Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 28, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, March 28, 2024, and National Black Forest Cake Day, a beautiful cake that I’ve never eaten:

“Black Forest Cake” by kimberlykv is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit here.

It’s also National Hot Tub Day, Weed Appreciation Day, National Something on a Stick Day (I’m thinking either ice cream bars or corndogs), Maundy Thursday, Piano Day, Serfs Emancipation Day in Tibet, and, most important, Respect Your Cat Day.  Here I am respecting my last and most beloved cat, Teddy, rescued from the street at an advanced age. He was the sweetest cat I’ve ever known. Pure white with bottle-green eyes.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Despite a complete lack of evidence, Putin is STILL trying to pin the Isis concert-hall attack, whose toll is now at least 143, on both Ukraine and the West.

Reeling from an apparent security lapse that allowed a group of heavily-armed men to massacre dozens of concertgoers in Moscow last week, Russia has gone into overdrive advancing a narrative that pins the blame on a usual suspect: Ukraine.

Western officials have said Islamic State is responsible for the March 22 attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue, which killed at least 143 people and left hundreds wounded. The group claimed responsibility through the ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq. But Russian authorities, embroiled in a costly war with Ukraine and having convinced Russians that Kyiv and its Western backers are the source of its ills, quickly reverted to form.

“Islamists couldn’t prepare such an action alone,” Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, told Russian state TV. He accused Western security services of involvement and echoed earlier comments by President Vladimir Putin that the attackers planned to flee to Ukraine where “they were supposed to be greeted as heroes.”

This week’s cover of Russia’s biggest weekly newspaper shows portraits of Western leaders engulfed in flames. “We know the architects of the Crocus terrorist act. We hope they burn in hell,” reads the banner headline. “They can tell lies about ISIS to each other.”

Putin acknowledged on Monday that the attack was conducted by Islamist radicals, but hinted that Kyiv and its U.S. backers were involved and linked the attacks to armed raids into Russia by Kyiv-backed commandos and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

Neither he nor the other Russian officials gave evidence of Ukrainian complicity. Kyiv has vehemently denied any involvement in the attack, and the U.S. on Tuesday dismissed Russia’s claim.

“It’s simply not true,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “Those comments by Russian officials, including from President Putin, are just propaganda to justify their continued aggression against Ukraine.”

Where is any evidence that Ukraine or its Western allies did this? And why would they? What is the motive—to undermine Putin? Killing 143 people and wounding hundreds is a pretty horrible way to do it. But even Putin’s running dogs, including many Russians, likely buy this conspiracy theory.

*While everyone’s paying attention to the war in Gaza, the media hasn’t reported much on Hezbollah’s own attempt to start a war: firing high-quality missiles south into Israel from Lebanon, some of which have killed Israeli civilians. This is, of course, a war crime, and is also forbidden by UN Security Council Resolution 1701.  The NYT reports it in a misleading way, “Hezbollah and Israel trade fire across Lebanon border.” Trade my tuches!  Israel responds only when Hezbollah fires first.

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday, killing at least one person in a barrage that it said was retaliation for an Israeli strike that the authorities said killed seven medics overnight in southern Lebanon.

For months, Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire across the Israel-Lebanon border. The violence has displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it carried out an overnight strike targeting a “significant terrorist operative” and others who were with him near the town of al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said the strike hit an emergency medical center and killed seven paramedics, denouncing what it called an “unacceptable” attack on a health center.

Hezbollah’s response was swift: It launched the volley of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for the Habbariyeh strike and to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the group said.

A direct hit on a building in the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona killed a 25-year-old, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s nonprofit emergency medical service.

. . . Kiryat Shmona, where the 25-year-old was killed on Wednesday, used to be home to about 24,000 people but only about 1,500 inhabitants remain. Many residents, now scattered among 220 hotels across Israel, did not even wait for the government’s order on Oct. 20 to evacuate.

Many Israelis in both the north and south of the country have evacuated their homes lest they be killed by rockets—or worse. I heard that the Israeli who was killed today refused to leave and suffered the consequences. Of course the world pays no attention to this other war crime or the Israelis being killed by Iranian-funded rockets (Hezbollah has thousands of them.)

