Monday: Hili dialogue

March 18, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the start of the “work” week and, at my university, the end of Spring Break: it’s Monday, March 18, 2024, as well as National Sloppy Joe Day. This is a sandwich I love, but haven’t had in aeons:

Buck Blues, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Act Happy Day, National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day, Forgive Mom and Dad Day, Gallipoli Memorial Day in Turkey, and Sheelah’s Day in Canada, and Australia, a St. Patrick’s Day for the Irish Diaspora in those countries.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Primatologists and author Frans de Waal died on March 14 at the young age of 75. Many of us have read his books or heard him talk, and thankfully there are lots of videos on the Internet.

Frans de Waal has died. Among his smaller accomplishments was winning an Ig Nobel Prize in 2012, with colleague Jennifer Pokorny, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends.

The Dutch newspaper NRC reports the sad news (and goes on, to describe some of de Waal’s imaginative, often-colorful research):

The man who brought humans and monkeys together

Frans de Waal died on Thursday evening US time at the age of 75 in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), as a result of metastatic stomach cancer, his family confirmed.

De Waal was the most famous Dutch primatologist for decades. With his calm speech, great knowledge and undeniable love for our fellow animals, he was also a well-known figure outside of science. Often shown on television, often quoted in debates.

De Waal rose to fame in the 1980s with his book Chimpanzee Politics (1982). This book was based on his observations of the power struggle in the chimpanzee colony of Burgers Zoo in Arnhem. The book offers a radical new view of ape leadership: it is not brute force and the direct application of power, but rather the mediation of conflicts and careful management of alliances that characterize the life of an ape leader. The monkey world suddenly became very human. So humane that conservative Republican Senator Newt Gingrich recommended the book in the 1990s as educational reading for young members of Congress.

This is a common thread in De Waal’s work: apes are much more like humans, and humans are much more like apes, than we think. As he said in a speech about his work in 2014: “I have moved the monkeys up a little and the people down a little.” …

A tweet:

*And 17 minutes of de Waal talking about “Moral behavior in animals” for TED:

*According to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu is not bowing to the U.S.’s (and world’s) demand that he hold off on Rafah, call a ceasefire, and all manner of activities that would cause Israel to lose the war. I presume the war cabinet (the other two guys are Leftists, but all of them dislike each other) is in agreement on the issue of going after Rafah. And yes, it has to be done:

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasts those “in the international community who are trying to stop the war now, before all its goals are achieved.”

Netanyahu’s Hebrew-language comments are likely a reference to calls last week for elections in Israel from US Senator Chuck Schumer, and growing criticism from the Biden White House over Netanyahu’s conduct of the war.

The prime minister says that those who wants to stop the war do so “by making false accusations against the IDF, against the Israeli government and against the prime minister of Israel. They do this by trying to bring about elections now, in the midst of the war.”

. . . Turning to Israel’s “friends in the international community,” Netanyahu asks pointedly: “Is your memory so short? Did you forget so quickly October 7, the most terrible massacre committed against Jews since the Holocaust? Are you so quickly ready to deny Israel the right to defend itself against the monsters of Hamas? Did you lose your moral conscience so quickly?”

He calls for international pressure to be put on Hamas and Iran, rather than Israel.

“No amount of international pressure will stop us from realizing all the goals of the war: eliminating Hamas, releasing all our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat against Israel,” insists Netanyahu.

“We must not give in to these pressures, and we will not give in to them,” Netanyahu stresses.

He also promises that the IDF will operate in Rafah, “carefully.”

“It will take a few weeks, and it will happen,” he says.

I guess that’s that, though not long ago Netanyahu set the deadline for the invasion of Rafah as March 15.  But a lot is going on, including negotiations that I’m not at all sure are serious ones.

*According to the NYT, the next President of Mexico may well be a Jewish woman:

Mexico’s presidential campaign is well underway and if the polls are to be believed, Claudia Sheinbaum, a physicist and candidate of the left-leaning ruling Morena party, could be the country’s next president. Ms. Sheinbaum, who is of Jewish descent, holds a staggering 30 percentage point lead over Xóchitl Gálvez, a tech entrepreneur of Indigenous descent. However, the election is not until June 2, and politics, like life, is full of surprises.

That the two leading candidates are women is seismic in a country imbued with machismo, where gender violence is rampant and the fight for women’s rights has been especially sluggish under the incumbent president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, who is limited by Mexico’s Constitution to one six-year term.

