Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 18, 2025 • 6:55 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: March 18, 2025, and it’s National Sloppy Joe Day.  I love them, but the sandwich seems to have gone extinct. (It’s loose ground beef, onions, and ketchup on a bun, and my mom used to make them.) Here’s one:

Buck Blues, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also World Social Work Day, National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day (?), and National Agriculture Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*David French has an intriguing (and probably accurate) op-ed in the NYT called, “Don’t fool yourself into thinking it will stop with Columbia” (archived here). Greg Mayer, who sent the link, says, “One part of his legal analysis seems to have a lacuna in it, but it’s quite good. A few excerpts:

Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime.

. . . .While that statement sounds damning, the reality is that [Mahmoud] Khalil was detained because of his protest activity and not because he’d provided illegal support for terrorists. As an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.”

In an interview with NPR, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made it clear that the administration was targeting Khalil’s expression. “We’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country,” Edgar said, “and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the secretary of state can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.”

But there is no visa to review. Khalil is a permanent resident now. Make no mistake, the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech.

While I’m appalled by the administration’s actions, I’m not surprised that the case arose out of what someone was doing at Columbia. The university has been in various degrees of political turmoil for decades.

. . . .In other words, universities possess a double obligation — to protect students and faculty and staff members from discrimination and harassment, while also protecting free expression on campus. It’s not an easy task. It requires a combination of wisdom and courage.

But the Trump administration possesses neither wisdom nor courage, and it is now in the process of using claims of antisemitism on campus as a justification for grave violations of due process and free speech. The Red Scares of 20th-century anti-communism are being replaced by a new frenzy, whipped up against left-wing supporters of the Palestinian cause.

French also chastises Columbia for its antisemitic atomosphere, but his main point is that freedom of speech is going to be destroyed in all universities if Trump keeps up like this.

When I told Greg that I pretty much agreed with French, he told me about the lacuna in logic:

It’s not that his argument differs from yours (indeed, I think you two agree in all or most details), but that concurrence from an evangelical Christian lawyer in the NYT is notable.
The lacuna is here. French writes:
A different statute, 8 U.S.C. Section 1182, says that any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” can be blocked from entering the country. Violation of that same statute can be grounds for deportation as well.
The cited USC means the First Amendment doesn’t fully apply to visa-seekers (because endorsing terrorist activity is protected for citizens). He also states that violation can be grounds for deportation of an alien (i.e. one who is already here), but doesn’t make clear if that includes green card holders or not
So when he then says that:
. . . even if Khalil did endorse terrorist attacks on Israel, that is still constitutionally protected speech. The First Amendment permits advocacy of violence, including illegal violence. The First Amendment permits advocacy of violence, including illegal violence . . .
it’s not clear if green card holders enjoy that constitutional protection.
His noting that there has been an absolute failure of due process, and that it is astounding that the “remedies” include taking over and reorganizing the academic structure of a private university, are noteworthy.

Finally, I found this thread about the piece on Twitter (click to go to site), noting a “remarkable admission” by the NYT, to wit:

Khalil is still being detained in Louisiana, with the Trump administration hoping that a conservative Southern judge will rule on his case. But it will go to the Supreme Court.

*And another NYT op-ed, showing why the Democrats were wrong to criticize Chuck Schumer when he pushed his fellow Senate Democrats to vote for a Republican bill against a government shutdown: “There’s a price for promising what isn’t possible in Congress” (archived here). It’s by Brendan Buck, a Republican, but I agree with him here:

On Friday the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, committed the grave sin of accepting reality, and his party is now furious.

Democrats were outmaneuvered by House Republicans on a measure to fund the government, and the only options for Democrats by late last week were to fold and vote for it or plunge into a government shutdown for which they were likely to pay a heavy political price.

Mr. Schumer understood this and spared the country and his party from the damage. It is dangerous territory for members of Congress to try to convince their base — or themselves — that they have more power than they do. At some point the bill comes due.

