Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 3, 2024 • 6:48 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“고비의 날 ” in Korean ): Wednesday, April 3, 2024.  Foodwise, it’s National Chocolate Mousse Day, a dessert I like, but only when it’s heavy with cream and chocolate–none of that unsubstantial light stuff for me.  This looks like a good one:

Lu from Seattle, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also American Circus Day, Geologists Day, Armenian Appreciation Day, Good People Day (I nominate Peter Singer), Fish Fingers and Custard Day (really, how can Brits eat that stuff?) and World Party Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Well, the IDF screwed up big time, killing 7 humanitarian charity workers in a huge and tragic mistake.

Facing searing criticism on Tuesday, Israel acknowledged mistakenly carrying out an airstrike that killed seven staff members of a US-based charity group who were unloading food brought by sea to the war-torn Gaza Strip.

The group World Central Kitchen said it was pausing operations after a “targeted Israeli strike” at around midnight between Monday and Tuesday killed three British and four other staffers — an Australian, a Palestinian, a Pole and a US-Canadian.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged a “tragic” and “unintentional” incident and vowed to “do everything” to prevent a recurrence.

The Israeli military promised to investigate the incident “at the highest levels.”

A Haaretz report on Tuesday afternoon said the IAF had fired three missiles in quick succession at three vehicles.

Facing searing criticism on Tuesday, Israel acknowledged mistakenly carrying out an airstrike that killed seven staff members of a US-based charity group who were unloading food brought by sea to the war-torn Gaza Strip.

The group World Central Kitchen said it was pausing operations after a “targeted Israeli strike” at around midnight between Monday and Tuesday killed three British and four other staffers — an Australian, a Palestinian, a Pole and a US-Canadian.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged a “tragic” and “unintentional” incident and vowed to “do everything” to prevent a recurrence.

The Israeli military promised to investigate the incident “at the highest levels.”

A Haaretz report on Tuesday afternoon said the IAF had fired three missiles in quick succession at three vehicles.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in an English-language statement that he had spoken to WCK founder Chef Jose Anders, “and expressed the deepest condolences of the Israel Defense Forces to the families and the entire World Central Kitchen family.”

He added that the IDF had expressed “sincere sorrow to our allied nations who have been doing and continue to do so much to assist those in need. We have been reviewing the incident at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of what happened and how it happened,” he said.

“We will get to the bottom of this and we will share our findings transparently,” Hagari added.

WCK has been working to unload food brought to Gaza by sea from Cyprus amid a push to increase aid to the Strip amid increasing fears of widespread famine. The killing of its aid workers compounds already intense criticism Israel has faced including accusations that it was withholding aid from the hunger-stricken region.

The White House was “heartbroken,” US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson wrote on X, stressing that relief workers “must be protected as they deliver aid that is desperately needed.”

And the details:

. . . .According to a report by the Haaretz daily, a Hermes 450 UAV fired three missiles at the convoy in quick succession despite the vehicles being clearly marked on their roof as being part of WCK. The decision was made by a unit guarding the aid transport route after troops earlier spotted what appeared to be an armed figure riding on a truck that entered an aid storage area with three WCK cars. The attack occurred moments after the three cars left the storage area, leaving the truck and the armed figure behind, according to the report.

After a missile hit one car, those inside evacuated to the other two cars, and managed to report they had been attacked before a second missile hit another car. As the last unharmed car approached to evacuate the wounded, a third missile hit. All seven people who had been in the vehicles were killed, Haaretz reported.

This is heartbreaking. Yes, it’s a war and everything, and mistakes are made (even by the U.S.), but when people who are trying to help the suffering get killed themselves by some kind of stupid mistake, it’s doubly tragic. Fortunately, Israel investigated and admitted the truth, damaging as that truth must be.  I hope there can be some kind of compensation for the families, though none is really possible for this. And this may make any aid workers reluctant to keep working in Gaza, which would be doubly tragic.

*As expected, Iran has vowed revenge for the killing, presumably by Israel, of 12 people, including two Iranian generals and five other terrorists (including one from Hezbollah)—after an airstrike of unknown origin destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria. Israel hasn’t admitted responsibility, but it never does in these cases:

Iran on Tuesday vowed to respond to an airstrike widely attributed to Israel that destroyed Iran’s Consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus the previous day and killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals and a member of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

Four Syrian citizens were also killed in the strike, a Syrian official said Tuesday, without providing any details about them. Hezbollah, which has been a key ally of both Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and Iran, also pledged “punishment and revenge” on Israel.