*A statement from the head of Hamas; make of it what you will:

Hamas will not release any of the 134 hostages it holds until Israel ends the war, withdraws its troops, allows all Gazans to return to their homes and lifts the blockade on the coastal enclave, the terrorist group’s leader Khaled Mashaal said on Wednesday.

*Several places, including the NYT, report the first case of an Israeli hostage saying she was sexually assaulted by a Hamas member while in captivity.

Amit Soussana, an Israeli lawyer, was abducted from her home on Oct. 7, beaten and dragged into Gaza by at least 10 men, some armed. Several days into her captivity, she said, her guard began asking about her sex life.

Ms. Soussana said she was held alone in a child’s bedroom, chained by her left ankle. Sometimes, the guard would enter, sit beside her on the bed, lift her shirt and touch her, she said.

He also repeatedly asked when her period was due. When her period ended, around Oct. 18, she tried to put him off by pretending that she was bleeding for nearly a week, she recalled.

Around Oct. 24, the guard, who called himself Muhammad, attacked her, she said.

Early that morning, she said, Muhammad unlocked her chain and left her in the bathroom. After she undressed and began washing herself in the bathtub, Muhammad returned and stood in the doorway, holding a pistol.

“He came towards me and shoved the gun at my forehead,” Ms. Soussana recalled during eight hours of interviews with The New York Times in mid-March. After hitting Ms. Soussana and forcing her to remove her towel, Muhammad groped her, sat her on the edge of the bathtub and hit her again, she said.

He dragged her at gunpoint back to the child’s bedroom, a room covered in images of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, she recalled.

“Then he, with the gun pointed at me, forced me to commit a sexual act on him,” Ms. Soussana said.

Ms. Soussana, 40, is the first Israeli to speak publicly about being sexually assaulted during captivity after the Hamas-led raid on southern Israel. In her interviews with The Times, conducted mostly in English, she provided extensive details of sexual and other violence she suffered during a 55-day ordeal.

The story is detailed and horrifying, and it’s just one hostage out of over 100 remaining. Who knows how many are still alive?

Although there have been plenty of people who deny that Hamas has raped anybody, much less used rape as a tool of war, the evidence, which I’ve been compiling for a while, says otherwise. I won’t go into it here, but even the UN itself concluded that, despite the difficulty of gathering evidence when people were killed, burned, or reduced to a few bones, multiple instances of sexual violence towards women happened on October 7 in at least three locations.  When the hostages return, if they’re returned alive, I have little doubt that we’ll hear of more.  And there is not one credible piece of evidence that IDF soldiers have raped anybody, despite the rumors that abound. Even Al-Jazeera has retracted its claims that IDF soldiers raped Gazans.

*And several places as well (including PirateWire and the NY Post) have reported that Jo Boaler, a professor of math education at Stanford whose work was the basis of preventing students in California from learning algebra early (inequities, you know), has been accused of academic misconduct (h/t Rosemary). From PirateWire:

Jo Boaler, a Stanford professor of mathematics education, is arguably the person most responsible for the new California Math Framework (CMF), a newly approved set of curricular guidance for teachers across the state’s more than 950 public school districts. These guidelines, which are non-binding but help shape instructional materials and practice, suggest delaying instruction of Algebra I until high school and teaching fuzzy “data science” courses as alternatives to calculus in the name of ensuring “equity.” The CMF has long been accused of distorting research to fit its policy agenda, but last week it got hit with what might be its most damning blow yet: a 100-page, well-sourced document published by an anonymous complainant alleging that many of the misrepresented citations throughout the CMF can be traced directly back to Boaler.

Though some of the specific allegations are new, the complainant’s conclusion — that Boaler has “engaged in reckless disregard for accuracy” throughout her career — won’t be surprising to those familiar with her track record. Besides routinely misrepresenting citations for decades, Boaler also has a history of deceptively presenting her professional credentials, charging underperforming schools exorbitant consulting fees, and pushing to water-down public school courses while placing her own children in elite private schools.

