its team proved that powered, controlled flight on another world was possible. #ThanksIngenuity. You may rest, but your legacy will continue to soar: https://t.co/uEe2ZAw2ML pic.twitter.com/9YlmWFpl2z
— NASA (@NASA) January 25, 2024
On this day:
98 – Trajan succeeds his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor; under his rule the Roman Empire will reach its maximum extent.
1302 – Dante Alighieri is condemned in absentia and exiled from Florence.
1343 – Pope Clement VI issues the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences. Nearly 200 years later, Martin Luther would protest this.
1606 – Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31.
1785 – The University of Georgia is founded, the first public university in the United States.
1820 – A Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovers the Antarctic continent, approaching the Antarctic coast. [Of course, we all know that the Māori actually got their first on a raft of human bones…]
1825 – The U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the “Trail of Tears”.
1874 – Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov premieres in Mariinsky Theatre in St.Petersburg.
1880 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his incandescent lamp.
1916 – World War I: The British government passes the Military Service Act that introduces conscription in the United Kingdom.
1924 – Six days after his death Lenin’s body is carried into a specially erected mausoleum.
1928 – Bundaberg tragedy: a diphtheria vaccine is contaminated with Staph. aureus bacterium, resulting in the deaths of twelve children in the Australian town of Bundaberg.
1943 – World War II: The Eighth Air Force sorties ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-boat construction yards at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. This was the first American bombing attack on Germany.
1944 – World War II: The 900-day Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
1945 – World War II: The Soviet 322nd Rifle Division liberates the remaining inmates of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
1967 – Apollo program: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
1967 – Cold War: The Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting the usage of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.
1973 – The Paris Peace Accords officially ends the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict’s last recorded American combat casualty.
1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian Caper.
1996 – Germany first observes the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
2010 – Apple announces the iPad.
2011 – Arab Spring: The Yemeni Revolution begins as over 16,000 protestors demonstrate in Sana’a.
2011 – Within Ursa Minor, H1504+65, a white dwarf with the hottest known surface temperature in the universe at 200,000 K, was documented.
2023 – Protests and public outrage spark across the U.S. after the release of multiple videos by the Memphis Police Department showing officers punching, kicking, and pepper spraying Tyre Nichols as a result of running away from a traffic stop, which resulted him dying in the hospital three days later after the incident.
2023 – A shooting at a synagogue in Neve Yaakov, East Jerusalem, kills seven people and injures three others.
Births:
1741 – Hester Thrale, Welsh author (d. 1821). [The Welsh-born diarist, author, socialite and patron of the arts, is an important source on Samuel Johnson and 18th-century English life. Her Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786) and her diary Thraliana, published posthumously in 1942, are the main works for which she is remembered. She also wrote a popular history book, a travel book, and a dictionary. She has been seen as a protofeminist.]
1756 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian pianist and composer (d. 1791).
1795 – Eli Whitney Blake, American engineer, invented the Mortise lock (d. 1886).
1803 – Eunice Hale Waite Cobb, American writer, public speaker, and activist (d. 1880).
1805 – Samuel Palmer, English painter and etcher (d. 1881).
1832 – Lewis Carroll, English novelist, poet, and mathematician (d. 1898). [Real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.]
1878 – Dorothy Scarborough, American author (d. 1935).
1885 – Jerome Kern, American composer and songwriter (d. 1945).
1908 – William Randolph Hearst, Jr., American journalist and publisher (d. 1993).
1912 – Francis Rogallo, American engineer, invented the Rogallo wing (d. 2009). [In 1948, Rogallo, a NASA engineer, and his wife Gertrude, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the “Rogallo Wing” and flexible wing. NASA considered Rogallo’s flexible wing as an alternative recovery system for the Mercury and Gemini space capsules, and for possible use in other spacecraft landings, but the idea was dropped from Gemini in 1964 in favour of conventional parachutes.]
1918 – Elmore James, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1963).
1919 – Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., American singer-songwriter, pianist, producer, and actor, created Alvin and the Chipmunks (d. 1972).
1924 – Brian Rix, English actor, producer, and politician (d. 2016). [Best known for running around the stage in his underwear in various farces in London’s West End.]
1929 – Mohamed Al-Fayed, Egyptian-Swiss businessman. [Promoted the theory that his son Dodi and Princess Diana died as the result of a conspiracy involving the queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the British security services.]
