Tuesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Tuesday, October 15, 2024 (the Ides of October), and National Cheese Curd Day, almost a state holiday in Wisconsin. Here’s short a Facebook video telling you all you need to know about this Midwest speciality:

It’s also National Chicken Cacciatore Day, “I Love Lucy” Day (the show premiered on this day in 1951), National Mushroom Day, National Red Wine Day (I’m finishing off a bottle of Côte-Rôtie),  Breast Health Day, National Roast Pheasant Day, National Shawarma Day (in Canada), and Global Handwashing Day. (I recommend this highly: wash them properly and often. Since the pandemic started, and I’ve become punctilious about washing my hands, I have had neither covid or even a common cold.)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As we all know, the Presidential race is a squeaker. From the NYT we get: “State of the race: a close race gets closer” (archived here).

The presidential race just keeps getting tighter.

With three weeks to go, The New York Times’s polling average shows Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump essentially tied across the seven key battleground states, with the two separated by less than one percentage point in five of the seven.

It’s hard to think of any election when so many critical states were so close in the polls at this stage.

By our reckoning, 2004 was the last election when the polls showed a candidate leading in the pivotal states by around one point — George W. Bush’s edge in states like Ohio and Wisconsin. But even then, he had a discernible if still narrow edge in the Electoral College: John Kerry needed to sweep most of the close states to prevail. The polling couldn’t really be characterized as a tie, like the polls today.

Before 2004? There’s the 2000 election, of course, but the polls weren’t quite as close as the actual result. Looking even further back, it’s hard to find anything. There has never been an election with so many polls showing such a close race.

The pollster that did the most to nudge the average toward Mr. Trump was Quinnipiac, which found him ahead by three points in Michigan and two points in Wisconsin. In each case, it was a notable swing from the prior Quinnipiac poll, which traditionally hasn’t been an especially favorable pollster to Republicans.

Two national polls released Sunday didn’t do as much to swing the average. NBC News found the race tied, down from a five-point lead for Ms. Harris a few weeks ago, while she led by two points in the ABC News poll, a drop from six points in its last measure. While these polls did nudge Ms. Harris’s lead back under three points nationwide, there were other polls that didn’t support any movement toward Mr. Trump — or even showed Ms. Harris gaining compared with prior measures — including polls from Pew Research, CBS News/YouGov and our Times/Siena national survey.

On balance, however, this week’s data does suggest that the race may have edged ever so slightly in Mr. Trump’s direction. It’s a small enough shift that it could just be statistical noise, but if additional polls showed the same thing, there would be a straightforward explanation: Ms. Harris’s modest post-debate bump has worn off with the passage of time and a hectic few weeks of news.

This race is so tight that I won’t make any of my lucrative bets, as I have in previous races. (For example, knowing that Obama would win, I would find a scared Democrat and say, “I’ll bet you $100 that Obama wins.” I would add that the sucker couldn’t really lose the bet, because if Obama won, the mark would be happy and glad to pay me $100, while if he lost, the mark would get the consolation of $100.  I must have made $500 on Obama but then lost it by making the same kind of bet favoring Hillary Clinton.)

*It’s now pretty clear that CBS edited its interview with Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes” to eliminate her customary word salad (a pair of circulating videos tell the tale). As the Free Press notes, this is against CBS’s own journalistic standards, and the FP‘s editors are  demanding of CBS, “‘60 Minutes’: Release the unedited Kamala Harris transcript”. You can see the videos showing the editing at the link.

Those of us who have worked in legacy media organizations have a pretty good idea why the so-called “mainstream press” has lost so much of its credibility. They ignore politically inconvenient stories. They rewrite history to suit the needs of the present. They punish wrongthinkers. And they promote ideology at the expense of reality.

But for those who still had any remaining doubt, the news out of CBS this week has gone a long way toward answering that question.

