Monday: Hili dialogue

December 30, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, December 30, 2024, and of course it’s the last day of Coynezaa and my birthday! It’s also Bacon Day, which reminds me of a slightly salacious joke:

A priest and a rabbi were sitting next to each other on an airplane.
After a while the priest turned to the rabbi and asked, “Is it still a requirement of your faith that you not eat bacon?”
The rabbi responded, “Yes, that is still one of our laws. We cannot eat pork.”
The priest then asked, “Have you ever eaten bacon?”
“Yes, on one occasion I did succumb to temptation and ate a bacon sandwich.”
The priest nodded in understanding and went on with his reading.
A while later the rabbi spoke up and asked, “Father, is it still a requirement of your church that you remain celibate?”
The priest replied, “Yes, that is still very much a part of our faith.”
The rabbi then asked him, “Father, have you ever fallen prey to the temptations of the flesh?”
The priest replied, “Yes, Rabbi, on one occasion I was weak and broke the pledge of my faith.”
The rabbi nodded understandingly and remained silent for several minutes.
Finally the rabbi quietly observed, “It beats the hell out of bacon, doesn’t it?”

It’s also National Bicarbonate of Soda Day, in case you eat too much Bacon. 

The Hili dialogue will be truncated tomorrow as I want to take some time off on my birthday. We’ll be back in business soon.

My friend Natalie, who plays and teaches harpsichord in Berlin, sent me a musical birthday present. The YouTube notes are these:

This is an improvisation for PCC(E) who has a very special birthday today! I do not usually improvise but wanted to try something new for this occasion. Thank you for appreciating my beginners efforts, and finding in it one, or if you are a harpsichordist, two little melodies you recognise.

Thank you, Dear PCC(E) for all you do for us human animals, lending us your sharp reasoning powers. Clearly humans need all the help they can get! And at the same time, you know that we all can not do or think other than we do – the ultimate compassion. Lang lebe PCC! Lang lebe PCC! Lang lebe PCC!!!

She added this:

Started in „C minor“ (C for PCC), wandering through different keys – feelings, thoughts – till I landed at Happy Birthday.
Be sure to listen to the end (wait 8 seconds after the piece finishes), where there is a special treat.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Jimmy Carter died. He was 100 years old. (Archived link here.)

Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.

The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but endured longer than even his family expected.

Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.

“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of his signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”

Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.

Carter was not great when he was in office, but I think he was the best ex-President we ever had: honest, hard-working, not one to give speeches for big dollars, and, though I’m not religious, I admire him teaching Sunday school. Yes, he was a man of faith, but he used his faith in productive ways. RIP Jimmy.

Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled: “Carter with Rosalynn Smith and his mother at his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1946.”

Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

*The crash of a Korean airliner (Jeju airlines) that I noted yesterday morning killed 179 of the 181 people on board, leaving only two crew members alive. See the video below, one of the clearest I’ve seen of such a crash. This one might really have been caused by a bird strike:

The Boeing 737-800 plane was operated by South Korea’s Jeju Air and had taken off from Bangkok. It was landing at Muan International Airport in the country’s southwest when it crashed around 9 a.m. local time. Footage of the accident shows a white-and-orange plane speeding down a runway on its belly until it overshoots the runway, hitting a barrier and exploding into an orange fireball.

Two crew members were rescued from the aircraft’s tail section, but by Sunday evening, the other people on board had all been confirmed dead. Officials were investigating what caused the tragedy, including why the plane’s landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned, whether birds had struck the jet, or if bad weather had been a factor.

The airport in Muan had warned the plane’s pilots about a potential bird strike as they were landing, said Ju Jong-wan, a director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The plane issued a mayday alert shortly afterward, then crash-landed, he added, saying later that the plane’s black boxes — which could help determine the cause of the crash — have been recovered.

I believe the plane is designed to fly on one engine, so it would have to be a double bird strike, AND why didn’t the landing gear deploy? It’s a big mystery and here’s what CNN said:

The Boeing 737-800 is one of the most widely used aircraft in the world and each one is used for about four or five flights per day, Geoffrey Thomas, editor of Airline News, told CNN’s Paula Newton.

“It is the most reliable aircraft in the world, and it’s been in service for 20 years,” he said. “Everybody knows how it works. And it works really, really well. And the maintenance done in [South] Korea is as good as it gets around the world.”

