Friday: Hili dialogue

February 9, 2024 • 7:30 am

I’m late today, but for reasons too stupid to recount. Posting may be light, but bear with me. I do my best.

Welcome to the end of the week: Friday, February 9, 2024, and a great holiday: National Bagel and Lox Day. WHERE’S THE CREAM CHEESE. I do love the three-component item, but had you told me when I was a kid that I’d be eating raw salmon slathered with cheese, I’d have vomited.  Now, thank Ceiling Cat, my tastes have changed! This is Jewish ambrosia, but not just for Jews. The one below looks a bit nefarious, like it’s sticking out its tongue at you:

“Bagel with cream cheese and lox” by sfllaw is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

It’s also Chocolate Day, No One Eats Alone Day, International Winter Bike to Work Day, and Pizza Pie Day (I haven’t heard anyone use the term “pizza pie” for ages).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I listened to some of the Supreme Court arguments yesterday about whether Trump was ineligible to be on the Colorado State ballot because he’d committed insurrection. As I predicted, the judges weren’t keen on affirming the Colorado ban on Trump’s candidacy:

The Supreme Court seemed poised on Thursday to issue a lopsided decision rejecting a challenge to President Donald J. Trump’s eligibility to hold office again.

Justices across the ideological expressed skepticism about several aspects of a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court that Mr. Trump’s conduct in trying to subvert the 2020 race made him ineligible to hold office under a constitutional provision that bars people who have sworn to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection.

There was very little discussion of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol or of Mr. Trump’s role in it. But a majority of the justices indicated that individual states may not disqualify candidates in a national election unless Congress first enacts legislation.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a series of questions reflecting what seemed to be an emerging consensus: that the 14th Amendment was not meant to permit states to determine whether a candidate was an ineligible insurrectionist.

“The whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power, right?” he asked, adding that the challengers’ contrary argument was “a position that is at war with the whole thrust of the 14th Amendment.”

Chief Justice Roberts noted that the challengers’ position would have empowered the former Confederate states to determine whether candidates were disqualified from holding federal office. The 14th Amendment was adopted to constrain states’ rights and empower the federal government, the chief justice said, and it is “the last place you’d look for authorization for the states, including Confederate states, to enforce the presidential election process.”

Some justices also seemed open to two other arguments: that the prohibition at issue bars candidates from holding office, as opposed to running for it, and that the president is not among the officials to whom the provision applies.

Not since Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, has the Supreme Court assumed such a direct role in the outcome of a presidential contest.

I think the Court’s decision to overturn Colorado is actually the right thing to do, and there was no mention, at least none that I heard, of the Court considering arguments about whether Trump was immune to federal prosecution for insurrection. They may rule that the idea of “insurrection” is outdated or ambiguous, but that would be to come. And I still think they’d overturn any ruling that he was immune. On the other hand, if he’s found guilty of inciting insurrection, the Supremes might overturn that verdict.  Reader Suzanna Sherry, a lawyer and professor emerita of law at Vanderbilt, sends this link for readers to consult about the various scenarios for the Trump immunity case, and the timeline for each.

*Scary but ultimately innocuous headline from the WSJ:  “Biden knowingly kept and shared classified material, special counsel concludes.” Oy vey! But he won’t be facing charges:

President Biden was sloppy in holding on to classified material related to some of his most consequential policy debates as vice president, eager to show that history would prove him right, according to a special counsel investigation that yielded no criminal charges but is likely to add a fraught new dynamic to the 2024 presidential contest.

Biden willfully retained and disclosed to a ghostwriter classified materials while a private citizen, after he was vice president, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and notebooks with Biden’s handwritten notes implicating sensitive intelligence sources, according to a report from special counsel Robert Hur, made public Thursday.

“Mr. Biden’s lapses in attention and vigilance demonstrate why former officials should not keep classified information unsecured at home and read them aloud to others,” Hur wrote in the 345-page document.

Biden aides have worried the revelations could embarrass him as he campaigns for re-election against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, who himself faces felony charges related to classified material he kept at his Florida estate.

Hur said in the report that he didn’t think prosecutors could pursue a criminal case against Biden over the classified material, in part because there were some innocent explanations for Biden hanging on to the material that jurors might find convincing. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report said.

. . . which of course is what he is. But it’s sad that this is our best choice for President right now. (Calling Mayor Pete!).  At least future Presidents can be taking lessons fro Biden and Trump to KEEP OFFICIAL SECRETS SECRET and LEAVE THE CLASSIFIED MATERIAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE!