Israel, which has repeatedly targeted Iranian officers in Syria and in Lebanon, did not confirm Monday’s attack.

Iran provides money and weapons to Hezbollah, as well as Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel in Gaza. Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese border have increased since the war in Gaza began nearly six months ago.

The U.S. National Security Council said the United States played no role in the strike in Damascus and did not know of it ahead of time. Americans directly advised Iran of that, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

It was not clear if and when Iran would respond, but any retaliation from Tehran would risk a dangerous confrontation with Israel and the U.S.

Iran is already deep into this conflict via providing weapons and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, but a direct confrontation with Israel and/or the U.S. would be dire. Israel doesn’t have the means to fight three wars (I think another one is coming with Hezbollah), but Iran doesn’t yet have nuclear missiles. As soon as they do, they’ll either fire them at Israel or the U.S. will join in a war with Iran. Either way, a dire confrontation is coming.

*It turns out that the U.S. shared information with Russia about a possible terror attack that became a real one when 144 people were killed in an ISIS-affiliate attack in a concert hall outside Moscow on March 22.

More than two weeks before terrorists staged a bloody attack in the suburbs of Moscow, the U.S. government told Russian officials that Crocus City Hall, a popular concert venue, was a potential target, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The high degree of specificity conveyed in the warning underscores Washington’s confidence that the Islamic State was preparing an attack that threatened large numbers of civilians, and it directly contradicts Moscow’s claims that the U.S. warnings were too generalto help preempt the assault.

The U.S. identification of the Crocus concert hall as a potential target — a fact that has not been previously reported — raises new questions about why Russian authorities failed to take stronger measures to protect the venue, where gunmen killed more than 140 people and set fire to the building. A branch of the Islamic State has taken credit for the attack, the deadliest in Russia in 20 years. U.S. officials have publicly said the group, known as ISIS-K, “bears sole responsibility,” but Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to pin the blame on Ukraine.

They also pinned the blame on the U.S. who turns out to have warned Russia of the attack.  But we don’t know why Russia ignored the warning. There seems to be a policy of sharing intelligence about terrorist attacks, even with adversaries, but there was a selfish reason, too:

While the United States routinely shares information about possible terrorist attacks with foreign countries, under a policy known as the “duty to warn,” it is unusual to give information about specific targets to an adversary, officials and experts said. Doing so risks revealing how the United States obtained the intelligence, potentially putting clandestine surveillance activities or human sources at risk.

But the information that pointed to an attack on the concert hall also pointed at a potential danger forAmericans in Russia. On March 7, the U.S. Embassy publicly announced that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts,” and advised U.S. citizens “to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.”

Pity that Putin didn’t listen.

*An op-ed in the NYT by science journalist Dylan Walsh: “Let people sell their kidneys. It will save lives.”

There are 100,000 people in the United States waiting for a kidney. More than half a million are on dialysis, which from my experience I know to be more of a means of survival than a form of living. About 4,000 people die each year while waiting for a kidney. Another 4,000 become too sick to undergo surgery — a gentler way of saying that they, too, die. The National Kidney Foundation estimates that without more investment in preventing diabetes and other ailments, more than one million people will be suffering from kidney failure by 2030, up from over 800,000 now.

These numbers illuminate a story of largely preventable suffering. Hundreds of millions of healthy people walk the streets quietly carrying two kidneys. They need only one. The head-scratcher is how to get kidneys from the people who have one to spare into the people who need one. Getting them from genetically modified pigs, as was recently found possible, won’t be a widespread solution for a very long time.

There’s a simpler and long overdue answer: Pay people for their kidneys.

But doesn’t that mean that the rich people get first dibs on kidneys? Not according to Walsh:

Creating a market for kidneys is not a new concept, but it’s historically been met with disgust: Sell what? To be fair, some of the ways to structure such a market would be irresponsible, coercive and deserving of that disgust.

But others are more thoughtful and prudent. One approach is to make the federal government the sole purchaser of kidneys. Donor and recipient would never meet. Compensation would be fixed, haggling impossible. After the kidney is acquired, the transplant process woud unfold in the typical manner.

This idea fits nicely within today’s health economics. Through a quirk of a 50-year-old law, Medicare is the primary insurer for anyone of any age in need of dialysis or a transplant. This has extended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. It has also been costly, with end-stage renal disease patients accounting for about 7 percent of Medicare’s spending, despite constituting 1 percent of its users. Because transplants are ultimately cheaper than dialysis, if Medicare started paying people to donate kidneys, fewer people would need to survive on dialysis, and Medicare would need less taxpayer money to cover it.

