Saturday: Hili dialogue

February 10, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, February 10, 2024, and National “Have a Brownie” Day (why the scare quotes?).

It’s Chinese New Year, celebrated by the Google Doodle below.  Click on it to go to the festivities and animations; it’s the Year of the Dragon!

It’s also Global Movie Day, National Cream Cheese Brownie Day, Teddy Day (celebrating teddy bears), International Cribbage Day, and National Flannel Day.

Here’s Toasty, my own teddy bear. I got him the day I was born, so, like me, he’s a bit battered and timeworn. (My mother made him the overalls.) But he’s been with me ever since, and now lives in my office:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Rafa, one of the cities of Gaza close to the Egyptian border, is said to harbor a huge nest of Hamas members. As far as I know, the IDF has determined this from tracing their movements through the tunnesl. But there are also 1.4 million civilians in Rafa, too, driven south by Israeli requests to move. Now Israel is formulating a plan to evacuate the civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for a “massive operation” in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, one of the last refuges for civilians in the besieged enclave, his office said Friday.

U.S. officials have expressed concern about the potential loss of civilian life if the Israeli military hits Rafah, a city bordering on Egypt now swollen with displaced Gazans after four months of conflict.

Netanyahu has directed the Israel Defense Forces to present to the cabinet a “dual plan” to evacuate the civilian population from combat zones and to “collapse” the four remaining Hamas battalions it says remain in Rafah, his office said in a statement.

It was unclear what such a plan would look like. Israeli airstrikes on Rafah overnight Thursday killed at least five people, according to local health authorities, adding to the fear among the displaced people there. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) estimates that the city’s population has grown to at least 1.4 million, more than five times its prewar count, with thousands of people sleeping in tents with little protection.

That is crowded! I wish that Egypt would open up its borders to allow Palestinians at least temporary sanctuary while the IDF cleans up Hamas in Rafa. But Egypt, like most other Arab countries, doesn’t seem to want to harbor Palestinians, largely out of fear that the refugee Palestinians would foment terrorism, which already exists in the Sinai.

At FDD, Seth Frantzman says this:

For some commentators, the humanitarian issue of overcrowding in the city by Gazans who fled fighting elsewhere is very important. However, it’s not clear why so many people fled to Rafah when they could also go to the humanitarian zone in Gaza near the coast, called Al-Mawasi. Hamas benefits from having a large number of internally displaced people in Rafah that it can use as human shields.

The Elder of Ziyon discusses the hypocrisy of the world condemning a plan to allow Palestinian refugees into Egypt while at the same time favoring a plan for refugees from Sudan to flee to Egypt:

But when it comes to Egypt (and Jordan) creating far more draconian measures to stop every single Gazan from escaping, literally making Gaza into a prison for those who want desperately to flee, suddenly these human rights groups and others are mute. These righteous words about the rights of desperate people in war zones are never, ever applied to Palestinians in Gaza.
All of these groups [Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc.] issue more and lengthier reports on human rights for Palestinians than for any other group in the world. But their concern for Palestinian human rights suddenly ends if helping them also helps Israel destroy a terrorist group with fewer casualties.
Hamas has built its entire war strategy on using innocent Gazans as human shields. HRW, Amnesty, Oxfam and Gisha are on Hamas’ side: they all agree with Hamas that Gaza civilians should protect the rapists, kidnappers and mass murderers of Jews.

I’m curious to see how Israel will resolve this problem. One thing is for sure (see below): Rafah is a critical area that needs to be taken by the IDF if Hamas is to be eliminated.

*Why is Rafah so important?  The Jerusalem Post explains:

Hamas has been defeated in many parts of the Gaza strip. This is particularly true in terms of Hamas battalions, the organizational tactical level unit that it has used to control areas in Gaza. Of 24 Hamas battalions, it is believed more than 18 have been defeated or destroyed.

However, Hamas continues to rule in Rafah, a key area on the Egyptian border where it controls humanitarian aid that enters Gaza.

For Hamas the control of Rafah is of the utmost importance. It wants to have a stranglehold on aid and also control other types of items, such as smuggled goods or arms stockpiles, which Egypt sought to stop.

The region is now awaiting the likelihood of a struggle for Rafah. Al-Ain media in the UAE reported on February 7 that Israel has made preparations for operations in Rafah and asks, “Has the countdown begun?” The report said “Fears have been increasing for several days about an Israeli attack.”