The poor memory stuff is worrisome. The NBC News last night said he couldn’t remember when he started or ended his term as Vice-President, nor could he remember the year his son died. This is VERY CONCERNING.

*As expected, the UN’s investigation of UNRWA is a put-up job, at least according to the Jewish News Syndicate.  As I predicted, the UN could never be trusted to conduct an objective analysis of UNRWA, as it has too much to lose if UNRWA is abolished (many Western countries have already withdrawn funding for the organization)  The foxes guarding the henhouse:

There has been less attention to a separate investigation of UNRWA, which predates the announcement of the allegations that agency employees participated in the terror attacks. The United Nations has assembled an ostensibly independent panel to assess whether UNRWA is acting in a neutral manner and in response to “allegations of serious breaches.”

. . . The new “review group,” which will operate parallel to an internal U.N. investigation, is helmed by Catherine Colonna, former French foreign minister. Two of the three European research organizations with which she will work have praised South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice, the principal U.N. judicial arm located in The Hague.

Two experts told JNS that they are highly skeptical of the neutrality of the new panel tasked with investigating the U.N. agency’s neutrality.

“This is a farce, a desperate scheme to save UNRWA,” said Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who, in part, studies international organizations.

“The United Nations does not recognize Hamas or Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations, and this secretary-general has proven himself biased against Israel,” Goldberg told JNS. “UNRWA’s time has come to an end. The only reform that will protect U.S. taxpayers is ending UNRWA.”

I think he’s right. That organization is about as corrupt as the Palestinan Authority!

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch whose exposé of a Telegram channel for UNRWA teachers appeared to finally push Lazzarini into calling for outside help, said that the new investigation is “tainted from the start.”

Lazzarini has already said that allegations against UNRWA amount to a “smear campaign,” Neuer noted.

. . .Colonna, who is leading the new review of UNRWA’s neutrality, praised UNRWA during a Jan. 12 meeting with Lazzarini, writing in French that she gives him her “full renewed support” and calling his work “more useful than ever.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported that an Israel-produced dossier indicates that some 10% of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff members in Gaza have ties to Palestinian terror organizations. Some 190 UNRWA employees, including teachers, double as Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, per a Reuters report on the dossier.

This is my prediction: the panel will give UNRWA a clean bill of health, but they should look at the textbooks that UNRWA gives its students  books that incite Jew hatred and martyrdom! Everyone who knows UNRWA knows that it not only teaches kids to become terrorists, but that many of its members are themselves terrorists. It’s time for the UN to disband the organization and put it under the umbrella of the UN organization that handles refugees for every other country in the world.

*After the damn Republicans killed the border bill out of sheer spite (they didn’t want to give Biden something he could claim as an achievement by his administration), they’ve nevertheless joined with Democrats to cobble together an aid package for Ukraine and Israel.

A bill that would send billions in aid to key U.S. allies surmounted a procedural hurdle on Thursday after more than a dozen Republicans voted with Democrats to consider the legislation. The move marked a surprising turnaround for the fate of U.S. aid to Ukraine, which had been bogged down for months by GOP demands that border reforms be attached to it

The bill includes more than $60 billion in aid for Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion, and $14 billion for Israel in its war in Gaza, and has long been a top national security priority for President Biden, who asked for the funds last October. Senate Republicans voted down a version of the foreign aid package that contained border reforms on Wednesday.

The vote to proceed sets up what will likely be days of debate on foreign aid, after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) declared he would slow the process to ensure “every minute” of procedural time be used.

Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the Senate would stay in session until “the job is done.”

Biden has been stymied by congressional Republicans who demanded strict border reforms be attached to aid for allies in exchange for GOP support. But Republicans banded together to block the larger package that included the very border reforms they demanded earlier Wednesday, after former president Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voiced their opposition to it.

The GOP is likely taking its marching orders here from Trump, who doesn’t want to face an opponent who has another notch in his belt. It’s odd that a mentally ill ex-President is running the Republican parts of the Congress, and I get more and more fearful of a Trump victory in November.

*The BBC reports a new rule for those trying to climb Mt. Everest: you have to bring you poo back to base camp, even if you defecate high on the mountain (h/t Andrew).

People climbing Mount Everest will now have to clear up their own poo and bring it back to base camp to be disposed of, authorities have said.

