Wednesday: Hili dialogue

34 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

1. My favorite line in the Trump AI video: “It’s hardly worth peeing out of it.”

   1. We can watch and share as many anti-Trump videos and memes as possible, so we can have a laugh. But be ready to see Biden portrayed similarly, as mamy on the Right really do want to “stick it to the Libs.” Because the Left has been sticking it to all Trump supporters, since forever.

      Does anyone truly think this bothers Trump himself? Hero or villain, doesn’t matter, he thrives on attention.

      You don’t put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it, you deprive it of oxygen.

      1. Does anyone truly think this bothers Trump himself?

         I doubt he’ll see it, but if he did, YES, of course it would bother him. His skin is thinner than gossamer.

         1. A truly thin skinned, man would have been broken by the Stormy Daniels graphic TMI revelations on his penis. He barely said anything, as it was merely a financial transaction, something for his lawyers to handle. Haters gonna hate.

            His skin thick as it needs to be.

2. Round of applause for the Sticky buns joke. Proper Dad joke. I’m stealing it.

   1. Add some nuts and we have Nathan Lane’s “The schnecken beckon(s)” (sic) as Albert in the Birdcage. Also my absolute favorite as a child every Spring when my grandmother would send a package of bakery goods from a kosher bakery in downtown Cincinnati.

3. The Alabama Supreme Court decision has me wondering if women will have to leave the State to get hysterectomies.

   1. Why?

      1. Hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus and cervix. Supracervical hysterectomy refers to removal of the uterus while the cervix is spared. These procedures may also involve removal of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and other surrounding structures.

         Wouldn’t surprise me if human eggs are next on the list to receive special status from these fundy zeolots.

         1. What? And place equal value of mere eggs to every sacred sperm?

         2. Given the age and fertility potential of most women getting hysterectomies — not many seek them merely for permanent contraception — the number of as-yet haploid children who will be snuffed out of existence by the operation must be very small, whether the ovaries are removed also or not.

            Now, even a secular state has an interest in promoting fertility among the productive classes when fertility rates are below replacement, necessitating the alternative of unrestricted mass immigration of workers. Discouraging permanent surgical contraception (or even any contraception at all) could be a reasonable goal of public policy that would not violate church-state separation if worded carefully. Just be careful with the “whereas” ‘s. Nothing works in this policy space, though. Might as well resign ourselves to the inevitable.

            Pace Su Gould, the preciousness of eggs exceeds by hundreds of million-fold that of sperm, Monty Python notwithstanding.

   2. Good wonder. I’m sure it will effectively destroy any IVF clinics in the state.

4. Dear readers across the Pond. I’ve just been watching an amusing video by Konstantin Kisin on Tucker Carlsen and the Great Supermarket Trolley Coin Mechanism. Which leads me to ask, is this really a wonderous novelty to Americans?

   1. No. Absolutely not. Aldi in our area (Northeast Wisconsin, USA) has them.

      1. We’ve got them near Toronto. Tucker’s an idiot🤢
         Jon Stewart just did a great piece on him.

5. On this day:
   1613 – Mikhail I is unanimously elected Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia.

   1797 – A force of 1,400 French soldiers invaded Britain at Fishguard in support of the Society of United Irishmen. They were defeated by 500 British reservists.

   1804 – The first self-propelling steam locomotive makes its outing at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales.

   1808 – Without a previous declaration of war, Russian troops cross the border to Sweden at Abborfors in eastern Finland, thus beginning the Finnish War, in which Sweden will lose the eastern half of the country (i.e. Finland) to Russia.

   1828 – Initial issue of the Cherokee Phoenix is the first periodical to use the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah.

   1848 – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.

   1878 – The first telephone directory is issued in New Haven, Connecticut.

   1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

   1916 – World War I: In France, the Battle of Verdun begins.

   1918 – The last Carolina parakeet [a male named Incas] dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. [The species was declared extinct in 1939.]

   1925 – The New Yorker publishes its first issue.

   1937 – The League of Nations bans foreign national “volunteers” in the Spanish Civil War.

   1945 – World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, Japanese kamikaze planes sink the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea and damage the USS Saratoga.

   1947 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first “instant camera”, the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.

   1952 – The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to “set the people free”.

   1958 – The CND symbol, aka peace symbol, commissioned by the Direct Action Committee in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom.

   1965 – Malcolm X is gunned down while giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

   1971 – The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna.

