Thursday: Hili dialogue

November 28, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, November 28, 2024, and THANKSGIVING DAY. This evening I’ll be winging my way to Warsaw, and then to Dobrzyn and my surrogate family, including parents and cats. Nominally it’s Turkey Day, but officially it’s National French Toast Day, a breakfast I love, and which I’d get on special days as a kid.

Google has a special Thanksgiving Doodle; click to see where it goes:

Remember that posting will be light for a few days as I get to Dobrzyn, schmooze and cuddle with the cats, and get settled before heading in a week or so to Katowice for my talks. Matthew will take over Hili tomorrow morning, and then I’ll post as I can. I do my best.

And Happy Thanksgiving from Mr. Natural (h/t Krod):

It’s also Turkey Leftover Day, Letter Writing Day, and Red Planet Day (celebrating the launch of the robotic interplanetary probe Mariner 4, a robotic interplanetary probe, on November 28, 1964; communication ended three years later).  Here’s the first image ever, taken by Mariner 4, showing craters on Mars. Now of course, we’re doing much better. 

Mariner 4- NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT assesses Donald Trump’s immigration plans and finds a number of barriers to mass deportations (article archived here). Here are fiour:

1. Who are the targets? Trump aides say they will prioritize migrants with criminal records and previous removal orders, who number in the hundreds of thousands. The federal government already knows where to find most of these people, thanks to their previous contact with law enforcement, and can quickly deport many.

The question is who comes next. Trump also wants to deport undocumented migrants with clean records (aside from the blemish of breaking the law to enter the United States). And he has said he’ll go after people with Temporary Protected Status, a program that allows some migrants from specific countries to stay in the United States legally. These migrants could be harder to find and detain, especially in cities and states that call themselves sanctuaries for the undocumented. Those places have refused to cooperate with most federal deportation efforts.

2. Will courts sign off? Undocumented migrants have due process rights, so their cases typically have to work through the courts. But immigration courts have yearslong backlogs. Trump officials want to use arcane laws, like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to bypass this process. That will likely lead to lawsuits — similar to those that stifled Trump’s first-term immigration policies.

Trump has two advantages. The courts, especially the Supreme Court, are friendlier to conservatives than they were in his first term. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the president has broad powers over immigration.

3. Where will migrants be held? Right now, officials don’t have anywhere to put tens of thousands more migrants, let alone hundreds of thousands. The government will have to build, buy or lease more detention centers.

4. Will other nations cooperate? Some countries, such as Venezuela, don’t take deportation flights from the United States. Others might resist taking in a sudden surge of migrants, especially those with criminal records. The administration could persuade nations to cooperate with a mix of favors and threats — trade deals and tariffs — but that would require careful diplomacy.

The other issues include the expense (billions) and Congress’s willingness to foot the bill and labor shortages. I’m guessing that the deportations won’t be nearly as extensive as Trump has promised. And, by the way, here’s a graph, by year, of the deportations carried out under various Presidents. Obama seems to have been the Biggest Deporter, and Biden the smallest.

*The Times of Israel reports that the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is holding, but just barely. Lebanese are approaching areas of southern Lebanon that are still held by the IDF for 60 days, and this approach is a violation of the agreement.

Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Tuesday fired warning shots at people trying to approach several southern Lebanon villages after Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered “forceful action” to keep Hezbollah members from returning while a ceasefire deal with Lebanon was being implemented.

Several suspects were hit by fire in Meiss al-Jabal, according to the IDF, which said it has shifted from active fighting in Lebanon to focusing on enforcing the agreement.

The military said it was working to prevent people from reaching areas where troops are still positioned in southern Lebanon, and several routes to villages had been blocked.

Israeli Air Force planes were still patrolling the skies and troops were still at positions in southern Lebanon. Overall, the calm appeared to hold, with rocket and drone fire on Israel halting since the early hours of the morning.

Earlier, the IDF said it fired warning shots at several vehicles in Lebanon that approached an area on the border where it was still prohibiting movement.

