Monday: Hili dialogue

February 19, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the top o’ the work week: Monday February 19, 2024 and to National Chocolate Mint Day. The most famous species in the genus is, of course, Menta frangoensis, or the “Frango Mint” most popular in  Chicago (or, of course, via Amazon).

It’s also International Tug-of-War Day, Iwo Jima Day (the day in 1945 when the Battle of Iwo Jima began), National Arabian Horse Day, Presidents’ Day (Feb. 22 was George Washington’s Birthday), and, in Bulgaria, the Commemoration of Vasil Levski, who helped free Bulgaria from Ottoman rule.

There were actually two episodes of the famous raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945, and the second, from which the famous photo was taken, was also filmed. Here’s a video narrated by Joe Rosenthal, who took the Pulitzer-winning photo. It shows both the film and the photo. Rosenthal snapped his shutter at just the right moment.

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Times of Israel reports that the full Israeli Cabinet rejected unanimously the U.S. demand that Israel agree to the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a truce agreement. (I keep arguing that the U.S. should stop telling Israel how to conduct the war, and also outlining the present dangers of a “two-state solution”, which, as a reader noted, won’t solve anything.)

Israel’s cabinet on Sunday unanimously approved a declaration rejecting “international diktats” seeking to push Palestinian statehood, in the wake of reports that the US and several Arab partners were preparing a detailed plan for a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians that includes a “firm timeline” for a Palestinian state.

“Israel utterly rejects international diktats regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” the cabinet decision read. “A settlement, if it is to be reached, will come about solely through direct negotiations between the parties, without preconditions.

“Israel will continue to oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state,” the motion added. “Such recognition in the wake of the October 7th massacre would be a massive and unprecedented reward to terrorism and would foil any future peace settlement.”

This part makes me laugh because it’s so arrantly ignorant:

In response, a US State Department spokesperson told The Times of Israel that “the best way to achieve an enduring end to the crisis in Gaza that provides lasting peace and security, for Israelis and Palestinian’s alike, is our strong commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state.

“As such, the United States continues to support the two-state solution and to oppose policies that endanger its viability or contradict our mutual interests and values.”

More from the ToI (the original WaPo article is here).

The Israeli cabinet statement echoed comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference on Saturday evening in response to a Washington Post report on the matter.

Members of Netanyahu’s party and ministers on the right flank of his coalition publicly blasted the report last week, with one Likud minister calling for Israel to threaten in response to cancel the Oslo Accords that created the Palestinian Authority. But Sunday’s statement was also approved by the centrist members of the emergency government, including ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot.

Face it: Israel is going to keep fighting this war, with or without the approbation of the U.S., other Arab nations, or the EU.  They want to end the terrorism for good, and a start to that is eliminating Hamas.

*Now the US MSM is unhappy with this declaration, of course, because it likely means that Israel will win this war.  Papers like the NYT want Israel to lose. But the Wall Street Journal reports that some countries may go ahead and recognize a Palestinian state without Israeli cooperation. If that isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! It won’t solve the problem of terrorism by Palestinians on Israel, the bellicose nature of their relationship, and, most important, Israel won’t recognize that state!

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voted to oppose plans by some allies to recognize a Palestinian state without Israeli participation in talks, but signaled willingness to engage in direct negotiations with Palestinians, something that hasn’t taken place in over a decade.

The vote, urged by Netanyahu, came after the U.K. and France said that they were open to recognizing a Palestinian state amid increasing pressure on Israel to create a viable path toward a two-state solution. Recognizing a Palestinian state without Israeli approval would mark a shift from longstanding U.S. and European policy, which has sought a negotiated solution between the two sides that would result in two internationally recognized states living side by side.

