Posting will probably be very light this weekend; Richard Dawkins is coming to town on what he says is his final tour (he’s 83), and I’ll be attending several Dawkins-related events, including his talk tomorrow. It will be at the old and small Chicago Theater, a fantastic venue, and you can still get tickets here. As you see below, the host is Jesse Singal.
Welcome to Friday, September 20, 2024, and National String Cheese Day. I do love the stuff, even though it’s bland as hell, because the texture is everything. But on average every American eats half a pound of this stuff per year. Here’s how they make it (in Wisconsin, of course):
It’s also International Grenache Day, National Fried Rice Day, World Paella Day, National Bakery Day, National Gibberish Day, aslke88 &^*&*m, and National Pepperoni Pizza Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the Sept 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*It looks like Israel is preparing for a war with Hezbollah, and Israel has pretty much said as much. Although the beepers and walkie-talkies that Mossad used to injure a large proportion of Hezbollah fighters this week were apparently detonated prematurely to prevent Hezbollah from detecting them, the war for which they were to be used seems inevitable. Now Israel is flying warplanes over Beirut (article archived here).
“The enemy transgressed all boundaries and red lines,” Nasrallah said in a widely anticipated speech Thursday evening local time about the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The attacks were “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime — an act of war,” he added, and they dealt an “unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah and Lebanon.
As he spoke in a televised address, the rumble of planes and large sonic booms could be heard over the Lebanese capital. But Nasrallah also struck a note of defiance, saying the group’s operations would not stop until Israel ended its war in Gaza.
“They will face a severe reckoning and just retribution, whether they expect it or not,” Nasrallah said of Israel. The nature, size and location of any retaliatory attack would be kept secret, he said.
. . . Minutes before Nasrallah began to speak, the Israel Defense Forces announced it was striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon to “degrade Hezbollah’s terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.”
Earlier Thursday, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where support for Hezbollah is strong, residents said they feel vulnerable and exposed, with a sense of unease sweeping across their neighborhoods. The attacks have eroded the once-solid sense of security they felt living far from the front lines in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has said it won’t stop attacking Israel until it ends the war in Gaza. Fat chance of that happening! And so the Keffiyeh Brigade is deeming the beeper attacks as “war crimes”, which they’re not. (As I’ve said, Hezbollah is committing multiple war crimes every day, firing missiles at Israeli civilian targets multiple times a day. But nobody seems to notice that, least of all the cowardly United Nations, which even passed a binding resolution prohibiting Hezbollah from attacking Israel. And of course there are thousands of UN troops in Lebanon that are supposed to keep the peace, but they’ve been too afraid to stop Hezbollah.) The war with Hezbollah will be a tough one, for they have more and better missiles than did Hamas, Hezbollah is a well-organized group, and they even have tunnels. This also means that Israel may be involved in two wars at once. Can they handle it? Well, they did in 1948, but armaments have changed a lot since then. And the United Nations has proven itself a bunch of hypocrites.
*John McWhorter has written some good columns lately (here’s one I wanted to feature), but I’ve had no space to do so. I do, however, want to call your attention to his new NYT op’ed called “Wby J. D. Vance dropped into my inbox” (archived here). It’s a lament for how McWhorter and Vance started out on similar paths, but then diverged. Vance, it seems, is proving a distinct liability to the Trump ticket, still harping on things like Haitian immigrants eating cats, but at one time McWhorter saw a kinship between them:
I once thought of JD Vance and me as coming from a similar place.
Not in terms of life experience, as my middle-class suburban childhood was quite different from Vance’s early years in rural poverty.
But something similar happened when we each wrote a book.
In 2000, I published “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.”
. . . . quite a few people thought I wrote the book as a cudgel for conservative Republicans to take up against Black people. In the Bay Area, where I was teaching, for a while I was race traitor No. 1. Besides occasional insults on the street, local newspapers did nakedly biased profiles of me, laced with nasty comments by people like the writer Ishmael Reed (who as recently as last year had a character in one of his plays dissing me!). I heard endlessly that I must have been hoping to get rich by selling out to white conservatives.