But Biden won’t put up with this, which is crazy if he really does want Hamas destroyed. From the NYT:

The Biden administration warned on Thursday that it would not at this point support Israeli plans for a military operation in Rafah, and both a White House spokesman and the U.N. secretary general warned of catastrophe should Israeli ground troops deploy there.

“Given the circumstances and the conditions there that we see right now, we think a military operation at this time would be a disaster for those people,” a White House spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters.

In a statement, the Israeli prime minister’s office said that it could not realize Israel’s aim of eliminating Hamas’s rule in Gaza while leaving intact what it said were four battalions of the group’s fighters in Rafah.

The military’s “combined plan” would have to both “evacuate the civilian population and topple the battalions,” it added.

I’m curious why Biden is suddenly backing off at this crucial point in the war, for if Israel doesn’t take Rafah (and of course it this happens they have to give civilians a way out), Hamas will return to rule Gaza. I wonder if Biden is trying to appeal to his Muslim constituency in America to win the war.

*Unlike Paul Krugman (see below), I’m quite worried about Biden’s lapses of memory, and it he’s elected, he doesn’t start his second term for about a year.  Andrew Sullivan’s worried too, and in his new Weekly Dish column, “The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Syndrome,” Sullivan bemoans for Biden what hurt the Supreme Court: RBG’s refusal to step down when she was incapacitated by age.

The [Special Counsel’s] report is persuasive and thorough, it seems to me. But in some ways it would have been better for the president if he had been indicted. Because among the reasons he wasn’t is that he’s “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Money quote:

Mr. Biden’s [2017] 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.

The last two things are worrying. The death of his son Beau was a searing event — and Biden couldn’t recall when it happened “even within several years.” Publicly, he even keeps saying Beau died in Iraq! And recalling a key ally in your fight over Afghanistan as a key opponent is a mark of real senescence. This past week alone, Biden talked of a recent G-7 meeting when he was chatting with President Mitterrand of France, a man who died in 1996; three days later, he had another memory of that same summit, recounting what Helmut Kohl had said, when it was obviously Angela Merkel. Mitterand, Macron — maybe an alliterative mistake. But confusing Kohl, who died in 2017, with Merkel? That’s a little harder to dismiss.

Even in his presser yesterday, he said he was talking to the president of Mexico, rather than Egypt, about Gaza. Or watch his recent attempt to explain where Israel-Hamas negotiations are at. Yes, he’s trying not to gaffe there, which is a good thing. But he seems close to catatonic. He has a habit of wandering off stage. And remember “Where’s Jackie?” Ahead of Sunday, Biden has — for the second year in a row — turned down an offer for a pre-Super Bowl interview. It’s a pattern. Biden has held the fewest press conferences since Reagan, and jokes about it: “In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office. I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away.”

This is why Sullivan starts his piece by saying, “in some ways it would have been better for the president if he had been indicted.”  How? He would never have been convicted: what he did doesn’t rise to that level.

But this is the part that keeps me awake at night (not really; I’m sleeping well):

And look: neither you nor I know how much dementia is affecting an 81 year old. There are times when Biden seems remarkably lucid for a man his age. My best guess is that it’s patchy: he has good days and bad days. But this much we do know: even if we judge him able to do the job now, what about in three or four years’ time? That’s what we are being asked to judge.

Indeed, and the prospect of President Harris gives me the willies. Yes, I know he’s showing loyalty, but the country needs leadership, not loyalty to someone like Harris. I would much prefer that he chose Mayor Peter or Gretchen Whitmer as his V.P. I think that if Biden is elected, the chances are substantial that he’ll become unfit to govern before his second term runs out.

*As always, I’ve stolen three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: say it ain’t Joe.”

The first one worries me (see also this NYT piecem and some pushback from Paul Krugman):

→ Biden forgetting so many words this week: I would love to be able to tell you that things are going great mentally for our president, because I am always rooting for ’Merica, but we’re all worried about one thing right now: The oval of the one in the Oval. This week, Biden confused Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron for their dead predecessors. Twice. He said he spoke to Helmut Kohl (who died in 2017) and François Mitterrand (who died in 1996). Then, during a brief press conference, he forgot the word for Hamas. “There’s been a response from the, uh—there’s been a response from the opposition, but, um—yes, I’m sorry, from Hamas.” Now, when I was pregnant, I forgot words all the time. I threw the dogs’ leashes in the garbage and put my phone in the fridge. I forgot I wasn’t allowed to cry when the grocery store ran out of the cereal I like. But I was not president. And I’m afraid Joe Biden is not pregnant.