There are other problems, including that it’s against the law to sell kidneys, but Walsh deals with all the problems and, in the end, I think he makes a strong case for the principle. Presumably none of us would sell one since we don’t need the money (and might be worried about having one kidney) but all of us would surely donate a kidney to a friend, relative, or loved one who needed it.

*For those of you who are going to watch the total solar eclipse on April 8 (I think I’m going to Indianapolis to see totality), the WaPo tells you how to ensure that you buy real glasses instead of fake ones, and that’s important.  You have to have eye protection during the eclipse, except for the few minutes of totality, when you can take them off.

Before you finalize your solar eclipse glasses purchase, you should check to see if it has the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 12312-2 code on the inside. If it does, you can be pretty certain that your glasses are legitimate.

Solar glasses that fit all the criteria — have the ISO number and aren’t damaged — can be used to look at the sun on a normal day to observe details of the sun’s surface, said Noah Petro, a scientist with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Project at NASA.

“On a clear day with these glasses on, you’ll see the bright disk of the sun. You may be able to see sunspots. You may be able to see features on the surface of the sun with those glasses on,” Petro said.

If you’ve kept your glasses from 2017, you’re a trouper. And yes, you can still use them.

I found mine from 7 years ago!  And they have the right number on them.

Also:

You just have to make sure they aren’t scratched, dented or bruised. To check your old solar glasses, hold your them up to an indoor light; if you can barely see it, they are safe.

. . .If you happen to have welding mask with shade numbers 12 to 14, those are also safe to view the solar eclipse, according to Aaron Zimmerman, who is a clinical professor in optometry at Ohio State University. The American Astronomical Society recommends welding glasses with shade numbers 13 or 14, although the image color could have a green tint rather than yellow-orange or white one.

But those are not to be confused with sunglasses. Regular sunglasses won’t cut it. Dark sunglasses allow in 10 percent of light but to safely — and comfortably — view the solar eclipse, you’d need glasses that allowed less than 0.001 percent, Zimmerman said.

“You actually have to think about — maybe six or seven pairs of sunglasses is what it would take to view the solar eclipse safely,” Zimmerman said.

So get your glasses now, and be sure to check the number.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is fed up with Biden ignoring her. As Malgorzata noted, “Would you imagine that the President of the U.S. would listen to any advice given him by a Polish cat? Hili, who thought that Biden’s politics towards Iran, Yemen and Israel should be different, realized that he was not listening to her.”

Hili: I will stop giving advice to President Biden.=
A: Why?
Hili: He is not listening.

In Polish:
Hili: Przestaję doradzać prezydentowi Bidenowi.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: On nie umie słuchać.

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

From Not Another Science Cat Page; the instantiation of “I can haz cheezburger?“:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih, a woman thrown into prison by the Taliban. Remember their promise to reform?

A freelancer for Reuters who participated in the butchery of October 7, recounts the Big Fun of that day. Will Reuters keep him? (I don’t agree that there are no good Palestinians, though.)

Watch to the end for the photobomb:

If you want to answer Judith Butler’s question here, what would you say? (h/t cesar)

Hatred being honored:

From Malcolm. Cheer up with some kittens!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First a smart cat playing with itself (will it go blind?)

This species is beyond wierd. Look at the sexual dimorphism in size, for one thing!~

x

45 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “I found mine [eclipse specs] from 7 years ago! And they have the right number on them.”

    nerd points scored : 6.022E42

    Judith “Gnostic wizard” Butler : “What’s the wound to lesbianism, if the category of women is expanded to include transwomen?”

    Oooo, will Doctor Butler do the expanding of the category for us?… ooo, expanding the category… ooo, my own category is getting all hot and bothered, from all the expanding… gotta have a lie down …

    Nice try, wizard – nice try.

  2. My wife and I are greatly saddened by the loss of innocent lives in the IDF attack on Chef Andre’s people. I immediately recalled the USS Liberty incident in the 1967 War. Bibi says “inadvertent”. I don’t think so. Missiles do not just fall off a UCAV and make serial direct hits. Extremely incompetent? Maybe….inexcusable? Yes!

    1. I just wonder whether you think that these killings were inadvertent or inexcusable:

      In July 2008, the US hit an Afghan wedding party, thinking they were a large number of terrorists. 47 Afghan civilians were killed including the bride. And in November, a similar airstrike at a wedding killed 37 civilians, mostly women and children.

