Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 7, 2024 • 6:45 am

Note that our Encampment was removed at about 5 a.m. this morning. It’s an ex-Encampment, singing with the Choir Invisible.

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, May 7, 2024, and National Roast Leg of Lamb Day. Here are two photos from my last trip to Paris, where, at the restaurant Sébillon, we got all the roast leg of lamb and white beans we could eat (I had three helpings).  Slices are carved at your table from a rolling tray

It’s also National Teacher Day, World Asthma Day, National Concert Day, National Tourism Day, National Cosmopolitan Day (a “cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice,” popularized in the t.v. show “Sex and the City”), and, finally,Radio Day, commemorating the work of Alexander Popov (Russia, Bulgaria)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*At his NYT trial for hiding hush money, Trump was again cited for contempt and threatened with jail (I think the judge is too timorous to jail him!).

The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan rebuked the former president on Monday for mounting “a direct attack on the rule of law,” holding him in contempt of court for a second time and threatening to jail him if he continued to break a gag order that bars him from attacking jurors.

In a moment of remarkable courtroom drama, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, addressed Mr. Trump personally from the bench, saying that if there were further violations, he might bypass financial penalties and place the former president behind bars.

Justice Merchan acknowledged that jailing Mr. Trump was “the last thing” he wanted to do, but explained that it was his responsibility to “protect the dignity of the justice system.”

The judge said that he understood “the magnitude of such a decision” and that jailing Mr. Trump would be a last resort. He noted: “You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well.”

As the judge delivered his admonition and imposed a $1,000 fine, Mr. Trump stared straight at him, blinking but not reacting, and when the remarks were over, the former president shook his head.

Lock him up!

The paper also reports that after Trump was President, he reimbursed Michael Cohen, his “fixer”, giving Cohen $420,ooo out of Trump’s personal account to pay the hush money.

A former Trump Organization employee who handled a key payment at the center of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan told the jury on Monday that much of the money had come from the personal bank account of Mr. Trump, who was by then the president of the United States.

The testimony of Jeffrey S. McConney, the business’s former corporate controller, provided jurors with their first look at some of the documents that prosecutors say were falsified by Mr. Trump in his effort to conceal a porn star’s account of a sexual encounter. Mr. McConney described how he was ordered by his boss, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, to reimburse Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, for the $130,000 he paid out of his own pocket to buy her silence.

To me this last bit doesn’t sound illegal, but it’s not the only money that Cohen received, and somehow business records were falsified to conceal this payment. That, I guess, is the illegal bit. Readers who know a little bit of law might explain below.

*Over at The Free Press, Abigail Shrier writes about how “There are two sets of rules for free speech” on college campuses. Her narrative sounds familiar:

In the last two weeks, self-proclaimed pro-Palestinian protesters have set up encampments at dozens of American universities. Heedless of university restrictions against intimidation and harassment, they demonstrate where, when, and how they like. They cry “Go back to Poland,” “baby killers,” and “globalize the Intifada” at Jewish students. They wave the flags of designated terrorist groups, like Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and hold up signs that beckon “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,” with an arrow pointing at Jewish counterprotesters. (Al-Qassam is the wing of Hamas that carried out the October 7 massacre.)

On campuses that have—for a decade or more—repeated ad nauseam that priority onewas the creation of a “safe, inclusive, supportive, and fair” community, the pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave Hezbollah flags, wear Hamas headbands, and conceal their faces with masks. They ignore all time, place, and manner restrictions on student demonstrations set by their schools, and refuse all demands from the universities to take down their tents or to move their protests elsewhere. And at Columbia, until April 30, when protesters took over Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and the NYPD was at last called in, they almost got away with it.

At UCLA, protesters blocked students from entering the library during the midterms, asking those who wished to enter: “Are you a Zionist?” After a Jewish girl was reportedly beaten unconscious by pro-Palestinian protesters, pro-Israel counterprotesters at UCLA arrived in masks and hoodies, shooting off fireworks, firing tear gas, and throwing objects at the pro-Hamas protesters and attempting to physically destroy the encampments. Only then did UCLA call in the police to remove the encampments.