Arguing from the middle means you get it from both ends. I am often a self-hating racist to the left, while the right often thinks I am a conservative in denial and lately diagnose me as suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” And so shall it be, as I hold on tight where I sit.
Sixteen years later, Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” became a huge best seller by arguing that what ails poor Appalachians is the result of both structural factors such as deindustrialization and also cultural factors. Structural factors can cause the cultural ones, but the latter can take on a life of their own. He describes people who see themselves solely as victims of those larger forces, rather than doing what is within their power to improve their lives.
Vance came in for it in the same way that I did back in the day. Despite his efforts to thread the needle, more than a few Appalachians read the book as disrespectful, condescending and disloyal. Sarah Jones at The New Republic judged Vance’s main point to be simply “All hillbillies need to do is work hard, maybe do a stint in the military, and they can end up at Yale Law School like he did.”
They exchanged friendly emails for a while, and Mcwhorter “assumed that his trajectory would involve walking the same kind of line I have tried to, exploring societal issues without being co-opted by the temptations of partisanship.” It didn’t work out that way:
Instead, Vance has done exactly what my detractors had assumed I would, riding the book to fame and fortune provided by people with partisan and even hostile right-wing opinions. It’s sad and perplexing to watch a person with such potential to do good transparently selling out.
His recent CNN interview with Dana Bash — the one in which he said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do” — was typically dismaying.
. . . And that’s just it — Vance is distinctly uncrazy. He is smart and competent and has proved himself to be capable of sensitive, thoughtful engagement. I just don’t believe that someone like that could fall for the idea that Haitians are netting people’s Goldendoodles, saying grace over a dinner of puppy chops and saving the leftovers for sandwiches the next day.
In other words, McWhorter accuses Vance of knowingly pushing lies to advance a divisive point of view about immigrants. And, it seems, McWhorter is right.
*The NYT has two op-eds aimed at giving Kamala Harris tips on how to win the Presidency. One, by Frank Bruni, is called “Why can’t Kamala Harris just say this?” (archived here), consists of a long explanation that, says Bruni, Harris should give for changing her positions over the last decade. (It doesn’t offer any new positions, which is also one of her problems.) Read it for yourself, and see if it would help her.
The other, by Todd Purdum, identified as “a former White House correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief for The Times” is called “The political cost to Kamala Harris of not answering direct questions.” *Archived here, though they changed the title.) She did this again in her recent interview with Action News’s Brian Taff, answering questions about her specific plans by beginning with “I’ll start with this. .” and then telling an incredibly tedious and aging story about her upbringing, before finally getting around to mentioning a few unworkable and un-pass-able initiatives that she’s mentioned before. Some excerpts, and blame this not on me, but on the NYT, whom, I guess, some readers will accuse of trying to help get Trump elected!:
When Kamala Harris sat down for just the second major television interview of her campaign last week with the Philadelphia ABC affiliate, the anchor asked her to outline “one or two specific things” she would do to fulfill her pledge of “bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people.” She responded by recalling how she was “a middle-class kid” who grew up in a community of construction workers, nurses and teachers who were “very proud of their lawn.” She recounted her mother’s saving to buy her family’s first house. She paid tribute to a neighbor who became a surrogate parent. She praised the “beautiful character” of the American people.
Only then, after nearly two minutes, did Ms. Harris outline her plan for a $50,000 tax credit for start-up small businesses; private-sector tax breaks to spark construction of three million housing units over four years; and $25,000 in federal down payment assistance for first-time home buyers.
It’s a shibboleth of modern political strategy that candidates should answer the questions they want to, not the ones that are asked, and Ms. Harris faces a unique challenge in this truncated presidential race of introducing herself to an electorate that in many ways still barely knows her. So she might be forgiven for leading with a blizzard of atmospheric biographical detail that makes some voters feel they can’t trust her to answer a direct question.
