Welcome to CatuSaturday, May 25, 2024, and National Wine Day, so be sure to have your tipple. Here’s a short video about one of my favorite wines (a dessert wine): Sauternes. And it’s best drunk on its own as a dessert or, if you want to pair it with something, use a ripe mango or peach or, as the French often do, have it with foie gras and a toasted baguette. The mixture of the sweet wine and buttery liver is fantastic.
It’s Julia Pierpont Day (founder of Memorial Day), Geek Pride Day, National Wine Day (again?), International Jazz Day, National Italian Beef Day (best in Chicago), Last bell (Russia, post-Soviet countries; look it up), International Missing Children’s Day, Towel Day in honour of the work of the writer Douglas Adams, and National Tap Dance Day.
I know a lot of good tap videos, but I think this is the best. It’s the Nicholas Brothers, starting with a piece by the scatting Cab Calloway:
A photo I took this morning with my iPhone:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 25 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Once again the International Court of Justice is going after Israel, this time trying to make it ratchet down or even stop its operations in Rafah (remember that the ICJ is part of the UN).
The United Nations’ highest court ordered Israel on Friday to halt military operations that could lead to the complete or partial destruction of the Palestinian population in Rafah, the Gaza Strip city where hundreds of thousands of civilians and units of the Hamas militant group have sought refuge.
The 13-2 vote by the International Court of Justice capped a week of international repudiation for Israel. On Monday, the International Criminal Court, a separate tribunal also located in The Hague, said that its prosecutor would seek to charge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders, with war crimes related to the Gaza operations and the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that provoked them.
After the ICJ decision was announced, Netanyahu’s office said he was consulting with his top cabinet officials on next steps.
Hamas issued a statement welcoming the decision and called on the international community to ensure that Israel complies.
Hamas’s approbation already tells you something, but of course we all know the UN wants Israel to lose this war. A bit more:
Friday’s directive is the ICJ’s latest provisional order intended to protect Palestinian civilians while a case filed in December by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide proceeds. Israel has denounced the accusations and said that its military operations are intended to destroy Hamas and free hostages whom the militant organization captured, and that they are consistent with international law.
Although the world court’s orders are binding, the tribunal has no means to enforce them. Zane Dangor, director-general of South Africa’s foreign ministry, said his government would ask the U.N. Security Council to mandate Israel’s compliance.
“It is the first time that explicit mention is made for Israel to halt its military action in any area of Gaza, this time specifically in Rafah,” he said. “It is ordering the major party in this conflict to end its belligerent action against the people of Palestine.”
The belligerent action is against Hamas, not the people of Palestine, who are being evacuated to safety in droves. Israel is determined to see this war out by cleaning out Rafah and the tunnels from there to and across the Egyptian border, and the ICJ’s orders won’t stop that. Yes, this will make the world dislike Israel even more, but that won’t faze a country who sees the war as an existential issue. And surely Hamas must be destroyed, which means getting Sinwar and most of its fighters out of action. Some of them may be left, but that will at least stop Hamas from controlling the country. After that, well. . . none of us knows what’s going to happen, and everyone has a different opinion. (Tom Friedman’s is the dumbest.)
*As usual, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: An appeal to heaven.” I didn’t worry much about Biden’s sentience, but look at the links below. A friend of mine swears he’s on Ritalin:
→ Biden looks so confused all the time right now: The dire situation of our president’s age reveals itself more and more by the week. Here is Biden after a noise startles him but not anyone else in the room; he looks confused, stares for a while, and salutes. Or here he is struggling to read a teleprompter, speaking like he just got dental surgery. Or here: Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan judges whether certain videos are AI-generated or real, and on the Biden video she confidently says it’s fake: “He didn’t blink. Not at all, right? So that suggests it’s fake.” Her interlocutor smiles a little awkwardly: “This one’s actually real. And yes, he didn’t blink for the whole 17-second clip.” The only theory that makes sense to me is that his staff and the donors prefer him senile—all the better for them to get their various agendas through. Agendas that wouldn’t win an election and that are much better hidden behind a kindly old man in aviators. How could this sweet elder possibly be radical, guys! And so it’s Biden forever. It’s Biden from the assisted living facility. It’s Biden 2056 from the grave, healthy as a horse, I might add.