Instead of immediately suspending the pro-Hamas protesters for breaking university rules, for weeks, university administrations instead chose to “negotiate” with the rule-breakers. At Columbia, the administration offered to review its policy on “socially responsible investing” (read: divesting from the world’s only Jewish state), and offered to “make investments in health and education in Gaza.” At Brown, the administration promised protesters that they would put divestment from Israel on the agenda. At Northwestern, the administration meekly tossed rewards, including the promise to establish a full-ride scholarship for Palestinian students and guaranteed faculty jobs for Palestinian academics.

At Columbia, protesters rejected the offers, knowing they had the upper hand. When police arrived to break up the encampments, Columbia faculty in orange vests linked arms to form a human wall against the police, shielding the rule-breakers.

The lengths administrators have gone to placate, encourage, and embolden the pro-Hamas protesters in the past weeks provide a signal reminder that there are at least two sets of rules governing elite universities today: one for the favored, protected class; the other for everyone else. And in case anyone has any doubt which category Jewish students fall into, the unwillingness of universities to enforce their own codes of conduct against pro-Hamas protesters in the months since October 7 should disabuse them.

Shrier then gives examples of similar speech that was immediately squelched by American University, including a man who put up flyers displaying Confederate flags and saying “Hurrah for Dixie!” on them; or use of the “n word” scrawled on walls or even uttered. That can’t possibly be free speech. But it is!

. . .In the abstract, if “Huzzah for Dixie” is worth the full mobilization of university resources and law enforcement, then waving the flag of a terrorist group, or writing “burn you filthy zio” to a student chat, or telling Jewish students to “go back to Poland” where millions of Jews were murdered in gas chambers, or pulling down the American flag over a statue of John Harvard and replacing it with the Palestinian flag, or painting “Ziosgetfuckt” on UPenn’s statue of Ben Franklin, or calling Jews “Hitler’s children”—all insults hurled at Jews on campus—are at least as menacing.

But in practice, the two types of incidents—rather, the two targets of the incidents—are treated entirely differently. Punishment is meted out swiftly and mercilessly, and with no consideration for free speech principles, any time Confederate flag flyers are posted, any time students hold culturally insensitive themed frat parties, any time colleges uncover student use of the N-word while in high school (or even a word in Mandarin that sounds like the N-word), or even when students or faculty make the familiar conservative argument that affirmative action sets black students up to fail. Rinse and repeat and repeat.

. . . But watch the marble carefully as university administrators spin the cups. When a favored group is attacked, they discover a “community safety” concern with remarkable alacrity. When it’s a disfavored group, suddenly the cup reveals “free expression.” The game is fixed, and the administrators show their hands. “Community safety,” or was it “free speech”? Surprise! They don’t believe in either.

What is odious here, and what brought down Liz Magill at Penn and contributed to the downfall of Claudine Gay at Harvard, is not free speech, but the violation of “time, place and manner
restrictions, and especially the unequal treatment of similar cases.

*This is sad: Columbia University canceled its main graduation ceremony.  I remember when I got my Ph.D: several of us “too cool for gowns” students were sitting around the Museum, and all of a sudden decided we really should go to graduation, especially because Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was speaking. Three of us ran to the Coop to rent caps and gowns, only to find out that there were hardly any left, and the one I got was so big it dragged on the ground. But we rented them and went to graduation. Solzhenitsyn gave a famous speech, and I was very glad I went. I’m sad for the Columbia students who will miss their Big Moment.

Columbia University canceled its main commencement ceremony but will still go ahead with smaller-scale graduations, the school said Monday, after weeks of pro-Palestinian demonstrations disrupted campus.

The ceremony, which was scheduled for May 15, has taken place outdoors on its New York City campus where students had set up a pro-Palestinian encampment that was taken down by police last week.