. . .The IDF has 60 days to withdraw under the deal, which ended 14 months of Hezbollah-initiated fighting. During that time, the Lebanese Army is to gradually take responsibility for southern Lebanon and an American-led committee will be established to adjudicate complaints regarding potential ceasefire violations, the IDF said.

Hezbollah forces will leave southern Lebanon, and its military infrastructure will be dismantled. The US has also reportedly provided a side letter specifying Israel’s rights to respond to any violations of the ceasefire.

. . . . An Israeli security official said Israeli forces remained in their positions hours after the ceasefire began and would only gradually withdraw.

He said the pace of the withdrawal and the scheduled return of Lebanese civilians to their homes would depend on whether the deal is implemented and enforced by all sides. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the deal and its implementation with the media.

The full text of the deal can be seen here.  Many people have expressed the hope that this deal will also lead to a ceasefire in Gaza, but the U.S. has said nothing about that and it’s extremely unlike that Israel would be party to any ceeasefire that didn’t make Hamas surrender unconditionally and also release the hostages taken on October 7 of last year.

*Via Jez, an op-ed in the WSJ: “The U.N.’s anti-Israel ‘genocide purge,”  with the subtitle: “Alice Nderitu said Israel’s campaign in Gaz doesn’t meet the definition of genocide. She was fired.” This is, as the kids say, a heinous and gnarly story.

The United Nations long ago lost credibility as a moral arbiter, but its assault on Israel is hitting a new low. On Wednesday the U.N. will refuse to renew the contract of Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Kenyan who is the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide.

Ms. Nderitu is an accomplished mediator, whose U.N. bio describes her as a “recognized voice in the field of peacebuilding and violence prevention.” She has served in that role since 2020 and her tenure has been marked by careful study of humanity’s worst crime. She is being dismissed because she has stood firm in her belief that Israel’s war with Hamas isn’t genocide.

In 2022 her office issued a guidance paper on “when to refer to a situation as ‘genocide.’” The paper noted U.N. officials should “adhere to the correct usage” of the term because of the political and legal sensitivities that surround it and “its frequent misuse in referring to large scale, grave crimes committed against particular populations.”

Her guidance paper argued that what was happening in Gaza was not a genocide:

As a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify. The war against Hamas has had many deaths, but Israel’s strategy is intended to dismantle a terrorist regime, not eliminate an ethnic group. The Jewish state has gone to great lengths to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, even as Hamas uses civilians as shields so their deaths can be used as propaganda.

That’s not what the anti-Israel cabal at the U.N. want to hear. On Nov. 14 the U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices issued a report supporting accusations of genocide. The report announced it had found “serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws” and “the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank.”

Ms. Nderitu serves at the pleasure of Mr. Gutterres, and Mr. Turk and the anti-Israel faction want her out. A U.N. spokesman sent us a statement that “Alice Nderitu is leaving the U.N. as her contract is expiring.” It added that “genocide is strictly defined in international law and any legal determination” is made by “appropriate judicial bodies.”

And so the UN fired her as she wasn’t with the rest of the organization in hating Israel, and she made the mistake of applying international law to Israel.

Yet the Secretary-General has the authority to extend Ms. Nderitu’s contract, and U.N. contracts are often renewed when their terms expire. Ms. Nderitu’s removal is a political choice.

Ms. Nderitu may be out, but her refusal to endorse a lie in service of a political agenda has been a profile in courage. Can anyone with integrity survive at the U.N.?

The answer, of course, is “No!” The only thing that can explain the organization’s complete obsession with Israel, and neglect of other states that are far, far worse (viz., Syria) is some form of antisemitism. And the firing of Nderitu is just the latest example of the U.N.’s irrational obsession.

*Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins claims that the arguments against biological men (“transwomen”) competing in women’s sports (her example is volleyball, subject to a lawsuit) are unsubstantiated, and involves women casting themselves as victims.  She’s badly wrong, for we already have the data to keep sports segregated, for the time being, by biological sex.

