Friday: Hili dialogue

February 16, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to: Friday February 16, 2024. Cat shabbos begins at sundown, and it’s National Almond Day , but don’t eat the bitter ones or you’ll get this poison:

It’s also Friday Fish Fry Day, Tim Tam Day (delicious Australian bikkies, but culturally appropriated), International Syrah Day, National Tartar Sauce Day (I can take or leave the stuff), Day of the Shining Star, celebrating Kim Jong Il’s birthday in North Korea, and, in Alaska, Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, celebrating the civil rights activist who worked for Native Alaskans.

Kim Jong Il, leading. I love to look at these Soviet-style DPRK propaganda posters:

Source

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Well, Trump is now facing criminal charges again, this time in a state case. It involves the hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels some time ago, which led to charges of fraud. And the trial begins in less than a month!

A New York judge on Thursday rejected Donald J. Trump’s bid to throw out criminal charges against him stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star, setting a trial date for next month and clearing the way for the first prosecution of a former American president.

The judge, Juan M. Merchan, announced the decision at a hearing in a Lower Manhattan courtroom as Mr. Trump looked on from the defense table. The former president’s lawyers objected to the judge’s decision for jury selection to begin on March 25, noting that the six-week trial would conflict with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

One of the former president’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, called the schedule “unfathomable,” arguing that, “We are in the middle of primary season,” and claiming that the trial would overlap with dozens of Republican primaries and caucuses.

But Justice Merchan summarily dismissed arguments from Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who had derided the case as “a discombobulated package of politically motivated charges.” From the beginning of the hearing, the judge bristled at the pushback from Mr. Blanche about the date, at one point instructing him to “stop interrupting me, please.”

The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought the charges last year accusing Mr. Trump of covering up a potential sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. In a statement, Mr. Bragg said he was “pleased” by the judge’s decision and looking forward to the trial.

It will be the first of Mr. Trump’s criminal cases to go to trial, but it might not be the last. He faces 91 felony counts across four criminal indictments from prosecutors in Washington, Florida and Georgia, as well as Manhattan, all while he seeks to lock up the Republican presidential nomination.

The trial date in Manhattan leaves the door open for Mr. Trump’s federal trial, on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, to take place in the late spring or early summer. That case, filed in Washington, is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

. . . The charges against Mr. Trump are all Class E felonies, which are the lowest category of felony offense in New York and carry a maximum prison sentence of four years per count, though if Mr. Trump is ultimately convicted in the case, a judge could sentence him to probation.

Dear Ceiling Cat, please let him be convicted before the election!  But I’m betting that even a conviction won’t stand in the way of his election, and of course, Republicans being what they are, it will boost his chances to be elected.

*Trump got a bit of a break, though, in a case in Georgia—a state case that he interfered in the state results of the election.  You’ll remember that the head prosecutor, Fani Willis, was found to have been involved in a romantic relationship with another prosecutor whom she hired, and there’s a question of whether there was financial impropriety (she took vacations paid for by the boyfriend she hired and paid).  There’s a hearing going on that may determine whether either of them can prosecute the case because of conflict of interest.

A key witness testified in a hearing on Thursday that the top prosecutors in Donald J. Trump’s election interference case in Georgia were in a romantic relationship earlier than they have said. Both prosecutors took the stand to dispute any suggestion of impropriety.

The timeline of the relationship is crucial to the defense’s argument that the lead prosecutor and her office should be disqualified from the case — a result that would put in limbo a proceeding that has major implications for the 2024 presidential election.

The defense says the relationship between the two main prosecutors — Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and Nathan J. Wade, whom she hired to run the case — has created an untenable conflict of interest. A disqualification would have a significant impact on the case against the former president and his allies.

Mr. Wade, who testified for several hours, stuck by his timeline of the relationship, which he said began in early 2022 — after Mr. Wade was hired for the case in November 2021 — and ended in summer 2023.

Ms. Willis, showing clear frustration and animus, began her testimony in the afternoon. The evidentiary hearing is expected to last into Friday or longer.

And here’s the issue:

Lawyers for Mr. Roman and other defendants are seeking to disqualify the two prosecutors from the case. Their argument hinges on assertions of a financial conflict of interest: Mr. Wade has been paid more than $650,000 since he was hired in 2021, and during that time he has spent money on vacations with Ms. Willis.

