Wednesday: Hili dialogue

October 23, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (”’aho ‘o e hump” in Tongan), October 23, 2024, and National Boston Cream Pie Day. Actually, it is not a pie but a cake, and a good one, too. From Wikipedia:

It is said to have been created in 1856 by Armenian-French chef Mossburg Sanzian at the Parker House Hotel in Boston. A direct descendant of earlier cakes known as American pudding-cake pie and Washington pie, the dessert was referred to as chocolate cream pie, Parker House chocolate cream pie, and finally Boston cream pie on Parker House’s menus. The cake consisted of two layers of French butter sponge cake filled with thick custard and brushed with a rum syrup; its side was coated with the same custard overlaid with toasted sliced almonds, and the top coated with chocolate fondant.[5] While other custard cakes may have existed at that time, baking chocolate as a coating was a new process, making it unique and a popular choice on the menu.

A photo:

cara fealy choate, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Canning Day, National Mole Day (the chemical mole: between 6:02 and 6:03 pm, it will be 6.022 x 1023 , roughly corresponding to Avogadro’s number), National Croc Day (the hideous shoe), and Lung Health Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 23 Wikipedia page.

NOTE: remember: I am off to Las Vegas for CSICon today, and posting will be light until after I return on November 1.  I will report as I can; as always, I do my best.

Here’s a photo of Botany Pond early yesterday morning. The lights by the pond are illuminating the Virginia Creeper affixed to Erman Hall, and the leaves are reflected in the pond.

Da Nooz:

*More on the election and a confusing headline in the Wall Street Journal: “Republicans eat into Democrats’ early voting advantage“. What? I didn’t know any votes had been counted and thought the election was a squeaker. But of course what they mean is that Democrats were tending to vote early and now Republicans are catching up:

Democrats have a clear edge in early voting so far, but Republicans are embracing the practice of casting their ballots before Election Day more than they have in past election cycles, despite former President Donald Trump sending mixed signals on the issue.

More than 15 million Americans have voted early in-person or cast mail-in ballots, including 5.3 million in the seven swing states, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab. In the states where voters register by party, about 47% of the early votes have been cast by Democrats, while 33% have been cast by Republicans. Battleground states such as Michigan and Georgia aren’t included in the breakdown by party registrations.

Democrats also account for 49% of returned ballots compared with 31% for GOP voters. That is a smaller margin than around the same time four years ago—in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic—when Democrats made up nearly 52% of returned mail-in ballots compared with 24% for Republicans.

Many states have gradually expanded opportunities for people to vote early, and the pandemic boosted interest in the idea of voters casting their ballots by mail rather than heading to crowded polling places. In most states, early voting rules are similar to what they were in 2020, though a handful have tightened some rules.

Both presidential campaigns are scouring the data for clues about voter enthusiasm and the strength of their ground games, while warning it is too early to draw major conclusions about turnout or enthusiasm. In particular, neither side can say for sure whether the people who have cast ballots already would have done so anyway on Election Day.

Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who maintains the early voting numbers for Election Lab, said the data so far shows more of a shift in how Republicans are casting their ballot rather than an indication of how the party is performing.

McDonald said the Republicans who have voted are likely high-propensity voters who had already made up their minds and decided not to wait until Election Day this year. “This appears to be a shuffling of the furniture,” McDonald said.

I guess exit polls (or the polling places themselves) tell you which registrants voted early, though it seems somewhat unethical for polling places to disclose this information. And I guess the assumption is that the rise in early-voting Republicans means that they were eager to vote for Trump. Who knows? After reading the article, and putting up this bit, I’m not sure this is anything more than meaningless prognostication. So it goes.

*Back to the two-state “solution,” which people are still floating. Steven Erlanger, former chief of the NYT Jerusalem bureau, is doubtful, writing, in a News Analysis, “Yahya Sinwar is dead, but a Palestinian State seems more distant than ever” (archived here).

The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, has raised hopes in the Biden administration that it could help pave the way for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.

But in many ways the goal of an independent Palestinian state seems further away than ever. In Gaza, there has been death and destruction on a devastating scale. There is a lack of a clear and solid Palestinian leadership. And Israel is grappling with its own trauma over the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7.

President Biden is hoping Mr. Sinwar’s death can bring about a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages, while producing a path toward negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel — the so-called two-state solution. But it is unclear who can speak for Hamas now in Gaza, or even if the group really knows where all the hostages are or how many remain alive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to continue the war against Hamas as he prosecutes another conflict against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and also to retaliate against Iran. Since Oct. 7, he has repeatedly ruled out the possibility of a two-state solution, and the stability of his coalition government is dependent on far-right ministers who oppose a Palestinian state of any kind.

