Welcome to Sunday, September 15, 2024: sabbath for goyishe cats. And it’s National Double Cheeseburger Day. The ultimate double cheeseburger, said to be the best in the world (I’ve never tried it) is from Hodad’s in San Diego. Here the owner describes how it’s made:
It’s also Butterscotch Cinnamon Pie Day (never had it), National Caregivers Day, National Cheese Toast Day, National Linguine Day, National Women’s Friendship Day, and National Brunch Day (remember, Anthony Bourdain told us never to eat brunch out).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 15 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Columnist Jennifer Schuessler has an op-ed in the NYT called “Should a more ‘diverse’ campust mean more conservatives?” (It’s archived here.) The issue. framed as a “Republican” one, is whether “diversity” should go beyond ethnic diversity or even socioeconomic diversity to include “viewpoint diversity”, which on today’s hyperliberal campuses means “get more conservatives”.
Criticism of universities as hotbeds of liberal elitists and tenured radicals is nothing new. But more than a decade after conservatives turned “free speech” into a rallying cry, they are increasingly championing another concept: “viewpoint diversity.”
The innocuous, bureaucratic-sounding term has its origins within academia itself. But as battles over higher education heat up, it has been taken up by politicians who promote it as a counterpart — some would say a counterpunch — to efforts to promote racial and ethnic diversity.
Calls for viewpoint diversity have been written into education laws proposed or passed in at least seven states, including Florida and Texas. In March, Indiana passed a law that curtailed diversity, equity and inclusion programs, while mandating that professors be regularly evaluated on whether their courses promote “intellectual diversity.” Failure to do so can be a firing offense, even for tenured faculty.
At first glance, calls for viewpoint diversity would seem to be hard to object to. The idea that the pursuit of knowledge rests on the unfettered exchange of a broad range of ideas is a bedrock principle of the university. It has also undergirded arguments for race-based affirmative action, which under the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was permissible if it enriched the overall learning environment for everyone.
But for many who advocate it — and certainly for many who are wary — viewpoint diversity boils down to one thing: the need for more conservatives on syllabuses, in the classroom and, perhaps most important, on the faculty.
Schuessler points out that some people—and this includes me—are worried about how a “progressive” ideology could itself impede the search for truth, the major theme of the paper that Luana and I wrote about the ideological subversion of evolutionary biology. There’s more:
Some prominent scholars have argued for the need to actively counter ideological imbalances. In a widely noted 2011 speech at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that social psychology had become a “tribal moral community that actively discourages conservatives from entering,” and called on the society to commit to having conservatives make up 10 percent of its membership by 2020.
That didn’t happen. And the field, Haidt said in an interview, has only gotten “more politicized.”
In the meantime, Haidt has moved from concerns with research to ones about the broader campus climate. In 2015, Haidt, with two colleagues, founded Heterodox Academy, a cross-campus group that promotes “open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.” In their 2018 book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Haidt and Greg Lukianoff connected the narrowing of campus discourse with broader shifts in American culture that have encouraged students to see themselves as fragile, easily traumatized people who need “safe spaces.”
That book became a New York Times best seller, and turned Haidt in to a leading public voice in debates about politics and higher education. But for years, he said, convincing liberal colleagues there was a problem felt like a losing battle. “We were seen as apologists for the right,” he said.
In the meantime, as recent surveys have shown, trust in higher education has plummeted across the political spectrum over the past decade. “When universities have lost the trust of centrists and moderates,” Haidt said, “you can’t blame it on the right.”
I am in favor of expanding the diversity of viewpoints on campus. after all, that’s been one rationale for expanding the diversity of ethnic groups on campus. If colleges are not going to become echo chambers of progressive, extreme Leftism, which is a real danger, then we need more than just a few token conservatives to balance the mix. It’s time for some affirmative action for conservatives (n.b., I am not one of them, but appreciate their presence on our campus).
*My hearing has always been substandard: when I had my draft physical in 1970, the hearing test put me pretty far below par. It’s getting worse as I get older, and I’m sometimes unable to hear low voices. But I’ve resisted getting a hearing aid, and that’s out of pure vanity, which is dumb. However, Apple has now converted its latest earbuds into a medical hearing device, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
When the world’s most valuable company held its latest glitzy event this week, Apple AAPL -0.12%decrease; red down pointing triangle offered a peek at its highly anticipated AI tools and the next iPhone.
And one more thing that could quietly turn out to be the most important release of them all.