I have no dog in this fight, and the timeline is crucial, but it would be a crying shame if Willis hired her own boyfriend and then benefited from the money he made after being hired. It won’t kill Georgia’s case against Trump and the other completely, but they’ll have to start all over again.

*There’s been a lot of buzz in the last few days about a Russian threat from space, which I took about as seriously as the claims of Jewish space lasers. But apparently there is a real threat, though for now we don’t have to worry about it. But I see that as of this morning, the gubmint is still worried.

Russia is developing a space-based military capability that members of Congress and U.S. officials worry could pose a significant threat to the United States and its allies, possibly by damaging critical intelligence or communications satellites with a nuclear weapon, according to officials familiar with the matter.

The precise nature of the system was unclear. One person referred to it as “a new Russian space threat capability.” Some officials were alarmed after examining classified intelligence on Wednesday and warned of ominous consequences; one member of Congress called it a potential “geo-strategic game changer.” Several lawmakers stressed there was no imminent danger, but they urged the Biden administration to take countermeasures soon.

The Russian government has experimented with the use of nuclear explosions or directed energy to disable satellites, according to one U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Experts have raised concerns that a nation could detonate a nuclear weapon in space to interfere with satellites through the emission of radiation.

Russia also has tested antisatellite weapons. In 2021, after it launched a missile from Earth that destroyed a Soviet-era satellite, a senior U.S. military official warned that Russia was “deploying capabilities to actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies.”

A day of fevered speculation about what the supposed space-weapon might be was triggered by an unusual and cryptic public statement Wednesday by a leading member of Congress, who urged lawmakers to review classified information about what he called a “serious national security threat.”

Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the nature of the threat or the country supposedly wielding it.

In a separate letter to fellow House members, Turner and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the committee’s top Democrat, said the committee “has identified an urgent matter with regard to a destabilizing foreign military capability that should be known by all congressional policymakers.”

And that’s all we know. Russians can blow up our satellites, which of course is not only an act of war, but would cripple our intelligence-gathering capabilities. I foresee an arms race in which the U.S. has to construct space weapons, too, and then we’ll have a brand new version of a Cold War.

*Clickbait headline from the WSJ: “Biden-Netanyahu relationship at boiling point as Rafah invasion looms.”  Clearly Biden, who keeps warning Bibi, doesn’t support the elimination of Hamas, yet Israel is now evacuating civilians from Rafah before the IDF goes in.  (Hamas is of course preventing civilians from leaving.)

The looming Israeli military plans to invade Rafah have exacerbated tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration, which has grown increasingly frustrated with its attempts to rein in Israel’s military campaign.

The consequences of the distrust between President Biden and Netanyahu, who have spoken 18 times since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, have grown only starker in recent days. Biden now appears to be trying to draw a line with Israel’s proposed military operation on Rafah where 1.1 million Palestinians—many of them displaced—now reside.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has vowed to forge ahead, saying Wednesday that Israel would mount a “powerful” operation in the city once residents are allowed to evacuate.

The U.S. has communicated that it wouldn’t—under any circumstances—support a plan for a full-scale invasion of Rafah, and that it would prefer to see targeted operations, U.S. officials said. The Biden administration has asked the Israeli military to produce a “credible plan” that included both a military and humanitarian component if it decides to disregard Washington’s advice and invade the city, U.S. officials said.

Umm. . . if the civilians are allowed to leave Rafah, then any operation (barring forcible detention of civilians in Rafah by Hamas, in which case civilian deaths would be Hamas’s fault) IS a “targeted operation.” It’s clear that many high-ranking Hamas operatives are in Rafah.

The growing clash between the two governments over Rafah underscores the Biden administration’s waning leverage over Netanyahu as his military continues to hammer Gaza, even as pressure grows inside the U.S. government to rein in Israel. The State Department has launched a probe looking at several Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that killed dozens of civilians and the possible use by Israel of white phosphorus in Lebanon, to determine whether the Israeli military misused American bombs and missiles to kill civilians, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Talk of a Rafah operation came as the U.S., together with Qatar, Egypt and Israel, continued to work on fragile plans for a sustained pause in fighting to secure the release of some of the remaining hostages in Hamas captivity while also ensuring that desperately needed humanitarian aid gets to the people of Gaza. Those efforts appeared to collapse Wednesday when Israel said it wouldn’t return to Cairo for further negotiations.