→ No lobster, yes cry: Red Lobster has filed for bankruptcy. It turns out that all you can eat shrimp for $20 is a challenge we Americans will take very seriously and eventually win. We will all eat too much shrimp. An ungodly, unimagined amount of shrimp. An amount that the CEO and consultants and analysts never calculated into the model, and they made models. Part of the reason Red Lobster was so close to the brink is because the new private equity owners were quietly gutting the place, selling the land for cash and such. And so Red Lobster is closing. The list of hallowed American institutions for high schoolers to go on awkward dates (I presume) is getting shorter and shorter with each passing week. TGIF (another great American restaurant) pours some creamy, congealing lobster bisque into the streets tonight in honor of our fallen soldiers.
→ No lobster, yes cry: Red Lobster has filed for bankruptcy. It turns out that all you can eat shrimp for $20 is a challenge we Americans will take very seriously and eventually win. We will all eat too much shrimp. An ungodly, unimagined amount of shrimp. An amount that the CEO and consultants and analysts never calculated into the model, and they made models. Part of the reason Red Lobster was so close to the brink is because the new private equity owners were quietly gutting the place, selling the land for cash and such. And so Red Lobster is closing. The list of hallowed American institutions for high schoolers to go on awkward dates (I presume) is getting shorter and shorter with each passing week. TGIF (another great American restaurant) pours some creamy, congealing lobster bisque into the streets tonight in honor of our fallen soldiers.
. . .At the University of Toronto, protesters are just straight up chanting “Heil Hitler.” Good thing they’re not trying to do anything Constitution Day–related up there. That would be a real problem.
My president Hillary Clinton (for the love of god, Hilz, just tip Biden over one day, and lock the doors of the Oval behind you) went on Morning Joe earlier this month. On pro-Palestine protests, she explains that many young people she’s encountered “don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or, frankly, about history in many areas of the world.” She then patiently describes how during the Oslo Accords “an offer was made to the Palestinians for a state on 96 percent of the existing territory occupied by the Palestinians with 4 percent of Israel to be given to reach 100 percent of the territory that was hoped for.” And that was turned down, you see, and. . . oh shoot, the kids stopped listening, they’re screaming Heil Hitler again. Oh well.
*Simon gave me a link to a BBC article on a social-media ‘influencer” becoming a Catholic saint, noting “Generally I think of Catholics as mainly harmless, but then things like this remind me just how medieval it still is.”
A London-born teenager – whose proficiency at spreading the teachings of the Catholic church online led to him being called “God’s influencer” – is set to become a saint.
Carlo Acutis died in 2006, at the age of 15, meaning he would be the first millennial – a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s – to be canonised.
It follows Pope Francis attributing a second miracle to him.
It involved the healing of university student in Florence who had bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.
Carlo Acutis had been beatified – the first step towards sainthood – in 2020, after he was attributed with his first miracle – healing a Brazilian child of a congenital disease affecting his pancreas.
The second miracle was approved by the Pope following a meeting with the Vatican’s saint-making department.
. . .As well as designing websites for his parish and school, he became known for launching a website seeking to document every reported Eucharistic miracle, which was launched days before his death.
Mr Acutis’ nickname, God’s influencer, has been attributed to him after his death due to this work.
His website has now been translated into several different languages, and used as the basis for an exhibition which has travelled around the world.
His life is also remembered in the UK, where in 2020, the Archbishop of Birmingham established the Parish of Blessed Carlo Acutis incorporating churches in Wolverhampton and Wombourne.
And there is a statue of the soon-to-be-saint in Carfin Grotto, a Roman Catholic shrine in Motherwell.
Miracles are typically investigated and assessed over a period of several months, with a person being eligible for sainthood after they have two to their name.
For something to be deemed a miracle, it typically requires an act seen to be beyond what is possible in nature – such as through the sudden healing of a person deemed to be near-death.