“It’s a little bit unclear whether or not the undercarriage collapsed on landing or whether the undercarriage was not deployed at all. This is a really serious issue that obviously investigators will be very much focused on,” Thomas added.

He added “it is perplexing” that the crash happened, given it was landing under dry and sunny conditions at a good airport.

Here is a clear and frightening 5-minute video of the crash, where the plane lands on its belly and then, striking a wall, explodes in a fireball.  I’m not sure how the inability

*The National Football League has agreed to be financially liable for brain injuries caused by repeated concussions or head strikes to players.  But for some reason it’s been reluctant to compensate those who were damaged, often very seriously, like getting dementia.

It took five years, three doctor’s visits, two federal lawsuits and countless emails with his lawyers, but Reggie Brown finally got word in February: He officially had dementia. Which meant, he believed, it was time for the NFL to pay up.

Brown, 64, had been fighting for years to get paid by the landmark NFL concussion settlement, which promised to compensate every former player with dementia or a brain disease linked to head trauma. Under the rules of the settlement, Brown’s lawyers told him, his diagnosis entitled him to about $200,000.

All that stood between him and a check was BrownGreer, the independent administrative firm that examines all claims. He had heard stories about the firm taking months, even years, to review claims, but he hoped his would move quickly. After all, his diagnosis had come from a board-certified settlement doctor who had been vetted by BrownGreer and lawyers for the NFL.

Then, in July, Brown received an email from the firm. Ithad reviewed his tax returns and scoured his social media activity, and it wanted to know:

If Brown had dementia, how had he managed to work part-time, earning about $30,000 annually the last five years?

Why did he claim online he worked as a motivational speaker?

And what about the Facebook posts that showed him attending his daughter’s graduate school graduation, traveling with his wife and going to the gym?

Guess who’s responsible? The lawyers!

When lawyers for the NFL and thousands of former players struck the historic settlement a decade ago, they entrusted the crucial role of managing itto BrownGreer, one of the most experienced firms in the country focused on settlement administration. And BrownGreer’s founding partner, Orran Brown Sr., publicly assured former players that his firm would work to make the process as efficient and fair as possible.

It was building a nationwide network of settlement-approved doctors whose diagnoses would quickly lead to payments, Brown said. And while the firm would consult a panel of expert review doctors on some claims, he said, it would rarely — if ever — deny claims involving diagnoses made by those settlement doctors.

“We do not take orders from the NFL,” he said then. His firm, he added, wanted to “get this done correctly and get it done quickly.”

But seven years later, BrownGreer has denied hundreds of claims involving diagnoses made by settlement doctors, and the firm hasspent months — and in some cases, years — scouring players’ social media and scrutinizing medical records, sparking an outcry from former players and causingsome doctors to quit the settlement’s languishing network, a Washington Post investigation has found.

A full 28% of the players’ claims have been denied, and settlements ofter take months to be completed. I suspect claims would be fairly easy to adjudicate, so a rate of denial that high is suspicious. The Washington Post notes that this reluctance to settle may be due to the extent of payments (over a billion dollars), far exceeding what was originally expected. But players get repeatedly hit in the head a LOT.

*Shen Yun is a popular Chinese music and dance group that I occasionally see advertised on television. I had no idea about its background, or where the money went, but the NYT tells us in a Sunday piece (archived here). It turns out that it funnels money to Falun Gong, the quasi-religious anti-communist group that the Chinese leaders mercilessly persecute. I support their right to do what they want, but I am not a fan, for the group believes in all kinds of nonsense: they reject modern medicine and biological evolution, to name two species.  But Shen Yun is even worse, and after you read this piece, you won’t want to go to their performances.

Over the past decade, the dance group Shen Yun Performing Arts has made money at a staggering rate.

The group had $60 million in 2015.

It had $144 million by 2019.

And by the end of last year, tax records show, it had more than a quarter of a billion dollars, stockpiling wealth at a pace that would be extraordinary for any company, let alone a nonprofit dance group from Orange County, N.Y.

Operated by Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese religious movement, Shen Yun’s success flows in part from its ability to pack venues worldwide — while exploiting young, low-paid performers with little regard for their health or well-being.