If the U.S. is serious about ending Hamas, then it must countenance an IDF invasion of Hamas, with, of course, an escape route given to civilians. That’s already taking place. Once again Israel is showing admirable restraint, while the Biden Administration is showing incredible stupidity. For all they’re doing, it certainly looks as if they want Israel to lose.

*Finally, some panda news, or, as they say at the end of the NBC News each evening, “There’s GOOD news tonight.”  And that’s that China, the Custodian of All Pandas, is taking their care very seriously. This took place at the Giant Panda Breeding Center, which I visited when I was in Chengdu a longish while back. People were FEEDING them, and we all know that pandas get bamboo, not visitor-brought treats.

Don’t feed the pandas. That’s the rule seemingly broken by a man who was banned for life from one of China’s main panda centers after throwing unspecified “objects” into an enclosure on Monday.

A notice from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding didn’t identify the objects, but said that feeding pandas may cause them harm, and that the panda appeared to be in normal condition. It identified the visitor as a 53-year-old man with the family name Gao.

“In view of Gao’s uncivilized visit and his behavior that may cause harm to giant pandas, he is prohibited from entering the panda base … for life,” the notice said.

The panda base has previously imposed lifetime bans for feeding pandas. A man who fed bamboo shoots to panda cubs in an activity area and a woman who gave them peanuts were barred for life last August.

Other visitors have been banned for one or five years for offenses such as throwing water at a panda or banging hard on enclosure window glass, according to state media reports.

. . . . The breeding base in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, is a popular tourist destination. A total of 34 pandas were born last year at two bases in Sichuan, including the one in Chengdu. Some made a special appearance recently as part of this month’s Lunar New Year festivities.

Banned for life! Leave the damn pandas alone! I was content to look at them, though our official guide asked me if I wanted to touch one that was sleeping against the bars, and I gently stroked its fur for a second (not disturbing it), just to say that I’d touched a giant panda.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is wondering, Malgorzata comments: “Diluting the substance (reality) has been going on in politics for ages. Hili should have known this and she is wondering quite unnecessarily. ”

A: You look lost in thought.
Hili: Yes, I wonder about the application of homeopathy to politics.
In Polish:
Ja: Wyglądasz na zamyśloną.
Hili: Tak, zastanawiam się nad zastosowaniem homeopatii w polityce.

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

From Darwin Awards 2024:

 

From Jesus of the Day:

And a wonderful gesture shown on Bizarre and Wonderful World:

Masih on the Houthi executing gays (no protests from the West, of course):

FIRE took the mickey out of Harvard the other day, and here ex-Harvard-President Larry Summers agrees:

From Simon, another analogy to academia from nature:

I had this because it’s so bizarre. And yes, it’s real; it’s a person named Wyn Wylie. What I can’t find is any evidence that, despite the fact that he (a drag queen) is an environmentalist, Pattie isn’t particularly known for traveling. And yes, it’s virtue flaunting.

These pudgy procyonids simply can’t jump high enough!

From Roz, a nighttime cat sequence:

From the Auschwitz Memorial; today is the birthday of Margot Frank, who was with her sister in Bergen-Belsen. Both died within a few days of each other of typhus (April, 1945), but that’s all we know.

From Matthew. First, Trump, who works 29 hours a day:

This claim is a bit exaggerated, but see the bioRrχiv paper here:

38 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

    1. Yes, I just heard that on the radio. Very tragic. It seems that he was in court yesterday, and appeared to be fine. A sad loss of a man of integrity.

      Reply

      1. After I heard about Navalny I sent an email to my U. S. Representative Elise Stefanik. I said because there is not likely now to be a deal on the border there is no longer any reason to link funding for Ukraine to it. I said Ukraine is fighting against Putin for all of us and the best way to help them is to free up the funding. I didn’t mention Navalny in my email but I should have. It was his death that spurred me to act.

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  2. Seems a good time to note :

    I saw on a nature show that bamboo releases small amounts of cyanide when … I suppose eaten … by, either pandas or lemurs… so pandas have dome sort of physiology to remove the cyanide…

    I have been meaning to look that up.

    (Don’t ask me what nature show.)