It wasn’t a new product. In fact, it’s a product you might already own. The company showed off a feature that will transform the most popular wireless earbuds into something else altogether—something that Apple believes will meaningfully, almost magically improve the lives of millions of people.
A hearing aid.
As soon as it rolls out the software update this fall, Apple will instantly make the AirPods Pro 2 into a medical device, essentially turning every pair of the company’s top-selling headphones into over-the-counter hearing aids.
Audiologists expect it will be the best low-cost option for most Americans who need hearing aids but don’t wear them.
It’s meant for people with perceived mild to moderate levels of hearing loss. And those are exactly the people who might never otherwise get a hearing aid.
Whether it’s because of price, stigma or their refusal to admit they’re getting older, people with the least severe hearing problems are the ones most reluctant to seek help. Most feel it’s not worth their money, time and energy to find a solution. Some don’t even know they have a problem.
Audiologists say they can be helpful:
AirPods might not be as good as prescription hearing aids for people with profound hearing loss. But for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, they are plenty good enough. And there are lots of those people.
There are roughly 30 million Americans who could benefit from hearing aids, according to the U.S. government, and the World Health Organization says 1.5 billion people globally are living with hearing loss.
And the only thing more surprising than how many people could use a hearing aid is how many of those people don’t actually have one.
In fact, 75% of people with hearing loss let it go untreated, according to the Apple Hearing Study, a project run with the University of Michigan. In case you don’t trust medical statistics from a trillion-dollar company trying to sell you something, the audiologists I consulted told me that number sounded right.
. . . Today, prescription hearing aids still cost thousands of dollars. OTC devices cost significantly less. The generic preset ones sell for roughly $100 and the more personalized self-fitting ones around $1,000. The hearing aid from Apple will essentially perform like the expensive devices for the price of the cheaper ones at $249. And for those who already own the AirPods Pro 2, it won’t cost anything extra.
Now that you can buy hearing aids of all stripes over the counter, this may be a good option. However, don’t those things look like big white devices sticking out of your ears? Probably not appropriate for a panel discussion or a lecture!
*The WaPo reports that conversations between people with opposing political opinions—conversations that are unguided and unmoderated—lead to comity far more often than people think. This was an experiment conducted at Stanford University.
Consider Ben and Emily. They live in the same state and belong to the same race, economic class and generation. Yet they don’t agree on much.
Ben is a Republican who owns two guns. “There are a lot of crazies out there,” he explained to Emily in a video conversation our Stanford laboratory facilitated. “A lot of crazy people own guns,” countered Emily, a Democrat who despises firearms.
Their fraught conversation resembled so many in this polarized moment — until it didn’t. Within minutes, with no prompting from our staff, the two began opening up about their stories. Emily’s husband once had a gun pulled on him in an argument. Ben is a gay man living in a conservative town; after receiving threatening messages, he felt he needed protection.
Ben and Emily (whose names have been changed to preserve their privacy) were among more than 160 Americans who spoke about their opposing political views as part of an experiment we ran at Stanford. Over and over, we observed as participants with rival opinions came to these conversations ready for combat — and left feeling changed. Afterward, they reported feeling less hostile toward the other party and more humble in their own views. When asked to rate the pleasantness of these dialogues, the most common response was 100 on a 100-point scale.
The article uses these results to boost cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of therapy that tries to help people with psychological problems by getting rid of cognitive distortions. And these distortions, so the article maintains, can be dispelled by conversation:
Like cognitive distortions in depression, political misperceptions bleed into our actions and make things worse, in at least two ways.
The first is unpopular escalation. In our study, participants who believed that rivals would bend democratic rules for their own gain thought their own party should do the same. Why honor rules of engagement if the enemy won’t? Likewise, people who overestimate the other side’s hatred and violence grow more willing to hate and harm, as well.
The second is consensus neglect. Yes, there are violent extremists who actually threaten our nation. But they are a tiny minority. In our lab, we’ve found that more than 80 percent of Americans regret the country’s division and wish for greater cooperation. In recent surveys, Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on other core values, such as voting rights and freedom of religion, as well as several policies, such as facilitating immigration for skilled workers, upholding Medicare and tightening gun laws.
. . . In CBT, people are challenged to think differently and act differently by collecting new data themselves. In a divided America, this could mean braving conversations across difference, the way Ben and Emily did.