Competition is never equal, and it is only sort of, approximately, occasionally fair. The best we can ask is that it be meaningful, that it teach us something about ourselves. This is the context in which transgender athletes enter into sport, and the people who would reduce this self-seeking to an unfair “them” against “us” are missing the point entirely: Sport doesn’t tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually, and psychologically, and the first thing it tells us is not to be victims. So it’s a step backward for so many women athletes to cry frailty in the debate over trans participation.

“Frailty”? That is a very odd way to couch the argument for fairness based on biological advantage.  But Jenkins wasnts to signal her virtue, so she continues:

Spoiler: I don’t know who is right in the scientific dispute over whether athletes who were assigned male at birth have lingering advantages from nanomoles of testosterone, or disadvantages from their suppression — hormone studies are all over the map, and anyway, every sport has different demands. Good luck using exceptional height and weight on the uneven bars. But the lawsuit brought by San José State co-captain Brooke Slusser and 10 other Mountain West volleyball players asking emergency injunctive relief to bench a San José State player for, in their view, not being a proper woman doesn’t clarify the matter. What it does, from the unfortunate way it’s written, is make female athletes out to be fretful weaklings.

The dispute is both scientific and ethical, and we already have the scientific data to keep biological men from competing in women’s leagues at any age after puberty.

The starting point in this controversy should be that women have agency and power. But the lawsuit is a recitation of tears and fears about someone who played NCAA volleyball for three years, without incident, until her gender identity was called into question this fall. At which point the legal equivalent of shrieking at spiders began. The word “harm” is used 12 times in the suit, “injury” 15 times, “safety” 35 times, “concerns” 37 times, and “protection” more than 50 times.

Now I don’t know much about this lawsuit, but the point is not just a single volleyball player or a single sport, but about general athletic capabilities.

Finding absolute fairness in all this is impossible — there are too many competing rights. Slusser may have been owed an explanation and chance at consent, but her teammate is entitled to medical privacy and is eligible under current NCAA rules. The lawsuit reflects none of these nuances. It just says, “This hostile environment has taken a severe emotional toll upon Slusser … and other women connected to the SJSU Team who have not conformed to the ideological orthodoxy mandated.”

There may be an unanswerable argument against transgender women competing on the basis of overwhelming physical advantage, but it hasn’t been made here. Instead, the suit is just a litany of suggestions that wilting women are endangered. Virtually every NCAA volleyball or basketball team in NCAA Division I practices against men — it’s standard to seek preparation against players who are bigger, stronger, quicker. But, suddenly, playing against this particular young woman was a threat, with players allegedly unable “to even get their hands up in time to deflect a ball away from their face.” A Utah State player expressed the conviction that “men have unmatchable physical advantages over women in volleyball” and she and teammates became upset at “how unfair and unsafe they thought it was that they were expected to play against a biological male.”

“Ideological orthodoxy”?  And Jenkins appears to be completely ignorant about the athletic advantage of postpuberty males, both trans and cis, over postpuberty women. There are now considerable data, and to me they do constitute an “unanswerable argument against transgender women competing [against biological women] on the basis of overwhelming physical advantage. I’ve written about them before. Meanwhile, the madness continues:

*If you’re buying diamonds, as in an engagement ring, would you go for natural diamonds, or the much cheaper, but for all practical purposes identical, synthetic diamonds? The NYT discusses people’s views on this issue. Synthetic diamonds are chemically the same as natural ones (pure carbon) and are made in a similar way: applying pressure to carbon. Synthetics even have some advantages, like greater hardness, that make them ideal for things like drills.  And of course the prices of synthetics are lower: as Wikipedia notes, “As of 2017, synthetic diamonds sold as jewelry were typically selling for 15–20% less than natural equivalents; the relative price was expected to decline further as production economics improve.”