This is beyond stupid, as it solves nothing. Now this news got me worried that the UN could itself create a Palestinian state without Israel’s approval. But looking up the procedure for such establishment, I find that to establish a new state,  9 of the 15 members of the UN security council have to approve of the state’s existence, so long as none of the five permanent members object to it.  If it passes that way, and if 2/3 of the General Assembly then approves of the state, it is henceforth in existence. The kicker here, of course, is that the U.S. is one of the permanent members, and it will not vote in favor of a Palestinian state so long as Israel objects (which it will, of course). So my worries on that account are dispelled.

*Marilynne Robinson wrote some good novels, but she went off the rails vis-à-vis religion some time ago, and yet people still respect her lucubrations about the undetectable divine. One example is an interview with her in yesterday’s NY Times. And they get a religious person, David Marchese (he’s nominally Jewish, or at least a “seeker”) to ask her the softball questions about God. Why on earth do people care about this? But I present it for your delectation.

Are there still fundamental theological questions that you have? Or maybe more simply, what doubt do you have? 

My theological question is how to reconcile the cruelty of the world with the idea of God’s omnipotence, and I simply assume that’s something I will not understand in this life.

She may not understand it, but she believes it!

Hearing you say that — I’m embarrassing myself, but it’s going to compel a confession from me. One real motivation for why I wanted to talk to you is that there are experiences of transcendence that you write about in your books that connect people to God or the divine. I feel as if I have transcendent experiences: being on my train ride into Midtown Manhattan and seeing an egret in the water of industrial New Jersey; listening to a song and being blown away that people can create that beauty;experiencing the goodness of my family — any number of things. And I was raised with some religious instruction: I had a bar mitzvah; half of my family is Catholic.But for whatever reason, my heart cannot osmosize religious feeling. What am I missing? 

Maybe nothing. Perhaps when you say the word “God” for yourself, the conception that you have is something that’s foreign to your own higher experience. So trust your experience. There’s a holiness in the fact that people are living in the world in a way that makes them feel that the world is addressed to them, and I think that’s much closer to the divine, much closer to religion, than the idea of trying to bring the idea of God, which has been abused historically, into the frame that your expectations may create for that figure.

No, living in the world thinking that the whole schmear is addressed to you is called “solipsism”, not holiness.  I suppose any bird or possum also thinks the world is addressed to them, too! This is the result of natural selection acting to make animals sufficiently aware to try to keep themselves alive. This is the worst exchange, though:

I have no remotely smooth segue to the next question: I have a theory about the lapsing of your relationship with Obama. You said that you felt as though you didn’t know how to speak to him anymore. It suggested to me that you saw him as a kind of avatar of American democracy. Then when he left office and was in the world of multimillion-dollar book deals and Hollywood deals, that wasn’t something that you could connect with symbolically, and that’s why you felt like you couldn’t talk to him. Does that seem plausible as a theory of a relationship between two people I know nothing about?

I think it’s pretty descriptive actually. My admiration for him is very great, and I’m sure that he’s doing things of real value. And my not finding an imaginative way into that — it’s certainly no less-than-positive judgment. I think he has stepped back because he does not want to be seen as a competitor with President Biden. Because Obama’s signature quality was youth, and Biden’s is age. Frankly, I’m less than a year younger than Joe Biden, so I believe utterly in his competence, his brilliance, his worldview. I really do. You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing. Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him.

Now there’s a campaign slogan: “Biden 2024: A Gift From God!”  Wouldn’t Mayor Pete be an even better gift from God! Robinson used to preach at her church, and this reminds me of what Hitchens said about Jerry Falwell, “you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if you’ll just get yourself called Reverend.”

*Usually hospice care if provided for people only if, under normal conditions, they are expected to live six months or less with their illness or condition. But it was a year ago yesterday that the seemingly invincible Jimmy Carter went into hospice care, and he’s still with us:

Since Jimmy Carter entered hospice care at his home in south Georgia one year ago, the former U.S. president has celebrated his 99th birthday, enjoyed tributes to his legacy and lost his wife of 77 years.