      In September 2012, a US drone shot at a truck in Yemen, killing 12 civilians, including three children and a pregnant woman.

      In 2015, the US fired over 200 shells at a hospital building in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 patients and staff. Days later, it admitted the mistake, saying that it had intelligence that the Taliban were in the building.

      In March 2017 , the US dropped a 500-pound bomb on a building where about 50 people were sheltering in ISIS-controlled Syria.

      In 2018, the US Army shot a Hellfire missile at a mother and daughter in Somalia, and when one tried to flee, it hit them again, killing them. .

      In 2021, a US drone shot and killed 10 civilians in Kabul, including an aid worker and seven children. It wasn’t a split second decision – they watched the vehicle for eight hours without considering that perhaps the people they were watching were innocent.

      Last May, the US announced the killing of an Al Qaeda leader – but the victim was really a 56-year old former bricklayer.

      1. I don’t know Malgorzata. I just don’t know. After relating some terrible Israel on Israel friendly fire tragedies of the past, Michael Oren said: “We need to take responsibility for our mistakes, but cannot take responsibility for the war. This is Hamas’ war”.

        1. I think that all these horrible events (including the Israeli one) were terrible mistakes done by young humans put in an inhuman situation when they know that they have to kill people who want to kill you and spare people who are innocent. It’s not easy to decide in a second or two that they have at their disposal, who is who. When it is an army of a democratic state with checks and balances, which generally adheres to the laws of war I assume that killing innocent civilians was inadverted event. Of course, in every army in the world there are some scoundrels but their crimes look different (like My Lai).

      2. Plus the USS Vincennes July 3rd 1998 in the Arabian Gulf shot down an Iranian Airbus, “mistaken identity.” Killed all on board, broke up after strikes by two missiles and bodies “ rained “ from the sky. The investigation makes for some very interesting reading!
        However, considering the current Israeli conflict and the difficulties therein there have been remarkably few “mistakes” thanks primarily to the professionalism of the IDF.

    2. Get a grip, everyone. It’s a fog-of-war mistake, at night, in proximity to armed fighters. To accept it as an accident doesn’t mean having to believe the missiles fired themselves, just accept the targeting was a human error. It’s neither stupid, incompetent, nor an inexcusable screw-up. It’s not a “never” event like removing the wrong kidney or operating on the wrong patient. And unlike the attack on the USS Liberty there is no plausible Israeli gain for the IDF to have done it deliberately.

      2. Yes again, Leslie.
        Let’s not forget were it not for Oct. 7 those volunteers would absolutely be doling out food or cooking or doing some good elsewhere. As opposed to the hellscape Hamas and the Pals engineered in advance with full understanding of the consequences. With full malice aforethought.

        Every single death since then is all on their shoulders. Not that they care – death cults have squishy consciences.
        best to you Leslie,
        D.A.
        NYC

      3. Yes, let’s all get a grip. We won’t even know whether it is a fog-of-war “mistake” until after Israel investigates.

        Why do I say that? Clearly it was a mistake . . . given what we now know. But what was known at the precise time the strike was executed? Was the strike executed without sufficient information to confirm the vehicle as a legitimate target? If so, why? Was the wrong target information relayed to the operators? If so, how? Were legitimate targets thought to be in the immediate area? Were there Israeli forces in near vicinity who were thought to be at risk? Scores of questions like this will be asked and answered.

        Some unfortunate actions prove wrong in retrospect, but they appeared by all reasonable lights to be the correct action at the time. Other actions appeared reasonable at the time only to the parties taking or supporting those actions; independent observers would have made different choices AT THE TIME. Other choices are made in the heat of the moment, with anger, fear, anxiety, and a host of human emotions interfering with the ability to reason and act clearly. This is why investigations should be done on all such tactical mistakes and why, after the conflict, commissions should be appointed to study broader operational and strategic choices. It’s how we ensure accountability and future course corrections, if needed. I am confident that the IDF will do this on tactical and operational matters, and I hope that the Israeli government does so on strategic. (Now, if only we in the United States could revisit Iraq, Afghanistan, and the pandemic with such an eye to accountability and possible course correction.)

        A final thought. It’s worth remembering that there is a man or woman who pulled that trigger and killed those innocent aid workers. He or she must now live with the consequences of that action. That will not bring back the innocent lives lost. But we should bear in mind that the immediate dead and the physically wounded are not the only casualties of war.

        1. Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments today. It has been helpful.