The truth is that this funding fight was over the moment House Speaker Mike Johnson was able to pass the G.O.P. bill without the help of the minority in the House. Still, some Democrats have deluded themselves into thinking the threat of shutdown provided some kind of leverage to rein in President Trump’s assault on the federal work force. Others believed that if they showed Mr. Trump the party was willing to fight, they would be in a stronger position next time. This is nonsense.

Shutdowns are not resolved through a negotiated peace or compromise. They almost always end when one side has taken a brutal political beating long enough that it finally throws in the towel. The party that forced the shutdown usually gets nothing but demoralization.

. . . . .As a result, I have sat through more than a couple of government shutdowns. Mr. Schumer is right that a shutdown was not a winning play for Democrats. It never is for the party that puts one into motion. In this case, it would have been an incredible political gift to Mr. Trump, who would love to change the subject from the market free fall and his sagging approval rating.

Yep, shutting down the government would have been a win for the Republicans had the shutdown been effected by the Democrats. Nevertheless, the younger and “progressive” Democrats were all for it, calling Schumer an out-of-touch fogey.  But Schumer has been around long enough to know whose bread gets buttered, and he’s right. It’s not only bad for the government to shut it down now, but especially bad for Democrats, who don’t seem able to avoid doubling down on what made them lose.

*A headline at the Free Press caught my eye: “Things worth remembering: Death is a friend.” It’s by Sean Fischer, Bari Weiss’s editorial assistant at the site.” WHAT? And again we have the site osculating religion:

Earlier this year, I wrote about my mom’s devastating misdiagnosis. After battling mysterious symptoms for years, she was told by her doctors, at the age of 61, that she had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. There was no hope of a cure, only a prolonged goodbye. I was 21 then. And though my mom made an unexpected, miraculous recovery, 18 months later, I will forever be grateful for my aunt’s gift, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, which I leaned on in those anxious days.

The author, John O’Donohue, was an Irish poet, philosopher, and former Catholic priest, who died in 2008 at the age of 52. This book, published in 1997, blends ancient Irish philosophy, Christian theology, and lyrical poetry—offering an immersive introduction to the spirituality of my ancestors, the Celts.

The root of this spirituality is friendship. Anam Ċara is Gaelic for “soul friend,” the Celtic term for a companion who acts as a guide and teacher through life. In such a friendship, O’Donohue explains, your spirits join. “You feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul.”

But to the Celts, friendship doesn’t exist simply between humans. It is also a way of relating to God, to nature, and all its inhabitants. “To be holy,” O’Donohue writes, is “to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.” The Celts rejected divisions between heaven and earth, time and eternity. To me, in that time of uncertainty, this was profoundly comforting.

Though I grew as a deeply faithful Christian, when I was confronted with my mom’s mortality, I felt divided from the God I thought would protect her. The church’s teaching, that eternal peace waits for us in another life, didn’t lessen my family’s suffering. But here was O’Donohue, with a message for those who are left behind on Earth in the wake of death. “That which seems to pass away on the surface of time,” he writes, “is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory.”

In other words, the division between the living and the dead is false.

. . . .We are bound to the rhythms of the Earth, which include death.

So you have to befriend it.

No I don’t have to fricking befriend it. I don’t want to die! I may reach the point where I’m so feeble or in so much pain that I don’t mind dying, but I will never befriend it. Nor did Christopher Hitchens, even when he knew he was terminally ill.  As he said, dying is like being at a party, and Death taps you on the shoulder and says, “You have to leave now, but the party will go on.”  And I want to go on, too.

*Also from the FP we have an article on our “progressive” Democratic governor, J. B. Pritzker (I did vote for him and he’s pretty okay, but sometimes off the rails). He’s off the rails this time with hypocrisy: “Is JB Pritzker wants to lead the Trump resistance. But is he turning his back on DEI?”

Since the election of Donald Trump, Democratic Illinois governor JB Pritzker has emerged as a key figure in the Resistance 2.0. A longtime proponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, Pritzker has described Trump’s attack on DEI as an attempt to “tear down” civil rights. He also called Trump “unfit to lead” after the president suggested DEI played a role in a tragic aircraft collision in January in Washington, D.C.