But it also is a token of the power that Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, has wielded over his followers. In the name of fighting communism, and obeying Mr. Li’s mystical teachings, they have created a global network to glorify him and enrich his movement.

Under Mr. Li’s direct leadership, Shen Yun has become a repository of vast wealth for Falun Gong, often accumulating money at the expense of its loyal adherents, a New York Times investigation has found.

It has raked in funds through ticket sales — nearly $39 million in 2023 alone — but also by using religious fealty to command the free labor of its followers. It has received tens of millions of dollars more in ways that may have crossed legal or ethical lines, The Times found.

As I said, it’s best to avoid this organization, which keeps its performers in a state of near slavery.

*Remember NASA’s Parker Solar Probe that made the closest approach to the Sun yet, exceeding the speed of any human-made vehicle ever and entering the sun’s hot corona? Well, it survived, and will surely provide some good scientific information.

 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has successfully made the closest approach to the sun, the space agency confirmed Friday.

Earlier this week, the spacecraft passed within a record-breaking 3.8 million miles (6 million kilometers) of the scorching star. NASA received an all-clear message from Parker on Thursday night confirming it survived the journey.

Launched in 2018 to get a close-up look at the sun, Parker has since flown straight through its crownlike outer atmosphere, or corona. With its close brush complete, the craft is expected to circle the sun at this distance through at least September.

It’s the fastest spacecraft built by humans, and hit 430,000 mph (690,000 kph) at closest approach. It is outfitted with a heat shield that can withstand scorching temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius).

Scientists hope the data from Parker will help them better understand why the sun’s outer atmosphere is hundreds of times hotter than its surface and what drives the solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles constantly blasting away from the sun.

Yes, I want to know why the corona is so much hotter than the Sun’s surface. If scientists don’t know, then I don’t expect readers will, either.  Here’s a five-minute news video about this mission:

*It’s now petty clear that the wreck of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight on its way from Baku to Grozny, and somehow got diverted and crashed in flames (killing 38) was not due to a “bird strike,” as first reported, but to an attack by Russian air defenses. (I suspect they thought the plane was a drone.) Surviving passengers remember hearing a loud bang, and there are apparently shrapnel holds on both the planes’s outside and inside.  And of course the Russians knew immediately what had happened, but didn’t admit it.  Now Putin has apologized for the crash, but won’t say that Russia was responsible.

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized Saturday that a “tragic incident occurred in Russia’s airspace,” the Kremlin said, acknowledging a role in the crash of a plane carrying 67 people, but stopping short of an expression of responsibility.

The Kremlin leader’s apology, made during a call with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, is likely to tamp down anger that had been growing over the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane this past week.

Preliminary results of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the crash that killed 38 of the people on board showed that a missile from a Russian air-defense system hit the Embraer 190 aircraft and that Russian authorities diverted it out of Russian airspace, people briefed on the matter said. As many as 29 people on the flight survived the crash landing in western Kazakhstan. Azerbaijani politicians have likewise publicly accused Russia of responsibility.

Putin, in his call Saturday, said that Russian air defenses were fending off an attack from Ukrainian drones in the region at the time of the plane’s descent. Putin “once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of those killed and wished the fastest recovery to those injured,” the Kremlin said.

The Azerbaijani president’s office acknowledged Putin’s apology for the crash, saying that the Kremlin leader pointed to an external factor that caused the disaster. Neither Putin nor Aliyev said explicitly that a missile had downed the plane, according to readouts from both governments. But, during the call, Aliyev said that the aircraft’s body had numerous holes in it and that objects had penetrated the fuselage, injuring passengers and crew members in the cabin.

Why would it “tamp down anger” if Putin simply expresses sorrow for those who were killed? That wouldn’t fly (excuse the metaphor) in the U.S., where people would demand answers as fast as they come.  Well, we pretty much know the anger. The cause of the crash according to experts? “Puncture holes in the plane’s vertical stabilizer.”  I don’t think birds can do that.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, I get special birthday greetings from both Hili and Szaron!

Hili: Do I see correctly? It’s December 30 so it’s Jerry’s birthday.
A: You are right.
Hili: Happy birthday, Jerry!
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ja dobrze widzę? Dziś 30 grudnia, czyli urodziny Jerry’ego.
Ja: Masz rację.
Hili: Sto lat, Jerry!