   1972 – The Soviet uncrewed spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.

   1972 – United States President Richard Nixon visits China to normalize Sino-American relations.

   1974 – The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt.

   1975 – Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison.

   1994 – Aldrich Ames is arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for selling national secrets to the Soviet Union in Arlington County, Virginia.

   1995 – Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

   2022 – In the Russo-Ukrainian crisis Russian President Vladimir Putin declares the Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic as independent from Ukraine, and moves troops into the region. The action is condemned by the United Nations.

   Births:
   1621 – Rebecca Nurse, Massachusetts colonist, executed as a witch (d. 1692).

   1788 – Francis Ronalds, British scientist, inventor and engineer who was knighted for developing the first working electric telegraph (d. 1873).

   1794 – Antonio López de Santa Anna, Mexican general and politician, 8th President of Mexico (d. 1876). [President of the Mexican Republic four times and of the United Mexican States another four times. One of his prosthetic cork legs was taken as a war trophy and is held by the Illinois State Military Museum. A second peg leg was also captured by the 4th Illinois and reportedly used by the soldiers as a baseball bat; it is displayed at the home of Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby (who served in the regiment).]

   1875 – Jeanne Calment, French super-centenarian, oldest verified person ever (d. 1997).

   1893 – Andrés Segovia, Spanish guitarist (d. 1987).

   1903 – Anaïs Nin, French-American essayist and memoirist (d. 1977).

   1907 – W. H. Auden, British-American poet, playwright, and composer (d. 1973).

   1910 – Douglas Bader, English captain and pilot (d. 1982). [Bader joined the RAF in 1928, and was commissioned in 1930. In December 1931, while attempting some aerobatics, he crashed and lost both his legs. Having been on the brink of death, he recovered, retook flight training, passed his check flights and then requested reactivation as a pilot. Although there were no regulations applicable to his situation, he was retired against his will on medical grounds. After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, however, Douglas Bader returned to the RAF and was accepted as a pilot. He became a flying ace and was credited with 22 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probables, one shared probable and 11 enemy aircraft damaged.]

   1915 – Claudia Jones, Trinidad-British journalist and activist (d. 1964).

   1915 – Ann Sheridan, American actress and singer (d. 1967).

   1924 – Dorothy Blum, American computer scientist and cryptanalyst (d. 1980).

   1924 – Thelma Estrin, American computer scientist and engineer (d. 2014).

   1924 – Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean educator and politician, 2nd President of Zimbabwe (d. 2019).

   1925 – Sam Peckinpah, American director and screenwriter (d. 1984).

   1933 – Nina Simone, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 2003).

   1940 – John Lewis, American activist and politician (d. 2020).

   1943 – David Geffen, American businessman, co-founded DreamWorks and Geffen Records.

   1946 – Tyne Daly, American actress and singer.

   1946 – Alan Rickman, English actor and director (d. 2016).

   1955 – Kelsey Grammer, American actor, singer, and producer.

   1962 – Chuck Palahniuk, American novelist and journalist.

   1962 – David Foster Wallace, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 2008).

   1964 – Mark Kelly, American astronaut and politician.
   1964 – Scott Kelly, American astronaut.

   1969 – James Dean Bradfield, Welsh singer-songwriter and guitarist.

   1977 – Rhiannon Giddens, American musician.

   1986 – Charlotte Church, Welsh singer-songwriter and actress.

   1987 – Elliot Page, Canadian actor. [Formerly Ellen Page.]

   1996 – Sophie Turner, English actress.

   No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually. (Billy Graham):
   1554 – Hieronymus Bock, German botanist and physician (b. 1498).

   1595 – Robert Southwell, English priest and poet (b. 1561).

   1677 – Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher and scholar (b. 1632).

   1938 – George Ellery Hale, American astronomer and academic (b. 1868).

   1945 – Eric Liddell, Scottish rugby player and runner (b. 1902).

   1974 – Tim Horton, Canadian ice hockey player and businessman, co-founded Tim Hortons (b. 1930).

   1993 – Inge Lehmann, Danish seismologist and geophysicist (b. 1888). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1999 – Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918).

   2002 – John Thaw, English actor and producer (b. 1942).

   2015 – Clark Terry, American trumpet player, composer, and educator (b. 1920).

   2018 – Billy Graham, American evangelist (b. 1918).

   2019 – Stanley Donen, American film director (b. 1924).