Rosalynn Carter, who died in November, about six months after the Carter family disclosed her dementia diagnosis, lived only a few days under hospice supervision, with her frail husband at her bedside.

Experts on end-of-life care say the Carters’ different paths show the range of an oft-misunderstood service. Those advocates commend the Carter family for demonstrating the realities of aging, dementia and death. They express hope that the attention spurs more Americans to seek out services intended to help patients and families in the latter stages of life.

“It’s been massive to have the Carters be so public,” said Angela Novas, chief medical officer for the Hospice Foundation of America, based in Washington. “It has shed hospice in a new light, and it’s raised questions” for people to learn more.

The Carter family released a statement ahead of Sunday, the one-year anniversary of their announcement that the 39th president would forgo future hospital stays and enter end-of-life care at home in Plains.

“President Carter continues to be at home with his family,” the statement said. “The family is pleased that his decision last year to enter hospice care has sparked so many family discussions across the country on an important subject.”

To be clear, the family has not confirmed whether Jimmy Carter remains in hospice care or has been discharged, as sometimes happens when even a frail patient’s health stabilizes.

I’m not exactly sure what “stabilizes” means here, but the last time we saw Jimmy, at Rosalynn’s memorial service in November, he didn’t look all that great:

So I suspect he’s pretty much comatose right now, and that’s sad. Still, although I wasn’t a big fan of him as President, I consider him the best ex-President in my lifetime. He lived in Plains, and simply, and didn’t try to parlay his Presidency into a lot of dosh, as the Obamas (and all other ex-Presidents) have done.  And Carter actually nailed houses together for Habitat for Humanity. It’s amazing that he’s lived that long, but whatever state he’s in, I hope the tough old guy is comfortable

*Finally, the WaPo asks, “Do apes joke around?” Good question, and the answer is “yes!” (h/t Barry)

If you have ever watched a group of great apes at the zoo or elsewhere, the primates are dynamic. They pick dirt and insects off one another, play games and get into scuffles. Sometimes, it even looks like our relatives pull pranks, but that behavior has never been formally examined — until now.

For the first time, researchers have detailed how great apes playfully tease. They found that four species of great apes joke around, suggesting the human cognitive tools that help us learn humor may date back at least 13 million years.

“Playful teasing is a thing,” said Erica Cartmill, an author of the study. The capacity to joke brings up a lot of questions “about what animals understand about other animals’ minds, expectations and the strength of their relationships.”

Funny primate behavior isn’t a bananas observation. Famed primatologist Jane Goodall described young chimpanzees disturbing older chimpanzees that were resting, and ones playfully jumping, biting and pulling others’ hair.

“This is not a behavior that was never observed,” said Isabelle Laumer, who is the lead author of the new study and studies critically endangered great apes. “It was just that we were the first ones that really systematically had a look at the playful teasing behaviors and studied them and just tried to describe them.”

Laumer and her colleagues watched 75 hours of orangutan, chimpanzee, bonobo and gorilla interactions at the San Diego and Leipzig zoos. They specifically followed juveniles and analyzed spontaneous social interactions that seemed playful or provocative. The team observed the teaser’s actions, movements and facial expressions, as well as how the teased primate reacted.

They found 18 different types of good-natured teasing, where an ape provoked another unsuspecting ape in a playful manner. The most common behaviors across all four species were poking, hitting, hindering movement, body slamming and pulling on another’s body part — all behaviors observed among humans, too.

The paper is here for free, but there’s a brand new video where you can see the playing behavior in chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. It seems more like “bothering” than “playing”, but what do I know?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili somehow got wet!

Hili: I’m a wet, unhappy cat.
A: But it’s not raining.
Hili: What do you know about it when you are sitting in a warm room?
In Polish:
Hili: Jestem mokrym, nieszczęśliwym kotem.
Ja: Przecież nie pada.
Hili: A co ty o tym wiesz, jak siedzisz w ciepłym pokoju?
And a photo of Baby Kulka:

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

From Absurd Science Project Uncensored 2. What are these things used for?