But, according to a Free Press review of internet archive records, Pritzker’s own family nonprofit appears to have scrubbed a slew of DEI language from its website on March 11. The Pritzker Family Foundation eliminated the phrase justice and equity from its mission statement and jettisoned the word inequities to describe its focus on social justice. The group also removed the word equitable from the statement that said the group had a “deep desire to create more just and equitable outcomes.”And the foundation removed an entire sentence from its website that read: “Learn more about our ongoing efforts to apply a lens of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) to our grantmaking here,” which linked to a downloadable foundation document detailing its “ongoing journey” to embrace DEI. This document can no longer be found on the foundation’s site, but was located by The Free Press on the internet archive.

. . .The document, which according to its file name was created in 2021, said that “diversity and inclusion” are “central to the foundation’s work.” It described how the organization is analyzing “inequitable systems” that discriminate against minorities as it shapes its philanthropic giving.

Progressive activist Misty Gaither says the alterations cast doubt on whether the Pritzker Family Foundation was serious about promoting DEI in the first place. “If anyone can so quickly scrub their website, their efforts have been performative at best over the last several years,” Gaither, who advises companies on DEI and is the former vice president of DEI and Belonging at Indeed, told The Free Press.

The Pritzker Family Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on the changes to its website. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said Pritzker has “been clear” that he will not roll back government DEI programs in Illinois and is continuing to push back against the Trump administration.

Here’s the before and after when “equity” was scrubbed (click to enlarge).

In fact, I see that of the “DEI” acronym, it’s the “E”, for “equity” that is disappearing in various universities.  No surprise about that: who can object to “diversity” or “inclusion” in principle? But “equity” implies affirmative action of sorts, and not everybody is down with that.

*As the weather warms up, the pro-Palestinian crowd is becoming busy on campus again.  According to the Chicago Maroon, a legal memorial for Kir Bibas, the youngest of the three members of the Bibas family (mom and two young sons) who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was vandalized. The two children were reportedly strangled to death with bare hands, and the Maroons for Israel, a pro-Israeli organization, put up a crib on campus to remind people of the savagery of Hamas. The University decried the vandalism.

The University released a statement denouncing the vandalism of a Maroons for Israel (MFI) installation on the quad as a violation of “the University’s longstanding commitment to free expression.”

A University Student Centers–approved MFI installation on the main quad outside Swift Hall was vandalized on March 7, per a MFI statement.

The installation consisted of a crib containing an Israeli flag and a poster with photos of Kfir Bibas, a nine-month-old Israeli taken hostage during the October 7, 2023 attacks and later killed. The poster was partially ripped and left on the ground.

In its statement, the University restated its position regarding damage to approved installations and noted that the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) is currently investigating the incident. The University also shared information about how students can receive support for freedom of expression–related concerns.

“Maintaining UChicago’s environment of free expression for a wide diversity of perspectives takes unremitting effort on everyone’s behalf,” the statement read.

In its March 7 statement posted on Instagram, MFI condemned the vandalism.

“Earlier today, our crib installation highlighting the barbaric murder of Kfir Bibas was vandalized on the University of Chicago quadrangles,” MFI wrote. “We are appalled at this inhumane behavior, which shows insensitivity at best, and support at worst, for the slaughter of an innocent nine month old infant whose only crime was being Jewish.”

“This act of hatred does not discourage us, but only motivates our advocacy on campus,” MFI continued. “We are committed to working with the administration and appropriate personnel to penalize the perpetrators of this heinous act. Jewish students can’t look away from antisemitism, and neither should you.”

Over the last year, MFI’s installations have been vandalized or stolen several times. During the pro-Palestine encampment last spring, Israeli flags and pro-Israel signs on the main quad were repeatedly stolen or removed from their approved locations by unknown individuals. At the time, an MFI representative told the Maroon the “desecration of a University-approved installment” was “despicable and shouldn’t be tolerated at the University of Chicago.”

Below is a tweet showing the desecration. This happened, as the article says, repeatedly in the last couple of years, as the pro-Pals continually ripped down expensive Israeli flags and pro-Israel and “bring them home” banners, an illegal act. As far as I know, not a single pro-Palestinian installation was vandalized. So it toes.