    UPDATES:

    “Primarily a plant of China and Japan, the single species, Nandina domestica, has many cultivars favored for the delicate flowers and bright red-orange berries. It is not a true bamboo but rather is closely related to Podophyllum species (May apple), and Berberis species (Barberry). […] Some cultivars of Nandina contain significant quantities of cyanogenic glycosides which when hydrolyzed release hydrogen cyanide. ”

    Source: https://poisonousplants.cvmbs.colostate.edu/plant/117

    I note that horseradish is something like that, with the glycoside.

    And finally:

    Dietary resources shape the adaptive changes of cyanide detoxification function in giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)

    “Bamboo shoots contained 3.2 mg/kg of cyanide and giant pandas absorbed more than 65% of cyanide. However, approximately 80% of absorbed cyanide was metabolized to less toxic thiocyanate that was discharged in urine. […] Phylogenetic analysis of both nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the rhodanese gene supported a closer relationship of giant panda with carnivores than with herbivores.”

    Rhodanese is a mitochondrial enzyme that catalyzes cyanide ion CN(-) to thiocyanate ion SCN(-) (<-also known as "rhodanate").

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5050549

    Ahhhh… now I can sleep better.

    Reply

    1. The headline shows everyone – the position is explicitly designed for activism – praxis.

      The candidate must be Diverse (= politically antagonistic to the values if the organization)

      The organization must Include (=accomodate, tolerate) the praxis.

      The praxis is working because :

      Your target’s reaction is your real action

      -radical activism instruction manuals

      The issue is never the issue – the issue is always the revolution.

      -SDS activist, as quoted by David Horowitz

      Reply

    2. Holy shit, the woman is unhinged:

      Her most recently documented controversy erupted three moths [sic – does no one proofread articles anymore?] ago, when Prescod-Weinstein appeared to have likened Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, in which Jewish partisans rose up to oppose Nazi efforts to transport the city’s remaining Jews to gas chambers.

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      1. Yeah. And before that, their treatment of Jerry and colleagues over the misleading Darwin cover illustration.

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    4. Jon Kay is a talented journalist. His treatment of CPW’s style and tactics in online warfare is fantastic: he shows how she works by adopting her writing tactics in his own article, then tells the reader what he’s doing. It’s so meta.

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    5. Re: “Intersectionality’s Cosmic Inquisitor”
      https://quillette.com/2024/02/15/intersectionalitys-cosmic-inquisitor/

      This article details one hell of a complicated story, which is nicely illustrated with a graphical representation of a ten-dimensional hypercube. (The human foibles described in the story, however, are so much more messy than what the pretty graphic suggests.)

      I can’t say that I could follow all the threads in the story, but I appreciated getting some additional background about the malicious and unsubstantiated attacks on James Webb. While people who defer to unreasonable social justice warriors might like to see the telescope that is named after Webb referred to with the unpronounceable letters “JWST,” I will continue referring to it at the Webb telescope.

      I also appreciated the additional background about the unfortunate construction hold on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii.

      It’s interesting that a recent letter published in AAAS Science — “Fund two extremely large US telescopes” (2/15/2024) — suggests that the National Science Foundation should contribute funding for both TMT in Hawaii and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile. An earlier editorial (“Extremely large telescopes at risk” 11/23/2023) had suggested that only one telescope should be supported.

      But given the budget gridlock in Congress caused by extremists in the Republican party, I wonder if either telescope will be built.

      Reply

  4. On this day:
    1900 – The Southern Cross expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink achieved a new Farthest South of 78° 50’S, making the first landing at the Great Ice Barrier.

    1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

    1936 – The Popular Front wins the 1936 Spanish general election.

    1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon.

    1940 – World War II: Altmark incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. A total of 299 British prisoners are freed.

    1942 – World War II: Attack on Aruba, first World War II German shots fired on a land based object in the Americas.

    1945 – The Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States, was signed into law.

    1959 – Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1.

    1960 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

    1961 – Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched.

    1968 – In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.

    1978 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago).

    1985 – Hezbollah is founded.

    2005 – The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its ratification by Russia.

    2005 – The National Hockey League cancels the entire 2004–05 regular season and playoffs.

    2006 – The last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

    Births:
    1514 – Georg Joachim Rheticus, Austrian cartographer and instrument maker (d. 1574).

    1822 – Francis Galton, English biologist and statistician (d. 1911).

    1843 – Henry M. Leland, American engineer and businessman, founded Cadillac and Lincoln (d. 1932).