It also means getting rid of those “conflict entrepreneurs” who benefit by fostering divisiveness (the DEI enterprise comes to mind). This idea that civil conversations could reduce the divisions between people is an old one, but is demonstrated here with evidence. I guess I’m just a bit cynical about this. Would it really be the case that putting a pro-Hamas and a pro-Israeli in a room together would bring their views closer together? How would that work? What about a rabid Trump fan versus someone for whom Kamala Harris brings joy? There seem to be certain fundamental values that wouldn’t be abandoned in such circumstances, and although people might understand where others are coming from better, or not hate somebody so much, it’s the difference in values that’s causing the problems. But of course I may be wrong.
*An op-ed in the WSJ, “The debate’s inadvertent Israel lesson,” echoes my criticisms of Harris’s confused (indeed, conflicting) response in the debate when asked about the war between Israel and Hamas.
If you hoped to learn about Israel policy, the presidential debate didn’t disappoint. It was a perfect demonstration of all that’s wrong with the way we talk about it.
ABC’s Linsey Davis began: “Vice President Harris, in December you said, ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’ but you added, ‘It matters how.’ You said, ‘International humanitarian law must be respected.’ ‘Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.’ You said that nine months ago. Now an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead. Nearly 100 hostages remain. Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there’s not a deal in the making. President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate. How would you do it?”
Like most media coverage, the question begins not with Oct. 7 but with Israel’s response. Hamas barely exists in the telling, except in the uncredited citation of its propaganda, “40,000 Palestinians are dead.” This passes off slain terrorists—more than 17,000, Israel says—as civilians. That’s how Ms. Davis posed the 40,000, as giving the lie to statements about protecting civilians. She left out that the figure is supplied by Hamas, whose strategy is to encourage the deaths of civilians, or that it includes some 10,000 deaths attested only by Hamas’s media sources.
Ms. Harris dodged the question about negotiations, which might have implicated Mr. Biden’s failure. Instead she tried to please everyone.
“Let’s understand how we got here,” she started. “On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis.” Then came Israel’s “right to defend itself,” in theory, but not like this and never quite now: “It is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end,” immediately, with a “cease-fire deal.” She closed by urging “a two-state solution.”
Ms. Harris treated the war only as a humanitarian crisis. Oct. 7 was horrible, Israel’s response was horrible, so end it now. Absent is any strategic objective. If the war ends now, Hamas will be left to rearm, restore its rule and start the next war. Hers is the same logic that has failed in each previous round of fighting.
Harris also plumped strongly for a two-state solution, which anybody with neurons that connect know is simply not viable now, and won’t be for aeons. But Trump takes his lumps, too:
Would Mr. Trump challenge this [the idea that Netanyahu should negotiate with Hamas] or expose the Biden strategy to which Ms. Harris clings?
Nope. “If I were president, it would have never started,” he said. “She hates Israel. If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.” By the time he explained—Biden sanctions relief enriches Iran and its proxies [sic]—who was paying attention?
Israel won’t exist in two years? Take that seriously but not literally; still, it gives succor to terrorists. On the war, Mr. Trump concluded, “I will get that settled and fast.” We are left to guess whether that means pressuring Israel to wrap it up or unleashing Israel to wrap it up. I think it’s the latter, but why isn’t it clear?
“Vice President Harris,” the moderator picked up, “he says you hate Israel.” “That’s absolutely not true,” she replied. Enlightening? No. Instructive? Bigly.
I think it’s clear that Trump means the latter, given his behavior when he was President. I don’t think Harris hates Israel, but nor do I think she’s thinking clearly about the war. Although Trump wasn’t clear, either, I’d guess that his approach to the conflict would please me more than Harris’s. I’m also guessing that Harris, if elected, would quickly move to the “squad” side of the Left, and you know what they think about Israel. In other words, I see a fair amount of Harris’s newfound “centrism” as a ruse.
*And this is one of the best pieces I’ve read recently, distressing at it is. It’s from the Free Press, and if you don’t subscribe or can’t access it by clicking below, you’ll find it archived here. Ten years ago I highlighted a related story by Matti Friedman, who worked as an AP correspondent in Israel for five years. His earlier article was largely about deliberate misreporting about Israel caused by pressure from the AP; the present article, while mentioning the Gaza conflict, is more about the ideological biases that cause reporters to lie:
A few excerpts:
The most important thing I saw during my time as a correspondent in the American press, it seemed to me, was happening among my colleagues. The practice of journalism—that is, knowledgeable analysis of messy events on Planet Earth—was being replaced by a kind of aggressive activism that left little room for dissent. The new goal was not to describe reality, but to usher readers to the correct political conclusion, and if this sounds familiar now, it was both new and surprising to the younger version of myself who was lucky to get a job with the AP’s Jerusalem bureau in 2006.