But when I looked at the University’s statement condemning the vandalism, which was a good affirmation of free expression on campus, I was amused to see this (my bolding).

The ability of RSOs to display messages of their choice is an important form of free expression on our campus, and vandalizing such installations is never acceptable. The University also does not tolerate harassment directed at individuals or groups.

Maintaining UChicago’s environment of free expression for a wide diversity of perspectives takes unremitting effort on everyone’s behalf. Students in need of support can contact the Dean-on-Call.

The Deans-on-Call here are worse than useless, as they cannot do anything without the permission of the administration. Nothing! And at least some of them don’t even bother to hide their political sympathies towards Palestine. Here’s a photo that a Jewish student took of a Dean-on-Call during the encampment last year (I added the arrow). Look at her “watermelon” fingernails and Palestinian colors. There are pictures of other Deans-on-Call dressed in red, green, white and black during the protests. Seriously, the University shouldn’t allow Deans-on-Call to take sides in such a way.

*Although this BBC headline is ungrammatical, the content is good: “Vending machine for ducks to tackle bread feeding.” (h/t: Matthew)

A special vending machine for feeding ducks appropriate food has been installed in a park after complaints the birds are becoming ill due to people feeding them bread.

It follows a request from volunteers at Burrs Country Park in Bury, Greater Manchester, who have reminded people that bread is bad for ducks’ health and the quality of their water.

The new solar-powered machine, supplied by the Feed The Ducks Initiative, offers £1 portions of healthier alternatives such as barley, oats, peas and chopped lettuce.

Bury councillor Alan Quinn said the council was “delighted” to support the scheme, adding: “Don’t let it be said that we duck the big decisions.”

“Everyone likes to feed the ducks and this initiative will help ensure that the birds are getting a healthy diet,” he said.

The national Feed The Ducks Initiative has been working with local authorities across the country to install the vending machines in a push to reduce bread feeding.

It has pledged to maintain and replenish them with necessary foods.

Users can pay £1 to dispense a handful of duck food, with 90% of costs going towards the initiative’s running costs and the remainder going to the Friends of Burrs Country Park group to help fund events and park maintenance.

A sign on the machine states: “Bread makes ducks ill and does not contain the right nutrition or calories that they need to grow or keep warm.

“Rotting bread pollutes the water and cause nasty surface algae, which kills wildlife and gives ducks diseases.”

Believe me, I’ve had this idea for years. But why pay for a machine and restock it when they’ve got ME to give them a complete diet?

*An update from Jim Batterson on the return to Earth of the two “stranged” astronauts (he doesn’t like “stranded”)

Butch and Suni undocked and pushed away from the ISS just after 1:00 AM EDT this morning as Crew-9 ended its duty on the ISS, turning it over to the recently arrived Crew-10.  The pair left a few days earlier than planned because the weather forecast for the intended splashdown area is unsettled for the end of this week—or at least NASA says.  They have been flying out a protected ellipsoid around station and now, as I write this morning just after 7am EDT, they should be below station and beginning a series of approximately 90-minute orbits that will culminate with the firing of their main deorbit thrusters at 5:11 pm EDT this afternoon, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida at 5:57 pm EDT.  Live coverage should start on Space.com and maybe even C-Span (as this very dangerous business has seemed to take on a political tone) at 4:45pm EDT.

There is a good full timeline summary of Butch and Suni’s excellent adventure on Space.com this morning here.
I conclude by saying that NASA, my home for 32 years and my father’s home for 31 years before me (1939-his death in 1970) is dead to me now.  I watched on C-Span last night as the NASA spokesman referred to Butch and Suni as “stranded” and returning to the “Gulf of America”.  This was the official NASA voice using Trump’s words!  So it is over for me, a second generation NASA engineer.  On TWiV, Vince Racaneilo and either Paul Offit or Dan Griffin have said, in talking about public health, that when you mix science and politics, you get politics.  Most recently, one of them observed that when you mix science and politics you get death.  They are very smart people.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still studying entomology:

Hili: This insect is annoying.
A: Why does it bother you?
Hili: It’s running back and forth.
In Polish:
Hili: Ten owad jest natrętny.
Ja: Co ci przeszkadza?
Hili: Biega tam i z powrotem.

