Tuesday: Hili dialogue

35 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

1. From the “There are no atheists in foxholes” department – altho you can ascribe this to subjective experience being an illusion : Many veterans who are honest with themselves will admit, I believe, that the experience of communal effort in battle (like antisemitic protesters) has been the high point of their lives… Their “I” passes insensibly into a “we”, “my” becomes “out”, and individual fate loses its central importance… I believe that it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy… I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life.” J. G. Gray 1970/1959, pp. 44-47.

2. 1.
   The United Nations was transformed in about 1999 by Robert Muller (a different Robert Muller) from a relatively nominal League Of Nations thing (as far as I can tell) into a theosophical cult (or, more accurately, an occult theosophy). In particular, the UN follows the doctrine of Prisca Theologia which sees each religion as facets of a single cosmic religion. See : en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisca_theologia

   It can be read about in tons of Robert Muller literature on the UN’s website. Helena Blavatsky is an example of a major figure in theosophy.

   And yes, I got that from James Lindsay’s latest podcast and take no credit.

   2.
   AOC = Alchemy Of Communism

   1. Forgot to note:

      Muller makes a major point with “evolution” in his insane documents, so this might be of particular interest for readers here. I haven’t gone through all of even Lindsay’s exposition, so I don’t have a concise write-up to post.

      But, Muller literally means evolution, using bacteria and biofilms as example systems (in a talk), and develops the idea of spiritual evolution.

      So – Robert Muller, evolution, and the United Nations – a novel occult theosophy that wants to put all religions in the prisca theologia blender.

3. The “Draw Bridge” photo brought a welcome smile to my face this morning amid so much depressing news from the universities. I wonder what this guy will do when he comes upon a “Wet Floor” sign.

   1. +1

   2. He’ll be in a pickle, since the command to wet the floor conflicts with the prohibition on exposing yourself in public.

   3. Well, if he’s anywhere near as thoroughly civic minded as yours truly, he will “use caution” while doing it.

   4. I recall some decades ago there were some types of canned foodstuff which had the instruction: Pierce can and stand in boiling water for 20 mins

   5. Similar but different story: I was married to a man for whom English was his 3rd language. When we bought our first home computer and had to call “support”one day, the fellow on the line told us to, “right click” and my ex used the keyboard to type out “write click” (Believe it or not, he’s a computer wiz today). Corny but true

   6. “Mother Goose and Grimm” addressed that in one of their cartoons: Grimm (a dog, for those who don’t know the cartoon) is shown looking at a wall with a sign “wet paint”, and says with a smile “I think I will.”

4. Doesn’t the prosecution have to prove illegal election interference as that’s the felony crime for which enablement overcomes the statute of limitations on the alleged financial reporting misdemeanours?

   1. Not sure about that piece. My understanding of the hush money case is that the illegality is predicated on the idea that Trump should have declared the payment as a campaign expenditure on the grounds that the payment was made to influence the election. The challenge is that there are many types of expenditures that politicians running for office make that don’t count as campaign expenditures (like getting your teeth whitened). The prosecution presumably has to show that this type of expenditure does count, and may, therefore, be using the election interference as the justification for calling this a campaign expenditure. Still doesn’t resolve the issue of why this is a felony rather than a misdemeanor.

5. I had a good laugh at AOC’s call for support for those who voted against Israel funding because many of the folks on that list are Republicans (I believe all those whose names aren’t in italics). Is she aware of that?

   1. Congressmen Jamie Raskin and Don Beyer, two dems for whom I have great respect were on that list. Their personal statements explain their concerns about Israel’s prosecution of the war in general, including behaviours in West Bank, and Netanyahu in particular. Of course voting in the minority on something you know will pass is more performative than determining.

   2. And not just any Repubs, but the Putin wing…Greene, Boebert, Gosar, Good, Gaetz, etc.

6. With the cows jumping the line thing. Could its be that the painted surface is too slippery for their hooves and so they don’t want to touch it?

   1. I rather think that it that they, like horses, have monocular vision with a lack of depth perception. My first jump (an uncommanded surprise to me) years ago was when we were quietly riding back to the barn on a lazy summer afternoon and came to a very shallow, dry drainage run, barely a ditch, which to my surprise, my horse leapt. Much as the cows may have seen the white line.

      Caveat: I have no formal knowledge in this area…just what my woke friends and post-modernists call “lived experience” for what it is worth.

      1. I think that’s it. In England farmers with livestock in the field will have a metal grate (parallel bars) at the gate to discourage animals from getting out. Some places they just paint white lines.

         1. Similar in the US, but metal grates or painted lines instead of gates.

            from a forum
            “My experience with the painted on faux cattle guards is that they worked ok if there were miles and miles of rangeland around, but once the pressure inches up, some bovine figures out that it isn’t real and heads of to the greener pastures.”