1930 – Bobby Bland, American blues singer-songwriter (d. 2013).
1936 – Samuel C. C. Ting, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate. [Received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle.]
1940 – James Cromwell, American actor.
1941 – Beatrice Tinsley, New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist (d. 1981).
1942 – Tasuku Honjo, Japanese immunologist, Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
1942 – Kate Wolf, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1986).
1944 – Nick Mason, English drummer, songwriter, and producer.
1957 – Janick Gers, English guitarist and songwriter.
1963 – George Monbiot, English-Welsh author and activist.
1964 – Bridget Fonda, American actress.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth. (Arthur Schopenhauer):
1596 – Francis Drake, English captain and explorer (b. 1540). [And pirate, if you’re Spanish.]
1731 – Bartolomeo Cristofori, Italian instrument maker, invented the Piano (b. 1655).
1851 – John James Audubon, French-American ornithologist and painter (b. 1789).
1873 – Adam Sedgwick, British geologist, Anglican priest and doctoral advisor to Charles Darwin (b. 1785).
1901 – Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (b. 1813).
1910 – Thomas Crapper, English plumber and businessman (b. 1836).
1922 – Nellie Bly, American journalist and author (b. 1864).
1970 – Marietta Blau, Austrian physicist and academic (b. 1894). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1972 – Mahalia Jackson, American singer (b. 1911).
1986 – Lilli Palmer, German-American actress (b. 1914).
2009 – John Updike, American novelist, short story writer, and critic (b. 1932).
2010 – J. D. Salinger, American soldier and author (b. 1919).
2014 – Pete Seeger, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and activist (b. 1919).
2018 – Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA (b. 1926). [Don’t mention the war!]
2020 – Lina Ben Mhenni, Tunisian Internet activist and blogger (b. 1983).
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Marietta Blau (born 29 April 1894, died on this day in 1970) was an Austrian physicist credited with developing photographic nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high-energy nuclear particles and events, significantly advancing the field of particle physics in her time. For this, she was awarded the Lieben Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. As a Jew, she was forced to flee Austria when Nazi Germany annexed it in 1938, eventually making her way to the United States. She was nominated for Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry for her work, but did not win. After her return to Austria, she won the Erwin Schrödinger Prize from the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Blau was born on 29 April 1894 in a middle-class Jewish family. After having obtained the general certificate of education from the girls’ high school run by the Association for the Extended Education of Women, she studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna from 1914 to 1918; her PhD, on the absorption of gamma rays, was awarded in March 1919.
Blau is credited with developing (photographic) nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high energy nuclear particles and events. Additionally, this established a method to accurately study reactions caused by cosmic ray events. Her nuclear emulsions significantly advanced the field of particle physics in her time. For her work, she was nominated several times, during the period 1950 to 1957, for the Nobel Prize in Physics and once for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry by Erwin Schrödinger and Hans Thirring.
From 1919 to 1923, Blau held several positions in industrial and University research institutions in Austria and Germany; in 1921, she moved to Berlin to work at a manufacturer of x-ray tubes, a position she left in order to become an assistant at the Institute for Medical Physics at the University of Frankfurt am Main. From 1923 on, she worked as an unpaid scientist at the Institute for Radium Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. A stipend by the Austrian Association of University Women made it possible for her to do research also in Göttingen and Paris (1932/1933).
In her Vienna years, Blau’s main interest was the development of the photographic method of particle detection. The methodical goals which she pursued were the identification of particles, in particular alpha-particles and protons, and the determination of their energy based on the characteristics of the tracks they left in emulsions; there, she developed a photographic emulsion technique used in the study of cosmic rays, being the first scientist to use nuclear emulsions to detect neutrons. For this work, Blau and her former student Hertha Wambacher received the Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1937. It was her greatest success when, also in 1937, she and Wambacher discovered “disintegration stars” in photographic plates that had been exposed to cosmic radiation at an altitude of 2,300 metres (≈7,500 feet) above sea level. These stars are the patterns of particle tracks from nuclear reactions (spallation events) of cosmic-ray particles with nuclei of the photographic emulsion.
Because of her Jewish descent, Blau had to leave Austria in 1938 after the country’s annexation by Nazi Germany, a fact which caused a severe break in her scientific career. She first went to Oslo. Then, through the intercession of Albert Einstein, she obtained a teaching position at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City and later at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, but since conditions in Mexico made research extremely difficult for her, she seized an opportunity to move to the United States in 1944.