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

Two cat-related photos from reader.  First, one from Peter Hearty in the UK, who says:

Not sure if this counts as a wildlife photo or not, but did you know there’s a giant cat looking down on us from the surface of the moon? Taken in my back garden in Southend-on-Sea, England, 16 Mar 2025.

Here’s reader Simon with his two moggies, all watching the terrific animated movie “Flow”:

From Cat Memes:

From Masih, who apparently was blocked on social media for advocating for a Woman’s March against Muslim theocracies:

From Divy: cats and ducks being cozy:

From Malcolm; a clever way to feed homeless cats:

From my Twitter feed:

And from my BlueHair feed; Larry the Cat, whom I follow:

Wishing a very happy St Patrick’s Day to all of my friends celebrating in Ireland and around the world, especially O’Larry who’s the guard cat at Jameson:

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T15:12:16.357Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

This Croatian Jewish girl didn't even survive the train journey to Auschwitz. She was 16. Her mother and brother were gassed upon arrival.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-18T10:31:47.750Z

Two posts from Matthew. Look at this unit! (There are more in the thread):

And another:

And a leucistic coot:

Well, I did not have "Leucistic American Coot" on my Bingo list today. Did anyone? Seen just a bit ago in #WoodlandCA #Birds

— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T00:01:14.437Z

48 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I saw that “this generation is lost” tweet yesterday. There are a lot of things wrong with today’s youth, but, in this case, the gag of asking for a left-handed hammer (or spanner or red oil for the port running light) is one that youths have been falling for for generations. Soon they will learn that people are not seriously interested in whether their refrigerators are running.

    1. Indeed. I remember in high school, approx. thirty years ago now, one teacher sending a classmate next door to get a tin of elbow grease. I’m not 100% sure I immediately got the joke.

    2. In the slate mill the new guys and gals always got sent to the office to ask for a slate stretcher.

    3. Are you not concerned that, instead of directing the “japester” to the hammer section, they all immediately started consulting their mobile phones?

      Anyway, left handed hammers do exist. Certain types of hammer are asymmetrical and come in left and right handed versions.

      1. +1

        The phones could be company-issued, or otherwise the store app has a store map. (… app map…)..

        Lowe’s and Home Depot (competitors) are like this – the store is so large they need a store map. It’s either them or you who will look at the map ..

        BUT …

        That said, this illustrates the difference between knowing the store and … not.

        Usually I don’t ask and go find items on my own. I enjoy it – a bit o’ therapy.

        I’m enjoying these tales … jar of ohms!

      2. My experience is that HD or Lowe’s staff will consult their devices to see if they have a certain item in stock. (I’ll first go the section and look. There’s always the occasional item not easily classified according to signage. For example, shoe/boot polish. I don’t perceive hammers as one of them.)

        Regarding the below Updike “bearings” quote, a classical practical joke pulled on a freshly minted seaman recruit recently reported aboard ship is to send him to fetch some relative bearing grease.

    4. When I was a Boy Scout many decades ago, it was a standard trick to send a Tenderfoot off to the stores for a stand and long weight.

    5. You are so correct, I am 74 and in high school almost 60 years ago, the auto shop teacher would send a student to get a jar of ohms from the electonics class next door. He would return with a request for a sky hook. These have been running jokes for many generations.

        1. I don’t know why, but of all these comments of age-old pranks on the callowness of youth, this is the one that made me laugh out loud for real. Thanks for sharing (and to everyone else who shared a prank).

        2. I don’t know why, but of all these comments of age-old pranks on the callowness of youth, this is the one that made me laugh out loud for real. Thanks for sharing (and to everyone else who shared a prank).

    7. Years ago when we were teenagers my friend worked at the shop at the Buckmore Park scout centre. A scout leader sent some of his troop to the shop to get some “sky hooks”. My friend went into the store room, bent some wire coat hangers into weird shapes and sold them for 50p each. The scout leader wasn’t happy, but accepted that it had served him right.