    1893 – Katharine Cornell, American actress and producer (d. 1974).

    1896 – Eugénie Blanchard, French super-centenarian (d. 2010).

    1905 – Henrietta Barnett, British Women’s Royal Air Force officer (d. 1985).

    1906 – Vera Menchik, Russian-Czechoslovak-British chess player (d. 1944). [The first and longest-reigning Women’s World Chess Champion from 1927 to 1944, winning the championship eight times primarily in round-robin tournaments. In an era when women primarily competed against other women, Menchik was the first and only woman competing in master-level tournaments with the world’s best players.]

    1909 – Richard McDonald, American businessman, co-founded McDonald’s (d. 1998).

    1920 – Anna Mae Hays, American general (d. 2018).

    1926 – Margot Frank, German-Dutch holocaust victim (d. 1945).

    1926 – John Schlesinger, English actor and director (d. 2003). [Best known for Midnight Cowboy – and there’s my earworm of the day…]

    1927 – June Brown, English actress (d. 2022). [My dad appeared with her in the 1959 world debut of The Rough and Ready Lot by Alun Owen, who later wrote the screenplay for A Hard Day’s Night.]

    1935 – Sonny Bono, American actor, singer, and politician (d. 1998).

    1937 – Valentin Bondarenko, Soviet aviator and cosmonaut (d. 1961). [A Soviet fighter pilot selected in 1960 for training as a cosmonaut, he died as the result of burns sustained in a fire during a 15-day low-pressure endurance experiment in Moscow. The Soviet government concealed the death, along with Bondarenko’s membership in the cosmonaut corps, until 1980. A crater on the Moon’s far side is named after him.]

    1941 – Kim Jong-il, North Korean commander and politician, 2nd Supreme Leader of North Korea (d. 2011).

    1953 – Roberta Williams, American video game designer, co-founded Sierra Entertainment.

    1954 – Iain Banks, Scottish author and playwright (d. 2013).

    1958 – Ice-T, American rapper and actor.

    1961 – Andy Taylor, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

    1964 – Christopher Eccleston, English actor.

    1973 – Cathy Freeman, Australian sprinter.

    1979 – Valentino Rossi, Italian motorcycle racer.

    1989 – Elizabeth Olsen, American actress.

    1990 – The Weeknd, Canadian singer-songwriter and producer.

    The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop. (Terry Pratchett):
    1531 – Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1452).

    1907 – Giosuè Carducci, Italian poet and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1835).

    1992 – Angela Carter, English novelist, short story writer (b. 1940).

    1996 – Brownie McGhee, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1915).

    1998 – Mary Amdur, American toxicologist and public health researcher (b. 1908). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    2001 – William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist (b. 1915).

    2016 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian politician and diplomat, 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations (b. 1922).

    2019 – Bruno Ganz, Swiss actor (b. 1941).

    Reply

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

      Mary Ochsenhirt Amdur (born February 18, 1921, died on this day 1998) was an American toxicologist and public health researcher who worked primarily on pollution. She was charged with studying the effects of the 1948 Donora smog, specifically looking into the effects of inhaling sulfuric acid by experimenting on guinea pigs. Her findings on the respiratory effects related to sulfuric acid led to her being threatened, her funding being pulled, and her losing her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953. Undeterred, she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT and New York University. Despite the early controversy related to her work, it was used in the creation of standards in air pollution, and towards the end of her life she received numerous awards and accolades.

      Mary Amdur was born in 1921 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1943 from the University of Pittsburgh, moving to Cornell University to study biochemistry at the postgraduate level. She received her PhD in biochemistry in 1946, writing her thesis on the “Role of Manganese and Choline in Bone Formation in the Rat”. She met her husband, Benjamin Amdur, while they were both undergraduates at the University of Pittsburgh. They were married in October 1944 in Rochester, New York. After achieving her PhD, she worked at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary before joining Philip Drinker’s team at Harvard School of Public Health in 1949. Mary and Benjamin Amdur had one son, David, who was born in 1961.

      The American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) funded Drinker to investigate the 1948 Donora smog, as the company had an interest in showing that its primary pollutants (sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide) had not significantly contributed to the damage it caused. In the middle of 1953, Amdur and her husband, Benjamin, developed a method of spraying a combination mist of sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide into humid chambers containing guinea pigs to investigate the damage that it would cause to their lungs. The Amdurs bought their own guinea pigs for the mini project, and spent the 4th of July weekend doing the investigation.