. . .Looking back at my essays ten years later, it’s clear that what I saw in Israel wasn’t limited to Israel. Starting out as a journalist, I knew the fundamental question to ask when reporting a story. It was: What is going on?
When I left the AP after nearly six years, I’d learned that the question was different. It was: Who does this serve?
You may think that a news story is meant to serve readers, by conveying reality. I thought so. What I found, however, was that the story was more often meant to serve the ideological allies of the people in the press. If your ideology dictates that Israeli Jews are symbols of racism and colonialism, and Palestinians symbols of third-world innocence, then a story that makes Israelis seem constructive and Palestinians obstructive must be avoided even if it’s true, because it serves the wrong people.
. . . Asking “Who does this serve?” instead of “What is going on?” explains why a true story about a laptop belonging to the president’s son was dismissed as false: This story would help the wrong people. It explains the reticence in reporting the real effects of gender medicine, or the origins of Covid—stories that could help the wrong people and hurt the right ones. It explains why much of the staff of The New York Times demanded the ouster of talented editors for publishing an op-ed by the wrong person, a conservative senator. It explains why a story about an opposition candidate colluding with Russia was reported as fact—the story wasn’t true, but it helped the right people. It explains why President Biden’s cognitive decline, a story of obvious importance to people of any political affiliation, was avoided until it became impossible to ignore. And it explains why journalists rarely pay any price for these shortcomings. If the goal is ideological more than analytic, these aren’t shortcomings. They are the point.
This thinking also explains why the growing fear of violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists, a fact of life throughout much of the Middle East, Africa, and increasingly the West, has to be presented whenever possible as a figment of racist imagination—a fictionalization that requires intense mental efforts and serves as one the key forces warping coverage of global reality in 2024. In the strange world of the doctrinaire left, adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism are the wrong people, while adherents of Islam have a point.
The ideas I saw shape Israel coverage, in other words, have spread through the press and tamed the formerly independent and unruly world of journalists—a world where we may have been wrong most of the time, but not all the time, and never all in the same way.
. . . When I began working for the American press in 2006, someone with my center-left Israeli opinions may have been someone to disagree with, like a conservative Democrat or moderate Republican. In 2024, someone like me is a suspected racist who probably wouldn’t be hired. With some exceptions, the institutions have sunk into the Manichaean fantasy world they helped create.
It took me several years at the AP, and then a few more after I left, to grasp the change and put it into words. What was true of the Israel story ten years ago is now true of almost everything. Most journalists have abandoned “What’s going on?” for “Who does this serve?” The result is that huge swaths of the public know what they’re sup
In other words, cui bono? I think about this when I read any of the MSM, but especially venues like the NYT, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and all the liberal MSM that used to be my sole source of news and opinion (the Wall Street Journal is harder, at least for the news section). You might have a look at Friedman’s Atlantic article from 2014, which is archived here.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s calling for a presser:
Hili: Let’s start.A: Start what?Hili: A press conference about the current situation.
Hili: Zaczynamy.Ja: Co zaczynamy?Hili: Konferencję prasową na temat sytuacji.
*******************
From David, another church sign:
From Cat Memes; spot the moggie!
From Jesus of the Day:
Masih notes that Iranian women who supported her, often removing their hijabs and calling out male harassers, are being forced to publicly “confess” and demonize Masih:
Authorities forced over 40 people, including brave women who removed their hijabs, into false confessions against me on Iranian state TV. Just watch a few—it’s like their favorite reality show.
Some in the West worry that sharing these stories might spark ‘Islamophobia.’
Fear… pic.twitter.com/QvjU5KSUkE
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 13, 2024
From Barry, a reworking of Ceiling Cat:
Orange cat behaviour pic.twitter.com/z4jqyzhevB
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) August 23, 2024
Hamas is firing rockets at Israel (and conducting its terrorist operations) from within humanitarian areas of Gaza. (Hamas fired two more rockets there yesterday.) Clearly Hamas’s strategy is to get Israel to strike humanitarian areas and kill Gazan civilians. How much more evil can you get? (The IDF now has to evacuate those who were already evacuated.)
Several terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis were struck overnight in a precise, intelligence-based strike.