      We later both had a summer job where one of the young permanent employees had never wised up to the prank requests and the old hands delighted themselves with sending him off to get striped paint, etc. They also convinced him to ask for “good old British North Sea petrol” for his moped the next time he filled it up, telling him not to let the petrol attendant give him “that Arab muck” that they fobbed off on less-discerning customers. Sadly, our summer work finished before we could hear the aftermath of that one.

      1. In Ring Lardner’s classic short story “Haircut”
        (1925), on the first day of baseball season, one character sends another one out to find a key for the batter’s box.

    9. We would tell our young draftsmen to go to the store room and bring back a box of body lines.

    10. I had no idea how many variations there are for this joke. When long ago I worked as a carpenters helper the favorite joke of the carpenters was to show a new helper the technique of toe nailing and then send them to the hardware store to get a bag of toe nails.

    11. There was a guy in my hometown who used to buy up old quarries and cut them up for post holes.

  2. We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. -John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009)

  4. A “dean on call” is an official function of the university (whether or not they do a competent job at it) and therefore should not permit clothing, signs, flags, or adornments that take a political position while serving in that role. As individuals outside of a dean on call role, they can certainly opine or wear what they want, but in the carrying out of their university-assigned duties, they must be and even appear to be neutral.

    On the brighter side, I am delighted to see that it is Sloppy Joseph Day. I have some leftover hamburger buns from grilling burgers and dogs this past weekend and look forward to slathering them with sloppy joe mix and homemade slaw tonight for dinner. I cannot be cynical about sloppy joes!

    1. Sloppy Joe day….. Hmm. I wonder if any one told the orange one. I see the immediate aftermath: An executive order removing “sleepy Joe day” from the calendar and prohibiting any federal employee from mentioning it or celebrating.

  6. Regarding the decision by my Senior Senator and his willing accomplice the Junior Senator from New York: I maintain that since the Republicans control all branches of government, it is THEY who will be blamed–and deservedly–for a shutdown. This is not the time of the collegial Senate of Dan Pat Moynihan. This is a battle for Democracy, and the Democrats need to fight it tooth and nail. Never again will I vote for those two cowards from NY.

    1. What if Trump was able to shut down 75% of the government and nobody cared? That is the nightmare scenario Schumer was trying to avoid.

      Remember, in previous shutdowns the Dems deliberately made the shutdown painful for ordinary people by closing the national parks, etc. This time that would not happen.

    2. The CR is basically just a continuation of the existing budget which was a product of Schumer, Johnson, and Biden. It’s no surprise the Democrats didn’t fight it from a priority of expenditure point of view. The only reason to oppose it would be to try to give the Republican administration a black eye. Schumer, a veteran political animal and oftentimes pragmatist, probably judged that blocking the bill would result in more harm to his party than to the opposition in terms of publicity. Plus, he already voted for the same spending last year.

      Thomas Massie (R-KY) publicly and correctly predicted that the bill would carry due to this. He voted NO, and as a result earned Trump’s approbation and the threat of being primaried in the next election.

  7. Your right! Sloppy Joes have gone extinct. I haven’t had one for decades and never see them in restaurants. Nor has a friend ever served one when I’ve visited. Nor have I heard or read of Sloppy Joes being served in recent years. My mother made them. They were easy, quick, and we kids loved them! Too late for the Endangered Species List?

    1. Not too late to resurrect them for dinner tonight, Norman, as I am planning to do. Hope that I am not over-anticipating after all these years…what with sense of smell and of taste dulling….

      1. My mouth is watering! They were so good, especially for kids. We liked the messiness of them as well as the taste.

    2. Celebrating Sloppy Joes reminded me of a “Beverley Hills” TV episode I watched as a kid, where The Beverley Hillbilly’s rich neighbors invited them to attend an Untidy Josephs’ bar-be-cue party.

    3. Norm, you have just been going to the wrong restaurants! There are many joints here in Denver that serve them, with some of the best being at the BBQ places. And we probably have them at home once per month. Dig out your mother’s recipe 🙂

  8. The FP – and Bari – have an undercurrent of religiosity which I personally find obnoxious.

    I’ve seen a few animal feed vending machines (ducks, deer, etc) in Japan, but then there’s also female panties, cigarettes galore, and whisky in vending machines. There’s one (serving lots of stuff, not just panties…) machine for every few Japanese citizens and they’re everywhere and they’re EXCELLENT. They even take coins!