“Our mountains have begun to stink,” Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Pasang Lhamu rural municipality, told the BBC.

The municipality, which covers most of the Everest region, has introduced the new rule as part of wider measures being implemented.

Due to extreme temperatures, excrement left on Everest does not fully degrade.

“We are getting complaints that human stools are visible on rocks and some climbers are falling sick. This is not acceptable and erodes our image,” Mr Mingma adds.

Climbers attempting Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, and nearby Mount Lhotse will be ordered to buy so-called poo bags at base camp, which will be “checked upon their return”.

During climbing season mountaineers spend most of their time at base camp acclimatising to the altitude, where separate tents are erected as toilets, with barrels underneath collecting the excrement.

But once they begin their treacherous journey things get more difficult.

Most climbers and support staff tend to dig a hole but the higher you go up the mountain, some locations have less snow, so you have to go to the toilet out in the open.

Very few people bring their excrement back in biodegradable bags when climbing Mount Everest’s summit, which can take weeks.

Rubbish remains a huge issue on Everest and other mountains in the region, although there has been an increasing number of clean-up campaigns, including an annual one led by the Nepali Army.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is reading with a lap full of cats.

A: Hili, it’s impossible to read now.
Hili: And who cares?
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, tak nie daje się czytać.
Hili: A komu to przeszkadza?

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

From Rick, a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson:

From Phun.org; I presume this isn’t in America, but I may be wrong:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih, translated by Google as ‘The happiness of a number of people in #سنندج (Sanandaj), after the loss of the football team of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”  I guess the people dislike the regime so much they’re elated when the national soccer team loses. 

From Luana and Brian; a savvy debater quits her organization because it won’t allow students to debate topics if holding the position they’re assigned offends them.

Any theories about why this might be true?

From Barry, a cat entranced by Perrier:

From Malcolm: a stray kitten gets a lesson from Mom:

From Matthew, who’s in the U.S. for a week or so, going to meetings and researching his Crick biography. His note on the first one: “Now THAT’S a tweet!”

I still see only three moons; I’m missing the “tiny one at left”:

38 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1539 – The first recorded race is held on Chester Racecourse, known as the Roodee.

    1555 – Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper is burned at the stake.

    1825 – After no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the US presidential election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as sixth President of the United States in a contingent election.

    1870 – US president Ulysses S. Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.

    1893 – Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff premieres at La Scala, Milan.

    1895 – William G. Morgan creates a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.

    1907 – The Mud March is the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).

    1913 – A group of meteors is visible across much of the eastern seaboard of the Americas, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.

    1932 – Prohibition law is abolished in Finland after a national referendum, where 70% voted for a repeal of the law.

    1942 – Year-round Daylight saving time (aka War Time) is reinstated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.

    1945 – World War II: Battle of the Atlantic: HMS Venturer sinks U-864 off the coast of Fedje, Norway, in a rare instance of submarine-to-submarine combat.

    1950 – Second Red Scare: US Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States Department of State of being filled with Communists.

    1951 – Korean War: The two-day Geochang massacre begins as a battalion of the 11th Division of the South Korean Army kills 719 unarmed citizens in Geochang, in the South Gyeongsang district of South Korea.

    1959 – The R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, becomes operational at Plesetsk, USSR.

    1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a record-setting audience of 73 million viewers across the United States.

    1965 – Vietnam War: The United States Marine Corps sends a MIM-23 Hawk missile battalion to South Vietnam, the first American troops in-country without an official advisory or training mission.

    1971 – Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro league player to be voted into the USA’s Baseball Hall of Fame.

    1971 – Apollo program: Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third human Moon landing.

    1975 – The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth.

    1986 – Halley’s Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System.

    1996 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army declares the end to its 18-month ceasefire and explodes a large bomb in London’s Canary Wharf, killing two people.

    1996 – Copernicium is discovered, by Sigurd Hofmann, Victor Ninov et al.

    2021 – Second impeachment trial of Donald Trump began.

    Births:
    1737 – Thomas Paine, English-American philosopher, author, and activist (d. 1809).

    1789 – Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, German engineer, invented Gabelsberger shorthand (d. 1849).

    1854 – Aletta Jacobs, Dutch physician and suffrage activist (d. 1929). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1865 – Mrs. Patrick Campbell, English-French actress (d. 1940).

    1874 – Amy Lowell, American poet, critic, and educator (d. 1925).

    1891 – Ronald Colman, English-American actor (d. 1958).