But in a campaign in which Donald Trump fills our days with arrant nonsense and dominates the national discussion (and polls show a tight race where Ms. Harris is running behind Joe Biden’s level of support in 2020 with some groups), the vice president can’t afford to stick only to rehearsed answers and stump speeches that might not persuade voters or shape what America is talking about.
. . . Writing about politicians for decades has convinced me that direct, succinct answers and explanations from Ms. Harris would go a long way — perhaps longer than she realizes — toward persuading voters that they know enough about her and her plans, which polling surveys now suggest they don’t (yet badly want to). Being known as a straight shooter would also help persuade restive political elites, pundits and journalists that Ms. Harris is grappling with such scrutiny, and I think she’s apt to be rewarded in the end for it.
. . . For better or worse, questions — and usually the very hardest ones — come with the job of being president. When voters say they need to know more about Ms. Harris, I think part of what they are really saying is that they want to know more about how she would be as president, as well as what she would do. What would it be like to have her in their living rooms and on their devices for four years? How would she roll with the punches? How would she react in a crisis? How would she respond to their concerns, fears, hopes, dreams, desires — and, yes, criticisms? Listening closely, and answering questions — clearly, early and often — is inevitably a part of passing that test.
Purdum also says, like Bruni, that Harris should “own” her flip-flopping. Don’t blame me for this: I’m highlighting New York Times articles, ones trying to help Harris get elected. Clearly the NYT should shut up until after the election is over, lest they enable Trump by hjighlighting Harris’s deficiencies. The price of her avoidance is losing the election. I think the last paragraph above is quite eloquent—and accurate. So far, undecided voters aren’t going over to Harris’s side, regardless of her slaughtering Trump in the debate. Why? It’s because, like me, they don’t have any idea what Harris would be like as President. (We already know what Trump would be like; we experienced that nightmare.)
The NYT still continues its bias in the news. Here are the top two headlines from the online news. The middle video features mockery of Trump. Oprah??
*It’s now become possible to renew your passport online, saving a ton of trouble.
The agency has been testing the renewal system since 2022. Over time, it has slowly expanded how many online applications it can handle each day. For the system’s mid-June relaunch, the public could submit materials starting at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Once the agency reached capacity, it would close the portal until the next day.
Rena Bitter, assistant secretary for consular affairs, estimates that up to 5 million Americans per year will be able to use the service that is currently available 24/7.
To be eligible for the online system, travelers must be U.S. citizens or residents 25 and older who have already had a passport with 10-year validity, among other requirements. Here are a few. .
The list isn’t onerous, though it says to give them an eight-week period to get your passport to you. I’ve used the renewal system not long ago, and I got my new passport within a week and a half. So if yours is expiring, go here and submit your application (if you pay extra you can get it in 2-3 weeks but I wouldn’t worry too much about that). You’ll need a digital color photo taken against a neutral background, but that’s dead easy these days. The site even has a tool that will crop your photo to the right size. (Don’t expect a great picture on your passport, though!).
*Saturday Night Live debuted on October 11, 1975, and so is beginning its 50th season. The AP looks back at what happened to the cast members of that first season, which I watched with fascination (I’d never seen anything like it!). Two of course are dead: John Belushi and Gilda Radner, but looking back at that cast, and comparing it to what I’ve seen of SNL since then (I no longer stay up that late, but watch what are supposed to be “good” skits), I have to conclude that the first case was the best cast. Here are the members and a few words given on each:
John Belushi: Following years of drug use, he died March 5, 1982, at 33 after overdosing at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Belushi’s death stunned and saddened his friends and fans and symbolized the end of the hard-living ‘70s.
Gilda Radner: Nasally Roseanne Roseannadanna. Weird teen Lisa Loopner. Weekend Update’s “never mind” complainer Emily Litella. Radner contributed an endearing sweetness to the inaugural season of “SNL.” She stayed for five years.
. . . Radner died May 20, 1989, at age 42 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Her book detailing her cancer fight was released earlier that year. A documentary about her life, “Love Gilda,” was released in 2018.
