Monday: Hili dialogue

October 14, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, October 14, 2024, and National Dessert Day. I proffer two photos of desserts. First, a piece of carrot cake I recently shared while dining out in Chicago. Of course it has cream-cheese frosting (and candied carrot curls on top)! And below that, a cherry pie made by Malgorzata (I helped pit the cherries). The cat decoration on top is mine.

It’s also World Standards Day, Columbus Day (I risk cancelation for mentioning that), National Real Sugar Day (I use Splenda in my coffee), Native American Day,  National Chocolate-Covered Insects Day, and, in Canada, it’s Thanksgiving, when everyone dines on roast moose. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*This is how clueless the Biden administration is. Three officials have pronounced that they don’t think Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

The United States still believes that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon despite Tehran’s recent strategic setbacks, including Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leaders and two largely unsuccessful attempts to attack Israel, two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The comments from a senior Biden administration official and a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) added to public remarks earlier this week by CIA Director William Burns, who said the United States had not seen any evidence Iran’s leader had reversed his 2003 decision to suspend the weaponization program.

“We assess that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003,” said the ODNI spokesperson, referring to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The intelligence assessment could help explain U.S. opposition to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack that Tehran carried out last week.

President Joe Biden said after that attack he would not support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, but did not explain why he had reached that conclusion. His remarks drew fierce criticism from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump.

This is nuts.  We all know that Iran has enriched uranium, and continues to do so, far beyond the level of purity needed to run nuclear reactors.  They refuse to allow inspection of their facilities.  From an AP report in August:

Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels in defiance of international demands, a confidential report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Thursday.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, seen by The Associated Press, said that as of Aug. 17, Iran has 164.7 kilograms (363.1 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60 %. That’s an increase of 22.6 kilograms (49.8 pounds) since the IAEA’s last report in May.

Uranium enriched up to 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. By IAEA’s definition, around 42 kilograms (92.5 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% is the amount at which creating one atomic weapon is theoretically possible — if the material is enriched further, to 90%.

The IAEA chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has previously warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so. He has acknowledged the U.N. agency cannot guarantee that none of Iran’s centrifuges may have been peeled away for clandestine enrichment.

I’m continually amazed that the U.S. won’t accept this data when the IAEA, a reputable organization, does. And it’s on this basis that Biden has told Israel to keep its mitts off Iran’s nuclear facilities.  They are believing a fantasy about Iran.

*Harvard’s President Alan Garber reveals that donations to the school have dropped, and that this disappoints him. This is from the Harvard Crimson:

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said he was disappointed by some of the University’s fundraising numbers during an interview with The Crimson on Tuesday, a sign that Harvard officials are bracing for donations to dip after a year of campus turmoil.

Garber’s comments come ahead of the release of the University’s 2024 financial report later this month, which is expected to show that fundraising numbers fell as a result of alumni and donor backlash to Harvard’s initial response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“Some of the new commitments have been disappointing compared to past years,” Garber said.

“There are also some indications that we will see improvements in the future,” Garber added. “I can’t get more specific than that right now.”

As the University grappled with months of donor fallout over its response to campus protests and an unprecedented leadership crisis, Garber had privately warned in March of a decline in new gifts. But he confirmed those suspicions publicly for the first time on Tuesday.

Harvard has faced public condemnation from even its most loyal supporters over its response to campus antisemitism, with several high-profile donors publicly suspending their donations to the University.

While total giving to the University is down from last fiscal year, according to four people familiar with the University’s fundraising data, the true extent of the damage will be revealed by the October report.

Money talks, and especially loudly now that colleges have become like charities, begging and dependent on the almighty DOLLAH.  Perhaps other colleges will take a lesson and get control of their campuses.

*New documents reveal, according to the Times of Israel, that the attack of Hamas on Israel of October 7, 2024, occurred later than originally planned.  Hamas wanted a “9/11-style bombing” and was waiting for funds from Iran to carry it out. Since Tehran didn’t come through, they enacted the “lesser” attack, which nevertheless killed over 1200 people, nearly all civilians:

The devastating terror onslaught carried out by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, had originally been planned for the previous year, but was delayed amid efforts by the Palestinian terror group to enlist the help of Iran and Hezbollah, according to a series of documents obtained by international media outlets on Saturday.