    1892 – Peggy Wood, American actress (d. 1978).

    1909 – Carmen Miranda, Portuguese-Brazilian actress, singer, and dancer (d. 1955).

    1922 – Jim Laker, English international cricketer and broadcaster; holder of world record for most wickets taken in a match (d. 1986).

    1923 – Brendan Behan, Irish rebel, poet, and playwright (d. 1964).

    1936 – Clive Swift, English actor and singer-songwriter (d. 2019).

    1939 – Mahala Andrews, English vertebrae palaeontologist (d. 1997).

    1940 – J. M. Coetzee, South African-Australian novelist, essayist, and linguist, Nobel Prize laureate.

    1941 – Sheila Kuehl, American actress, lawyer, gay rights activist, and politician.

    1942 – Carole King, American singer-songwriter and pianist.

    1943 – Joe Pesci, American actor.

    1944 – Alice Walker, American novelist, short story writer, and poet.

    1945 – Mia Farrow, American actress, activist, and model.

    1945 – Carol Wood, American mathematician and academic.

    1955 – Jimmy Pursey, English singer-songwriter and producer.

    1960 – Holly Johnson, English singer-songwriter and bass player.

    1960 – David Simon, American journalist, author, screenwriter, and television producer.

    1963 – Brian Greene, American physicist.

    1981 – Tom Hiddleston, English actor.

    That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of his projecting meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation. (Hans Jonas):
    1881 – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and philosopher (b. 1821).

    1945 – Ella D. Barrier, American educator (b. 1852).

    1966 – Sophie Tucker, Russian-born American singer (b. 1884).

    1981 – Bill Haley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1925).

    1984 – Yuri Andropov, Russian lawyer and politician (b. 1914).

    1994 – Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1934).

    2002 – Isabelle Holland, Swiss-American author (b. 1920).

    2005 – Robert Kearns, American engineer, invented the windscreen wiper (b. 1927). [It’s not quite as straightforward as that – Kearns invented the first successful intermittent wiper; the most commonly cited inventor of the basic windscreen wiper is Mary Anderson although two others also filed patents at around the same time in 1903.]

    2006 – Freddie Laker, English pilot and businessman, founded Laker Airways (b. 1922). [He pioneered cheap cross-Atlantic flights – in the ’70s we flew on his Skytrain on my only visit to the US.]

    2007 – Ian Richardson, Scottish actor (b. 1934).

    2010 – Walter Frederick Morrison, American businessman, invented the Frisbee (b. 1920).

    2021 – Chick Corea, American jazz composer (b. 1941).

    1. Woman of the Day
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs (Dutch pronunciation: [aːˈlɛtaː ɦɑ̃ːriˈɛtə ˈjaːkɔps]; born on this day in 1854, died 10 August 1929) was a Dutch physician and women’s suffrage activist. As the first woman officially to attend a Dutch university, she became one of the first female physicians in the Netherlands. In 1882, she founded the world’s first birth control clinic and was a leader in both the Dutch and international women’s movements. She led campaigns aimed at deregulating prostitution, improving women’s working conditions, promoting peace and calling for women’s right to vote.

      Born in the mid-nineteenth century, Jacobs yearned to become a doctor like her father. Despite existing barriers, she fought to gain entry to higher education and graduated in 1879 with the first doctorate in medicine earned by a woman in the Netherlands. Providing medical services to women and children, she grew concerned over the health of working women, recognizing that as laws did not provide adequate protection for their health, their economic stability was compromised. She opened a free clinic to educate poor women about hygiene and child care and in 1882 expanded her services to include distribution of contraception information and devices. Though she continued to practise medicine until 1903, Jacobs increasingly turned her attention to activism with a view to improving women’s lives.

      From 1883, when Jacobs first challenged the authorities on women’s right to vote, she strove throughout her life to change laws that limited women’s access to equality. She was successful in her campaign to establish mandatory break laws in retail workers’ employment and in attaining the vote for Dutch women in 1919. Involved in the international women’s movement, Jacobs travelled throughout the world speaking about women’s issues and documenting the socio-economic and political status of women. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and an active participant in the peace movement. She is recognized internationally for her contributions to women’s rights and status.

      Jacobs died on 10 August 1929 in Baarn, at the Badhotel [an unfortunate name!], while on holiday.