And from Szaron:

The whole house sends wishes, not just Hili.  (In Polish: “Cały dom składa życzenia, a nie tylko Hili.”)

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

From Meow, a birthday meme:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs: BACON!

From Things With Faces:

Masih is back, sadly with another tale of an Iranian protester deliberately blinded by the goons of the theocracy:

A groaner from Simon:

Did you know dogs can't operate MRI machines? But catscan.

— Princess (@themultiplemom.bsky.social) 2024-12-28T15:53:44.767Z

From Bryan. I had no idea that Roy Clark was this good, but I’ve never followed him very closely. What a performance!

From Malcolm. A void eats!

What–did you think DEI was just for humans, or even mammals?

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch woman perished in Auschwitz. She was 37.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-30T11:44:11.446Z

Two posts from Matthew. He sent me this one as a “birthday eve duck” yesterday. And it is indeed gorgeous:

Drake Eider at Hannafore beach, Cornwall yesterday.#birds #ukbirding #birding #Ukwildlife

— Steve Sanderson (@steve-sando1.bsky.social) 2024-12-29T16:59:29.298Z

This is a sad story, but you can read more about it here:

#OnThisDay, 27 Dec 1935, Regina Jonas was ordained as a rabbi in Berlin, the first known ordination of a woman.After her arrest in 1942, she ministered in a ghetto until she was transported to Auschwitz in 1944. She was probably killed on arrival.#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️

— Carve Her Name (@carvehername.bsky.social) 2024-12-27T09:00:02.000Z

63 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Many, many Happy Returns of the Day, Jerry. Three quarters of a century ain’t to be sniffed at. Here’s to the next quarter-century! And thank you for posting that lovely tribute by Natalie.

    Jimmy Carter’s life and achievements should be celebrated, just as the man himself is being mourned. Reading his obituaries, I was reminded of George Orwell’s final sentence in his long article about Gandhi: “Regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!”

  2. I join Hili’s extended family in wishing you a very happy birthday today, Jerry. (75?). And thank you Natalie for a lovely opening two-minutes on this Monday morning.

  9. The piece by Natalie is beautiful. To both watch and listen to.
    Happy birthday Jerry!

    2. Well done, Natalie if you are hovering around this thread. The improv’s gestures from the start to middle reminded me most strongly of Rameau. Of CPE Bach ( who largely composed in Brandenburg ), not at all. I was in Berlin in late May, to see the Deutsche Oper Ring cycle, which took a big commitment as I live in NZ. The harpsichord reminded me of a couple of happy hours spent in the Berlin musical instruments museum. Incidentally, 2024 is the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. The bulk of the surviving manuscript is conserved in Berlin, though I managed to see selections of it in Wien, which is the first time in a century it has been loaned outside of Berlin for public display.

  14. Happy Birthday! I appreciate the ways in which you have enriched my life: your book, which I purchased and read a number of years ago; and this site – while I don’t always agree with all of the views that are proposed here, it is good to have a place that challenges the intellect, and one where, despite the different views, civility is maintained.

    Roy Clark was not in one of my preferred genres, but he was quite talented, both in technical ability and in the fact that he was a multi-instrumentalist.

  15. Parker passed about ten sun radii out from the photosphere, the sun’s “surface” which is a thin layer of visible light located about 500,000 miles out from the Sun’s center. The sun of course, being all gas and plasma, has no solid surface. So passage ten radii away is not what I would generally call “kissing the sun”, but given the extreme temperature, magnetic, and gravitational environment close to our star, this data-taking flight is a terrific achievement according to Tom Zurbuchen, former NASA Associate Administrator for Science who wrote an opinion piece for wapo a few days ago, extolling the fundamental measurements that Parker is making and their potential impact on better understanding the Sun’s science and dynamics. I look forward to the analysis that will spill out from these data.

    1. And please see Randall Munroe’s table link in David Harper’s Comment #17 below for closest approach relative to earlier probes…with a dash of humor of course!