  3. I too saved my eclipse glasses from 2017. I can’t believe that was 7 years ago! I have to travel a bit south from my location as totality will only last a few minutes here. I should receive my order of a solar filter for the camera lens I intend to use. Basically all this preparation ensures there will be clouds Monday.

    1. Last time I was fortunate enough to be traveling on business to an area where the eclipse could be viewed in near totality. At the appointed time everyone from the meeting took a break and headed outside. Still have my glasses, too, although my daughter brought us new ones.

  4. I think the wound to lesbianism, if the definition of “women” is expanded to include “transwomen,” is that transwomen are men, and thus lesbianism would cease to be a meaningful category, since it would include men who are attracted to women.

    And that shark video is awesome!

    1. Back in the 1980s, Al Franken appeared on the David Letterman show where he announced “I’ve found myself. . . I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.”. At the time it was a joke.

      1. Doug,

        I should really change my posting name so that people don’t think the two of us are one person who is over-posting. Thing is, I lack much of your sense of fun and humor, and I like to piggyback on that! Cheers.

  5. The fish fingers and custard of Fish Fingers and Custard Day is not something any non-Whovian Brit probably ever eats. It was a strange dish that was the only thing the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) was able to eat immediately after he had regenerated, with his “new mouth, new rules”. There’s a reasonably funny scene in which a young Amelia Pond keeps trying to give him various foods (including apples, yoghurt, bacon, bread & butter, and beans), to all of which he responds with nearly violent revulsion.

    1. As a Brit of the non-Whovian variety I can assure you that fish fingers and custard are never eaten in combination. However, although today was the day I learnt of FF&C Day, by sheer coincidence yesterday evening my wife and I had for our dinner fish fingers, chips and mushy peas (and no criticism of mushy peas will be tolerated by me, especially if it comes from anybody who eats guacamole) followed by coconut sponge cake and custard – all home made by me.

  6. JezGrove: you had me worried, but now I see you actually posted late yesterday due to your father-in-law visiting. Your posts have become a valuable ritual for my mornings! Enjoy your visit, and know your work is appreciated.

  7. I take exception to the claim by Dylan Walsh and others that we need only one kidney. While it is true that many of us have sufficient renal capacity to osmoregulate and maintain fluid balance with just a single kidney, how many of us can claim that this will always be the case? We age, we suffer injuries, we are prone to diabetes and various cardiovascular diseases that can easily compromise renal function. And those of us who enjoy outdoor activities like hiking and endurance sports– activities that often push the limits of kidney function– would be foolish to endanger their own well-being without understanding the healthspan risks of their generous organ donation.

    1. Nephrologists have studied how kidney function declines with age and take that into account when evaluating donors. I know this because I volunteered to donate a kidney and was rejected. The reason was that they calculated from my current kidney function that although I’ll be fine with two kidneys, I might be in trouble in later life if I only have one kidney.

      They also exhaustively evaluate donor’s general health. And nobody with diabetes or any significant risk of developing diabetes will be accepted.

      I’m certain that paid donors would also be rigorously screened.

      Another thing is that all donors are provided with a sort of ‘insurance’ for the risk that they might nevertheless suffer disease or injury that leaves them with insufficient kidney function due to having only one kidney. That insurance is the guarantee that if they ever need a kidney transplant later in life, they will be automatically moved to the top of the list.

      In addition, to assuage fears that a donor will be unable to help a family member who develops a need for a kidney transplant, donors can name up to 5 family members who will also be moved to the top of the list if they ever need a transplant.

      I think that paid donors should also be provided with these protections.

      1. Agreed. I was a non-directed kidney donor ten years ago, and the pre-donation checks took six months of tests. Yes, I was given a top-of-the-list guarantee (though not one for relatives – this was in the UK). I’m now 77, and still get an annual kidney check from a nephrologist. So far so good!

        I have no objection to paid donation, provided it is done through the proper channels (the NHS in the UK), with proper medical assessment.

  8. Late again today.

    On this day:
    1043 – Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England. [His death in 1066 resulted in the Norman Conquest.]

    1721 – Robert Walpole becomes, in effect, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, though he himself denied that title.

    1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins.

    1882 – American Old West: Robert Ford kills Jesse James.

    1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for a light, high-speed, four-stroke engine, which he uses seven months later to create the world’s first motorcycle, the Daimler Reitwagen.

    1888 – Jack the Ripper: The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.

    1895 – The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

    1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

    1933 – First flight over Mount Everest, the British Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston.

    1936 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the infant son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.

    1948 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.

    1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges.

    1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech; he was assassinated the next day.