All that makes the prospect of Israel agreeing to a serious negotiation on a Palestinian state extremely unlikely, said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gazan scholar who is a visiting professor at Northwestern University.

“Netanyahu has said many times lately that a Palestinian state would endanger the security of Israel,” said Mr. Abusada. “With the radical part of Israel now in power, it’s not on their agenda.”

Actually, right now Netanyahu is right; who in their right minds would set up a Palestinian state without credible and moderate leadership? Remember, Hamas was and is quite popular in Palestine—including in the West Bank—and what state adjacent to Israel could be guaranteed not to send out terrorists? Further, the Palestinians want a two-state solution even less than do Israelis, as they’ve rejected offers of a state, and sometimes good ones, several times.  I think we have to set our minds to realizing that such a “solution” is a long ways away, but I’m wondering what Israel’s interim plans are after defeating Hamas. I’m sure they’re making them, but we have no idea what they are.

*For a different take, see the solution of David Friedman, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, at the Jewish News Service: “How to end the hundred years war on Israel “. Friedman rejects the two-state solution for the reasons I note above, but proposes a ONE-state solution: a Jewish state! The article, by Andrew Pessin, describes what Friedman says in his new book, One Jewish State:

One Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” is obviously off the table for the pro-Israel side. Friedman does not consider a “binational state,” but one can speculate why: That is not a Jewish state, and his starting point is that there must be a Jewish state. That leaves, then, the “one Jewish state.” The basic idea is that Israel must exert its sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. (Gaza is a separate and difficult case, as Friedman acknowledges in a chapter devoted to it, which we shall not treat here.)

In addition to the main negative argument above, there are positive arguments for the idea. These boil down to this: Only under Israeli sovereignty will Palestinians be able to lead full lives of dignity and prosperity, ultimately producing a peaceful outcome for all. Israel is a vibrant democracy “with a track record of respecting the civil, religious and human rights of its minority population, almost all of which is Arab.” Most Arab-Israeli citizens “patriotically support living in their country,” where their standard of living, opportunities and prosperity are orders of magnitude greater than that of their Arab neighbors in surrounding countries, including in the territories administered by Palestinians themselves. The idea is to extend the same situation—i.e., Israeli sovereignty, to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

With one essential difference. Israeli Arabs are full citizens of Israel with equal rights. Palestinians in Judea and Samaria cannot be. A secure Jewish state cannot swap the security risk posed by Palestinians in Judea and Samaria for the demographic risk of making them full citizens. They may become “residents” of Israel but cannot become full citizens.

Here we reach the point at which critics will explode, “Apartheid!”

Friedman addresses this through a deep dive into the case of Puerto Rico, which he sees as a possible model for the “One Jewish State.” Roughly, Puerto Ricans stand to the United States as Palestinians in Judea and Samaria might stand to Israel. The United States has sovereignty while Puerto Ricans have extensive rights of self-government but not collective national rights to vote in U.S. elections. Why does it work? Because Puerto Ricans live better than they would if they were entirely independent. They derive political, economic and civil benefits, and enjoy all the same basic civil rights as any U.S. citizen but pay less in federal taxes in exchange for not being full citizens. With Israeli sovereignty, Palestinians would have the civil rights guaranteed by Israel’s Basic Law on Human Dignity without the collective right to self-determination; they would pay less Israeli taxes; and they would not vote in national elections.

I give this one a big NOPE.  Palestinians will not look ahead to see their presumed improvement in well being, which is a phantasm, and the many who hate Jews will be even more dubious.  I cant believe anybody could think this solution would work. I would prefer UAE control of Palestine, but that would work only for Gaza. As the Magic 8 Ball says, “The future looks cloudy.” Perhaps this could work, but I will have been long below ground if and when it does.

*The Washington Free Beacon (a right-wing site, reports that Kamala Harris plagiarized in two separate instances, one involving testimony before Congress and the other in a report she issued in 2012 about human trafficking (in the latter, she presented somewhat fictionalized material as if it were true). h/t: Bill. Author Aaron Sibarium found many of the instances that helped bring down Harvard President Cluadine Gay. An excerpt and two examples:

On April 24, 2007, Kamala Harris testified before Congress in support of the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007. The bill, which was introduced that year but never passed the upper chamber, would have created a student loan repayment program for state and local prosecutors, and Harris, then the district attorney of San Francisco, argued it would draw top legal talent to offices like hers.