      In the Netherlands, there are numerous awards and institutes which bear her name, such as the Aletta Jacobs Prize granted by the University of Groningen and a college in Hoogezand-Sappemeer. There is a planetoid named after her and a plaque with her image is displayed on her former house in Amsterdam at 15 Tesselschadestraat. Between 11 August 2009 and 28 January 2013 the Atria Institute on gender equality and women’s history was known as the Aletta Institute for Women’s History, in her honour. Her life was adapted into film in 1995 as Aletta Jacobs: Het Hoogste Streven (The Highest Aspiration).

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aletta_Jacobs

    1. No. I think it is a pixel-sized dot that you can see to the up-and-left of the big moon, about halfway to the corner. You have to enlarge the image to see it. I think that thing in the ring is just part of a ring.

      1. I think Kevin is correct — there is an gap in the rings (the Encke gap), and Pan is sitting in that gap. It’s one of the shepherd moons that keep the gaps clear.

  3. From the Special Counsel’s report:

    Mr. Biden’s memory also appeared to have significant limitations-both at the time he spoke to Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.

    In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama. [pp. 207-208]

    1. This story is #1 at every major U.S. news outlet. And it’s not going to go away. Even when President Biden held a press conference last night to defend his cogency, he made some important mistakes. Once he conspicuously mixed up Mexico and Egypt. And another time—when discussing his son’s death—he talked about praying the “Rosary of…” and was unable to finish the sentence. The whole point of the conference was to show how he was not impaired, but the conference only exacerbated the concern. Biden is in trouble, and I feel for him.

      1. Huh?
        Every one seems to be missing the point. Biden could be a frickin’ slobbering vegetable in a wheel chair and he’d still be a better POTUS than Trump. Or VP Harris if we want to be more realistic. Unless you want a retribution POTUS that has no use for the Constitution and thinks America should relinquish it’s role as a leader of world-democracy and be run more like Hungary or Russia (autocratic governments whose leaders Trump adores). People really need to wake up…has no one been listening to Trump and MAGA sycophants? I guess not. At the same time, many in the cult say they’d be fine if America became a dictatorship under Trump. Sick puppies.

        And Americans and the media act like a POTUS in cognitive decline is somehow a new and terrifying phenomena. Reagan had Alzheimer’s by his 2nd term and it got pretty bad towards the end of his Presidency, but no one seemed to care. At least the media didn’t seem to care.

        1. I’ve ordered a 3×5-foot flag version of a Biden-Harris sign that I created for the last presidential election. It should arrive in the next week or two.

          https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1747086086936076342

          I’m not a fan of Harris, but she would certainly be better than a self-proclaimed dictator, even if she pushed the equity meme.

          I do like Gavin Newsom (sort of), who reminds me of New York City mayor John Lindsay (Republican), the first politician that I campaigned for as a teenager (1965).

          I once spent a full day putting up Lindsay posters with two of my friends. We literally did not sleep until the next day. Or that’s how I remember it, from when I was young.

        2. The US has already lost its role as a leader of world democracy. The refusal to investigate election irregularities in 2020, the multiple findings since that election was in some States unlawful, the politicisation of the (now two-tier) justice system, the attempts to remove an opponent from ballots, the endemic corruption, the Government control over social media and silencing of opposition, the disregard for the views of the American public on immigration and the Government’s disregard for courts; these things do not shine as a beacon of democracy.

          1. That’s way too negative a perspective. At least until before the next election, the raw military and cultural power of the U.S. still infuses the beacon of democracy with light, even if it is currently diminished by bad agents. There is still no other democracy with as much status and influence. It remains to be improved and strengthened, not dismissed.

      2. How about Amy Klobuchar? Not too old, not too young, not too left but certainly not right.

    3. Did the special counsel deign to explain why he brought up Beau Biden? Was there somehow a classified materials connection? Why didn’t the special counsel go ahead and rub it in even more by asking Biden when his first wife died?

      That said, a former VP, who is currently P, ought to be able to remember when he stopped being VP.

      At the end of an intro to a podcast several podcasts ago, Bari Weiss referred to Biden and Trump as two “very, very old men.” (Biden turns 82, Trump 78 in 2024.) At what age does one become “very, very old” (especially in the eyes of youngsters like Weiss)? Born in October 1947, Hilary Clinton is approximately sixteen months younger than Trump. I look forward to Weiss’s evaluation of Clinton. I reasonably gather that Weiss would consider someone 90-plus as “very very, very (very?) old.” May Weiss herself reach that age and possessed of her faculties undiminished. However, she surely acknowledges that not everyone does.

