Welcome to CaturSaturday, March 9: shabbos for all good Jewish cats and National Crab Day (sadly, not kosher). Here’s one of the most famous crabs of our time:
It’s also Amerigo Vespucci Day (honoring his birthday on this day in 1451), National Meatball Day, Barbie Day (the doll debuted on this day in 1959), and International Fanny Pack Day (I doubt they’re called that in the UK, where “fanny” does not mean “rear end”),
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the March 9 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Most of the U.S. government was supposed to shut down this week, but it was averted, as usual, by legislation at the last minute:
The Senate gave final approval on Friday to a $460 billion spending bill to fund about half the federal government through the fall, sending the legislation to President Biden’s desk with just hours to spare to avert a partial shutdown.
The lopsided 75-to-22 vote cemented a resolution to at least part of a spending stalemate that consumed Congress for months and has repeatedly pushed the government to the edge of shutdown. Funding had been set to lapse at midnight, but the White House said that the executive branch was halting shutdown preparations and that Mr. Biden would sign the bill on Saturday.
Top lawmakers were still negotiating spending bills for the other half of the government over the same period, including for the Pentagon, which Congress must pass by March 22 to avert a shutdown. Several thorny issues, including funding for the Department of Homeland Security, have yet to be resolved.
*As always, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at The Free Press, call this week “TGIF: The state of TG is strong.”
→ On another MSNBC show this week, everyone had a good laugh about people who care about immigration. They can’t believe voters choose it as a top issue! Here’s former White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue.” Joy Reid laughs. Rachel Maddow comes in with the kicker: “Well, Virginia does have a border with West Virginia. They’re very contested there.” The joke here is that the poor whites of West Virginia might move east. Like ew, someone call border control please! Appalachian invasion! Strategically, because I like many normal liberal policies, I don’t love the Democrat Commentariat becoming open snobs who say how much they hate poor people every week. But as a snob myself (I order sparkling spring water in glass bottles to the house every week and I feel no shame, I like it), I feel I don’t have a leg to stand on here. Carry on, guys! What are all these poor people doing, anyway?
And because I haven’t reported on this important issue:
→ WPATH Files: This week, the leading organization for doctors who perform gender transitions on minors is reeling from a major leak of internal documents, emails, and conference calls. What the leak mostly shows: doctors really had no idea about a lot of the long-term impact of these interventions. Would the kids put on blockers and then cross-sex hormones ever be able to orgasm? Wow, we’re finding out that they can’t, because they’re saying they can’t. Will puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones (the yellow brick road of medical transition) stunt a kid’s growth, one clinician asks? Answer seems like yes: “Blockers, by suppressing puberty, keep growth plates open longer, so younger teens have a potential to grow longer, however their growth velocity is typically at prepubertal velocity, without typical growth spurt.” Or watch this video of clinicians trying to figure out how to get their 14-year-old patients to do informed consent to lifetime sterility (often starting at age 9 with puberty blockers). From the video: “It’s a real growing edge in our field to figure out how we can approach that. I’m definitely a little stumped on it.” I am also stumped on how to get gender-dysphoric children to consent to sterility—maybe we can wait till they’re 18? Just an idea. Just a thought. One practitioner talks about meeting former patients now in their 20s who want to start families, and he jokes that when they find him, he responds: “Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you?”
The biggest news is that these groups knew that the hormone therapies were causing cancer. I’ve said it before, but as a one-time butch teenager with rabid political opinions and the knowledge that I was Correct About Everything, now a happy gay adult with no political opinions and the knowledge that I am Usually Wrong: thank god this movement wasn’t around when I was 14. That said, when I’m done having kids, given the state of things post-breastfeeding, a double mastectomy sounds sort of nice.