The four Cs — carat, cut, color, and clarity — have traditionally been used to evaluate diamonds. Now, couples buying diamond engagement rings have another choice to make: natural diamonds, which are mined from the earth, or lab-grown diamonds, which are man-made but chemically identical.

The once straightforward process of picking a stone is now fraught with confusion. Along with their style preferences, couples are now considering the ethics and sustainability of each type of diamond.

“I was surprised by how much uncertainty and how much of an opinion existed out there on both sides of the fence,” Chris Lawlor, 35, of New York, said about his experience designing an engagement ring for his fiancée in 2021. “People didn’t seem to be on the same page.”

Mr. Lawlor, a founder of Black Creek Digital, an artificial intelligence computing company based in New York, had looked at both natural diamonds and those created in factories using machines that mimic the pressure needed to produce natural stones.

. . . Today’s consumers are increasingly seeking ethical diamonds, which can be both lab-grown or natural diamonds that are sourced or created with minimal environmental impact and without contributing to human rights abuses.

Rings can also be pricey. The average cost nationwide of an engagement ring was $5,500 last year, according to a survey by the wedding planning company the Knot, though prices can easily move into six-figure territory or higher.

Price is often a major factor driving the decisions of couples who opt for lab-grown diamonds. Because stones made in a lab are continuously produced, there is plenty of supply, lowering the cost. Couples looking for a specific cut, color or size also have a larger catalog to choose from.

Given the chemical and physical identity of lab-grown vs. natural diamonds, and the price of natural diamonds, I’d prefer the synthetic ones, but of course when you are buying a diamond ring, it is not always your choice! Here’s a video showing how synthetic diamonds are made:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is preparing for winter, which she hates:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m catching the last rays of sun.
In Polish:
Ja: Co robisz?
Hili: Łapię ostatnie promienie słońca.

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

From Cooking with Cajun (I agree!):

From Meow:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih: Hunger strikes in Iranian prisons against executions!  Here’s the Google translation:

In support of the 44th week of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign on 6 December 1403 which is ongoing with the hunger strike of prisoners in 25 different prisons of the country every Tuesday. Issuing “bulk” death sentences, the strategy of Iran’s autocratic government to create terror” November 25 is International Day of Violence Against Women. The world should hear our protest and recognize gender apartheid as a crime and punish its perpetrators in Iran, Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

#No_to_execution #Tuesdays_no_to_execution #Union_against_gender_apartheid #Global_campaign_no_to_execution_in_Iran

From Luana: how DEI statements are almost perfect ways to increase ethnic diversity:

From Malcolm, an amazing video of a gravity-defying goat:

From my feed:

And another wonderful animal tweet:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

28 November 1901 | A Polish Jew, Norbert Armer, was born in Krakow. A bakery aid.In Auschwitz from 14 January 1942.No. 25542He perished in the camp on 7 February 1942.

— Auschwitz Memorial (@auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social) 2024-11-28T06:00:02.122Z

Two Bluesky posts from Dr. Cobb. First, an arrant and illegal violation of the First Amendment:

Here we go again: Dogma is infiltrating America's public schools. Texas to encourage teaching Genesis in kindergarten – ncse.ngo/texas-encour…Kids deserve better than this. #creationisminschools #freedomofreligion #freedomfromreligion #texas #edusky #k12

— National Center for Science Education (@ncse.bsky.social) 2024-11-27T15:44:09.539Z

. . . And in one continuous day of driving, you can visit every salaciously-named town in Great Britain:

I actually knew the chair of Shitterton's parish council. The hamlet put up a huge stone with the name, because the smaller metal signs kept getting stolen.Also, my local bus stop in Oxford is Crotch Crescent, and there's a Butts Lane nearby. I'm juvenile enough to absolutely love it. 🍑

— Joanna Bagniewska (@joannabagniewska.com) 2024-11-26T22:03:15.064Z

57 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Mariner 4 Mars photo: there was a huge disagreement between President Kennedy who was willing to go to the mat with Congress and the taxpayers over the race to the moon (he referred to it as the lunar program) and other scientific exploration of space. President Kennedy’s priority was to beat the Russians to the moon in order to demonstrate U.S. preeminence in space to the world. It was a statecraft and political priority to the White House, not about science and knowledge. All these space-faring engineering programs were hugely expensive and drained budget from domestic programs.

