Welcome to CaturSaturday, March 23, 2024, and cat shabbos until sundown. Foodwise, it’s National Chips and Dip Day, and nothing can beat (besides guacamole, but not with potato chips), the classic recipe of Lipton’s French Onion Soup Mix (dried) mixed with Sour Cream. The dip below is a tad fancier, topped with caramelized onions:
It’s also National Puppy Day, National Chia Day, National Tamale Day, National Melba Toast Day, a dry, thin toast (I like it) which is, like Peach Melba, named after the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba. Moving on, it’s also Pakistan Day (in Pakistan)m World Meteorological Day and last but far from least, it’s Cuddly Kitten Day. Here, submitted for your approval, are ten minutes of cuddly kittens (sound up):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 23 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Two pieces of breaking news:
*A branch of ISIS sent four armed members to shoot up a packed concert hall outside Moscow. Many were killed, and the perps are in custody:
The death toll from an assault on a sold-out rock concert near Moscow climbed to at least 115 people on Saturday, as the Russian authorities announced arrests and new details emerged about the deadliest attack on the capital region for more than a decade.
The attack began at around 8 p.m. local time on Friday, when camouflage-clad gunmen opened fire in a popular concert venue, minutes before a veteran rock band was to start playing. Social media videos verified by The New York Times showed screaming concertgoers rushing past bloodied victims sprawled on the floor. As gunshots boomed, fire erupted in the structure’s upper floors.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said Saturday that the attackers had used automatic weapons and explosives, and set the concert hall on fire with “a flammable liquid” while people were still inside. Russia’s emergency service posted pictures and video footage of charred seating inside the concert hall as firefighters worked to clear the debris.
The Kremlin said on Saturday that 11 people had been detained in connection with the attack, including “all four terrorists directly involved.”
The Islamic State, through an affiliated news agency, on Friday claimed responsibility for the attack.
*Sadly, Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, revealed that she’s been diagnosed with cancer.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, has been diagnosed with cancer and has begun chemotherapy, she announced on Friday, putting a grim coda on months of rumors about her condition and plunging Britain’s royal family into deep uncertainty as two of its most senior figures grapple with grave health concerns.
Her diagnosis follows that of King Charles III, who announced his own cancer diagnosis and treatment in early February. Like the king, Catherine, 42, did not specify what type of cancer she had, nor what her prognosis was.
I’m not a big royals fan or royals watcher, but this is ineffably sad. She’s only 42 and, besides her husband, has three young children, who now are faced with the possibility of losing both their mother and their grandfather. I wish the family well and hope all turns out for the best, by which I mean the King and Princess will be cured. Over at the NYT, Pamala Paul wrote an extra column on America’s bizarre fascination with the royals, “The real royal scandal is on us.” Indeed. Here’s Paul’s ending:
Sometimes a person’s request for privacy is just that, not an invitation for yet more giddy, self-indulgent, obsessive invasiveness.
What we now know is that all this speculation was directed at a woman with cancer. Whatever this news means for the future of the British monarchy, whether one supports or despises it, is of far less consequence than what it means to a young woman with three school-age children, regardless of royal status. In dealing with this terrifying disease, Kate is just another human, with just as much right to handle her illness as she chooses.
Right now Kate Middleton is sick, and the hope is, with proper medical care, she will get better. What, we must wonder, would it take for a culture sick with its own wolfish appetite for self-exposure to try to get better, too?
*The ACLU is being sued by the National Labor Relations Board for firing an employee who supposedly used racist “slurs”—well, not really slurs but words that might be construed by the easily offended as racist. Read the NYT article here (h/t Carl):
Kate Oh was no one’s idea of a get-along-to-go-along employee.
During her five years as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, she was an unsparing critic of her superiors, known for sending long, blistering emails to human resources complaining about what she described as a hostile workplace.
She considered herself a whistle blower and advocate for other women in the office, drawing unflattering attention to an environment she said was rife with sexism, burdened by unmanageable workloads and stymied by a fear-based culture.
Then the tables turned, and Ms. Oh was the one slapped with an accusation of serious misconduct. The A.C.L.U. said her complaints about several superiors — all of whom were Black — used “racist stereotypes.” She was fired in May 2022.
The A.C.L.U. acknowledges that Ms. Oh, who is Korean American, never used any kind of racial slur. But the group says that her use of certain phrases and words demonstrated a pattern of willful anti-Black animus.
In one instance, according to court documents, she told a Black superior that she was “afraid” to talk with him. In another, she told a manager that their conversation was “chastising.” And in a meeting, she repeated a satirical phrase likening her bosses’ behavior to suffering “beatings.”
The caption from the NYT: An A.C.L.U. lawyer discusses Ms. Oh’s use of the phrase “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” according to the transcript of arbitration hearing.