→ A bad WaPo take and a creepy Republican response: Sometimes to be a moderate is to feel crazy, stuck as we are between two very strange extremes (and I’m not even talking about Mark Robinson anymore). This week, The Washington Post ran a long news story about how shoplifting is a fake, dumb “late-capitalism horror story.” In the piece, which describes a Washington D.C.–area CVS that was robbed so much it’s shutting down, the Post reporter explains: “America is a sticky-fingered nation built on stolen land, and its current moral panic is about shoplifting.” Yes, The Washington Post is trying to argue, as usual, that theft is a distraction from the real story: for-profit stores are bad, because America is bad and is itself stolen, and all our moisturizers and shampoos should be provided free by the government. That Jeff Bezos, the ur-capitalist, pays these writers and loses $100 million a year is endlessly funny to me. If I got really, really rich through my ruthless business acumen and admirable work ethic, I might also enjoy keeping a playpen of communists just to see what they get up to. And anyway, CVS closing is quite literally good for Jeff. It’s a double win!
Now conservatives, of course, had a field day with this, and it got very creepy. When one antisemitic Twitter/X account posted about the writer, cryptically: “In case you were wondering, yes she is,” Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia wrote back: “Never was a second thought.” The X account confirmed it meant she’s Jewish, while Mike Collins pretends people are just reading into things, overacting and such.
*The NYT has a summary from their columnists of “The best and worst moments from the State of the Union.” There’s also a section on “what else mattered.” I’ll give a few in each category, but most writers agree that Biden did a good job.
BEST MOMENTS:
Jamelle Bouie I thought Biden’s best line was his move to connect reproductive freedom to freedom writ large: “Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom,” he said. “My God,” what other freedoms “would you take away?”
Gail Collins For Biden, the speech was a real rouser. The audience didn’t walk out worrying about his age this time. His delivery had the kind of energy that his fans often worry Donald Trump has and Biden doesn’t.
Ross Douthat Every moment when he poked and prodded and made fun of congressional Republicans. Bonus points for the cut to a laughing Lindsey Graham.
Michelle Goldberg When he looked right at the Supreme Court justices and, quoting Samuel Alito about women’s political power from his opinion overturning Roe, said, “You’re about to realize just how much.”
Bret Stephens Invoking Ronald Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech to embarrass Republicans on helping Ukraine was a brilliant rhetorical touch.
Michelle Goldberg When he looked right at the Supreme Court justices and, quoting Samuel Alito about women’s political power from his opinion overturning Roe, said, “You’re about to realize just how much.”
WORST MOMENTS:
Appelbaum I am so tired of hearing about plans to help factory workers. A vast majority of American workers are employed in the service sector, and they will never work in factories. Where are the plans to improve the lives of those workers?
Paul Despite a House ban on hats dating to 1837 (amended in 2019 for religious reasons), Marjorie Taylor Greene wore a MAGA hat and a T-shirt cynically emblazoned with “Say her name” and “Laken Riley,” in reference to a student killed in Georgia two weeks ago whom Republicans have used as a symbol of the border crisis. Her disrespect was surpassed only by J.D. Vance, who boycotted the speech.
Stephens That persistent cough. The Jewish mother in me worries.
Wallace-Wells For me, it was when Biden referred to “an illegal.” There may not be much, if any, political price to pay for it, but it’s awful to see an American president who wants to present himself as a figure of compassion casually fall into language designed to demonize and dehumanize.
WHAT ELSE MATTERED:
Cottle He went all in on the gently mocking humor. He poked fun at himself, including his advanced age, and he teased Republicans repeatedly. “If any of you don’t want that money in your districts,” he said of the infrastructure bill that they had voted against, “just let me know.”
Douthat A great many people are going to talk themselves into believing that this was a good speech, a real barnburner. That happy talk will be good for Biden; he needs stiffened spines. But it wasn’t actually a good speech; it was a rant that offered little to the disillusioned, and any boost will be ephemeral.
Goldberg What an unexpectedly rousing speech! Good for Biden for going straight at the existential threat Trump poses to American democracy. Yes, he stumbled over his words a few times, but watching the president parry surly Republicans, I felt momentarily less terrified about his re-election campaign.
Paul The bar here was low: All Biden had to do was drive home that one candidate’s old and sane is better than another’s old and crazy. With the predictable line “The state of our union is strong and getting stronger,” Biden conveyed he is still capable of vision, conviction and strength.