In a written statement to the House Judiciary Committee, she described how debt-addled prosecutors often decamp to the private sector a few years into the job, lured by the prospect of higher pay that could be used to pay off law school debt. That dynamic had left many district attorneys’ offices short-staffed, she said, forcing them to put rookie attorneys on complex cases.

The statement was simple and pragmatic. But Harris wasn’t the first person to make it.

. . . Virtually her entire testimony about the bill was taken from that of another district attorney, Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois, who had testified in support of the legislation two months earlier before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both statements cite the same surveys, use the same language, and make the same points in the same order, with a paragraph added here or there. They even contain the same typos, such as missing punctuation or mistaken plurals. One error—a “who” that should have been a “whom”—was corrected in Harris’s transposition.

. . . Harris, who also testified about two other bills that day, devoted approximately 1,500 words to the John R. Justice Act. Nearly 1,200 of them—or 80 percent—were copied verbatim from the statement Logli submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 27, 2007, two months before Harris delivered her testimony.

Two examples with Harris’s copying in red (click on the original source if you have trouble reading):

But wait! There’s more!

But as California attorney general, she didn’t just copy boilerplate language without attribution. In one of the lengthier passages reviewed by Free Beacon, she lifted a fictionalized story about a victim of sex trafficking—and presented it as a real case.

The story came from Polaris Project, a nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. By June 2012, the project had posted a series of vignettes on its website that were “representative of the types of calls” the hotline receives and “meant for informational purposes only,”  according to an archived webpage. To preserve confidentiality, the project said, key details like “names, locations, and other identifying information” had been changed.

But in November 2012, Harris included one of those vignettes in a report she published on the state of human trafficking in California. Though she said that the story was “courtesy of” the hotline, she copied it verbatim and did not acknowledge that it contained fictionalized material.

The only detail she changed was the location. The Polaris Project described a young woman, “Kelly,” who had been forced to engage in prostitution and was rescued by law enforcement in Washington, D.C. But in Harris’s telling, Kelly had conveniently been found in San Francisco.

The change effectively gave Harris credit for a rescue that never occurred, at least in her state, and reflects what Skinner, the former solicitor general, said was a common perception of Harris among legal officials at the time.

Here’s that one, and there are several other examples:

But of course the MSM found a way to excuse this. It’s not malicious, but just sloppiness!

Experts who reviewed those allegations, including Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, argued that they comprised such a small portion of Harris’s work that sloppiness—not malice—seemed like the most plausible explanation for them, arguments that were quoted in the Washington PostandNew York Times.

“You’d expect these to be more apparent throughout the book if this was malicious intent to plagiarize,” Bailey told the Post. “Ultimately we’re talking about not very many words in a very long book, which to me means it’s more likely poor writing.”

I didn’t realize that you had to have malice to commit plagiarism; all you had to do was pass off somebody’s words as your own. Oh well, autres temps, autres mœurs.

*And since I’m leaving, let’s have something from the AP’s “Oddities” section.  The small New Zealand airport at Dunedin has now limited the time the departing can hug their loved ones goodbye.

Emotional farewells are a common sight at airports, but travelers leaving the New Zealand city of Dunedin will have to be quick. A new three-minute time limit on goodbye hugs in the airport’s drop-off area is intended to prevent lingering cuddles from causing traffic jams.

“Max hug time three minutes,” warn signs outside the terminal, adding that those seeking “fonder farewells” should head to the airport’s parking lot instead.

The cuddle cap was imposed in September to “keep things moving smoothly” in the redesigned passenger drop-off area outside the airport, CEO Dan De Bono told The Associated Press on Tuesday. It was the airport’s way of reminding people that the zone was for “quick farewells” only.

The signs had polarized social media users, De Bono said.

“We were accused of breaching basic human rights and how dare we limit how long someone can have a hug for,” he said, adding that others had welcomed the change.

The signs were meant as an alternative to those at other airports warning of wheel clamping or fines for drivers parked in drop-off areas. Some in Britain have imposed fees for all drop-offs — however brief.

. . .Three minutes was “plenty of time to pull up, say farewell to your loved ones and move on,” he said. “The time limit is really a nicer way of saying, you know, get on with it.”

A 20-second hug is long enough to release the wellbeing-boosting hormones oxytocin and serotonin, De Bono said. Anything longer was “really awkward.”

But passengers need not worry unduly about enforcement. “We do not have hug police,” De Bono said.

Visitors might, however, be asked to move their lingering embraces to the parking lot, where they can cuddle free of charge for up to 15 minutes.