      I think it time to amend the U.S. constitution to set an upper age limit for President and Vice-President, say, age 70 when one can max out on one’s monthly Social Security payment. And at least also Speaker of the House, third in line. (Unless someone objects because it would result in one less issue about which to indulge in kvetching.)

      1. This whole thing was a political hit job, simple as that. Much like Comey did during Clinton’s campaign. Merrick Garland (a clueless conservative AG who thinks if he chooses right-wingers to investigate democrats, they’ll be fair and he won’t look like he’s putting his thumb on the scale). So he selects a Trumpster to head the special council investigating the documents case and this is what you get. An unethical smear campaign that got the Washington press core frothing at the mouth like a bunch of jackals. He’s the main reason why Trump may get to the election without any of his many indictments seeing the light of day. Garland dragged his feet on Trump’s corruption because (for some reason) he’s deathly afraid of looking political. Garland is a naive rube if he thinks he can skirt “looking political.” No matter what decision he makes, the right will smear him as a “political operative” so why not be a straight shooter and find people who aren’t obvious hacks with an agenda? I’m not saying he has to be corrupt like Trump’s AG, Barr, but does he have to bend over backward to make sure Biden is politically damaged every time he chooses the investigator? He did OK appointing with Jack Smith, but again, he should have got that guy going a year before he did. I think Biden choosing Garland as his AG is one of the major mistakes of his Presidency.

    4. I’m not an American but I’m watching with dismay the likely situation where the elderly Biden is already showing loss of memory, the VP is Kamala Harris and the Republican is Trump. How could this happen?

  4. I’m missing the “tiny one at left”
    It’s actually within the rings in the dark space.

    1. I wonder if perhaps Jerry mistook the largest moon as Saturn. Saturn is not actually in the image, it’s offscreen to the left.

      1. I’m going to barge in to Jerry’s defence given that he said he’s pre-occupied today. Jerry wrote that he couldn’t see the “tiny [moon] at the left,” which means he counted three, including the large one outside the orbit of the rings which is clearly not Saturn.

  5. (Extended and corrected at 8:22 CST). The photo of Saturn’s rings and the four moons is terrific. Maybe part of today’s post-modernists’ rejection of technology has something to do with these results regarding our solar system being so simply available and ubiquitous in their lives as opposed to those of us who grew up in the 50’s and only had fuzzy pictures from earthbound telescopes and imaginative artists’ drawings of the world beyond Earth.

    Love the photo of Andrzej and the kitties. Is he about to doze off and startle them when the book falls from his hand?

    1. Hmm, I do wonder how having lots of actual facts at one’s fingertips affects one’s outlook on reality. I remember longing to see the best photos of the planets and universe, marveling when the next increase in resolution became available.

      Did that make me value the facts with more passion when they became available? Does the ubiquity of data and photos now make facts seem less important or valuable? Or is it just that people are unable to process or absorb the flood of new information?

    2. I love that photo, too. Looking at it I can feel the comforting weight of my three cats (since passed) on my own lap. I miss them so!

    1. The headline already lost me…”Biden mixes up names?” Who doesn’t, esp. the names of obscure foreign leaders? That’s just lazy journalism to me. Here’s some examples while Trump was POTUS, but for some reason, this all gets ignored.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3e4QoxKIfo

      And yes, I’m sure you could do a mash up like this with Biden as well.

      But recently, it’s Trump who has really messed up names, and we’re talking names he shouldn’t confuse (unless there’s cognitive decline). Confusing Jeb Bush w/ Obama, confusing Jeb Bush with W. Bush, confusing Nikki Haley with Pelosi.

      And it comes down to “vibes?” If Trump does win the Presidency in 2024 (and I doubt he will) a lot of the blame will be the media’s obsession with both siding Trump and Biden. And even worse, normalizing and excusing Trump’s hideous humanity- they’ve been doing that since 2016. “Who cares if he’s a bigot, that’s just Trump being Trump! move along, nothing to see here.” It is very tiring.

  7. A suggestion for the surname effect: New immigrants TEND to have rarer surnames than the local populace. New immigrants arrive at all ages, but will have an average age of, say, 25, on arrival. Therefore, we are missing any mortality during the first 25 years of life in this group.

    The effect is weak because not all new immigrants have rarer surnames, rare surnames exist in the local populace, and mortality before the age of 25 is low.

  8. “Posting may be light, but bear with me. I do my best.”