    In the end though a number of planetary exploration programs somehow stayed in the budget, the Mariners being such a program.

  3. OK, I can’t top the names on that last item from Britain, but we do have some runner’s-up very near me: Sugar Tit; Beaverlick; Big Bone; and Big Bone Lick.

    1. I remember driving past the sign for Big Bone Lick! Down in Kentucky.
      I wonder if these names are decided to invite tourism.

      2. I was born on Butts Road, Chiseldon, Wiltshire. Using the theme that the name of the road where you grew up and the name of your first pet gets you your porn name, I would be Benjie Butts. I think I deserve a prize for best porn name ever!

  4. New news demonstrates just how radical the Biden Administration truly is. Marc Andreessen, a billionaire venture-capitalist and long-time Dem supporter, reports on a meeting he attended at the the White House:

    “We had meetings [Biden officials] this spring that were the most alarming meetings I’ve ever been in. Where they were taking us through their plans, and it was – basically just full government – full government control – like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”

  6. In an article posted here recently — dealing with the gender business — the author used the term “natal male” in place of “assigned male at birth”. What do the scientists/physicians here think about that?

    1. Off the top of my head

      The Latin or Greek “natal” means swim – like “supernatant” means the liquid above (super) a centrifuged pellet or something.

      So a natal male example is Michael Phelps.

          1. Being familiar with your sense of humor, I saw that one coming. I’d actually pictured a shrunken, adult version, hee hee

  7. This news demonstrates exactly how radical the Biden Administration truly is. Marc Andressen, billionaire venture-capitalist and long-time Dem supporter, reports on a meeting that he attended at the White House this spring:

    “We had meetings [Biden officials] this spring that were the most alarming meetings I’ve ever been in. Where they were taking us through their plans, and it was – basically just full government – full government control – like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”

    1. You mean Mark “Anderseen”, right? I heard about that. The AI control/banking control, etc. Scary stuff. He’s another lifetime Democrat who bolted the party. (I’ll probably be called a conspiracy theorist in about a minute)

  8. Trump is planning to issue an executive order to end birthright citizenship, which would make it possible to deport children born in the US to undocumented immigrants. It has been taken to be established law in the US that anyone born in the US and subject to its jurisdiction (so not including foreign diplomats with diplomatic immunity) has US citizenship, as established by the 14th Amendment after the Civil War. Trump is apparently planning to challenge birthright citizenship, which would set up a dispute likely to reach the Supreme Court. Trump does apparently want to include the children of undocumented immigrants in his deportation plans, including any born in the US.

    1. I am thinking that a lot of the things he says he’ll do won’t happen. And that order would be immediately blocked by the courts until the Supreme Court rules it illegal.

      See the next post. I won’t freak out until he actually DOES these things.

    2. Aside from (probably) needing to amend the Constitution, what would be wrong with ending automatic birth citizenship? The 14th was written to circumvent attempts by legislatures in the reunited South to deem (former) slaves born in America not to be citizens. All those people having long since died, does that clause in the 14th even need to be there anymore?

      Yes, it would mean deporting children born in the U.S. along with their parents here illegally. That would keep families together. Isn’t that a good thing? Why would you want to create orphans stranded in the U.S. to be fostered somewhere when their parents should just take them home with them? And let’s be realistic: a child born in the U.S. is currently a humanitarian excuse not to deport the parents because it can’t be deported with them. Would illegal migrants even have children in the U.S. if they knew they weren’t going to be usable as anchors?