Boaler first made a name for herself in the mid-2000s by advocating against “tracking” — a system designed to allow high-performing students to be appropriately challenged and underperforming students to receive appropriate support — and instead promoting “heterogeneous classes,” where students’ demonstrated math ability is ignored and all are taught the same content. For years, she’s had the ear of administrators and policy wonks eager to reform teaching practices in a state where over 65% of students aren’t meeting grade-level math standards.

. . . . A landmark study of the algebra delay Boaler pushed on SFUSD in the name of helping “students from underserved communities” found the policy disadvantaged high-achieving students and did little to help those already struggling. Specifically, the authors found that “large ethnoracial [enrollment] gaps” in both AP and advanced math courses “did not change” after Boaler’s reforms, while overall enrollment in AP Calculus — which requires a strong foundation in algebra — initially fell sharply. Subsequent reforms allowing students to enroll in summer Geometry and Algebra II/Pre-Calculus courses attenuated this drop, but did nothing to alter the persistent disparities in black and Hispanic enrollment in AP math, which was the supposed point of Boaler’s reforms.

And here’s the kicker!:

Fortunately for Boaler, her children are unaffected by this bad policy; instead of sending them to local public schools, she enrolled them in a $48,000-a-year private school that, according to publicly available course material, offers Algebra I to all its middle schoolers. And though Boaler writes often of her desire to bridge “indefensible racial and social inequities” in math performance, she charged an underfunded minority school district $5,000 an hour for consulting services that included seven sessions for a total fee of $65,000. (When Jelani Nelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, tweeted about her exorbitant consulting fees, Boaler responded that his “sharing of private details” was “being taken up by police and lawyers.”)

There’s a letter attesting to this $5000-per-hour fee.  All I can say is repeat what we used to say in college: “Karma’s a b-tch!”

*A New York roller derby team is suing the county where it plays because the local government has prohibited transgender women and girls from competing athletically with natal women or girls on its parks and fields. The ACLU is taking the side of the plaintiffs, of course.

They zip around the rink, armed with helmets, pads and mouthguards. They push, bump and occasionally crash out as they jostle for position on the hardwood floor.

But for the women of the Long Island Roller Rebels, their biggest battle is taking place outside the suburban strip-mall roller rink where they’re girding for the upcoming roller derby season.

The nearly 20-year-old amateur league is suing a county leader over an executive order meant to prevent women’s and girl’s leagues and teams with transgender players from using county-run parks and fields. The league’s legal effort, backed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, has thrust it into the national discussion over the rights of transgender athletes.

Amanda Urena, the league’s vice president, said there was never any question the group would take a stand.

“The whole point of derby has been to be this thing where people feel welcome,” said the 32-year-old Long Island native, who competes as “Curly Fry” and identifies as queer, at a recent practice at United Skates of America in Seaford. “We want trans women to know that we want you to come play with us, and we’ll do our very best to keep fighting and making sure that this is a safe space for you to play.”

This ban seems a bit harsh when it comes to girls, but how many transgender girls are there? There shouldn’t be any who have taken hormones or had surgery, as there should be an age of consent of at least 16. If the trans females are just claiming their identities without surgery or medical intervention, then no, it’s certainly not right. Such people should be competing in boys’ or mens’ leagues. And for adult females, the ban should stand, as, to me, fairness to all trumps inclusivity for one. And for roller derby, a rough sport? Natal women could get hurt, as they have been in similar situations. Nope. By all means let transgender women compete, in such local contests, but with natal men, as they should be at least have an opportunity to compete.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is trying to efface her consciousness, for she sees Baby Kulka near the food bowl!

Hili: I’m pondering about the mystery of consciousness.
A: What does that mean?
Hili: I know she is there but I fend it off.
In Polish:
Hili: Rozważam tajemnicę świadomości.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Wiem, że ona tam jest, ale to wypieram.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Anna:

Apropos, here’s the latest from reader Pliny the in Between’s site Far Corner Cafe. The guy, according to the artist, is “The current CEO of Boeing – Dave ‘Loose bolts’ Calhoun.”

Seat diagram of a Boeing 737-800, with 28A marked:

One more from The Dodo Pet:

From Masih; Hamas meets with Khamenei. All that evil in one room!

From Luana, an “X” from Elon Musk, who doesn’t like wokeness.