Yeah, and I’m sure that there are no cases of spontaneous cures involving bleeding of the brain or of the pancreatic disease at issue. You know, there should be a book (by skeptical doctors, not believers) that carefully documents all the “miracle” cures said to have been involved in making people saints. One thing I know for sure: they won’t involve regrowing missing limbs or missing eyes!
*This week Andrew Sullivan takes on the “Biden left” in a piece called “The psychology of being in a minority.” contrasting Biden’s with Obama’s commencement speeches at the well known historically black Morehouse College:
The last two Democratic presidents have one thing in common: they have both given commencement speeches at Morehouse College, an HBCU for black men, whose alumni include Martin Luther King Jr. But the two speeches are worlds apart. One reason for this, of course, is that Obama was himself a black man, and so had more leeway to offer some hard truths than Biden did. But even taking that into account, the moderation and uplift of Obama contrast so vividly with Biden’s fatalistic leftism.
Obama encouraged Morehouse men to reach high:
[O]ver the last 50 years … barriers have come tumbling down, and new doors of opportunity have swung open, and laws and hearts and minds have been changed … So the history we share should give you hope. The future we share should give you hope.
Here’s Biden on where America is on race a little more than a decade later:
What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street? What is democracy if a trail of broken promises still leave Black — Black communities behind? What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot? And most of all, what does it mean … to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?
Here’s Obama:
Your generation is uniquely poised for success unlike any generation of African Americans that came before it … There are some things, as black men, we can only do for ourselves … One of the things that all of you have learned over the last four years is there’s no longer any room for excuses.
And here comes Biden with the excuses:
If Black men are being killed on the streets, we bear witness. For me, that means to call out the poison of white supremacy, to root out systemic racism.
Obama calls on the graduates to seize the day, overcome the residual racism in this country, fix their own problems, resist cynicism, and join America’s progress. Biden tells them that all they can do is “bear witness” to the horror of “white supremacy” and fight against “systemic racism.” (And of course the vast, vast majority of black men “killed on the streets” are not killed by cops, as Biden sickeningly implies.)
Leave aside for the moment the question of which president is more accurate in telling America’s racial story — and focus instead on the psychological impact of both messages. Obama evokes personal energy, taking command of your own life, living up to your own responsibilities, acting to make the world better for you and others. Biden’s evokes passivity, helplessness, “bearing witness” to racism, and despair about the eternal nature of America’s racial evil.
And Sullivan’s conclusion, which seems pretty much on the mark:
Yes, Biden included some boilerplate about the brightness of the futures of the Morehouse grads; but every policy he mentioned was something government had done or could do: mainly channeling money to black universities, and practicing constant race discrimination against Asians, Jews, and whites, in order to give blacks an advantage. There was nothing wrong with black America, he seemed to imply, that white Democratscan’t solve by discriminating in favor of them.
This message is empirically wrong, I’d say. But more importantly, it is psychological poison. It disempowers minorities, robs us of agency, encourages fatalism, and stirs endless resentment. Even if it were true that America were an eternal white supremacist nation, as Biden seems to think, believing that will sap you of optimism, self-confidence, direction, and self-esteem. Which will perpetuate everything you say you oppose.
Sullivan’s message is that the presumed loss of agency touted by wokeness—a loss that affects blacks more than whites, women more than men, and LGBTQ people more than cis hetero people—is causing the large uptick in mental illness among groups that consider themselves oppressed. In the quote above, Obama emphasizes agency while Biden undercuts it. (Yes, I’m a determinist who doesnt believe in such agency, but that’s no matter: what you hear affects how you behave.) Sullivan’s piece, one of his best in a while, ends this way:
And once you become ever more attuned to and aware of how society is rigged against you — the definition of becoming “woke” — you can see it everywhere. Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology, argued in his 2020 paper “Harm Inflation” that the cultural left has increasingly “broadened [the meaning of ‘trauma’] to include adverse life events of decreasing severity and those experienced vicariously rather than directly”; and that “‘abuse’ extended from physical acts to verbal and emotional slights.”