When AMLO became president in 2018, he promised that the poorest Mexicans would be his priority and blasted the “neoliberal” establishment for ignoring the concerns of the “people.” That rhetoric has worked. He has maintained high approval ratings throughout his presidency. Ms. Sheinbaum, who lacks his charisma and political acumen, is seen as the continuator of his political project.

If elected, Ms. Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s first Jewish president. She rarely identifies publicly as Jewish and has neither played up nor sought to avoid her identity. As a Mexican of Jewish origin, I have seen with amazement and optimism how so many Mexicans, in a predominantly Catholic country, are backing someone of her gender and religious origin.

That she’s the front-runner says something about the degree to which the country’s effervescent democracy has redrawn the role of minority groups. Though it remains to be seen if winning the presidency, as she is poised to do, will bring about a positive and definitive change, beyond a popular political project.

. . . .If she is elected, even if she long ago walked away from her religious roots, the catastrophic Israel-Hamas conflict could become a particularly thorny subject for her. Left-wing governments in the region like those of Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua and even Mexico have a strong anti-Israel bent, and like it or not, Jews in the Americas are often associated with Israel.

Mexico is home to some 30,000 Palestinians. In the days after the Hamas attack on Israel, AMLO walked back the foreign ministry’s condemnation of the attack and expressed Mexican neutrality in the conflict. That Ms. Sheinbaum fell in line behind him on this issue is particularly revealing. It tells us that her neutrality may perhaps be a defining factor in her foreign policy.
Walking back a condemnation on the Hamas attack? That’s not “neutral”, but shameful. A government, after all, doesn’t have to maintain institutional neutrality.

*In yesterday’s column “Things Worth Remembering” at The Free Press,  Douglas Murray lauds Christopher Hitchens in a column called “The Freedom to Offend“. I think of Murray as today’s centrist version of Hitchens. Although Murray is formidable in debate, in conversation, and on the page, he’s not quite as charismatic as Hitchens, but it’s certainly worth paying attention to what Murray says. Here are a few of his thoughts on Hitchens.

When I was starting out as a writer and a speaker, a friend gave me some sound advice. “The only rule of public speaking,” he said, “is never to speak before, with, or after Christopher Hitchens.”

. . .I remember a particularly tense debate in California around the time of the Iraq war. Christopher had Michael Ignatieff, the Canadian historian and former Liberal Party leader, on his side, and things got pretty stern with the other faction almost from the start.

At some point, Christopher attacked not only his opponents but the chair. Then, perhaps inevitably, he attacked the audience. Some point or other got hissed, and Hitch wheeled around and said, “You can always tell where the morons are when they start to hiss.”

Whatever you thought of the arguments he was making, it was a rhetorical dare that I admired. Christopher didn’t mind being in a minority of one. In fact, I think he enjoyed it.

He had all the Aristotelian skills: a quick wit, an ability to charm the audience if he so wished, and a breadth and depth to his knowledge—often informed not just by his wide reading but also by his travels. He could deploy all these at any moment, sometimes at the same time. He had the ability to make arguments that were truly forceful.

. . .There are many retorts and tricks of his that you can learn from any of his videos. But, for me, his supreme speech will always be the one he gave at the University of Toronto in 2006. The motion was: “Be it resolved: freedom of speech includes the freedom to hate.”

. . .Christopher took a different line, arguing not only that people had the right to offend, but that the people doing the complaining were, in fact, themselves the possessors of holy books from which precisely the worst types of hate could come.

Christopher saved this final point for the very end of this speech, but the whole thing—from the coup de théâtre of the opening to that final point—is a rhetorical masterpiece.

There is one other thing worth saying about this, which is personal.

I remember watching the debate at the time and admiring how “blasphemous” Christopher was willing to be about the religion that was, at that point, doing most of the intimidating around the world. I remember emailing him, saying, “Be careful” or the like, knowing that with his criticism of Muhammad he had crossed a perilous line.

He wasn’t bothered, but I remember thinking, “Gosh—I’d like to be able to give that speech someday.” And I suppose in different ways I did. And that is one of the things about not just excellent speech, but brave speech. It inspires others. It encourages them and leads the culture onward. It is a virtue of the art form that should not be underestimated.

And here’s that famous speech, which I think is Hitchens’s best video on the Internet (you can read a transcript here). I listened to it again this morning, and I suppose I’ll listen to it several more times. It’s a speech that should be part of every first-year college student’s unit on free speech (what, they don’t have those units?)