From reader Divy, perhaps not safe for work, but still. . . .

From Ant:

From Masih, meeting the Iranian protestor whose eye was shot out:

Translation from the German:

In #iran the regime had shot her in the eye. She became blind in one eye. Since then #KosarEftekhari was in contact with activist @AlinejadMasih until Masih helped Kosar escape from Iran. The two met for the first time at #MSC2024 in Munich. Kosar said at the security conference: the regime can take away our eyes, our health, but not our hope

From Bryan, a clever bird feeder (cats would love it):

From Jez, who sez, “This statement from Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta (and leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP)) is encouraging.”

From Barry, who thinks this tweet won’t ever be topped. I even wrote a poem:

Here’s a cat who thinks he’s small
But he isn’t really small at all:

From Malcolm: a trusting cat (sound up):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a Dutch girl, age seven, gassed upon arrival:

TWO tweets from Dr. Cobb, who’s back home now. The first is disturbing:

Piccolo with raven accompaniment (sound up, of course). The raven sings well!

20 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “No, living in the world thinking that the whole schmear is addressed to you is called “solipsism”, not holiness. I suppose any bird or possum also thinks the world is addressed to them, too!”

    My cats are CONVINCED that the world is addressed to them.

    L

    Reply

    1. It is perfectly accurate to point out the link between solipsism and ‘spirituality’ – they are closer than most people think. This Robinson character is very good at painting others with what she would like to see in them (Obama, Biden) which is, of course, the trait of a solipsist. How disillusioning for her when they turn out to be their own man, rather than what she had imagined (or when she finally has to accept that Biden is not quite as sharp as he once was…)
      And with respect to the upright character of Carter, I once read a review of a book about him that made me realise he was capable of some pretty devious plays:
      https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-outlier

      Reply

      1. Thanks for the link to the review of the Carter biography by Kai Bird (co-author of the Oppenheimer biography on which Christopher Nolan’s biopic is based).

        Reply

  2. “Now this news got me worried that the UN could itself create a Palestinian state without Israel’s approval.”

    Not to worry. The UN does not have the auspices to create a state, or to make or redraw a border. They can pass all the Resolutions regarding UN recognition they want, but the UN can not make binding International law. It is not a legislative body. This is the key difference between the UN and the League of Nations.

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  3. On this day:
    1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.

    1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England.

    1807 – Former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Wakefield, Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert.

    1836 – King William IV signs Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia.

    1878 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.

    1913 – Pedro Lascuráin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes; this is the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country.

    1942 – World War II: Nearly 250 Japanese warplanes attack the northern Australian city of Darwin, killing 243 people.

    1942 – World War II: United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps. [Also rescinded on this day in 1976 by President Ford.]

    1945 – World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on the island of Iwo Jima.

    1953 – Book censorship in the United States: The Georgia Literature Commission is established.

    1954 – Transfer of Crimea: The Soviet Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the transfer of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.

    1963 – The publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique reawakens the feminist movement in the United States as women’s organizations and consciousness raising groups spread.

    1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital.

    2002 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.

    Births:
    1473 – Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish mathematician and astronomer (d. 1543).

    1630 – Shivaji, Indian warrior-king and the founder of Maratha Empire.

    1660 – Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist (d. 1742). [Credited with conducting the first scientific investigation into carbon monoxide poisoning caused by burning charcoal.]

    1717 – David Garrick, English actor, playwright, and producer (d. 1779).

    1859 – Svante Arrhenius, Swedish physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1927).

    1877 – Gabriele Münter, German painter (d. 1962).

    1896 – André Breton, French poet and author (d. 1966).

    1902 – Kay Boyle, American novelist, short story writer, and educator (d. 1992). [She was a Guggenheim Fellow and O. Henry Award winner.]

    1911 – Merle Oberon, Indian-American actress (d. 1979).

    1915 – Dick Emery, English actor and comedian (d. 1983).