Our ex-provost, Daniel Diermeier, is now the President of Vanderbilt, and took action against students occupying campus buildings. According to the campus newspaper, 3 students were arrested and 16 suspended.  The issue, the administration’s canceling an upcoming vote by the Vanderbilt Student Government (VSG):

If passed, the VSG amendment specifically would prohibit VSG funding from being used to purchase goods or services from companies that the international BDS movement has identified as “complicit” in Israel’s post-1967 occupation of Palestinian territory and violations of Palestinian rights. The amendment would not interfere with the amount of funding distributed to pro-Israel groups on campus but would prevent these organizations’ spending on BDS movement target companies.

My question is, though, how student governments can invest their funds anyway, much less groups sub-funded by those governments?

Some tweets (I believe the first one in, who knocked over the employee, has been charged with battery):

A faux dog attack from Jon, who likes this but thinks it needs a better soundtrack:

From Malcolm, who says, “Not now, please”:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 14-year-old girl was killed with cyanide gas immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First, a cat shown by the Nazca Lines, which can be best viewed from an airplane. When I was young and poor, my significant other and I went to Peru and spent the munificent sum of $30 to hire an airplane to fly us over some of the figures. It was money well spent. Read the whole tweet; it’s got a lot of information. (The cat is probably a local wildcat, not a domestic cat.)

Matthew’s title for this one is “All the dux”:

35 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I have to say that I am perplexed by people like Boaler. I have to assume that since she is sending her own kids to a school that doesn’t follow her philosophy that she doesn’t think that it would be good for them. What’s the goal here? Equity doesn’t seem like it is served by having a well-educated, rich elite. Unless, that is, equity requires an aristocracy (or party vanguard) to govern the hoi polloi.

    Reply

    1. It says something, but there are other schools and reasons to use them – and I might have missed it, but for this case we need to know more to say something about it. Perhaps it is a performing arts school, or some other sort of thing.

      If it was a mathematics school, though, that would say a lot.

      And it is said:

      Equity Equalizes Downward

      Reply

    2. Well, if she were really concerned about impacting resource-starved school districts, she could publish all of her material under a creative commons license at least cc-by. This would make it freely available to any educator to use as is or modify to their own specifications. I was introduced to creative commons licensing by the ck-12 Foundation in 2008 when they, in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Virginia led the creation of a “21st Century Physics Flexbook: a compilation of some contemporary and emerging physics” to introduce high school teachers and students to ideas that were new and had not yet found their way into standard physics textbooks. Anybody could freely use or modify the text as they saw fit. A few years later ck-12 and NASA published a similar freely available, creative commons licensed flexbook on modeling and simulation for k-12. This was the time period when Sal Khan was creating his early, freely available and excellent Khan Academy material.

      Reply

    3. That story about Boaler brought to mind the term “luxury belief” – a belief that the privileged can afford to have (or at least confess) and that confers status on them, but that is harmful to normal people when implemented widely. Like, “abolish the police” is survivable if you can afford armed bodyguards. Not so much otherwise.
      Then again, it could just be good old-fashioned hypocrisy with a side dish of grift and some “let’s keep the competition down” sprinkled on top.

      Reply

    4. Yes, Dr.B. Skin in the game. Similarly I’d like to see some of Palestine’s “allies” VISIT Gaza, or any Muslim country. Particularly the women. Or even be able to find it on a map!
      D.A.
      NYC

      Reply

  2. Bold added : “Jo Boaler, a Stanford professor of mathematics education”

    The sleight-of-word here is a clue. We could look at this too :

    scholar.google.com/citations?user=k7VNoNUAAAAJ

    Two words are all that is necessary :

    critical pedagogy

    Study of the education of things – instead of study of the things. Instead of actual mathematicians promoting mathematical thought for public understanding of mathematics – which is what it sounds like – it is a hermetic world reorganization project based on critically conscious gnostics.

    Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
    Eric Voegelin
    1968, 1997
    Regenery Press
    Chicago;Washington D.C.

    And see Paulo Freire’s output.