What Biden did at Morehouse, and what his administration has done in every way imaginable, is to uphold this view of the world. From its crude race and sex discrimination to its support for critical queer theory and transing kids, it is spreading a message that not only holds minorities back; it tells them that the country they live in — the freest and most diverse in human history — is defined by hatred of the black, brown, gay, queer, and trans populations, and was really founded in 1619 to oppress, and not in 1776 to liberate.
*Michelin just issued its first food guide to Mexico and, mirabile dictu, a humble taco stand got one star. Needless to say, that stand is now deluged with customers.
Over a week ago, Taquería El Califa de León was simply one of Mexico City’s nearly 11,000 registered taco shops, though there are undoubtedly many more that aren’t. Sure, it had been around nearly 60 years and was popular, especially among politicians who worked nearby. But it was mostly a locally known taco stand.
Then, on May 14, life changed completely for the cash-only taquería that has barely enough room to stand, sells four kinds of tacos — three beef, one pork — and whose grill radiates intense heat. That day, the Michelin Guide, the world’s most widely recognized arbiter of fine dining, released its first Mexican edition.
Of the 18 establishments in Mexico awarded at least one Michelin star, many of them fancy restaurants, El Califa de León was the only street-food stand. (Outdoor food stands in other parts of the world have been awarded Michelin stars.)
Business has surged since. Wait times have gone from 10 minutes to as long as three hours.
A nearby shop started renting out stools to customers in line. More workers were hired to help meet the soaring demand. Tourists from all over the world are showing up, many snapping photos as the food is prepared. Sales, according to the taco stand’s owner, Mario Hernández Alonso, have doubled.
“It’s been fantastic,” said Arturo Rivera Martínez, who has manned El Califa de León’s grill for 20 years.
. . . The tacos at El Califa de León are more expensive than a typical street taco, which can cost as little as 60 cents. The cheapest taco Mr. Hernández sells (steak) is roughly $3, and the priciest (pork chop or beef rib meat) is $5. But the pieces of meat at El Califa de León are the size of a large fist and the quality of the meat, Mr. Hernández insisted and some customers confirmed, was better.
The Michelin citation noted that the gaonera taco was “exceptional” and “expertly cooked.” And the combination with freshly cooked corn tortillas was “elemental and pure.”
Even though the guide said that “meat and tortillas of this caliber” made the homemade salsas “hardly even necessary,” customers still reach for the spicy green (serrano peppers) and red (pasilla, guajillo and árbol peppers) condiments.
I don’t think I’d wait three hours in line for a taco, even if it was made in a two-star restaurant. Still, one of the highlights of my visits to Mexico was the humble but oh-so-delicious taco. And there are good ones even in Chicago, especially if you like goat.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is, as usual, obsessed with noms.
A: What are you doing?Hili: I’m digesting what I ate and I’m thinking about what to eat.
Ja: Co robisz?Hili: Trawię to, co zjadłam i zastanawiam się co zjeść.
*******************
From Merilee:
From Science Humor:
From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:
Reposted by Masih; the imam, of course, represents a hijab, which many women wave on a stick after they remove it:
Iranian women are so inspiring. They are so strong and resilient. Not even powerful men dare to stand against Islamic fascism, and these beautiful women do it every day.
One day they will rule Iran, but until then, they are showing the rest of the Middle East how freedom is won. pic.twitter.com/Dm3TtQHReO
— Luai Ahmed (@JustLuai) May 21, 2024
From Luana: Seriously, President Biden?
Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican allies don’t care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system.
If they did, they would have supported the toughest border enforcement in history.
Instead, they put partisan politics ahead of our national security.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2024
As I said, I’m no fan of Ted Cruz, but here he passionately attacks the an unconscionable placing of a large trans woman into a women’s prison after a series of rapes and salacious crimes. Cruz is questioning one of Biden’s judicial nominees:
Absolute FIRE line of questioning from @SenTedCruz today 🔥🔥🔥 bravo!