The reports cited minutes from a series of meetings held by Hamas’s military and political leaders over the course of two years, in which they planned the logistics of the attack, as well as various correspondences between Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Iranian officials.

An initial report published by The New York Times on Saturday detailed the minutes of 10 meetings spanning from January 2022 until August 2023, which the outlet said had been discovered back in January on a computer in a Hamas control center in Khan Younis. The Times said that it had verified the authenticity of the documents and had separately obtained an internal report by the Israel Defense Forces that did the same.

The contents of additional meetings and messages, mostly focused on Iran’s involvement in planning and funding the attack, were then shared by the IDF with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, both of which said that they could not independently verify the authenticity of the information they received.

While it was not always clear which officials had attended which meetings, The Times found that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was present at each one, while now-dead top officials Muhammed Deif and Marwan Issa attended at least several of them, as did Muhammad Sinwar, Yahya’s brother.

His request appeared to have been granted, as The Wall Street Journal said it had obtained a letter in which an Iranian official confirmed the allocation of $10 million for Hamas’s armed wing. Sinwar later asked for an additional $500 million, which he said could be delivered over the course of two years, with $20 million being transferred per month.

Following the meeting in January 2022, the “big project” was discussed at length in later meetings of Hamas’s Gaza leadership in April and June of that year.

It was during that period that the attack began to take shape. Last November, a 36-page document was uncovered in northern Gaza, The Washington Post reported, in which various scenarios for attacking Israel were outlined and reviewed.

Among the targets discussed were shopping malls and military command centers, The Post reported, as well as the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, which house offices, a large shopping mall and a train station. In this scenario, the terror group reportedly envisioned carrying out an attack similar to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

However, the report said, this plan was discarded after the terror group concluded that it lacked the ability to bring down the towers.

Sinwar is reportedly still scuttling around in the tunnels in southern Gaza, surrounded by hostages and a great deal of explosives to blow everybody up if Israel tries to rescue its own. This puts the IDF in a difficult position, of course.

*The Nairobi National Museum, which holds some of the world’s greatest treasures, including hominin fossils, is in deep trouble, though scientists are mustering to save it:

Louise Leakey is paleo royalty, descendant of some of the world’s most famous fossil-hunters. Now, walking through the backrooms of the Nairobi National Museum, surrounded by million-year-old specimens her family collected, in laboratories her father built, next to an auditorium with her grandfather’s statue outside, Leakey can picture Kenya’s—and her family’s—legacy falling to pieces.

The museum’s open shelves and the aisles between them are crammed with tens of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of ancient specimens, stored loose in plastic bags, perched precariously on wooden tables, sinking into decaying, decades-old foam that leaves blue-green stains on fossilized bone. Loosely attached paper labels that identify which bone is whose are vulnerable to a stiff breeze through the lab’s open windows.

There’s a 2-million-year-old horned giraffe skull too large to be hoisted safely off the plastic sheet beneath it. Three-million-year-old tortoise shells litter the floor. An enormous crocodile skull, two million years old, stretches between two shelves, too long to be moved without risk of snapping off teeth or even its slender snout.

“We hold here one of the most important collections in the world,” Leakey says. “It’s not in good shape.”

Leakey, 52, is the granddaughter of Louis and Mary Leakey, who put East Africa on the paleontological map with the discovery of a 1.75 million-year-old human ancestor in Tanzania. She’s the daughter of Richard and Meave Leakey, whose fossil-hunting team found Turkana Boy, a famed Homo erectus skeleton that’s the jewel of the museum’s collection.

Their work—and now hers—have helped uncover the story of humans and the natural world. The potential of losing all the history in the museum’s collections worries her. “We need to make sure that we are keeping them safe for the future,” she says.