    1924 – Lee Marvin, American actor (d. 1987).

    1930 – John Frankenheimer, American director and producer (d. 2002).

    1939 – Erin Pizzey, English activist and author, founded Refuge. [Her controversial views on the role of women in domestic violence led to threats which she claims eventually led to her exile from the UK.]

    1940 – Smokey Robinson, American singer-songwriter and producer.

    1943 – Tim Hunt, English biochemist and academic, Nobel laureate. [Cancelled for his ill-advised comments about his “trouble with girls” in labs.]

    1946 – Karen Silkwood, American technician and activist (d. 1974).

    1948 – Tony Iommi, English guitarist and songwriter.

    1950 – Andy Powell, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1952 – Amy Tan, American novelist, essayist, and short story writer.

    1955 – Jeff Daniels, American actor and playwright.

    1957 – Falco, Austrian singer-songwriter, rapper, and musician (d. 1998).

    1957 – Ray Winstone, English actor.

    1958 – Helen Fielding, English author and screenwriter. [Creator of Bridget Jones.]

    1958 – Steve Nieve, English keyboard player and composer.

    1961 – Justin Fashanu, English footballer (d. 1998). [The first professional footballer to be openly gay and also one of the first footballers to command a £1 million transfer fee, with his transfer from Norwich City to Nottingham Forest in 1981. He died by suicide facing charges of sexual assault in the US, which he denied.]

    1963 – Seal, English singer-songwriter.

    1964 – Jennifer Doudna, American biochemist. [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1971 – Jeff Kinney, American author and illustrator. [Author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.]

    1981 – Beth Ditto, American singer.

    Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences. (Soren Kierkegaard):
    1553 – Erasmus Reinhold, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1511).

    1716 – Dorothe Engelbretsdatter, Norwegian author and poet (b. 1634). [She has been described as Norway’s first recognized female author as well as Norway’s first feminist before feminism became a recognized concept.]

    1806 – Elizabeth Carter, English poet and translator (b. 1717).

    1837 – Georg Büchner, German-Swiss poet and playwright (b. 1813). [His literary achievements, though few in number, are generally held in great esteem in Germany and it is widely believed that, had it not been for his early death, he might have joined such central German literary figures as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller at the summit of their profession.]

    1916 – Ernst Mach, Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher (b. 1838). [The anniversary of his birth was marked in yesterday’s list.]

    1952 – Knut Hamsun, Norwegian novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859).

    1980 – Bon Scott, Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter (b. 1946). [“Have a drink on me”, as his band mates said on their next album.]

    1994 – Derek Jarman, English director and set designer (b. 1942).

    2002 – Sylvia Rivera, American transgender LGBT activist (b. 1951). [Falsely claimed to have played a leading role in the 1969 Stonewall riots.]

    2001 – Stanley Kramer, American director and producer (b. 1913).

    2016 – Umberto Eco, Italian novelist, literary critic, and philosopher (b. 1932).

    2016 – Harper Lee, American author (b. 1926).

    Reply

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

      Jennifer Anne Doudna ForMemRS (/ˈdaʊdnə/; born on this day in 1964) is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a Nobel in the sciences. She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Emmanuelle Charpentier, “for the development of a method for genome editing.” She is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair Professor in the department of chemistry and the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.

      Doudna graduated from Pomona College in 1985 and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1989. Apart from her professorship at Berkeley, she is also founder and chair of the governance board of the Innovative Genomics Institute, which she co-founded in 2014. Doudna is also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, and an adjunct professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

      In 2012, Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were the first to propose that CRISPR-Cas9 (enzymes from bacteria that control microbial immunity) could be used for programmable editing of genomes, which has been called one of the most significant discoveries in the history of biology. Since then, Doudna has been a leading figure in what is referred to as the “CRISPR revolution” for her fundamental work and leadership in developing CRISPR-mediated genome editing.