Chevy Chase: Now 80, Chase has taken in recent years to hosting screenings with audience Q&As for “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” the most enduring movie in that franchise. He also makes chicken sounds and posts fan meetups and family gatherings on TikTok, where he has 1.2 million followers.
Laraine Newman: She left “SNL” in 1980 after portraying Connie Conehead, Valley Girl stewardess Sherry and ditzy public access TV co-host Christie Christina. She was also a recurring reporter on “Weekend Update.”
Newman has spoken openly about her struggles with depression and drug addiction during that time. She got sober in 1987.
Dan Akroyd: When he wasn’t bleeding out as Julia Child or declaring, “Jane, you ignorant slut!” on “Weekend Update,” Aykroyd swagged with Steve Martin as one of two wild and crazy guys, and led the Conehead family as patriarch Beldar.
And he lent so much more to “SNL” before leaving in 1979, including as half of The Blues Brothers and impersonations of talk show host Tom Snyder, Rod Serling and two presidents: Nixon and Carter.
. . . Aykroyd, 72, wrote and narrated a recent audio documentary, “Blues Brothers: The Arc of Gratitude.”
Jane Curtin: Curtin left “SNL,” in 1980, after five seasons. She was a master of deadpan, often playing the straight woman off such outsized performers as Belushi and Radner. A regular on “Weekend Update,” she was also known for the Coneheads sketches as matriarch Prymaat and as Enid Loopner with fellow nerds Radner and Murray.
Garrett Morris: Initially hired as a writer, he was the oldest on “SNL’s” first cast at 37. He came to the show after 17 years as a singer and arranger with Harry Belafonte, as an actor in plays and musicals, as a playwright and as a civil rights activist who helped desegregate Actor’s Equity.
. . . He remained on “SNL” until 1980. He was known for his character Chico Escuela, the Dominican baseball player whose catchphrase, “Baseball has been berry berry good to me,” caught on in pop culture. He also performed as the shouting interpreter in the “News for the Hard of Hearing” segments and did impersonations of Idi Amin, James Brown, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bob Marley and Muhammad Ali.
What a cast! Yes, there have been individuals who have been as good as some of these, but not have equaled Belushi and Radner, or, a close second, Dan Akroyd. I’d be remiss if I didn’t show a sketch from the best two, so here you go:
Radner’s “The I Hate Jennifer Show”:
Belushi in “Samurai Delicatessen”:
@nomad_215 “Samurai Delicatessen” is a comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live that aired on January 17, 1976. The sketch features John Belushi as a samurai who makes a sandwich by: Cutting ropes on hanging salami Slicing tomatoes in midair Splitting bread with his skull The sketch also features Buck Henry as Mr. Dantley, who waits while the samurai makes the sandwich. The two characters have a pleasant conversation even though they speak different languages. #snl #johnbelushi #ripjohnbelushi
And Akroyd as Julia Child (genius!):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants a LEAF! This is not like her!
Hili: What is it you have?A: A leaf.Hili: May I have it?
Hili: Co tam masz?Ja: Listek.Hili: Czy mogę go dostać?
*******************
From America’s Cultural Cecline Into Idiocy:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:
From Masih, a sad tweet:
The hypocrisy is glaring: the same regime that intentionally blinded peaceful ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protesters in Iran is now offering medical care to Hezbollah operatives who lost their eyesight to pager explosions.
Two years ago, when people took to the streets to peacefully… pic.twitter.com/70p5bwHbNq
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 18, 2024
From Steve Stewart-Williams. No, journals should not engage in politics nor endorse candidates. It only serves to weaken the public’s confidence in science.
“In 2020, Nature endorsed Joe Biden in the US presidential election. A survey finds that viewing the endorsement did not change people’s views of the candidates, but caused some to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally.” https://t.co/ujZEpKI5kC pic.twitter.com/yQjMqb7Npv
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) September 16, 2024
From Simon; how ailurophiles entertained themselves during lockdown.
Them: how’s quarantine going?