Did her language add up to racism? Or was she just speaking harshly about bosses who happened to be Black? That question is the subject of an unusual unfair-labor-practice case brought against the A.C.L.U. by the National Labor Relations Board, which has accused the organization of retaliating against Ms. Oh.
The case will be resolved soon. Do you think her language was racist? I have my opinion (and you can try to guess it), but give your answer below.
*As I noted yesterday, the US resolution at the UN Security Council promoting a ceasefire and release of Israelis hostages failed to pass—against all my expectations. The reason? According to the Jerusalem Post,
“Russia and China still could not bring themselves to condemn Hamas as terrorist attacks on October 7,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the 15-member body which has yet to take a stand against the terror group.
. . .Thomas-Greenfield said that the failure to adopt the resolution was “really outrageous, and it’s below the dignity of this body.”
She further charged that Hamas aside, Russia and China took this step purely because it was authored by the United States.
“This is not just cynical, it’s also petty. Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States because it would rather see us fail than to see this council succeed,” she charged.
“Let’s be honest,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “For all the fiery rhetoric, we all know that Russia and China are not doing anything diplomatically to advance a lasting peace or to meaningfully contribute to the humanitarian response effort.”
I think there is more to this, involving deals struck among the parties (including terrorist groups, perhaps), but we won’t know.
And here’s a story by Benjamin Weinthal, the Israeli reporter who was there when MEMRI head Yigal Carmon predicted to me, while lunching in Jerusalem last August, that there would be a war between Israel and Hamas by October. Yigal was right, and Benjamin was the first reporter to publish his prediction before October 7. But here’s Benjamin’s response when I asked him yesterday what the Israeli public thought of America trying to tell it how to vote and how to run the war. He sent me a story he published on March 16, called “Schumer’s anti-Netanyahu speech strengthen’s Bibi in Israel’s war to defeat Hamas,” and there’s your answer. A small excerpt:
Having seen his lowest levels of support in months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity has gotten a bounce in the polls, which some say is partly due to the Biden administration and Democrats’ growing criticism against the Jewish state.
Criticism grew this week from across the political spectrum [in Israel] after New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s speech calling for new elections.
. . .Mideast expert Caroline Glick told Fox News Digital this dynamic is playing out.
“Schumer spoke about Netanyahu, but Netanyahu is simply acting in accordance with the demands of the public. As a result, calls from Schumer and the White House for Netanyahu’s ouster only strengthen him politically,” Glick said.
The law of unintended consequences also might help Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister’s support could solidify and he could gain new followers due to Schumer’s efforts to dislodge a sitting head of state.
*Reader Bob sent an email urging us to listen to a podcast or read its transcript. His notes about the story, which is that Israel’s going after Rafah no matter what the world does or thinks.
“This is the most important podcast on the Gaza war I’ve heard since it began–and it has a transcript so you don’t have to listen. All sorts of insights from inside the Israeli war cabinet.
It’s Canadian journalist Dan Senor (right) talking with Ron Dermer, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and now Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs. The part about Rafah (i.e., Israel will attack it regardless of the world’s opinion) starts at 33 minutes in exactly:
Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the Gazan city packed with evacuees as a final Hamas bastion harboring a quarter of the terror group’s fighters.
The prospect of tanks and troops storming Rafah worries Washington, which says Israeli must have a plan to move more than a million Palestinians who have sheltered there since being displaced from elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to ensure civilian evacuation and humanitarian aid — measures that top Israeli aides are due to discuss in the White House in the coming days at the behest of US President Joe Biden.
“We’re quite confident that we can do this in a way that would be effective — not only militarily, but also on the humanitarian side. And they have less confidence that we can do it,” one of those Israeli envoys, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, told the podcast “Call Me Back with Dan Senor.”
And from the second source:
An IDF military campaign to destroy Hamas in Rafah must take plan, even if it harms Israel’s relations with the United States and isolates it on the international stage, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said ahead of his trip next week to Washington.
“We’re gonna go in and finish this job, and anybody who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that the nerve of the Jews, that existential nerve, was touched” by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, which sparked the Gaza war, Dermer said.
He spoke on an episode of the Call Me Back podcast with Dan Senor amid a stiff diplomatic battle with the Biden administration about Rafah, which is last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.
The Rafah operation is “going to happen, and it will happen, even if Israel is forced to fight alone, even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States,” he stated.
Those words are music to my ears, because without a Rafah operation, Hamas stays in power. And I’m certain that if Israel goes into Rafah, Hamas is toast. They must, of course, provide a secure place for Gazan civilians in Rafah to go.
*As always, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly and snarky news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Bloodbath & Beyond.”