   2019 – Peter Tork, American musician and actor (b. 1942).

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

      Inge Lehmann ForMemRS (born 13 May 1888, died on this day in 1993) was a Danish seismologist and geophysicist who is known for her discovery in 1936 of the solid inner core that exists within the molten outer core of the Earth. The seismic discontinuity in the speed of seismic waves at depths between 190 and 250 km is named the Lehmann discontinuity after her. Lehmann is considered to be a pioneer among women and scientists in seismology research.

      Lehmann was born and grew up in Copenhagen and was very shy as a child, a behaviour that continued throughout her life. She received her school education at Fællesskolen, a remarkably progressive high school that taught women and men the same subjects together. This school was led by Hanna Adler, Niels Bohr’s aunt. According to Lehmann, her father and Adler were the most significant influences on her intellectual development.

      At 18, Lehmann achieved a first rank mark in the entrance exam for Copenhagen University, where in 1907 she started her studies in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. She continued her studies of mathematics in Cambridge from 1910 to 1911 at Newnham College. There, Lehmann faced gender-based [sex-based!] adversities, not being allowed to fully participate in her studies, nor to achieve higher positions of education. As a result, Lehmann had a mental breakdown during her first year in 1911, and in 1912 returned to Denmark. She developed good computational skills in an actuary office she worked in for a few years until she resumed her studies at Copenhagen University in 1918. She completed the candidata magisterii degree in physical science and mathematics in two years, graduating in 1920. After a short period of time, studying mathematics at the University of Hamburg, in 1923 she accepted a position at Copenhagen University as an assistant to J.F. Steffensen, the professor of actuarial science.

      Lehmann once complained to her nephew Niels Groes about the incompetence of her male colleagues, writing: “You should know how many incompetent men I had to compete with—in vain.”

      In 1925, Lehmann was assigned to be the assistant of seismologist Niels Erik Nørlund. She took an interest in his field, and she began studying it on her own. She was chosen as a delegate for Denmark to attend the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in 1927—a role she filled another eight times over the next forty years. By 1928, Lehmann obtained a magister scientiarum in seismology, and she was appointed head the Geodætisk Institut’s seismological department the same year. In this position, she was responsible for overseeing the operation of three seismographic observatories, two of which were in Greenland. She personally operated the one in Copenhagen, producing reports based on its readings. Though it was not part of her job, Lehmann also engaged in research at the facility.

      In 1929, Lehmann studied the Murchison earthquake which struck on the South Island of New Zealand. She analyzed the seismic data from the earthquake and noticed that there were waves of significant amplitude recorded in the Russian cities of Sverdlovsk and Irkutsk, both unexpected locations due to the theory that S-waves and some P-waves are deflected by the core creating a shadow area in which waves are not able to pass through. The waves seemed to pass through that area to reach Russia. This led to her discovering that there is a spherical core of solid material at the Earth’s centre.

      Lehmann was the first to interpret P-wave arrivals as reflections from an inner core. She published her findings in a paper titled P’ (1936). The theory she developed was that the Earth consisted of 3 shells: the mantle, outer core, and inner core. Lehmann inferred that the core wasn’t homogeneous; rather, there is a smaller core that exists that is surrounded by the outer core. She deduced that waves travel faster in the smaller core, but the waves can be reflected off if it arrived tangentially. Her theory allows for another wave deflection at the extra boundary and this accounts for the direction and location in which the waves emerge. Other leading seismologists of the time, such as Beno Gutenberg, Charles Richter, and Harold Jeffreys, adopted this interpretation within two or three years, but it took until 1971 for the interpretation to be shown correct by computer calculations. She continued her work during World War II, though international collaboration was limited.

      When American geologist Maurice Ewing visited her station in 1951, he invited Lehmann to work at the Lamont Geological Observatory that he ran at Columbia University, and she studied there for some of 1952.

      She later collaborated with Ewing and Frank Press on investigations of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. During this work, she discovered another seismic discontinuity, which is a step-change increase in the speed of seismic waves at depths between 190 and 250 km. This discontinuity was named the Lehmann discontinuity after her. Francis Birch noted that the “Lehmann discontinuity was discovered through exacting scrutiny of seismic records by a master of a black art for which no amount of computerization is likely to be a complete substitute.”

      Lehmann was also involved in the creation of the International Seismological Centre from 1961 to 1967.