*The Times of Israel reports that IDF has produced its report on the swarming of the humanitarian aid truck in Gaza and the 100+ people who died in the melée. And it exculpates the IDF of causing deaths of Palestinian civilians, except for shooting at the legs of about ten people menacing the soldiers. The other 100-odd people were either crushed by other people in the scrum or run over by trucks.
. Now of course this is an Israeli paper, but I’ve found it to be the most accurate source of news about the war, even when Israel screws up, as it did when the IDF killed three hostages. An excerpt:
The Israel Defense Force on Friday said it had completed its probe into the reported deaths of 115 Palestinians as they swarmed aid trucks that entered Gaza City in late February, finding that troops stationed in the area did not open fire on the convoy itself as the Hamas terror group had claimed.
Rather, the probe found that shots were fired at several Gazans who moved toward soldiers and a tank at an IDF checkpoint, in a way that “posed a threat to them.”
The probe into the February 29 incident was presented to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Tuesday by the commander of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, the military said.
In a statement, the IDF said the probe included a timeline of events, from the moment the 38 aid trucks arrived at a coordinated location on the Strip’s coast at 4:00 a.m. to be escorted by Israeli forces to their designated distribution location in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood.
The IDF said that at 4:15 a.m., troops conducted a patrol along the route on which the trucks were set to drive and deployed troops for the operation. At 4:29 a.m., the convoy of aid trucks began to cross the route while accompanied by IDF tanks, the probe found.
“During the course of the looting, incidents of significant harm to civilians occurred from the stampede and people being run over by the trucks,” the IDF said, noting that at 4:33 a.m., troops had spotted the bodies of Palestinians beside the trucks and amidst the large crowd.
Amid the looting of the trucks, the IDF said dozens of Palestinians advanced toward the Israeli tanks, escorting the convoy, reaching several meters from them and “thereby posed a real threat to the forces at that point.”
” At this stage [at 4:30 a.m.], the forces used cautionary fire in order to distance the suspects,” the IDF said. “As the suspects continued to advance toward them [at 4:45 a.m.], the troops fired precisely toward a number of the suspects to remove the threat.”
There’s more, but you can read the summary. But do you think the world will believe this? Of course not: the narrative is that Israel killed everyone, and people are sticking to it. But why would the IDF fire on a crowd of civilians? Given that they want to avoid that at all costs, it doesn’t make sense.
*Reader Jez pointed me to an article from the BBC with the headline, “Adviser warns London a ‘no-go zone for Jews every weekend.”
London has become a “no-go zone for Jews” during weekend pro-Palestinian marches, the government’s counter-extremism commissioner has said.
Robin Simcox also urged ministers to “be willing to accept higher legal risk” when tackling extremism.
Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the PM took concerns of extremism “extremely seriously” and noted a rise in both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred.
March organisers said Jewish people did not need to be scared of the events. [Of course they would!]
Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Simcox said Mr Sunak had been right to point to an increase in extremist disruption.
He said he now needed the “policies to meet the scale of the challenge.
A spokeswoman for Mr Sunak said that Mr Simcox was “referring to intimidation by a minority at protests in London at weekends”.
“We have sadly seen an increase in anti-Muslim hatred as well as antisemitism,” she said.
“The PM would continue to urge those taking part to be mindful of the upset and distress it can cause. Peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy.”
Note how Sunak’s spokesman adds pulls a both-sides strategy by simultaneously demonizing antisemitism and Islamophobia. But no, Muslims aren’t in danger during pro-Israel demonstrations in London—if there are any.
Here’s a relevant new video about the safety of London for Jews with moderator Douglas Murray (20 minutes, but the “no go zone for Jews goes from the start to about 12 minutes in).
The blond woman is more sympathetic to the pro-Palestinians, averring that many of them are ignorant of what they’re really saying. The discussion then segues into “British values” and Murray’s idea that Muslim communities haven’t integrated well into British society, but the two topics are connected. The segment moves to Biden’s State of the Union message and his leadership (or lack thereof).
Now I haven’t seen these demonstrations, so I’m not sure whether “no go zone” means that you’re likely to hear offensive antisemitic slogans, which is okay in the US, but it could also mean that you’re in physical danger, which is not okay.