Cat lovers:(Sound on) pic.twitter.com/G0KprnHRzW
— Emilee (@ourshieldmaiden) September 7, 2020
A cat Go-Pro—way cool!
I could watch this for hours pic.twitter.com/2SRo9nT1ey
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 18, 2024
Two tweets from Barry—a hungry eagle and an angry goose. Why are geese such jerks? Ducks don’t chase people like that!
Bald Eagle 🦅 pic.twitter.com/kqY76sXQt5
— . (@stunningworlds) September 8, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial:
20 September 1896 | A German Jewish woman, Erna Eschwege, was born in Offenburg.
She arrived at #Auschwitz on 2 June 1944 in a transport of 1,000 Jews deported from #Drancy. After the selection she was murdered in a gas chamber pic.twitter.com/kEEGRodF9E
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 20, 2024
Two tweets from the newly-retired Dr. Cobb. First, a lovely sunrise from The Shepherdess:
Sunrise 🌅 🙏💛☀️🐾🐾 pic.twitter.com/cNoSuvWP7x
— Alison O’Neill ~ Shepherdess (@woolismybread) September 19, 2024
Matthew calls this pair of tweets “Beautify—and terrifying.”:
This is the first time the Warming Stripes have been displayed at sea. It is vital that the message of the stripes reaches every corner of the globe – our world is warming fast, especially in the Arctic, and we need urgent action to limit the impacts of climate change. pic.twitter.com/ONl6LHKzDo
— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) September 17, 2024
On this aslke88 &^*&*m, or Punch Day, I recommend Perfessor Wondrich’s, Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, as well as any actual punch you have the ingredients for.
The problem with all these articles saying that a candidate should just do this—and we see them every season for every major candidate—is that they most often suggest that the candidate be a different person than they are.
There’s a movie on SNL coming out – agree, the first seasons had skits and characters that stand alone in creative breakthrough and spirit.
Here in the UK, it’s possible to renew a British passport online too. Renewing online is cheaper (£88.50, or $117) than filling out a paper form (£100, or $132). Whether it is easier or faster, I don’t know, but I shall find out for myself in January 2025!
I have two tickets for the Dawkins talk in Chicago that I purchased by accident. (I will be attending his Milwaukee event tonight.) If someone wants my Chicago tickets and we can figure out a way for me to transfer them to you, get in touch somehow. (I think I can transfer them via the Ticketmaster app.)
As you quote above:
“In 2020, Nature endorsed Joe Biden in the US presidential election. A survey finds that viewing the endorsement did not change people’s views of the candidates, but caused some to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally.” (https://x.com/SteveStuWill/status/18358236967681108610)
We’ll, true to form, that once-great magazine of science, Scientific American, a few days ago endorsed Kamala Harris for President:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vote-for-kamala-harris-to-support-science-health-and-the-environment/
I don’t find it surprising when up and coming political heroes like Vance end up being villainous hypocrites. The omnipresence of social media, specifically the algorithms on the dominant apps, gives psychopaths quite a tool to deceive. People do of course have to be credulous enough.
Love the video of the cat with a camera around its neck. Adorable! 🐈
I’m hoping Americans will put Harris in as a “holding pattern” until you can come up with something better & we don’t have to listen to Trump remind us of how fucking stupid we humans are… there is enough evidence of that.
If HE losers I don’t think he will be back, pheww but it will be another X yrs of nashing and grinding as he tells us how it is or he could do better… what a snore feast that will be. And I’m not American!
Hezbollah and AOC claiming the exploding pagers are an act of war/terrorism, do these poeple think we’re all imbeciles, ok some are I am but not all the time… umm but still a ludicrous & laughable claim.
The cat’s eye view video is interesting, not just because KITTY, but also because the cat vocalizes when she (he?) greets feline friends.
Experts have been telling us for years now that adult cats don’t meow to each other, but only to humans!
Yes! (On both counts.) My cats clearly use an entirely different voice when they talk to me vs when they talk to each other, and it sounds a lot like that.
Thank you for making the archived articles available. Much appreciated.