    2. As 2024 draws to a close, I wish to promote internationally a topic discussed on this website : ‘World-Class New Zealand Science Education’, in particular the cutting-edge science Bachelor/Bachelorette degrees of the University of Auckland !
      Much credit goes to UoA science professors Dunning and Kruger, to ‘deodorise and democratise’ the UoA freshman science curriculum.
      I posted on an earlier thread the general puzzlement amongst recent NZ university students as to why NASA just didn’t launch the Parker probe at night, to reduce the risk of the probe frying close to the sun during daytime. A couple of UoA science students have contacted me to point out my silly error. Of course, even though the Parker Probe accelerates to 600000 km/hr, as the Earth is 150 million kms from the sun, it takes weeks to reach the sun, so the probe will be exposed to many daytime temps after all!
      It is deplorable that NZ space startup Rocketlab largely relocated to the USA, just when the University of Auckland has upgraded its basic science credentials!

  16. Happy birthday!

    I spent much of the day puttering about the shop and listening on NPR about Jimmy Carters’ life. Of course I knew about his good deeds, but still I got a little verklempt hearing all the details about them.

  17. A very happy birthday to you, Prof Coyne!

    Apropos why the Sun’s corona is so hot, it appears that astronomers don’t have a definitive answer either. This article from a recent issue of Physics Today offers some interesting insights:

    https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/76/4/34/2879433/Unveiling-the-mystery-of-solar-coronal

    Perhaps Parker Solar Probe will help resolve the puzzle. Speaking of PSP, Randall Munroe celebrated its remarkable Christmas Eve achievement in his own inimitable style with this cartoon:

    https://xkcd.com/3029/

  18. Happy birthday, PCC(E)!

    The Parker probe’s trajectory reminds me of humpback whales.(*)

    (*) That is, via the fanciful but poetic time travel scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. This movie inspired me to seek out and visit Monterey Bay Aquarium and later to share my budding fascination about aquatic life with the next generation.

  20. Happy Birthday, Jerry. It’s my birthday, too. I’ll celebrate both by taking my old Honda Civic out for a drive and contemplate felid evolution while bemoaning recent developments at FFRF. Then some pie since I’m not a cake fan.

  21. Happy, happy birthday!

    Birding’s bias towards the often flashier males isn’t just sexist, but an example of lookism. LBBs (little brown birds) are often similarly oppressed.

    1. If we’re going to condemn humans for their bias to flashy males, it’s only fair that we condemn female birds, too. After all, it’s the fact that they consider unadorned males to be sexually unappealing that forces the males of so many species to burden themselves with elaborate, useless feathers and head ornaments.

    2. Another problem with the Audubon article is their use of a species of swift in the illustration, of which all North American species are little brown or black birds that have no distinctive differences in plumage between males and females. Not to mention that they are usually seen in high speed flight at higher altitudes, making identification a challenge.

  23. My very best wishes to PCC(e) on your birthday! WEIT is my first stop each morning, never failing to provide interesting news I wouldn’t get elsewhere, as well as essential updates on the Polish cats.

    And Natalie’s improvisation is a delight!

  25. Happy Birthday Dr. Coyne, Wayne. My birthday as well, 1966. I can’t help wondering where you might have been on this day in that year?

  27. Muy feliz cumpleaños, Jerry! Congratulations on having reached such a nice figure and still be as active, and as curious, as you are. Thank you so much for WEIT!

  29. I was curious about which “-ennial” this milestone birthday is, so I looked it up and learned that this day marks the Semisesquicentennial of your birth. That’s a word that does not exactly roll off the tongue, so here is a Happy Birthday instead!

    And, as others have said, thank you so much for this website. It has given me hours of entertainment and enriched my life with mind-expanding information and points of view.

  30. Loved the harpsichord improvisation with its tribute to Bach! Was that a cat greeting at the end?
    Herzliche Geburtstagsgrüsse, PCC, aus Pennsylvania!

  31. A very happy Birthday to you Jerry.

    And a thank you for WEIT, as it enriches my life each morning. I can’t say it’s my first stop each day, though. First I have to put the kettle on, feed the cats, check their litter & make sure it’s up to their standards, make my bed, stoke up the wood stove, make a cup of tea, and THEN I can sit down and enjoy my daily fix of WEIT. Delayed gratification.