    1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

    1974 – The 1974 Super Outbreak occurs, the second largest tornado outbreak in recorded history (after the 2011 Super Outbreak). The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.

    1975 – Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.

    1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

    1993 – The outcome of the Grand National horse race is declared void for the first (and only) time.

    1996 – Suspected “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States.

    2000 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors.

    2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.

    2007 – Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record of 574.8 km/h (159.6 m/s, 357.2 mph).

    2008 – ATA Airlines, once one of the ten largest U.S. passenger airlines and largest charter airline, files for bankruptcy for the second time in five years and ceases all operations.

    2010 – Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.

    2016 – The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.

    2017 – A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people.

    Births:
    1715 – William Watson, English physician, physicist, and botanist (d. 1787). [His early work was in botany, and he helped to introduce the work of Carolus Linnaeus into England. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1741 and vice president in 1772.]

    1778 – Pierre Bretonneau, French doctor who performed the first successful tracheotomy (d. 1862).

    1783 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian (d. 1859).

    1791 – Anne Lister, English diarist, mountaineer, and traveller (d.1840).

    1807 – Mary Carpenter, English educational and social reformer (d. 1877).

    1876 – Margaret Anglin, Canadian actress, director, and producer (d. 1958).

    1885 – Bud Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 1954). [Created Mutt and Jeff, the first successful daily comic strip in the United States.]

    1893 – Leslie Howard, English actor (d. 1943).

    1898 – Henry Luce, American publisher, co-founded Time magazine (d. 1967).

    1904 – Iron Eyes Cody, American actor and stuntman (d. 1999). [After his death, it was revealed that he was of Sicilian parentage, and not Native American at all.]

    1922 – Doris Day, American singer and actress (d. 2019).

    1924 – Marlon Brando, American actor and director (d. 2004).

    1925 – Tony Benn, English pilot and politician, Secretary of State for Industry (d. 2014). [An ex-girlfriend lived next door to his son Hilary and babysat for his children. We sometimes saw Tony playing football in the garden with his grandchildren when he came for Sunday lunch.]

    1926 – Gus Grissom, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (d. 1967).

    1934 – Jane Goodall, English primatologist and anthropologist.

    1941 – Jan Berry, American singer-songwriter (d. 2004). [As part of the duo Jan and Dean he was a pioneer of the California Sound and vocal surf music styles popularized by the Beach Boys.]

    1943 – Hikaru Saeki, Japanese admiral, the first female star officer of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.

    1944 – Tony Orlando, American singer. [Now THERE’S an earworm that I didn’t want…]

    1949 – A. C. Grayling, English philosopher and academic.

    1949 – Richard Thompson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1953 – Sandra Boynton, American author and illustrator.

    1958 – Alec Baldwin, American actor, comedian, producer and television host.

    1958 – Francesca Woodman, American photographer (d. 1981).

    1959 – David Hyde Pierce, American actor and activist.

    1961 – Eddie Murphy, American actor and comedian.

    1964 – Nigel Farage, English politician.

    1965 – Nazia Hassan, Pakistani pop singer-songwriter, lawyer and social activist (d. 2000).

    Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. (Dylan Thomas):
    1680 – Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj , Indian emperor, founded the Maratha Empire (b. 1630).

    1897 – Johannes Brahms, German pianist and composer (b. 1833).

    1901 – Richard D’Oyly Carte, English composer and talent agent (b. 1844).

    1950 – Kurt Weill, German-American composer and pianist (b. 1900).

    1975 – Mary Ure, Scottish-English actress (b. 1933).

    1981 – Juan Trippe, American businessman, founded Pan American World Airways (b. 1899).

    1982 – Warren Oates, American actor (b. 1928).

    1986 – Peter Pears, English tenor and educator (b. 1910).

    1990 – Sarah Vaughan, American singer (b. 1924).

    1991 – Graham Greene, English novelist, playwright, and critic (b. 1904).

    1998 – Mary Cartwright, English mathematician and academic (b. 1900). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1999 – Lionel Bart, English composer (b. 1930).

    2000 – Dina Abramowicz, Librarian and YIVO and Yiddish language expert (b. 1909).

    2014 – Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith, American guitarist, fiddler, and composer (b. 1921).

    2015 – Sarah Brady, American activist and author (b. 1942). [Became a prominent advocate for gun control in the United States after her husband, James Brady, press secretary to U.S. president Ronald Reagan, was left permanently disabled as a result of an assassination attempt on Reagan.]