*Over at Skeptical Inquirer, Robyn Blumner, head of the Center for Inquiry as well as the Richard Dawkins Foundation, continues her series of “Postcards from Reality” with n attack on the incursion of ideology into science, “Defending science against social justice dogmatism and identitarianism.” (She’s written two related pieces in the other CfI journal, Free Inquiry.) I won’t reproduce her shout-out to this site, but it’s nice. At any rate, her topic is the erosion of science by identitarianism.
The first bit is about how GMO “golden rice”, which prevents blindness in children, was opposed as “western science” or “colonialist capitalist science” by, among other venues, the badly degraded Scientific American:
Similarly, in a piece titled “Decolonizing the GMO Debate” in The Counter, engineering studies professor Benjamin Cohen of Lafayette College wrote, “The GMO proponents’ technocratic version of reform is colonial in its reliance upon and perpetuation of the logic of conquest. It puts nature in the position of an ‘Other,’ a separate sphere to be fixed or improved not just by humans but by Western, market-oriented humans” (Cohen 2021). Are we really going to interrogate the source of every scientific advance and reject those derived from anyone with too little melanin, too much testosterone, too much first-world education, and too much private funding? That’s definitely not a world I’d want to inhabit. But increasingly dogmatic social justice/identitarian considerations are leaching into science in a way that is hampering progress in the field.
. . . . Identitarianism, a term once reserved for far-right ideology, is now charging into STEM publishing from the far left in a way certain to obscure scientific merit by making it seem as though one’s background and demographics unduly influence scientific outcomes. These “positionality statements” are now being encouraged by some science journals (Zamzow 2023). So rather than simply report on their data and findings, authors of papers submitted for publication are being urged to list their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities or advantages.
Science is society’s best means of advancing human progress precisely because it focuses on demonstrable achievements and evidence-based results, instead of on who did the research or where they came from. Giving up this essential neutrality principle or suggesting that science is inevitably differentiated based on the researcher’s background is corrosive to the entire enterprise.
Besides, I don’t know how much more disadvantaged, excluded, or bullied you could be in the cruel hierarchy that is the American high school than being a total science nerd—the lowliest rung. One’s victimhood points should overfloweth.
There’s a similar social justice warrior project called “citation justice” that tells scholars to bulk up their research papers with citations by people of color, women, indigenous people, etc. This will serve to boost the careers of those cited. Once again, identity is deemed a value higher than pure merit—the proper yardstick for when a citation is warranted.
. . .There are many other ways scientific merit is under attack due to social justice dogmatism and identitarianism, including forcing scholars to write muster-passing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements before being considered for university postings. Here’s a hint: embracing Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition to treat everyone equally with dignity and respect without regard to skin color is considered a Giant Fail by the DEI bureaucracy.
We are individuals, not a collection of demographics and immutable characteristics. It is time to stop lumping people who look somewhat similar into affiliation groups and making sweeping generalizations about who they are, what they’ve experienced, what they care about, and how they think. Mostly you’ll just be presumptuous and wrong.
This capture of science by the ideology of the moment is a dangerous trend. It is not only bad for science, it is bad for society: divisive, anti-meritocratic, and causing scientists to self-censor and conform their findings to predetermined social justice demands. Science depends on us getting past this. Children around the world who would benefit from golden rice and other GMO advances depend on us getting past this. I hope it’s soon.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is puzzled:
Hili: Another new house.A: Interesting, the town becomes depopulated but there are more and more new houses.
Hili: Znowu nowy dom.Ja: Ciekawe zjawisko, miasteczko się wyludnia, a domów przybywa.
*******************
An Instagram gif by Elizah Leigh that reader Lee found. Ceiling Cat says “NO!”
From The Dodo Pet:
From ScienceBlogs:
From Masih: the brave women of Iran on International Women’s Day. Sound up: there are slogans and music:
This is how women in Iran celebrate international women’s day by removing their forced hijab, holding a
sign of Woman Life, Freedom and singing the song of equality in the city of Bukan:
I will grow a sprout from the wound on my body. #ژن_ژیان_ئازادی #زن_زندگى_آزادى pic.twitter.com/O8IfvhDeXJ— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 8, 2024
And we have another video from Masih as well. Three women standing up against religiously-based oppression by men. Ceiling Cat bless the women of Iran!