The Nairobi National Museum, flagship of Kenya’s museum system, is in trouble, overwhelmed by a bounty of specimens and a lack of money to keep them safe. Darkening the outlook are criminal charges against its former director-general for allegedly masterminding a scheme to steal $4 million from its coffers.

Now an ad hoc coalition of scientists and boosters is frantically trying to save it.

The effort to save the museum has turned international. Marta Mirazon Lahr, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Cambridge University, dug into her own pocket to preserve priceless fossils of early man.

U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, has roped in the White House and Smithsonian Institution to get a rescue under way.

“This,” says Whitman, “could be the most amazing museum of the origin of man anywhere in the world.”

In the paleontology lab, Leakey flips gingerly through the brittle pages of a notebook identifying where Meave discovered certain fossils four decades ago.

There’s no fire-suppression system in the lab to keep the documents from going up in flames. Fossils without such context are nearly useless, scientists say. Hanging over Nairobi is the specter of the 2018 fire at Brazil’s national museum, which destroyed most of the 20 million specimens in the 200-year-old collection.

Here’s the actual fossil of Turkana Boy, a fossil of an adolescent H. erectus who lived about 1.5 million years ago and described as “the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found.” Here’s a cast of all the remains; this resides at the American Museum of Natural History. There are 108 bones (modern humans have 206), and indications of a congenital skeletal disorder that probably accounts for the individual’s death.

Claire Houck from New York City, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

*Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania, has written an op-ed in the WaPo that’s sure clickbait for an academic: “College rankings are leaving out the most important factor.” I couldn’t guess what that was, but it’s the quality of teaching.  Whether that’s the most important factor in ranking colleges depends, of course, on what you want for your ranking. If you’re looking for colleges whose graduates make the most money, teaching may not be the most important factor. But I digress:

Trying to choose a college based on how well it teaches? Good luck. If you consult the rankings — such as the U.S. News & World Report survey that bills itself as a tool for “finding the right school” — you can learn about everything from how much a college costs to how much debt its students incur and how much they donate as alumni.

But one thing you can’t find out: how well its professors teach.

In a recent survey asking respondents what makes the “best” college or university, the most popular answer was “it has professors who are excellent teachers” — far ahead of high graduation rates or good-paying jobs after college. Yet students and their families deciding where to shell out thousands of dollars have no way to determine which schools meet that standard. Their only resort might be anonymous posters on forums such as College Confidential or Reddit. That needs to change.

Sure, U.S. News records faculty salaries, student-professor ratios and the average amount of money spent on each student. But none are a good proxy for teaching quality. A high-salaried professor might prioritize research over teaching, which is the best route to getting a raise in academia. Even if that professor’s class size is small, their students aren’t guaranteed to learn very much.

U.S. News’s “Best Undergraduate Teaching” list, based entirely on surveys of college presidents, provosts and admission deans, doesn’t offer much help. What do these “top academics” — as the magazine calls them — know about teaching quality in classrooms at different institutions? It’s a popularity contest, plain and simple.

So are student course evaluations, which most colleges use to assess their faculty. These reports can provide important information, such as whether a professor returns work on time or is available outside of class. But they can’t tell you whether the teacher is effective or how much their students have learned.

Indeed, there’s some evidence suggesting that professors with lower expectations get higher evaluations — who doesn’t like an easy A? — and that teachers who assign more work pay the price on student ratings.

If we wanted to get a more meaningful measure of how well professors are teaching, we would send trained observers into their classrooms. That’s what American University education scholar Corbin Campbell did in the most comprehensive study on college teaching to date.

Many years ago I tried to implement a system of professors evaluating each other’s courses in the Division of Biological Sciences here, but it was a miserable failure.  Professors didn’t want to be evaluated, and my idea of having several random visits, unannounced, during a quarter was not met with approbation, to say the least. The initiative died quickly.