Over the past few days, we’ve reported on:

• CBS News admonishing one of its top journalists, Tony Dokoupil, for the crime of asking tough questions in an interview.
• Shari Redstone, the majority shareholder in CBS’s parent company Paramount, criticizing the network’s executives for their handling of Dokoupil’s interview and its aftermath.
• The network’s director of standards and practice ordering CBS journalists to avoid referring to Jerusalem as being “in Israel.”
• And cautioning reporters—as Israel’s dead were still being counted on October 8, 2023—against referring to Hamas terrorists as terrorists.

But perhaps the biggest scandal at CBS this week is one we’ve yet to mention. And that’s the interview 60 Minutes conducted with Kamala Harris that has Donald Trump accusing the network of “election interference.”

Here’s the background:

In the interview, veteran journalist Bill Whitaker asked presidential candidate Harris about whether Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was listening to the Biden-Harris administration. Harris offered a response that can be generously characterized as word salad: “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”

They then show a pair of clips and demand that the full video, or a transcript thereof, be released,

The edit suggests a possible violation of the CBS News standards guide, which states that “answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response.” It goes on to say: “We cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better,” and that journalists should “always edit interviews in a straightforward manner to preserve the sense of the interview.”

You don’t need to be a broadcast journalist to understand why these are important rules. Excessive editing distorts reality—which is the opposite of what good journalism is supposed to do.

The FP reports that they asked “60 Minutes” for a transcript, and CBS didn’t respond.  They also asked the Harris campaign for a copy of the recording, as recordings of interviews are customarily made by candidates’ staff. Harris’s people referred the FP back to CBS. What Harris said is apparently buried forever, which seems a bit fishy.

*The WSJ reports on how “Billionaires back a new ‘anti-woke’ university“, with the University of Chicago cited as an “aspirational model” for this endeavor. (h/t Rick) We were just given $100 million by an anonymous donor to promote free speech programs in the university! The “anti-woke university, is, of course, The University of Austin:

Billionaires frustrated with elite colleges are banding behind a fledgling school in Texas that boasts 92 students.

Trader Jeff Yass, real-estate developer Harlan Crow and investor Len Blavatnik are among the high-profile people donating to the University of Austin, or UATX. The new school has raised roughly $200 million so far—including $35 million from Yass—a huge sum for a tiny school without any alumni to tap.

Crow, a major GOP donor, was an early backer. “Much of higher ed today seems to want to reject Western accomplishments and the accomplishments of Western civilizations in their entirety,” he said. “Many people think that’s a bad idea.” Crow said he expects UATX to encourage ideological diversity.

Crow and his wife, Kathy, have hosted several events for the school at their Dallas home and let the school use space in an office park he owns for its summer program, provocatively called Forbidden Courses. Crow has been a controversial benefactor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has said he has never discussed pending cases with Thomas.

Frustration with the state of debate and levels of unrest at prestigious universities has spurred some of the richest Americans to flex their financial muscle.

Enter UATX, which welcomed its initial class of first-years last month in a former department store near the Texas Capitol. The school says it is nonpartisan and refers to its mission as the “fearless pursuit of truth.” Its foundational curriculum marries classical texts—students were given a copy of Homer’s Odyssey upon enrollment—with an emphasis on entrepreneurship.

A video posted to the school’s YouTube page contrasts scenes of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments at other schools with a civil UATX seminar. The video ends with the message, “They burn, we build.”

UATX students walking in front of the Texas Capitol during the school’s convocation in September. Photo: Joshua W Helms/University of Austin

Officials talk about UATX in lofty terms. Some cite the University of Chicago as an aspirational role model. President Pano Kanelos called students and faculty “pioneers” and “heroes” in his convocation address. “What is truly historic is that which sends the trajectory of history, and lives lived within the stream of history, shooting in a direction other than that towards which they were tending,” Kanelos said.

Well, I’ve had my doubts about UATX, and I’m not alone: both the late Bob Zimmer (our President) and Steve Pinker resigned after initially accepting positions on the UATX board. My concern is that it is not ideologically neutral, but deliberately “anti-progressive”, which is what the “Forbidden Courses” are about. Will it teach “progressive” stuff, too, which is necessary if the school is to have full freedom of speech?  UATX, as of yet unaccredited, may turn out ok, but we’ll see in five or six years.