This video brought tears to my eyes…
See how women of Iran resisting the harassers in the streets, some blinded by the regime. See how women are wounded, but unbowed to their oppressors. We are asking the free world to be #UnitedAgainstGenderApartheid pic.twitter.com/W1l3TFcLWD— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 8, 2024
From Jez: “Pointless vandalism.” This is absolutely shameful:
Masked Palestinian activist completly DESTROYS historic British painting by slashing it with a knife and spray painting it.
The activist from the Palestine Action group ruined the Lord Balfour painting in Trinity College, University of Cambridge using a box cutter Stanley knife… pic.twitter.com/e8swYGWp2d
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) March 8, 2024
From Muffy, who says “There are so many funny cat videos on X but these two (you have to watch them both) are priceless because of the cat/staff relationship.” White cats with two blue eyes have a high chance of being deaf, and if they have one blue eye (odd-eyed), a lesser but still appreciable chance. Sound up.
The second video is taking me out pic.twitter.com/uSsV5dUdkp
— menace of color 🦂 (@lareinanegraa_) March 7, 2024
From Malcolm: a cat party including a kindle of kittens:
its a party pic.twitter.com/7AIGRXfHrx
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) February 29, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 13-year-old girl gassed upon arrival:
9 March 1931 | A Hungarian Jewish girl, Judith Rosenberg, was born in Abaujszanto.
In May 1944 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/JAWLkEcAqH
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 9, 2024
Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. He says about the first one, which is linked to a BBC story, “Who would have thunk it?”:
BBC News – US says UFO sightings likely secret military testshttps://t.co/HgpOZBiN87
— Ken MacLeod (@amendlocke) March 8, 2024
And this one gets “Yikes!” three times. How are we getting all that plastic in our bodies?
Yikes. https://t.co/UzUF6RCQQw
— Paul McAuley (@UnlikelyWorlds) March 8, 2024
“Fanny Packs” are called Bum Bags this side of the Pond.
LOL
I mean, “fanny” is also LOL., so,…
Folks without a British connection might not see the humor of “fanny” pack. 😄
For some reason, the lyrics to Aqualung come to mind.
Don’t ask me what that means!
That’s pretty funny! My thoughts went to Trump and his favorite grabbing activity.
1. Article: “Top lawmakers […]”
LOL – I love that – “Top lawmakers”…. “Top lawmakers”…
It’s one of those turns of phrase that is fun to repeat over and over until it sounds like something else.
2. I loved Michael Shermer’s mocking reaction (S. Alinsky) to the real action (which is not shown above) :
“I’m been a supporter of Israel but this is such a good argument, so well articulated and expressed, so logical, that I need to update my priors and adjust my credence to now support Palestine.”
https://x.com/michaelshermer/status/1766213350487118140?s=46
… dialectical political warfare, friend v. enemy.
Also – I think we need a price check on the bag worn in the video – “mulbery black cara delevigne”?
$600?
https://us.vestiairecollective.com/women-bags/mulberry/cara-delevigne/#categoryParent=Bags%235_brand=Mulberry%23268_model=Cara%20Delevigne%23975_gender=Women%231
995 pounds?
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/fashion/fashion-news/news/g31640/the-mulberry-x-cara-delevingne-collection/
Don’t they make laws about “tops” then? They can spin quite fast!
Otherwise why do we need “top lawmakers”?
That is.. sublime…
Michael Shermer’s reaction is sublime. At first I didn’t realize what “argument” he was endorsing, so I (nervously) opened the link. As soon as the first few scan lines of the painting appeared it hit me like a tonne of bricks. But yes, pretty convincing. (Not)
Another mentally ill young white woman, no doubt a product of an expensive university. I might once have said, “Sad.” Now, “Toxic” seems better.
On this day:
1009 – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.
1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies. The fleet will discover Brazil which lies within boundaries granted to Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494.
1765 – After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually died by suicide.
1776 – The Wealth of Nations by Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith is published.
1815 – Francis Ronalds describes the first battery-operated clock in the Philosophical Magazine.
1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.