*Finally, supporters of dead (likely executed) Alexei Navalny stood in long lines yesterday—to vote against Putin. He still won, getting 87% of the vote.

On the final day of a presidential election with only one possible result, Russians protested Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian hold on power by forming long lines to vote against him at noon Sunday — answering the call of opposition leader Alexei Navalny who had urged the midday action before dying suddenly in prison last month.
The “Noon Against Putin” protest, with voters forming queues outside polling stations in major cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, was a striking — if futile — display of solidarity and dissent designed to counteract the Kremlin’s main message — that Putin is a legitimate president commanding massive support.

Many polling stations in Moscow were deathly quiet on Sunday morning, but long lines appeared at exactly 12 p.m. — despite authorities sending mass text messages warning people against participating in “extremist” actions and in the face of severe repression of dissent since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests.

Navalny, who had long crusaded for free and fair elections in Russia and was blocked from running for president in 2018, had urged Russians to vote against Putin at noon Sunday. It turned out to be Navalny’s final political act before his death. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Putin of ordering his killing, and many Western leaders have said they hold Putin responsible. The Kremlin rejects the allegations.

Of course Putin couldn’t lose, but 87% isn’t 100%.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili discuss déjà vu:

A: Sometimes I have an impression that everything already happened.
Hili: Nonsense, tomorrow’s breakfast hasn’t happened yet.
In Polish:
Ja: Chwilami mam wrażenie, że wszystko już było.
Hili: Brednia, nie było jeszcze jutrzejszego śniadania.

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

Reader Mike found these photos on Twitter and said about the first one, “I remember one of your rules about all coffees eventually becoming candy. This seems to close the loop.”  Indeed it does! Ding Dong Lattes? Oy gewalt!

 

From Merilee via FixNation.  The caption, “If you’re gonna use photoshop, at least do it properly and put some CATS in the shot!”

From The Absurd Sign Project; I’d eat the big one!:

Another cleric stops a hijab-less woman in Iran. I love it when these women give the theocrats what for:

A rare tweet from Titania! Look at each panel:

Here’s the ultimate in government repression of free speech (h/t Luana). What’s with Switzerland? This guy may be voicing an unpopular opinion, but so what?

The belief, which is without any foundation I know, is going up over time!

From Simon: a re-enactment of “Dune” at home. Sandcats!

From Malcolm. I swear I don’t know how pandas survive being clumsy at everything but eating bamboo!

From the Auschwitz Memorial a 16-year-old girl who died on the train during the journey to the camp:

Tweets from Professor Dr. Cobb. For the first one, it’s essential that you turn the sound up:

Matthew’s comment on this tweet was just “!”:

20 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Biden does not have the options that the left wing of the Democratic Party claims he has. They claim that he can stop the war. They claim that he can pull the Israelis out of Gaza in some magical way. He can’t. If the missile shipments stop, Israel goes into Rafah–it just goes into Rafah with slightly less precise weaponry. That’s more dead Palestinians, not less.”
    –Haviv Rettig Gur
    https://unlocked.fm/podcast/episode-200

  2. On this day:
    1229 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, declares himself King of Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade.

    1241 – First Mongol invasion of Poland: Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków in the Battle of Chmielnik and plunder the city.

    1314 – Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and final Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.

    1741 – New York governor George Clarke’s complex at Fort George is burned in an arson attack, starting the New York Conspiracy of 1741.

    1766 – American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act.

    1834 – Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset, England are sentenced to be transported to Australia for forming a trade union.

    1848 – The premiere of Fry’s Leonora in Philadelphia is the first known performance of an grand opera by an American composer.

    1899 – Phoebe, a satellite of Saturn, becomes the first to be discovered with photographs, taken in August 1898, by William Henry Pickering.

    1922 – In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience, of which he serves only two.

    1940 – World War II: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.

    1944 – Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupts, killing 26 people, causing thousands to flee their homes, and destroying dozens of Allied bombers.

    1965 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

    1967 – The supertanker Torrey Canyon runs aground off the Cornish coast.

    1968 – Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.

    1990 – In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $500 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

    2014 – The parliaments of Russia and Crimea sign an accession treaty.

    Births:
    1634 – Madame de La Fayette, French author (d. 1693). [She authored La Princesse de Clèves, France’s first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in literature.]

    1690 – Christian Goldbach, Prussian-German mathematician and academic (d. 1764).