But I would tell parents who really wanted their children to learn to send them to schools where teaching is both prized and excellent. That’s why I always tout my own undergraduate school, The College of William and Mary, as a great place to send kids. I can’t overemphasize the quality of teaching there (there was not much reward for research, but teaching was carefully vetted).  Nearly every class I took fired me up with enthusiasm for the subject (and that includes ethics and Greek tragedy), and it ignited a love of learning under me that remains to this day. Without that education, I doubt I’d be as keen on literature and art as I am today, and of course the science courses were fantastic. I single out especially Jack Brooks (evolution) and Bruce Grant (population genetics) as inspirations that put me on my current path.  I am still glad I went to Harvard for graduate school (I took courses there, but simply audited them), but were I to give advice to a parent, I’d say they should send them to William and Mary rather than Harvard.  Of course most people think that William and Mary is a Catholic girls’ school, but it’s a public liberal-arts college in Virginia, set in a lovely place far removed from distractions like clubs.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is lugubrious (remember, she’s a Jewish moggy). It’s a lovely portrait of Hili as Senior Cat:

Hili: Can a pessimist be simultaneously an optimist?
A: That’s the norm. We pessimists always hope that we are wrong.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy pesymista może być równocześnie optymistą?
Ja: To norma. My pesymiści zawsze mamy nadzieję, że jesteśmy w błędzie.
Retweeted by Masih; another defiant Iranian activist remembering when she was blinded in one eye by the regime for protesting.

Today, on October 21, at 6:00 p.m. Iran time, I was injured in my beloved country. I returned to the moment again. To a moment shared by many of us. I was eye to eye with him when he shot.

From Jez, who has returned! A false accusation of duck theft leveled at a Good Samaritan:

From Luana. Could Columbus possibly have been Jewish? If so, he’s going to be even more demonized than before: a murderous Zionist settler-colonialist! The results are based on a 22-year study involving finding Columbus’s real resting place and doing a DNA analysis.

Two from my feed. First, the double standards of CBS. It’s okay to hector with political questions the father of a rescued hostage, but not okay to ask Ta-Neheshi Coates about an argument that he actually made.

Look at this animal!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Matthew. This first one shows a remarkable recapture of a booster by SpaceX (h/t Simon for a related tweet):

A completely confected-by-AI interview, including the voices:

26 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. My first thought about the pronouncement about Iran building or not building a nuclear bomb is that the US government has access to some of the most sophisticated intelligence gathering tools in the World, probably much better than those available to the IAEA. Unless there is good reason why they might lie about it, just maybe they are right.

    That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be concerned about. Reading the story, it seems clear to me that the officials are only saying that Iran has not decided to build a bomb yet. They are not denying that Iran has the capability to build a bomb or that they might change their minds.

    2. Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; he will use those weapons of mass destruction. Iran is not developing weapons of mass destruction; they will . . .?

      Despite one’s “sophisticated intelligence gathering tools,” the facts collected rarely survive collision with the political.

  2. To Prof Cobb’s tweet, I have been experimenting with Google’s Notebook LM to create AI podcasts of articles on this site for weeks for my own listening pleasure. It is indeed pretty good, but needs work. Right now the AI seems to use the phrase “deep dive” at least twice per show, which I know you don’t like.

  3. While Mechazilla was snagging the first stage super heavy booster (I must say it was both frightening and riveting in real-time yesterday morning when the booster came barreling down from the sky and the viewer did not know how it would come out), the Starship spacecraft was continuing on to orbit as indicated by the speed and altitude data in the lower RIGHT-hand corner next to the spacecraft icon. About an hour later, it successfully re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and appeared to achieve a successful controlled soft splashdown in the night time dark Indian Ocean…though apparently exploding soon after contact with the water. HD live coverage throughout flight using Starlink relay…no NASA or Boeing ionization blackout periods. So SpaceX should have a complete dataset of the spacecraft from launch to orbit through landing. Great stuff and all done in public.

    1. If you’ve seen the Iron Man movies – Starship reminded me of that – Iron Man gracefully and rapidly swooping into scene.

      (Stuff you learn from kids…)

  4. This Hili dialogue and even more the yesterday’s one on history repeating itself sounds like something from The Witcher (Wiedźmin), so it’s appropriate that it’s in Polish.

    I also remember reading a theory that Columbus was Polish so that one didn’t pan out.