    “The future has arrived, it is just unevenly distributed.” – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner.

    D.A.
    NYC

      1. It is, Raskos, I stand corrected. Still can’t for the life of me remember WHERE he wrote it.
        But it is a killer line – I think about it on every trip to Tokyo to see what our electronics and trends will be back in NYC in about 2-3 years!
        best,

        D.A.
        NYC

    1. I wonder if the Israeli leadership has learned that the rest of the hostages are already dead or are unlikely to be returned? Restarting the war now could be curtains for the remaining hostages but, yet again, Hamas needs the hostages for leverage. Maybe this was a on-off attack, perpetrated to elicit a reaction. It’s all hard to say.

      1. I think it is true that nearly none of the hostages are still alive.

        Be that the case or not Norman, the war must continue. For everybody’s sake there Hamas must be extinguished down to the street gang level of “I wanna be a martyr on my 15th birthday” types. Let’s help them achieve their life goals.

        Root and branch and then salt the earth. Terrorism can’t be allowed. The Pals have turned down every sane opportunity, ignored every off ramp including their own state, effectively, in Gaza for 17 years lately. They buggered it all and then started a war of annihilation on Oct. 7. It will be their own annihilation.

        Anybody not willing to change there must be treated… koranically. There are instructions in that book – THEIR book – about enemies and how to treat them.

        Onwards Israeli heroes.

        D.A.
        NYC
        for more reasonableness and kumbaya peacenik takes, enjoy my much syndicated column:
        https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/
        🙂

        1. The incomparable force of Nature and woman of steel named Natasha Hausdorff spoke at an event last night, live and in person, Q and A format. It was inspiring to be in the presence of someone who has taken on a mission bigger than herself. We were overcome with emotion through every word. Because she joked ruefully about what a change it was to be where she felt love instead of hate I’ll not mention any details of what she said. The moderator who introduced her — I’m being deliberately vague to respect security concerns — hit all the right notes that would be familiar to WEIT readers. Her wishes for the hostages still in captivity drew a mournful response. I think everyone knows they are dead or doomed.

          Time to finish the job. Onward Israeli heroes.

    1. I’m a free speech proponent, and also agree that non-citizens do not necessarily have the same rights as citizens. As Dr. Coyne pointed out in this post and others, the answer seems to be complicated.

      I also think about alternative scenarios – if Khalil was a German neo-nazi who joined a group painting swastikas on buildings, and a Democratic administration deported him, would the sentiment be the same? Ira Glass might defend both Khalil and the hypothetical German, but I think many who currently voice support for Khalil would not.

  11. The irony is palpable. The worst part? The people at the NYT are blind to it.

    The tweet highlighting the New York Times’ remarkable admission leads to this article:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/opinion/trump-research-cuts.html

    In it, the NYT concedes:

    “Too many professors and university administrators acted in recent years as liberal ideologues rather than seekers of empirical truth. Academics have tried to silence debate on legitimate questions, including Covid lockdowns, gender transition treatments, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

    And who does the NYT choose to quote on the lack of liberal pushback against conservatives? Holden Thorp!

    “The people who are attacking higher education are talking nonstop,” said Holden Thorp, a chemist and former university administrator who runs the Science family of journals. “And the people leading higher education are not saying very much.”

    A telling choice.

      1. I see the cat. What I have never been able to see is the supposed man’s face (“The Man on the Moon.”) In the Middle Ages, people claimed to see a man carrying firewood, accompanied by a dog (as referenced in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”) They evidently had a much more vivid imagination than I do.

  13. Death can wait as far as I’m concerned but there seems to be a rush to buy it, (very popular in the middle east, it’s on special) impose it, milk it out of you, pass it around.
    I just don’t want it to be by bus.

    “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval”
    Averroes 1198 Spanish astronomer, physicist, and philosopher.

  14. Pingback: Tuesday: Hili dialogue - Peek Jar News

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