      Amdur presented the results of the experiment, that inhaling the combination mist led to dramatic effects on breathing, loss of weight and lung disease, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science at their annual meeting in December 1953. She then wrote a damning paper on the effects of lower levels of sulfuric acid on human volunteers, levels similar to those of the 1948 smog. The paper, and her attempt to present the associated findings to the American Industrial Hygiene Association, caused her many difficulties. Amdur was accosted and threatened by two thugs in an elevator at the association’s 1954 annual meeting. She presented the findings regardless. As Drinker received funding from ASARCO, the company’s management assumed that they would hold sway over what was published. When Amdur returned from the meeting, Drinker demanded that Amdur remove her name from the paper and to withdraw it from The Lancet, despite the fact it had already been accepted. Amdur refused Drinker’s demands, so her position on his staff was removed and she was left to find new work. The paper was never published.

      She quickly found a new untenured research associate role under James Whittenberger, chair of physiology at Harvard School of Public Health, working with Dr. Jere Mead. She continued the research on air pollution, which she began under Drinker, until she left the school in 1977. Partly because of the difficulty in obtaining tenure at Harvard, both for herself and for her colleague Sheldon Murphy, and partly because she needed to work with engineers to produce suitable combustion products, she moved her research to the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and accepted a position as lecturer, securing funding for the next 12 years. When she moved, her new focus was the interaction of metals and gases in the inhalation of sulfuric acid. Dissatisfied with the attention the research received at MIT, she moved to the Institute of Environmental Medicine at New York University in 1989 as a senior research scientist, where she remained until her retirement in 1996.

      Amdur died on February 16, 1998, of a heart attack while returning from a holiday in Hawaii. At least three societies wrote obituaries and a toxicology book was dedicated to her memory. A Society of Toxicology Award was set up in her name by students and colleagues. The award, the Mary Amdur Student Award is presented annually at the meeting of the Inhalation and Respiratory Specialty Section. She is considered the “mother of smog research” and her work had “a major role in the development of air pollution standards.

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

      Reply

      1. Thanks for this. I’ve been in Pittsburgh for nearly 40yrs now, at Pitt for 3/4 of them, and had never heard of her.

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    2. 1961 Explorer 9 launched: this satellite was the first orbital success launched from NASA’s Wallops Island, Virginia launch facility. Previously, the facility, located along the Atlantic Ocean on Virginia’s Eastern Shore was home to the NACA (NASA’s predecessor agency) Pilotless Aircraft Research Division from Langley Research Center in which supersonic and hypersonic shapes were launched out over the ocean on the nose of ballistic missiles to acquire high speed aerodynamic flight data for comparison with theory and ground-based wind tunnel data. Launches were extended to high altitude atmospheric characterization with release and tracking of sodium vapor clouds and balloons in the late 1950’s (I recall the excitement in my childhood, of watching the vivid orange and green vapor clouds high in the still sunlit upper atmosphere from our darkening Newport News, Virginia backyard at sunset). And then with Explorer 9, an actual orbiting satellite, to study characteristics of the exosphere (between 300 and 1000 miles) as a part of NASA’s rapidly developing space program. Thanks for remembering, Jez!

      Reply

    3. 1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

      My youngest daughter when she was nought but a toddler used to speak of her life as “a little boy in Ancient Egypt”. I rationalize that the impetus for her ‘memories’ was a television documentary.

      However, I used to tell her that indeed she was related to King Tutenkhamun because she was my Princess Cute-n-Charmin’.

      Reply

    1. Used to be more freshwater fish available. Seems now everyone only has Cod. Even Culver’s only has Walleye around Lent. How is Cod sustainability these days? I know the atlantic fishery was a concern a while ago.

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  7. PCC(E) – sorry that comment no. 2 ran long. I couldn’t finish editing before the edit deadline.

    I’m pretty sure the links held it in “moderation”.

    Everything in moderation, the saying goes…

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  8. I’m calling BS on the latest Russia scare. What, precisely, is new here that hasn’t been a concern for US military planners for decades? The Soviets had an operational anti-satellite system during the Cold War. The Russians have developed significant counterspace capabilities since. Several countries, to include the US, have demonstrated ASAT capability. And now we are supposed to panic because the Russians might deploy a nuclear capability in space and fry not only our satellites but also their own? All of this general information is well known in defense circles and available in open-source documents. Something else is going on here.