*American-Israeli dipolomat Michael Oren, in his Substack essay “The price of a hug,” is peeved (h/t Bat)

Casus belli is a Latin legal term meaning “justification for going to war.” Iran’s firing of 181 ballistic missiles at Israel constituted a clear and irrefutable casus belli.

Accordingly, the United States and most of the West recognizes Israel’s right to retaliate against Iran. At the same time, they are seeking to limit the extent to which Israel exercises that right by insisting we attack neither Iran’s nuclear nor its oil facilities. They send senior military and diplomatic officials to “hug” us and ensure that we won’t dare act while they’re in Israel.

The result has been a prolonged delay in Israel’s response that threatens our security no less than the missiles themselves. With each passing day of inaction, Israel’s casus belli grows weaker. If and when Israel acts, the world will scarcely remember why. In the United States, especially, the image of Iranian missiles flying toward Tel Aviv will be obscured by those of cities ravaged by hurricanes and the latest developments in the presidential race. A part of the public and much of the press will criticize Israel for needlessly escalating the Middle East conflict, raising the price of gasoline, and trying to drag America into a total regional war.

What, besides avoiding further friction with the White House, does Israel have to gain by waiting? Is there a pressing national interest—a raison d’etat, to cite another diplomatic phrase—that Israel could fulfill. Can we use the American administration’s fear of our [Israel’s] response to Iran to secure vital concessions from Washington?

One such concession would be the president’s agreement not to oppose Israel’s implementation of General Giora Eiland’s plan to declare northern Gaza a closed military zone and then trade territory for Hamas’s release of the hostages. Another concession would be a presidential commitment to intervene militarily against Iran’s nuclear plants once they enrich uranium above sixty percent. Yet another concession would be America’s agreement to sell us long-range strategic bombers capable of dropping 15,000 kilogram bunker buster bombs from a height that Iran’s defenses cannot reach. Such a sale would say to the Iranians “we won’t bomb your facilities this time but we have the means to do so effectively in the future.”

Any price that the administration is willing to pay for Israeli restraint would have to appear worthwhile to the Israeli public. The overwhelming majority of Israelis expect our country to respond massively to Iran׳s missiles. The public overwhelmingly rejects all of America’s demands except one—that Israel respond proportionately to Iran. Okay, we can say, we’ll fire at Iran the same 26,000 rockets they and their proxies have shot at us over the past year.

It is curious that Israel hasn’t retaliated so far when it said it would do so promptly. I can only guess that America is bargaining with Israel about the US demand that Israel can’t hit Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil and gas fields.

*In the Freethinker, Daniel Sharp has written a very positive review of Richard Dawkins’s latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead.  I’ll quote him, and also add a bit about the book that first appeared here and which Sharp also quotes:

In The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008), Richard Dawkins writes:

Our ability to understand the universe and our position in it is one of the glories of the human species. Our ability to link mind to mind by language, and especially to transmit our thoughts across the centuries is another. Science and literature, then, are the two achievements of Homo sapiens that most convincingly justify the specific name.

And I think I am justified in saying that Dawkins himself is one of the few who have really managed to combine these two greatest achievements of humanity. In a corpus of work written over half a century, Dawkins has innovated and explained, and he has done so with the ear and eye of a poet. It is appropriate, then, that his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, is a medley and a melody: a revisiting and extension of his previous ideas about evolution written with elegance and beauty. The very word ‘reverie’ suggests a pleasant and roaming meditation, which is exactly what The Genetic Book of the Dead is. Come to think of it, the quintessentially Dawkinsian phrase ‘a Darwinian reverie’ might just sum up Dawkins’s entire career. Call this book a Dawkinsian medley, or a Dawkinsian melody, then.