The protests over the Israel-Hamas war that have swept campuses nationwide have prompted university administrators to rethink commencement plans with a goal of protecting students and guests from potentially ugly and violent political disputes.

“Holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable,” Columbia said in a statement Monday.

The university said it looked for another venue but couldn’t find one that could hold the more than 50,000 people who normally attend its graduation ceremony.

“Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome,” Columbia said.

What do you think? Is “safety” a valid concern that would warrant this cancellation? There might be a few vocal protests, but couldn’t they have enough security there to give any protestors the bum’s rush?

*It looks like the IDF is about to begin its Rafah operation. Israel and Hamas have failed to reach a cease-fire agreement, and Israel is gearing up to attack the last bastion of Hamas, beginning by evacuating civilians to a secure area (they’ve also dropped notes with maps on the Gazans)

Channel 12 quotes Israeli officials saying Israel’s negotiating team has just received Hamas’s response from the mediators.

The report says Israel is now carefully evaluating the Hamas response and will issue orderly comments later this evening.

It says the Israeli officials are already saying that “this is not the same proposal” for a deal that Israel and Egypt agreed upon 10 days ago, and that served as the basis for the indirect negotiations since then. “All kinds of clauses” have been inserted, the TV report says.

These new clauses, among other issues, relate to the cardinal questions of if, how and when the war would end, and what kind of guarantees are being offered to that effect.

Hamas, the report notes, had been toughening its demands in recent days, and demanding that the war end during the first, 40-day phase of the deal, rather than in the second or third phases.

Israel, for its part, has repeatedly rejected ending the war as part of a hostage deal at all, instead insisting that it will resume fighting once the deal is implemented, in accordance with its twin war goals: returning the hostages and destroying Hamas’s military and governance capacities.

The evacuation:

The IDF has begun evacuating civilians from eastern Rafah to a new expanded humanitarian zone which includes al-Mawasi and parts of Khan Yunis and central Gaza, the IDF announced on Monday morning. The evacuation comes ahead of planned IDF operations in the Rafah area.

The new humanitarian zone includes field hospitals, tents, and increased provisions of food, water, medicine, and other supplies.

Additionally, the IDF is working in cooperation with international organizations and several countries to allow an increase of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

The IDF, in accordance with a decision made by the political echelon, is calling on the population currently under Hamas control to evacuate temporarily from the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to the new zone. The evacuation will be conducted in a phased manner in accordance with continuing situation assessments.

The call to evacuate is being made through leaflets, text messages, phone calls, and statements in Arabic.

“The IDF will continue to operate in order to realize the goals of the war, including the dismantling of Hamas and the return of all the hostages,” said the IDF.

Hamas is getting desperate now that they realize Israel means business. But despite the orderly and planned nature of the evacuation (there are food and tents in the new secure area), the U.S. is still telling Israel not to invade Rafah.  This means, as I’ve always said, that the U.S. wants Israel to lose the war. This is not acceptable to the vast majority of Israelis.

*Good news for Chicago-area biology fans. The Field Museum has acquired a specimen of Archaeopteryx that’s now on display, and, says reader Neil Shubin, “it’s arguably the best specimen yet.”

In front of gathered dignitaries and the press, the Field formally announced to the world what had become a not-so-well-kept secret: The museum had acquired just the 13th specimen known to exist of Archaeopteryx (ar-key-AHP-ter-icks), a fossil often described as the “missing link” between dinosaurs and birds.

“It’s a spectacular example … teeth like a dinosaur, a tail like a dinosaur, but it’s a bird,” said Julian Siggers, Field Museum president and CEO. “The top-level message is that dinosaurs didn’t go extinct, they actually evolved into birds.”

Actually, it’s not a bird, at least according to the taxonomist I consulted. While birds are a subgroup of dinosaurs, Archaeopteryx  apparently belongs to a non-avian dinosaur lineage close to birds (h/t Phil Ward).