      She died in Copenhagen on 21 February 1993, aged 104.

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

      1. Nice one!

6. Harvard facing fresh antisemitism scandal as faculty group shares cartoon full of ‘offensive tropes’ https://trib.al/YevUphB.
   “Faculty group” seriously? What is wrong with these Harvard people?
   However offset by the hilarious AITrump video, could not stop laughing, he must be really pissed about this!

7. “In act of foolishness that is embarrassing even by red-state standards, the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that embryos are “unborn children” under state law, and therefore that any IVF facility that unintentionally destroys frozen embryos can be sued for causing wrongful death!”

   Foolish, but logically consistent with their religious beliefs. After all, an embryo has 46 chromosomes…life begins at conception and all that.

   I actually have a (very) grudging respect for these fundamentalists over those who try to have it both ways by banning abortion but allowing IVF…

   1. This is the first step to making IVF illegal.

      1. Like I said upthread, it will destroy any IVF clinics in benighted Alabama.

      2. I am a little befoozled. If a frozen embryo is a child, why isn’t the destruction at the very least regarded as a criminal matter rather than merely allowing the ‘killer’ to be sued. I could understand it better if it was regarded as the destruction of property, notwithstanding that then you must figure out when the embryo becomes a person, a thing that you can lno longer own.

8. Alabama—and other states with Draconian abortion laws—are shooting themselves in the foot. People who support abortion rights or need reproductive services have yet another reason leave the state. And will major companies want to locate there or build plants there, given that women employees won’t have the reproductive freedoms they are used to? This can’t be good for the state’s economic future.

9. Can someone please elaborate on how, exactly, the new holistic admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School discriminates against Asian-American students?

   By way of throat-clearing I will posit that a policy aimed at increasing diversity at the school, as stated, is wrong on its face. Period. This is true whether by “diversity” is meant “more blacks” or “not so damn many Chinese everywhere.” Diversity as a goal, rather than a by-product, is simply wrong. So if the policy was brought in as a way of increasing diversity, again as the school board officials stated, then the officials were working from bad faith. They predicted their holistic policy would somehow bring in more blacks and, necessarily, displace Asians to make room.

   So my question is, how exactly does the policy exclude Asians? Is the “student portrait” letter the obvious way to get students to disclose their race/national origin, and exclude them? How about the requirement that all middle schools in the county get a quota of places? A bad school that produces no high-achieving students will be heavily black, not just low-income. Is its one student who can scrape a 3.2 GPA on courses gamed to look advanced but really aren’t, a shoo-in for a spot at TJ? Are you really not going to bend the rules for this poor kid, even if you don’t (yet) know he’s black? What if the one Uyghur or Jewish kid whose recent-immigrant parents can’t afford to live anywhere better gets a 4.0? After all, if the goal is diversity, someone will want to see results from a policy explicitly designed to produce it.

   I remain doubtful as to how the Asian-American parents would be able to prove, though, that the policy’s disparate impact on their children constituted discrimination against them, when we race-skeptics don’t normally attach much credence to critical-race hustlers who make their own motivated disparate-impact arguments.

   1. The policy is racist by intent; the board set out to boost certain racial groups and inhibit others. Not my words but the findings of the Federal Court – https://pacificlegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Coalition-for-TJ-v.-Fairfax-County-School-Board-Decision.pdf

      The policy is racist by outcome – see the same reference above; it directly reduced attendance by Asian American students.

      The ‘how’ is less clear, but I think it was through two primary routes.

      The first of these is specific allocations to students from each of the middle schools in the county. Unless each middle school has an identical racial mix that in itself can enforce a racial outcome.

      The second is the removal of a standardised test in which Asian Americans scored well and certain other demographics did not.

      So there’s no direct discrimination, but instead a shift in policy with the intent of racially discriminating, and achieving that intent.

      This may be why the Supreme Court chose not to take the case. The policy is on the surface race neutral; the racism is in its intent and its effect.

      The removal of the merit based advantage enjoyed by the children better able to pass a standardised test doesn’t in itself strike me as racist, it just means the school will no longer deliver the same educational results it previously enjoyed. They’ll have a beautifully diverse school that nobody intelligent will apply for, and will no doubt in 20 years be bemoaning the lack of diversity because all the Asian American families are sending their children to a school that does care about ability.

      1. Cynically, deviously clever. Thanks for finishing on a note of hope: there will always be a magnet for ability somewhere, and the able, motivated families will find it. Reputations are evanescent.