My only reservation concerns the seeming finality of the book. Not so much the contents of the book itself, but the publicity surrounding it. Dawkins is currently embarked on a tour marketed (in homage to Sherlock Holmes, I think) as ‘The Final Bow’—a ‘swansong’, his last tour on the road, taking in America and Europe. In riffing on many of his previous themes and producing a book that does what the final section of his 2015 memoir Brief Candle in the Dark attempted—i.e. provides ‘a kind of biologist’s world-view, with an aspiration at least to coherence’—does Dawkins mean us to view The Genetic Book of the Dead as a farewell, too?¹ He is 83, after all, and international touring must take its toll. There is, I fear, a soupçon of the elegiac in all this. If it is a farewell, it is a very good one indeed; but I hope that it is not, and that lovers of science and literature can expect still more to come from one of the finest practitioners of both.

There’s no sign I can detect that Richard’s ability to popularize science, whether it be verbally or in print, has waned, and I’m sure he’ll always be writing.  More:

Because The Genetic Book of the Dead is a book written by a man clearly still at the height of his powers. As a medley, longtime admirers like me can detect and enjoy references and callbacks galore. Indeed, a great many of Dawkins’s previous books are mentioned, and the title itself is taken from a chapter of what I consider to be perhaps his finest book of all, Unweaving the Rainbow (1998). As a melody, its prose contains the clarity and poetry for which Dawkins is justly famous. It is a worthy addition to the genre of literary science. A few examples should suffice, the first expressing the book’s main argument and purpose:

This is my central message, and it will bear repeating here. The fine-fingered sculpting of natural selection works not just on the external appearance of an animal such as a stick caterpillar, a tree-climbing lizard, a leaf insect or a tawny frogmouth, where we can appreciate it with the naked eye. The Darwinian sculptor’s sharp chisels penetrate every internal cranny and nook of an animal, right down to the sub-microscopic interior of cells and the high-speed chemical wheels that turn therein. Do not be deceived by the extra difficulty of discerning details more deeply buried. There is every reason to suppose that painted lizards or moths, and moulded potoos or caterpillars, are the outward and visible tips of huge, concealed icebergs.

I have my own favorite parts, many of them from what I see as Richard’s most “literary work,” The Blind Watchmaker. But I have no space to put them here, so read that book.  There’s one plaint I had about Richard’s thesis that Sharp adds to his review:

As to whether Dawkins’s overall thesis in this book is correct, I cannot rightly judge. I suspect that it is, but it would be interesting to hear Dawkins’s response to a concern raised by another eminent evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne:

There are two problems with this [thesis].  We can certainly use DNA sequences to reconstruct family trees, confirming our conclusion (already known at from morphology, fossils, and development) that yes, we’re evolved from fishy and reptilian ancestors. But trying to suss out the environments of those ancestors from DNA sequences is probably futile. For one thing, we don’t know what most genes actually do, and thus would be stymied since we don’t know which ancestral DNA constituted adaptations to the environment,—and if so, what kind of adaptations.  More important, most of the ancestral DNA we still have has been overwritten by the endless churning of natural selection, so even finding out what deep ancestral genes we had would be nearly impossible today.

We’ll only know whether I’m right after evolutionists try to carry out Richard’s suggested program.

*This is very sad: Julien’s is holding an auction of “Property from the life and career of Christine McVie.” (h/t Ginger K). If you want some McVie/Fleetwood Mac paraphernalia, there is a lot to buy (647 items), though most of it isn’t cheap. The auction begins on October 16 at 10 a.m. Central Time, and goes for two days. The description:

An auction celebrating Christine McVie, GRAMMY Award-winning Singer, Songwriter, Keyboard player and legendary band member of Fleetwood Mac. The sale includes more than 650 lots covering eight decades, from the 1950s to the 2020s, featuring stage-played instruments, stage-worn clothing, touring gear, awards, memorabilia, paintings, jewelry, furniture, and numerous personal keepsakes from McVie’s London home reflecting her impeccable taste. All Proceeds of Auction to Benefit MusiCares® and Other Music Charities in the UK.

Here’s one item I wouldn’t mind having, but go look at her stuff. She appears to have liked penguins!

Here’s my favorite of her songs, written and sung (live) by La McVie.  No modern group even comes close to this one, which I underrated when I was younger. They’re spectactular in instrumentalism, vocals, and of course in the songs they wrote and performed. The caption for what’s below: “The official live performance of Fleetwood Mac: “Everywhere” live at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, CA in May 1997.” The group performed as well live as they did on recordings.