The acquisition is a coup not just for the museum and O’Connor, but for Chicago, with the Field becoming the only public institution outside of Europe to have an Archaeopteryx in its collection.

“It’s definitely the most important scientific specimen we’ve ever acquired, beyond a doubt,” Siggers said. “It takes first place. … For us here, it’s an enormous opportunity for science. But there was an incredible exhibition opportunity, too. Because it’s then on us to explain to the public why this is so important.”

. . .All of the specimens of Archaeopteryx unearthed to date — including the Field’s — have come from this single deposit of Bavarian rock, known as Solnhofen Limestone.

The first Archaeopteryx fossils were excavated around 1860 (exact dates of a fossil’s discovery versus its announcement versus its identification are often murky). The timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous, occurring shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking “On the Origin of Species,” the foundational text of evolutionary biology.

Darwin knew the biggest criticism of natural selection, his theory of evolution, would be the lack of supporting proof. There had not, as yet, he admitted, been a single discovery of a fossil demonstrating an organism’s gradual change from one form to another.

“He points out, in the first edition of his book … we have no transitional forms or missing links that we can point to and go ‘Boom, right there,’” O’Connor said. “And then two years later Archaeopteryx is found. It’s the perfect missing link.”

Well, it’s not a transitional form from dinos to birds, and it’s not really a “missing link”, which is generally a misnomer because the “missing link” between dinos and birds would be the one dinosaur species that split into two species, one of which gave rise to all modern birds and the other to all dinosaurs. It would look like a dinosaur, and you wouldn’t recognize it as a missing link. What it does show is that some groups of dinosaurs (including probably T. rex) evolved feathers, and one group, of which Archaeopteryx is not a member, evolved into all modern birds.

Still, it was an early example showing that there were viable animals with traits intermediate to those of dinosaurs and birds, and that was good enough at the time. Here’s a picture of the specimen taken from the WTTW site:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szardon is on the desk, displacing the displeased Editor:

Hili: Tell him that this is my place.
A: I told him that it’s my desk but you know how it is with cats.
In Polish:
Hili: Powiedz mu, że to jest moje miejsce.
Ja: Już mu mówiłem, że to jest moje biurko, ale wiesz jak to jest z kotami.

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

From Debra, a stingy restaurant! And look at the comment at the bottom.

This was on Facebook, but I can’t remember where:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih: an Iranian man sentenced to death for criticizing the regime on social media. His crime? “Corruption on earth.” Those students who are currently extolling Iran would never want to live there.

From Iranian-American attorney and activist Elica Le Bon: an analysis of non-Muslims engaged in Islamic prayer at the University of Texas (h/t Rosemary, who says the Le Bon is “the intellectual voice of Iran’s dissident women”.)

What happens when policing drops:

A good one from Simon:

From a colleague: you do the crime, you do the time. To this ASU student’s credit, she does say she’d encamp again.

From Malcolm, who. referring to the second tweet below says, “This is just a beautiful clip.”  And so it is! As for the sound in the first clip, what do you think it is?

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a woman who died in the camp at about 30.

A tweet from Dr. Cobb. Yes, “Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is indeed the name of a newly-discovered gene. (I also like “Groucho”, a mutation that gives flies extra bristles over its eyes.)

31 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. 1. A. Shrier : “On campuses that have—for a decade or more—repeated ad nauseam that priority one was the creation of a “safe, inclusive, supportive, and fair” community, the pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave Hezbollah flags, wear Hamas headbands, and conceal their faces with masks.”

    Shrier highlights the dialectical trap laid by communists : their system doesn’t work, Shrier points to the contradiction, and communists can argue “See? It shows we need more Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equity.” As long as the sovet has total control.

    Faith in Dialectic is the core belief of the Left

    2. The Archaeopteryx news is wonderful. Hopefully I can go to this museum one day.

  2. There’s a new talk on youtube by Steven Pinker, President’s Lecture Series at CMU on Human Rationality and Academic Freedom. Challenging to listen to, like any good sermon but the patient are rewarded with some very salient points on politics in academia and insights on the response from the political right.