For the second year in a row, Biden is sitting out the pre–Super Bowl interview, a new tradition started under Barack Obama. Not because of anything wrong with Biden, his team is quick to clarify, but because Americans are tired of politics. The Biden White House just wants all Americans to enjoy the Big Game, and Sundays are for POTUS naps.

→ News of the Jews: A prominent Greens Party member of Parliament in Australia, Jenny Leong, has been exposed as a raging antisemite. Here’s what she said at a Palestine Justice Movement forum in Sydney in December: “The Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups. They rock up and they’re part of the campaign. They offer support. . . they offer solidarity. They rock up to every community event and meeting to offer that connection because they, their tentacles reach in to the areas that try and influence power, and I think we need to call that out and expose it.” Their. . . tentacles? She has since offered a semi-apology. Other activists in Australia have compiled a list of 600 “Zionists” within the arts community. But the list includes even left-wing anti-Zionists, so it’s really just a list of Jews, probably with tentacles?

City University of New York is offering a course (since canceled) called “Globalize the Intifada!” And Douglas Murray—who is not Jewish but deserves an honorary bar mitzvah for all his work this year— had to relocate a sold-out speech to an undisclosed location after threats were issued against the workers at his previous venue.

→ Lia Thomas is suing: The trans swimmer Lia Thomas is suing World Aquatics for the right to keep competing against biological women. In 2022, World Aquatics barred swimmers who have gone through male puberty from swimming against women, citing once-obvious, now-controversial physical advantages that come from being a full-grown biological male. Thomas, who was a mediocre competitive swimmer as a man, absolutely crushed it among women. Wow! And in Canada, in a single professional women’s volleyball match, five trans athletes reportedly competed in a single game. These new women’s volleyball players are so strong and powerful! Crazy! And let’s not forget pro golfer Hailey Davidson, a transwoman who recently won the NXXT Women’s Classic in Florida. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it may not be fair, but don’t act like women’s sports were all that interesting before these competitors got involved. We’re now paying attention to volleyball. Women’s golf. I’d watch shuffleboard if Lia Thomas were playing. And isn’t that a win for women everywhere?

*Some humor from the NYT: the apostrophe police go after Taylor Swift (I have to admit I’m among those cops; h/t Enrico).

When Taylor Swift announced at the Grammys that the title of her new album would be “The Tortured Poets Department,” what was your reaction?

Maybe it was: “My gosh! Her first new album in more than a year. I can’t wait!”

Maybe it was: “Ho-hum. I’d rather listen to Shostakovich/Metallica/Baby Shark.”

Or, just possibly, it could have been:

“Shouldn’t there be an apostrophe in that title?”

Yes, plenty of people, upon hearing the biggest music announcement of the year, started thinking about punctuation marks and then talking about them on social media.

“I ruined this album release for my students by making it a lesson on apostrophe usage,” Erin Weinberg, an instructor in the department of English, theater, film and media at the University of Manitoba, wrote on X. (Others opined via Reddit, TikTok and elsewhere.)

If you do insist on adding an apostrophe, there are two potential places. It could be before the “S”: The Tortured Poet’s Department. That means the department belongs to just one poet.

“Is it a department just for a single tortured poet, where they can sit alone and write tortured poetry?” Weinberg asked.

Or after the “S”: The Tortured Poets’ Department, a department of many poets. “A designated department where all tortured poets can inspire together?” Weinberg asked.

But the title as it officially reads has no apostrophe: “The Tortured Poets Department.” It’s like those other great apostrophe-less works of art “Dead Poets Society” and “The Baby-Sitters Club.” In this case, the department does not belong to the poets. “Poets” describes the department.

“Nouns can be attributive, which just means we can use them to describe things the same way we use adjectives,” said Mignon Fogarty, the host of the “Grammar Girl” podcast. “‘Tortured Poets’ is telling us what kind of department it is, the same way ‘Cosmetics’ is telling us what kind of department we’re visiting at Macy’s.”

So which way should the title be? Before you decide that a feud on the scale of Kanye West versus Taylor Swift is breaking out, be aware that the consensus of professional grammarians is: It’s really up to Swift.

“I find the apostrophe-free option to be by far the most appealing and logical option,” said Ellen Jovin, author of “Rebel With a Clause: Tales and Tips From a Roving Grammarian.” “I am guessing there are multiple tortured poets, and I understand ‘poets’ adjectivally. It’s a department of tortured poets. I wouldn’t want an apostrophe there! I trust Taylor Swift’s apostrophe use.”