    2022 – June Brown, English actress (b. 1927). [Dad made his first TV appearance in The Rough and Ready Lot alongside her in 1959. It was written by Alun Owen who later was screenwriter for the Beatles’ debut film A Hard Day’s Night.]

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

      Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright DBE FRS FRSE (born 17 December 1900, died on this day in 1998) was a British mathematician. She was one of the pioneers of what would later become known as chaos theory. Along with J. E. Littlewood, Cartwright saw many solutions to a problem which would later be seen as an example of the butterfly effect.

      Mary Cartwright was born on 17 December 1900, in Aynho, Northamptonshire, where her father William Digby was vicar. Through her grandmother Jane Holbech, she descended from poet John Donne. She had four siblings, two older and two younger.

      Cartwright studied mathematics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1923 with a first class degree. She was the first woman to attain the final degree lectures and to obtain a first. She briefly taught at Alice Ottley School in Worcester and Wycombe Abbey School in Buckinghamshire before returning to Oxford in 1928 to read for her D.Phil. Cartwright was supervised by G. H. Hardy in her doctoral studies. During the academic year 1928–9 Hardy was at Princeton, so it was E. C. Titchmarsh who took over the duties as a supervisor. Her thesis “The Zeros of Integral Functions of Special Types” was examined by J. E. Littlewood, whom she met for the first time as an external examiner in her oral examination for that 1930 D.Phil.

      In 1930, Cartwright was awarded a Yarrow Research Fellowship and went to Girton College, Cambridge to continue working on the topic of her doctoral thesis. Attending Littlewood’s lectures, she solved one of the open problems which he posed. Her mathematical theorem, now known as Cartwright’s Theorem, gives an estimate for the maximum modulus of an analytic function that takes the same value no more than p times in the unit disc. To prove the theorem she used a new approach, applying a technique introduced by Lars Ahlfors for conformal mappings.

      Throughout her career, Cartwright wrote over ninety articles on several different mathematical concepts. Her contributions extended to topics such as the Dirichlet series, Abel summation, directions of Borel spreads, analytic functions regular on the unit disk, the zeros of integral functions, maximum and minimum moduli, and functions of finite order in an angle.

      In 1936, Cartwright became director of studies in mathematics at Girton College. In 1938, she began work on a new project which had a major impact on the direction of her research. The Radio Research Board of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research produced a memorandum regarding certain differential equations which came out of modelling radio and radar work. They asked the London Mathematical Society if they could help find a mathematician who could work on these problems and she became interested. The dynamics lying behind the problems were unfamiliar to Cartwright, so she approached Littlewood for help with this aspect. They began to collaborate studying the equations, which greatly surprised the two:

      For something to do we went on and on at the thing with no earthly prospect of “results”; suddenly the whole vista of the dramatic fine structure of solutions stared us in the face.

      The fine structure described here is today seen to be a typical instance of the butterfly effect. The collaboration led to important results which have greatly influenced the direction that the modern theory of dynamical systems has taken. Although the duo did not supply the answer in time, they succeeded in directing the engineers’ attention away from faulty equipment towards practical ways of compensating for the electrical “noise”—or erratic fluctuations—being produced.

      In 1945, Cartwright simplified Hermite’s elementary proof of the irrationality of π. In 1947, she was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society; although she was not the first woman to be elected to that Society, she was the first female mathematician.

      Cartwright was appointed Mistress of Girton in 1948 and a Reader in the Theory of Functions in Cambridge in 1959 until 1968. From 1957 to 1960, she was president of the Cambridge Association of University Women. After retiring from Girton, she was a visiting professor at Brown University from 1968 to 1969 and at Claremont Graduate School from 1969 to 1970.

      Cartwright was the first woman:

      to serve on the Council of the Royal Society
      to be President of the Mathematical Association (in 1951)
      to be President of the London Mathematical Society (in 1961–62)
      to receive the Sylvester Medal (in 1964)

      In 1968, Cartwright became the first woman to receive the De Morgan Medal, the highest award of the London Mathematical Society, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh (HonFRSE). In 1969, she received the distinction of being honoured by the Queen, becoming Dame Mary Cartwright, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

      Cartwright died in Cambridge, on 3 April 1998 at the age of 97.

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

      1. “She was the first woman to attain final degree lectures and obtain a first…”. What do “attain the final degree lectures” and “obtain a first” at Oxford mean, Jez? Sorry to be a day late but if I miss you before 9:00 or 10:00 am Eastern time US, I may miss you for the day.