    You are a river to your people!

    -Paraphrase of Auda Abu Tabi (Anthony Quinn) from Lawrence of Arabia, 1962

    I know PCC(E) likes that line, so I’m providing moral support.

  9. Actually the hypothesis in the linked article on the surname effect posits that those with higher intelligence and/or greater education leave fewer descendants but are longer-lived while those with lower intelligence and/or lesser educational attainment tend to be more fecund but live shorter lives.

    1. This is the R vs. k reproductive strategy hypothesis that Phillipe Rushton got into trouble over when he applied it to races during his time at University of Western Ontario.

  10. The rare name study. I think Native Americans and definitely black people have less diverse family names vs Europeans and Asians. Their lower SES and life expectancy probably skew the numbers.

    An aside: Internationally, in some countries (Mongolia, Burma, Indonesia come to mind) family names are very recent indeed, some still don’t have any. These wouldn’t skew American numbers though.
    Just a theory.
    D.A.
    NYC

    1. I adore Razib but I have to disagree with him here:

      “common surnames like smith or whatever are common professions. normal ppl. ppl with rare surnames are exhibit distinction in some way and such lineages are smarter and more high status?
      idk” https://twitter.com/razibkhan

      D.A.
      NYC

  11. “After the damn Republicans killed the border bill out of sheer spite (they didn’t want to give Biden something he could claim as an achievement by his administration). . .”

    Much has been made in the press (and misrepresented?) about the daily thresholds to activate the border authority—the “5000-a-day” debate. Some pols quibble about a clause that mandatorily deactivates the authority prematurely—when illegal crossing numbers decrease to 75% of the level that activated the authority. Others note that an Administration could not activate border authority at all if illegal crossings stay below 4000 a day, or nearly 1.5 million annually. Some note that unauthorized minors cannot be counted as part of the overall numbers and this would encourage parents to send their children alone to the border. Still others have pointed to the fact that powers given to the Secretary of Homeland Security are increasingly constrained over each of the next three years until they lapse, being limited to 270 days in year one, 225 in year two, and 180 in year three.

    My concern is different. Chiefly, the bill grants emergency authorities to the Secretary of Homeland Security to summarily remove an alien from the United States. However, while the “authority” is made available at certain thresholds, the decision to exercise the powers granted by that authority appears to be entirely within the discretion of the Secretary.

    The bill leads as follows: “SEC. 244B. BORDER EMERGENCY AUTHORITY. (a) USE OF AUTHORITY . (1) IN GENERAL .— In order to respond to extraordinary migration circumstances, there shall be available to the Secretary, notwithstanding any other provision of law, a border emergency authority” (p 205). “BORDER EMERGENCY AUTHORITY DESCRIBED. — (1) IN GENERAL .— Whenever the border emergency authority is activated, the Secretary shall have the authority, in the Secretary’s sole and unreviewable discretion, to summarily remove from and prohibit, in whole or in part, entry into the United States of any alien . . .” (p 208).

    Making an authority “available” to summarily remove aliens in the “sole and unreviewable discretion” of the Secretary is a far cry from mandating the removal of aliens once a certain level of illegal crossings is reached. I would welcome any nonpartisan lawyers who could correct me if I am misreading the authority granted here.

    I am not yet ready to characterize this bill as either “Republicans hurt the country to deny Biden a win on immigration” or “Democrats push a sham immigration bill that they are largely free to ignore.” My initial take is that the bill appears designed to give a Democrat president great leeway to allow illegal crossings, but it would constrain the ability of a Republican president in 2025-2026 to stop those crossings. Perhaps the Dems are looking forward to a favorable Senate map in 2026.

    https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/emergency_national_security_supplemental_bill_text.pdf

    1. The moons of Saturn? there is one moon between the rings if that’s what it is, if so, 4 moons…
      Top of the head on the death rates within common names? is it simply because there are so many say, Smiths, it makes sense, more earlier deaths by numbers or, since we have lots of individuals marrying into the Smith line the deleterious genes for a short life, etc.,are being thrown around within the Smiths… hmmm.
      Jez, today description of death was too good I was slightly depressed by it…

  13. “ he couldn’t remember when he started or ended his term as Vice-President, nor could he remember the year his son died. This is VERY CONCERNING.”

    If this issue is confined to recalling dates then it could be about nothing more substantial than not paying much attention on chronology. Nevertheless, in the primaries I will probably vote for a younger person.

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