1842 – Giuseppe Verdi’s third opera, Nabucco, receives its première performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy’s foremost opera composers.
1842 – The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush.
1862 – American Civil War: USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (rebuilt from the engines and lower hull of the USS Merrimack) fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.
1908 – Inter Milan was founded on Football Club Internazionale, following a schism from A.C. Milan.
1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress, the first of his New Deal policies.
1945 – World War II: Allied forces carry out firebombing over Tokyo, destroying most of the capital and killing over 100,000 civilians.
1954 – McCarthyism: CBS television broadcasts the See It Now episode, “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy”, produced by Fred Friendly.
1959 – The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.
1960 – Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis.
1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a dog and a human dummy, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.
1974 – The Mars 7 Flyby bus releases the descent module too early, missing Mars.
1976 – Forty-two people die in the Cavalese cable car disaster, the deadliest cable car accident in history.
1997 – Comet Hale–Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day. As the comet made its closest approach to Earth on March 26, all 39 active members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed ritual mass suicide over a period of three days, in the belief that their spirits would be teleported into an alien spacecraft flying inside the comet’s tail.
1997 – The Notorious B.I.G. is murdered in Los Angeles after attending the Soul Train Music Awards. He is gunned down leaving an after party at the Petersen Automotive Museum. His murder remains unsolved.
2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights.
Births:
1451 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian cartographer and explorer, namesake of the Americas (d. 1512).
1758 – Franz Joseph Gall, German neuroanatomist and physiologist (d. 1828).
1763 – William Cobbett, English journalist and author (d. 1835).
1824 – Amasa Leland Stanford, American businessman and politician, founded Stanford University (d. 1893).
1863 – Mary Harris Armor, American suffragist (d. 1950).
1887 – Fritz Lenz, German geneticist and physician (d. 1976).
1892 – Vita Sackville-West, English author, poet, and gardener (d. 1962).
1910 – Samuel Barber, American pianist and composer (d. 1981).
1911 – Clara Rockmore, American classical violin prodigy and theremin player (d. 1998).
1918 – George Lincoln Rockwell, American sailor and politician, founded the American Nazi Party (d. 1967).
1918 – Mickey Spillane, American crime novelist (d. 2006).
1923 – Walter Kohn, Austrian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2016).
1930 – Ornette Coleman, American saxophonist, violinist, trumpet player, and composer (d. 2015).
1933 – Lloyd Price, American R&B singer-songwriter (d. 2021).
1933 – David Weatherall, English physician, geneticist, and academic (d. 2018).
1934 – Yuri Gagarin, Russian colonel, pilot, and cosmonaut, first human in space (d. 1968).
1940 – Raul Julia, Puerto Rican actor (d. 1994).
1941 – Ernesto Miranda, American criminal (d. 1976).
1942 – John Cale, Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer.
1943 – Bobby Fischer, American chess player and author (d. 2008).
1945 – Robert Calvert, English singer-songwriter and playwright (d. 1988). [His first solo album, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters (1974), is great.]
1945 – Robin Trower, English rock guitarist and vocalist.
1947 – Keri Hulme, New Zealand author and poet (d. 2021).
1951 – Helen Zille, South African journalist, politician and Premier of the Western Cape. [As a journalist, she helped uncover the murder of Steve Biko.]
1964 – Juliette Binoche, French actress.
1993 – Suga, South Korean rapper, songwriter, record producer. [I believe that all seven members of BTS are currently doing their compulsory military service.]
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. (Woody Allen):
1566 – David Rizzio, Italian-Scottish courtier and politician (b. 1533). [Brutally murdered after Mary Queen of Scots’ husband, Lord Darnley, accused his wife of adultery with him. The murder was the catalyst of the downfall of Darnley, and had serious consequences for Mary’s subsequent reign.]
1825 – Anna Laetitia Barbauld, English poet, author, and critic (b. 1743).
1847 – Mary Anning, English paleontologist (b. 1799). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1851 – Hans Christian Ørsted, Danish physicist and chemist, discovered electromagnetism and the element aluminium (b. 1777).
1876 – Louise Colet, French poet (b. 1810).
1918 – Frank Wedekind, German author and playwright (b. 1864). [His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the development of epic theatre.]