    Isaac Gottesman’s The Critical Turn in Pedagogy (2016) pretty much brags about how the “sixties radicals” infiltrated education to continue bringing forth the revolution, as in Marx’s C-word revolution. So institutional capture is not inaccurate here.

    Reply

    1. post-deadline edit:

      1. Full title : Critical Turn in Education — From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race, not “pedagogy”.

      2. I wrote:

      “based on critically conscious gnostics”

      ->

      based on the critical consciousness of gnostics.

      The critical consciousness is the point. The gnostic a person with the critical consciousness.

      Reply

    1. I would generally say that putting costumes on animals, including dogs, is often silly and maybe even infantile — like dressing up dolls. Still, many people find this anthropomorphizing game with animals humorous.

      But what “expression” on the dog “says it all”? Says what? To me the dog appears oblivious to the costume and is just interested in playing with the cat. If anything, it’s the cat that has issues with the dog’s costume, which repeatedly bumps into the cat.

      Reply

  4. Rather than later algebra, I would propose earlier algebra…say fifth or sixth grade…with what are often considered algebra 2 concepts such as logarithms introduced in sixth grade. This allows for the teaching of the quantitative aspects of physical sciences (physics and chemistry) earlier and thus provide a solid basis for teaching a proper life sciences program. We must remember that k12 math, while learned in isolated pedagogy, is not isolated in the world as it really forms a critical backbone for understanding and using the sciences and engineering. My observations in trying to teach my ninth graders math back in the early 70’s was that they were more impacted by their lack of reading skills than an inability to carry out the math once they grasped it. Reading first!…particularly for kids from poor households.

    Reply

    1. I agree. The only experience I have is my own two children, so my opinion isn’t worth much. But something that provided much amazement and delight was watching how quickly and single-mindedly my kids learned new things when they were very young. By very young I mean primarily from about 9 months to kindergarten age.

      That experience lead me to think that we really hold our kids back, education-wise, during the time period that they are most capable of learning new things. I’ve little doubt that kids could learn algebra starting in 5th grade, perhaps even a little earlier.

      Reply

  5. On this day:
    193 – After assassinating the Roman Emperor Pertinax, his Praetorian Guards auction off the throne to Didius Julianus.

    1802 – Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid ever to be discovered.

    1842 – First concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Otto Nicolai.

    1854 – Crimean War: France and Britain declare war on Russia.

    1910 – Henri Fabre becomes the first person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, after taking off from a water runway near in France.

    1933 – The Imperial Airways biplane City of Liverpool is believed to be the first airliner lost to sabotage when a passenger sets a fire on board.

    1939 – Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquers Madrid after a three-year siege.

    1959 – The State Council of the People’s Republic of China dissolves the government of Tibet.

    1969 – Greek poet and Nobel Prize laureate Giorgos Seferis makes a famous statement on the BBC World Service opposing the junta in Greece.

    1978 – The US Supreme Court hands down 5–3 decision in Stump v. Sparkman, a controversial case involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity.

    1979 – A coolant leak at the Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania leads to the core overheating and a partial meltdown.

    1979 – The British House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence against James Callaghan’s government by 1 vote, precipitating a general election.

    1990 – United States President George H. W. Bush posthumously awards Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.

    Births:
    1638 – Frederik Ruysch, Dutch botanist and anatomist (d. 1731).

    1760 – Thomas Clarkson, English activist (d. 1846). [Helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.]

    1819 – Joseph Bazalgette, English architect and engineer (d. 1891).

    1868 – Maxim Gorky, Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright (d. 1936). [Dad appeared (in a very minor role) in the RSC’s British debut of Gorky’s Summerfolk in 1974.]

    1902 – Flora Robson, English actress (d. 1984).

    1904 – Margaret Tucker, Australian author and activist (d. 1996). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1905 – Marlin Perkins, American zoologist and television host (d. 1986). [Best known as the host of the television program Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom from 1963 to 1985.]

    1906 – Dorothy Knowles, South African-English author, fencer and academic (d. 2010).

    1912 – Marina Raskova, Russian pilot and navigator (d. 1943).