  4. Columbia U needs a strongman. Replace President Shafik with (former) President tRump! He wouldn’t put up with this crap – and he seems to be in residence in NYC for a few weeks. But seriously, the university cannot provide a civil environment for a few hours for thousands against a few hundred miscreants? An incredible failure of leadership. Stand up to them! Bring in a few dozen Walter Isaacsons on-call and seat them strategically throughout the audience.

    There is something to be said for ceremony as you and your fellow grads realized in the nick of time some years ago while sitting in your Harvard lab. I realized it when as high school faculty, I watched and listened to kids who were the first in their family to graduate from high school. The ceremony and pomp was important to them.

  5. Thanks for the exposition on Archaeopteryx. I”m thrilled that the Field has a specimen.

    The piece by Ms. Le Bon on foreign prayers in public is very good. To someone who is grateful to have been brought up in Dawkins Christianity and who feels no angst whatsoever about whatever white privilege racists and foreigners might accuse me of, her take is insightful. These women are neurotic, not spiritual.

    I’m also glad to see her not flinch from the word “foreign”, instead of its euphemism “international”.

    1. From the linked Archaeopteryx article: “It’s got this long reptilian tale . . . .”

      Well, any creature around for at least some several million years would.

    2. Not only are they “ neurotic “ but also displaying copious amounts of hair and flesh, anathema to muslims especially women at prayer, usually private and separated , neurotic morons more like engaged in “cultural appropriation “ perhaps. I too was born and raised in “Dawkins Christianity” and have never ever felt any guilt about being white or privileged whatever that means.
      “Live long and prosper”

    3. Nice juxtaposition of the X post on happenings in Iran with the students praying while attired in a manner that would get them beaten or worse in Iran.
      These children believe in the noble savage, whether that savage is Islamists, indigenous, Black, trans or other.

    4. I, too, was quite taken by Elica Le Bon’s critique of “white women” praying like Muslims. I find it brilliant, perceptive and right on! In fact, I emailed a copy of it to myself to share with my dear Iranian friend who was forced to flee the country after the Revolution (her father had been part of the Shah’s regime and was assassinated by Khomeini’s henchmen). I can’t simply share the tweet as Twitter (X… Whatever) gave me the boot for “abusing the platform” which is a joke since I never once used it for anything other than viewing others’ tweets. Maybe they felt “abused” by my refusal to participate? Thanks to Rosemary for sending it to Jerry.

    5. It seems that these young women somehow missed some important lessons.
      This is the second excellent post by Elica Le Bon on WET. If I was on Twitter/X, I would follow her. Instead I will hope more of her posts will be shared.

  6. I love your story about sacrificing coolness in order to experience graduation.

    As to putting Trump in jail, I don’t think it can ever happen. As an ex-pres, he has a right to secret service protection, and I don’t think there is any way that the SS could protect him if he was in jail. I mean, how would they do that?

    I think the only feasible way to ‘imprison’ Trump is in his own home (i.e., house arrest). In this sense, Trump already has at least part of his wish – immunity from ever going to prison. It’s a crying shame.

    On edit, I think that Trump would actually love to be put in jail for a weekend. The pictures of him in an orange jumpsuit would be the best press in the world for him, since it would convince his fans that he really is a victim of the swamp, or however they put it.

    1. I, too, read that house arrest is possible and I also read that in lieu of incarceration in a jail, Trump could be compelled to sit in an isolated area at the back of the courtroom—in a sort of holding tank. This might be a good option, and a major humiliation if carried out.

      1. In criminal trials in contemporary Russia, the defendant is generally sequestered in a cage, constructed of either plexiglass or steel bars.
        Given Trump’s admiration for Putin and the way he governs, this would be appropriate, perhaps.