  5. Enjoyed the walk down William and Mary memory lane. I recall that the vast majority of profs were very good and much better teachers than I was a student. A couple of clunkers 50 years ago. More recently, good news was the physics dept chair asking me to sit in on the general lectures from a half dozen finalists for a tenure-track faculty slot, to get at least one opinion of a general observer on these candidates’ lecture structure and delivery…they were told beforehand that undergrad teaching was of highest importance and to make their talks generally accessible. More recently, I wanted to audit a freshman/sophomore biochem class. The professor thought that as a 70-something retired research engineer I might be disruptive to the class, but offered (and I readily accepted) to read the course with me with regular visits to her office. Her concern both for the classroom dynamics and my desires really impressed me as going above and beyond.

    That all said, I think the only way for a prospective student to get a feel on quality of teaching at a university is to simply talk with several current students in addition to reading through any rate my professor comments online. I also recall from teaching high school math and physics many years ago, that the students and also many teachers knew who were the good teachers and who were mediocre and bad. The administrators who observed us teaching in our classrooms once or twice a year comparing our technique to a school of education listing of good habits, often were clueless.

    1. I’m all for outstanding excellence in teaching. As a student I was most grateful for it. I’m also all for outstanding excellence in, so to speak, “studenting.” I.e., if a short attention-spanned, un-self-motivated, undisciplined student sits in class scrolling through the laptop or handheld sacred digital demigod, it won’t do for the student to somehow blame his/her scrolling – and lack of academic excellence and accomplishment as a result – on an allegedly mediocre or “boring” professor. (We live in an age and culture of blaming third parties for our deficiencies if at all possible.) A student is not entitled to expect a professor to “entertain” him. There’s a difference between entertaining and engaging. When I was a student I certainly felt (and still feel) a duty to do my part paying attention and studying.

      And forgive me, but, it is some state of affairs when a professor is concerned that an accomplished, retired, intellectually curious adult auditing a class will have a disruptive effect on the juvenilized (if not infantilized) younger set. This is the first I’ve heard of such a phenomenon. Do these youngsters need a trigger warning and a safe space with a coloring book? What is the maximum age of the older classmate beyond which said triggering will occur – 39? Can they handle instruction from an emerita/emeritus professor? Perhaps they themselves should have an IEP (Individualized Education Plan – do those now exist at the university level like they do at the K-12 level?) and instead have office hours visits with the professor. (Hand-in-glove with K-12 IEP’s is “inclusion” in the general classroom. Does inclusion – as it relates to older folks – no less apply at the university level?) It strikes me as gratuitous ageism. (Glad to have made it this far to have the “privilege” of experiencing it.) When I was 22 there was a retired adult age 60 (I cannot recall how I knew his age – as if it possibly mattered – I didn’t seek to know. Likely I simply overheard someone who knew) in my Renaissance and Reformation class. We youngsters somehow survived his presence. I have a misty memory/perception of his doing very well on assigned papers (but also speculating that he, unlike the younger set, did not have other classes requiring the judicious apportionment of his time, attention and energy).

      FURTHER THE AFFIANT RANTETH NOT.

    2. When I was a young professor, one of my students (an auditor of the course) was a retiree named Vince Talley. His daughter is a well-known oceanographer. Vince was fantastic. Unlike the younger students, Vince would ask questions—good questions—questions that benefited everyone. He was an amateur astronomer who built his own telescopes. He invited the entire class to a night of viewing. My wife and I went. It was incredible to see the rings of Saturn through a home made telescope. Vince was such a nice guy and so genuinely curious that everyone loved him—even the college-age students!

  7. About sixty years ago we learned Christopher Columbus might have been Jewish from our Sunday school teacher. The teacher told us he wanted to explore the world to escape the Inquisition.
    I wonder where he would have gotten that information so long ago. I’m very surprised to see it is possibly true. That was the last I heard about this.

  8. Look at the tiny leg on Starship!

    x.com/sawyermerritt/status/1845540151315017750?s=46

    I had to look at the video multiple times before the beauty of the mechanical engineering was visible through the craziness!