→ Doctors are giving C-sections because they’re scared of the A-word: Doctors in Louisiana are giving doomed C-sections to women with failing pregnancies instead of standard abortions. So the care is worse and more dangerous and impacts future births, but it skirts the A-word a little better. And House Republicans sent a letter this week opposing Biden’s effort to expand veteran access to IVF. Their reasoning: “IVF is morally dubious and should not be subsidized by the American taxpayer. It is well known that IVF treatments result in a surplus of embryos after the best ones are tested and selected. These embryos are then frozen—at significant cost to the parents—abandoned, or cruelly discarded.” There’s an effort to pretend that this isn’t happening. But it is. Many in the Republican Party want to effectively ban IVF, by making it so every embryo created must be implanted (i.e., put in the womb). For my Catholic friends, I know this is a truly held belief. My only complaint is that these politicians should stop trying to pretend this isn’t their argument. If you think embryos are people, that’s okay, man, just say it, try to sell me on it. It’s the sneakiness that gets me freaked out way more.
→ Double-check that your lawyer passed the bar: A test called “the bar” that is intended to gatekeep who can become a lawyer has been consistently accused of being a bar that gatekeeps who can become a lawyer. And of course: that it’s racist. It’s gaslighting. It’s girlbossing (which is a bad thing these days). So now Washington State has joined Oregon, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire in saying that the bar exam is optional. An expert tip for going forward: double-check that your lawyer passed the bar and is licensed to practice law and stuff. At this rate, medical school exams will be optional pretty soon, and then I don’t know what to tell you. Go with god. Trust your gut. Does he seem like someone competent in kidney transplants? As you move through life, learn to give quick, casual IQ tests along the way. Maybe pretend they’re just riddles, and you’re a riddle person. Wear a hat to make this more believable.
→ In news about the Jews: Aldo Soberon, an engineer at Intel, held a bullhorn in Phoenix to say to a cheering rally: “Read my lips: I will not condemn the Houthis of Yemen. I will not condemn the PFLP. I will not condemn Hezbollah and I will not condemn Hamas!” MIT students are openly supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group whose logo is now all over campus. And Harvard students held a community wake after Hamas leaders were captured and killed inside al-Shifa hospital, where they had regrouped. While the ADL filed a federal complaint about Berkeley schools after allegations of, among other things, elementary school students being told by their teachers to write “stop bombing babies” on note cards and then to attach those cards to the door of the only Jewish teacher at the school. [JAC: Things can’t get more insane than that!]
And locals in Gaza are posting about how gross the new U.S. military–supplied meal kits are and also how expensive the free kits are, which raises the question: Who is hoarding the supplies and selling them to you? Could it be a group called Hamas? And judging from the kit shown, they took the protein source for themselves. Which leads us back to the same old, same old: Hamas is a genocidal death cult that doesn’t care one iota about the lives of people in Gaza.
You tell ’em, Nellie!
*Finally, in his Weekly Dish column, a splenetic Andrew Sullivan laments, “What have I, what have I done to deserve this?” No, he’s not ill; he’s beefing about Bluetooth speakers and increasing public noise due to “devices.”
There is something about being forcibly exposed to someone else’s choice in loud music that makes me lose my shit as well. It got so bad a few years back that I talked to my shrink about it. I wasn’t just irritated, annoyed, or put out by it. I was instantly full of blind, hateful rage. My rational faculties would desert me, and I’d find myself yelling at strangers in public, which is something I usually only do online.
What is it about this relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things? I’m a pretty congenial person in public usually, with some English reserve. My shrink suggested it was about my years of living with a dictatorial father. I continued to overreact to situations where I was completely powerless, she suggested, and unable to escape. There was something to that, I think. I’m extremely independent-minded as an adult, and bristle at being pushed around.
. . .At the beginning of this phone surge, a term was even coined in Britain for playing music on your phone in public: “sodcasting” — after “sod” for “sodomite”, i.e. something that only a total ASSHOLE would do. Sodcasting was just an amuse bouche, though, compared with our current Bluetooth era, where amplifiers the size of golf-balls have dialed it all up to 11, and the age of full-spectrum public cacophony — including that thump-thump-thump of the bass that carries much farther than the sodcasting treble — has truly begun.
National parks? They are now often intermittent raves, where younger peeps play loud, amplified dance music as they walk their trails. On trains? There is now a single “quiet car” when once they all were, because we were a civilized culture. Walk down a street and you’ll catch a cyclist with a speaker attached to the handlebars, broadcasting at incredible volume for 50 feet ahead and behind him, obliterating every stranger’s conversation in his path.
. . .When did we decide we didn’t give a fuck about anyone else in public anymore?