Among the terrorists struck were:
• Samer Ismail Khadr Abu Daqqa: Head of Hamas’… pic.twitter.com/wTU28YsMNs— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 10, 2024
This happened to me once and it was plenty scary (and wound up in a 5-car collision in which nobody, thank Ceiling Cat, was hurt. I stopped my car by running it into the dirt shoulder. I think it’s useful to know
Information that everyone who drives a car should know. pic.twitter.com/QIaI58FUmF
— Learn Something (@cooltechtipz) September 14, 2024
Do you know this breed of sheep?
THE ONE WITH HIS TONGUE OUT 😛 pic.twitter.com/AkG7clt94n
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 13, 2024
Here’s the one with his tongue out, 13 seconds in:
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one who survived and is still with us! Today is her 95th birthday.
15 September 1929 | Polish Jewish woman Halina Birenbaum was born in Warsaw.
She survived the Warsaw ghetto, Majdanek, #Auschwitz (no. 48693), Ravensbrück & Neustadt-Glewe camps. In 1947, she emigrated to @Israel.
A poet & writer.
Today she turns 95.Read “There is my soul”. pic.twitter.com/FEHXSQbTp9
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 15, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one is for those who know cricket. Matthew called it “the best tweet he’s seen,” and added, in response to my puzzlement, “The ball is hitting the wicket – the catcher is just sitting there. Warne was a spin bowler so even these talented batsmen could not keep their eye on the ball and hit it – it nipped in and knocked the bails off each time.” I still don’t understand, of course. . .
You’ll probably watch this 489 times more but guess what? It never gets old 🔥❤️❤️🔥 Shane Warne, we will always remember you. pic.twitter.com/0MnMjl6AME
— Broken Cricket Dreams Cricket Blog (@cricket_broken) September 13, 2024
One I retweeted. LOOK AT THAT FLOWER!
This is a fantastic duck mimic!!!!! https://t.co/jw78z7KG2I
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 14, 2024
Get hearing aids! I had an uncle who was always a jovial sort of guy. As he got older I noticed he wasn’t as much. I put it down to age and cancer fight, but then he got hearing aids and was back to his old self. It turns out he was just having trouble following the conversations at the dinner table at family get togethers.
Hearing loss can cause a slow change that you might not even notice. So put your vanity aside and get hearing aids! I don;t think many people consider it a bad thing if you have hearing aids, and if they do, that’s their problem!
Get the hearing aids! You wear glasses, modern ones won’t be or will barely be visible. Similar to above I’ve family members with hearing loss. Who spent years, for exactly the same reasons. Now the problem is making sure they’re charged as christmas with the TV turned up to Eleven hurts my hearing.
Ditto, get hearing aids. Even low levels of hearing loss have been associated with a faster rate of cognitive decline and an increased dementia risk.
I wear hearing aids. They can do everything airpods can do and more, they’re properly programmed for my hearing loss, they automatically adjust to the environment, I can use them as bluetooth ear buds, I can use them to make phone calls and I can use them to control the AI assistant on my phone.
They cost a lot more than airpods but have 15+ hours of battery life and aren’t obnoxious white jewellery.
Question about Harris’ Israel stance. Obviously, many Jews are uncomfortable with Biden’s policy towards Israel and have zero trust in Harris as someone who could deliver a coherent, fair and effective approach to this issue. The question I have is this-as far as I can tell, Biden’s approach was to say one thing and do another. He would repeatedly wring his hands about civilian deaths, Netanyahu and cease fires, but in the end the US never stopped giving Israel arms or intelligence aid, and never intervened in any way. Is this not the case? If so, this an age-old approach to say one thing to lessen the heat from one flank of your party but then to do another thing altogether. For Jews who have been life-long Democrats but will vote Republican based on the Israel issue, is the thought that Harris wouldn’t do as Biden has done (e.g. she would move away from his policy towards an even more anti-Israel stance) or just that Biden’s was bad enough?
Yes, Biden has taken actions to impede Israel’s conduct of the war, and has not done things he could have to help Israel win.
1. Biden totally stopped delivery of some weapons, notably the 2000-pound precision bombs that explode underground (I’m not sure if he has resumed delivery). As I recall, he mischaracterized these weapons as having the ability to kill a lot of people aboveground, but in reality they explode underground and are aimed specifically at tunnels and designed to reduce civilian casualities.
2. Biden has delayed shipments of other precision weapons, often by creating a bureacratic process that slows delivery (https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-delays-sending-precision-weapons-to-israel-253f12f0)
3. Because the U.S. has a HUGE ability to influence Egypt, for Egypt is poor and we give them billions in aid, the U.S. could have pressured Egypt to construct refugee camps in, say, the Sinai. That would have saved the lives of thousands of Gazans by getting them away from Hamas. He didn’t lift a finger to pressure Egypt.