  9. Re: Canadian Thanksgiving. Forget the moose–eat mor geees! (apologies to Chik-Fil-A)

  10. Iran is setting the table for a bomb. It may not have made a formal decision to build one, but the elements are coming into place. Once the decision is made to begin the specific act of assembling a bomb, the pieces will come together quickly. These statements by U.S. officials may be legalistically true, but that does not mean that Iran isn’t inching closer and closer to a bomb.

    Why are the officials using such language? Because the U.S. administration does not want to have to act. Since U.S. officials, including Vice President Harris, have repeatedly said that we will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, they need to keep reminding us that ”the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003.” It’s a legalistic word game that is obfuscating the reality that lies right in front of us.

    This display of timidity on the part of the administration is, of course, watched closely by Iran, but the Russian, Chinese, and North Korean leadership see it as well. This kind of rhetoric may embolden them all.

  11. As someone who’s been a bit of a space nerd since I was a kid, SpaceX just continues to astound me. Watching the catch, I was also amazed to hear and see the cheering as it was going on.

    1. Yeah. Nary a white shirt, skinny tie, crew cut, cheap cigar, or pocket protecter in sight.

      1. I remain nostalgic for the no-nonsense “steely-eyed missileman” laconic voice of NASA Mission Control’s Jack King counting down and commenting during the last few minutes prior to the launch of Apollo 11. Rare was applause and emotional outpouring (exceptions: Apollo 11 landing and safe return of Apollo 13). Nowadays there is the apparently mandatory histrionic and performative whoop-and-holler staff ululating characterizing contemporary commercial launches. But I am glad to give those fine folks full credit for their accomplishments. Will one ever hear one of their names mentioned, maybe once out of every million times “Elon Musk” is uttered? As worthy of praise, honor and guh-lor-ree as Musk may be, he doesn’t do everything at SpaceX.

  12. Given the Biden Administration’s border policy—to do everything to facilitate border crossers while denying their is a problem—I have no trouble believing that they are not, in fact, ignorant of Iran’s progress and welcome it. Why? Well, there seems to be a strong objection to America’s status as a world power, and a feeling that, if there were more regional powers, the world would be less likely to plunge into a world war.

    1. Certainly there’s an objection to Exceptional/Indispensable Nation American insistence that it be the world’s sole superpower. (“Full Spectrum Dominance” as they say at the Pentagon.)

  13. Some months ago here I said I thought the IDF knew where Nasrallah was MOST of the time – but kept him alive in fear of a replacement young punk with things to prove.

    It looked like Nasrallah’s intentions were within parameters for 20 years.
    Seems that some exploration of hides under Sth Lebanon recently let Israel understand that like Hamas, Hezb was planning a similar mission over their border into Galilee. Co-ordination isn’t a strong suit of terrorists so it didn’t happen.
    But it seems like it was planned – with wall busting explosives teams and all.

    That tore it for Israel, Nasrallah had escaped his parameters and had to go.

    Of great happiness to me – given the timing of the strike in Beirut – it is possible Nasrallah was actually watching Bibi at the UN while the building around him collapsed. His last vision might have been Bibi’s face. Even though he’s alleged to have expired due to gas, as you’ll get in a building collapse. Either way, he’s where he deserves with his imaginary virgins.

    THAT… my friends.. the timing.. is high art. Sublime.

    D.A.
    NYC

  14. Just occurred to me:

    Columbus Day—Indigenous People’s Day forms a clear axis for Maoist dialectical political warfare.

  15. Today is Chocolate Covered Insect Day! Decades ago when I was working at an ad agency, a practical joker passed around a box of chocolates. I ate one. It had a texture like rice krispies but tasted like hazelnuts. Then I heard loud screams from the other women in the office when they found out what they had eaten. I thought it was very funny….but I guess most people dont. It easily passed for a chocolate covered hazelnut rice krispie. But those sweet sticky hormigas in Colombia that were for sale in the airport…..I would have been happy to have a tiny taste but they only offered them in large boxes. So I passed. All food is cultural.

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