It’s not as if there isn’t an obvious win-win solution for both those who want to listen to music and those who don’t. Let me explain something that seems completely unimaginable to the Bluetoothers: If you can afford an iPhone, you can afford AirPods, or a headset, or the like. Put them in your ears, and you will hear music of far, far higher quality than from a distant Bluetooth, and no one else will be forced to hear anything at all! What’s not to like? It follows, it seems to me, that those who continue to refuse to do so, who insist that they are still going to make you listen as well, just because fuck-you they can, are waging a meretricious assault on their fellow humans.
. . . Whenever I’ve asked the sonic sadists whether they actually understand that they are hurting others, they blink a few times, their mouths begin to form sentences, and then they look away. Or they’ll tell me to go fuck myself, or say I’m the only one who has complained, which is probably true because most people don’t want public confrontation, and have simply given up and moved on. Then there is often the implication that I’m the one being the asshole. On no occasion has anyone ever turned their music off after being asked to. Too damaging to their pride.
Andrew Sullivan as Andy Rooney! He limns a number of solutions, including bans, fines, signs, counter-blasting or howling, or even jamming or destroying speakers via hacking. Ultimately, though, since Sullivan blames all this on the desire of Generation Z kids to have a constant soundtrack to their lives, is simply to find a quiet space and wait another generation.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili mimics a Christian prayer. Malgorzata says, however, that the Polish word for “taking away” is the same as “stroking”, as one strokes a cat. Hili’s superiority complex is on show here, as she’s claiming that, like God, she can purge the world of sin. This obligation, however, is also Jewish, and falls on people–and cats.
A: What are you doing?Hili: I’m taking away the sins of the world.
Ja: Co ty robisz?Hili: Gładzę grzechy świata.
*******************
From Barry; an atheist’s riposte:
From Stash Krod:
From the Darwin Awards, submitted by Mark Garver:
From Masih: A woman shot in one eye (and blinded) by the Iranian police during a protest. She also testified before the UN’s fact-finding committee that condemned Iran. There’s English, so listen up:
Iran committed crimes against humanity during its Woman, Life, Freedom movement crackdown, the U.N. Human Rights Council says. @NegarMojtahedi speaks with one woman who the council says is living proof of the state's violent oppression.
READ MORE: https://t.co/jYtA8JUlxq pic.twitter.com/d5xO7EQ3k4
— Global BC (@GlobalBC) March 21, 2024
Ricky Gervais posted a photo of his cat, Pickle, somewhat the worse for wear.
1st day’s work as a real professional supermodel (no, I am not a nepo baby!!!). I’m going to earn a fortune!! #DutchBarn pic.twitter.com/cKMBQ2xXl8
— Pickle (@PickliciousF) March 22, 2024
From Frank, Andrew Doyle (the creator of Titania McGrath) on Hamas. Frank’s comment: “How Hamas are so misunderstood…the poor darlings!😂😂”
Are Hamas misunderstood? pic.twitter.com/Bl9vnMBoZ5
— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) March 18, 2024
From David, the wrong time to share a picture of flatbread! (Click to see the whole tweet.)
— wholesome boomer content (@wholesumboomers) March 12, 2024
From Malcolm; a cat playing fetch, but not as a d*g would play fetch. The cat can’t be bothered to bring the object all the way back:
My cat plays fetch but exactly as a cat would play fetch pic.twitter.com/0Ghq0Fi2UK
— Actually_Tina_Mentor_Mode_FFXIV (@Actually_Tina) March 17, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial: a tweet that I retweeted:
Three members of a Dutch family, along with 901 other Jews, were gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz. Note the yellow star on dad. https://t.co/jlUqjdc7Se
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) March 23, 2024
Two tweets from the esteemed Dr. Cobb. First, a view of Saturn’s Moon. Second, our own Moon with a speculation about how it might have changed history had we seen it in that view. (I think religion would have developed earlier and differently.):
Similarly provocative but less well known is a Galileo spacecraft image of Orientale Basin, which is on the extreme western limb of our Moon as seen from Earth. It's fun to speculate how human society would have developed had there been this constant "eye" looking down at them. pic.twitter.com/1IivAzGsB7
— Jon Alexandr (@Jon_Alexandr) March 20, 2024
A fossil drawn with ancient squid ink found in an invertebrate fossil by the famous Mary Anning.
In 1826 Mary Anning discovered a fossil belemnite (squid relative) with dried fossilised ink contained inside. Her friend Elizabeth Philpot revived the ink and used it to illustrate her own ichthyosaur fossil, which was thought to be the same age as the belemnite (200 mya). pic.twitter.com/6hCEkLdcZx
— Oxford University Museum of Natural History (@morethanadodo) March 20, 2024
1. “Did her language add up to racism?”
No.