  9. The killing of the seven aid workers is awful. It’s a terrible tragedy for the workers, their families, for the WCK, and for the Gazans who were relying on them for humanitarian aid.

    One thing I’ve never thought of before—but can’t help thinking of now—is why it is that NGO’s are engaged to perform these kinds of operations. Under the circumstances, one might think that the Israeli military itself should distribute the aid. I know that NGO involvement is a long-standing practice, but the risk is great, as this unfortunate incident demonstrates.

    1. Sad, sure, Norman. But there is a doctrine called assumption of risk in law.
      If you actively head into a dangerous war zone you can expect and anticipate less safety than, say, typing “River to Sea” into facebook.

      Perhaps they are the first real civilian victims of Israel’s de-terrorization of Gaza. The locals aren’t, by any stretch, innocent bystanders.*

      D.A.
      NYC
      *See the “reception” the women hostages got on Main St. Gaza from a random street sample there on Oct. 7?

      1. Yes. I agree with that, David. The aid workers are taking risk and they know it. My main question is this historical one: Why have NGOs become such important agents in administering aid in war zones—especially given all the logistical complexities involved in keeping them safe? I know that they have long done this type of work in all sorts of conflicts, but (in this case) if the IDF itself were tasked with distributing aid this incident couldn’t happen.

  10. I really know nothing about Jose Andres except that he’s a famous chef, but wondered at the time I heard that his organization was going into Gaza whether they were the right ones to be doing that.

    Thoughts? Or details on how they were carrying out their operation vs. delivery of emergency nutrition in a compact form like MRE’s?

  11. I think we need to do more ignoring of Judith Butler – less “Streisand Effect” amplifying that nonsense in the name of refuting it.

    As an intellectual he is a complete bust and as a female impersonator he is far from convincing.

    The best policy with ALL narcissists of nonsense is … ignoring them. They have nothing to teach us, they just annoy us with their idiocy.

    Opposition voices- sure – we need them -but let’s be selective. Let competence be the first priority here.

    D.A.
    NYC
    ps Oh no. Did I “misgender”? Here am I thinking I lead a felony-less life.
    I spank myself for my sins against the New Stupidity.

    1. I think mockery is precisely what the lucubrations deserve (obviously – up above).

      It works for the old conventional religions – should work for gnostic cults too – in fact the cults are counting on them not being recognized as religious cults, so it should confuse them.

  13. The State Department issued the warning about a possible “imminent” terrorist strike against “large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts” and advised people to “avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.” That was on March 7th. The attack at Crocus occurred on March 22nd. Where is the State Department warning advising people to avoid large gatherings, to include concerts, beyond March 9th? It appears that Russia is not the only country that “failed.”

    Let’s set aside the Putin animus, the context that this warning came a week before Russia’s election, and the state-sponsored information warfare between Russia and the West being carried out through the media. What, specifically, would we have Russia or any other country do in the face of such warnings? Imagine that Russia passes on general information to the United States that they have indications of an imminent terrorist attack, most likely by the weekend, at a large venue, to include concert halls, in New York City—a city with nearly 4.5 million fewer people than in Moscow. They even name one or two specific facilities that might be at highest risk. We have no knowledge of their source and its credibility. We are taking the word of Russian intelligence agencies and Putin. What do we do? (Keep in mind that Putin, and potentially his allies, will be monitoring our security responses.) At how many large venues in New York do we send additional guards, limit attendance, close? Let’s imagine we do some of the above. The weekend comes; nothing happens. How long do we continue the additional police functions, the attendance restrictions, the closures?

    1. The article stated that it is “unusual to give information about specific targets to an adversary”. If this is correct, then it seems to be a rare occurrence and not part of an endless stream of false warnings meant to subvert security.

      1. That Russia might be suspicious of our words says nothing about our intent. And they have reason to be suspicious, as we of them, no matter how frequently such information sharing occurs.

        I assume we took our own warnings seriously, yet did the State Department reissue a warning to US citizens in Russia after the 48-hour window of the initial warning elapsed without an attack? Would we have “failed” to keep Americans safe who might have been at that venue? It is notoriously difficult to plan a response to such intelligence warnings—even when you consider them legitimate, even if they come from your own intelligence agencies. If the United States responded to every threat it discerned—whether detected through our own systems or passed to us through international information sharing, then we would currently live in a police state.

  14. Any form of “mousse” is a crime against desert IMHO. A solid and firm mouthfeel is a requirement for a good desert. “Mousse” does not cut it. It is ALWAYS too airy and light for my palette.

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