4. Biden could have pressured the ICC by threatening to sanction its judges or prosecutors, as has been done by previous Presidents when US citizens were in the dock. In fact, Biden rescinded sanctions put in place by the previous administration (https://www.state.gov/ending-sanctions-and-visa-restrictions-against-personnel-of-the-international-criminal-court/) Instead, the ICC went ahead with its indictment of Israeli leaders, which led the ICJ to say that Israel could not invade Rafah. Now both courts had no effect on the conduct of the war, but, as I note below, they do have an effect on world opinion. Likewise Biden’s intimations that the killing of civilians by the IDF was excessive and that Gaza was in a state of starvation.
5. Biden has been hypocritical in his treatment of Israel vs. Palestinian terrorists, putting sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank but no sanctions on Palestinians in the West Bank who kill Israelis.
In total, Biden’s words, despite the support he has given Israel materially, have been weaselly, and that weaseling has given enormous psychological support to Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, leading them to think that they can batter Israel at will. It also influences world opinion by bolstering the false idea that Israel is engaged in excessive killing of Gazan civilians, leading to accusations of genocide.
I have no confidence that Harris will be better on Israel, as she’s more “progressive” than was Biden, and progressive Democrats are basically anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. In fact, I’m pretty confident that as far as Israel is concerned, Harris will give it less support than did Biden. You have already heard her words as a candidate: she’s calling for a cease-fire and touting a two-state solution. Don’t you think what she says is being heard by people in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran????
I would also add that Biden’s objections and threats to Israel regarding its incursion into Rafah probably delayed the end of the war by two months and gave Hamas hope that the United States will forbid Israel from winning the war decisively. Hamas continues to act as if this is a centerpiece of its strategy. By delaying the end of the war—and the destruction of the four remaining Hamas brigades in Rafah—it’s possible (but cannot be proven) that Biden’s policies have led to more civilian casualties than would have happened had he not been trying to prosecute Israel’s war from Washington, DC.
It’s hard to say what Harris’s positions are WRT the war, but her rhetoric seems to indicate that she would be less supportive of Israel than Biden. The ball is in her court to provide some clarity on this matter.
The sheep are Valais.
L
“More sheep-bell!”
The supposed point of racial, economic, sexual, and “gender” diversity in institutions is that the diversity of experience and backgrounds improve decision making. This is nothing other than viewpoint diversity. As many have pointed out, though, in practice this seems to provide not a spectrum of opinions, but a point of converging light, focused on a specific set of ideas. If academia isn’t about different opinions, it’s not education, it’s indoctrination.
I don’t think political clashes are necessarily about differing values because both sides tend to argue that THEIR side is fair/compassionate/wise etc and it’s the OTHER side that isn’t. They’re wrestling over the rights to the same values.
The crux of the disagreement is usually over the facts of the matter. If I agreed with all the truth claims made by Hamas & its supporters, then I’d see Israel as the enemy of my original values. I wouldn’t be picking up new ones, but changing my views. All things considered, that probably adds to the common ground and makes the goal of coming to a compromise or consensus easier — or at least conceivable.
As regards the “stealth” hearing aids (“I thought he was getting old, but turns out he’s just listening to music!”) I’m reminded of one of the odd and unexpected benefits of Bluetooth phone headsets: it allowed schizophrenics to blend in better when out in public. They know that talking to the Voices makes them look crazy – it’s embarrassing. But put on a headset and the casual passerby will assume any frantic gestures or furious gibberish is a rational response to whatever the hell is going on with the person on the other end of the line. One of technology’s little conveniences.
Hi Jerry,
If you are interested in how cricket works, there’s a fairly good Youtube video – cricket explained for baseball fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWpbtLIxYBk
It’s about 15 mins, so wouldn’t take up too much time. It’s also introductory, so cricket fans will note a couple of minor omissions, but as a starter it looks ok.
A more detailed intro, in writing rather than on video, is on this website. https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/writing/sport/cricket-for-baseball-fans/
Not trying to convert you!
(1) Can we look forward to Diversity Statements which affirm acts of kindness toward conservatives? How about a commission to discuss the enactment of reparations to conservatives for past acts of unkindness. Couldn’t the treatment of Charles 1, Louis XVI, and Nicky II (not to mention king Zog the Last of Albania) have made conservatives feel at least little unsafe, for a time?