1974 – Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., American pharmacologist and biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915). [Won his Nobel Prize in 1971 “for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the action of hormones”, especially epinephrine, via second messengers, namely cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or cyclic AMP.]
1983 – Ulf von Euler, Swedish physiologist and pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905). [Shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 for his work on neurotransmitters.]
1989 – Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer (b. 1946).
1992 – Menachem Begin, Belarusian-Israeli soldier, politician and Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913).
1994 – Charles Bukowski, American poet, novelist, and short story writer (b. 1920).
1996 – George Burns, American comedian, actor, and writer (b. 1896).
1997 – Terry Nation, Welsh author and screenwriter (b. 1930). [Especially known for his work in British television science fiction, he created the Daleks and Davros for Doctor Who, as well as the series Survivors and Blake’s 7.
2006 – John Profumo, English soldier and politician, Secretary of State for War (b. 1915).
2006 – Anna Moffo, American soprano (b. 1932).
2010 – Doris Haddock, American activist and politician (b. 1910). [Achieved national fame when, between the ages of 88 and 90, starting on January 1, 1999, and culminating on February 29, 2000, she walked over 3,200 miles (5,100 km) across the continental United States to advocate for campaign finance reform.]
2023 – Chaim Topol, Israeli actor (b. 1935).
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Mary Anning (born 21 May 1799, died on this day in 1847) was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for the discoveries she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning’s findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.
Anning searched for fossils in the area’s Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. [Her family lived so near to the sea that the same storms that swept along the cliffs to reveal the fossils sometimes flooded the Annings’ home, on one occasion forcing them to crawl out of an upstairs bedroom window to avoid drowning. The house where Mary Anning was born and had her first fossil shop is now the Lyme Regis Museum.]
Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods.
Anning struggled financially for much of her life. As a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions. However, her friend, geologist Henry De la Beche, who painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, based it largely on fossils Anning had found and sold prints of it for her benefit.
Anning became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as fossil collecting. The only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime appeared in the Magazine of Natural History in 1839, an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine’s editor questioning one of its claims.
Anning died from breast cancer at the age of 47 on 9 March 1847. Afterwards, her unusual life story attracted increasing interest.The
[The full Wikipedia article is worth reading and contains much more detail than there is space for here.]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
My favorite SOTU moment came afterwards, when Biden was caught telling a Congressman that he had told Netanyahu that they were going to have to have a “come to Jesus meeting.” Come on, man.
The statement by the UK Home Office’s Commissioner for Countering Extremism that parts of London have become no-go zones for Jews has been widely rebutted, including by a number of Jewish leaders. Their position is that although the large pro-Palestinian marches, and the slogans used, can make Jews feel uncomfortable and threatened, the no-go assertion is simply wrong. The version of the story in the Torygraph is typically one-sided; The Times has a more balanced account: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/london-no-go-zone-jewish-people-latest-palestinian-protests-n9mx32rd0 (may be paywalled).
Archived copy here: https://archive.ph/yh9zv
Thanks
a comment with two links is in moderation – “price check on a hand bag, aisle 5, womens’ department”…
I’ve run into that embargo before and fail to find any logic in it.
But because of that, now if I have two I just post them back-to-back.
Thanks for releasing the comment, PCC(E) – I just gotta find the best price for that radical activist action bum bag!
Folks without a British connection might not see the humor of “fanny” pack. 😄.
Quick take. The Xweet about plastics in arterial plaque needs a closer look at the original study. “Removal” of plaque is not a standard treatment for any condition that I’m aware of, so presumably done as a stand-alone research study. You want want to exclude, with appropriate controls, the possibility that the “removal” process itself triggered the inflammatory process that led to the later strokes. We already know that doing things to the arteries that feed the brain can lead to stroke. Even if the plastic burden somehow made the process worse, it might also be true that if the plaque had been left undisturbed and the patient given just the usual treatment to reduce the risk of stroke, like controlling high blood pressure, the plastic in the plaques might never have done any harm. (There is no evidence of an inflammatory response in the freshly removed plaque shown in the photo.)