      2. Your “lived experience” reminds me of my first Boy Scouting trail ride. I only got muted responses when I asked, ” …wonder why they named this horse ‘Cricket'”?

7. TWEET OF THE DAY: U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips “Imagine if college students put as much energy into protecting reproductive rights, and reducing poverty, homelessness, crime, and other injustices. In America. Imagine.”

   1. Imagine, indeed!

8. I don’t trust for a minute the investigation into the UNRWA. Fortunately, their biggest backer—the United States—is no longer finding them.

9. Oh, and today is Shakespeare’s birthday as well as the anniversary of this death: “William Shakespeare was both on April 23 and also died on April 23, but in those few hours he accomplished so much.”

   1. :o)

10. Interesting choice of words by President Biden. Not only “understand”, as you note, but he “condemns” people for not understanding. This is totalitarianism.

    Excusing illegal protests, and opposing a police response to them, just because they are non-violent is a common refrain from the protest industry. As I said elsewhere, this is is the transmogrification of “good trouble” into entitled trouble-making. It’s ironic that it was the decision by police after about 1970 not to play their assigned role of villains in the melodrama that led to this pass where the police enforce only laws that protesters agree with. They are still being manipulated but more subtly now.

11. Today is Saint George’s Day in England, where little is done to commemorate the country’s patron saint.

    On this day:
    599 – Maya king Uneh Chan of Calakmul attacks rival city-state Palenque in southern Mexico, defeating queen Yohl Ik’nal and sacking the city.

    1516 – The Munich Reinheitsgebot (regarding the ingredients of beer) takes effect in all of Bavaria.

    1635 – The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston.

    1724 – Johann Sebastian Bach leads the first performance of his cantata Du Hirte Israel, höre, BWV 104, illustrating the topic of the Good Shepherd in pastoral music.

    1914 – First baseball game at Wrigley Field, then known as Weeghman Park, in Chicago.

    1927 – Cardiff City defeat Arsenal in the FA Cup Final, the only time it has been won by a team not based in England.

    1942 – World War II: Baedeker Blitz: German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck. [The name derives from Baedeker, a series of German tourist guide books, including detailed maps, which were used to select targets for bombing. To increase the effect on civilian morale, targets were chosen for their cultural and historical significance, rather than for any military value.]

    1945 – World War II: Adolf Hitler’s designated successor, Hermann Göring, sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of Nazi Germany. Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels advise Hitler that the telegram is treasonous.

    1967 – Soviet space program: Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1) a crewed spaceflight carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov is launched into orbit.

    1968 – Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university. [Plus ça change – in-person classes are currently cancelled.]

    1971 – Bangladesh Liberation War: The Pakistan Army and Razakars massacre approximately 3,000 Hindu emigrants in the Jathibhanga area of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

    1979 – Blair Peach, a British activist, was fatally injured after being knocked unconscious during an Anti-Nazi League demonstration against a National Front election meeting in Southall, London.

    1985 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.

    1999 – NATO bombs the headquarters of Radio Television of Serbia, as part of their aerial campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

    2005 – The first YouTube video, titled “Me at the zoo”, was published by co-founder Jawed Karim.

    2018 – A vehicle-ramming attack kills 11 people and injures 15 in Toronto. A 25-year-old suspect, Alek Minassian, is arrested.

    Births:
    1464 – Robert Fayrfax, English Renaissance composer (d. 1521).The

    1484 – Julius Caesar Scaliger, Italian physician and scholar (d. 1558). [Employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the New Learning. In spite of his contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high. Jacques Auguste de Thou claimed that none of the ancients could be placed above him and that he had no equal in his own time.]

    1661 – Issachar Berend Lehmann, German-Jewish banker, merchant and diplomat (d. 1730).

    1723. Hannah Snell, British woman who disguised herself as a man and became a soldier (d. 1792). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1792 – Thomas Romney Robinson, Irish astronomer and physicist (d. 1882). [Remembered as inventor of the 4-cup anemometer.]

    1858 – Max Planck, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1947).

    1867 – Johannes Fibiger, Danish physician and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928). [He was the recipient of the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discovery of the Spiroptera carcinoma“. He demonstrated that the roundworm which he called Spiroptera carcinoma (but is correctly named Gongylonema neoplasticum) could cause stomach cancer (squamous cell carcinoma) in rats and mice. His experimental results were later proven to be a case of mistaken conclusion. Erling Norrby, who had served as the Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Professor and Chairman of Virology at the Karolinska Institute, declared Fibiger’s Nobel Prize as “one of the biggest blunders made by the Karolinska Institute.”]

    1895 – Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand author and director (d. 1982).

    1899 – Minoru Shirota, Japanese physician and microbiologist, invented Yakult (d. 1982).