      If you repealed the 14th, you could pass a federal citizenship statute the same way most countries do, tailoring it to what you wanted your citizenship class to look like according to changing global realities. Do you think there is a strong constituency that would regard automatic citizenship to children born to tourists, illegal migrants, and bogus asylum claimants as a hill it would die on?

    3. Would that be such a big deal? Most countries don’t have that. Some grant citizenship to people born there if their parents are legal residents. What sense does it make to give children born when the mother is in the country illegally citizenship? Like the electoral college, it might have had some justification in the 18th century, but not anymore. There is of course an industry of flying people in (legally, with tourist visas) so that their child can be born in the USA and thus get citizenship. That doesn’t make much sense either.

      1. I love how Leslie and Philip blithely propose to simply repeal the 14th Amendment, based upon their own contemporary political views about illegal immigration.

        Meanwhile, they ignore 150 years of case law based on the 14th Amendment, which includes, according to Google AI :

        Brown v. Board of Education
        A landmark case that addressed racial discrimination in schools

        Roe v. Wade
        A landmark case that addressed reproductive rights

        Bush v. Gore
        A landmark case that addressed election recounts

        Reed v. Reed
        A landmark case that addressed gender discrimination

        University of California v. Bakke
        A landmark case that addressed racial quotas in education

        Griswold v. Connecticut
        A case that addressed the right of married couples to use contraception

        Obergefell
        A case that addressed the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and state laws that separate same-sex and opposite-sex marriages

        Craig v. Boren
        A case that addressed how classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives

        Loving vs Virginia
        A case that addresses interracial marriages

        Griswold vs Connecticut
        A case that involves access to contraception and the inherent Constitutional right to privacy

        Mathews v. Lucas

        A case that addressed how legislation that treats legitimate and illegitimate offspring differently does not require the same judicial scrutiny as cases involving discrimination along lines of race or national origin

        The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 and guarantees equal civil and legal rights to all citizens. It includes provisions that:

        Grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States”
        Prohibit states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law

        Prohibit states from denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

        -=————————————————

        Beware the inclination to historically define any Constitutional Amendment narrowly to further one’s contemporary political penchant, while ignoring the important case law that Amendment generated.

        1. From the rest of Leslie’s comment it is obvious that he meant “repealed that part of the 14th”, and Philip nowhere suggested repealing the whole thing either. As should be clear from reading this thread, the only part that is being called into question is a portion of the first sentence – the specific bit about people born here automatically being citizens regardless of the status of their parents. Not one of the cases that you listed would be affected in the least were that to be changed.

          1. The first sentence in Article 1 of the 14th Amendment is foundational to the Amendment.

            You claim that ” Not one of the cases that you listed would be affected in the least were that to be changed.”

            I would argue that your claim would not be supported by Constitutional law experts and that removing the first sentence of Article 1 would indeed affect those cases.

            I am not a Constitutional lawyer. It would be interesting to see how an analysis by experienced Constitutional lawyers would proceed. I daresay we will find out in a few months.

            That said, amending the 14th is a process that would take longer than Trump’s term in office. For him to try to unilaterally suspend even part of Section 1 through Presidential Directive would be to cause a Constitutional crisis and set a precedent that could destroy Democracy as we know it.

        2. You’re missing the point. I’m just pointing out that most countries don’t grant citizenship due to being born in the country, so removing that right would just put the USA on par with many other countries. Whether that is desirable is a completely separate question.

  9. Sally Jenkins: “Virtually every NCAA volleyball or basketball team in NCAA Division I practices against men — it’s standard to seek preparation against players who are bigger, stronger, quicker.”

    Umm, doesn’t this sentence neatly destroy her entire argument?

    Has anyone ever heard of men’s teams seeking out women’s teams in order to hone themselves against stiffer opposition?

    1. Also

      What it does, from the unfortunate way it’s written, is make female athletes out to be fretful weaklings.

      Compared to the elite males they will be competing against they are weak, and I would be fretful about that situation too. That’s the point.