I”m with Jovin; no apostrophe here is perfectly correct given that the poets don’t own the department.  In fact, I don’t even know why there’s a controversy in the first place.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili asserts that she’s without ego. LOL!

Hili: The sun has set, only clouds are illuminated.
A: So am I to take a picture of you or the clouds?
Hili: Of me and it’s not at all about my ego.
In Polish:
Hili: Słońce zaszło, tylko chmury są jeszcze podświetlone.
Ja: Mam fotografować chmury, czy ciebie?
Hili: Mnie i wcale nie chodzi tu o moje ego.
And a photo of the loving Szaron:

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

From Merilee; a grammar lesson for cats (a Scott Metzger cartoon):

From Phun.org.  I can’t figure out the gendered basis for this, so it must be a mistake:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

As Time Magazine notes,

Meta has removed Instagram and Facebook accounts run on behalf of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after criticism over his support for Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked the monthslong war still raging in the Gaza Strip, the company confirmed Friday.

Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, offered no specifics about its reasoning. However, it said it removed the accounts “for repeatedly violating our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy.”

As Masih notes, Khamenei prohibited Iranian citizens from using social media, though he and other leaders used it themselves. It was, of course, a way to prohibit people from using social media to organize resistance to the regime.

From none other than Elon Musk: Disney’s inclusion standards. What bothers me are the quotas.

From Optus: Jews as white colonizers:

From Malcolm; cat brings (cat) food to ailing staff:

From Jez; questions asked to children as young as nine in my state:

Amazing: a d*g is staff for a kitten!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, the face of impending death. Dänn lasted but eight days in Auschwitz.

A tweet from Dr. Cobb, still in the U.S.; a lovely masked duck from the tropics, and a warbler for lagniappe.  Nice bill!

 

x

x

x

 

32 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The duck picture reminds me of one of my favorite jokes from when I was a kid: A duck goes into a pharmacy, gets some ChapStick, and takes it to the cashier. The cashier asks, “Will that be cash or charge?” The duck says, “Just put it on my bill.”

  3. Jerry, I hate to say it but your teddy rather reminds me of Chuckie from some horror movie (not sure which). Something about the eyes. I wouldn’t turn your back on him….

    2. The teddy reminded me of the old kids rhyme:
      “fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. fuzzy wuzzy had no hair. fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he.

  4. On this day:
    1306 – In front of the high altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries, Robert the Bruce murders John Comyn, sparking the revolution in the Wars of Scottish Independence.

    1355 – The St Scholastica Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 63 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead in two days. [Two students from the University of Oxford complained about the quality of wine served to them in the Swindlestock Tavern, and the argument with the landlord ended in a brawl that turned into a riot. Armed gangs came in from the countryside to assist the townspeople. University halls and students’ accommodation were raided and the inhabitants murdered; there were some reports of clerics being scalped. Around 30 townsfolk were killed, as were up to 63 members of the university.]

    1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India.

    1567 – Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, is found strangled following an explosion at the Kirk o’ Field house in Edinburgh, Scotland, a suspected assassination.

    1763 – French and Indian War: The Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Quebec to Great Britain.

    1861 – Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

    1906 – HMS Dreadnought, the first of a revolutionary new breed of battleships, is christened.

    1919 – The Inter-Allied Women’s Conference opened as a counterpart to the Paris Peace Conference, marking the first time that women were allowed formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.

    1920 – Józef Haller de Hallenburg performs the symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea, celebrating restitution of Polish access to open sea.

    1923 – Texas Tech University is founded as Texas Technological College in Lubbock, Texas.

    1940 – The Soviet Union begins mass deportations of Polish citizens from occupied eastern Poland to Siberia.

    1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns against United States intervention in Vietnam. [That went well…]

    1962 – Cold War: Captured American U2 spy-plane pilot Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

    1967 – The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. [I wonder how seriously invoking Section 4 was considered when Trump was POTUS?]

    1989 – Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African American to lead a major American political party.

    1996 – IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess for the first time.

    Births:
    1775 – Charles Lamb, English poet and essayist (d. 1834).

    1824 – Samuel Plimsoll, English merchant and politician (d. 1898).

    1842 – Agnes Mary Clerke, Irish astronomer and author (d. 1907).