(2) My own moderate hearing loss, significant only in large meetings and in noisy restaurants, led me to acquire a Pocket Talker. This is a small amplifier with comfortable earphones (I dislike earbuds), and costs about 1-2% as much
as fancy hearing aids. I suppose it makes me look old, but I am old.,
” . . . noisy restaurants . . . .”
Is one supposed to be as easily able to hear one’s dinner companions or anything else in a noisy restaurant as compared to a less noisy or quiet one? If I am in a movie theatre am I supposed to be able to hear actors’ dialogues as easily when inconsiderate movie goers behind me talk out loud, even at comparatively low volume?
Any more, when someone asks me out to eat, I ask if the restaurant is typically noisy, both from patrons and music from speakers. (Ten years ago I was in the lobby of a Chicago major name hotel and was amazed at how loud the ambient music was. Why must it be so loud?) What diner with an apparently breath taking sense of entitlement has to talk so loudly that I can clearly hear their specific words ten feet away? They certainly can’t hear mine as I strive not to talk loudly. Self Awareness and Situational Awareness and all that. One shouldn’t have to talk loudly to be heard by someone sitting no more than three feet away. It’s the same in a classroom where a student is trying to ask the teacher a question and the teacher can’t hear because of the keening sounds of other students insisting on talking loudly.
Related matter: a few months ago I had a hearing test. Part of the test consisted of having “fizzing,” “sizzling” etc. sounds of varying volumes in the headphone of one ear while testing the other ear, the other ear itself not subjected to such sounds. The technician said to simply ignore it. I thought that that was a ridiculous statement. How could it not be distracting? After the test I read once some convoluted explanation involving neutralizing or compensating for some neural cross-connecting between the ears and prevent then from aiding and abetting each other. Or so I gathered. I’ll have to read it again.
In daily life, when I’m trying to hear and detect the location of a faint noise, I don’t start up some (additional) noise generator directed toward either of my ears. (I think I do have minor tinnitus which I gather is basically an excess electrical noise to signal ratio and which may mask certain higher tones. On the other hand can one have detectable noise to signal ratio without it necessarily being tinnitus?)
(Years ago a general practitioner gave me a hearing test through headphones. He didn’t subject additional noise as above. Should he have? He noted that I seemed to have a loss in the higher frequencies. I didn’t contest his statement, as I was reasonably confident that my hearing remained in pretty good shape and did not want to cause a stink by telling him that through the headphones I could hear and was distracted by two of his staff talking not all that loudly in the hall, though the wood and glass door was shut, to that extent reasonably making it more difficult for me to hear faint sounds in the headphones.)
Age-related hearing loss typically reduces higher frequencies more than lower.
This has an interesting side-effect on the audibiity for us seniors of radio announcer voices, as related to the changing sex ratio in that profession.
Edit: this is to Filippo. I’m no expert, but the sort of issues you’re experiencing sound (ha ha) like they have more to do with attention/distractibility. I say this as one who experiences the very same problems. My hearing is too *good*, if you will. I hear things I’d rather *not* hear, am distracted by them and find it difficult to focus on what I *want* to hear. Sound (there it is again) familiar to you?
Our Lady of the Immaculate Primary Election is brainwashed with these two gnostic religious doctrines :
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon
1961
60th ann. Ed. Grove Press, NY
Preface by Sartre:
“from afar we see their war as the triumph of barbarity; but it proceeds on its own to gradually emancipate the fighter and progressively eliminates the colonial darkness inside and out. As soon as it begins it is merciless. Either one must remain terrified or become terrifying -which means surrendering to the dissociations of a fabricated life or conquering the unity of one’s native soil. When the peasants lay hands on a gun, the old myths fade, and one by one the taboos are overturned: a fighter’s weapon is his humanity. For in the first phase of the revolt killing is a necessity :[…]”
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Repressive Tolerance
“In terms of historical function, there is a difference between revolutionary and reactionary violence, between violence practiced by the oppressed and by the oppressors.”
Repressive tolerance
from: Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse,
A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 95-137.
Available here:
http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html
Or marxists dot org might have it.
The issue is never the issue – the issue is always the Revolution
Fanon (and even Sartre) conveyed more complex thoughts than these quotes
suggest. Paul Berman has, as usual, explicated this matter in detail, see:
https://quillette.com/2024/09/09/a-stupid-cartoon-and-the-university-ideology-hamas-gaza-fanon-carmichael/?ref=quillette-weekly-newsletter .