    2. Jenkins is saying that even if the transgender athlete on the woman’s team IS a man, the women play with men all the time and they’re not afraid of injury then — why be afraid now? I’m going to guess though that men helping women practice volleyball aren’t going all out, and behaving just like they were playing a championship game against other men. They know they’re physically stronger.

      Jenkin’s basic argument would justify coed teams before it supports letting some males on female teams.

      I hated this:

      … captain Brooke Slusser and 10 other Mountain West volleyball players asking emergency injunctive relief to bench a San José State player for, in their view, not being a proper woman

      No, being male doesn’t mean you’re “not a proper woman.” That’s a phrase deliberately designed to invoke images of black or lesbian women excluded from the woman’s team. Being male means you’re not a woman at all. You’re a man.

      We absolutely need clear language to clear up conceptual confusion.

      1. Her bit about reducing sport to “self-seeking” and how it “doesn’t tell us who we are biologically, but spiritually and psychologically”… Really! And what about professional sports which many collegiate competitors are hoping to participate in? That tells us about our income! There was so much trash in that piece. “Wilting women”? “Shrieking at spiders”? Dang!

  10. Have a great trip!

    We’ll see if the truce with Hezbollah is still in place when you return. I hope so. Over in Gaza, Hamas needs to return the hostages. They are isolated, weak, and in no position to negotiate. Return the hostages or the IDF will keep fighting. As the Hezbollah case illustrates, diplomacy and force are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the latter encourages the former.

    1. Didn’t they have a truce like this several years ago…in which none of the guarantors did his job …. Leading to the mess we have in Lebanon today?

      Yogi, i think said: deja vu all over again.

  11. I don’t regard this as definitive (by any means). However, the pro-Gaza types regard the recent Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah deal as a big win for Israel. Certainly, if (big if) Hezbollah end up withdrawing behind the Litani river, Israel will have achieved a key goal. What everyone notices, is that Israel can now focus on Gaza.

    If the above analysis is correct (big if), the shift in public opinion in Lebanon must be credited. Apparently, Lebanese public opinion is very anti-Hezbollah and Hezbollah knows it.

    For the record, I am not Lebanese, but I do have close ties to Lebanon (my family used to live there).

    1. But does your betrothed? 🙂

      The point of an engagement ring is the durable “consideration” that binds the marriage betrothal contract. It is supposed to be expensive, a significant fraction of a man’s annual salary — I seem to recall three months — to indicate serious good faith and commitment. If the man breaks off the engagement or abandons her after the wedding, the woman will keep the diamond and the gold in forfeit to compensate her for her economic loss. If a woman was considering settling for a factory diamond, she should hold out for a that-much-bigger one so that her stake is preserved. She also has to ask if a factory diamond will serve as a store of value. How much cash will it command at sale 20 or 50 years from now? One suspects that factory diamonds will fall in value as they become cheaper to make and more “common”. Real diamonds might not appreciate against inflation but they will always have scarcity value.

      Don’t take wooden nickels, Ladies!

      (No, I am not in the diamond business.)

      1. And how is one to tell, 50 years from now, whether a diamond is mined or made (“real” or “synthetic”)?

        1. Provenance documents that you get when you buy a diamond. Diamonds mined in Canada and many other countries have internal marks to prove they weren’t African “blood diamonds”, also.

      2. Not much cheaper or rather not much less expensive I should say. Look very nice in jewelry…necklaces, bracelets and such. And less romantic than compressed dinosaur guts?? I think not. (Smile)

      3. Leslie, the woman to be married might be better off simply asking for the cash that her suitor is willing to spend on a diamond.
        When you buy a diamond you pay the retail price, but the diamond’s financial value, which is the resale value, is the wholesale price (since professional diamond sellers buy at the wholesale price). And the difference between these two prices is large. Here’s an example:

        Rob Brooks: Diamonds Aren’t Forever (And Neither is Your Love). Quillette, Feb 2022

        First husband Kris Humphries put a 16-carat diamond on her [Kim Kardashian’s] finger in 2011.