“Do they have the right to not have a 6’2″ man who is a repeat serial rapist put in as their cell mate?” pic.twitter.com/TSzIMjdmmi
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) May 23, 2024
From Barry, who says “Oh yeah? You think you can eat one of us? We’ll show you!” This is a group of bees mobbing a giant hornet and cooking it to death by vibrating their abdomens, taking the wasp above its lethal temperature. (I describe this in Why Evolution is True).
A group of bees take revenge on a giant hornet for eating one of them pic.twitter.com/NpRA8uGXTQ
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 24, 2024
I’m putting up a video from Malcolm, showing a camera that can photograph a trillion frames per second!
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted with a link:
This man was a hero, wrongly executed by Poland after the war for espionage. https://t.co/5GezcvqSpN https://t.co/He1l42vAYz
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 25, 2024
Two tweets from Matthew, who’s going to Amsterdam (I hope he doesn’t get deplatformed!) First, a very weird cat video:
— SillyCats (@catshouldnt) May 7, 2024
Baseball pandemonium:
Absolute chaos. This is why you should thank the coach’s and volunteers… pic.twitter.com/6Em3DPFmkj
— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) May 8, 2024
Love that photo – good eye! Angles, shading, depth,.. etc.
Reminded me of the photographer Andreas Feininger.
Yep, very good. “Reflections upon a Black Hole”.
A propos nothing at all, does anyone know of a black cat who has been named “Hole”. Astronomer staff are a likely correlate.
Sigh, there’s probably one in the “Halloween Black Cat Parade” gallery thread, stage left.
Love the T-ball video. So rich in individual and independent kid’s interests of the moment. It is kind of a 24-second superbowl of what I watched over the years of two grand daughters and a grand son at ages five or six being introduced to teamwork using the Great American Pastime.
I guess the private equity induced end of Red Lobster is another example of what David Leonhardt refers to as “rough and tumble” capitalism in his “The story of the American Dream – Ours was the Shining Future”.
Very interesting article about President Biden and his outward behaviour and policies. It seems quite depressing to me a non US resident and observer and leading more and more to look like Mr Trump will be the next President of the USA.
I am confused about Last Bell. The Wikipedia article only describes the practice. Is it pro- or anti-Soviet?
It’s something that was done in Soviet times but it doesn’t seem to be an oppressive thing. I looked at the Wiki description.
Oh wait you looked at the Wiki entry too! Anyway, that was my interpretation.
The Nicholas Brothers did that all in one take, and they only did it once. It’s gets better and more impressive with each viewing, and it’s lovely to see all of the beautifully dressed young couples come out to the dance floor at the end. I think it’s one of the best dance numbers in a movie.
Israel needs to destroy Hamas’s ability to wage war, and the ICJ ruling does not change that. The ruling is largely symbolic, so long as the world does not use it as a license to apply crippling sanctions against Israel. Very few governments really want Hamas to succeed, despite the almost universal hatred of Israel, so we’ll see. My hope is that this news story dies away in a few days and that Israel’s pursuit of Hamas continues unabated. Hundreds of thousands of Gazan civilians have fled Rafah and Israel seems to be doing more than what any other government at war has ever done to protect civilian lives.
Until a few days ago, the U.S. and others were demanding that Israel have a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah. Now that they are moving people out successfully, the shape-shifting, Israel-hating media has predictably turned to criticizing Israel for doing exactly what the U.S. and the world community demanded. At the MSN and NBC web sites*, headlines tell of hundreds of thousands of Gazan civilians being “forced” to flee, the word “forced” being used to signal condemnation of Israel’s actions, of course. The duplicity is astounding. Whether antisemitic or “merely” anti-Israel, this morphing of the narrative to demonize Israel and Jews is taken directly from the antisemite playbook.
* https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/hundreds-of-thousands-forced-to-flee-again-as-israel-pushes-into-rafah/ar-BB1mjwbX?ocid=BingNewsSerp
* https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-palestinians-gaza-rafah-nakba-anniversary-rcna152314
Let me also add a codicil regarding the ICJ ruling…
Even though the press is almost uniformly reporting that the ruling demands that Israel immediately cease its operations in Rafah*, the ruling itself is more narrow:
“The State of Israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in the Rafah Governorate: Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”**
The two statements are not the same and, not surprisingly (at least to me), most news outlets are reporting the ruling as being absolute, deemphasizing or ignoring the last clause.