    1901 – E. B. Ford, English biologist and geneticist (d. 1988).

    1907 – Lee Miller, American model and photographer (d. 1977).

    1910 – Sheila Scott Macintyre, Scottish mathematician (d. 1960).

    1921 – Janet Blair, American actress and singer (d. 2007).

    1926 – J.P. Donleavy, American-Irish novelist and playwright (d. 2017).

    1928 – Shirley Temple, American actress, singer, dancer, and diplomat (d. 2014).

    1933 – Annie Easley, American computer scientist, mathematician, and engineer (d. 2011).

    1936 – Roy Orbison, American singer-songwriter (d. 1988).

    1939 – Lee Majors, American actor.

    1950 – Barbara McIlvaine Smith, Sac and Fox Nation Native American politician.

    1953 – James Russo, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

    1954 – Michael Moore, American director, producer, and activist.

    1960 – Steve Clark, English guitarist and songwriter (d. 1991).

    1962 – John Hannah, Scottish actor and producer.

    1968 – Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist, Oklahoma City bombing co-perpetrator (d. 2001).

    1977 – John Cena, American professional wrestler and actor.

    1988 – Alistair Brownlee, English triathlete.

    1990 – Dev Patel, English actor.

    Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them. (Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind):
    AD 303 – Saint George, Roman soldier and martyr.

    1016 – Æthelred the Unready, English son of Edgar the Peaceful (b. 968).

    1605 – Boris Godunov, Russian ruler (b. 1551).

    1616 – William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet (b. 1564). [His birth is usually attributed to this day, too, estimated from the date of his baptism.]

    1702 – Margaret Fell, English religious leader, founded the Religious Society of Friends (b. 1614). [AKA the Quakers]

    1850 – William Wordsworth, English poet and author (b. 1770).

    1865 – Silas Soule, American soldier and whistleblower of the Sand Creek Massacre (b. 1838).

    1915 – Rupert Brooke, English poet (b. 1887).

    1965 – George Adamski, Polish-American ufologist and author (b. 1891).

    1966 – George Ohsawa, Japanese founder of the Macrobiotic diet (b. 1893).

    1983 – Buster Crabbe, American swimmer and actor (b. 1908).

    1986 – Jim Laker, English international cricketer and sportscaster; holder of world record for most wickets taken in a match (b. 1922).

    1986 – Otto Preminger, Ukrainian-American actor, director, and producer (b. 1906).

    1991 – Johnny Thunders, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1952).

    1992 – Satyajit Ray, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1921).

    1993 – Cesar Chavez, American activist, co-founded the United Farm Workers (b. 1927).

    1996 – P. L. Travers, Australian-English author and actress (b. 1899). [Best known for the Mary Poppins series of books.]

    1998 – James Earl Ray, American assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. (b. 1928).

    2005 – John Mills, English actor (b. 1908).

    2007 – Boris Yeltsin, Russian politician, 1st President of Russia (b. 1931).

    2015 – Ray Jackson, Australian activist (b. 1941).

    1. Woman of the Day:
       [Text from the excellent The Attagirls X/Twitter account]

       Woman of the Day soldier Hannah Snell born OTD 1723 in Worcester who disguised herself as a man and joined the 6th Regiment of Foot. She took part in the capture of Pondicherry and fought in the Battle of Devicotta during the War of Austrian Succession.

       Neighbours in Worcester claimed that even as a child, Hannah played at being a soldier. After her parents died, 17 year old Hannah went to live with her older sister in London. A few years later, she met and married a Dutch sailor. He was a rogue. He “not only kept criminal Company with other Women of the basest Characters, but also made away with her Things, in Order to support his Luxury, and the daily Expences of his Whores” but left her when she was seven months pregnant. The baby was a girl and died soon after.

       Hannah borrowed her brother-in-law’s name – James Gray – and his clothes and travelled to Coventry in search of her errant husband. A woman travelling alone in those days was at great risk, a man less so. In Coventry, she learned he’d been executed for murder so she enlisted in the 6th Regiment of Foot as James Gray but deserted after she was given 500 lashes by her sergeant on a trumped-up charge.

       Apparently Hannah refused to facilitate a sexual encounter between the sergeant and a local woman so she was sentenced to “600 lashes” and received 500 tied to the castle gate in Carlisle. She evaded discovery because of the way her arms were tied to the gate.

       Hannah travelled to Portsmouth and joined the Marines, boarding the ship Swallow with her unit. Life at sea was harsh – seasickness, disease, food shortages, cramped conditions – but bathing was not high on the agenda so she again evaded discovery although her shipmates noticed that she never shaved and teased her about it. She just said she was too young to have a beard.