        1. That would be great. And doable, and appropriate. Would be nice if he had to wear a cone hat. No phone, of course.

  8. I enjoyed a sticker I saw in Rhode Island:

    Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.
    Teach a man to fish and you are a fool.

    Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island

    1. Or there is the old gag:

      Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.
      Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

      1. Haha. That’s a good one. To Steve’s “sit in a boat and drink beer all day”.

  9. I sat in the audience for my college graduation, thinking that the ritual was overblown. Even today, 46 years later, I know I made a mistake. But when I got my Ph.D., I bought the distinctive regalia, sat with my fellow GSAS candidates, walked up to the podium when my name was called, was handed my diploma by my obviously joyous department chairman and life-long friend (actually just the jacket for the diploma; I picked up the diploma later), and took my seat. My parents, sisters, and future wife witnessed the whole thing, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. If you are a student, go to your graduation! You will never regret it.

    1. Meh. I went to my graduation (I only got as far as a bachelor’s), and it doesn’t rank anywhere near my top memories. My high school graduation ranks even lower (probably because I knew I was just going on to more school). I don’t think I’d regret it much at all if I’d missed my own graduation. And even then, I only went to the engineering graduation. I didn’t want to sit through the bigger, longer, and more boring university-wide graduation. One was bad enough.

      Maybe it’s different for a Ph.D.

  10. Today in Berlin pro-Hamas protestors (I refuse to call them pro-Palestine protesters) tried to set-up a camp at the Free University of Berlin. The university reacted immediately and called in the police, who cleared the unregistered protest camp in the afternoon. The police gradually removed the demonstrators, sometimes using force. They were also attacked in the process, with one policeman being injured. Investigations were initiated against numerous people.

      1. Protest posters everywhere in the world are frequently in English, whatever the language of the protestors may be. I think that it’s an acknowledgement of the importance of the English-language press in today’s world, and also a way of attracting the attention of Americans.

  11. I read that timing was a reason for 2nd fine by the “timorous” judge.
    The 10th fine was for comments Trump made on Apr 22.
    The first 9 fines were imposed on Apr 28 or 30th.
    So it wasn’t a case of ignoring the first set of fines and continuing to violate the gag order.

  12. Archaeopteryx 13 — the long tail seems to be complete — is the end of the tail intact?
    I don’t recall an archaeopteryx specimen preserved with an intact tail end before. Anyone know?

  13. Odious Claudine Gay was/is the Paul McCartney of DEI.
    She and her cousin, bonkers “feminist” Roxanne Gay, are scions of the Haitian concrete monopoly. So real marginalized.
    That kind of economic strangulation and graft is the default in the Third World but Haiti has excelled in it. And the Gays… well its all fabulous if you’re born into the dozen or so families who OWN the country.
    Their “poor Haitian refugee” story doesn’t quite wash.

    The latter, Roxanne, might just be the most irritatingly, offensively stupid woman in America. Why she doesn’t have a seat with those drooling wrecks on The View is beyond me.
    D.A.
    NYC
    https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

  14. The “Field” could name the new fossil specimen “Archie O’Pteryx”. It would nudge the popular pronunciation towards the etymologically more sensible Archaeo–pteryx (“ancient” + “wing”/”winged creature”).

    PS: This German would see that as conveying a fine Chicago-local flavor, rather than as an attempted “expropriation” from the Bavarian Solnhofen Lagerstätte.

  15. I’m testing out what is claimed to be OpenAI GPT-5 in a test arena which it is known as im-a-good-gpt2-chatbot and wonder if this is an example of bias in training?

    Prompt:
    Is it feasible to ask the mass of humanity to go against their instincts and traditional cultural mores and become like the Vulcan Spock, more rational and less emotional as a method to bring peace to humanity?

    (picked this out of a LONG answer)
    Moral and Ethical Reasoning: Not all ethical decisions can be made on logic alone; many require moral intuition and emotional intelligence. For instance, many humanitarian principles are based on feelings of fairness, compassion, and empathy, which are not purely logical constructs.

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