    1919 – Eileen Crofton, British physician and author (d. 2010). [Co-founded ASH Scotland, an anti-smoking charity, in 1973, and she became the first medical director of the charity. Between 1975 and 1987, she also worked on the World Health Organization’s expert committee on smoking. Crofton’s campaigns were worldwide and focused on increasing regulations for tobacco and educating people on the harm that smoking can cause. She also campaigned for smoking bans in public places. Crofton was awarded an MBE for services in public health in 1984.]

    1921 – Dirk Bogarde, English actor and author (d. 1999).

    1935 – Michael Parkinson, English journalist and author (d. 2023).

    1936 – Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian writer and politician, Nobel Prize laureate.

    1942 – Daniel Dennett, American philosopher and academic.

    1943 – Richard Eyre, English director, producer, and screenwriter.

    1948 – Dianne Wiest, American actress.

    1986 – Lady Gaga, American singer-songwriter and actress.

    We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. (Richard Dawkins):
    1584 – Ivan the Terrible, Russian king (b. 1530).

    1874 – Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish-German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1795).

    1881 – Modest Mussorgsky, Russian pianist and composer (b. 1839).

    1903 – Magdalene Thoresen, Danish writer (b. 1819). [Several characters in Norwegian literature are based on her, including two of Henrik Ibsen’s. She met Ibsen through her work in the theatre and he later married her step-daughter, Suzannah.]

    1929 – Katharine Lee Bates, American poet and songwriter (b. 1859). [Chiefly remembered for her anthem “America the Beautiful”, but also for her many books and articles on social reform, on which she was a noted speaker.]

    1941 – Virginia Woolf, English writer (b. 1882).

    1943 – Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1873).

    1953 – Jim Thorpe, American football player (b. 1887). [The first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon).]

    1958 – W. C. Handy, American trumpet player and composer (b. 1873).

    1969 – Dwight D. Eisenhower, American general and politician, 34th President of the United States (b. 1890).

    1974 – Arthur Crudup, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1905).

    1985 – Marc Chagall, Russian-French painter (b. 1887).

    1987 – Maria von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (b. 1905). [Stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers.]

    2004 – Peter Ustinov, English-Swiss actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1921).

    2010 – June Havoc, American actress, dancer, and director (b. 1912).

    2012 – Addie L. Wyatt, African American labor leader (b. 1924).

    2013 – Richard Griffiths, English actor (b. 1947).

    2023 – Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japanese composer, record producer, and actor (b. 1952). [Pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.]

    Reply

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

      Margaret Lilardia Tucker MBE (born on this day in 1904, died 23 August 1996) was an Aboriginal Australian activist and writer who was among the first Aboriginal authors to publish an autobiography, in 1977.

      Margaret Tucker was born at Warrangesda Mission near Narrandera to William Clements, a Wiradjuri man, and Theresa Clements, née Middleton, a member of the Yorta Yorta Nation. She spent her childhood at Cummeragunja Aboriginal Reserve.

      In 1917, aged 13, she was forcibly removed to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, where she was badly treated. After two years of training in white domestic practices, in 1919 she was sent to work for a white family in Sydney, where she was abused. The Aborigines Protection Board intervened and she was given another placement from which she ran away. In 1925 the Board released her and she moved to Melbourne.

      In the 1930s Tucker began campaigning for Indigenous rights with William Cooper, Bill Onus and Douglas Nicholls and in 1932 was one of the founding members of the Australian Aborigines’ League. During this time she married and gave birth to a daughter, Mollie. At first influenced by the Communist Party of Australia, she gravitated later towards the conservative Moral Re-Armament movement. This deepened with an eight-month stay at Mackinac Island. In the 1960s she founded the United Council of Aboriginal and Islander Women and in 1964 she was the first Indigenous appointee to the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board.

      Tucker was awarded the MBE in 1968, recognising her welfare services to Aboriginal Australians. Her 1977 autobiography If Everyone Cared was one of the first books to bring to light the mistreatment of her people.

      Margaret Tucker was inducted in the Victorian Women’s Honour Roll, one of the first to receive the honour, in 2001.

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

      Reply

  6. A new duck on the pond today – three common mergansers, two male and one female. Raining very hard, so I didn’t get a photo. On the diagram above, third row up, fifth from the right, I think.