    1789 – Charlotte Elliott, English poet, hymn writer, editor (d. 1871).

    1800 – Harriet Smithson, Irish actress, the first wife and muse of Hector Berlioz (d. 1854).

    1844 – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer and academic (d. 1908).

    1845 – Kicking Bear, Native American tribal leader (d. 1904).

    1858 – Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the Diesel engine (d. 1913).

    1869 – Neville Chamberlain, English businessman and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1940).

    1893 – Wilfred Owen, English soldier and poet (d. 1918).

    1899 – Marjorie Abbatt, English toy-maker and businesswoman (d. 1991).

    1905 – Robert Donat, English actor (d. 1958).

    1907 – John Zachary Young, English zoologist and neurophysiologist (d. 1997).

    1909 – Ernest Gallo, American businessman, co-founded the E & J Gallo Winery (d. 2007).

    1922 – Suzanne Perlman, Hungarian-Dutch visual artist (d. 2020).

    1932 – John Updike, American novelist, short story writer, and critic (d. 2009).

    1934 – Charley Pride, American country music singer and musician (d. 2020).

    1941 – Wilson Pickett, American singer-songwriter (d. 2006).

    1942 – Kathleen Collins, American filmmaker and playwright (d. 1988).

    1950 – Linda Partridge, English geneticist and academic. [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1951 – Ben Cohen, American businessman and philanthropist, co-founded Ben and Jerry’s.

    1952 – Bernie Tormé, Irish singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2019).

    1959 – Luc Besson, French director, producer, and screenwriter, founded EuropaCorp.

    1964 – Courtney Pine, English saxophonist and clarinet player.

    1966 – Jerry Cantrell, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1970 – Queen Latifah, American rapper, producer, and actress.

    You’ve gotta know what death is to know life! (Jack Kevorkian):
    1703 – Maria de Dominici, Maltese sculptor and painter (b. 1645). [In 2010, a crater on Mercury was named after her.]

    1745 – Robert Walpole, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1676). [Generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.]

    1845 – Johnny Appleseed, American gardener and missionary (b. 1774).

    1871 – Augustus De Morgan, Indian-English mathematician and academic (b. 1806).

    1898 – Matilda Joslyn Gage, American author and activist (b. 1826). [Mainly known for her contributions to women’s suffrage in the United States, but she also campaigned for Native American rights, abolitionism, and the free exercise of reason in matters of religious belief. She is the eponym for the Matilda effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention. She influenced her son-in-law L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.]

    1918 – Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, American architect, designed the Plaza Hotel (b. 1847).

    1947 – William C. Durant, American businessman, co-founded General Motors and Chevrolet (b. 1861).

    1978 – Peggy Wood, American actress (b. 1892).

    2004 – Harrison McCain, Canadian businessman, co-founded McCain Foods (b. 1927).

    2009 – Natasha Richardson, English-American actress (b. 1963).The

    2014 – Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Nigerian author, playwright, and academic (b. 1951). [She was a founder-member of the Association of Nigerian Authors.]

    2016 – Barry Hines, English author and screenwriter (b. 1939).

    2017 – Chuck Berry, American guitarist, singer and songwriter (b. 1926).

    2020 – Alfred Worden, American test pilot, engineer and astronaut (b. 1932).

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

      Professor Dame Linda Partridge DBE, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci (born on this day in 1950) is a British geneticist, who studies the biology and genetics of ageing (biogerontology) and age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Partridge is currently Weldon Professor of Biometry at the Institute of Healthy Ageing, Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, and Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany.

      Partridge was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart School in Tunbridge Wells and the University of Oxford from which she was awarded Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.

      After completing her DPhil at the University of Oxford, Partridge became a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) post-doctoral fellow at the University of York, and in 1976 moved to the University of Edinburgh where she became Professor of Evolutionary Biology. In 1994 she moved to University College London (UCL) as Weldon Professor of Biometry, and was the Director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing between 2007 and 2019. In 2008 Partridge became a Director in the Max Planck Society and the Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany.

      Partridge was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1996 and appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2003. Her husband, Michael J. Morgan was also elected FRS in 2005. She was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004, and awarded the Linnean Society of London’s prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 2008. In 2009, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE),.and received the Croonian Lectureship from the Royal Society.

      In March 2009, the UKRC announced Dame Linda as one of six Women of Outstanding Achievement in Science, Engineering and Technology.

      She was awarded Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, and of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2023.