Here’s a video showing the sign.  What if you want a really fond farewell?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili beefs about the American media:

A: What do you think about mainstream media?
Hili: No comment.
In Polish:
Ja: Co myślisz o mediach głównego nurtu?
Hili: Wolę nie komentować.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor:

From They Walk Among Us:

From Masih, showing two reporters imprisoned in Iran simply for reporting on the arrest and treatment of Mahsa Amini, killed by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab the “wrong” way:

From Malgorzata; Sinwar’s spiffy apartment in a Gazan tunnel:

A tweet from Bill Maher, in which he beefs about Elon Musk being denied SpaceX launches in California, presumably because they don’t like Musk supporting Trump:

One from my feed (send in your tweets!), and it’s very sad (story is here; note that her family blames Israel for not helping her).

A Brown University professor responds to the group of students asking the University to divest from 10 companies in Israel. The student’s response is lame.  Look at the second post, as the first is just a recording of the entire hearing.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

 

 

Two tweets from Matthew. The first, he says, is “from Bluesky, where things are actually nice and the site works.”

— Karen Newcombe 🐈‍⬛ (@karen-newcombe.bsky.social) 2024-10-22T05:00:36.695Z

Another Cobb kitteh. I may have posted this before; if so, here it is again:

 

32 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Regarding Bill Maher’s bit on Musk suing: i would think that the Space Force would carry the suit; it is their launch with SpaceX simply being the contractor. When, after Brown v. Board of Ed, Norfolk Va closed its schools as part of Virginia’s shameful massive resistance to desegregation in the 50’s, it was the quiet threat of the military pulling out their bases, a major part of Norfolk’s economy, because they would not send families to be stationed in a city that offered no public education, that really got the public schools reopened rather than parents’ lawsuits.

    1. What got me about the Maher clip was what the guests did not say: they did not say that withholding a properly sourced government contract because of political views is wrong. They talked about rule of law and that SpaceX can sue, and seemed to agree that the courts would side with SpaceX. But they voiced no personal defense of the right of the individual to voice opinions that disagreed with the government and to be free of government prejudice as a result of those opinions. I take it that they’re both Democrats who don’t want to be heard saying nice things about Musk?

  2. I’m not concerned about the alleged plagiarism by Harris. It is pretty clear that she is not a deep thinker with any intellectual integrity. She is another placeholder to fill the “not Trump” role. I don’t like her but I’ll be holding my nose and voting for her. The fact that plagiarism is a charge that could damage Harris at least suggests she aspires to some sort of honesty. Can you imagine a plagiarism charge leveled against Trump? It could actually be a positive for him because may people would be surprised to learn that he not only wrote something but actually read someone else’s writing first. The fact that he reads anything at all would be a revelation.

    1. And in Trump’s case it would be further proof that he is a genius. Only a stupid person would go to the trouble of writing something themselves! Or something like that.

    2. falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus

      Harris is in fact exquisitely programmed in thought – that is, 洗腦, xǐnǎo – wash brain – in specific doctrines, e.g. Wretched of the Earth, complete democracy, dialectic, or the species-being, and as such, can be trusted to do exactly as she says.

      You Can Trust The Communists
      (… to do exactly as they say!)
      Fred C. Schwartz
      Prentice-Hall, Inc.
      1st-9th printings, 1960-1961

    4. It doesn’t suggest that she aspires to honesty. It suggests that voters value honesty.

      1. Good point. One could counter that at least she’s courting voters who value honesty but we’re really scraping bottom here. I’m starting to wonder if a bottom even exists. I guess we’re going to find out.

  3. Jerry, on your views about the one-state solution where the one state would be Israel, is your opposition based on a principled objection to the plan on its merits? Or that the Palestinians would never go for it, simply because they dream of pushing all the Jews west of the River into the Sea and won’t lay down their arms for anything less?

    The one-state solution would be decried from the usual corners as apartheid but so what? Corralling a dangerous minority to restrict its access to power (and to communities where Jews live) is not the same as a tiny minority running a state and denying civil and human rights to a large majority. Not even close.

    1. Part of the problem is that any organization that wants to operate in Palestinian territory has to make a deal with terrorists in order to operate. In a one state solution Israel is in control, not the terrorists.

    2. Why would Palestinians accept their biological and cultural inferiority? Nationalism is a consequence of human tribalism, and of course nationalists everywhere will promise “once we get self-rule, our country will turn into a paradise!”. Few will admit, even to themselves, that they will lose trade, subsidies, capable administrators etc. to be bogged down by corruption and incompetence. (I have yet to understand how decolonising Sub-Saharan Africa was anything other than a humanitarian catastrophe.)