10. I have bought Jerry’s audiobook Faith versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (I’m holding off on listening to it until a long car trip I’m taking next week). The reason I bring it up is that the Alabama court ruling reminded me of the fact that there are powerful arguments for the incompatibility of LAW and religion, as well.

    However, as I understand it, the legal rules of evidence already suffice to render Biblical ‘testimony’ inadmissible. But I’m no lawyer. I’ll be very curious to read what legal pundits like Leiter and the Volokh gang have to say about this ruling.

    1. If you want evidence for the resurrection, the only writer in the New Testament to claim to have seen the resurrected Jesus was Paul, and it’s fairly clear his sighting was actually some sort of vision.

       Even if you accept the traditional authorial attributions (which are almost certainly all wrong, excepting maybe seven letters of Paul), there is no specific claim by anybody else to have personally seen the risen Jesus.

       So yes, I don’t think the NT rises to the level of legal rules of evidence.

11. Phrase of the day brought to you by Alabama: extra-uterine children. Really.

    1. It’s amazing how openly Judges like Parker and Moore ignore the very first part of the very first article of the Bill of Rights. They don’t even pretend to have any respect for their country and its Constitution.

12. Regarding extra fees for checked baggage, the airline argument – that the added weight means more fuel burned – is rather transparent. If there is any validity to this point, it is because airlines have increased the number of seats, and thus the number of passengers/luggage. The cost of a ticket should cover the fuel used, especially in a full flight. My cynical hunch is that the added fees are an example of a different economic principle: if you have no option, you pay what is charged, a lesson that oil companies learned when Katrina allowed them to jack up gas prices, and they discovered that they did not have to lower those prices later. When you need to fill your car, what’s the option to gasoline?

    A different economic principle might be to charge for baggage that will be stowed in the overhead bins, since that is where people prefer to stow luggage if they can. We have all seen passengers in line to board, with three or more items, only one of which is going to end up under the seat in front of them. The rest of us then find that there is no room in the overhead bin for the relatively small bag that we carried on. In other words, when demand exceeds supply (in this case, for overhead bin space) the cost should rise. Since there is no shortage of supply for space in the luggage hold, there is no good reason to raise prices to use it. On the contrary: additional baggage fees simply drive up demand for the limited space in overhead bins.

    1. Nice!
       Not sure that there is no shortage of space in the holds. What doesn’t get filled with suitcases can be filled with lucrative air freight palletized for easy, last-minute handling. (That’s one reason to charge more for on-the-spot bag check.
       A pallet already promised for that flight based on on-line bags might have to be bumped by a bunch of late bags.) But no matter. They should still charge carry-on luggage as you say (by volume, not weight, since space in the overheads is what is in short supply.)

13. My take. I think some have missed the point of this embryo-as-child ruling.

    I don’t see any further restrictions on the freedom of the good people of Alabama from this decision. The defendant is a business entity — the IVF clinic — not the individual butterfingers at the clinic who dropped the embryo containers and broke them, and not the parents. (The parents were the plaintiffs seeking damages.) This is just the “deep-pocket” principle at work. The would-be future-maybe parents wanted to sue somebody over the loss of their embryos but had been unsuccessful. By deeming the embryos to be unborn children the Court made them entities whose death can be wrongful, with (unspecified) financial damages to be awarded accordingly. A civil judgment doesn’t change the criminal law on abortion or murder (or “abortion-murder” in some states) unless the legislature decides to make embryo destruction a criminal offence to match what the civil judgement implied. (Most states that ban abortion explicitly allow selective embryo reduction as part of the IVF procedure. No one having IVF thinks of herself as having abortions by the half-dozen.)

    What this does to IVF in Alabama depends on if the IVF clinics’ insurance carriers can price the new risk accurately and build it into premiums. If they can, the price of IVF will rise. If they can’t, they will stop insuring IVF clinics and that will be the end of IVF in Alabama. But the parents get their money, so they are delighted with the ruling I’m sure, even if they are pro-choice. After all, it was their own lawyers who made the argument.

    This is not foolish at all. It’s inspired, actually. Money transfers from the pockets of a careless corporation (or its insurance company) to its three aggrieved customers. Isn’t this what we want? Do you really want to see a corporation appealing this to the U.S. Supreme Court to deny the parents/owners their payout on some trifling loophole like church-state separation?

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