    Is it coincidence that the scare-mongering is happening while the passage of the aid bill to Ukraine is at the US House and in jeopardy of not passing? Not that anyone in DC plays the game of politically-motivated leaks and spin, knowing that those in the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community who are honest, law-abiding, and in-the-know about current and past systems, plans, and wargames must remain silent in the face of such stories since virtually everything substantive about this topic is highly classified. It’s a bit like weapons of mass destruction—never heard any fear-mongering about those, have we? If you only knew what we know . . .

    https://www.csis.org/analysis/space-threat-assessment-2023

    Reply

    1. I agree. Not to mention that the USSR / Russia has had the capability to put nuclear weapons in orbit for decades, on short notice and without the need for a specific weapons program to develop that capability. All they’d need to do is stick a warhead in a Soyuz capsule.

      Reply

    2. I also find this curious, given all the attention given to Reagan’s “Star Wars” program(s) in the 1980s, which included research on exotic nuclear-explosion-pumped X-ray lasers. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems unlikely that the current commotion involves anything more than somewhat updated anti-satellite weapons, which have been around for decades. It does seem that there’s something else behind this that is more political and less hardware. But if it increases opportunities for funding Ukraine’s defense against Putin’s war, I’m all for it.

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  9. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expired 12/23 and supposedly, it was this Act that helped gather the intel on the Russian satellite program. I’ve read that the motivation for this disclosure was to get Congress to reauthorize the Act. It’s complicated… But if this puts extra pressure on the GOP to pass the aid bill to Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan, then I’d say that’s a good thing.

    This was supposed to be a response to Doug above…woops

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    1. Thanks, Mark. I had forgotten that FISA was sitting out there. There is almost always an ulterior motive.

      I welcome strategy and policy debates on the merits, and I have little beef with people who arrive at honest and informed disagreement. But I despise these a-holes who either leak or hint at classified data, manipulate the public, and try to scare ignorant people.

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  10. Hydrogen cyanide! I thought it was an interesting way, like a logo or something, to write HITCHENS. Why is the S left off?, I wondered…

    Reply

  11. More news:

    Hunter Biden and Burisma: FBI source charged with lying about Biden bribe claims

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68313086

    An ex-FBI informant has been charged with making false statements about an alleged bribery scheme involving a Ukrainian company, President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

    Alexander Smirnov, 43, is accused of lying about the Bidens accepting payments from energy firm Burisma.

    The Justice Department said Mr Smirnov gave false statements to the FBI because he disliked President Biden.

    Republicans had relied on his claims in an ongoing bid to impeach Mr Biden.

    …Mr Smirnov was arrested in Las Vegas on Thursday after returning from an overseas flight, the Justice Department said. He was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.

    In a 37-page indictment document released on Thursday, Special Counsel David Weiss – who has overseen the investigation of Hunter Biden – accused Mr Smirnov of providing “false derogatory information” to the FBI about the president and his son in June 2020.

    …Congressional Republicans have used Mr Smirnov’s allegations over the last year in their impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

    When announcing the inquiry, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family”.

    Republicans later successfully pushed the FBI to release their memos on Mr Smirnov’s claims.

    At the time, senior congressional Republicans acknowledged the allegation was unverified, and there was no evidence that Joe Biden had received any payments from Ukraine….

    Reply

  12. The two raccoons trying to open the door is a lot like indigenous knowledge. In the past as the raccoons were jumping like that a person on the other side just happened to open the door. Via this accidental operant conditioning variable-ratio schedule, the raccoons came to believe jumping opened that door.

    Reply

  13. Slightly off topic, but I think this will be a topic we’ll be looking at at WEIT soon-ish. I mentioned this trend (on the right mainly) gaining ground lately. I see it has reached the top: (from today)

    Elon Musk
    @elonmusk
    Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide.
    This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it.
    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1758569518442701250

    Funny from him, a huuuuge pro-natalist with 120 babies, but the panic is spreading. There are, of course, side effects from hormonal contraception. Way below the current level of panic on the right though. Is it a “trad” thing?
    D.A.
    NYC

    Reply

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