It’s hard to believe she’s gone: McVie died two years ago at age 79.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has been sad and slightly depressed over the news, so Hili is astonished to see him a bit less sad:

Hili: I’m astonished.

A: Why?

Hili: You look as if you were content.

Hili: Jestem zdumiona.

Ja: Czym?

Hili: Wyglądasz jakbyś był zadowolony.

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

From Adrian: A cat shirt riffing on the movie “Reefer Madness“.  Say “NO” to nip!

Here’s a poster from the original movie:

From Nikki: A religious Jeopardy choice:

From Cat Memes:

The SpaceX booster being caught by “chopsticks” as it lands on target (h/t: Bat):

From Masih. I had no idea executions were so frequent in Iran.

In my birth country Iran, one person was executed every six hours last month. Meanwhile, in my adopted country America, the same clerics who hang innocent Iranians for so-called “insults to Islam” have established the Alavi Foundation and fund students at top universities like… pic.twitter.com/8Yj2OxFS9B

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 14, 2024

From Claire Lehmann Luana; I guess the conclusion comes from the Ta-Nehisi Coates/CBS kerfuffle:

To be a celebrated intellectual in the West you have to do 2 things:

1. Express alienation towards your home nation, culture
2. Romanticise regimes & cultures that are geopolitically opposed to the West

Coates is just fulfilling his job-description. https://t.co/zickAfd0eW

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) October 13, 2024

From Jez, who, happily is back.  He sent a tweet in which a long NYT opinion piece about Israeli soldiers shooting Gazan kids in the head appears to have used fake X-rays. You can read the original NYT piece here:

Hello @afalkhatib

I saw your post after seeing the reply from @COLRICHARDKEMP and @AntSpeaks, and then I read the article, twice. As someone who is actually a forensic ballistics specialist, I wanted to respond to your post, and this article, with some facts that will… https://t.co/NLhX9ILcCn

— Cheryl E 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🎗️ (@CherylWroteIt) October 12, 2024

Two lighter posts from my feed. First, one I quite like:

The real size of things ~ A Thread🧵

1. If Saturn were as close to Earth as the Moon, this is what it would look like: pic.twitter.com/SZpuzucrin

— Raghu (@IndiaTales7) October 13, 2024

The SpaceX booster catch. Apparently the damage to the rocket was trivial and it was quickly put back on the launching pad, where it could soon be ready to go again:

Unreal video from my grandpa’s friend of the catch. @SpaceX @elonmusk #SpaceX pic.twitter.com/7VS7T2Ff98

— Cosmo (@Cosmo_556) October 13, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial. These exhibits are perhaps the most heartbreaking ones on display at Auschwitz. I retweeted this.

There are many exhibits like this, including suitcases, children’s toys, artificial limbs, toothbrushes, and (the only one you can’t photograph), the hair of women shaved off after they arrived. https://t.co/bzTOuLBDkQ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 15, 2024

Two tweets from Professor Emeritus Cobb. Like him, I love trains, particularly the old and now defunct steam trains. There’s nothing so evocative as a lonely train whistle in the night. . .

The romance of steam at night , the photographer can hear the roar of the mighty flame consuming beast as suddenly a light comes into view. Friends told him it would be a namer and it was , it’s fire flowing away as it sped into the night .
Have a great night all #Steamfix pic.twitter.com/3DAFmlYl6M

— Nigel (@njvphotographee) October 8, 2024

This one gets an “oy vey!” from Matthew, who’s not even Jewish!

Dipshit Trump asks the Rabbi at the memorial service today if he wants him to autograph the prayer book. pic.twitter.com/jjPwNJj2OC

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2024

A much better one from reader Debbie. Sir Paul is celebrating Yom Kippur in Chile, wearing a kippah and talit.

You say goodbye, and I say hello (to the Jewish new year).

Spotted: Sir @PaulMcCartney at Yom Kippur Services in Chile.

Gmar Chatima Tova 💙pic.twitter.com/bfdsfpLMK4

— Israel ישראל (@Israel) October 13, 2024