    Reply

  7. >How many trans girls are there, PCC(E) asks, suggesting the ban on trans girls is a bit harsh.

    Quite a few, in fact. New York State does not restrict puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to people over 16. Like any treatment, a child can be given these drugs if the doctor believes the child is mature enough to understand. Failing that, the parents or guardian can consent on behalf of the child. There may not be any gender non-conforming boys playing league roller derby as girls right now but there is no reason, save the ban, why they couldn’t.

    The activists quoted in the article say that boys given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will be too stunted, deformed, and fragile to compete with boys their own age and so must have the right to play with girls. (The stunted part is not correct, btw. Delaying puberty makes girls and boys taller by keeping bone growth plates open longer.). This is just another example of the movement’s eternal willingness to make other people suffer for the consequences of their foolishness.

    A practical reason for writing the ban to protect women and/i> girls is that if you allow boys to play but not men, some league official, presumably female, has to go into the girls’ locker room before every game and eyeball the genitalia of all the girls with penises to make sure none has grown beyond Tanner 2.

    Reply

  8. Despite a complete lack of evidence, Putin is STILL trying to pin the Isis concert-hall attack, whose toll is now at least 143, on both Ukraine and the West.

    Putin’s version of events has been undermined by the president of Belarus. According to The Daily Telegraph:

    The Crocus City Hall terrorist attackers tried to flee to Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko said in a statement undermining Vladimir Putin.

    The Belarusian dictator’s remarks contradict claims by the Kremlin and top Russian security officials that the attackers were backed by Ukraine and tried to escape there as part of a pre-arranged plan.
    Speaking to Belarus media, Mr Lukashenko said he closed the border with Russia following a personal request from Mr Putin in the aftermath of the atrocity.

    “He asked me, ‘will you help me close [the Russian-Belarusian border]?’” Lukashenko said in remarks carried by the official Belta news agency. “He said, ‘I will. We’re doing everything’. That was the conversation.”

    “That’s why they turned around and went toward the Ukrainian-Russian section of the border.”

    https://archive.ph/ytX1T

    Reply

  9. Speaking of the terrorist attack in Russia and how the country was “Reeling from an apparent security lapse . . .”

    This formulation, in one variety or another, appears frequently in the media, be it after bombings, shootings, riots, or other instances of massed violence. It would be an interesting study to determine when the media (the public?) started blaming such events on security lapses, with the assumption that the State is to protect its citizens from all such events. My first remembrance of being stunned by this attitude was when George Bush in 2004 said that his most important job was to protect the American people, but we now hear versions of it with regularity from presidents, candidates, and media alike.

    Within the context and time of 9/11, this was an understandable, if somewhat misguided, sentiment. At the time Bush said it, I was working in a building that had seen a plane flown into it, and I was quite used to the daily march past armed guards, dogs, and other security procedures. But I wasn’t expecting anyone in government to keep me safe from a random bombing or shooting in Bethesda. Acts of violence are not always predictable or preventable, particularly if we are dealing with non-state actors. The attempt to make them so has vastly expanded—and will continue to expand—the apparatus and missions of the security and intelligence agencies. That there are necessary tradeoffs between security and freedom in a free society has long been recognized. And reasonable people can disagree on where to draw the line. What concerns me is that we seem to no longer even have the debate. Something bad happens somewhere? Well, someone failed to keep us safe. It’s obvious, right?

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    1. I agree. We can’t terrorism-proof our society entirely w/o living in some kind of North Korea. Miniscule risk is part of life.

      I used to work in the WTC. I was a securities/options trader in WTC 7 but left that company about 6 months before 9/11 for another firm.

      Funny – outside the building smoking I’d often think I’d be whacked and smushed if the buildings were to fall.
      And the irony is the lobby security there was incredibly efficient/officious. Forget your work ID it was a major headache!

      D.A.
      NYC

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  10. This just in: Saudi Arabia to be head of UN women’s rights commission!
    Hooray!!

    With THAT incredible, insightful and just decision how can we NOT take the UN’s line on Gaza with deep moral seriousness?