       Hannah’s regiment sailed around Cape Horn, took part in a brief attack against Mauritius, and ended up in India where they laid siege to Pondicherry to take it from the French. During the subsequent battle of Devicottail, Hannah was shot in the groin, sustained five injuries to her legs and five more elsewhere. Treated by two physicians at Cuddylor, she found a local woman willing to help her remove the bullet rather than being tended by the regimental surgeon.

       Back in England, and once she’d been paid the last of her wages, Hannah proposed to her shipmates that they all go out for one last “hurrah” and that was when “she discovered herself to the whole Company which caused a universal Surprise amongst them all.” I bet it did. They took it well. In fact, they encouraged her to apply for a pension based on the wounds she’d received in India.

       Her incredible story quickly spread. Hannah capitalised on it by putting on her own stage show where she’d dress in uniform, recount her adventures and demonstrate military drills and songs. She also sold her story to Robert Walker, a London publisher, who published it as The Female Soldier, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell.

       Hannah was honourably discharged. Better still, she got that pension. Post-discharge, she married twice, had two children, briefly ran a pub – The Female Warrior or The Widow in Masquerade, depending on which source you trust – and was mentioned in James Woodforde’s Diary of a Country Parson. On 21 May 1778, he recorded that she was selling buttons, garters, and laces.

       Hannah’s life did not end happily. She was admitted to the lunatic asylum Bedlam in 1791 and died in 1792, aged 69. She is buried at Chelsea Hospital.

       https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1782659342866468899

       1. I’m surprised she hasn’t been posthumously claimed to be “trans”, as has happened to some other historical figures.

          1. She has, sadly, despite her marriages and children:

             Snell’s life is also the subject of further examination. For instance, Hannah Snell: The Secret Life of a Female Marine (2014) investigates the context in which her life took place, while Female Husbands (2020) discusses themes related to Snell’s and other figures’ “transing” of gender.

             […]

             Much of the academic work on Snell likewise uses her birth name and pronouns, although papers in transgender studies and related fields have diverged from this norm.

             https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Snell#Legacy

12. Oldie dogs and cat reactions to hole optical illusion https://imgur.com/5CI7TKk

13. The EEOC suit against Sheetz may appear ridiculous on the face, but it may be more complex than a simplistic report implies. As the EEOC suit notes, the federal policy is to encourage businesses to consider ways to integrate those with a criminal record, but who have ‘paid their dues,’ back into the workforce, and this is part of a larger movement that includes, for example, restoring voting rights. The problem arises when it creates the appearance of disparate impact.

    However, the disparate impact claim might fail on statistical grounds. Although the percentage of Black job applicants that have been denied employment due to a criminal record is higher than the percentage of White job applicants who have been denied due to a criminal record, the more important statistic is the percentage of Black job applicants with criminal records who have been denied employment versus the percentage of White job applicants with criminal records who have been denied employment. If, for example, 95% of Black applicants with criminal records have been denied employment for that reason, and 99% of White applicants with criminal records have been denied employment for that reason, the discriminatory impact of the policy works against the White applicants, not the Black applicants.

    1. Thanks for that statistical analysis of disparate impact, Barbara. The Ontario Human Rights Code takes a more straightforward approach. It simply prohibits employers from discriminating among job applicants based on record of offences. The candidate not selected need only satisfy a tribunal that he, individually, didn’t get the job because of his criminal record. The only defence for the business is to prove that it never asks about records or asks for police reports on candidates. If the business asked, the Tribunal is free to find discrimination occurred, even if the business has employees of a diversity of races on staff who have been in trouble with the law. The focus is on how the business treated this candidate, not on its approach to criminals in general.

       (Governments here don’t sue businesses over this sort of thing. The process is started by the person making a complaint, which doesn’t cost him anything. An administrative tribunal takes over from there, cross-examining the respondent’s defence, judging the case, and assessing penalty to be paid to the complainant, the government, or both. The system is going to be beefed up enormously and will apply additionally to individual behaviour as one tentacle of the proposed On-Line Harms Bill, C-63. The American approach sounds more costly to defend and suffers from caprice—why did the government decide to pick on me? But you have more safeguards regarding judicial review than we do.)

       Record of offences is just one of a long list of things you can’t ask a job applicant here, in case the answers plausibly caused you to reject him.

14. Trump prediction:
    Assuming this trial gets to the jury, not guilty all counts. Best we can hope for I suspect is a compromise verdict which would find him guilty of some Misdemeanors only. Here is a good analysis from a defense perspective:

    https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4589586-why-trump-should-win-his-ny-hush-money-trial/

15. The Biden administration is suing Sheetz for discriminating against minorities. The reason? The company requires all the applicants to first pass a criminal record background check. QED, minorities are mainly criminals and can’t get jobs unless standards are lowered. At least that’s how it reads to me.

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