There’s a certain good explanation for that turn-of-phrase I’m sure, but I suspect this was seen as an intimidating power-grab opportunity…. because obviously, some of us have a magical insight to find the racism nobody else can see, usually hidden behind trigger words.
2. Awesome moon thoughts
3. What’s with the flatbread?
4. I saw that Doyle clip this past week – so good! (The satire that is).
I just realized : and this is meant generally :
The question of racist-or-not-racist is an affordance trap. Similar to a false dilemma. There is likely more to bear on the question than just the two options afforded in the question.
So, there is some background I don’t know about. I admitted I don’t know the origin of the phrase. But – too late – I fell for the affordance trap. And possibly into trouble.
That’s how affordance traps work.
Affordance traps – thanks. James Lindsay discusses in ten minute audio at
https://newdiscourses.com/2024/03/staying-out-of-affordance-traps/
Yep – I listened yesterday.
Another affordance trap example is the waiting room at a service/doctor’s office. There are chairs – what are you going to do? Well – a few things, only two of which are sit and stand – and it’s ok to note that.
… so for racist/not-racist, I suppose the third option might be nothing-to-do-with-race, or the fourth option of all-race, and so on. The military context of the phrase (see below) suggests the phrase is in fact all-race.
See? We are drowning in two inches of water now, and I think that is the point of the trap.
BTW we are polite company here, so I understand we can ask these questions as a way to say “Discuss” – I’m not criticizing any writing here.
I don’t think the question is an affordance trap. Logically speaking, the phrase “X or not X” covers all possibilities. Not only that, the people posing the question aren’t the ACLU, it’s the reporter of the story and Jerry.
There is an issue in that racism is not binary in degree. There’s a difference between crossing the road to avoid a black person and shipping boat loads of black people across the Atlantic for vast profits but both are essentially racism. One is much worse than the other, though.
Note : I think PCC(E)’s question here can be understood as a call to “Discuss”, and I do not “call out” anything.
jeremyp: ” Logically speaking, the phrase “X or not X” covers all possibilities. ”
Indeed – I think the nature of the trap, though, is to set that up as a decision dilemma, false dilemma, or other strategy of manipulation. I found myself floundering to look for ways it might be racist – and that is the point, I think.
Recall also, the dialectical thought process at work in such scenarios – degree v. kind as you note – that thought can be driven into.
In any event, I think this turns out to be good exercise – and the “morale” phrase seems unrelated to racism anyway.
I’m not sure that either example is racism at all. The former is simply risk management (assuming the risk of getting hit by a car while crossing is less than the risk of robbery.). The latter, at least in the context of the trans-Atlantic trade, was just a reflection of where the slaves came from. Slaves in all prior eras had to be taken from closer to home, so they were likely to look much like their ultimate owners. And of course the African slaves did look much like their original captors on the other side of the river. The danger with confounding racism with slavery is that it attenuates the moral crime of slavery if you say that slavery became a moral crime only when slaves and owners were of different races. This makes it too easy to overlook and excuse slavery where it existed before and persisted later, particularly where slave-owners were not of the white race.
And “too easy” where it still persists and is common, certain middle eastern countries are fine examples of slavers, Qatar being high on the list but of course they are “brown” people and can never be accused of slavery!
Humans have been enslaving each other since they got up on two legs.
” … it attenuates the moral crime of slavery …”
^^^that. And look how long it took for the moral dimension to come up.
Apologies for the truncation and bolding.
Just one thing I just noticed now:
“… shipping boat loads of black people across the Atlantic for vast profits ..”
Does that say anything about slavery of whites? I imagine that’d have to mean “not racist”.
White Cargo – The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America
Don Jordan and Michael Walsh
New York University Press
2007
Not just in America either, the islamic slavers of the Mediterranean are infamous for the numbers of “white” slaves taken, some from as far away as the coasts of France and England. White slaves were highly prized and valuable commodities. Racism? Pah!
On this day:
1540 – Waltham Abbey is surrendered to King Henry VIII of England; the last religious community to be closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech – “Give me liberty, or give me death!” – at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia.
1801 – Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death inside his bedroom at St. Michael’s Castle.
1806 – After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their “Corps of Discovery” begin their arduous journey home.
1857 – Elisha Otis’s first elevator is installed at 488 Broadway New York City.
1868 – The University of California is founded in Oakland, California when the Organic Act is signed into law.
1888 – In England, The Football League, the world’s oldest professional association football league, meets for the first time.
1909 – Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
1919 – In Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini founds his Fascist political movement.
1933 – The Reichstag passes the Enabling Act of 1933, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany.
1956 – Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic in the world. This date is now celebrated as Republic Day in Pakistan.
1965 – NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States’ first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young).