  33. I’m surprised no one has mentioned Carter’s hostility toward Israel. Via Perplexity:

    Jimmy Carter demonstrated significant hostility toward Israel through multiple actions and statements:

    He accused Israel of implementing apartheid policies, claiming it represented “total domination and oppression of Palestinians by the dominant Israeli military”[2].
    He consistently criticized Israeli settlements, condemning them as illegal land confiscation and claiming Israel puts “confiscation of Palestinian land ahead of peace”[2].

    Major Criticisms

    He blamed Israel for Palestinian economic problems and condemned their water rights policies and house demolitions[1].
    He strongly opposed the security barrier proposed by Yitzhak Rabin[1].
    He omitted the historical presence of Jews in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities while emphasizing Arab presence[3].

    Controversial Statements

    Carter allegedly threatened that if re-elected in 1980, he would “screw the Jews”[3]. When faced with criticism of his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” he suggested Jews controlled the media and had undue governmental influence[3].

    His book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” was so controversial that it prompted the resignation of 14 members of the Carter Center community board[2]. Carter consistently portrayed Israel as unwilling to pursue peace and blamed them for Palestinian terrorism, characterizing such violence merely as a reaction to Israeli policies[2].

    Sources
    [1] My Problem with Jimmy Carter’s Book – Middle East Forum https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/my-problem-with-jimmy-carters-book
    [2] Jimmy Carter – Jewish Virtual Library https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jimmy-carter
    [3] Praise for Carter Ignores Ex-President’s Anti-Israel Obsession https://www.camera.org/article/praise-for-carter-ignores-ex-president-s-anti-israel-obsession/
    [4] [PDF] Carter’s Screed Against Israel https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=umiclr
    [5] The Unraveling of Jimmy Carter’s Middle East – New Lines Magazine https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-unraveling-of-jimmy-carters-middle-east/
    [6] Jimmy Carter Apologizes For Criticizing Israel : The Two-Way – NPR https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/12/jimmy_carter_apologizes_for_cr.html
    [7] Perplexity Elections https://www.perplexity.ai/elections/2024-11-05/us/president

    1. He also excused the Russian grab of Crimea, swallowing the Russian propaganda hook, line and sinker, and then was against military aid to Ukraine.

      Which proves once again that being truly good requires not only benevolence but a certain measure of IQ to make sense of situations.

  36. Happy Birthday, Jerry. A nice birthday present for you that Masih is back. We were worried about her.

  37. Happy birthday Jerry! Thanks again for this forum of sanity, hope you get to eat a bacon butty. Yum.

  39. Happy Birthday to the original and only true Ceiling Cat! May cats everywhere seek you out. And may this international site continue to be a safe place for reasoned discussions.

  42. Happy birthday, PCC(E)! I very much enjoyed hearing your friend Natalie’s gratulatory improvisation in the manner of the 17th-century French clavecinistes. Delightful!

  45. Best birthday wishes! I hope you’ve had a good Coynezaa despite the kerfuffle that has roiled the last few days.

    I’m rummaging about the cellar for some really good wine to open tomorrow evening. May the fine wine flow wherever you are as well.

  46. Happy birthday!

    Thank you for sharing your birthday presents with us. Loved the improvisation, and the drake (birding bias warning) is beautiful.

  51. A very happy birthday Jerry! And many returns in good health!

    That harpsicord piece is stunning (beginner’s effort my tuchus! 🙂 ) Thanks to you and Natalie for that!

    Commercial jet airliners (e.g. 737-700/-600/-800/-900 series) are designed to fly on one engine. They must be able to handle the most rigorous conditions with one engine out, including takeoff with maximum gross weight. On landing, the engines are usually idling, so that shouldn’t affect landing (unless there was a systems failure, which looks likely).

    I have to assume a hydraulic system failure (or whatever system releases the landing gear on those 737s) for the failure of the landing gear to deploy. Highly unusual and tragic of course. I am a bit surprised that they didn’t divert to an airport with a long runout at the end of the runway. Probably they couldn’t.

  52. Roy Clark was a true master of the guitar.

    I recommend this piece from the old Odd Couple show (apparently Clark was friends with Klugman and Randall):

  53. Roy Clark once marveled at the skill of some of the guitarists on his show, and then realized that he used to be able to play like that himself, before the logistics of running his show prevented him from practicing 12 hours a day!

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