In the United States, Blau worked in industry until 1948, afterwards (until 1960) at Columbia University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Miami. At these institutions, she was responsible for the application of the photographic method of particle detection in high-energy experiments at particle accelerators.
In 1950, Cecil Powell received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the photographic method for particle detection and the discovery of the pion by use of Blau’s method.
In 1960, Blau returned to Austria and conducted scientific work at the Institute for Radium Research until 1964 – again without pay. She headed a working group analyzing particle-track photographs from experiments at CERN and supervised a dissertation in this field. In 1962, she received the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, but an attempt to make her also a corresponding member of the Academy was not successful.
Marietta Blau died in Vienna from cancer on 27 January 1970. Her illness was related to her unprotected handling of radioactive substances as well as her cigarette smoking over many years. No obituary appeared in any scientific publication.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marietta_Blau
JezGrove, thanks for your interesting, continuing series on women of note!
1785 University of Georgia founded as first public university in U.S.: The wikipedia says ONE of the first public universities in the U.S. Indeed, the College of William and Mary, under a royal charter, but governed by the Virginia General Assembly was founded in 1693. One could say that technically it was not in the U.S. since there was no U.S. at that time, simply the colony of Virginia, but none the less, I think it qualifies as a public university and predates UGA by close to a century.
Thanks, Jim – I’ve changed the Wikipedia list for today to qualify the claim as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_public_university_in_the_United_States
A couple things:
First, Biden is still willing to negotiate on the border issue. It is the Republicans who have backed out. This needs to be made clear, over and over.
Second, all those women who support the “freedom” for Palestine remind me of Phyllis Schlafly (remember her?), who famously advocated for women staying home and being little wifeys, while she herself went to law school and started a think tank. If those women really want to espouse those values, they need to incorporate those values into their own lives, and stop trying to shove them off on others. They should all put on their burqas and go home, and find a male relative to run their lives, so that they can experience REAL freedom.
L
Bowles : “five-year plan”
Ooo, direct hit :
[quote from linked source Brittanica ]:
“Soviet Union the first Five-Year Plan (1928–32), implemented by Joseph Stalin, concentrated on developing heavy industry and collectivizing agriculture, at the cost of a drastic fall in consumer goods. The second Five-Year Plan (1933–37) continued the objectives of the first. Collectivization, coupled with other Stalinist policies, led to terrible famines that caused the deaths of millions of people. The man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932–33, known as the Holodomor, has been recognized as an attempted genocide against the Ukrainian people. The third Five-Year Plan (1938–42) emphasized the production of armaments. The fourth (1946–53) again stressed heavy industry and military buildup, angering the Western powers.
In China[…]”
… I only learned about the Holodomor
thislast year. It is hard to know where it sits on the Evil-O-Meter.But yeah – “five-year plan” – Leftism and numerology go hand-in-hand… two of them! 7 and 17 are other numerological favorites (besides , of course, 3). I’m not sure where 5 can be located in history, so it might be a modern contrivance.
I leave it to readers to find the numerological appeal of 7 and 17 with esoteric mysticism.
1969 A friend of mine introduced me to numerology one night and decided my number was 6. The lottery for the draft happened that night, which I payed no attention to as I wasn’t going. The next day another friend asked what my number was and I said 6 and he said man that’s a bad number. I said no it’s a good number it means I am artistic, would be a good father… and he said what are you talking about? So I said numerology what are you talking about and he explained and we looked up my number which was in the 300s.
great story!
But pls explain why you were sure you weren’t going to Vietnam. Were you exempt for some reason? Or were you planning to go to Canada?
At first I thought of going to prison, then thought about Canada. Decided this is my country and if they came for me I would deal with that then. But mainly just put it out of my mind. And I had dropped out of school so I had no deferment. Definitely not the brightest bulb.
Anne Applebaum has a good book on the Holodomor – as well as an earlier, equally good one on the Gulag called “Gulag” – better than Soltzynitsen’s (sp?).
D.A.
NYC
Anne Applebaums’ Iron Curtain was an eye opener for me.
I had a minimal relationship with my Ukrainian father, but he did explain to me when I was a child that his father was a businessman and landowner in Ukraine during one of those 5-year plans, when his father’s land and businesses were confiscated.
According to my father’s story, the businesses floundered (foundered?) under Soviet totalitarian control, and they were eventually given back to my grandfather. But after my grandfather resuscitated the businesses, they were once again taken away in the next 5-year plan.