1977 – The first of The Nixon Interviews (12 will be recorded over four weeks) is videotaped with British journalist David Frost interviewing former United States President Richard Nixon about the Watergate scandal and the Nixon tapes.
1983 – Strategic Defense Initiative: President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.
2001 – The Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.
2010 – The Affordable Care Act becomes law in the United States.
2019 – The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces capture the town of Baghuz in Eastern Syria, declaring military victory over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant after four years of fighting, although the group maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells across Syria and Iraq.
2020 – Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the United Kingdom into its first national lockdown in response to COVID-19.
2021 – A container ship runs aground and obstructs the Suez Canal for six days.
Births:
1749 – Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician and astronomer (d. 1827).
1838 – Marie Adam-Doerrer, Swiss women’s rights activist and unionist (d. 1908).
1842 – Susan Jane Cunningham, American mathematician (d. 1921).
1882 – Emmy Noether, Jewish German-American mathematician, physicist and academic (d. 1935).
1904 – Joan Crawford, American film actress (d. 1977).
1912 – Wernher von Braun, German-American physicist and engineer (d. 1977).
1921 – Donald Campbell, English race car driver (d. 1967). [Broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year (1964). He died during a water speed record attempt at Coniston Water in the Lake District, England.]
1924 – Olga Kennard, English crystallographer and academic (d. 2023).
1924 – Bette Nesmith Graham, American inventor, invented Liquid Paper (d. 1980). [She was also the mother of Monkees guitarist Mike Nesmith.]
1929 – Roger Bannister, English runner, neurologist and academic (d. 2018).
1935 – Barry Cryer, English comedian, actor and screenwriter (d. 2022). [ “Quick – the noise made by a dyslexic duck”.]
1944 – Tony McPhee, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.
1944 – Michael Nyman, English composer of minimalist music and pianist.
1944 – Ric Ocasek, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer (d. 2019).
1946 – Alan Bleasdale, English screenwriter and producer.
1952 – Kim Stanley Robinson, American author. [I’ve only read his The Ministry for the Future.]
1953 – Chaka Khan, American singer-songwriter.
1962 – Steve Redgrave, English rower. [Won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000, the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds.]
1968 – Damon Albarn, English singer-songwriter, producer and actor.
1976 – Chris Hoy, Scottish cyclist.
1983 – Mo Farah, Somali-English runner.
1988 – Jason Kenny, English cyclist. [The holder of most Olympic gold medals (7) and medals (9) for a British athlete. Kenny’s seven Olympic gold medals place him joint 15th by reference to gold medals won in the Summer Olympic games since 1896. He is the single holder of the records for both most Olympic golds and Olympic medals for a cyclist. His wife Laura, the most successful female cyclist, and the most successful British female athlete, in Olympic history, announced her retirement this week.]
“And what would humans be without love?”
RARE, said Death. (Terry Pratchett):
1842 – Stendhal, French novelist (b. 1783).
1910 – Nadar, French photographer, journalist, and author (b. 1820).
1946 – Gilbert N. Lewis, American chemist (b. 1875). [Best known for his discovery of the covalent bond and his concept of electron pairs; in 1926 he coined the term “photon” for the smallest unit of radiant energy.]
1964 – Peter Lorre, American actor (b. 1904).
1981 – Beatrice Tinsley, English-New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist (b. 1941). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]
1992 – Friedrich Hayek, Austrian-German economist, philosopher, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899).
2001 – Margaret Jones, British archaeologist (b. 1916).
2003 – Fritz Spiegl, Austrian-English flute player and journalist (b. 1926). [His works include compiling the BBC’s Radio 4 UK Theme in 1978.]
2006 – Cindy Walker, American singer-songwriter and dancer (b. 1918).
2007 – Paul Cohen, American mathematician and theorist (b. 1934. [Best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was awarded a Fields Medal.]
2011 – Jean Bartik, American computer scientist and engineer (b. 1924). [She was one of the original six programmers of the ENIAC computer.]
2011 – Elizabeth Taylor, American-British actress, socialite and humanitarian (b. 1932).
2013 – Boris Berezovsky, Russian-born Soviet-British mathematician and businessman (b. 1946). [A critic of Putin, various plots to kill him were investigated in the UK after he was granted political asylum. One of those who reported a plot against Berezovsky, Alexander Litvinenko, was himself assassinated in London. When Berezovsky was found dead by hanging the coroner recorded an open verdict.]
2021 – George Segal, American actor (b. 1934).
2022 – Madeleine Albright, Czechoslovakian-born American diplomat, 64th United States Secretary of State (b. 1937).
Woman of the Day:
[Text from Wikipedia]
Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley (born 27 January 1941, died on this day in 1981) was a British-born New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist, and the first female professor of astronomy at Yale University, whose research made fundamental contributions to the astronomical understanding of how galaxies evolve, grow and die.