      Her many other awards and fellowships include the 2000 Alan T. Waterman Award for her research on the structure of a ribozyme, as determined by X-ray crystallography and the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology, with Charpentier. She has been a co-recipient of the Gruber Prize in Genetics (2015), the Tang Prize (2016), the Canada Gairdner International Award (2016), and the Japan Prize (2017). She was named one of the Time 100 most influential people in 2015, and in 2023 was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

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

      Reply

  4. My opinion of mint chocolate is very similar to Jerry’s opinion of candy corn. I am happy somebody likes it, but none for me, thanks.

    Reply

  5. Nobody gonna comment on the Iwo Jima post? I had never seen the movie, nor had I heard the photographer’s commentary. I found it chilling to watch and listen to. Could almost smell the cordite in the air. Thanks for this post, Jerry!

    Reply

    1. I’m almost certain that I saw this video a few years ago. It’s very moving indeed. The photograph is perfect—an image for the ages.

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  6. I was glad to read that the entire Israeli cabinet rejected the dumb idea of bringing a Palestinian state into existence both against the will of Israelis and, it seems to me, against the will of the Palestinians themselves. For any Palestinian state forced upon the world would inevitably allow the State of Israel to continue to exist, and this is not what the Palestinians want. They want it all—from the river to the sea—so surely even the Palestinians don’t want what those conspiring to give them their own state are proposing to deliver.

    Creating a state under the idea that such a creation would make the problems go away is unbelievably naive. And, of course, creating a Palestinian state now would be interpreted by terrorist groups the world over as endorsing terrorism as a legitimate form of political action. It’s a reckless act of desperation that has no hope of producing a durable peace.

    It’s also noteworthy that it’s not just Prime Minister Netanyahu who thinks that rewarding terrorists with a state is wrong; it’s the entire cabinet and the majority of the Israeli people.

    Reply

  7. There’s a holiness in the fact that people are living in the world in a way that makes them feel that the world is addressed to them, and I think that’s much closer to the divine, much closer to religion…

    The religious are so resourceful. One of the more popular explanations for why people believe in God tho there be no God is that it’s a runaway byproduct of a brain evolved to work within a highly social species. We see faces in the clouds, discern messages from random events in nature, and interpret an environment that’s indifferent to our presence as if we were instead a significant focus of attention. It’s a primal instinct towards socialization that we unlearn as we mature enough to consider matters objectively and make rational distinctions.

    So let’s take this pretty devastating takedown of supernatural thinking and turn it into a Reason to Believe. Nice.

    Reply

  8. I have a visceral reaction every time I hear of the US pushing a Palestinian state. HAMAS and their ilk have been like mad dogs sneaking up to bite at every opportunity ever since Israel became a state and they never keep their part of any agreement.
    The Iwo Jima post aroused more positive emotions. Thank you for the video Jerry!
    I really enjoyed the singing raven. These wonderful birds visit my yard here in Montana. Maybe if I sit on my deck and play my fiddle one might come and sing for me….

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  9. I’m questioning the assumption here that secularization will bring a world of peace, love and understanding – it’s just not that simple. Basically I attribute wars to simple biological population growth outstripping the natural, agricultural and industrial resources needed to support all those people.

    Anyway, found this about John Locke interesting:

    Locke agreed that the native peoples had no right to life, liberty or property. The “kings” of America, he decreed, had no legal right of ownership to their territory. He also endorsed a master’s “Absolute, arbitrary, despotical power” over a slave, which included “the power to kill him at any time”. The pioneers of secularism seemed to be falling into the same old habits as their religious predecessors. Secularism was designed to create a peaceful world order, but the church was so intricately involved in the economic, political and cultural structures of society that the secular order could only be established with a measure of violence. In North America, where there was no entrenched aristocratic government, the disestablishment of the various churches could be accomplished with relative ease. But in France, the church could be dismantled only by an outright assault; far from being experienced as a natural and essentially normative arrangement, the separation of religion and politics could be experienced as traumatic and terrifying.