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

  3. Sloppy joe and french fries – always my favorite meal in the college dining hall! I think that I might lobby for it this week at home. I wonder if it will still taste as good fifty years on. Thanks for the reminder.

  4. “Slop-Sloppy joe, a slop- a-sloppy joe, yeah”

    Adam Sandler – The Lunch Lady Song

    youtu.be/VY14zcUM9SI?si=Ijg1Kr-Np2Lhq1xM

    (Add the h t t p s stuff to above link)

  6. I didn’t know that Frans de Waal was ill. I remember a NYT article where he said “I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, ‘doesn’t this guy have a dog?’ “.

  7. “De Waal’s work: apes are much more like humans, and humans are much more like apes, than we think. As he said in a speech about his work in 2014: ‘I have moved the monkeys up a little and the people down a little.’ ”

    The 4-part Netflix documentary “Chimp Empire” does an amazing job of showing the group dynamics of our near relatives. It shows such an intimate perspective that I might wonder if the chimps needed to sign a privacy waver.
    https://www.netflix.com/title/81311783

  8. That is an amazing speech from 2006 by Christopher Hitchens. My only beef with it is that it is so erudite, which means that it goes over the heads of most people (including, too often, my own). I wonder if maybe a chatbot could make the message more accessible to a larger audience.

      1. So correct, we could really do with Christopher Hitchens now more than ever.
        I remember this Toronto speech and the references to the “ Canadian “ law, he would be horrified to see how much worse it is now and is going to be in the future.

  9. Sorry to learn about Frans Waal. From that longer talk I always use a shorter clip that shows how monkeys have a strong sense of fairness in my evolution class. It always kills.

  10. To give context to Martin Sellner, he is an Austrian neo-nazi who illegally entered Switzerland by boat to give a conference speech calling for forceful removal of immigrants and anyone supporting them (presumably from Switzerland?). The venue owner canceled the conference contract upon learning the details but the attendees refused to leave.

    I know Americans can be free speech absolutists, but that’s not our culture in Europe. Either way I suppose this End Wokeness twitter account is not actually interested in free speech, but rather in disseminating neo-nazi propaganda? Be wary of who you boost using your website and credibility.

    1. Five Years ago: “Austrian far-right extremist refused US entry: Austrian Identitarian leader Martin Sellner has been denied entry to the US. It comes after he was linked to the Christchurch terror attack.”

      Source: https://www.dw.com/en/austrian-far-right-extremist-denied-us-travel-permit-after-christchurch-link/a-48107733

      Sellner is a central figure in the Austro-German New Right network of neo-fascists & neo-nazis. Unfortunately, Sellner’s “unpopular opinion” is getting increasingly popular in Germany (especially in East Germany), where the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) is getting increasingly stronger.

      Here’s an article (in German) in the Jüdische Allgemeine about Sellner and his Identitarian Movement, which mentions that in 2006 he sticked swastika posters on the wall of a synagogue: https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/juedische-welt/braune-hipster/

  11. This part says so much about the NYT and the issues that plague the left:

    “She rarely identifies publicly as Jewish and has neither played up nor sought to avoid her identity. As a Mexican of Jewish origin, I have seen with amazement and optimism how so many Mexicans, in a predominantly Catholic country, are backing someone of her gender and religious origin.

    That she’s the front-runner says something about the degree to which the country’s effervescent democracy has redrawn the role of minority groups. Though it remains to be seen if winning the presidency, as she is poised to do, will bring about a positive and definitive change, beyond a popular political project”

    Imagine! A politician running on policy position and not on her identity! How can it be, that those Christians vote for someone, who is a Jew? I don’t know.. maybe because they like the political position she champions?
    If a three legged horse was guaranteed to do good politics, I would vote for it, despite me neither missing a leg NOR being a horse! (edit: yet)

  12. I love the de Wall Ted Talk. I’m going to look for the book you mentioned (Chimpanzee Politics). Thanks for including in today’s Hili dialogue.

  13. Has anyone here read this recent book by de Waal?

    https://royalsociety.org/medals-and-prizes/science-book-prize/books/2022/different/

    I haven‘t. Based on the title, it seems like it is pushing a woke agenda. Of course, one shouldn‘t judge a book by the cover, or even by the title, so I‘m genuinely interested in appraisals by anone who has read it. (It might have a provocative title to, erm, provoke the woke into buying it and being converted.)

    On a related note, many decades ago I read Desmond Morris‘s The Naked Ape. How was that judged by the experts then, and how now?

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