Was it true? I don’t know. But my father — a leatherworker and shoemaker — was fiercely anti-Soviet.
According to another story, my father was drafted into the Soviet navy, but he jumped from the ship — possibly a submarine — that he was assigned to. He was eventually caught and put into a gulag. The local commandant needed shoes, and in return for my father making him a pair of leather boots, the commandant left the prison gate open, which my father took advantage of.
Somehow my father made it to Germany, supposedly crossing the border with a confiscated German military uniform. There he survived, at least partly, with some kind of black market business.
Still in Germany, he eventually met my mother, 20 years younger, and soon I was born. According to my mother, she was good in gymnastics, but my German grandmother threw all her trophies with swastikas into the Rhine river when Munich was liberated by the Americans. (My grandmother assumed the trophies would be stolen as war-time mementos.) In 1949 my parents came to America when I was not yet one year old.
My mother told me that I laughed and laughed during a storm in the Atlantic as the ship canted this way and that, and I rolled back and forth on the deck.
True or not, I think Spielberg could make a good movie from the stories.
Any readers here of Wilson and Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy?
The Rule of Fives surely applies. Note also the mention of 17.
Good to hear of the verdict against Trump. I heard on the news that (so far) he has not mouthed off about Carroll, apparently because the dollar amount of damages has gotten his attention.
Per http://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227070855/trump-testifies-briefly-in-the-defamation-trial-brought-by-writer-e-jean-carroll (before the verdict was announced):
Again, NPR (or at least this particular reporter) thinks that “not my type” constitutes grounds for defamation:
‘So what’s at issue here is how much Trump will have to pay for comments he made in 2019 from the White House, including from the Resolute Desk of the Oval Office, that, quote, “she’s not my type,” that she’s a liar and so forth.’
I wonder if defamatory comments made while seated at the Resolute Desk are more blasphemous and legally more actionable than those made, say, while tweeting seated on the toilet. (Nixon and Kissinger’s Oval Office conversations at whatever desk negatively affected millions of Asian lives. Contrariwise, Lyndon Johnson was innovative in minimizing wasted time by conducting staff meetings while he was seated on the toilet.)
Shame on the Biden administration for censoring, yes censoring, historical artifacts and their current science-based interpretations. So they are against banning books, but direct the banning of objects that are fundamental to our understanding of what binds us together as Homo Sapiens…my cynicism grows daily.
The Rip Curl thing is such a Dialectical trap it isn’t even funny. …
Sigh…
And some say the same thing about voting for Biden, while justifying a Trump vote 🙂
They are not claiming the existence of an indigenous theory of the atom, are they? I took a look at the linked document and it seemed rather light on meaning. How does this apply to science education? What is an example of a indigenous epistemology that would come in useful? In any case, has anyone seen this sort of thing happening in a science class?
I’ve been to the Natural History Museum and am planning to go again this spring. I hope they reopen the exhibits.
I am wondering if this is an example of woo of a different kind 🙂
“In any case, has anyone seen this sort of thing happening in a science class?”
Yes. My wife’s son is a chemistry professor at a university in California. He has been very annoyed with DEI statements he has had to sign.
No. I meant examples of ‘indigenous knowledge’ in science, not statements that one has to sign, which is a bit like swearing on someone else’s holy book. I’m looking for concrete in-class examples. What is actually taught in class? Is there a particularly indigenous cosmology that we can teach along with the standard model of cosmology? A theory of atomic spectra perhaps? 🙂
Have they considered consulting Dorothy Wainwright?
My guess is that they don’t have anything at all. It looks like a purely political move. But I don’t want to be dismissive.
“Bethany Hamilton is a famous woman surfer who competed despite having her arm bitten off. But she opposes having to compete against transgender women:”
Why is competition surfing segregated?
Male and female bodies differ. Elite surfers:
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2017/09000/gender_differences_in_physical_performance.9.aspx
“segregated”
I’m not “going after you”, I just want to make a note on the English language (Orwell):
Sport is categorized. Dialecticians hate categories, so the words “segregation” and even “apartheid” were usurped from genuine contradictions which were resolved through classical liberalism. Example book : The Apartheid of Sex, Martine Rothblatt, 1995. Also Gender apartheid has, I find, a Wikipedia page.
To the dialectician, that alchemy makes the contradictions same in kind, different in degree.