    During the French revolution, one of the first acts of the new national assembly on November 2, 1789, was to confiscate all church property to pay off the national debt: secularisation involved dispossession, humiliation and marginalisation. This segued into outright violence during the September massacres of 1792, when the mob fell upon the jails of Paris and slaughtered between two and three thousand prisoners, many of them priests. Early in 1794, four revolutionary armies were dispatched from Paris to quell an uprising in the Vendée against the anti-Catholic policies of the regime. Their instructions were to spare no one. At the end of the campaign, General François-Joseph Westermann reportedly wrote to his superiors: “The Vendée no longer exists. I have crushed children beneath the hooves of our horses, and massacred the women … The roads are littered with corpses.”

    Reply

    1. Basically I attribute wars to simple biological population growth outstripping the natural, agricultural and industrial resources needed to support all those people.

      Maybe some wars, esp. ancient wars, but not many (any?) modern wars, esp. those that involved the US. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan/Iraq, were fought because of ideology or in the case of Afghanistan, revenge; they had nothing to do with biological population or resources. Then there’s WWI which doesn’t fit into your attribution (“simple” indeed). And WWI was the underpinnings of WWII, not population growth, etc. Then there are the many wars fought because of religion: Crusades, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan/India.

      Reply

    2. Wars are fought because many men lust for power and wealth. They are prone to hubris, claiming certainty in matters of importance to them, and desiring to impose their will on others. Or as another once said, “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.”

      Politics and religion simply organize and manifest, and potentially exacerbate, these fundamental traits in men and women; they don’t cause those traits. Do away with religion if you will, both its inflammatory and its mediating tendencies. Men will still brutalize each other. It’s sad that after the 20th century we still need to learn this lesson. But there are always those who will pine for the idyllic days of the Garden—and they will try to force the rest of us to live their version of it.

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  11. Very interesting, John Locke – the philosopher who gave us the Separation of Church and State (which I have no problem with, my only beef is with the militant atheism of Stalin and this site) – writes in A Letter Concerning Toleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Letter_Concerning_Toleration

    “Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the Church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated.”

    Now you can retort with the Plato argument and enlightened self interest – which I also champion to the max, just with the observation that, it ain’t working – something in families, schools, whatever – is failing to raise moral citizens of a free nation.

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    1. Nobody rose to the “militant atheism” bait so I’ll bite. I started to write my own reply, but nothing can top Hitchens.

      “Ah, well, what an incredibly stupid question [why would a militant atheist want to take religious belief away from the little people?]…I hope I’ve made it clear, that I’m perfectly happy for people to have these toys [stupid religious beliefs], and to play with them at home, and hug them to themselves and so on, and to share them with other people who come around and play with the toys. So that’s absolutely fine. They are not to make me play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don’t bring the toys to my house, don’t say my children must play with these toys, don’t say my toys might be a condom – here we go again – are not allowed by their toys. I’m not going to have any of that.”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFQODNlFtc0 (there are lots of versions of this same extemporaneous summary of “militant atheism”).

      Reply

  12. There is an urban myth that McDonald’s McRib sandwich is made from pork rectums. I also recently watched James May’s “Our Man in India.” One of his Indian guides said she thought that calamari was pork rectums. Just random flotsam in my brain, sorry.

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  13. I mean no disrespect and this may sound nit-picky but it sounds strange to me to say that particular media outlets (NYT, WA-PO, etc) “don’t want” Israel to win the war. Are we attributing that desire to the editors? To particular journalists? Are we lumping all MSM in the US together and declaring them all be 100% biased and actually rooting against Israel? Attributing desires to a news outlet is weird. Along these lines, if these outlets truly are–as a whole– against Israel, then why are we reading any of their output? Just to slam them? Let’s do that. Let’s slam them, once and for all, and be done with them.
    I’m prepared to be personally slammed for saying this.

    Reply

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