    1846 – Ira Remsen, American chemist and academic (d. 1927). [Discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin along with Constantin Fahlberg. He was the second president of Johns Hopkins University.]

    1883 – Edith Clarke, American electrical engineer (d. 1959). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1890 – Fanny Kaplan, Ukrainian-Russian activist (d. 1918).

    1890 – Boris Pasternak, Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1960).

    1893 – Jimmy Durante, American actor, singer, and pianist (d. 1980).

    1894 – Harold Macmillan, English captain and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1986).

    1898 – Bertolt Brecht, German director, playwright, and poet (d. 1956).

    1906 – Lon Chaney Jr., American actor (d. 1973).

    1914 – Larry Adler, American harmonica player, composer, and actor (d. 2001).

    1920 – Alex Comfort, English physician and author (d. 2000).

    1930 – Robert Wagner, American actor and producer.

    1937 – Roberta Flack, American singer-songwriter and pianist.

    1941 – Michael Apted, English director and producer (d. 2021).

    1950 – Mark Spitz, American swimmer.

    1957 – Katherine Freese, American astrophysicist and academic.

    1973 – Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho, English businesswoman and politician.

    1976 – Keeley Hawes, English actress.

    1981 – Stephanie Beatriz, American actress. [Best known for playing Detective Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.]

    1981 – Holly Willoughby, English model and television host.

    The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying. (Jean Paul):
    547 – Scholastica, Christian nun.

    1660 – Judith Leyster, Dutch painter (b. 1609).

    1686 – William Dugdale, English genealogist and historian (b. 1605).

    1837 – Alexander Pushkin, Russian poet and author (b. 1799).

    1846 – Maria Aletta Hulshoff, Dutch feminist and pamphleteer (b. 1781).

    1887 – Ellen Wood, English author (b. 1814).

    1891 – Sofia Kovalevskaya, Russian-Swedish mathematician and physicist (b. 1850). [She was my Woman of the Day on January 15, the anniversary of her birth.]

    1923 – Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1845).

    1932 – Edgar Wallace, English author and screenwriter (b. 1875).

    1956 – Leonora Speyer, American poet and violinist (b. 1872).

    1957 – Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author (b. 1867).

    1992 – Alex Haley, American soldier, journalist, and author (b. 1921).

    1997 – Brian Connolly, Scottish musician (b. 1945).

    2001 – Buddy Tate, American saxophonist and clarinet player (b. 1913).

    2002 – Dave Van Ronk, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1936).

    2005 – Arthur Miller, American actor, playwright, and author (b. 1915).

    2008 – Roy Scheider, American actor and boxer (b. 1932).

    2014 – Stuart Hall, Jamaican-English sociologist and theorist (b. 1932). [No, not that Stuart Hall!]

    2014 – Shirley Temple, American actress and diplomat (b. 1928).

    2016 – Fatima Surayya Bajia, Indian-Pakistani author and playwright (b. 1930).

    2021 – Larry Flynt, American publisher (b. 1942).

    1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Edith Clarke (born on this day in 1883, died October 29, 1959) was an American electrical engineer. She was the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States, and the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. She was the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; the first female engineer whose professional standing was recognized by Tau Beta Pi, the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States; and the first woman named as a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. She specialized in electrical power system analysis and wrote Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems.

      One of nine children, Clarke was orphaned at age 12 and raised by an older sister. She used her inheritance to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College, where she graduated in 1908.

      After college, Clarke taught mathematics and physics at a private school in San Francisco and at Marshall College. She then spent some time studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but left to become a “computer” at AT&T in 1912. She computed for George Campbell, who applied mathematical methods to the problems of long-distance electrical transmissions. While at AT&T, she studied electrical engineering at Columbia University by night.

      In 1918, Clarke enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the following year she became the first woman to earn an M.S. in electrical engineering from MIT.

      Unable to find work as an engineer, Clarke went to work for General Electric as a supervisor of computers in the Turbine Engineering Department. During this time, she invented the Clarke calculator, an early graphing calculator, a simple graphical device that solved equations involving electric current, voltage and impedance in power transmission lines. The device could solve line equations involving hyperbolic functions ten times faster than previous methods. She filed a patent for the calculator in 1921 and it was granted in 1925.

      In 1921, Clarke took a leave of absence from GE to teach physics at the Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey because she was not allowed to do electrical engineering work, was not earning the same salary, and had a lower professional status than men doing the same work. The next year, when she returned from Turkey, she was offered a job by GE as a salaried electrical engineer in the Central Station Engineering Department – the first professional female electrical engineer in the United States. She retired from General Electric in 1945.