Microplastics are everywhere, much of it thought to be dispersed from the steady wear of motor-vehicle tires, much less from plastic trash that gets tossed away because there is no recycling market for any but the very best selections.
Yes, again, cheers Dr. Leslie!
I’ve long thought “plastophobia” is more an anti-capitalist, aesthetic elite perversion rather than something based on actual science and harm to the human body.
D.A.
NYC
This is the study:
Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events
Raffaele Marfella, M.D., Ph.D., Francesco Prattichizzo, Ph.D., Celestino Sardu, M.D., Ph.D., Gianluca Fulgenzi, Ph.D., Laura Graciotti, Ph.D., Tatiana Spadoni, Ph.D., Nunzia D’Onofrio, Ph.D., Lucia Scisciola, Ph.D., Rosalba La Grotta, Ph.D., Chiara Frigé, M.Sc., Valeria Pellegrini, M.Sc., Maurizio Municinò, M.D., et al.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822 March 7, 2024
The Journal claims I’ve used up my two free articles already this month but I don’t think I have. Whatever, I get only the abstract.
The photo in the Xweet is misleading. It shows a section of an intact coronary artery (not necessarily human), with plaque in situ. That’s not what these researchers did. They used plaque scraped out of the carotid arteries of 304 patients having a procedure called endarterectomy, done to reduce the risk of stroke, although the evidence is complicated. They compared the rates of a composite outcome of stroke, heart attack, and death in patients who had any detectable plastic in the plaque specimens, with those who didn’t. The abstract doesn’t say but other media accounts say the authors didn’t control for other risk factors for that outcome as to whether they might have been unequally distributed between the two groups. (Says MedPage, the patients with plastic were “more likely men and smokers, and had a greater prevalence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and dyslipidemia.” Well, then….)
This is hard to tease out. Patients having carotid endarterectomy are at higher risk of stroke and heart attack — the procedure is done to reduce the risk of the former. But stroke and heart attack can be complications of the operation, which is done almost exclusively in elderly people. The authors said they did tests for activation of the inflammatory response (a putative mechanism for how plastic might hurt you) but they don’t report any results in the abstract. That doesn’t mean they didn’t report them in the article itself.
In the abstract, they don’t report the actual number of strokes, heart attacks, and deaths, just the hazard ratio for that composite event between the two groups, which was 4.53. This does not mean that the plastic-burdened group was four-and-a-half times as likely to have an event during follow-up. It means that the rate of events per time interval was 4.5 times as steep in the plastic group. It’s the comparison between the slopes of two curves, not the actual numbers. Especially when you don’t know the number or events in the reference (control) group, and when the events occurred, you cannot get easily from a hazard ratio to a relative risk, which is what most people want to know. And if there were only a few events (as you would hope, in a population being operated on to prevent stroke) the HRs don’t tell you very much, except there might be some true differential effect going on, at least during part of the exposure time.
This is a potentially interesting study that might well have important information in the text.
Another great explanation from Yoram in Israel:
Israelis must listen to the Palestinians!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svIa02N6JUo
Indeed! DO listen to what they’re saying – people in the west don’t. The excerpts from MEMRI he provides us are NOT weirdos or cranks, forgettable extremists. They represent the mainline thinking, the intellectual atmosphere of the Islamosphere.
A must see. 15 min.
D.A.
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Very depressing video. While I don’t think he proves that he’s not ‘cherry picking’, I believe that he is accurately depicting the views of many Palestinians, many, many more than just the active Hamas fighters. That leaves one questioning how this can ever really end.
Robyn Blumner, a favorite pick of Richard Dawkins, is an incredible, wonderful person.
She’s subsumed into the work their org. does, but everything she does just shines. A hero against the forces of darkness from the retarded religious right to the mentally ill lefty identitarians.
D.A.
NYC
Yes, that’s a powerful piece by Blumner. Our host is too modest to include her parenthetical reference to this website, but here it is:
Credit where it is due.
In honor of National Crab Day, here is an oddly hypnotic video of a crab eating chips. It has 15 million views on YouTube:
Make that 15 million and one!
+1
Literally, for once!
That whooshing sound is our host’s Andy Rooney / crab reference flying over my head…