“As above, so below”
–Corpus Hermeticum (100-300 A.D.)
Trump is indeed a threat to our representative democracy because Trump’s appeal is broad and scary. He’s a useful idiot but a useful tool for people like Mitch McConnell and the MAGA politicians who seek to consolidate power for themselves. The attempt to remain in office was a coordinated effort that involved a number politicians and lawyers, and many of those remain in office. They have learned from their mistakes. The wealthy and corporations like the tax cuts and efforts to deregulate the government that Trump favors. The unwashed rabble who feels threatened by INSERT ANY CULTURE WAR OR RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL TOPIC HERE channel their anger through Trump because like Trump, they are petty and want to hurt people. This is a toxic combination of interests for our country. There is undoubtedly a smarter and more dangerous version of Trump who will emerge in our political future.
Ok, I’ll bite on the Jesus meme. I think it refers to the expression and Carrie Underwood song “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” It is not to be taken literally (“What’s so special about the cheese makers?”), but as a request for divine intervention.
I was wracking my brains, but I think that must be it! 👍
Thank you! Related, and somewhat better.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/jesus-take-the-wheel/
The meme is an allusion to the Led Zeppelin hymn ‘Steerway To Heaven’.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Trump, but to say that there are no reasons to vote for him is naive at best.
Reasons why people might vote for Trump? Primarily to vote against Biden and the Democratic Party. Why? In no particular order:
–The open border
–The attempt to censor Americans people holding heterodox opinions on everything from Hunter Biden’s laptop to Covid
–The Administration’s injection of DEI into government policy, including at the FAA
–Support for “gender-affirming care” for children
–The ballooning national debt
–Inept foreign policy (Ukraine, China, the Mideast)
–The Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco
–Biden’s infirmity and apparent senescence
–Biden’s suspected corruption
–The fact the he is, actually, a mean person
–The fact that Joe Biden has defined anyone who would vote for the opposition as un-American
–Kamala Harris
–The two-tiered justice system
–The attempt to destroy the American energy sector
–The continuing attempt to forgive student loan debt after the Supreme Court has ruled he can’t
–Abortion
–Corruption at the FBI
–The fear that in a second term he might pack the Supreme Court
–Outrage at the persecution of Jan. 6 rioters, especially those who were non-violent, at least one of home has sat in prison for three years without a trial
That isn’t a complete list, and I don’t agree with all of them, but they are reasons I read everyday. If they are unfamiliar, then people should start checking out sites like Gateway Pundit, Zerohedge, and The Post Millennial. Even the New York Post. By the way, Matt Taibbi has a new piece over at Racket News called “The Anti-Democratic Movement Targeted Ralph Nader First. We Should Have Paid More Attention.” It talks about who the Democratic Party treats its own challengers.
Damn. If Hunter Biden sodomizes a goat on the White House lawn…. I DON’T CARE.
There is actually nothing that man could do which would move my (or anybody but foxnews afficanados) needle.
He is a private citizen with nothing to do with the administration.
Trump’s idiot, corrupt children would be equally irrelevant IF they weren’t in government.
When you ring that Hunter Biden bell you’re betraying your intellect Dr. B.
D.A.
NYC
He is citing reasons given by people in general, not necessarily ones with which he agrees.
The point is that, even if Jerry sees no reason to vote for Trump, there are those who have reasons to vote for him.
Thank you for this list. I am unable to wade through the media that covers these topics, and end up relying on newsletters such as “The Righting” to summarize for me.
It was clear from your commentary that this merely summarizes concerns that others may have and that you “don’t agree with all of them.” Those accusing you of “betraying your intellect” should reread your piece.
I think it is important to remain aware of the mindset of others whom we do not agree with.
Yes, we people supply ourselves with reasons to explain to ourselves our own behavior. Fortunately the human mind is generally extremely flexible, to the extent that stuff like “I voted for Trump because Biden is a mean person” can be seriously entertained.
Not surprising that many of the reasons for voting for Trump don’t hold up to scrutiny.
“The open border”
It’s never been an open border. The current crisis stems from refugees turning themselves into border control.
“The attempt to censor Americans people holding heterodox opinions on everything from Hunter Biden’s laptop to Covid”
Has Fox News been censored on that topic?
“The ballooning national debt”
Made worse by Trump’s tax cut for the wealthy.