* https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/middleeast/israel-icj-gaza-rafah-south-africa-ruling-intl/index.html
** https://www.timesofisrael.com/icj-orders-israel-to-halt-rafah-operations-that-risk-destruction-of-civilian-population/
Two thoughts. First, wrt to Nellie Bowles’ column & POTUS’ age, am I the only one thinking about a “Weekend at Biden’s” remake? Second, wrt the first baseman in the red jersey who gets hit in the head by the ball, that’s embellishment and two minutes in the penalty box.
Even allowing for journalistic hyperbole, does this add up?
The wait times would suggest an 18-fold increase, but I’d put more credence in the stand-owner’s accountant.
Empirically, to bring them into some sort of agreement, there must be “behind the counter” delays as well as just cooking time.
Doesn’t “the dismal science”, Economics, have some sort of equation for this. Or is it really so dismal?
For some reason, the presenters on the Grand Prix qualifying, have taken to calling this race the “cat’s whiskers” – even if Señor Alonso – the other Alonso! – isn’t appearing too far forward in the qualy. Yet.
Actually, Monaco circuit; cat’s whiskers; tight, tight tolerances; big cream at the end ; maybe it’s not such high hyperbole. Almost elliptic, even.
The operative words are “as long as”. The statement as given is consistent with a very wide range of sale rates. Maybe the three-hour wait only happened once, and the average wait time is 20 minutes.
True.
I’d file that under “journalistic hyperbole”, but you’re right, I hadn’t been weighting that phrase highly enough. You tend to just let your eyes filter that sort of guff out before submitting the meaning to your actual fore-brain.
If supply is too low to cover demand, then waiting time sky rocket. 10 minutes waiting time were for a situation of matched supply and demand due to random fluctuations in customer arrival. That suggests little reserve capacity. Out of the blue, demand doubles and suddenly you get customers added to the queue all the time with no chance to reduce the queue as long demand exceeds supply.
So no, from simple math one wouldn’t expect the wait time to double, if demand doubles but supply stays the same.
“Absolute chaos. This is why you should thank the coach’s and volunteers…”
I should thank the coach’s WHAT (and the volunteers)?
Regarding the Michelin thing: “Tourists from all over the world are showing up, many snapping photos as the food is prepared. ”
Did they travel specifically to partake of this food venue? Or did they just happen to be close by? In either case, I’d like to possess their discretionary income.
An excellent book about the hero Witold Pilecki is The Volunteer: One Man, Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather. Pilecki’s story is incredible. I highly recommend this book.
Well, Nellie Bowles, continue to charitably and considerately hold forth on Biden. (I wish the Dems fielded another younger, sharper, intellectually rational and competent candidate. But I somehow don’t feel the need to dump a load of snark on Biden, and would not get one iota of satisfaction from doing so. I’ve yet to hear of one snark dumper turning his/her gaze on themselves, much as critiquing oneself, which human primates are not wont to do.) I reasonably gather that she agrees with Bari Weiss that Biden and Trump are “very, very, very” old men. (How many “verys” does age 100 warrant, especially someone who by great good fortune has retained her/his cognitive sharpness?)
I’ve read or heard to the effect that ageism is the last bias at which none but the elderly take umbrage. Or is that some sort of cultural myth or stereotype or exaggeration?
Bowles and Weiss themselves surely wish to reach a “very, very, very” old age, if only for the sake of their children and grandchildren. (Of course, there exist those children and grandchildren and relatives standing around the death bed with clasping, rubbing, grasping hands. I’ve observed that not a few descendants behave themselves because they don’t want to be disinherited. Granted that some necessarily discipline themselves to do that in response to years of bearing up under the obstreperous and unreasonable and abusive behavior of their forebears.) They will surely no less take umbrage at the younger set describing them that way.