Beatrice Hill Tinsley was born 1941 in Chester, England, as the middle of three daughters of Jean and Edward Hill. The family emigrated to New Zealand following World War II, first living in Christchurch, and then for a longer time in New Plymouth, where her father, Edward Hill, was a clergyman, Moral Re-Armer, and later became the mayor (1953–56).
While studying in Christchurch, she married physicist and university classmate Brian Tinsley, not knowing that this would prevent her from working at the university while he was employed there. Tinsley completed her master’s thesis in 1962. They moved in 1963 to the United States, to Dallas, Texas, where Brian was hired by the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (now the University of Texas at Dallas). However, she was said to have found the situation “stultifying”, and had once caused a controversy by refusing to follow the custom of hosting a faculty tea. In 1964, she enrolled at UT-Austin, where she was the only woman in the astronomy programme and where she would later publish her groundbreaking research.
Despite receiving recognition for her work, Tinsley was unable to find a permanent academic position. In 1974, after years of attempting to balance home, family and two commuting careers, she left her husband and two adopted children to take a position as assistant professor at Yale. On 1 July 1978 she was appointed a professor of astronomy at Yale, becoming the first woman to hold the position. She worked at Yale until her death.
Tinsley completed pioneering theoretical studies of how populations of stars age and affect the observable qualities of galaxies. She also collaborated on basic research into models investigating whether the universe is closed or open. Her galaxy models led to the first approximation of what protogalaxies should look like.
In 1974 she received the American Astronomical Society’s Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy, awarded for “outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher”, in recognition of her work on galaxy evolution.
In 1977, Tinsley, with Richard Larson of Yale, organised a conference on ‘The Evolution of Galaxies and Stellar Populations’.
Shortly after, in 1978, she became the first female professor of astronomy at Yale University. Her last scientific paper, submitted to The Astrophysical Journal ten days before her death, was published posthumously that November, without revision.
Tinsley died of melanoma on 23 March 1981, aged 40, in the Yale Infirmary. Her ashes are buried in the campus cemetery. Her obituary was published by The New York Times several decades later on 18 July 2018, in their “Overlooked” project, which aims to note “the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times”.
In 1986 the American Astronomical Society established the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize, which recognises “an outstanding research contribution to astronomy or astrophysics, of an exceptionally creative or innovative character.” It is the only major award created by an American scientific society which honours a woman scientist. The award is not made with restriction on a candidate’s citizenship or country of residence.
The main-belt asteroid 3087 Beatrice Tinsley, discovered in 1981 at Mt John University Observatory near Tekapo, is also named after her.
In December 2010 the New Zealand Geographic Board officially named a mountain in Fiordland’s Kepler Mountains (which are named for astronomer Johannes Kepler) as Mt Tinsley.
There is a full list of her posthumous tributes in the Wikipedia article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Tinsley
Saw NBC News from last night. Reporting from Haiti. I noticed that there were several videos of reporters walking the streets and reporting. I never see that from Gaza. How come reporters are not out and about in Gaza filing reports like they are in Haiti? Also, still no call for an immediate ceasefire in Haiti.
Parts of the “beatings/morale” phrase can be found in documentation/writing including old (18th c.?) military settings – English, maybe French – very interesting! :
english.stackexchange.com/questions/371325/origin-of-the-beatings-will-continue-until-morale-improves
The phrase, on posters, stickers and even t-shirts, was common throughout my military career. It was not associated with race. The fact that “morale” is a factor certainly alludes to military origins.
I suspect that certain groups have decided to take “beating” and make it a thing only about race, and indicative of racism.
The idea of hanging and the image of the noose has undergone a similar transformation. Besides being a common method of both execution and suicide, it was in popular culture associated with the old west and horse thieves for many decades. You could hardly watch an old Clint Eastwood western without hangings or lynchings being featured prominently.
As we have discussed previously, when there is high demand for examples of racism but very little of it to be found, then it must be manufactured, through outright fabrication, or by forcing racist connotations into places where it is not actually present.
JAC: Things can’t get more insane than that!
I wouldn’t want to put money on that proposition, sadly…
Says the Jewish optimist: “Of course they can!”
Without getting into the weeds about free will, I think most of us agree that there is a qualitative difference between insanity and evil. The incident Ms. Bowles describes is like counseling children to burn ants with a magnifying glass or pull the wings off flies. There is a perverse glee in instilling cruelty in children. It’s unlikely that the teacher is suffering from a diagnosable mental disorder. More likely she is just an evil person.
McGrath’s “poor darlings” reminds me of Noel Coward’s “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans.”
It’s fun to speculate how human society would have developed had there been this constant “eye” looking down at them.