      The best solution for Palestinians would be to do exactly what African-Americans have done, of course. Stay put, fight for equal rights, and then further improve your situation with affirmative action and the whole circus. I’m not sure that Jewish Israelis will stand for that, though.

    3. Isn’t the reason for not wanting a general one state solution the fact, that Arab Muslims would be the majority of the population – if not right away then very soon given the demographic trends?

      So it would be a Jewish minority running the state and denying full civil rights to a majority. Hence the suggested ploy of the West Bank being a “territory of Israel” and not part of Israel.

      I, too, wonder what the objection of our host is in regards to this proposition. If not two states and not one common state and not a Jewish state with non-Jewish territories… then there might be only one solution left…

    4. Leslie, nationalism is the most powerful politicial ideology in modern times. That is why the one-state solution without the right to vote for Palestinians would not work.
      I imagine that Puerto Rico is some super special case. I suppose that children in Puerto Rico schools are not taught to hate US Americans.

    5. I don’t think the Palestinians would want to be part of a state that is, in effect, a sovereign state of Israel. I don’t know how it would be governed. And I can’t see the terrorism going away from at least one generation, or maybe two. I don’t know if that answers your question. I just don’t think it would work.

  4. When I see stuff like that Science Humor meme, I think it’s strange that anyone would think it strange for a human to carry around a small, portable tool, regardless of context.

    1. Agreed. A pocket knife is a perfectly normal thing to carry, on a date or on the job or at the grocery store. But not, any more, on an airplane.

          1. No kidding. In my experience, today’s packaging is stronger and nearly impenetrable. Then the product inside is complete crap — built to break so that you have to turn around and buy it again.

    2. Came here to say this! My late husband, who was the least violent person in the world, always carried a Swiss Army knife.

  5. I believe voter rolls are public databases. That includes whether a ballot has been cast by which voters in each election. I have often been an Election Judge in Colorado, so I will use the terms there. Each party can appoint what are called Poll Watchers. Poll Watchers must take an oath. They can review who has not yet voted, in order to attempt to contact them and remind them. They can even review who has checked in to our voting centers the day of the election. Note that every registered voter in Colorado gets sent their ballot. They can fill it out and mail it, bring it to a drop box or voting center, and even go to a voting center and cast a newly printed ballot but the elections office will know if you also mailed your ballot and one will not be counted.
    Therefore, it has little to do with exit polls, it has to do with public records. I am pretty certain that is true in most states.

  6. Re: early voting numbers– voter rolls are public record and open, at least where I have lived. Party of registration is listed, as is the history of elections voted in. We are now computerized start to finish here (until a few years ago, we still had paper roll books) and the record updates immediately to prevent going to another early polling station and voting again.

    I won’t get into the ethics of the current election voting status being publicly available prior to the closing of the election, but my opinion is that they should not be. I can think of a lot of potential ethical issues that could arise, including the potential for election interference.

  7. In 2016 & 2020, my Republican friends were vehemently opposed to early voting because “it is your patriotic duty to go to the polls on election day”. Then some of them ended up not voting. This year I’m seeing the same ones doing early voting to make sure their votes are cast. That could indeed be an advantage for Trump.

    Regarding plagiarism charges against Harris: the instances that have been described now and in the past seem worse than what forced Biden out of the 92 election, and are certainly worse than the hullabaloo broadcast by all the major media around Melania’s lifting of lines from Michelle Obama’s speech, but I guess we’re in the place now where whatever our chosen party does is OK or not a big deal. Either party’s candidate could shoot a guy in Times Square and get away with it. Let’s agree to stop pretending that one is anymore ethical than the other.

    1. Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last election led to the US failing to make a peaceful transfer of power. He has been campaigning non stop ever since to regain power that he feels was unjustly taken from him. In contrast, it doesn’t seem like Harris really wanted to run for president let alone do the job. The useless VFP role seems to suit her. The desire for power is the key distinction between the candidates and makes the ethics of choosing one over the other a mater of deadly seriousness – the only people pretending are the ones who say they are equally bad. Harris may give us bad policies but our institutions will remain intact. Trump attacks our institutions at every opportunity.
      Harris is the VFP so she will have to certify Trump’s election if she loses. I have no doubt that she will fulfill that duty if it comes to that. I do not think Trump would if the roles were reversed. That makes all the difference to me.

        1. Typo – VP for Vice President. The acronym VFP has meaning in my line of work so my hands typed it despite the best efforts of my little brain.

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