“Inept foreign policy (Ukraine, China, the Mideast)”
Hard to see why folks would curse Biden for not allowing Ukraine to fall to the Russians (as Trump would like), for supporting Israel, and for pushing back against the Chinese!
“The Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco”
Which was pretty much the same plan Trump favored.
“Biden’s suspected corruption”
Note the use of “suspected,” since the Republicans have yet to actually prove anything worth a damn.
“The fact the he is, actually, a mean person”
How is that a fact?
“The attempt to destroy the American energy sector”
American oil production is at an all-time high!
I could go on, but the baisic reason why people will vote for Trump is that those poeple hold right-wing opinions and ideologies, and despite Trump’s massive drawbacks as a human being, he’s the most popular representative of the right wing.
The border is open, my friend. I mean no disrespect to you but regardless of who is turning themselves into whom, it is open.
This may be the point that ultimately weighs against the seeming love affair students and other young adults have with Sacred Indigenous Non-Colonialist culture. In the past, tribes generally passed their knowledge along through the family. Once it becomes clear that true admiration for Ancient Ways of Knowing entails sitting at the feet of their parents to learn, accept, and obey their wisdom, that will be the end of that.
that’s funny
E Jean Carroll may not see the money soon, but I don’t think she will starve in the meantime. My understanding is that Trump still has to deposit cash or some equivalent (he won’t get good loan terms, given his other encumbrances) in a court administered account while the appeal is sorted out. He already has $5m tied up in such an account from the previous trial). So even if she doesn’t have it, he won’t either. Is Melania is seeing he prenup frittered away on other women 😮
When he appeals, he has to put in Escrow 111% of the 83 million. So not only will he not have it, he has to pay an extra $9 million to appeal. Bye, bye properties and good riddance.
The main dynamic with Trump voters is culture war stuff. I see the larger issue as Trump was in large part caused by, and exacerbated woke idiocy.
And here, friends, we see co-evolution in action. One feeds the other.
D.A.
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Yes. The world should be calling for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages. Good that the International Court of Justice at The Hague called them out for their atrocities. The rest of the world should follow suit, but it has been conditioned to think of Israel as a colonial power and Jews as conspiring to global domination. I do think that some progress has resulted from the widespread dissemination of pictures, videos, and witness reports of the atrocities themselves.
And I agree that the U.N. is a disaster. But what are the options? The U.S. can withdraw from the organization, close UN headquarters in New York, and send the U.N. packing off to Geneva (or wherever). But it’s probably better to be part of the U.N. and apply what pressure we can from the inside.
Especially when one considers what happened to the UN’s predecessor, when the USA refused to join in.
I’m embarrassed to get a lump in my throat from the demise of a mere machine:
“You may rest, but your legacy will continue to soar”
But when it comes to eliciting tears for electronics, nothing will ever top XKCD’s memorial cartoon for the Mars Rover when it finally bit the dust (almost literally!): https://xkcd.com/695/E.
Edit: There’s a strange bug: for some reason, this site keeps breaking the link to XKCD by adding an “/E” to the url. Every time I edit the link to remove the “/E,” the site adds it back! Very curious.
I see that the Algemeiner correctly used the word “pogrom” in reference to the events of Oct. 7, underlying its true nature.
This usage should be more widespread, particularly in response to idiotic glorification of Hamas’s actions as a “liberation”.
Since this seems another bittersweet posting day in the comments section . . . the tip a couple of weeks back for Moser Roth dark chocolate is much appreciated. Our local Aldi store lacked the variety in your store, but they had the 85% cocoa, which is all I needed.
And the price! I could buy hundreds of bars just with the annual increase in my auto insurance premiums.
Breaking news, or at least it was when it happened last night, about 8 blocks from my door. I just learned of it this morning from his wife, and just now went to see if it had made the news. John Fetterman’s house picketed, and he hands it right back to them.
I’m glad to read that Sen. Fetterman’s speech has improved substantially since his election. I haven’t heard him speak recently but the NY Post story makes reference to it, and transcripts of his remarks indicate he has made great progress in recovery from his stroke. This is wonderful news for him and indicates the voters of Pennsylvania recognized the difference between stroke and dementia when they elected him. Best wishes for him.
Leaving this comment without (before) having read others so may be redundant but would like to note to Jerry how far ahead of the media your own reporting has been wrt the war. Everytime I finally hear something on news it’s stuff we’ve been aware of here from long time back due to your connections, friends in the region, etc. Thank you!
I second this comment.