Nonetheless, it is clear that the simplistic message of a few quotes from Fanon and the like is what drives the campus noisemakers of the pop-Left.
Oh my god, TP. “Our Lady of the Immaculate Primary Election”… That is too f*cking funny! I love it. Thank you for that one.
Thank you.
I’ve adjusted it so the sound of “Conception” would match up better with “Election” :
Our Lady of the Immaculate Election Primary.
It’s perfect. You should sell it to some late night comedian and strike it rich. Keep it goin’, my friend.
Good one! 😸
Ummm…wicketkeeper. The chap behind the stumps with the gloves is the wicketkeeper 🙂
I was going to say “catcher” as well…
Do all wicketkeepers go to the same Celebration School?
I’m sure they do 🙂 But there are probably only two wicketkeepers in the video: Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist. Healy is in most of them. Gilchrist is the taller keeper, and is in about three of the dismissals including the last one.
Ian Healy was the Australia wicket keeper when Shane Warne made his debut. After Healy, Adam Gilchrist took over and was the keeper at the time of Warne’s retirement. Phil Emery played a few matches, but I don’t think he appears in the video.
To Hili: green is definitely your color!
That cat looking through the hole in the counter? I thought it was facing the corner — like a cat in trouble.
Finally, I think where we all go wrong (and this is germane to both the story about needing more conservatives on college campuses and the one about getting along with people of differing political orientations), is with the kind of language we use. First of all, the old labels seem to have lost their meaning and we should all get together and agree on some definitions. Having said that, using terms like “rabid Trump fan” or characterizing a Harris supporter as “someone for whom Kamala… brings joy” will set people off right from the start (I’m not picking on you, Jerry, I don’t even know if those were your words or something you pulled from the article) and most of us are guilty of this. There are many modern day writers who are called “conservative” who bring great ideas and fresh ways of thinking to discussions but they are excluded because they write for a “conservative news outlet”. I prefer to read articles *not knowing* “which side” the author is on. I like to test my own objective capabilities, if that makes sense. I’ve often met people and become friendly with them having no idea which party they belong to (if any party at all) and same goes for religion and sexual preferences. I don’t give a damn so long as you don’t try to stuff it down my throat. I have friends on “both sides of the isle”, have friends of many different religions (and atheists) and I love it when I’m surprised to discover, much later, that we totally disagree on certain issues. So what? I wish I could write like Leslie or Jerry. I probably didn’t make my point very well and I’m rambling. I just think certain “hot button” name calling is a big problem all over the place. I’ll shut up now. Thank you
In the comment section on WSJ articles on the election huge arguments break out over Trump. Their readership trends conservative but many don’t like Trump.
At NYT or WaPo reader comments are intensely anti-Trump: as though he were Satan himself.
I’m not an American but it’s interesting to see these reactions.
Managing a car with failed brakes at speed is one thing. I had the steering go a little loose in a car once at 60 mph. I assumed it was a puncture that was affecting the steering, so I just took my foot off the accelerator and slowed right down, without using the brakes, before I steered off the road. Even at low speed the car sort of fish-tailed in the gravel. I got out and walked around the car looking for the flat tyre – all tyres were fully inflated. I was puzzled until I finally noticed that the front wheels were not pointing in the same direction. A tie-rod had snapped on the steering gear. I still vividly remember deciding not to use the brakes.
Yikes. This is my nightmare. Or one of them.
As a classroom teacher, I often witnessed firsthand the value of viewpoint diversity. Controversial topics energize students and provide challenges that allow cognitive, social, and civil skills to develop. I had hoped that the AAUP might be interested in this perspective. They were not, but, fortunately, Lawrence Krauss was: https://lawrencekrauss.substack.com/p/we-have-met-the-enemy-and-they-is
Your feedback would be welcome and appreciated ;D
Get the hearing aids.
I’ve used the pocket talker, $300 OTC hearing aids, and about 10 years ago when the technology was not as good, $5,000 hearing aids. None of them compared to my current hearing aids, which cost which cost about $2,800, after insurance covered $1,000.
They’re absolutely invisible. You won’t get normal, natural hearing back. It isn’t like putting on glasses, when your vision is magically made perfect again. There is a breaking-in period. The $3,800 included monthly appointments with the audiologist to make adjustments.
The important point is that, according to my audiologist and everything I’ve read, the longer you’re deaf, the more you lose the ability to put together the sounds you do hear. In other words, the sooner you get the hearing aids, the more they help you.