      Her background in mathematics helped her achieve fame in her field. On February 8, 1926, as the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers’ (AIEE) annual meeting, she showed the use of hyperbolic functions for calculating the maximum power that a line could carry without instability. The paper was of importance because transmission lines were getting longer, leading to greater loads and more chances for system instability, and Clarke’s paper provided a model that applied to large systems. Two of her later papers won awards from the AIEE: the Best Regional Paper Prize in 1932 and the Best National Paper Prize in 1941.

      She also worked on the design and building of hydroelectric dams in the West including Hoover Dam, contributing her electrical expertise to develop and install the turbines that generate hydropower there to this day.

      In 1943, Clarke wrote an influential textbook in the field of power engineering, Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems, based on her notes for lectures to GE engineers. This two-volume textbook teaches about her adaption of the symmetrical components system, in which she became interested while working for the second time at GE. This system is a mathematical means for engineers to study and solve problems of power system losses and the performance of electrical equipment. Clarke adopted this system to the three-phase components that are the basis of the electrical grid in the United States. This textbook was used as the basis of education for electrical engineers for many years.

      In 1947, she joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin, making her the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. She taught for 10 years and retired in 1957.

      Clarke died on October 29 1959, aged 76. In 2015, she was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

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

      1. Thanks for the recognition of Edith Clarke and her upstream swim to be a part of the engineering discipline in the first half of the twentieth century. She certainly had to move around a lot to create a career. Women engineers were still the exception in my NASA organization in the 70’s and 80’s with some remnants of the old guard still referring to them as trouble. I attribute much of the failure to create female engineers in the U.S. to the more than century-old K12 curriculum which, until the recent publication of the 2013 Next Generation Science Standards, provided only science without even a mention of engineering for children preparing for college. With the NGSS blending engineering design into science standards, the initiative of some non-profits such as Virginia Childrens Engineering and FIRST Robitics, and some industry leaders such as Formula1 and its constructors, we are now seeing more women moving into engineering fields. But I am sure that many still feel like Edith Clarke.

    2. Always interesting, thank you JEZGROVE.
      Who would have thought that Oxford University collectively was so unpopular with the common folk in the fourteenth century?
      I can attest from my time living and working close by that it was always “town and gown” and friends tell me it remains so. Parliamentary representation used to be a good indication, Labour and Conservative.

    3. Re: 1763 and Quebec. What is locally called the French and Indian War was part of the worldwide Seven Years War —see, no apostrophe! — between Britain and France. What France ceded to King George III was not just the present-day province of Quebec south of the Hudson Bay watershed (though practically only Montreal and Quebec City and some scattered farming settlements along the river, the rest being rocks and trees) but her vast thinly settled fur-trading empire in what is now the midwestern United States to the Mississippi River.

      Britain’s passage in 1774 of the (“intolerable”) Quebec Act that governed this territory and frustrated the plans of English settlers in the Atlantic colonies to exploit it made the Declaration of Independence inevitable. Thus when the 13 Colonists prevailed, they would inherit a third of the continent and almost all of its then-arable land. Well played!

      1. I think there must be some rule against possessives in the title of groups, events, etc. Try googling “dead poet’s society”, or when was the last time you saw a firetruck labeled “New York’s Fire Department”? Not sure how the rule works, though, because “Schwab’s Pharmacy” seems right to me.

  5. In case you were wondering, the term “scare quotes” was coined by Professor Elizabeth Anscombe in 1956. She was a professor of philosophy at Cambridge.

    Have a nice day!

    PS – scare quotes existed long before 1956, she just created the term for them.

    1. It bothers me considerably to read or hear people using the term “air quotes” for something in print, what we would now usually call “scare quotes”. As far as I’m concerned, air quotes are something gestural, the motion or miming done IN THE AIR.