        Those [diamonds] that are resold fetch a meagre return. Kris Humphries only recovered $620,000 of his $2 million outlay [31%], despite the celebrity lustre of the ring having graced Kim Kardashian’s finger during their engagement and 72-day marriage.

        If I were the woman, I would ask for the cash [and invest it in an index fund] and then buy a cheap ring that nobody can visually distinguish from an expensive diamond ring.

        Diamonds are not actually scarce, make a terrible investment, and are purely valuable as a status symbol because the advertising industry told us so. Priceonomics, Mar 19, 2013
        https://archive.ph/qOFRQ

        2. Everything you say is absolutely correct, especially since there is sales tax (13% here) to pay on top of the retail markup. The catch is, though, that theoretically the woman is not supposed to know that the man is about to propose marriage. So the sharing of information about what she would rather have than a ring (such as cash) can’t happen. The man is left to speculate that she, rationally like him, would rather have the cash. If he is wrong, and offers her a cheque when he gets down on one knee, and she spurns him, … well, at least he still has the cash instead of a ring no one will now want. Might be a good test of marriageability, a bullet dodged.

          On the other hand, suppose she takes the cash, hiding her resentment, but then herself breaks off the engagement. Traditionally, she throws the ring back at him. Would she return the invested cash?

      4. We don’t use engagement rings in my country. I’d recommend abandoning them. They seem a pure waste of resources, and just another thing making guys reluctant to marry.
        If someone wants a diamond ring, of course! But not to invest a huge sum just because the Joneses expect it.

  13. The WSJ makes it seem like Nderitu is saying in her 2022 guidance paper that Israel’s response to the Oct. ’23 attack is not genocide. What she wrote in 2022 may well apply, but she obviously wasn’t aware of the particulars of Israel’s response.

    1. The article doesn’t say that. It says they don’t like her definition because they can’t make it fit.

      The article refers to the “U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices,” a committee that contains a couple of Muslim countries.

      The UN is obsessed with Israel.

  14. Regarding synthetic diamonds, I use a cheap diamond saw blade to square up the grinding face of my bench grinders. I lay the blade so that the flat side touches both the tool rest and the grinding face, and then move the blade left and right across the tool rest while the grinder spins and the diamonds do their work. Don’t forget to wear a face-mask.

  15. Regarding mass illegal immigrant deportations and any consequent labor shortage, should there (again) be an illegal immigration amnesty like that in 1986, but this time including stringent border control?

  16. There is actually a precedent (bad) for the BBC “Women’s Footballer of the Year” award going to a man. Some years ago, Will Thomas was nominated for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year award. He was nominated by the University of Pennsylvania. He did not win the NCAA award. Later he was barred from the 2024 Olympics by the International Swimming Federation.

  17. My goodness! I just listened to my first Joe Rogan podcast. That was also my first time listening to Fetterman at length. I wasn’t aware of his depression ordeal after the election (I was experiencing my own personal hell at that time and had checked out of politics).
    My impressions are: Man, can Rogan talk! I wasn’t prepared to take him seriously because he appears so stoned! How does he do it? When we smoked pot we got cotton mouth…
    There was a whole lot of honesty in that lengthy conversation. Thanks for the Thanksgiving treat, Jerry. Not everyone has turkey leftovers and family to hang out with. I loved that the first issue Fetterman brought up was Citizens United. I agree with him that that has gone a long way to destroy our elections and our government in turn. He specifically brought up Israel at the end when Rogan asked if he “had anything else”, which was unexpected and gutsy for a Democrat. He seems like a straight up guy. It took Rogan about 5 (maybe 6) tries to get an actual answer out of Fetterman (especially when it came to the border) — I don’t know how much of that is just his personality and how much is due to the stroke. They really covered a lot of material though and they both seemed genuinely concerned about our country as a whole. Good stuff.

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