    That settles it. I’m buying a (campus swastika) keffiyeh, call for River to Sea and start murdering Jews. I’ve got the necessary brain damage for that position, I’m morally absurd and now I’ve got the UN on my side! Yallah!

    D.A.
    NYC

    Reply

    1. I’m buying a (campus swastika) keffiyeh

      I initially read that as a keffiyeh where the black in the pattern is composed of many barely-discernible little swastikas — the ideal snark gift for a young SJW in your life. Someone with more courage than me might see this as an online business opportunity; you surely would not want a retail store.

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    1. True believers make good marks, whether we’re talking religion, New Age woo, gender identitarianism, or Wokeism.

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      1. Agree, with the caveat that Jo Boaler is (I don’t think) a true believer, she’s a “believer” for *thee*, not for herself. Her children go to a 48K a year private school and learn algebra.

        And. She charges 5000.00 USD a hour for “equity math” workshops and lectures.

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  12. A reminder from the On this day timeline: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, greater scientists than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

    I love this passage from the book, “Unweaving the Rainbow,” by Richard Dawkins.

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      1. Yes, and thanks for the standing reminder! I think I’ll put it into the documents that my family has for when I die.

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  13. Regarding the cat represented in the Nazca Lines…

    Even though Snopes gives a thumbs-up on the story, I remain skeptical that the cat is ancient. The style of the lines seems incongruous, and local people might have incentive to create additional reasons for tourist dollars. As I understand it, all it takes to make the lines is to expose soil by lifting rocks, and this is often done to “refresh” many of the existing lines. Can anyone point to definitive scientific evidence for the lines actually being ancient?

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  14. How are these DEI clowns, who are actively dumbing down our society and having terrible impacts on not just white and Asian kids but minority kids also… able to charge SO MUCH DAMN MONEY?

    I’m periodically shocked by the likes of major frauds like Kendi and DiAngelo’s and this woman’s speaking fees – and worse, the lucrative nature of the whole DEI beast. (google U. Michigan DEI salaries, or DEI salaries in general).
    We need fewer overpaid lawyers for sure, but we need SOME lawyers I maintain, We need NO dei “disrupters” damaging our education system and corporations.

    This stuns me.

    D.A.
    (reformed lawyer) 🙂
    NYC

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  15. $5,000 AN HOUR.

    I assume the woman is a grifter. I mean a conscious, deliberate grifter.
    *
    Lovely shot of Teddy with our host.

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  16. I held off on this until the thread cooled, so as not to dominate. It refers somewhat tangentially to an issue that often comes up here: inequality of opportunity due to school funding inequities. From the PirateWire* story, quoted by Jerry:

    And though Boaler writes often of her desire to bridge “indefensible racial and social inequities” in math performance, she charged an underfunded minority school district $5,000 an hour for consulting services that included seven sessions for a total fee of $65,000. [Internal emphasis mine — LM]

    According to the article cited, the school district is Oxnard (County) School District in California, which is heavily (nearly exclusively) Hispanic and many students qualify for free lunches, a measure of poverty. I wanted to look into what “underfunded” means, since the article didn’t define it, except I think as Newspeak for “underperforming”, which was why they had contracted with Dr. Boaler in the first place. Googling yielded a pdf of the District’s financing for 2022-2023.

    The District’s total revenue was expected to be $241.2 million (all figures rounded.) Of this, the District raised 13.4 million locally (from county property taxes, presumably), and got 18.4 million from the federal government. The rest came from the State of California, the bulk of it (189.4 million) in the form of equalization grants under a plan called Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF.) Of this 189.4 million, 55.1 million was through a program-within-a-program for high-needs students — many are poor and speak no English — called Supplemental and Concentration grants.

    That means the Oxnard District raises 5.6% of its budget from its own resources and relies on the two levels of government for the other 94.4%. Of course I can’t know if this munificence brings its funding per student up to the state average, or whether this level of funding is ample or pitifully inadequate. But it’s clear the the State of California is making some substantial effort to share the wealth of its taxpayers so that poor districts can educate their students without having to rely more than trivially on their own taxing capacity.

    “Underfunded” minority school advocates, over to you.
    —————
    * To comment on the PirateWire story you have to pay to subscribe, so I didn’t.

    Reply

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