      And air quotes, in that more or less standard sense, can be used for several — perhaps any — of the available functions of quotation marks in print. That includes both actual citational quoting and of course scare quotes as well. The association of air quotes to convey the scare quotes functionality is perhaps so strong that some people are led to call them air quotes even when not in the air at all — as originally complained here! 🙂

      1. And not to forget, there is also a verbal form of quotation, saying “quote” and either “unquote” or “end quote” — often to surround quoted words much as printed quotation marks do. But here again an oddity has developed, and perhaps become more common than that standard. The oddity is to put both sides of the bracketing BEFORE the quoted material or “scare-marked” term, in the form of the quick phrase “quote-unquote”. >>Is today quote-unquote have a brownie day?<<

  6. Two comments with respect to Biden and Harris (I’ll post the latter separately):

    The historian Heather Cox Richardson (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-9-2024) makes a lot of points that belie the “Biden is senile” narrative that so many have taken up rather uncritically. First, going back to McCarthy at least, the GOP has a long history of weaponizing “official” investigations (Benghazi, “but her emails”, Trump/Ukraine etc) and this appears to be the case here (I didn’t realize that the interview from which Hur drew his conclusions occurred on October 8th – could it be that the President was just a bit pre-occupied?) Second, she (and I) find it appalling that this is receiving infinitely more attention than the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll rape trial and the increasing evidence of Trump’s declining mental capacities. And finally, Richardson quotes the political commentator Bryan Taylor Cohen: “The thing about Biden’s memory,” Cohen wrote, “is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23.”

    And as an addendum, Ruth Marcus, legal columnist for WaPo, argues that the special prosecutor overstepped his bounds in making these arguments in the first place. His job was to determine whether there was sufficient probably cause to prosecute (which he found not to be the case) and not speculate about the mental fitness of the target. Once again, this smells of a hit job by a former Trump administration official (Hur was Rod Rosenstein’s deputy during that time).
    https://wapo.st/497UqCV

    I’ve already gone on to long (my apologies to PCC-E and readers), but I think it is important that these perspectives be heard. And I am fully prepared to support Biden/Harris in November.

    2. Important points all, IMO, Bruce. As one TV legal pundit noted, this smells of James Comey’s press conference just before the 2016 election to announce that Hilary had been careless but not criminal in her use of a private email server.

      I’m inclined to trust Biden when he claims that of course he remembers when his son died, he just didn’t want to talk about it with Hur.

    4. I also read Heather Cox Richardson. She has a bias, no doubt, but generally her rhetoric and sources are solid.

  7. questions to children about ideas originating in occult doctrine

    The bailey here is that “school boards” approve and justify the questions for something like “Kindness”, on some ad hoc basis. The motte is 洗腦 (xǐnǎo, wash brain – Lifton, 1961) – usually by Social Emotional Learning, currently the Transformative variety. See? Transform – Hermetic alchemy – as well as – unless opted out of (the tyranny of opt out) – data mining by the WEF or UNESCO (find the paper with “Psychodata” in the title).

    Philosopher Nicholas Shackel coined the Motte and Bailey Fallacy.

  8. Now I want to provide my own perspective on Vice President Harris. It’s a simple one – she’s doing what loyal vice presidents typically do. I know she gets criticism for her role in dealing with immigration, but look. Absent congressional action, that problem is never going to be “solved”. What she did do was work with Central American governments to try to reduce the flow at the source, and indeed that has happened – while yes, overall immigration is up, the numbers from that region are significantly down. And remember – in the first Biden term, she was tied to DC by having to be available as a tie-breaker in the Senate.

    Second, she has been a tireless ambassador for the administration, both domestically and abroad. She has been the point person on defending women’s reproductive rights in this country, and has served as a capable representative of the President in numerous diplomatic forums in Europe and Asia. Again, this is what VP’s do, and as far as I can tell, she’s done it capably.

    So is she ready to be President if the need arrives? There’s no way of knowing that for sure with anyone, but in my opinion, she is at least as well prepared as were many of those who have succeeded to office due to a vacancy in the past (i. e. Andrew Jackson, Chester Arthur, Gerald Ford and others). I am comfortable she would govern capably if the need arises, and that’s all we can hope for.

    1. I’m reminded of Harry Truman who was considered not ready for the job when Roosevelt died. He turned out to be a very significant contributor. Probably Harris would likewise rise to the occasion.

    2. It doesn’t matter whether Kamala Harris is fit for the job or not. The Democrats are not going to dump a woman who is sort-of black (although not Black as Americans understand it) who will be the first VP to have an almost sure chance of becoming President. They will certainly not compound the gross insult to their base and cause them to stay home on Election Day by nominating a homosexual man instead.

    3. It would be nice if the Democrats did, well anything, to start promoting her now, instead of waiting until DJT picks god-knows-who to “run” with him. Just something more to campaign on other than ‘Trump is Hitler! And you have NO CHOICE but to vote Democratic!’ despite the fact that many people feel strongly that they do.