Reminded me of the the “Church of Him” and Larry Niven’s The Mote in God’s Eye.
Can you blame poor old Howard Grote Littlemead?
I have heard the “beatings will continue…” trope since I began working almost 50 years ago. Never imagined any racist implications.
Regarding Andrew Sullivan’s piece about noise: I enjoy playing golf. IMHO, golf should be played while walking: golf carts are an abomination. But now, some golfers not only take a cart but they bring their Bluetooth speaker so they can blare music while playing. Golf has been called a good walk spoiled, but bringing noise on a good walk is nonsense.
ICYMI : english.stackexchange.com/questions/371325/origin-of-the-beatings-will-continue-until-morale-improves
I imagine there was zero racism intended in Ms. Oh’s “the beatings will continue”-type phrases. It reminds me of the poor guy who had to resign for correctly using the word “niggardly” in a budget meeting (1999, I think in D.C.).
The public noise nuisance will only improve when the employees in public transportation, at your local gym, at the local Starbucks ask the patrons making the noise to please turn it off. If the offender doesn’t do that, they must be asked to leave. I don’t ever see that happening, so we’re stuck.
It’s not just Gen Z. Many people in their 30s, 40s, and beyond also feel like the gym is a place to blast your phone, have long talks with your relatives by phone, and so on. Hell is truly other people!
Racist or not racist? Probably not in my opinion. The phrase “the beatings will continue until morale improves” is one I’ve heard many times in relation to poor morale sapping management decisions, never in a racist context though.
Of course, it could be racist, if Ms Oh only used it in respect of her managers who are black because they are black. However, the facts of the story as laid out in this post suggests to me that it’s just a trumped up excuse to get rid of a difficult employee.
Given that “she was an unsparing critic of her superiors, known for sending long, blistering emails to human resources complaining about what she described as a hostile workplace … rife with sexism, burdened by unmanageable workloads and stymied by a fear-based culture”, I’m amazed she is not glad to be out of it. Although, I can understand her wanting to clear her name – being fired doesn’t look good on your CV.
“A fossil drawn with ancient squid ink found in an invertebrate fossil by the famous Mary Anning.”
The ink in my pen is constituted from ancient atoms made many billions of years ago in a supernova!
I don’t see any 220 Ohm resistors on that board. Those would be red-red-brown. But it’s a blurry Captcha, so it’s hard to be sure.
Looking forward to listening to the Ron Dermer interview when I’m at the gym today.
I just watched the hour-long interview with Ron Dermer. I know that the transcript is available, but only the video captures Dermer’s strength, clarity, and determination. Highly recommended.
Norman.
Yes I agree, reminded me of the mnemonic resistor colour code drummed in viz :-
Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Grey, White, Gold, Silver.
I will not bore with the resistor values.
Trigger warning, do NOT proceed if easily offended, non intended.
Recited as, “Bl**ck b******s rape our young girls but virgins getting worried, no tolerance, gold and silver.
‘Twas definitely “racist” then let alone by todays standards. However in the UK of the late 1950s we never saw any black people let alone in Technical Training Schools so the offence was never realised but existed . How things change. It did not by the way make me anti black people.
The problem is just like the rainbow colour spectrum ROYGBIV “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, it is in my memory cache for ever.
Just don’t blast it through Bluetooth speakers!
Regarding lawyers not required to pass the bar, isn’t there an insurance requirement for practicing, like doctors?
If there is that will probably bring an end to it. No company who doesn’t want the liability will insure them.
The Oregon Supreme Court approved it so it’s likely staying.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/no-bar-exam-required-practice-law-oregon-starting-next-year-2023-11-07/
I didn’t have a dictatorial father and I despise hearing the music and phone conversations of people in stores. I also can’t stand the increasingly loud “club like” music played by stores. While I’m complaining, I can’t stand people installing blindingly bright led lights on their houses that make me feel like I am being incinerated when I walk on sidewalks after dark. My last dog walk of the evening is being ruined.
Indeed, the “ elevator” music once reviled seems positively restful now and despite the cost of electrical power and the “climate change” mantra most of my neighbours leave every outside light they have burning twenty four hours per day. Makes using my telescope difficult.
+1
I find two sources of music particularly annoying. The first is motorcycles. People riding in the mountains often have incredibly loud music playing over their unnecessarily loud bikes. Half a mile or more from the road, and it is still loud enough to be distracting.
The other for me is the beach. My folks have a place on the beach, and we try to stay there a couple of times each year. Young adults and teenagers regularly walk up and down the beach with annoying music playing at full volume.
It shows a complete lack of consideration for others. The lingering lessons from my childhood years in Japan are just horrified at these displays.
It seems to me a symptom of society’s ills, like slovenly dress in public.