  10. “The Federalist” had a unique take on the Biden classified documents: It’s time for Biden to pardon Trump on his classified documents.

    1. Sure, if Trump is convicted of taking national security documents to Mar-a-Lago, it might make for magnanimous gesture for Biden to pardon him for that offense, or at least to commute his sentence, given Biden’s own mishandling of classified documents.

      But Trump’s ass should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for obstructing justice in the South Florida documents’ case — especially for his hiding and lying about documents sought by a federal grand jury subpoena and for his having his lawyer file a false sworn certification that all documents sought by the grand jury had been turned over to federal investigators.

      The rule of law is the rule of law, dude, and it’s well past high time for Trump to be held accountable for a lifetime of thumbing his nose at it.

  11. … the prospect of President Harris gives me the willies.

    Kamala Harris was not my first choice to be Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020. (Nor was Biden my first choice to be the Democratic nominee that year.) And I’ve commented several times in this space about her seeming lack of gravitas.

    But a comparison of Harris to other recent VPs, and unsuccessful VP candidates, doesn’t reflect badly on her relative abilities — Sarah Palin? John Edwards? Joe Lieberman? Dan Quayle? Spiro Agnew? Lightweights (or, in the case of Agnew, that and much worse), one and all.

    And even those VPs who’ve ascended to the presidency — though the death or resignation of the president or otherwise — including some who compiled records as president that many consider praiseworthy, did not exactly cover themselves in glory while serving in the vice-presidency (an office that’s traditionally been as useless as teats on a boar).

    Harry Truman (whose formal education ended after a year at community college business school) was a little-known former haberdasher, who owed his soul and his seat in the US senate to Missouri’s Pendergast political machine, before FDR plucked him from obscurity to be his third running mate in ’48. Near the end of Dwight Eisenhower’s eight-year term in office, he was asked by reporters to name any significant accomplishments made by his VP, Dick Nixon. His answer? If you give me a couple weeks to think about it, maybe I could come up with one.

    LBJ was the greatest congressional legislator of the 20th century, but was kept on ice by the Kennedys during his three years in the vice-presidency. Gerald Ford, who replaced Agnew as Nixon’s VP, was a mediocre US congressman from Grand Rapids. To my knowledge, during his 14 years in that office, no one ever suggested that he make a run for statewide, let alone national, office. (LBJ used to joke about the lack of mental acuity of Ford, who was a two-way All-American on Michigan’s national championship football teams in the 1930s, by saying it was a shame poor Gerry forgot to put on his helmet before stepping onto the Wolverine’s gridiron.)

    If the Biden/Harris ticket is reelected this year, and if Harris ascends to the presidency during the next four years, she just might surprise those of us who’ve been misunderestimating her.

    Plus, let’s give Kamala credit where credit is due for being the first Jewish vice president — or at least “Jewish by injection” as the saying goes. :).

  12. Israel needs to clear Rafah of Hamas. They will have a plan to protect civilians, but Hamas will do everything it can to thwart any plan. For Hamas, civilians are weapons of war, pieces of organic hardware they will place on the front lines for purposes of blunting Israel’s attack. We should not call these civilians “human shields.” They are not. They are human munitions. And Hamas is responsible.

    Biden is in trouble. He’s not doing the Super Bowl interview because it risks showing his frailty to over 100 million people. There is simply too much risk. It’s been the same regarding press conferences. He avoids them (or his staff does), again, so that they can keep his frail state from the public. Biden’s hastily held press conference the other day proved his diminished capacity, despite the fact that it was intended to prove the opposite. Political spin cannot fix this. Even in the near term, I’m worried that Biden is not up to the task of supporting Israel against Hamas. This is not a problem that can be put off to some future date.

    The President and his advisors need to start *today* planning for a dignified withdrawal from the presidential race. They need to do it and they know it. The person who loves him the most and understands him the best—Jill Biden—needs to convince her husband to retire. The Democrats have a deep bench of excellent candidates and can still win in November. But they need to get moving now!

    Dear Jill. Please help Joe preserve his dignity by getting the retirement planning started.*

    *Surely, she reads Whyevolutionistrue and will get this message.

    1. For an outsider like myself, given that the US is country with a population of over 334 million people the likely choices of candidates in this year’s presidential election is utterly baffling.

      You’re right about Jill Biden – what she should do, not whether she reads WEIT (although we can live in hope).

Comments are closed.